Dangerously cute dogs and purrfectly sweet cats

Yesterday, the gang and I headed over to a place somewhere between Holywell and Trelogan to NCAR (the North Clywd Animal Rescue) it's a privately owned charity that takes on strays and signed-over cats, dogs and rabbits in order to try and re-home them. We had kind permission from Nicky Owen, the media relations officer at NCAR to film the day to day goings on. We all had a great time and hopefully managed to capture some great footage of the work that goes on there.

This is Adam Hobbs, he works alongside NCAR as a behaviourist, training and working with difficult dogs so that they can be re-homed. Here he is working with Marmaduke, who is a tri-colour English bull terrier. He was a little excited when another dog came by, but on the whole he seemed to enjoy being in front of the camera and posed a lot!

We filmed a family spending time with a small terrier (I forget his name) that they were thinking of adopting. This area is called the Paddock, and it's where they take animals to let them off the lead to run freely and tire themselves out playing with balls, Frisbees and running around the agility course.

As part of the filming, we decided to get a bunch of 'filler shots', shots the sit between more important ones as a way of both padding out the film and moving seamlessly between unconnected shots. This sign was one of many we filmed over the course of the day.

The gang and I discuss the days filming.

Sue turns 'dog whisperer' for the day. Del was another dog being trained by Adam, and seemed to take a bit of a shine to her.

Rabbit. Very difficult to film of photograph due to them moving around so much and the crossed bars on the hutches, none the less cute though!

Here, Owain talks to us about the trailer that travels around shows and pet shops educating people on the value of donating time and money to NCAR. We heard lots of stories of the generosity of the public at shows who disappear and return laden with blankets, food, donations and anything else that helps the staff at NCAR keep the rescue centre running. And at a running cost of approximately £850 per DAY they need everything people can spare.

If you would like to adopt, foster, sponsor a kennel or cat pod, volunteer, donate money, blankets, food, toys or time or would like more information please visit their website.

I just want to say another huge thank you to the staff (and the animals!) at NCAR for their warm welcome and openness to talk to us yesterday. Keep up the great work guys, and we hope you like our documentary, watch this space for more soon!!

3 weeks in, 8 assignments and a food festival.

Hello!

Well like the title suggests, we're now 3 weeks into the new year, when we were first given our assignments I felt a little daunted, like there was way too much to do in the time we've been given. I'm sure I wasn't alone in thinking that, but I feel more confident as I take each step towards completing the work.

I'm happy to have already completed one of the film projects and have taken steps in most of the other assignments.

For the past few nights, Conwy castle has been lit up in purple and green and it turns out it was all part of Blinc, a festival of the digital arts that was running alongside the Conwy food festival. I've never had the chance to visit one of these festivals but I've been told on good authority that it's well worth a visit.

It was a little rainy yesterday (Sunday) but I headed down into the medieval town and arrived at the festival just as the final stalls were setting up and only a handful of people were milling around.

I photographed the main street while it was quiet, the bunting looked a little sad with no one around to enjoy it, but it did make a good picture.

There were lots of smells in the air as the day wore on, everything from stonebaked pizza, to champagne and oysters were on sale. Chocolate fountains, ice cream, Welsh oggies, chilli, crepes and caviare were just some of the treats on offer at the various stalls and chefs were doing live demonstrations and answering cooking questions in numerous tents across the town.

Not all the smells were pleasant though, there was a barrell outside one of the tents, a Victorian butter churn, and even though the day was overcast it looked and smelled rather gross as the day wore on, not to mention thai curry, ew.

Surprisingly, I ate very little at the festival. A crepe and some icecream was about the whole of it, there was just too much choice and after trying to decide what to eat for a good hour I gave up and headed home.
I brought some brownies home for Chris, he loves them, but even though I am also a chocolate lover, I'm not a huge fan of them. I find them too heavy, and these smelled amazing but were just too sickly!

I brought home a couple of toffee yoghurts, toffee ones from Llaeth Y Llan (village dairy).

Apart from food, the festival had music and poetry on different stages across the town, a beer tent, actors dressed in medieval costume acting at random, birds of prey and giant bubbles!

As I mentioned before, the digital arts festival Blinc was also on around Conwy, one of the strangest was two screens set up in the courtyard of Plas Mawr, they were displaying still images with loud sound effects of the sounds that might go along with the still. It was eerie, but designed to bring Plas Mawr back to life, as it would have been in the past.

Another display was in one of the towers of the castle walls, a projector was showing microscopic images taken of the unseen places of the castle. It was strange, and looked otherworldly.

Blinc had lots on offer over the weekend, the main event being an actual lights show displayed on the side of the castle walls using several projectors. This was on Saturday night, which I unfortunately missed but have been told it was spectacular. It also meant the bridge out of Conwy was closed for a while, and getting back into town was quite difficult that night!
I had a great day wandering around the stalls, listening to music and generally found Conwy had a lively and excited atmosphere. It was a little expensive to get in (£7 for access to all the tent areas) but it was still a really enjoyable day.

Today's blog is brought to you by the letter C and the number 3

Hello!

Welcome back!!!! So year two is upon us, and I'm at the end of my first week back enjoying a moment of piece, a cup of coffee and Scuzz on the TV in the background. It is possibly the first time I've stopped save for sleeping since Monday. I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong, I'm at my happiest when I've got plenty to do, I just didn't realise we'd have so much and so little time to prepare for it!

Are you wondering about the title? Well today's buzz word is commutation, or rather, lack there of. I've felt that despite having our briefs explained, that different tutors interpret them differently, and this has caused me a fair bit of confusion. I'm not alone in thinking this either. Then there's confusion about where are lectures etc are being held this year.

It would've been nice to have been informed about the layout of this term's critical studies lectures (contextualising design) turning up at 9am (to get a parking space) only to be told at 10am that the first half is geared towards fine art and the second towards the design students. It's great that the uni took into consideration what we agreed on last year that the subject matter was too broad to appeal to all types of art students and that it was mainly aimed at the fine art students. However, communication was lacking here too when one tutor told us we only needed to attend the hour intended for us, and another said both were important and relevant.

Perhaps what I'm saying seems petty or whatever, but this is a space meant for me to review and reflect on my lectures and university life. They're not massive issues, and I probably won't dwell on most of them outside of this blog, but it's important to draw attention to them as I'm sure I'm not the only student who has felt a little lost this week.

So, getting back to contextualising design, we were shown roughly half of a video called 'Beautiful Losers' about a group of artists (in a wide range of artistic disciplines) and their trials and tribulations whilst trying to 'make it' in their chosen field. It was quite a visually stunning, and impacting and sometimes brutally honest including one film maker who was stood in a children's park with a big ceramic dragon who told children nearby 'in 1986 we found Samuel's head right there' while pointing to the centre of the dragon. It got a laugh out of the audience, but I'm not sure about it's relevance. Another artist who was speaking about never really wanting to be an artist when he was younger and how he wanted to be a rubbish collector and that for his birthday one year he asked his folks to not only take him to a landfill sight but to also collect a bag of rubbish so they could all throw it on the pile. Amusing.

The general feeling I got from the film, so far, is that art comes from a part of you. Be it angst, wanting to be part of a sub culture, anger, or a need to save your own life through making something all these people shared a very visual way of thinking. I enjoyed the film, but looking at my scribbled notes from the day I don't think it had much of an impact on me. I guess we'll see once the second half is over....

On Thursday, I finally set foot over the threshold of the Centre for Creative Industries. A £5m structure designed to give students a taste of the industry, from sound booths, to a full size TV studio with lighting rig, green screen and removable seating for a studio audience, and an upstairs gallery it really has everything. Of course I cannot fail to mention the 3 amazing Panasonic £5000 cameras on tripods that have handlebars to move it around, needless to say my eyes nearly popped out of my head! The idea of being able to get in there and learn how to set up the studio, film, edit and work the gallery is exciting to say the least!

I feel a little more confident with the majority of my ideas for the upcoming projects, so we'll see how they go. Sorry that there's been no pictures to look at in this blog, but it was really to bring it up to date.

I hope you all have a great year two!