Creative Media Practice: Final Project Proposal

Final Project Proposal

Friday 25th October 2013 

So todays session was about making sure we all had an idea, for our final project for this module. Weirdly enough my idea came to be late last night, I knew I wanted to do something with QR Codes as I found it really enjoyable when creating our location narrative for the mini brief a couple of weeks back. I also knew I wanted to base my idea/story in the city centre of Liverpool, my first thought was to use the iconic locations/buildings but after discussing with my tutor. Finding places that aren’t so iconic would tell a better story, which I intend to do with the QR Codes. 

Other Side of Town - Proposal

For our Creative Media Practice project, I am hoping to create a story tour of Liverpool City Centre. As we all at one time or another stood and looked at a building and thought how the building would of looked like years ago or what it may have been used for. Well I am hoping this project will fix this problem, by allowing users to scan QR Codes on their smart phones as they are traveling past the building and locations used in this project. 

The QR Codes will inform the users of history of the building/area and the story behind the scenes. When scanning the QR Codes users can either receive historical facts, videos, audios or still images.

The audience of this project will mostly be tourists to the city informing them of the areas that they wouldn’t normally go to within the city centre. The project will be free for the users as they only have to scan the QR Codes, businesses on the path of this story may gain clients who are interested in their business after the story being told through the QR Codes.

Along with history on areas and building, I am thinking users could find out people stories from many years ago, to do this I would link the ‘People Stories’ website to the QR Codes. Some people may want to add their own story. Hurricane films developed this idea so that anyone can add their own story, videos and pictures http://www.peoples-stories.com/index.php.

Examples of locations and areas that I am thinking of using for this project are;

-Hope Street   -Hanover Street/Duke Street; Ayrton Saunders   -Rodney Street

 -Bombed out Church    -Bold Street   -Everyman Theatre  -Renshaw Street; Grand Central 

Creative Media Practice: Interactivity with YouTube Annotations

Interactivity with YouTube Annotations

Thursday 24th October 2013

Since last session we have spent all our time possible editing our clips. To edit the clips we used Adobe After Effects, as we had used this software in one of the other mini briefs, I found it really easy editing and creating the start of the timeline. We decided that to make it fair we would each have a go at editing so we all had a try at using the software, as we will have to know how to edit for when creating our individual projects at the end of this module. 

So with having the first few seconds been created in the timeline we decided to learn how to edit the clips so that we could add video clips when the lift opens, we did this by using mask tool. Once the first clip was done, the others became easy and all where done in minutes. The only problem we had while editing in this session where; rending and also exporting the clips so that we could add them to our full timeline. A couple of times it felt like we had a hit brick wall, as we felt under pressure and couldn’t remember how to do certain tasks, but after calming down and asking for help we sorted our problem and moved on. We added a few notes on certain part of the timeline to help viewers understand the annotations. So after completing the editing we then uploaded the video onto YouTube and added annotations putting a start and end time for each annotations and making the viewers have the option to go back and try another annotation so they don’t have to finish the experience so quick. As we focused on editing and trying to make the clips perfect we ran out of time so we couldn’t add audio to our video. 

As I said in my previous blog post if we had more time we would add more clips for each floor, also add audio for each clips that appear as the lift doors open, but while the character is in the lift they would have cheerful elevator music. Other than the problems we had I really enjoyed this brief, as I feel like its one of the ideas that we stuck will without changing the main idea. We only had to make a few changes to props etc, so I feel like it was a big bonus to see something work from beginning to end. To do this type of brief for our final project I think would be hard as theres a lot of work that has to be done and doing it on our own, I think would build pressure. Most of us are feeling the pressure with all the other university deadlines we have. 

But on a happy note below is the link to our; YouTube Annotations. 

(Just click on Elevator Adventure)

Elevator Adventures

Creative Media Practice: Interactivity with YouTube Annotations

Interactivity with YouTube Annotations

Friday 18th October 2013

This session of Creative Media Practice focused on Interactivity with YouTube annotations, so to introduce us into this task we watched our tutors prezi presentation which discussed the areas that can be used for interacting with YouTube such as; Play, Story, Education, Campaigns, Promotion, Websites. Some examples used on the presentation I found really enjoyable and could see myself looking them up again on YouTube such as the Tipp-Ex promotion interaction video as it allows us the viewers to re-write the story by just typing in a simple word. 

Check out the link below to the prezi about Interactivity with YouTube Annotations;

http://prezi.com/inh1_fnvpujw/interactive/ 

So after the presentation we where set our brief to come up with an idea for our own YouTube Annotations, so we chose our groups and began to come up with ideas. Each member of our group had ideas, but we all agreed on one ideas! Our idea is that a character will enter into a lift and then the viewers can decide on which floor the character will go onto, but the lift is not any normal lift as the floors are all different locations and settings, you could call it a ‘Magical Lift’. Plus each time the viewers/character are taken back into the lift each floor are given another variety of locations/settings, so you don’t get taken to the same locations twice.

We decided that the viewers can pick from five floors, each floor will have three different locations/settings. 

The locations/settings picked are;

• Liverpool Docks    -University    -Crowd of People walking towards character
• Field    -Buckingham Palace    -Eiffel Tower    -New York    -Jungle    -Desert
• Sydney    -A Mountain    -A Boat    -Hurricane    -Taj Mahal    -Space

Thankfully we where able to film and download all the clips we need for our idea, which means that all we need to do during next week is to edit everything and then place them together in a timeline. So as a group we have decided to spend Wednesday & Thursday morning next week completing this task for our deadline. 

This mini brief has been one of the best, as its so simple and it allows our viewers to interact with our work and not just sit and watch as we all know can get boring after a while. I think if I am going to pick this kind of brief and idea for my final product I think the idea could be expanded a little more maybe by allowing the viewers to pick which lift they want the character to use along with the different locations, another idea to expand this idea would be to have a larger amount of locations which could vary in each lift. One key point to this task would be to make sure I had enough time to find clips and edit them all into a timeline, if you run out off time and rush the product never looks as good as it should. 

So make sure to check back to see our finished product! 

Creative Media Practice: Isadora

Isadora

Friday 11th October 2013  

Our third task for this module is focused on Isadora and interactivity, we had a background story of the software where it started and why. Isadora is an open ended interactive media presentation tool. There so much anyone can do using the software as there is over 250 basis building blocks that can be connected, to create manipulate stunning visuals, sonic environments and media intensive theatrical experiences. 

In small groups we where given our mini brief, to decide on a short interactive narrative experience, that users can explore and engaged in the narrative. As it’s October our brief for this narrative is based around ‘Halloween’. So as a group we’ve decided to use materials such as; audio, stills, movie clips to create our interactive horror/haunting experience. So we’ve started planning our idea and research the internet for the materials where going to need but also to test to see if our narrative idea will work. 

Our Narrative Idea; 

-A Bates Motel still image at the start of the experience.

-Users will interact by making noises e.g. footsteps, knocking.

-Using & moving mouse will allow users to interact with some movie clips e.g. psycho shower scene. 

So the list of material things we need for our Isadora narrative are;

-Doorbell Noise     -Scream Noise     -A person in a window clip/image

-Howling wind Noise     -Creaking Door Noise     -Door Opening clip

-Bats flying Noise     -Whispers of People Talking     -Shower Scene from Psycho 

So from this week till next week as a group we need to collect the materials and also spending time getting use to the Isadora software. 

Creative Media Practice: QR Codes

QR Codes

Thursday 10th October 2013

Our second task for this module is focused on QR Codes, after a small discussion about QR Codes our mini brief was set. In small groups we have conceive a plan and to build a narrative that is located around the Redmond's Building. For this brief we had to make sure we had a minimum of five QR Codes that could be placed in a location. Our QR Codes could be linked to; website URL, YouTube videos, Google Maps, Twitter, Blogs, plain texts, data etc. Our QR codes are for users to scan with their smart phones. We decided to stick to a simple narrative, but that would also have a meaningful story behind it and connect locations and objects together. 

So for our group narrative we decided to go down the historical narrative route, for this prototype we used real stores about the location but also made some stories to make the prototype more realistic, as we didn’t have much time to search for a lot of stories about our location. Our location for the QR codes prototype is Rodney Street which is down the road from the Redmond’s building. We researched a little bit about the history of the street e.g. buildings, photographs, videos but also ghost stories about the streets. As we found out there is a gambler buried on the street. 

Our narrative is simple but affective as you can imagine our idea being used with any street in the world, as people are able to find something new about an area but also be part of an experience. We designed our narrative so that users can either follow a route or start at an point in the narrative and they will still be able to figure out the idea straight away. 

This mini task was enjoyable, the part that did take up most time was coming up with our narrative as we had an idea and then changed our minds a couple of times. But once we finalised the main idea everything fell into place, collecting all the different types of media, downloading them was so fast and easy to do. Only problems we had was with Google Maps, as Google has changed the setup, as we where pushed for time we couldn’t spend a large amount of time learning how to use it, so we had a quick change of plan and decided that we would present our prototype on prezi to show a real idea of our narrative. 

I really enjoyed this mini brief, and I’m thinking this maybe the task I want to do for my final project. To do this for my final project then I would make sure I manage my time better, to make sure I have enough time on each area; researching, planning, creating, learning software/tools. But also to make sure everything works successful, so that viewers can get the whole experience of the QR codes and the narrative. 

Below is the link to our prezi showing our QR narrative check it out; 

Hauntings of Rodney Street/

Creative Media Practice: Triptych & Multiscreen

Triptych & Multiscreen

Thursday 3rd October 2013

To start off our Creative Media Practice we had a short introduction into the module and the individual tasks. After the short introduction we then moved into our first task ‘Triptych & Multiscreen’ discussing screen narrative, split screen, we spoke about how images using spilt screen can tell a story without doing anything, to prove this we where shown examples of images. We were also shown a variety of films using spilt screens. 

Once the discussion about Triptych & Multiscreen was completed we where given our mini brief. Our brief is to; come up with a narrative that plays across three screens. So to start off our brief we had to come with ideas and also to develop our concept before we could start planning our narrative and creating the triptych. As a small group we came up with a few ideas;

• Real Life vs Reality
• Bad Day (POV of a persons bad day)
• Phone Call
• Peoples View on Reality & The world around

We decided on the Bad Day (POV) idea, so we began to create our story board & shot lists, so we could just grab a camera and start capturing the clips we need. We also choose specific locations for each part of the narrative. So after planning we started filming with the time left we had, then uploaded all the clips ready to edit and start to build our triptych. 

Friday 4th October 2013

As we had all our clips uploaded on the PC, we decided to recap how to use After Effects, once we had the hang of After Effects again editing our Triptych became so much easier. But as we only started editing the same morning as the deadline we didn’t have enough time to make everything perfect for our Triptych, but as a group we where made up to get all our clips into the sequence, even if it is without audio as we thought we wouldn’t complete the sequence in time. As this mini brief was only set for us to find out which software and techniques we would like to use for our final project, I enjoyed creating the triptych and using After Effects. But if I decide to do Triptych again I think one main point I will make sure I do is to do a schedule, so that I have a certain about of time to focus on specific tasks needed to create the Triptych e.g; clips, audios, effects. Below is our YouTube Triptych video; 

3rd & Final Year!

So back to being a student can’t believe this is my third and final year, the past two years have just disappeared in a blink. This year will probably be the same and before I know it I won’t be a student anymore. Scary to think I’ll be graduating at the age of 20, is that to young to graduate? I am just thankful to have a great summer off and actually going on holiday, as I’m rested and ready for the assignments this year brings. Even though I feel ready for this year the thought of writing a 8,000 word dissertation terrifies me, and also having to start thinking about getting a real job at the end of this year!