Saturday, 26 January 2013

Help with thinking

I have been compiling a list from research of the elements that make up a stage production.


  1. Decide which play you are going to perform.
  2. Figure out a budget.
  3. Hold auditions and create your cast.
  4. Set a rehearsal schedule...but always be ready to change it.
  5. Get yourself a stage manager.
  6. Begin with the text.
  7. Costumes, set, vision...Figure it out!
  8. Publicize, publicize, publicize.
  9. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
  10. When it’s time to let go...


As you can see from the above example this list is just a starting place to pin down what elements are needed. I have also under taken a preliminary search for icon to help with my map idea and have found that looking for the icons has helped me think about the list above.

Publicity

Stage Hand

Writer

Buget

Actors

Lighting

Director

Wardrobe
These icon I have adapted or changed to help with my thought process from example I have found via Google.

Monday, 21 January 2013

Which brief


After receiving the brief list these where four that I found the most interesting-:




Douwe Egberts coffee.

The key point that struck me upon reading the brief where, They wanted to get the people who drink coffee at work, purchased from well known coffee chains where not drinking coffee at home. They have a 250 years of expertise in making coffee, tradition can be an advantage, it can also make them look old and dated. They want to appeal to the 25+ age group ho fall into the ABC1 category. Who love life, food and travel and will pay for quality.

I ran through a few ideas and thought about a video for a central charterer who had not so happy experience getting coffee in the morning on the way to work, culminating in them having some 'me time' at home drinking Douwe Egberts coffee in a nice airy kitchen in a Victorian house. 

 

Marriott Hotel & Resorts.

The key points to the brief where they wanted to appeal to technically enabled young, who have a new mind set about work life and travel. Who want to travel with a purpose. Marriotts want touse the idea of traveling to events in Europe. They suggest that their be a minimum of three events. For example a concert in Manchester, An event in Munich, a cultural event in Moscow.

My first thought was for a stylised poster to promote the events in the style of poster from the 20's and 30's displayed in the underground and other trans port links. Also a card which would be in the same style in hotels telling you of up and coming events in other Marriott Hotels around Europe. I soon move on to the idea of an ipod touch or similar device which arrived after you booked your room with all the thing you might need for the city where you where staying, ie maps, tour guide, compass, audio guide if you going to see an exhibition. All pre loaded and the device would act as your room key and control every thing in the room. At the end you could have your photos down loaded after you hand back the device.


Plan UK

The key point to the brief are that Plan UK are a global children’s charity who want to at
sponsorship and money for their program “I am a girl”. Which promotes education for girls in the third world. Their primary audience are women aged 25 to 34 demographic classification of ABC1. Who give to charity but don't think that they are campaigners. Girls have to be show in a positive light.

This appealed to me for altruistic reasons, I though of post with cleaver strap lines. “ because we worth it” and the idea that women in the past help modern women to be what they are now.


The Royal Court Theater

The key points for the brief are to tell the story of the play before its presented on stage, that results in raising interest, enthusiasm and general awareness to their theater audience. The target audience are their existing audience who regularly attend but don't know what else goes on behind the scenes most people that come view themselves as risk takers and want to be in on something at the start.

I can see that The Royal court web site already has lots of information and it the trigger for people to visit their site I think is key. I thought about creating some thing the would stick in people memory so they would think about The Royal Court. I have though of many visual images to say that it take many things from many places before a production is put on.


Thursday, 17 January 2013

New Brief

We have just been given our new brief. The design agency YCN have held  an award competition since 2001.

YCN is a design agency, which describes itself as 'Producing work across all media and representing the finest creative people for commissions and collaborations'. They say of themselves that 'YCN today produces advertising, design and other creative communications n all media; both for its own projects and ventures and on behalf its various clients'. They are a 'group of designers, art directors, developers, writers, illustrators and project managers work together at 72 Rivington Street in London'. They also run an annual competition which offers students the chance to fulfil creative briefs from a range of high profile clients and enter that work in a competition. 'The YCN Student Awards shine a light on new creative talent and centre on a collection of live creative briefs'. (http://www.ycn.org)

Winning a competition such as this one often results in the work being commissioned commercially and is a good career starter.

 
For this assignment I will choose from a list of YCN Award brief. The internal deadline for my degree assessment is in advance of the YCN submission deadline, which is March 14th 2013. It is recommended, but not compulsory, that we enter our work into the competition.



YCN Clients brief list.
Bacardi,  British Eurosport, Churchill, Douwe Egberts, Ella's Kitchen, Experian, Fedrigoni, Forestry Commission England, Goji, Lego, Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Nissan, Plan UK, Reading and Leeds Festival, Royal Court Theater, The Feel Good Drinks Company, UGG, UK Greetings, Very, Yahoo!, Yell.

We are required to keep a sketchbook/ visual diary to record the generation of ideas and the progress, development and evolution of our project.
In addition my blog hold process, idea, techniques and examples of any contextual references (art and design styles) that I have researched, together with links to media sources used for inspiration.


Key Dates
Mondays 14th January - Visiting YCN in London
Wednesday 16th January -Talk about three initial ideas in response to your chosen brief for discussion
Wednesday 6th February - Full pitch of idea
Monday 25th February - Crit
Wednesday 27th February - Hand in project

Thursday 14th March - Submission deadline at YCN 

 

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Evaulation

I have enjoyed this project, But I felt that I did not necessarily approach it in the best way.  I was unable to fully understand what i-book author could produce. I enjoyed After Effects as I found elements  and skill set similar to using Photoshops. I believe I have produced a coherent and well made book. Others example have only inspire me to do more and try different things.

Tuesday, 11 December 2012

Crit and Useability

 Before Crit I undertook a usability test of my first completed book. I showed it to a number of people to gauge their feelings about the book. Most of the feed back was positive, people had no problems with the navigation. The interactive content was easy to understand and the liked the flow and general look of the book. However one comment did ring in my ears and that was when did James text start and the introduction end, they also confused by the headings on one of the pages.
Acting on the comments given I have removed the heading clearly stated that part of the writings different from the story is created to James. 

Small change to page
 Crit as always was an enjoyable experience. I like opportunity to see others work and how they have come up with creative solutions to fill the brief. I partially liked Lucy and Jamie e-book. They came up with ideas that to my mind fill one of the key ideas of and e-book, that is the book has to create its own world and all the elements are in keeping with that world. For my part the crit of my book was very favorable, an obvious omission was pointed out. That being a silhouette of a man in the window of the house, this being key to the story. It was also pointed out that the image of a hat was interfering with the text on one of the pages making it hard to read. Lastly an issue of one of the videos needing a slight purse in the audio. On reflection I felt that the text on the front cover was to small so I have increased it as well attending to the elements brought up in crit. 
The entire book
Since refining my e-book I have undertaken further useability test and have had nothing but good and positive response from those who have tested the e-book.

Saturday, 1 December 2012

Crossing the T's and dotting the I's

As we are getting closer to crit it is time finish the videos. I have been making quicktime file to view the finished work. I have done this so I can view them out side of After Effects.
I have noticed that all of the videos seem to be a lot lighter than they appear in After Effect. I have reviewed each of the videos and made notes for each dividing them in to units of scenes as you can see from the listed below :- 

Name of video. Intro Video
 
1.Image needs to be darker. James & Mirror
2.Image needs to be darker. Cholton st 1892
3.Image needs to be darker. James & Mirror
4.Ok
5.Image needs to be darker. Pit head
6.Move bricks.
7.Image needs to be darker. School
8.Image needs to be darker. Boys in mine
9.Needs background sound
10.Ok
11.Image needs to be darker. Bricklayer image
Add fade to end of video

Scene reference
 

After I have instigated the changes I have produced a quicktime video to review again and make more changes if needed. As it turned out I dropped the second image of James, scene 3 and made the others around it longer.

Finally I have rendered my videos to a finished format. I has set the image size 1024 x 768 so it would fit the i-pad window. I used the codec h.264 and save them as a Quicktime .mov . The version 2, i-books author converts .mov so it can be played in i-books. This process I went through for all the videos I made.

The finished video 

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Development of an idea

I was originally going to use the cropped mage of James for the front cover of the book. But it really does not have the impact I feel a front cover should have.
Original family group and cropped image
I have been toying with the idea of using it graphically. I have converted it and used it as a mask to make an image of his face being cut out of bricks. I have used two layers, one where I took all the cement out from between the bricks. This image I place over the original wall and used the mask to cut out the brick. I have introduced a shadow to add to the depth of the image.
Wall face
I have played around with text. Originally I used black type, then in the process of making the intro video I have the extended wall with the type cut out. It seems one idea is feeding another. I felt that that idea of cut out letters did not work for the front cover and I made a version using chalk as the text for the cover.
Wall face work outs
Looking at all three I prefer the last one using chalk.