absence makes the heart grow fonder

sorry for the lack of posts, what's it been? a year-ish? sorreh!
to be fair i have had a massively busy year, started university and what not, so that's my excuse!
but i'm making a mid year resolution to start blogging more, about anything and everything i find interesting. so, expect to see more of me and hopefully a revamp if i can become blog savvy and figure out how to use this again!

in the meantime, here's something that makes me a smile a massive amount http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0wEYtmmuFQ

student TV viewing habits - survey results!

we came up with individual questionairres about which programmes we watched on TV and how often, then as a class we grouped together the best questions and reposted a new survey to a selected group within college. these are the results...

The questionnaire generated 25 responses overall despite being sent to 56 students. The age range of students that took part range from 16 to 21 and have an average of 17 years old, which is about the age the TV channel would be aimed at anyway.

The gender range is 72% boys who answered the questions, this could lead to bias within our experiment for answers to lean towards more male related viewing habits and interests, to achieve a fairer representation it would have been ideal to distribute the questionnaire to an even number of girls and boys.

the results show that the most popular time period to watch television is 8-10pm gaining 52% with 10pm- 12 am closely behind at 48%, this shows that late night TV is the preferred choice and this could be down to a number of reasons; only time of day free or even because its past the watershed time so programmes that appeal more to the age group could be shown at this time. The overall percentage results give us 156% which isn’t possible, this tells us that multiple choices have been made referring to the times and doesn’t give us a clear time for the actual preferred time.

The top responses in the news related questions show that world news is the most watched but only occasionally.

The top favourite genre choice is comedy according to the people that answered; the question was skipped by one person which could mean that there are more genres viewed by this specific age group. The list of genres was made specifically varied but the results have come back leaning to an obvious choice.

One the ‘your top 5 programmes’ question the majority of people answered with only one person skipping the question, personally I don’t see a reason for skipping the question altogether unless you don’t watch any programmes and have no favourites therefore a television habits survey isn’t exactly right for said person to answer in the first place. Popular choices in these answers which appear a fair few times are; Takeshi’s Castle, South Park, How I met your mother, Family Guy and Friends.

I think the question regarding the top 3 channels is useful because channels are usually tailored to tastes and finding out each participant’s preferred choices shows more for about their interests. Dave and E4 proved to be popular choices within the collected answers.

The last question was “what’s your ideal duration of a TV programme” the answers ranged from 5 minutes to 3 hours plus. 30 minutes and one hour both received 40% of the votes, i think this shows an awareness in terms of attention span, anything longer could get boring or just not be worth watching, perhaps a busy social life makes it impossible to dedicate so much time to a television programme.

One of the risks of sending a questionnaire like this to an age group ranging 16 to 21 is that not everyone could take it seriously, we won’t be able to gather evidence for this particular age group without that risk being present though, maturity levels are uncontrollable by us as evidence gatherers.

Biography

this is a biography I've put together on one of my favourite directors.

Baz Luhrmann

 He was born 17^th of September 1962 as Mark Anthony Luhrmann. He’s been nominated for a golden globe and an academy award, best known for his Red Curtain Trilogy which consists of Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge. All three films follow his particular style of film-making which includes fast paced editing and bright colours, also the theme of red runs through.

   Strictly Ballroom

This is the only one of the three that I haven’t seen, it’s a romantic comedy that’s centred around the world of competitive dancing. The film was based on a play that was also directed by Luhrmann in 1986 which he later transformed into a film.

Romeo and Juliet

Based on the well known story by William Shakespeare, this version puts the same story and language into a contemporary setting; it also brings an old story and historic language to a new younger audience with its cast and soundtrack.

Moulin Rouge

The film is based on the Orphean myth and also on an opera ‘La Traviata’ by Giuseppe Verdi. The story is set in France and around a well known club the Moulin Rouge. Luhrmann’s inspiration for the film came from a musical he saw in India. He also took inspiration from the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Australia

Luhrmann’s most recent film is set in Australia between 1939 and 1942.  As well as Moulin Rouge ‘Australia’ stars Nicole Kidman as his leading lady.

In the summer time when the weather is fine...

the sudden burst of sunshine we had has brought on a wave of summery adverts, i'm being told on a daily basis to do up my garden, buy a barbeque and check out new summer clothes. what would summer be without icecream :) and i particularly like the new cornetto advert.

i'm not going to go and buy this icecream, which kind of defeats the selling point of the advert, just give me one of those bears!

Valentines Shmalentines

recently my friend Mary told me that valentines day was named after a priest (Father Valentine) that held secret weddings for couples wanting to get married in a time when marriage was banned, he was found out and killed for his cupid like crimes, before his execution he had written a note for his beloved signed 'from your Valentine' and so St Valentine was given a day devoted to expressing love for the one you love. personally I love Valentines day, its the one day you can be over the top gushy, cheesy and romantic and it's acceptable.

I don't know if it's just me but I've been noticing a lot more dating site adverts too! the theme of love in the calendar is spreading to the telvision advert air time, one of my favourites is the one with the old couple talking about each other and the man says she makes a great cup of tea, aww!
one that i dont like however is the match.com couple that meet in the music shop and sing a little song about what they like. I know these matchmaking scenes arent exactly realistic but come on.

Visit to the Baltic

As a group we visited the Baltic centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead to gain first hand research of installation projects on display by real artists.

On the ground floor was an installation called ‘It has to be this way2’ by Lindsay Seers, it is an exploration documentation of the misconception and reservations generated from a mix of factual history and recollected memories. The story it follows is of the disappearance of Christine Parks, she was the artists stepsister, it retraces her journey to Ghana where the slave forts line the coast. The actual installation was a model of one of these forts that you could walk into where a circular screen played the film on the floor. There were also two large shapes outside the fort that kept making appearances in the film, a 3d black star and a 3d red diamond.

I really liked the way you could step into the piece of work, it made you feel linked into the project itself and involved in the story. The way the screen was set out really helped with this too, looking down through a sort of spy hole.

On the first floor there was a live art workshop taking place, you were able to construct your own brick out of card and then decorate it using either paint or pens, expressing something you love. It gave me the idea to potentially use something physically interactive as an installation for my own work.

The second floor was closed but the third floor held an exhibition of George Shaw’s work, ‘The Sly and Unseen Day’ which is a collection of paintings from 1996 to present day, they were made using Humbrol enamel and looked really effective.

New Year, New You

the majority of adverts i have seen so far this year are all aimed at eating healthily, after the overindulging in the christmas period everyones desperate to stick to the annual new years resolution of eating healthily. my absolute favourite so far has to be from innocent smoothies

just watching this makes me want a smoothie, so essentially the adverts already working! even the song was stuck in my head for about a day and i told everyone about it. another food fave of the advert world has to be the chocolate finger advert, upon my first ever viewing i was in hysterics, after that its not so funny but still. although, does anyone agree they look more like hot dogs than chocolate fingers?!

dont watch if you're attempting to diet this month, mines ruined already.