Fighting the rumours by writing another blog post, I’m not dead… yet. Busy I have been incredibly so over the past few weeks. As the Christmas holidays approach, my Uni deadlines start to creep in ever so slowly. As is customary with this time of year, I’ve been running left right and centre like a headless chicken, attempting to meet deadlines. Thankfully I seem to have met most of them for now.

Visual Media Applications, as a few people may be aware, is a module in my course, that teaches the basics of Adobe After Effects. Earlier on in the semester I had to follow a set of course tutorials. These tutorials had room for improvisation and encouraged creativity. They allowed me to get to grips with the powerful software package, whilst allowing me to experiment and play around.

The short tutorials were only a small part of my total assessment. My final assignment was to create a 30 second animation, within After Effects, based on either part of or an entire book. I chose to use the opening paragraph from Stephen Clarke’s “Talk To The Snail”. A video of how the animation turned out is above, feedback is always appreciated.

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.

[See post to watch Flash video]

[See post to watch Flash video]

Blogging can be a chore at times. This is not the post that I originally intended to write this evening, however, how were you to know that until now?

A new type of Podcasting network is being launched by a young entrepreneur, Lewis King. Citrus 7 Media promises to deliver clean, fresh new media podcasts 7 days a week. Although it’s early stages and the project hasn’t hit the public yet, I can tell that it’s going to create some waves in the industry.

Podcasting companies, such as Mevio or Revision 3, are fantastic; however, they all seem to have their avoidable faults. They’re too focused on commercialisation, making a profit, and not on the actual content itself. Now whilst content may be king on some other podcasting networks (such as the Teen Podcasters Network) the lack of production values lets the overall presentation down. There needs to be a middle ground, great looking and sounding content with substance. That is what Citrus 7 Media aims to create.

Now, sceptics would have probably worked out by now that I have some sort of vested interest in Citrus 7 Media; this is not wholly untrue. I personally am fed up and frustrated with the ways that certain podcasting companies carry out their business. I, once again, want to see producers creating great content for the love of doing so. This did happen, and was a regular occurrence, during the early stages of podcasting; this practice seems to have faded away. I want to see Citrus 7 Media succeed because I want great fresh high quality content.

I have already become involved with Citrus 7 Media, more or less from the off. I’m excited to see the kind of buzz that this small network can produce. All one has to do is look at the Twitter results for “Citrus 7″ to see what I mean. My role, so far, in this budding venture, has been to create the Citrus 7 Media ident; the animation of the network logo that will play before a show (See video above). I have also been reviving my old concept of a video production show; a show based around teaching the basics of video production, in a fun way.

Vidproquo will be THE video show for any wannabe video producer. The show will advise, inform and entertain… most of all it will be fresh high quality content. Filming for the first season is due to commence in December. The introduction video for Vidproquo is above.

Citrus 7 Media promises to deliver fresh content 7 days a week, let’s see if it can live up to its promise when it launches sometime very soon.

Chris Leydon.

As you might have seen  in my previous post, I’ve been focusing a lot more on my studies, which is a good thing, but it shouldn’t dominate the rest of my life. With only less than two weeks left at Uni, my first term here is drawing to an end. Nevertheless the work still has to be done. By Friday afternoon I need to have a finished script, production script and a proposal. This shouldn’t be too hard, but it will be challenging.

I’ve started to dabble in Podcast imaging once again. This is a service that is offered by myself, where people pay me to create jingles, IDs, stingers etc for their show. The most recent show I’ve “imaged” for is the Chris Edwards Podcast. I’m going to put a link to a sound montage at the bottom of this post.

If you’d like me to create some idents for your show please drop me an email and I’ll get back to you.

It’s getting late now and I’m feeling rather tired so I’m heading to bed.

Chris Leydon.