Recently I’ve spent a lot of time working on my new online portfolio. Back in Nobember I bought the domain name chrisleydon.tv with the intent of turning it into an entertainment channel. A channel that would have been full of blogs, video shows and short films. Whilst this is a long term dream, something I want Keyone Productions to be able to achieve, I realised that it wasn’t something that was plausable for chrisleydon.tv at the present time.

An online entertainment channel requires constant updating with fresh content. It requires time and love, two things which I can’t give to such a project at this current moment in time. I needed to come up with another use for my domain.

Over the past two months and the holiday season, many ideas and concepts have come and gone. The concept that I settled on was to turn chrisleydon.tv into a place for my portfolio. I could have done this through a page on my blog, but I decided that it was wise to have a completely seperate and independant site for this project.

The design of the portfolio was something that was crucial. I wanted as much space as possible for a widescreen flash video player, but I also wanted incredible ease of use. After a few mockups in Photoshop I settled on the final design that is currently being used, the next step was to code the site.

I’ve dabbled with web design and coding in the past, as regular blog readers will know, however this is my most ambitious web project to date. To save on loading pages I wanted everything to be on one page. For accessibility reasons I didn’t want the entire site to be flash based. I required a system whereby the user click on a video to play and it plays in the central video player. From past experiences I knew that this was plausable with little hard work. Such a system is put into use on the Mevio website, as well as the new Podzone site (coded by Owen Jones).

The problem with using the systems from Mevio and The Podzone is that both of those sites run off a content management system, something which I didn’t want to use. As I’m not the most fantastic coder in the world I needed a little help with Javascript, so I reached out into the Twitter community. Sam Starling, student and web coder, replied to my message and created a demo with a walkthrough. This enabled me to code my project with ease, whilst learning how it all worked. I am forever indebted to him for this.

My portfolio, as it stands, contains some of my best work from over the past year and a half. It will continue to be updated with more work as it appears. No doubt that Project New York will play a crucial part in it. That’s the story of my online portfolio. Should you want to check it out, head on over to www.chrisleydon.tv.

Chris Leydon.

I feel so overworked recently. I’ve been having to pull all nighters just to get my work done in time. I suppose in one respect it’s my own fault, allowing all of my deadlines to pile up; in another though, why do I have so much work in the first place? By the end of this week I have to have completed all of the Bishops’ College Videos (that Keyone Productions were commissioned to produce), I have a pantomime video scene for OTFM Productions and my University Film Tech work is due in too.

With the first draft of the second Anti-Bullying video for Bishops’ College complete, I now have more time to concentrate on my University work. One thing I must say that I am proud of though, is the video intro that I created for the Bishops’ documentary. Using a lot of the knowledge that I gained from my Visual Media Applications lectures this year, I set forth to produce one of the best intros I’ve created yet. A copy of the video intro is above, should one wish to view it. Feed back is always appreciated.

This is a short post, mainly because I’m suffering from sleep deprivation and am unsure of how to phrase things. Another reason why this is a short post, is because I need to finish my work and meet my deadlines. I also didn’t plan this post, it was spontaneous. This post is basically an excuse to show case my new intro!

Chris Leydon.

Last week I made another journey back to that certain special school in Gloucester, Bishops’ College. This journey was in relation to two new promotional films that they’d commissioned Keyone Productions to produce. In case you can’t recall, or you haven’t read one of the previous posts, in July Keyone Productions produced a short promotional film for the school; it was a highlights reel of what had gone on during their Year 7 Induction week. The film got a warm reception and as a result the school commissioned 3 further videos to be produced throughout the 08 / 09 academic year.

Two videos were shot on Friday, one was another highlights stream (for the school’s anti-bullying day), the other was an interview/documentary on the school children’s perspective of bullying. I started work on the post production for the highlights video on Saturday, the first cut was finished on Sunday evening. Whilst the feedback for the first cut was good, the school requested that a number of changes and additions be made; such as the addition of titles to narrate some of the shots.

Chris Leydon.

Uni work has been hitting me hard pretty recently. It’s that time of year again where everyone finally realises that University isn’t one big social, as their first deadlines start to loom over the horizon. I, yet again, have fallen into the trap of NOT doing my Uni work as I go along my course; instead I’ve let it pile up and a deadline is approaching from around the corner. Admittedly it’s not as bad as I let it get last year, but I really should have learnt not to do this by now.

My modules, for the first semester of year two, consist of “Film Technology 2″, “Visual Media Applications”, “Video Editing Technology” and “Studio Production”. It’s my Visual Media Applications (VMA) work that’s starting to creep up on me.

VMA is a module that explores the use of After Effects within film. Throughout the course and over the past weeks, one has supposed to have been creating animations to upload to MySpace; how to do the basics of each animation was covered in the relevant lecture, one then has to put their own artistic flare on the work. I have yet to finish all of my animations. If truth be told, my mind has been preoccupied with other things; such as a social life, Keyone Productions progression and loosing a job.

The first animation that I’ve had to create for VMA, is one where a bunch of playing cards have to rotate, showing both the face and the back of the card, as well as appearing within 3D space. My take on this animation is displayed above in the video player. This animation has had to be uploaded to “MySpace” so that it can be peer assessed in order to complete my assignment and module.

Chris Leydon.

This is a post of two halves. I originally started to write this post back in September, a month later and I am finishing it. A lot can change in a month, as one shall find out.

September 27th, 2008.

That was a hectic past few weeks. Since my last blog post I’ve become a part-time intern for BTPodShow, filmed a pilot of Ask Dr Nick and moved back into Uni (amongst other things).

I thought that my time as the BTPodShow intern had come to an end but it seems that my contract will be extended. It should allow me to do less hours and work from wherever suits me. This is fantastic news! I really enjoyed my time as being part of the London team and I’m very happy with the possibility of continuing it.

BTPodShow & Mevio are re-branding themselves and re-entering the online entertainment market to take the field by storm. The companies have swung their attention to focus on creating high quality online video content in a typical channel form. The format change reflects the brand’s new competitors “YouTube” and “Revision3“.

October 19th, 2008.

Mevio’s “Channels” offer their users a way to watch online content they love, in a format that combines old and new media. The video above provides the best explanation of Mevio’s Channels, but I shall attempt to describe them now. Like classic media, you can watch the channel from start to beginning; but like new media you can jump in an out of the channel wherever you want to. Each channel has its own theme and host, who provide insightful links in between shows. All of this, combined with the fantastic content on offer, places Mevio as one of the best places to watch online content via the web.

Each channel, from my understanding, will have their own website. The Mevio channel with the most love and attention, at the moment, is TeXtra; which of course takes its name from the popular PodShow podcast of the same name. TeXtra is a combination of lots of high quality technology based show. New episodes of these shows are presented to you daily, by one of the enigmatic hosts. Check out the TeXtra channel over at www.mevio.com or www.textranetwork.com

Although this is a contradiction to one of my above statements, I am no longer the Mevio intern.  I received a message on Monday 13th October informing me that my services were no longer required. The Mevio finance department would not extend my contract. I’m not bitter about this fact, just slightly disappointed that I can no longer work with the fantastic team there. I loved my time as the BTPodShow Intern and I would love to work with everyone at BTPodShow and Mevio again; my offer will always stand.

Chris Leydon.

Over the past few months I’ve noticed that there are several breeds of blogger; those who blog about topics, those who blog for a living (and attempt to be journalists), and those who write about themselves. I seem to fall into the latter category, but then again what did you expect from a site called chrisleydon.com?

The last month has been very busy and productive for me. As you should be aware Keyone Productions has produced two videos for Bishops’ College in the past year; I received confirmation a few weeks ago that we’ve been commissioned to produce two/three further videos in the new academic year. This is fantastic news for a business as small as ours!

Whilst still on the topic of Keyone Productions, we’ve been approached by Mevio to continue to produce our video games show The Glitch. This time it would be in association with Mevio as part of their promotions campaign. If this goes ahead it would mean that Keyone Productions has two successful podcasts on the agreement, the other being The Podzone.

Moving onto the subject of Mevio and by UK default, BTPodShow, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve managed to gain an internship with them until September. I’m currently based in the UK, London, office for 30 hours a week. My roles involve, scouring the network for the best content we have, editing shows, monitoring stats, channel organising, spare hand and general bitch boy, or anything else they throw my way. I’m thoroughly enjoying it and will be rather sad when the time comes for me to leave. I’m proud and very glad that I’ve had the chance to be part of such a great team.

Chris Leydon.

The previous statement, I suppose, could be called a lie because I’m also working on several other ideas and projects that I have. I say several, I actually mean three. One I’ve already discussed, but the other two not so much.

Keyone Productions is about to go under a rebrand; not an extreme one, we’re not doing a PodShow, but a reinvention. Before hand we’ve been all about having fun and making short lived projects. Whilst this is all well and good, it doesn’t pay the bills. As a business we’re starting to move towards short serial internet based content, in which advertising can be sold. We’re going to monetize off of the fantastic stuff that we create. I personally don’t believe in charging for internet content; one it’s not a profitable business venture and two, I personally don’t like paying for my entertainment.

With that in mind, myself and various others are finalising the details for two new Keyone ventures. Both of them will be online video shows, that will be offered through a podcasting medium. One will be made solely by Keyone Productions, whilst the other shall be a joint production with another creative digital media organisation. I can’t say more than that at this current moment in time, but all shall be revealed soon.

Chris Leydon.

Well I’m pleased to say that I did indeed sign that new BTPodShow contract, which means that The Podzone is guarenteed for at least another two years. I’ve also been working a bit more on script concepts and I’ve finished University for the year.

Finished, completely finished until September, you have no idea how good it feels to say that. Ahead of me I’ve got one long summer of work, making money and enjoying myself.

In the meantime however, I’ve discovered that my web design skills are so fantastic that the new Keyone Productions site, only works on about 90% of the worlds browsers. Yep, it doesn’t work with IE… oops. My day today will be spent correcting that mistake. I’ve started to learn CSS and I’m hoping to implement what I’ve learnt into the redesign.

Tomorrow, as a favour to my father, myself and Nick shall be headed to Bishops College (Gloucester) to film their Year 11 graduation. It should be fun as we’ll have a multicam set up and various other bits of over kill. We know that a job such as this doesn’t require all of the trims that we’re putting in to it; but I’ve got to do something to keep me amused until September.

Chris Leydon.

Fairly busy week.My Internet & HTML Technology assignment deadline and exam were this week. the exam was incredibly easy, I scored 97% which let’s face it isn’t bad going really; the assignment as perhaps the trickier task of the two.

The assignment was to create a website based around the streaming technologies that the BBC use on their websites. I had to create the website from scratch using a WYSIWYG, if you know me, or have seen my work, you know that I’m fairly capable at this kind of thing. The hardest thing about this assignment was simply the content; the BBC don’t REALLY use that many different streaming technologies, at least not that many up to date ones. They still use Real Video and Windows Media for their news reports, as an example, instead of Flash.

In the end I used a theme that I created for v.4.0 of the Keyone Productions website and customised it to fit my needs. If you want to take a look at the finished site, head on over to www.chrisleydon.com/bbc – I’m quite happy with my work.

I have one more assignment and one more exam left before I finish Uni for the year, the exam is on the 28th of April and the assignment needs to be in by the 2nd of June. My final assignment is for Audio Processing; I have to create an original piece of music and then write a report on the process, pretty much the same thing as last time – apart from this time we’re using Reason instead of Cubase.

I’ve taken this weekend off from working; I know that this isn’t a good plan but I feel as though I deserve it. Next week I’ll be working on Reason and the technical report. If I have some spare time I might even pop around once again, write a post and give you an update.

Chris Leydon.

While the Keyone Productions site was down during the upgrade, I stuck up a test of the Keyone TV “Mogulus” channel. No idea if any of you have seen this service, but it is definitely worth a look at. Mogulus allows you to essentially create your own online streaming television channel, using content from YouTube or your own content which you upload. All, of course, for free – www.mogulus.com

This morning I received the marks and feedback for the Project Elements drama. In all they were very good; as a group we scored a 2-1 with a few pointers on how we could have improved the film. The plot was a little thin, but other than that it appeared to be alright.

No idea what’s wrong at the moment, but my typing and writing skills seem to be lacking today. As a result of this temporary lack of skills I shall bid you adieu.

Chris Leydon.