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.