This is the second idea, it's much easier to do and the bulk part of it is just the image that is displaying. You have to use your mouse over to move through the picture, hopefully telling a story (a visual essay). The drawbacks to this are that you can't just click on practitioner 3 and it will go there, you have to search your way through until you get there. This isn't necessarily bad as you do not need to skip, but if looking back through the essay you might want to find some information quickly.
I need to make sure the main image is broad, and it gets my point across as this is basically the essay. Back to making 100meg photoshop images..
As the snow outside is now over a foot deep and still blizzards i've found myself making a mock up of how i would like to display my Visual Essay. I am wanting to do a cork-board that has notices on it, or a wall that has notices on it, that you can scroll through, by clicking links, or at your own pace.
This is a quick mock up of a flash website that moves left and right displaying images. But in my essay, these will be images to do with my practitioners and evidence to why i want to do a certain course nect year.
I think it flows really well, and uses external flash script to make it flow better.
Thought I better get started/thinking on this. Easter holidays are usually for holidaying, but currently I'm snowed in, in the blizzard that Inverness have in Scotland. So.. I've been browsing a few websites for inspiration. I know what I'm doing next year, 'the webby one', forgot the name. So I'm wanting to do a website type thing for my Visual Essay, I know its not fantastically unique but I think I can get my point across by making it. I think I will hit the criteria that the Visual Essay asks for. I'm going to make a couple of mock ups for layout wise and usability and then add the content for the final thing.
Also I need to finalise my 3 practitioners that I will choose. This is hard because I feel that I need to show the best of their work, but yet show a broad range of their work, and finally to show why they are my inspiration. I will update bit by bit on this.. Back to the snoww..
Here we go to our cellar scene on our film which was done at Sketch's friends house. I turned up to see the location today, and it was perfect. Couldn't really ask for better. So filming commenced, I tried to get as many photo as i could to show how the day went. Filming done, onto editing tomorrow.
Lights prepared and then setting up how the old man will sit.
Producer sorting things out and writing down time codes.
Couple of lighting alterations, safety, safety.
Producer and Director confer while the film-man gets ready to shoot.
Fake blood getting ready for filming.
Figures on shelf.
Getting the camera ready to shoot the figures.
Adjusting figures.
Final blood splattered figures, a good closing scene.
And thats a wrap, the end to filming on day 2. Very successful outcome in my eyes, lets just hope it looks good when we see it on the big screen..
Just an update on my boredem, managed to redesign my portfolio website. Its not out there to get work for myself, but in the future i hope to do that. I was coding in PHP with my last website which i made at the start of the Uni year (october) where i bought the domain and hosting too;
I did really like this site, although i did have critism about the small text, but this was just a style/design feature.
The new site is part finished and is entierly flash as i wanted to get my skills better. I've seen a lot of interesting backgrounds to websites, and i thought i'd try and be original as possible and took a photo of my bedroom wall and then editted it on Photoshop;
Following on from the other post here is a list of sound effects that I think we can use in our edit. Found a great website where the sound effects are free to use. A lot you had to pay for, but i managed to find sound effects that were just as good but free of charge.
Right, be trawling through shit loads of music and sound effects, but have come up with quite a good list. Aswel as the youtube links i have already put i have also found these Royalty Free Music downloads than can be used in the actual edit. Its all well and good knowing what type of music you cant from famous types, but finding one that is royalty free is a whole different ball game. I think i have found some good'uns though;
The pathway I will talk about is Interactive Narrative. I have chosen this pathway because I really enjoy the work and the outcome you can get from the work. I will show three different practitioners linked to Interactive Narrative that I like their work. I will show lots of different types of work they do. I think graphic design as well as programming are both important, and I will link this in the essay.
My first practitioner is Mr. Jago, a Leicester based graphic designer that I first picked up on when he was designing for skate shop Casino's Skates in Leicester. Ever since I have been following his work through his portfolio website to keep track on his diverse style.
In Interactive Narrative it's key to use both computer and paper based mediums. I will also show a mixed media in my essay to portray how the two are linked. This shows the artist to be more broad with their ideas, rather than just keeping to one type of medium.
This is just a quick Abstract, but I need to decide on a final three artists that show everything I want to show that I want to do the pathway. I will mention all the practitioners in question but then will finally decide on three.
I think its been done really well, a simple edit and filming using depth of field and focus makes this short film come to its own, the music suits it perfectly and I really like it. I think music is key to the film, so while I search for music for our film, I'm making sure it's the right music.
Also I think the opening few seconds of the music is also key, I think those few seconds should get you in to the mood for the type of film it is going to be.
Moby - Isolate (instrumental) I think this song would be good for the dark cellar music, as its only an intrumental and I think would work well with our theme. Moby - Pale Horses I think this last peices of moby music, would be a good intro/outro type music.
I think getting the right backgroud music is key, it has to be eiry, it has to show that something odd is going, it can't be too slow, yet not too fast. I think when coming to editting we will have to try a couple of selected songs and see which best fits with the filming.
Right, this is our next project we have moved on to and it was my groups task to envisaging the 'figure' script. At first we were taught about camera views;
E/C/U = Extreme close up (eyes) F/S = Face shot (face) M/C/U = Medium close up (face & shoulders) M/S = Mid shot (face & torso) L/S & W/S = Long shot & Wide shot (whole body)
Establishing shot = A shot to give you a sense of where you are Coverage = Different types of shot of the same shot (back up for when editing)
All these shot I had never known what they were, so this will help when planning out the scenes.
<------------Along (to track)----------------->
/\ l l l In or out (to dolly) l l \/
When I first read our script, I wasn't quite sure what it was about, but luckily after reading it over a few times and with help from members in my group I got to understand the script a lot more. I wouldn't say film is my strong point, and im always sceptical about envisaging a scene in my head to then actually filming it. But time will tell, and hopefully it will come out ok.
I will make another post about our shots and scenes.
Last thing the group is;
Director - Instructions: Alex Producer - Organise, Locations, Actors: Michael Filming: Alex Lighting&Editing: Chris Sound: Me
This 1991 film we watched this morning was a really good watch. I'm pretty poor at writing reviews on movies so;
Policeman Bob Gold has to capture a murder that not even the FBI has been able to find. But before he can even start he is re-assigned to the murder of an old lady in a black area. The evidence points at a Jewish group and he discovers connections between them and his previous case. Written by Mattias Thuresson
-imdb.com
I did really like this film, and I got into it really well (although uncomfortable). All the way through I did feel sorry for Bob, and I did want him to solve both cases. Although his best friend getting shot and killed I think the outcome was the best for him. It wasn't obvious what was going to happen at the end so this also a positive point about the film.
Right, finally I am very happy with my Pub Quiz. I have tested it on different people, and they all took well to using it, so I think from a user interface view I have done well. It's not complicated and it's an enjoyable quiz with a variety of questions.
I started off with making an intro animation for the quiz which then led on to the 'main screen', so if you missed the intro, you weren't faced with the quiz straight away, I wanted to make sure the user was ready for the quiz so gave them the option of 'play' and 'instructions'.
I have been questioned about why I have shown the instructions like this. I wanted to make sure it was clear about what the quiz was offering. I tried to align the text left, centre and right, but there was too much free space around the text and it didn't look good, so I finally had the text 'justified'. I was also changing the font size so it wasn't too big and not too small.
After finishing the intro and the main screen I wanted to add a pre-loader. So I made a simple one that shows how much percentage has loaded and made an animation of a beer bottle loading.
For the layout of the questions and answers, I wanted it to be clear where the questions will show and what type they are. So I made a big question section at the top, then a type of question and finally the answers. This was put through-out the quiz, so there was no change to the layout.
Animation wise I wanted to use a different animation for each type of question, so firstly I made a brain for the general knowledge questions. This was a simple line drawing of a face and then the brain with a small colour tween animation.
Also here are the rest for each section;
I also incorporated video into my quiz. This was a part of question which just shows a clip of a football player playing for their club.
I think this turned out well because I used keepvid.com to download from youtube.com and then chose a small size so no matter how slow your internet is, it will load quickly without you having to wait.
I added sound aswell, I put this on every answer in the quiz, so if you get it wrong, then it will play a different sound to if you get the answer right. I added a 'boo' sound to the answers that were wrong and a 'cheer' sound to the answer that were right in the general knowledge section, I think this incorporated well into the 'Pub Quiz' theme. On the sport section I added a golf noise as a general sound to all three types of sport. It's just a 'swing' of golf club if you get it wrong (as if you were missing the golf ball) and a 'swing' of the golf club and 'pot' sound for the right answers (as if you were getting a hole in one). I think these sounds work well with the quiz.
Finally for the last bit of the quiz, the last page shows, what your score is and depending on your score, you get a different animation, where the pint glass fills up depending on how many questions you go right, and also displays a different message.
if (score >= 26 ){ ifcond.text = "Well Done, Enjoy a full pint.."; pint1_mc.gotoAndPlay("full"); } if ( score >= 16 && score <= 25 ){ ifcond.text = "Not bad, but not a genious"; pint1_mc.gotoAndPlay("twothird"); }
Also this page I also have left an option to replay quiz so that you can do it again if you didn't get a good score or a 'no' option where the credits come up.
After finishing the quiz with literally no time to spare as I had a unfortunate event with my personal computer (few posts down) I was wanting to add a 'top scores' table. After a lot research into this, I found out that you couldn't make it just from flash and you would have to incorporate a MYSQL database for all the information to be stored. This would have to be online so that the flash quiz could 'fetch' the database and information and display/edit it. If I had a lot more time and access to a MYSQL database I would have added this as a final touch to my quiz.
