Interactive Narrative Final Piece

This is my Final completed edited Flash.


The Treasure Land by ~salomeliu on deviantART


When we were in the first seminar, we were asked to come up with some stories for our flash.
I had three ideas at the time and all of them were targeted to children, because I think an Interactive Flash like this could be fun for children to play with.
Then I chose this story of treasure finding after listening to other people's ideas in class as I think this one could be more interesting because the player has to go around to find the treasure.
Once I have decided which story I would used, I did a flowchart to plan out my story.

And then I did something like a storyboard to remind myself of each step.
I actually drew out what each images would be like too.I decided to draw out my own images because I don't think I can find the images I want on the Internet.

I tend to keep my images simple as my target audience are children.
Once I have all my images, I edited them in Photoshop to add a “cartoon-like” feel, so it looks more interesting for children.


This is my first time using Flash, although I was confused at the beginning, it became much easier once I have understood how Flash works and I actually enjoyed it.

What was good:

• I think the plot was quite good. The player has to find the right path, so will be curious of what will happen next.
• It is simple and easy to play. I think children would like to play it.
  

What was not so good:

• If I have more time, I would make the images prettier. Maybe add more colours and make them more interesting for children.
• It is too simple that I think more instruction is probably needed.
  

One shot film Final piece

This is our final One Shot Film.


The quality of this video isn't very good as I have to get down the file size for uploading so there's a reserve link- http://vimeo.com/7764945

We had a meeting for gathering ideas together before filming it.
As we all liked the idea of the camera being the eyes of the audience and this idea worked quite well on our practice piece, we used this concept again but only in a different story.
Then we came up with this story of a guy trying to do his essay in his room but his flatmates keep coming in and try to get him out drinking.
We discussed our plot in detail and the order of things happening. I think we worked quite well as a group as we discussed the problems and tried to find solutions which we think might occurred when filming it.
Although we did quite a lot of takes on the shotting day and finding problems as we were shotting along, we were able to get the problems fixed.
Sometimes we just go along to film it and see how it worked out and what didn't worked well.
But we all were pleased about the final piece.

What was good:

• It's very realistic and situation like this does happen in real life. I think it makes the audience have a feeling of 'ah, I understand'.
• It's simple and easy to understand. Nothing fancy but real.
• I think the camera handling was good. It did look like how our eyes would see.
• Put aside the acting, I think the plot itself was good.
  

What was not good:

• The voice of the guy's thought wasn't as good as I thought it would be. We probably need some professions for help.
• The time passing issue was the biggest problem we discussed. It would have been better if we could change the time on the clock to show the time passing.

Through this project, I understand that a one minute short film is very hard to do as there's a time limit. And especially we are doing a one shot film, there's a lot of limitations and it is very important to keep the film simple and easy to understand.

Trial One shot film

The second project we need to do is a one shot short film.
We have to make a one shot film using a DV camera and a tripod.
The film needs to be only one shot and about a minute long.
We cannot move the tripod or the camera, we are only allow to turn the camera around on the tripod.



This is our groups first attempt on the one shot film - Vending Machine
(Edited by Dan Stewart)

We got the idea of the camera being our eyes from this video called "Guy Stuck in History Class" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7hzcLZ7uRc

We really like this idea so we used it and plugged in our own story.
I think this piece was really good. It went well.
It wasn't very hard to do once we have the story planned and we knew what to do.

Human Beatbox

These are two videos from a Japanese TV program.
They created these two videos called "Human Beatbox" which basically, they gathered several people to record some short and random voices and movements and then put them together and edited it to become a short video which sounded like a beat box.
I think it is a very cool idea and the videos came out really cool too.

Short Film - Strangers

I found this video on youtube and I really liked it.
Although it's short but it created an anxious atmosphere through this 6 minutes and the music helped a lot too.

I know its not a one shot film but it helped me to understand that a short film needs to be easily understandable.
We need to be very clear about what we want to say from the film we make.

Pixilation Final Piece

Final version of my pixilation - "Illusion"

I got my inspiration from a stop motion video called "Copenhagen Sleepwalker" - http://hk.video.yahoo.com/video/video.html?id=83879
I think this video is amazing and the story is very interesting.

So I took this idea of "dreaming" and made my version of it.
The story is, in my dream, I became my friend and went Aldi's at night. Then I woke up in my dream and went to the kitchen but got hit by the saucepan lid. So I was scared and awaken by it and realised I have actually got my ring on where I wore it in my dream.

What was good:

• I really like the music. I think it works quite well with the video, makes the audience wonder what would happen next.
  
• the plot itself was quite good because what happened was not expected
• many people like the shoes walking scene, but I like the bench scene more. I think it worked really well. I was very pleased with the outcome effect of this scene
  

What was not good:

• The lighting. I have brighten up the photos using photoshop but the lighting outside wasn't good when it was dark. So I have to use the flash on a few shots, which I think seemed a little bit disconnected with other shots. I should have taken the photos at day time.
• I shouldn't included myself as a model too. Only the first part of the shots were taken by me, the rest was taken by my friend. I should have taken all the photos as I would know what angle and what effect I wanted, it would be all control by me.
• As I have said, because the photos were taken by my friend, we both didn't realised she took her finger in the photo too. It was a mistake to let her do the photographing.
  

If I'd do it again:

• will not include myself as a model.
• edit the photos more. probably more blurry or in a cartoon style
• try to play with other things more
  

My first attempt on Pixilation

This is an unfinished piece.
I got a lot to work on.
I got more photos now and this one is just too fast.

I watched several stop motion videos online and got some ideas.
The idea was I do some stupid movements on the street and found out I was only dreaming.

I will update this as soon as I've worked out a better piece.

Trial Pixilation

My first Design Practice group is Pixilation

The first seminar we worked in groups of 5 and went outside the Waveley building to take a sequence of photos for a frame rate of 12 per second for a 30 second piece.We first discussed as a group what kind of ideas each of us have and had an overall idea what to do together. Then we just basically came up with new ideas as we go along and do it. We went down to town to take photos. We went to McDonald's to capture the eating too.

• It was fun but its kind of tiring too cos we needed to take a lot of photos in order to make a long enough video. We also needed to make sure every move was well-planned and well-done. Our group didn't have much trouble of taking the photos. It was nice and smooth as we talked and came to compromises at each stage, like capturing in turns etc

The second seminar on Pixilation was learning how to resized and edited the photos we took using Photoshop. I am quite keen on PS but I have never used this record button before. So it was sort of new to me.

• But it was a quick and easy process because once we have known how to use the record button on PS we are sorted. We don't have to do the same thing for hundreds of photos.

We had our last seminar on Pixilation this week and we finally got to know to how to put our photos together to be a real video. We use Adobe Premier Pro to edit our photos, we can also add sound effects, add titles, subtitles, fading effects, cutting bits off and adding more in and all sort of things which Andy had shown us.

• It is a very fun process from what I have seen. But when I had a go in class, it wasn't as smooth as I thought it would be. But I believe once I have the hang of it and with a few more practices I should be capable of it just like how I taught myself into PS :P

Multimedia Competitions

We've been asked to search for any multimedia-linked competitions
and I found some recent interesting multimedia competitions:

The 6th Annual Citizens for Global Solutions Multimedia Contest
"CHOOSE YOUR GLOBAL SOLUTION"

http://multimedia.globalsolutions.org/2009-multimedia-contest

The Piano

A very beautiful story with excellent animation.

NYC Poster

Photography by Mitchell Funk. Image@Getty Images Design@ Pyramid Posters 2008

I bought this poster at the poster sale in uni last week.
To be honest, I love everything in this poster :)
I love the angle of the photo
I love that it's fish-eyed and
I love it's in black and white except the yellow taxis which,
is a very representative image of New York City.

Pinhole Photo

my pinhole camera photo

I love the effect of it, it's like fish-eye, which I didn't know it would have this effect before.
And I love the atmosphere of it too I think it's because it's in black and white.
I didn't think making a photograph could be this easy just using a can.
It was a fun process. The first time I get to use the dark room and going through all the different liquid.
My photo was taken on the ground floor in the Waverley Building facing the road.
It isn't the best photo but it's actually better than I thought.
I have seen other people's photos in our group, some of them are really nice.
I think mine will get better by making more attempt.

2009 WhiteBoard Induction

My group is at about 1.08-1.15
Although it was fun, the process of taking photos at each move is tiring.
As a group, each one of us drew a little bit in turns and giving different ideas as we go along.
Surprisingly, what I like the most is the end bit where one of our group member turn the "page" over. I think it work quite well although it didn't look good at the time.
It's very nice to see other people's work too.
Some of them are just amazing. Some of the ideas are really creative which I wouldn't think of.
I like the group at about 0.49-0.59
I like the idea of a real person involved in it by holding the little bit of paper and putting "on" the board and I just love that little black person :)

first post

starting the first lecture tomorrow :)

06/10
made a pinhole camera

07/10
created this blog
made a short video using whiteboard