Subject for Products

The assignment revolves around the wonders of nature and so this is what the website and ibook will be about. As a class we were given around 15 categories to choose from such as earthquakes, glaciers mountains etc. I ended up with canyons which I don't think is a bad subject and there will surely be some interesting topics in this to base my products on for example I could focus on one particular canyon such as the grand canyon or I could go into how they are formed looking at the erosion or mix up a few different pieces of information for the products. 

So my next step is too start researching further into canyons until I find what I really focus my products or as mentioned above if it will be a mixture of info from the category. I don't know a great deal about canyons so hopefully I learn a few interesting things and start planning how this all fits into my products.

The New Brief

On monday I was given the new brief for the next assignment this include two modules and is titled wonders of nature. The assignment is to produce a ibook for the ipad and a responsive website for desktop, tablet and mobile, the products are educational resources which will be aimed at L3 learners so 16 to 18 year olds. The content must be factually correct and be engaging  for the user using a wide range of media and interactive elements, as well as this I must develop a visual style for my products which is consistent in both the ibook and the website which make the products visually exciting. 

The brief for this project included a list of what my products must at least contain : 

• A robust and user-friendly navigation system.
• Content to include: text, images/illustrations, sounds and moving image. 
• Animated navigational elements to accompany the content and enhance the user experience.

A   As well as this this the website must be using a "responsive navigation design" , for actually designing these products I will be using iBooks author to create the iBook and and hand coding my website in Notepad++, BBedit, Text wrangler or something similar. To create the website I will be using HTML5, CSS3 and media queries for the responsive elements of the website. It is also possible to use jQuery for further interactivity. 

      I will be planning the project and showing the design process in my blog and sketchbook throughout the project, showing research, idea development and mock-ups for example.  I will also be creating a production schedule and Asset Register as part of this project as a requirement of the brief. 

      I will be pitching my research and ideas on Monday the 25th march, including my contents and design solutions showing visual styles navigation plans, wireframes etc. I will crit these products on 20th May 2013 and the deadline for this project is Friday 24th May 2013. 

     Overall I am looking forward to getting into this project as I think designing the website and iBook will be interesting and also a good learning experience as I haven't used iBooks author before or created a website all out of hand code. 

Evaluation

I found this project fairly difficult to be honest from an idea point of view I found it difficult to remain abstract and plan out the whole of my trailer from start to finish. Many of my ideas were loose and based on certain parts of the JFK speech and while I do think I had some good ideas in places I think my final trailer would be a lot better if I had a clear plan from the start. WIthin this was the pitch process which was useful although I was not fully prepared for it and again found it difficult to put my ideas for video into a presentation but looking back it was a good learning experience. 

Moving onto a software point of view I enjoyed this project as video editing is fun and something you can really get involved with. Also I knew final cut so editing and cutting together my footage was not difficult. I did have to make kinetic text however and the two programs I used were motion and after effects (mainly using the latter) These were programs that I had not used before so learning the basic of these was really helpful and good experience for the future. I enjoyed after effects and will definitely be experimenting with it in the future to see what kind of stuff you can make.

My final trailer I think is ok, I like the first half of it till you get to the applause however then I think you can see that my ideas get weaker and eventually run out. This is disappointing in my opinion as I think I could of made it better however I think the meanings behind the footage is clear and relates to the struggles, challenges and also the success of JFK's reign as president. 

Overall I think there are lots of positives to take from this project such as learning new software and getting better with ones I already knew as well as this it gave me more experience in presenting ideas for video. However I do think there are ares I could of improved on the second half of my trailer being the biggest. 

Kinetic Text

My first attempt at making the kinetic text I used motion I experimented with creating kinetic text for the responsibility part of the speech which I had planned too do. After coming up with some different layouts for the text and adding in some behaviours too certain words I didn't really think it went well with the feel of the trailer.

I also used after effects to try and create the right looking kinetic text I decided to go with my other option of kinetic text which was to use it on the following part of the speech "and the glow from that fire can truly light the world." It was my first time using after effects so the animations were kept fairly simple however if they were too flashy I don not think they would suit the trailer. 

I used keyframes to sort out the position of the text as the other words came in on the first part of the quote I moved the text up a little for each piece of text that came in to make it look a bit more dynamic and fluid. I did this by linking all the different text layers to a null object and movings this object position at the keyframes mentioned above. It worked really well in my opinion and was a good learning experience for me in after effects, to finish this of I made the word fire red too give it that little bit of emphasis.

For the second part of the quote I wanted a video or image in the backdrop which was fine as it was the same as working on the black canvas like above. I chose a video of the sun coming out form behind a church as I thought it linked well to the previous clips in the trailer and also the light from the quote it was showing. For this part of the quote I just wanted the text to appear as the sun was moving.





Overall I am happy with my kinetic text and I enjoyed making so it is definitely something I would like to experiment with in future projects, also enjoyed after effects and I will carry on experimenting with that to see th other possibilities of the program. 

Crit Feedback

So for the crit I showed what I and so far for my trailer and got some good feedback on parts of the trailer for example the time lapse going backwards at the start of the trailer was mentioned as a good point as were the dominoes falling over the responsibility part of the speech. There was also some issues raised which I found useful these were - 

• The effect on the dominoes is a little uneasy to watch - Here I wanted the last domino that falls to have a real earthquake effect shaking the screen to try and give it more impact on the viewer I used a effect with a similar name in final cut here to try and do this and it is a little extreme so I could see where they were coming from it still something I want to do so maybe I need to explore other effects here and just experiment a little.

• No kinetic text on dominoes sections - This is where I had original planned to use kinetic text because the dominoes were over the responsibility and 'I welcome it" part of the speech. However it was mentioned that the footage here was strong enough without kinetic text so it is something to think about but I think I would still like to at least experiment a little with this to see what it looks like before cutting the idea completely. 

• No build up - It was suggested that the strong imagery I had in the footage had not build and seemed a little forced on to go with they timing of the speech and looking back now I can see where they were coming from. This is something I do want to address and as I want the trailer the flow with speech and lead somewhere rather than just forcing certain footage up to go with parts of the speech so some sections will have to change a lot for this too happen, which I have already started to do and have some good ideas for.

So the crit was very helpful for me in this project and these were the three main points I want too address and experiment with. 

Finding Footage

For my trailer I wanted to use a mixture of stock footage and my own footage so to do this I needed to find a place to get this stock footage. I thought I could use youtube unto a point to get 1960's footage the big problem here is that it would most likely be low quality so I need to be careful although in some places this bad quality footage might work but I don't want it to be difficult to see and make out.  

I also found a number of websites that give out free stock footage which was in high quality websites such as www.videvo.net where I got some of my footage from although limited there in content what they do have is really good quality.  There were a few other websites that I used as well which were a similar situation. I tried too find footage of the time using the cold war, civil right movement and the vietnam war as my first searches. Looking for possible footage that would give a feel for the time the speech was given and also referencing the backdrops of the speech.  

I also looked for some of the more abstract ideas that I wanted to use in my trailer for example the time lapse at the beginning and the American flag at half mast and the dominoes falling footage. All of which were found on free stock video sites which meant they were high quality which is good for the trailer. 

Domino Footage

For part of my trailer I wanted to reference JFK's belief in the domino theory so I had the idea of using a domino chain falling which I thought would work well as it links to the cold war backdrop of the speech and also would be powerful imagery to use. I decided to use it on the part of the speech where JFK says he welcomes the  responsibility as it goes with this part well and makes you think he can handle the challenges that America faced at the time.

Initially I wanted to shoot this footage my self as I knew what I wanted to do so I did not think it would be too difficult however after experiments and shooting a couple of different angles something was off about the footage and it did not really work against the speech it was also not really powerful or have that much impact. Especially as the last domino falls which I want to be really strong. After playing with the footage in final cut against the speech I decided it did not really work the background was off and the fall of the dominoes was not really striking or powerful nor was it how I had planned it too look. 

However I still wanted the domino idea to play a role in my trailer so I looked around the web to see if there were any video that really stood out and worked for what I wanted to do. After finding loads that were not really helpful I found one that really worked as it had plain white background surrounding it and featured the dominoes falling from the front after panning them into view. This was really good and the last two dominoes that fall work well. Also the white background gives me room to use kinetic text here or add in some effects that will not distort the view too much.