Having finalised our plans for descending upon the Yorkshire Museum next Friday, we moved on to our next great adventure: designing the University of York Archaeology Department's Year-End Exhibition For First-Years Having Just Finished Their Excavation Module And Now Creating Interactive PowerPoint Slides On Their Work!
No, we didn't actually call it that. But it's a fairly good description of what's happening and what we're up to now!
K/G60, otherwise known as The King's Manor Cellars.
Photograph by us.
We divided into three teams of two each: Emma and Susan on publicity, Jenna and Olivia on design and logo, and Adam and me on technology. This meant us embarking on a dangerous mission to the dreaded K/G60 - 'The Cellars' - where we battled the monstrously slow and/or deathly unresponsive computers in a fight for PowerPoint supremacy. We lost... Actually, we discovered that eleven of the fourteen computers worked, although we will need to budget extra time to get them booted up before the exhibition. Because we need fourteen computers to display each of the seven groups' two posters/slides, we need to request three laptops to take the place of the broken computers. In addition, we will also have a central table with six laptops: two containing only the films we created in our Heritage Practice module, and four with a menu slide linking to all fourteen heritage slides. At either end of the room, we will have a SMART board (interactive large board) on which the fourteen slides will cycle. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to interact with each groups' slides on either one of the fourteen computers around the walls of the room, the four central laptops, or one of the two SMART boards. We hope this will reduce queueing time. Each station will also have headphones.
On to the more exciting part: The Bribe. Come to the exhibition and you get free wine and food! Our job is to guess how much of each we'll need. Adam took the task of seeing how many glasses of wine make up a bottle upon his "noble" (I responded, "foolish") self. I guess he'll report back with his Internet findings when we meet again. We also had to calculate how many bags of crisps to order. It was a fun game of 'Guess how many bags of individual crisps can you fit into a massive sharing-size bag?' This will also have to be tested. Adam nominated me. I nominate the Internet. Of course, not everybody likes crisps, so why not add something everyone does like: SUGAR!!! Adam suggested adding Pixie Stix, those big sticks of coloured sugar. I thought this might be a tad dangerous, so, after much debate and compromise, we decided on mini-cakes. This also means that we can buy fewer crisps. For the exhibition, anyway.
This afternoon was our Hollywood debut. After being behind the camera for so long, it was good to be the star. Simon Davis, E-Learning Advisor for the University of York, came to interview our class on our work in this module, specifically our filmmaking project. Fun!
After our fifteen minutes of fame, it was back to work. Next on our list: create a ballot for the competition between the excavation posters. Easy!
Now, as we wrap up this blog post, we have just one thing to say:
Come to 'GroundBreaking', the year-end archaeology exhibition, on 19 June at 4 PM in King's Manor, G/60! THERE WILL BE FREE FOOD AND WINE!!!
This is the image we are using on the promotional posters.
Photograph taken by Gavin Repton.
Today we focused on refining the logistics for our trip the Yorkshire Museum next Friday to collect visitor feedback on the 'After the Ice' exhibition with a focus on the site of Star Carr. This involved creating a list of every piece of equipment and signs we would need, writing out the interview questions we wish to ask and timetabling our planned activities for the day.
Poster advertising the year end exhibition we created
The rest of the day focused on preparations for the year end departmental exhibition. This will take place on Wednesday 19th June 2013, at 4pm in K/G60 of The King's Manor, York. This will be an opportunity for the excavation students working in collaberation with us Heritage Studies students to present a 'Heritage Panel' of interactive information about the site they were working on. Our videos will also be showcased at this event. Everyone that attends will have the chance to vote for the best panel for each site and the winners will recieve a £10 Amazon voucher each. There will also be wine and nibbles for all!
The six of us were divided into pairs and given specific tasks. Emma and Susan were tasked with the promotion of the exhibition, particularly through social media sites such as the departments facebook and twitter, and also to create a post for the departments newsletter and website home page. Kelly and Adam focused on the logistics of the running of the exhibition. This involved seeing how many screens would be needed for the exhibition room and also issues such as how much food and wine would be required depending on how many are likely to show! Our task (Jenna and Olivia) was visual presence and branding of the exhibition. For example we have produced a poster advertising the event with the main details which you can see above. We also created the ballot slips that will be used to decide the winners.
Lastly Simon Davis who works with the University joined us this afternoon to ask us for our feedback on the video projects in the form of a survey and a group video interview. Thats all for today, you'll hear from us again after our day of data collecting at the museum next Friday. Thanks for reading as always.
Today began with a visit to the Yorkshire Museum to get a feel of how
the exhibition preparation is coming along. It was frantic but it's
looking excellent and we're really excited to be a part of it! Our
videos may even be featured on tonight's 'Look North' local BBC news! We
got to handle the infamous Scarborough frontlet, heavily featured in
one of our videos. After speaking to the Curator of Archaeology at the
museum, Natalie McCaul, she said the museum would be greatly interested
in seeing any results from our surveys...
This leads us
to the afternoon when we continued the development of our surveys and
interview questions that we will conduct next week. As a group we
created and also finalised the information we wanted to gain from the
visitors concerning the new 'After the Ice' exhibition and in particular
the Star Carr features and our videos. We are devising a plan of action
for the day, including allocated roles and where we should be stationed
within the museum, so as not to get in the way and reach the maximum
amount of people. We are also planning to do observational studies
within the exhibition and we're trying to think of the best way to go
about this without being invasive or looking weird and creepy. So we're
thinking of just having two people handing out surveys, two doing
interviews and two mingling with the visitors and wandering around the
exhibition taking mental notes of things like what attracts the most
attention and how people engage with the interactive elements. We are
really intrigued to find out how people perceive the exhibition
including the films that we have created. What will people think of the
exhibition? What will people think of our films? Will people be willing
to take part in the surveys and interviews?
So four weeks later and our video has finally hit the internet after much toil in the editing room! We are very proud to present to you the final product of our Heritage Practice module. You can view this clip through YouTube using the link below or come to the Yorkshire Museum to see it, and the rest of the fascinating 'After the Ice' exhibition which opens tomorrow (Friday 24th May). This is only a short post to give you all access to the video, however, we will be back soon to give more detail on our final processes and what is next in store for the remainder of the module - four weeks left guys!
Just three weeks ago, we were assigned a project: to create a three-minute film about Star Carr for the Yorkshire Museum exhibit "After the Ice". We're nearing completion of our video - just a few tweaks to do this afternoon! Thank you to those of you who have followed us through our first filmmaking experience! Here it is: the story of our filming, editing, and overall film-creating process - and how our (nearly!) final product compares to our original vision.
Our lovely model, Jenna, helping Kelly and Emma
set up the indoor shot. Photograph by us.
We began filming on Friday. As we were meeting our interviewees in a natural location, we were able to take some nature photographs and landscape panning shots, which we planned to incorporate with the existing Star Carr archive footage. For silent scenes and images, the weather was not a problem; for outdoor interviews, the wind was a nightmare. We resigned ourselves to indoor shooting in a nearby cabin. Although we were disappointed that we couldn't have the natural surroundings in our shot, and we were afraid the brown background would be boring, we quickly realised that our sound quality was really good in our indoor location, and with a little bit of "doctoring up" the background it looked quite archaeological. After our initial sound-checks and preparing the camera's precarious positioning, we were ready to shoot!
We practised interviewing Tom Ratcliffe outside. Kelly
did the camera, Emma took care of the dictaphone, and
Adam asked the questions. Photograph by us.
Within three hours, we had interviewed four important people on the Star Carr Project - Dr. Chantal Conneller, Professor Nicky Milner, Chris Evans, and Becky Knight. Everyone was really open to being interviewed and quite relaxed, which made our first interviewing experiences much easier. Filming continued on Monday, when we had the amazing experience of interviewing David Lamplough, a self-described amateur archaeologist who had worked with John Moore (discoverer of Star Carr) when he was eight and Grahame Clark. Natalie McCaul (of the Yorkshire Museum) had told us about him, and Dr. Milner introduced us. We were thrilled to interview him for thirteen minutes, plus plenty of outside conversation before and after the official interview! We had loads of footage that we could have used - nearly 25 minutes of interviews alone for a three minute film! It was a shame to cut it down; we had so much footage that we really wanted to use - which is why we're sharing just a few outtakes with you below! (Note: These are outtakes; they were never edited for use in our film.)
Things changed quite a bit from our original vision. We didn't expect to get the fantastic personal experience and amazing interview from David, and of course we had to include that! We also had wanted to bookend our film with a reconstruction image of Star Carr, but due to copyright issues we couldn't use it at all. But we found much better footage for those gaps in our film: Gavin had some time-lapse footage of an excavation, which he kindly gave to us. It kept our pace up in what could have been a very slow, boring, typical historical film. To end our film, we reworked our original plans just to include a fantastic quote David had given us.
Kelly is quite proud of herself for snapping this excavation-
themed photograph of shovelling dirt into a wheelbarrow!
Photograph by us.
Technology was also a bit different from what we expected. While we found the camera easier to work with than expected, the battery life was terrible. We had to work quickly. Then, getting onto the computers for editing, we discovered the wonders (read: user-hostile and non-intuitive) of Windows Movie Maker. It's really good for what it was designed to be: a basic, introductory film-editing program that allows the creation of simple personal movies. But we had bigger and better plans in mind. We wanted to do all sorts of stuff we'd seen in professional productions - overlaying sounds on each other, controlling zooming on pictures, overlaying images from the archives on our interview footage, using complicated computer graphics - these all proved impossible for our level and technology. However, we adjusted and worked around the "Stupid Movie Maker!" moments, and we were thrilled with how well our very first production turned out. You want to see it?
Better come to the Yorkshire Museum exhibition "After the Ice" then! But if you can't make it, it will be on the museum's website. Here's a short teaser clip from our introduction:
Thanks again for following us on this journey and for all your support and advice. NOW COME SEE OUR FILM! :-D
Timeline illustration, Storyboard draft, and Dictaphone.
Photograph by Kelly Guerreri.
We're pressing onward with our plans for filming our short documentaries. On Monday, we faced menacing blank storyboards, challenged to fill them with notes on the visuals, commentary, and sounds of our film. The time for organization had arrived. We filled twelve frames in our storyboard - a lot to fit in for a three minute film! After we finished our designs, we presented them to our instructors and classmates for feedback. With their feedback, we modified our plans.
Tuesday was the real thing: we pitched our film idea to the Yorkshire Museum. Their response? - "Go ahead!" Natalie McCaul suggested we consider adding music and special effects to our film to liven up the historical approach. She also expressed some concern over its length. We realized that where we had planned for interviews we would have to search for soundbites. Now we knew that, in our interview debriefing, we would have to emphasise our time constraints and make it clear we needed compact information. We're still trying to think of how to say, "Please give us soundbites and not your full career experience" without unintentionally sounding insulting...
Our voiceover script and a draft of pawprints
on our timeline. Photograph by Kelly Guerrieri.
One of the ideas Claire Price (one of our instructors) had was to focus on "John Moore's dog", a quirky bit of history we used to liven up our timeline. On her suggestion, we included an illustration of a dog in each of Jenna's timeline pictures. We found that the inclusion of the illustrated dog adds a relatable element as well as something that holds the attention of the viewer during the explanation of the timeline. Whilst playing with the timeline pictures and the camera today we developed further ways of how to utlise the theme of the dog throughout the timeline:
* Instead of arrows to link the events of the timeline together, we will use drawings of paw prints which we will film being drawn and then speed up during the editing process.
* We will also film Jenna's hand adding colour and dates to the timeline drawings as we focus on each one.
* Sound effects will bring each illustration to life; today, we found a website that allows us to access and use sound effects without copyright infringement.
* The dog will guide us through the timeline, and we will introduce each illustration by first focusing on the dog and hearing a dog bark.
Emma Carr recording the timeline voiceovers, and Jenna
Tinning sorting the audio files on the computer. Photograph
by Kelly Guerrieri.
Today, we finalised our plans for filming our interviews, shots and pictures. We also set our timeline voiceover script and recorded it using a dictaphone. Emma's lovely Yorkshire vocals will narrate our finished film. Kelly is in charge of technology, and she had a lot of fun experimenting with the video camera and dictaphone!
Since filming begins tomorrow, we assigned specific roles to our team. Emma will interview our experts and perform sound checks; Jenna will direct the film and draw the timeline pictures, and Kelly will be the cameragirl and technology figure-out-er. Everyone is very happy with their roles, and we're looking forward to the creative process!
Our day started back at King's Manor, the base for the Archaeology Department for the University of York. Here we refined the pitches for our films after a thorough storyboarding session yesterday. After an official pitch of our ideas to the Curator of Archaeology at the Yorkshire Museum, Natalie McCaul, we were given some very helpful feedback and she brought some new ideas to the table. We are now confident that we can progess with the filming towards the end of the week.
Me and my partner Olivia hard at work
At the Yorkshire Museum we had previously been set the task to put together an exhibition cabinet in pairs, to be displayed in the learning zone. My group was given a mysterious brown box to open, the contents of which were unknown. We quickly tore open the box, eager to unveil what we had to work with. Within the box, rested four brown Bronze Age pots, with which we had create an engaging and informative display. In the beginning of this process we felt nervous about the forthcoming goal but we were also determined and enthused by the possibilities presented to us by the other exhibitions at the Yorkshire Museum. At first we did not know what to do with the artefacts or what exactly they were. This helped us with our creative process as we could approach the curating experience with the same perspective as a member of the public might view the display. With help from Natalie, we were given some context surrounding the artefacts and we learnt that they were found on the Yorkshire Moors. Through the further use of an early Twentieth Century book by the archaeologist Frank Elgee entitled; 'Early Man in North East Yorkshire' we were able to identify the different stylistic groups that the pots belonged to. The two larger artefacts, we identified as Beakers, while the other two rather smaller pots we discovered were called 'pygmy cups'.
How we displayed the 'pygmy cups' and Frank Elgee's book
Today we finished arranging our artefacts and wrote labels. We started by playing around with the layout and location of the artefacts within the cabinet. We have aimed to achieve an aesthetically pleasing display which involved a multi-layered effect to emphasise the variation in the artefacts. We also included the afore mentioned book by Frank Elgee in order to contextualise the artefacts, spread open at a page which has a description and illustrations of 'Beakers'. We set this to the side of the cabinet so that a viewer could relate the artefact to the information in the book. We found it quite difficult to write the labels for the display due to a limiting word count of 40 words. We felt we needed to make the labels engaging to visitors without scaring them away with jargon. We were pleased with the overall vibe that we achieved with the display. After a peer assessment of each other's displays we gathered some constructive criticism such as how the pygmy cups, being at the back of the display behind the book could be lost as the visitors eye could be drawn by the bigger, more decorated beakers at the forefront of the display. We found our first curatorial experience extremely satisfying as it is the first time we have been able to creatively engage with artefacts.
Hello again all. This week began for us Heritage students with the pitching of our video ideas to Yorkshire Museum Curator of Archaeology Natalie McCaul, and also prior to that, a pitch at the Kings Manor (our base) to John Schofield the Head of the Department of Archaeology. They both gave us some constructive feedback on our plans and possible leads to follow up on for enhancing our videos.
With the pitches done our day was then focused on finishing curating the display cabinets that we had began to produce on Thursday the week before. For me this involved working in a group with Adam, a heritage student working within the other heritage video group, to create a mini exhibition of the Star Carr finds that the museum currently possessed. This consisted of an animal bone, a single barbed point, an elk mattock replica and varying flints; we also had Clarke's excavation book. This exercise was used to help give us some first hand experience of curating, and the thought processes involved in doing so.
Picture taken by Sara Perry of the Heritage Field School
As part of creating a Star Carr display cabinet we had to produce some informative labels. We wanted these to include some interesting facts to help the viewer understand the wider context for example the fact that 195 barbed points were found at Star Carr and this makes up 95% of all the known ones from the National Museum. Because we had so little artefacts to work with we used Clarke's book displayed behind de single barbed point, to emphasise just how many were found at the site and to help display the small object in an aesthetically pleasing way. We arranged the flints we were given to demonstrate the process of knapping moving in a circle from cores to microliths at the very edge.
The next step now will be to prepare for actually going out into the field with our cameras, the gather the footage needed for the videos!
Our adventure in curation began last Thursday, when the Yorkshire Museum presented us with three boxes of artefacts to display in three cases. We divided into pairs (I paired up with Susan), chose a box, and got to work! Our mission: organize the artefacts in our box for a display in one of the Learning Labs. Sounds simple enough, but it was anything but! The initial part of our curating experiment was quite fun; we unwrapped artefact after artefact after prehistoric artefact. It was like Christmas in May! From the outset, our mission involved making a multitude of decisions:
What exactly have we got?
What is good enough or interesting enough for display?
Are there themes or natural groupings in our set of artefacts?
How might we unite the artefacts in a coherent story?
Can we give these artefacts contemporary relevance?
Photograph taken by Sara Perry. Posted on the blog "The Archaeological Eye",
blog post "Heritage Field School at York", 4th May 2013. Found at:
What had we got? - What we had was a collection of Paleolithic and Neolithic flints and stone tools (with one random Mesolithic arrowhead thrown in for good measure). This covers about 400,000 years' worth of history - in one small collection! Could we possibly display all of this and still make our display look attractive and logically organized?
What is good enough or interesting enough for display? - We had a massive mattock in good condition; this we immediately set aside for display. The Paleolithic flints and core were a lovely orange-brown colour, and they illustrated the shape and process of flint-knapping. These we also chose to include, both for their educational potential and to liven up the grey-brown colour of everything else. They also looked stereotypically "Stone Age" - hey, we've got to have a hook! We liked the polished nature of our (relatively) large collection of celts - Neolithic stone axes, named celts by the Victorians - but there were so many that we were worried about how to include them without cluttering our display. There was also a large bag of flints, but they just didn't look interesting enough to justify their inclusion in our exhibit.
Our flint (and part of our celt) collection. Photograph by us.
Are there themes or natural groupings in our set of artefacts? - we both quickly noticed that all of our artefacts were tools, so we settled on a "toolbox" theme for our display. We further categorized our artefacts by type (hammer, flint, celt, etc.), origin (area of Britain or off the island), and time period (Paleolithic, one artefact of Mesolithic, and Neolithic). We scrapped the Mesolithic artefact early on; it just didn't fit, so it was sadly relegated to the storage box once more. Now, which of these groupings best fit our display? Could we use more than one?
How might we unite the artefacts in a coherent story? - Taking the artefacts chronologically was the obvious approach, allowing us to demonstrate how technology and function changed over time. Paleolithic tools had general functions; Neolithic tools were much more specialized. By forming an expansive timeline of artefacts, illustrated with pictures, films, mock-ups, experts standing by at all hours, etc., we could trace changes in lifestyle from hunter-gathering communities to farming communities. It was going to be the best and most informative display ever created - but we simply didn't have the time to bring this glorious vision into reality. Sorry about that! We had to settle for a basic divide between Paleolithic and Neolithic artefacts, organized by general type, with a radial display of celts forming the centerpiece between the two end elevations. But we think we did catch the sense of change and development and convey this to our viewers.
Our Neolithic tools - including the ancient predecessor
of Susan's mattock! Photograph by us.
Can we give these artefacts contemporary relevance? - OF COURSE! That's what heritage is all about! We focused our labels on describing the artefacts' past uses and connecting them to modern-day tools. For example, the mattock is a tool still in use today (Susan has one in her shed. Not a Neolithic one, though!). Because the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages are so far in the distant past, and they seem so removed from our experience, we knew we had to draw upon whatever connections we could make to allow our viewers to empathize with the artefacts in the case before them. We had to make these old stone tools come alive in the 21st century.
Our completed display! Photograph by us.
Now it's Tuesday. We've set up our display, we've poured a great deal of thought and effort and trying new things and all the creativity we could summon between the two of us. We thought we had a pretty good display. But what did the other two groups think?
They liked the toolbox theme and the idea of progression of the technology.
They liked continuation of these artefacts into modern life.
But we all agreed that the labels were a tad wordy. Well, when you put Susan and me on the same project, what did you expect? What did you learn from reading this blog post we just wrote?
How might you make these celts come alive?
Photograph by us.
All in all, it was a good display, especially since it was our first one! We learned a lot about curation and heritage from this exercise: first of all, curation is a lot harder than it looks; think about that the next time you go to a museum! A curator has to take an artefact from the past, however distant or recent, and bridge the canyon of time to reach out to the viewer's imagination, making the past come alive for them. Our only way of communicating with the viewer was through our organization of the artefacts and our labels. We discovered that it is really difficult to distill the wide world of academic analysis, interpretation, and scientific knowledge into fewer than forty words (preferably fewer) on a display label, and to do so in a way that will make an artefact interesting and memorable. We left with a greater appreciation for museum curation.
Look out world! Two new curators are on their way!
Hey, welcome to our blog! We are a group of Heritage Studies students at the University of York, embarking on a brand new heritage field school project. Our task is to create a three minute video documenting the history of the archaeological site of Star Carr. Most excitingly, this video will be used in the new 'After the Ice' exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, opening at the end of this month. We welcome any constructive feedback on our preliminary plans:
Our initial mind map planning for our film.
Our film starts with a question: how did we go from a Yorkshire man walking his dog to the discovery of what is now a world-renowned Mesolithic site? Through the use of archives we plan to learn more about John Moore, the initial discoverer of the site. An amateur archaeologist, he noticed a piece of flint sticking out of a drainage ditch in a field near Scarborough. From this starting point, our film will trace the various excavations of the site, including the famous Grahame Clark excavations of 1949-1951, and its upcoming spotlight in a major museum exhibition. We will use a modern reconstructive illustration of the Mesolithic landscape of the site to highlight two key finds: Britain's oldest house and a worked wooden platform, the earliest evidence of carpentry in this country. Having informed the viewer of Star Carr's archaeological history, using interviews and archival materials, we will briefly explore the future of the site. Echoing our opening question, we will ask, 'It started with a Yorkshire man walking his dog; where's the end for Star Carr?'
Archival newspaper clipping from The Scarborough Evening News, 1947. It is the earliest record we have found so far which mentions John Moore. Source: The Star Carr digital archive, Scarborough paper archive, img184.jpg
Traditional archaeological films rely heavily on 'talking head' interviews, but we want to create something more engaging, relational, and interesting to the general public without the archaeological jargon. To do this, we plan to focus our film on a hand-drawn timeline linking to images and interviews conveying information. As we encounter our key finds, we will examine their importance in the context of Star Carr and in the greater understanding of British prehistory. To enhance our preparation for this film, we have had fantastic access to experts in the field. We are fortunate to work with Yorkshire Museum professionals Natalie McCaul, the Curator of Archaeology, Martin Fell, the Digital Team Leader, and Gavin Repton, a documentary filmmaker. Yesterday, we met with these professionals to mind map ideas for our film. Natalie took us on a tour of the exhibit logistics, and Gavin gave us his experienced advice on our initial plans. Equally as exciting, we have access to archaeologists who have researched and written on the site: Professor Nicky Milner, Dr. Chantal Conneller, and Becky Knight, among possible others whose knowledge and personal experiences we can mine through interviews. Through Skype, we have received and will receive guidance and advice from filmmakers around the world. We are thrilled to have this opportunity and will make the most of all of our resources moving forward.
