Creative Media Practice Ideas

After looking at split screens online, I have narrowed myself down to two ideas I could possibly create.

One idea focuses on the repetitiveness of live. From the start of the day to the end, everyone goes through mainly the same daily routine and yet strives to be different, I want to capture the repetitiveness through my split screen. I would start with one screen and build to multiple before finally ending back on one. The repetitive cycle I have identified involves:

• Alarm going off
• Shower
• Coffee/Breakfast
• Journey to work/Uni
• Work
• Lunch/Coffee
• Work
• Journey Home
• Tea
• Evening TV
• Bed

To make this film interesting it would rely heavily on audio and visual and would therefore need to be of high quality.

My other idea is also a Split Screen to show the obsession we have with our phones. We miss out on a lot of the day staring at our screens, checking Facebook, Twitter and Instagramming just about everything and so I want to show what we miss out on because we have our faces buried in screens. To create this project I would have one screen showing what a person sees such as point of view and over the shoulder shots, it would be mainly a view of their phone. While the other screen would be what they are missing out on such as their bus driving past them or missing a conversation with friends. I actually found a video with similar ideas:

http://www.businessinsider.com/i-forgot-my-phone-movie-2013-8

My next step is to decide what idea will be easier for me to create in the space of time.

Creative Media Practice - Project Ideas

For my individual artifact I want to create a project using Split Screen. The Split Screen project I previously created for this module was something I really enjoyed, creating the autumn theme was my favourite mini brief and I wish I'd had the time to finish it. And so with that in mind, I want to create another Spilt Screen short film.

In order to create an idea, I first need to research Split Screen projects already created. The first one I found is a film called 'Symmetry' from Everynone. I like the theme of this, that the two screens contrast each other, it works really well. What I liike most about this video is the layout, I think the black border and rounded edges gives the film a modern and sleek look. This is how I want my film to look.

Another Split Screen video I like is 'A Love Story', it follows a similar style to the video above.

I like the contrast idea of a split screen, and want my final piece to incorporate this theme, I like the idea of showing a day in the life from the perspective of someone considered 'rich' and someone seen as 'poor'. However while researching I came across this exact idea.

 

I don't want to copy this idea so I need to continue to think of another story.



YouTube Annotations - Do You Want To Party?

We filmed our video on a night out and cut it up in editing through Adobe Premier Pro, before finally adding the annotations to link the video together in YouTube. Our narrative follows a girl being asked to go to party, which leads to the audiences first decision - To go out or not.

 

 

 

Clicking 'No' will take you to a simple end video of the girl enjoying time at home; While clicking yes will lead you to the party. 

 

 

Whilst at the party you will be faced with the next decision, take drugs or say no. Saying 'Yes' to the drugs, will lead you to the next video where they unfortunately kill you and you are asked to 'Try Again'. However say 'No' to drugs and you survive... Onto the next challenge.

  





 

Your next challenge is whether to drink from a random drink you find or not. Clicking 'Yes' will once again lead to your death from a spiked drink. While clicking 'No' will prove a good choice and you will survive the party.. Apart from the hangover! 

 

 

Looking back at our work for the interactive video, I really like the idea of warning people away from the dangers of drugs and spiked drinks, I think using an interactive video is a nice way to show this, as it gets the audience involved and shows them the consequences that could happen to them if they had to make these decisions. Having said this, I would have liked the film to have a more serious feel to it, considering it is quite a serious message.

In regards to the presentation of the annotations, I would have liked them to have look neater and more professional, however we didn't have much time to edit, especially as YouTube kept playing up and showing errors.



Creative Media Practice - YouTube Annotations

For our final mini brief we are to create an interactive video using YouTube Annotations. Interactive videos are something I actually watch and enjoy. I especially like campaign videos such as this one by the Metropolitan Police, in which they highlight the dangers of turning to gun and knife crime and encourage people to step away from that way of life.

Another interactive video I find interesting is 'Howard Glitch'. It's a game played across YouTube in which you must figure out how to help people escape a doomed spaceship.

With this in mind, we want to create an interactive video in which you are presented with dangers of going to a party and must escape alive. The two dangers we want to address are drugs and unattended drinks, as these can be two of the biggest dangers when at a party.

Creative Media Practice - Isadora

Through this module, we were introduced to the software 'Isadora', described by the developers as 'as limitless as your imagination', it allows for realtime interaction within media. And I must be honest, I hated this software, it wasn't for me at all. I didn't like the way it was designed or work but nevertheless I gave it a go.

Our brief was to create a short, interactive narrative for users to be guided through, and as Halloween is coming up, it had to have a spooky theme! In teams we first had to come up with an idea, and our group based ours around the film Psycho... To be more specific, The Bates Motel.

We started with this image and developed our story from here. From this we created the narrative, we wanted the user to be guided from this image into the house.. To the famous shower scene. 





Our narrative structure started with the user being asked to walk up to the house, We wanted the noise of someone walking to trigger the sound of footsteps on the screen and use that to jump to the next scene.
We also wanted the bonus material of hearing a woman scream if you hoovered the mouse of the woman in the window of the image.

Once someone created the sound of footsteps we decided the image should jump to a front door were you are asked to knock using the space bar. The trigger of tapping the space bar 3 times would start the sound of knocking followed by the creak of a door opening weere you would move on to the image of a corridor. 

From the corridor, we decided that the user would need to select a door, hoovering the mouse over the door would open it... to reveal the shower scene!

The narrative is pretty simple, but we wanted to keep it that way; mainly because we were using a new piece of software that we weren't sure how to use and therefore didn't want to over complicate things and make it harder for us to create. 

Our next step was to gather all the material, we decided we would need:

• The Psycho shower scene footage
• Sound of Footsteps
• Sound of Knocking
• Sound of a creaking door
• A woman screaming
• An image of a corridor
• Atmosphere sound - Spooky/Wind Howling/Thunder

QR Photo Album

Unfortunately I don't have the finished photo album as it wasn't a desktop artifact, however I do have the QR Codes we created.

QR Code for the Birth Memory. Takes you to Google Map of the hospital.

Two codes for the first kiss, linking you to a photo of their first kiss and a song that reminds them of the kiss.

QR Code of the couple in retirement.

Creative Media Practice - QR Codes

Our Idea for a QR Code narrative was to take the old fashioned idea of a photo album, and update it with new media. Instead of having a bulky album full of artifacts from different memories, we decided to compress it and turn each memory into a code. For instance, the memory of your wedding; rather than a photo... A QR code that would link you to the wedding video you had uploaded to YouTube, so you could relive the memory again at the click of a button.

Our first step was to identify 5 key life events to use.. We chose:

• Birth
• First Kiss
• Wedding
• First Child 
• Retirement

We felt like these 5 aspects could encompass someones whole life. As we didn't have long to create this project, we took all the components from the internet.

For the birth, we had a QR Code that linked to a Google Map of the hospital our character (Elizabeth Parker) was born in.

For the first kiss, a QR Code that linked to a photo of their kiss, while another linked to a song that reminded them of that time.

For the Wedding, a code that took the scanner to the wedding video, uploaded onto YouTube; and another code that spoke the vows the couple took.

Scanning the QR code for the first child would bring up the calender event of the due date, with another code linking to the ultrasound scan.

Finally for the retirement code, a video of the the couple in retirement.

We felt that this was a nice idea, photo albums are nowadays seen as old fashioned. Most people upload photos to a social site or keep them in a virtual photo album on their computer. We liked the idea of bringing back this old fashioned style archive but updating it to fit into modern life and I personally think it's a nice idea.

Autumn Triptych

To create our Autumn triptych, we filmed in St John's gardens and near Becca's home in Childwall. From the list of images we created we knew the type of shots we wanted to get, and filmed when we found things that were relevant.

Here's the finished (sort of) product:

You can see the basic concept of what we were trying to achieve in the above piece, unfortunately we didn't have enough edit time to make it properly and so what we created is a sort of demo for what the finished piece would have looked like.

Had we had the time, I would have liked to put in the audio from the videos, we had some good, clear sound of crunching leaves and the rain. It would have been nice to use these over the audio track to enhance the visual. While as for the audio track, we only had the last few minutes to add it on, hence it doesn't end properly, so I would have liked the time to add this in properly.
With the triptych layout, we hastily arranged it how we wanted it to be, but we didn't have the time to align the frames correctly, which would have made it look a lot neater and polished. 

You can tell from watching the finished piece, we also didn't have enough time to use all of the footage we collected.. or to end it properly, which I think is a shame, because I really enjoyed making this mini film.

Creative Media Practice - Triptych

For our first mini project in Creative Media Practice we were asked to create a triptych/split screen within a small group. We were asked to create a narrative or themed montage. 

Working with Becca and Elicia, we came up with a concept based on the theme Autumn. I love the colours of Autumn with orange being extremely prominent through leaves, pumpkins and fires and felt that visually, it would be interesting to look at. The first thing we did was come up with a list of all the things we associated with the season.

This list consisted of:

• Fallen Leaves
• Conkers
• Coffee (Pumpkin Spice special)
• Halloween
• Bonfire Night
• Hats/Scarfs
• Rain/Umbrellas
• Fire/Candles

Next we focused on sounds associated with these images:

• Crackling Fire
• Crunchy Leaves
• Blowing Coffee
• Rain Pounding.

Finally we chose a song for a backing track, and felt 'Ed Sheeran - Autumn Leaves' would be a perfect fit.

Dissertation

So today I had my first lecture about dissertation. When I first started uni, I was BEYOND petrified by the thought of writing 8,000 words.. Now it's come to that time and while I'm still quite worried, I'm also slightly excited. Not only does it signal that my time in education is coming to an end, but it's also time for me to go out and find a job that I'd love to do. What excites me the most about writing the dissertation is the fact I get to write about something that interest me, which means I'm more more likely to focus on the task.

Since last year I've had an interest in formats and how they've taken over our TV's but in particular Reality Television. It's now a massive part of our lives and because of this, I've decided for my dissertation I want to look at Reality TV and how it has changed societies values. I think this will be a really good topic to cover, due to it's popularity, I'm sure there will be countless material on the matter but also because it's become such a big phenomena  being able to discuss this subject in detail should hopefully help me with future job prospects! 

For the present however, it's time to get reading...