Thank You

Andy and Dave say thank you very much, we had a great time working on the project and hope that you all keep up the good work, and do some other making and creative things in the future.

The Films

The next day was the last of the workshops, and the final thing we had to do was to edit the video footage that we made on the hills and reflect on the work we had done.

Luckily we had done some video editing earlier in the project so we could remember quite well how to do it and what programs we used.

We had already got the films off the flip cameras and Andy and Dave had converted them to make them work with Windows Movie Maker, so getting the films onto the Netbooks and to begin to edit them was a lot quicker than the last time.

It was fun to get a first look at the video we (and our machines) had made a few days before, again we thought about making a title for the films, which bits we should cut out, and which bits could have an effect applied to them to add emphasis to certain parts. Here are some screen shots from a few of the movies.

Project Breaking Point, Short Show Reel from David Bethell on Vimeo.

After doing the editing of our films we had a few thoughts about how we could have improved the machines, either making them differently with different materials, or where we would place them in order to make the best use of the recording equipment.
The main thing to come out of this was that we would need to make things slightly stronger as some of the machines weren't sturdy enough for the trip there, although they did work once they were repaired. Other ideas included making thing waterproof and making things secure so that we would be able to leave them for longer, in the environment.

Out on the Hills

The penultimate day of the project was to go out onto Hednesford Hills and use our newly built machines to do our recordings.

The Hednesford Hills are an area of heath and woodland that are part of Cannock Chase, they are right next to the school and they are a great place to see wildlife. The hills are a nature reserve and have lots of interesting plants and animals living on them. There is Heather, Gorse, Oak, Pine and Birch Trees, Bilberry, and grasses. In the area we went to there was also a marshy pond which was alive with frogs. There are also cattle which help maintain the unique environment by eating the grass and invasive plants, these cattle are a breed called Dexters and they have very short legs.

Making the Final Pieces

Once the maquettes and were finished, we started to think about making the actual machines. For this part of the Andy and Dave brought in some new materials. Some of the materials were larger versions of what we had already used and some of them such as Duck Tape were new.

Again we had to do some planning before we started making, this was important to make sure that we made the best use of the materials we had and to make sure that we were safe when we were working.

We managed to make the final pieces within a day. It was hard work but we managed it in the end, although we had to do some quick finishing off on the next day.

The Final Part

We are now coming to the end of the breaking point project, so we have started planning what we are going to make as a final piece of work.

Planning
Planning is very important when we are making work it makes sure we get all our ideas down and then have something to work to when we are making the work.
The brief for this end project was to find a way of recording or measuring the environment on the hednesford hills, which are next to the school. The idea was to make objects which were half machine half sculpture.

Mini Masterpieces

On the same day that we made the Zoetrope films we also had a go at making some very short films just using the classroom. Again they were to tell a story but this time it was all going to be live, we had to think about props and costumes and what shots there were going to be in the film. This was to get us thinking about how we can tell a story and to get us used to using the Flip cameras to film each other.

At the end of the day we used the NetBook computers to transfer the film from the camera and onto the school's network. We had a bit of trouble with this because of the space available and the number of film we had made.

Zoetropes

Zoetropes are quite an old way to make images appear to be moving or animated, they were first made in the form that we recognise in the 19th century, however the idea goes back to ancient china.

we wanted our Zoetropes to tell a story, it was a story of going to get some food, and the animations would relate to the three different ages.

Andy and Dave had made some examples and a zoetrope made from lego, two old CDs, a CD stack box and some card.

Here is a drawing of the zoetrope