Creative Media Practice- Presentation!

Today was the presentation for my final piece, the QR code Guess the Band game. I decided to create a Power point presentation in order to show all the images and explain my research and development. To see my presentation go HERE! I decided to go the a Powerpoint and not a Prezi because I found that Prezi did not allow me to show all the images in an orderly way and I find it much easier to go through the stages page by page. I read through the pages before my presentation in order for me to know what I would say and just used the words on screen as a guide. I was really nervous before the presentation but as I began it wasn't all bad! There is not a lot of detail in the presentation here I explained most of my while I was presenting it as I did not want to be just reading off the screen, so this will just be a reminder for my tutors. I also gave my tutors the QR code booklets for them to have a go at guessing. I think it went well and my tutors seemed to like my idea!

My reflection
My tutors told me that because of me creating a game out of QR codes it would seem pointless to some people, with or without Smart phones, as they could just view the images and not have to scan the codes so if I was to develop it I would have to come up with more of a meaning the my use of QR codes. I agree with this as I originally thought this in the mini brief but I have not quite figured out what the meaning will be yet! Overall, I am very happy with my final artefact, I now have more of a positive attitude towards QR codes and have started to learn more about Adobe Photoshop which I hope to start using more of! I found these mini brief sessions very useful as it was some training to get me back in the swing of working after a long summer!

Will let you know the feedback I get!

Creative Media Practice- Final Artefact!

So for my final piece for Creative Media Practise I changed my original idea completely from a Triptych video to a QR code 'Guess the Band' interactive game because of a few reasons;

• I am quite confident in Adobe After Effects‚ which would be the programme I would use to create the Triptych so I wanted to use something different to broaden my software skills. 
• The Triptych mini brief was the one I enjoyed the most (so you would assume I would do that) but I wanted to widen my knowledge of some of the other mini briefs we explored instead of sticking to my comfort zone.
• I wanted to develop my VERY little skills in Adobe Photoshop to create the images the QR codes would link to. 

I wanted to stick to the subject of music so that is why I decided to do a guess the band game similar to the Smart phone App 4 pics one word.

'4 Pics one Word'

So as you can see above '4 Pics one Word' gives the players 4 pictures and they have to guess the word from the images. I decided I would use one or two images that made up a band name with 3 different levels so the players wont get bored! Here is one of the images I created using Photoshop. 

Guess the Band

I also created a Guess the film game as I wanted it to be played head to head with two teams!

Guess the Film!

At first I placed the QR codes all on one page, five for each level but I found that it looked untidy and unprofessional so I decided to create an album of the images, meaning that I had one QR code on each page. I then made a front cover for each of the two subjects in order for it to be more like a booklet!

Front cover.

Scan the codes and see if you can guess!

easy peasy!

These ones get a bit harder!

I did the same with the music ones...

My reflection

After me moaning about QR codes I found that I actually really enjoyed creating these and I am excited to present them to my tutors next week! I found it interesting that I could create a game that would mean relying on technology and knowledge to get you through it, because if your phone wont scan the other team will be ahead of you! It also gave me a chance to develop my (next to nothing) skills in Photoshop. Not many people play board games any more so I found this very suitable for the digital age we now live in! If I were to develop this idea in the future I would make the booklet look more professional (as it was just four pieces of paper) by making it our of card and binding it together as well as creating more categories so that the players have more of a choice. 

Creative Media Practice- Final artefact idea

For my final artefact idea I'm going to create another triptych video. My first idea is a video of somebody playing a song on guitar so you will have one screen like the image above and the other two of their head and feet so you get a feel of the atmosphere. I will have it so you can hear the guitar and then I will add some non-diegetic music to the piece, creating a cool little video!  My second idea has been inspired by going to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 this afternoon and this guy (below) made me think of another good idea for a triptych. I want to create either of these as I really enjoyed the triptych mini brief and the sweets would enable me to have another go at creating another stop motion animation!

I will keep you  updated on what I decide to create!

Creative Media Practice-Isadora

This video shows the screen in the background reacting the the sounds from the saxaphone, creating a cool effect. This is done using Isadora, a software that allows you to create interactive media using sound and visuals.  We explored this programme in todays session and were given the task to create an interactive piece with a horror theme so my group decided on a haunted house theme!

The bates motel was the style of house we wanted in our piece so we were going to use that as a base image and then add in different rooms that gave you a scary sound or a clip from a horror movie as you entered such as the Physco shower scene. Isadora allows you to give the triggers for the media to play such as stomping your feet or clicking in a certain area but this was challenging for the group at first as it took us a while to figure out how to get the triggers to work in order for it to run smoothly.

My Reflection
I found Isadora quite overwhelming at first as it takes a lot of different trigers to get it working therefore I would have liked to have had the chance to play around with it a lot longer. I think I didn't like it at first because I usually pick up new software quite quickly! If I was to improve our piece it would have ideally acted as a haunted house that the user would physically have to walk up to and knock on the door in order to enter but that would take me a while to master! Overall I enjoyed learning about this new software and think it produces (when done properly) some cool interactive pieces and it gave me an insight into some more interactive software!

Creative Media Practice- Interactive YouTube video

Today we look at interactive YouTube videos. This particular one allows the viewers to take part in an experiment by clicking the options shown which then takes you to the outcome video. These are created by making all the different outcomes and uploading them to YouTube and then linking them to each answer. In a pair we had to come up with an idea for our own video. Our idea consists of a conversation between a girl and her 'crush'. The boy initiates a conversation and the user has to guide her through what to say to end up meeting up with him. We created two fake Facebook accounts and recorded videos of the girls side of the conversation on my phone, one for each different bit of text ready to upload to YouTube. I did not manage to finish this task as could not make the session but the videos created by others in the class were really creative. I think was a successful mini brief and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

My reflection
I have never heard of these interactive YouTube videos before so I was really intrigued that these could be created through YouTube itself, meaning that anyone can do it without the need for complicated software. YouTube is used by almost everybody to view videos so I think it is a great idea to have videos that people can also interact with as I think it is important to keep the users interested. I found it enjoyable coming up with our idea and I think it would have worked really well as an interactive video and could have led on to more videos of the couple, like a weekly online soap that is controlled by the audience! I found filming the footage to become quite boring as we had to go back and forth to change the answers so a simpler idea might have worked better, as well as using a different recording device to make the text clearer.

Creative Media Practice-QR codes

I don't know what this one does...

In today's session we looked at QR codes, these are used in a lot of different ways to promote things to smart phone users such as a Facebook page advertising a company, a film trailer in replace of a headstone! We had to create something using five different QR codes. In a pair we decided to create something factual that smart phone users can gain useful information from, so we came up with the idea of using QR codes in a zoo to give fun information on the animals.

Well, this image was created in Photoshop and as you can see it is awful as I am awful at Photoshop but you get the idea. We created images of the information about each animal and then uploaded the image to Flickr and pasted the URL into http://www.qrstuff.com/ to get the QR code. These QR codes would be placed outside each enclosure around the zoo and then people will scan them for the information on each animal. Give the code a scan and have look!

My Reflection 

I don't have much of an interest in QR codes  as I never seem to scan them when I see them around. I don't see them as a useful thing as not everyone has smart phones and there is a number of more interesting and creative ways to portray media. I found this session quite boring as it did not challenge me enough due to the creation of the codes themselves being fairly simple but I did have fun making the images and coming up with silly names for the animals. I think simply scanning a code for information is what I don't find appealing as I can just use Google on my phone anyway, so if they were used to create something such as a murder mystery game or something more interactive I would find them more useful and interesting. However, I think the QR code generator website is useful tool as it allows you to create your own images, text and links so you can use the codes on almost anything and in all honestly, how do you make one of those codes yourself? 

Creative Media Practice- Three Screens

In this session we looked at Triptych photography and videos. As you can see in the image it is simply three different photographs placed together to create another image but showing three different parts of the same subject. This is also done with films to shows three different characters or three different parts of the story. Here is more of an example of a triptych video, a stop motion animation piece we made about three Starbucks cups (we didn't want to be on camera) that are basically caught in a love triangle. Click the heart to have a look! <3

The story

Toby and Kelly meet and fall in love but are then separated by Zach's charm, who lead Kelly astray which leads in Toby;s suicide down the stairs of the fifth floor Redmonds building. Morbid I know but it looks good! In a group of three we used a DSLR to take the photographs around different areas of the university building and then put them all together using Adobe After Effects to make them look as though they were moving, then split each character into the different screens!

My reflection

I found that I enjoyed this task as I like making short films but I had not tried making a stop motion before so the process was interesting. I think the use sing three screens portrays more of a meaning to the piece as you have the ability to portray three different emotions at the same time. I found that this task helped me develop my skills in After Effects and introduced me to the process of stop motion animation, giving me more options when it comes to creating my final artefact and final project. I would have liked to have spent more time on our video in order to improve and make it more professional looking by storyboarding, working longer on taking the photographs and giving up more time to edit.