Busy Weekend- Final version of "The Suspicious Birthday"

Last week, I had spend most of time working on my context 1 essay, I have finished it and send it to Jools, then I got some feedback from it.

Therefore, during the weekend, I had improved my essay and it was done now then I had finished the edited of my one shot film. 


At the start, I had added some typewriter sound effects with some digital style words, because this created the tension to make it look more serious. The texts that I added at the beginning were inspired from a HK film that I watched recently.

In addition, a suspicious music gradually increased as background music. Sound effects such as, walk steps on the snow had added on the top. I had added sound effects of the action in order make it standout and again increase the tension e.g. zipping the jacket, envelope hand over to the birthday boy etc. Once the birthday boy, open the envelope, some loud party blowers sounds added to increase in order to make the audience feel shock, then “Happy Birthday” background music played gradually to create the happy and cheerful mood.

In this edit, I had created my own sound effect. At the end, when Hollie and me said “Happy Birthday” I had cut this section from the Adobe sound booth, I made the it louder and reduced the background. Although It still contain the background noise, it was better compare to the actual one.

The title of the film, I had added this at the end, as this would not break the serious mood at the beginning, and I think this fit very well. There we go of my final edited:

The Suspicious Birthday (Seminar of Premiere Pro)

Today, the seminar was about how do we edit our film. At first, we thought we edited the film as a group. However, Deborah said that as we won’t have enough time to improve the film, so that we have to edit our own one.

In the seminar I didn’t do much, I just experiment with Premiere Pro and try to find the sound effects and back music for my final edit. It is hard to find, cause most the website I have to pay for the sounds.

One shot (unedited) Feedback from seminar

Today seminar, it didn’t last for 2 hours only 1, because most of the people haven’t do their filming yet due to the weather. However, groups that done their filming got feedback from the seminar.

The feedback that we got overall this is a good one shot film. Chris didn’t say much, the only thing was he recommended that we could put the title at the end and sound effects of the walk step.

After showing our video, we had 10 minutes group discussion; we discussed the sound effects , visual effects and the title that we can edit. Then we will edit our film in tomorrow seminar.

Filming of - Errors and Final

We chose to do our filming on a snow and freezing day, this is not a good idea right? But it is the only chance that we can film before Thursday, and it is hard to meet everyone due to the snow. However, we managed to film our final shot at the end that we had spend 2 hours after the seminar.

On the day, I managed to borrow a camera and a reflector from the equipment store. After the seminar, we went to the Arboretum Park start our filming.

During the filming, there are couples of errors, due to our casts and weather. However, errors helped us to improve our final shot; changes are white balanced and position of casts.

Error of our takes:

Final shot:

Lighting Seminar

In today seminar, we had taught about the use of lighting in film. It is interest, and there is a big different with light and without light. And I found out that lighting is the main element that creates the atmosphere in film.

I learnt the four main properties of lighting:

-Coherence (quality)

-Colour temperature (colour)

-Intensity (strength)

-Three point lighting

During the seminar we were given a task to do- 

create an interview in a daylight atmosphere inside a studio.

We did experiment with the position of lights and the gels in order to get the correct lighting. The problems were the face’s looked too dark or too bright, and once the video imported in a PC, the quality looked very poor.

Then we showed our practices to Deborah, she said that it was due to the wrong camera setting. So she told us to adjust the white balance by using a white paper and set the iris to 0db. And the first attempt, the background looked too obvious in the camera. Therefore, she did help us to adjust the height of the main light. The light then shine from the top, which made everything clear and the background was black with no shadows. 

Feedback...

Today, I have made two post s in my Facebook which allow my friends comment on my work. I hope I will receive some feedback by next week , so I can improved my work before my presentation.

Group Meeting 2

Finally, idea of one-shot film has decided and this was agreed by everyone in our group. So each of us have assigned some preparation work, e.g. buy some parties’ equipment before we start filming, costume, birthday card... etc. Also, in today meeting we have decided what people roles are.

The person that left the envelope- Lee
Birthday Boy- Elliot
Party guests- Hollie and me
Camera person- Sam

And today, we have started our risk assessment, some sections that we are not sure. Therefore, we will ask on our Thursday seminar.

Group Meeting & Final Idea

After the lecture that about the DP1 presentation, I was starting to nervous, because it seem the pressures are on the their way (Assignment 1 X DP1 presentation). However, I will try my best to produce my best work.

In the presentation that I will have on the week 20, I am thinking to present my presentation on a website, because this can show what I have learnt in the first semester. In addition, I think it is time for me to do some preparations of this presentation. E.g. Developing it, feedback, improvement etc.

The task that I would like to improve is the interactive space project; I found it was too obvious. I would like to create another on that is more exploring and abstract, and I properly will start do it after I finish my Context 1 assignment.

Anyway, let me write about what I have done in today’s group meeting.  Today, we have shared about the ideas that we thought during the weekend, and the final decision for the twist is having a mini birthday celebration at the end. So the mood of the beginning of the film will be serious, and at the end it will be a happy mood.

Before when draft out our storyboard, we have written out a plan:

Location:
-Arboretum park
   -using the bench where the canons are.

Equipment:
-Video Camera
-Tripod

Characters:
1.) One that left the envelope to the birthday boy -?
2.) Birthday boy -?
3,4.) Party guests- ?

We haven’t decide it yet.

Things that we need:
-Party poppers x2
-Party Blowouts x2
-Party Hats x3
-Birthday card x1
-Wrap present (box) x1
-Mobile phone
-Newspaper/ magazine x1

Costume:
-2- dark and dull clothing
-2- bright, colourful or party wear & hats

Camera setting:
-Zoon once- Zoom in on expression/ action at the end?

Expression:
Character 1- serious
Character 2- serious at the beginning, then unhappy, embarrassed, shocked, uncomfortable, and at the end a smile will on his face.
Character3,4- Cheerful, happy, dancing and singing.

Storyboard:

In addition, we will do our risk assessment today, and hopeful we can start some practice filming on Friday. 

C.R.A.P Seminar Task

In last week seminar, we have been told to do a task in our journal which is to re- designed a layout. I have searched a poster in the interest. This poster is about yahoo has a search engine called "Graable".

For a poster, I thought this was too much, because audience would like to read the main point rather to understand it thoroughly.

Contrast- This is where it made it called the bad layout poster, because the colour of the fonts are too close to the background it was too hard to read. People normally read from the top to the bottom, and for a poster the top section is the most important section, because this will be the point that will audience carry on reading the poster or not?

For me I will stop at this point, cause it was too hard to read and seem too much information given.

This poster did achieved the RAP.

This is the re-design poster that I created: 

2nd Seminar of One Shot Film

As I said yesterday, we have our practice filmed in today seminar. 

Before we filming, we have done a rough storyboard of what our film will look like.

In this task, we only allow to either zoom/ pan/ crab/ track once, and we decided to use, because this could built up the tension and gave a direction of what audience should focus on. In order to create a best film, we must need lots of practice and trail, so we have tried 5 different angles.

During our filming, we received some comments from Deborah; she said that we could added a twist at the end to make it more entrainment and make the audience memorable. At the weekend, in our group we have to think about some ideas and discuss it on Monday.

After an hour film, here are the best 3 that we think:

1st Seminar of One Shot Film

Today, I have my 1^st seminar of this new task was called “You Decide!”. We will working as a group of 4, my group members are Sam, Lee and Elliot. Our task is working together to shoot a one shot film- shoot in on go by without any stop and the film must be short as well 1/ 2 minutes film (maximum).

Today seminar, I have been taught about what is the task about, and we have went to the arboretum park and walked for 30 minutes to get some ideas.

During the walk, I did came up some ideas:
1. Hide and Seek
2. A group of family member taking their family album- this sounds interesting, because during my AS I went to the Tate Gallery, and inside there one of the room was showing a video that a group of people standing in a room, the video seem took forever, the setting looked like they were taken photography. But instead of having still image, they were being video. From the video, we can see the people facial expression, scratch their head, looked boredom etc. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the artist name and the title of that work, I wish I can post that video in here.

However, these weren’t use for our final decision. The main idea that arose in our group after a half hour walked was confrontation between two characters in a suspicious style, like when we watching a cops and robbers’ film when they exchange ransom.

The film will start with a character walking toward to a bench with a bag then sit on it. Another character will meet the first character, then sitting on the bench and looks strange with each other. However, when the character gets to the meeting place, a homeless person would steal the bag and run.

This is what we have discussed in our seminar today, but in tomorrow seminar, we will shoot some practice to see what the film will like then we will have some discussion and make our final decision of this task.

Finished Piece of Your Station Ident

I had spend two days to edit my animation including the timeline mistake that I made before, and also I had added some sounds track into my final piece- is super mario!.  This animation is different to the one that I made before, because I have set the time line to 900 frames, and this is exactly 30 sec. Therefore, the animation was finished as what I planned at the beginning of this task. 

However, there are lots of improvement that I can made. For example,
1. The character can looks more interest and similar to me.
2. At the end, the background music can goes off smoothly. 

C.R.A.P Lecture

In today’s lecture, I have been taught about the C.R.A.P knowledge.

C- Contrast
R-Repetition
A-Alignment
P-Proximity

We have been told to do a task during the seminar, which is using the images that brought from our course mate and improve the layout by drawing out a draft. The image that I picked was a CV, and my views are…

CV which is a formal document. I could guessed the why the writer use this style to present his CV, because she want to show her skills and expertise. However, I thought this was not a good idea, because it looks frustrating and informal, but it could be improved by the C.R.A.P objectives:

Contrast-
Small, big, bold and normal fonts- make the document looks plainly.

Repetition-

E.g. Subtitle can put in bold.

Alignment-
All the text should push to one side, the best is left to right, because this is where people start to read.

Proximity- The writer did this, but each section should place it in order. E.g. what is most important on a CV should place it at the beginning, hobbies could cancel (people may not interest with this section).

I wish I am nearly there...

Basically, today I have finished my animation project. The last bits that I need to do is try to figure out how the camera work. When I exported it in Premiere Pro my animation will have different angles’ views. So I wish I will finish this tomorrow. I knew I did not update my process of this project regularly, because I have not decided my final idea until the last week of the deadline of this task .

As 3D max is new to me, I am not familiar with this software. Therefore, I have spent lots of the time to explore it, because I would like my work looks special and unique, and match the title of this project “Your(My) Station Ident”

In the beginning of this project, I did not have many ideas.  However, after 2 and 3 days, I was wondering "Will my ideas be those that I want, but possibly I am not a professional..."  But I wish at the end of this course I will build up an expertise (Auto desk 3D Max).

I thought I have finished my animation, but I have made a mistake when I imported my render output in Premeire Pro. The mistake was due to I thought each frame was equal to one sec, but it wasn't. Therefore, I have to edit the time line in 3D Max again.

Final idea for my station ident & conceptual influences for my piece...

This is my final idea. This is influence by Pixar and my interest. 

Pixar is a company that develop computer-animated feature films with memorable characters and heartwarming stories that appeal to audiences of all ages. I love to watch Disney’s film, every time at the beginning of the film; we will see the Pixar’s Ident. When the light jumping on the “I” and the sounds effect did very well, and this inspire me to create some jumping movement in my animation. 

 
My interest- I’m an active person, I like traveling, I don’t like sit down and read. I like eating. I like playing games, e.g. Super Mario. This animation will tell you a bit who am i? As this task is to create a station ident animation that represent myself instead of my Facebook.

Therefore, I thought this idea will be the best one for my animation project. In order to make this animation interest and unforgettable, apart from the animation effect, sounds effect are playing the second role. The sound tracks that I will use are the sound effects that in the super Mario games.


This is the character that I designed for my animation. I wish I can create this character.

Ideas...??

Here are some ideas that came up in my free time and the seminar that I had on Thursday.

Idea 1:

Jelly climbing up the stairs from the ground to the sky. When the Jelly arrives, once it looks down. The camera will zoom to the A and zoom out again. At the end, my name will appear on the ground.

Idea 2:

This is an animation that a gold fish trying to tell it’s name to it’s owner, because it is a fish, it can’t speak.  So it decide to use the bubble to create some words and tell it’s name.

Idea 3:

This is an idea that I came up in my seminar on Thursday. It will start with a spot light, then my name will gradually appear on the screen. A girl stand in front of the name. Suddenly, the girl jump on the button. Then AMANDA falls to 90 degree. Once it falls, my Chinese name will appear.

Idea 4:

This is my final idea. This is influence by Pixar is a company that develop computer-animated feature films with memorable characters and heartwarming stories that appeal to audiences of all ages. I love to watch Disney’s film every time at the beginning of the film, we will see this and this made me memorable especially when the light jumping on the “I” and the sounds effect did very well.

First Touch of Auto desk 3D Max

The first seminar that I had with Andy, and this is my first touch of 3D Max. It is complicate to me, for my final piece I think I will need a lot of experiment before I proceed the project. And today experiment was I had made a Jumping Jelly.

Making New Maps

In this entry, I would like to update the process of interactive space project.

Since 3 weeks effort, I had finished my first project “Interactive Space”.  However, I have not submitted my work to Simon yet, because I would like to do some improvement.

Last Thursday was my last seminar with Simon, I got some feedback from my finished piece. The suggestion from Simon was there was a scene, when audiences went to the wrong route and at the end of the scene audiences needed to make a call from a telephone booth. The feedback was instead of clicking the next button; I can change the button that allow audiences more involve into my interactive space, i.e. when audiences click the insert coins area will go to next page.  

There is a feedback from myself, this was came from after Simon played with my interactive space. The node that I made seemed annoy the audiences. Therefore, this will be another improvement of my final piece.

I knew that in order to make a perfect product, this will involve many changes and this is what Jools is taking about during context 1 lecture “The design process-defining”.  During my project, I had made changes of ideas, storyboard, the tree branches- structure of my project and the photos.

Initial ideas
Cooking- Bake cake/ cook a dish
Find a key in a room
Where is my rabbits?
Where is my friends?
A visit of a friend’s house.

I had chosen “A visit of a friend’s house” cause I did looked last year example, seems no one ideas are similar to mine. However, I am wondering to create another interactive space the title is “Bake Cake”. This sound interesting to me, because I like bake cakes.

Storyboard & Tree branches

The storyboard and tree branches I did not change a lot, I just added some scene in between.

Photos
I did not change the style the ideas of the photos but I changed the orientation of the photos, because Simon did not tell us this does matter of how the audience view as they will feel disturb.

I had learnt how a webpage work including key elements of HTML and CSS, and I was enjoying when I doing this project.

Key elements of HTML

<html>- opening tag
<head>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>- closing tag

These must nest together in order to make the webpage work.

Other key elements:

<brl> line break
<p> paragraph
alt- alternative
src- souce
url- uniform resource locate
“”- nothing
<img> image

CSS key elements:

<style></style>- CSS Cascading Style Sheet- layout

There is a unique ID of each CSS which I need to name it and this is the hotspot identify.

 In this project, I learnt something different; something that I learnt from the internet is “rollover images”. In order to make my project to look more interact, I decided to learnt this and put this in my project. However, the rollover image involved complicate section i.e JavaScript. It used JavaScript to create the effect. At the moment, I am not sure how JavaScript works. I think we will go deeply later on in the course, and all I used was Dreamweaver helped me do it.

Tomorrow will have my first seminar <Animation> with Andy and he is my tutor... 10am till 6pm....

Reading and Reflection

Recently, I am addicting a game in my iPhone called “AR defender”. It uses the technology called AR (Augmented Reality). After some internet research, I found the AR development of nearly a decade.  AR is similar to VR (Virtual Reality). The different are VR is purely fictitious, from scratch to create a world that does not exist. AR is the emphasis being given to the combination of the real world, and enhances real-world experience in information display and interaction.

I found it interesting, because I think the AR technology can actually combine into Multimedia. Imagine the final piece of my Interactive Space project is presenting on papers, and what the audience need are lens and screen, even with operating keys (mobile phone?) which allow the audience play with my interactive space but in the real scene.

One of the reasons that I want to study in this course, because I would like to do create something that relate to E-learning as the advanced technology will keep changing every day. I believe that in the next five to ten years the traditional teaching method will knock out, because the next generation will dislike sit and read. However, personally I think AR technology can change this behaviour, because things that I can interact with, I will more interesting to read and I will remember it deeper.

Below is an example that I think it should use in GCSE and A-level revision guide, this will make the revision section more interesting.

Interactive Space- Storyboard

This is my interactive space's storyboard. The idea was from the last weekend I went to Sheffield visited my friend. Therefore, I came up with this idea by using my collection of dolls' figure as the characters of the project, they called Milky and Pinky. This project I decided to call it "A journey to Pinky's house."

My Design Process

In order to complete my context 1 module, I have been given a journal task which I need to write about the design process of my previous project in my A-level course- Graphic Design.  My final project title was "advertising campaign". I decided to advertise ‘Anti- drugs abuse’ as my main topic and presented it in a website for my final piece. 

Firstly, I have to brainstorm on a mind map which was aimed to lead some initial ideas of the next stage- photographic and observation drawings. Meanwhile, I have to undertake some artists’ research. Basically, I looked at the style of their works and chose two artists that I liked. Afterwards, I gained some knowledge of the artists’ background and methods they used to create their work. Then, I did an interpretation of both artists’ work.

 Mind Map

Secondly, I carried out some experiments which I have applied the artists’ style to the photos that I have taken from my initial ideas. In this project, I had experimented something different to other such as I had created an animation in Adobe Photoshop and flash in Adobe Flash. However, this was the section which I found difficult, because my mentor could not help me with the software. Therefore, I have to learn the software independently through the internet tutorial’s clips.

Artist research and interpretation

Animation that created in Adobe Photoshop

Animation that I created for the website
<< Drugs do make you lost>>

From time to time, I would have some advices from my mentor and feedbacks for improvements in class discussion (e.g. tutorial that I will have in this year). Once I have my final idea, I discussed the decision with my mentor, after his approval, I started plan the structure of my website.  I found that to have a good layout of the website was a complex process since I have to attract the target audience. After I have drawn out the rough idea of the structure and design, I started to work on my final piece. Basically, I have to put the final selection of the photos and experiments that I had done in previously and gathered them into the area that I have planned into my website to make it look more professional and user-friendly. 

Print screen shot of my final piece

HW: Visual Story Telling....1,2,3

My first lecture and seminar started on this Tuesday. Fortunately I managed to find the rooms and turn up on time. In this Tuesday, I had received many information of my course, such as I will work on my Context 1 Assignment 1 and Design Practice 1 in this term, it sounds interesting.

On Tuesday seminar, me and Sara are in the same group, we did some sequences experiments by using the images from a film called "Vertigo" and "North by Northwest". 

What we need to do are...

1. Select 3 images that we interesting from each film.

2. Drag these images into Photoshop.

3. Arrange the images to create a new sequence.

4. Once we have finished, crop the images to remove the unwanted area.

5. Final step is to save our works.

*Unfortunately, our experiments are on my school network that I would not be able to post my works now.

After the experiments, we got homework to do!! 

Our homework is...

Select 3 visual strategies that described in the seminar. Create 3 different sequences that include 3 visual strategies, each sequence has to be 5 photographs that taken by myself.  Therefore, I am going to post my practical works of the first project called "Making New Maps". 

I have combined the strategies together of each sequence. And the strategies that I have used are Rich colour, Flat colour field, Depth of field and Zoom shot. 

Cranberry Juice

Parcel in postbox

A trip that I have in this summer.

Induction Week

  

In my induction week, 

I created a pinhole camera which was very interesting, 

cause I like photography and I cannot believe that a 500ml beer-can can be a camera!!

Also this is my first time develop a photo by myself, I was exciting about the process. 

Fortunately, the photo that I took was very success.

I'm happy with it XD. 

Photo developed...

After inverted in Photoshop...=]

Finally, I got my timetable...hope everything will go okay =S

My first post

Just opened my NTU online journal... I will keep update it..=]