A Interview with Learning Support Professional

An Interview will Gemma

0:08 introduction

0:29 loved ones on the spectrum

0:56 what is autism

1:45 how she helps her son on the spectrum

2:23 how her son copes at school

3:02 The advantage of his son going to school

3:40 what should be in mainstream

school to educate people on the spectrum

4:39 how far away are we for the proper support at public-school

As part of my research I wanted to speak with people who had major involvement with educating people on the Autistic Spectrum.

Gemma is the Autistic Spectrum facilitator for college and she supports students on the Spectrum, Gemma also has a son on the Autistic spectrum which interested me as my animation focuses on a boy struggling in a mainstream school who is on the Autistic Spectrum so I wanted to get her thoughts and check the concept for my video would still be relevant.

Through this interview I ve learned that there are still issues with a student with Autism being able to assimilate into a mainstream school and that unfortunately my experiences are still continuing so this reminded me that my video and Autism awareness is still needed and hopefully to increase understanding to at least lessen the harsh experiences people with Autism experience at school.

Also, to show how complicated and Individual Autism is and how it can affect different people in different ways.

Spending time with Gemma I also had an opportunity to speak to many other students Gemma supports who are Autistic as we have a working group who will be developing a BBC 3 style ‘what not to say to an Autistic Person’ video which will be used across college to raise Autism Awareness in student tutorials.

We will be working on this in June when all the students have less pressure and exams to worry about.

Talking to some of them about their time at school, many weren t comfortable talking about their time at school partly because of the horrendous experiences and they didn t seem to have the fondest of memories about this time in their life!

When we were planning out the questions for this many struggled to think about positive things about school as school had been a distressing place for most of them they were not happy to discuss details publicly though they do talk individually with Gemma.

In relation to my planning for my final video, these interviews and time with other people on the spectrum helped me clarify exactly what Autism is and more importantly how different people are with Autism and that they are not the same.

I have had to go back and rewrite the beginning of my script to make it more accessible for a general audience to understand that this reflects my personal experience but another person on the Spectrum would have a different experience with different issues but would still have struggled at school.

I have changed the beginning to give a general insight into Autism rather than the original beginning which attempted to be autobiographical but that focussed on the diagnostic process rather than what Autism is and what it is like to be in school as an Autistic Person.

I didn t feel that the back story was necessary or useful for the length of the piece or the target audience. I wanted it to be fully accessible to someone who knows nothing or very little about Autism and enjoyable and emotive rather than a full documentary.

Somewhat of a dramatic example to illustrate my point is the film Schindler s List.

The film doesn t waste time on how the war started or Schindler s back story it drops you into a situation where war is happening and there is a particular group of people who were sadly born in the wrong place at the wrong time and how Schindler tries his best to save those people.

Similarly in my film the how I got there is less important than showing how it actually played out.

If I had more time I would have done a few one to one interviews with other Autistic students however as they may struggle with social interactions with new people I would have needed to have got to know them.

However after my FMP is done I will be continuing with the working group with Gemma so will be getting to know them better and carrying on with another project linked to raising awareness and understanding of Autism.

Property of BBC Three

Things Not To Say To An Autistic Person

Who Animated

Roger Rabbit

0:03 introduction

0:15 how it started

1:12 where is the his diploma

1:38 how did it go on to Roger Rabbit

2:13 the in between in

2:28 meeting Mr Spielblberg

2:53 how did you go on your animation work

3:25 what animation did she do for the film

3:57 animating on 24 frames

4:29 favourite characters in the film

5:02 what happened after Roger Rabbit

5:55 a funny question

While I was talking to my sister-in-law about my FMP project ,she told me that she had an old friend called Pete Gambier that used to be an animator of various projects.

The most notable feature he had ever worked on was Who Framed Roger Rabbit, she suggested that I should interview him about his times working on feature films for a possible use at college.

I consulted with my tutor about the possibility of interviewing Pete and he advised that it would be beneficial to talk with a retro animator who was very successful and get some tips and tricks especially in relation to my FMP project as animation is my chosen genre for this project.

I asked him a variety of questions and we talked for over an hour, he explained how he came to be an animator and when he did the course he realised that it was the actual work he had done that showed his achievements rather than a certificate. His show reel was what got him where he is now.

His portfolio of work which we looked at showed me a model sheet which is a finalised drawing of the characters from all angles and he uses this as a guide when sketching to ensure continuity and consistency with the original drawing and character.

This is something I am using in my FMP to improve upon the original as I had noticed that in my original school reflection my characters sometimes changed slightly between sequences and I wanted to make it more professional and improve upon my original animation.

Following my meeting with Pete I adopted his way of working with 24 frames instead of 12 which has improved the smoothness of the animation, the movement and transitions.

Another technique he showed me, which unfortunately I won t have time to do for this project, is creating scale 3D models of characters to understand dimensionally how the characters look and move so a more sophisticated version of the model sheet.

This technique is one I will use in my next college project when I return in September..