Proj 5 - 30 May

Final class session of Cinematics was today. Rather shocking, almost half way through the year. I had a talk with Morgan about my idea with the DVD and he seems to think it’s a good idea so a comic book style it is ☺ Over the next few days leading up to the hand in I will create all necessary images for the menus, transitions and any other animations I decide to use.

Proj 5 - 27/28 May

Scanned my character to the computer and began making a traced vector based image of it to be used in my animation. Being vector based will mean I don’t have to worry about messing up its resolution when I transform it. It is a bit of a process but it’s worth it in the end.

Character for Start-up of DVD

Proj 5 - 26 May

Drew up a character for my start-up animation to go at the beginning of my DVD. I like him a lot. Ill put a post up of the sketch after this. So this week ill go about developing him and getting him ready to animate.

For the rest of the DVD I had an idea to make it like a comic book. After the start-up it will come to some sort of menu screen and it will be of a room and on a table a comic book which you can click on and then it will come up to the screen and then the user will be presented with another menu which will be used to take them to three sections which contain my three chosen videos for this DVD. These will be my Site/Non-site video, Documentary and 48 Hour Film. I am not going to use my Munted video; it got me a D so no use putting bad work on my disc.

Proj 5 - 25 May

I have decided to go ahead with Option A and use animations for my DVD menu. For the start-up of the DVD I am going to have an animation with a character in which I will design myself tomorrow night. That way I can scan it to the computer Tuesdays class and begin with creating developed iterations of the character to piece together to make the complete animation. As for the rest of the DVD I am not to sure what I will do, but I think in keeping with the start-up animation I will have it all somewhat cartoon drawn. I’ll have a bit of a brainstorm tonight.

Project 5 Concept Ideas

Righteo, i have got two ideas for how i am going to approach this project:

Option A:
Make it personal to me, styled in some way of my own design. I am really into cartoons and drawing, many people can tell you that. With my new found experience with flash and illustrator i could create some animation/s for the menu and then link them together.

Option B:
Working with stills. I also quite like photography so this could be quite an interesting approach. Use a collage of images for backgrounds and menus and sequences of stills to create videos for the menu.

Not sure which idea i will take yet. Ill get Morgans and/or Rowans opinion tommorrow as well as some from people in the class. Update you soon :)

Project 5

Yes, project 5 has now come. The 48 hour film festival for project 4 was... lets say some good times :D Now its back to individual work and i need an idea for my DVD menu and package. Looking at some examples of peoples cases it seems card made ones are quite overused id say so ive decided im going to use some other material besides the norm. Perhaps plastic? or wood? Metal is another idea, but i think thats a lil intense. Not to mention if it doesnt have a nice even finish it could scratch the disk. Hmm I have some thinking to do so ill get back to blogger soon..

Thursday 8th May

What I thought to be my final day to complete my video turned out to be just another day. Morgan granted an extension because many people hadnt worked during the week and were trying to do there videos in one day and so if he had left the deadline in place he was going to see a lot of crap videos tomorrow. This was kind of a relief as it bought me some more time, but I couldnt help but feel kind of frustrated as I have worked my ass off this week exhausting myself when If i had known about the extension earlier I could've spaced the work out more so that I didnt have to be there every single day this week spending 12 or so hours at the computer... Never mind though. Such is life. Im going home earlier today but I will finish the movie tomorrow as I need some R and R this weekend or I am going to collapse.. The 48 hour film festival is next week also so last thing I want to be is exhausted for it because its going to be one hell of a weekend. Im going to need as much energy as possibe.

Wednesday 7th May

Today I finished editing my footage into shorter clips and sequences and then compiled all the sequences in order. As expected, the outcome of what was to be my doco came out a little longer than the allocated time limit. 7 mins 42 secs so therefore I had to cut 2 mins 42 secs out. Which wasnt as hard as I had thought it was going to be because I realised areas could be and some needed to be cut down in length and that some footage wasnt even needed as my voice over didnt make any reference to it. Once I had got it down to 5 mins I then downloaded my audio footage and then deleted the video from it and exported them out into quicktime to turn them into proper audio files that I could simply drag and drop into the timeline where that information was needed. A long grueling process but I got it done.

Tuesday 6th May

Was this a stressful day or what? Had a power outage at uni today and so this stopped me from getting back onto the computer to continue the edit process. I wasnt going to let this stop me though. I missioned it back home and researched info about each of the consoles and formed it into a speech for my voice over. Once that was done I then recorded myself saying all of it. Luckily after I had done this I got word that the power was back on so I rushed back into uni again only to find that only one side of the lab computers was working and unfortunately this was not my side. I made do though and instead I downloaded the images I made last Sunday to the computer and compiled them into a Website. This time paying better attention to what the site looked like if the window was smaller than the mac screen. Last project I didnt do this and found out afterwards that when you looked at my site on different computers, on some where the screen was a lot smaller, this squashed my title and other images. So this time I must try to get it right. Two more days to go.. I hope I make it.

Monday 5th May

Today was an extremely long day of downloading my footage to the computer and then editing it into short clips and sequences. I created a sequence for each individual console so that tomorrow i can put them together and edit it to run nicely as well as within the correct time limit because im pretty sure it will come out longer than the maximum time limit of 5 minutes. In doing this i developed a plan of how my doco will pan out. The first minute will talk about the Sega Master System and Megadrive, then the next 30 secs will be about the gameboy followed by a minute to a minute and a half about the Playstation and Playstation 2, then another minute about the Wii console and then a final minute to include the interview I had with my mate and the player of the consoles throughout the video.

Sunday 4th May

Last night after work I had my mate come round and we got out all my old consoles and hooked them up to the TV and I shot my footage of him playing the consoles in many diff angles etc. I also then sat down with him and interviewed him on his thoughts of video games. What was his favourite console, games etc. as well as where he thought video games would be at in the future to gain some perspective on what a hardcore gamer thinks.

Today (Sunday) I started creating images for my website and developed them in photoshop. My idea is that my video is about a history of video games, so its kind of like a journey through time. So in the beginning, your taken back to the time Sega was todays Playstation or Xbox, and then as the movie progresses you get closer in consoles to modern day in which i explored the Wii console as I find it the most interesting out of whats on offer today as it has taken gaming to a whole new level. Its not just a console with improved graphics in its games, but its gone and taken the way in which we play these games a step further. Because of this journey, its like going through a time warp like you see on movies so im going to use this sort of image for my background on my site, then ill have a person moving through this time warp as that represents the viewer being taken on the journey when they watch the film, then ill have the person reaching out for something that will represent video games, as this is my subject so must be included. It could be like he is reaching for the future of video games, but in order to get there you must first go through and learn of its history and where its been.

Friday 2nd May

Unfortunately went to class today without any footage, my flash project took a lot longer to complete than I had hoped. Never mind though, thats all done now and so im free to focus on this documentary. After class though I did go down to Gamesman and take some pictures so that is at least a start. I have hired out a camera also so I am ready to shoot as soon as I get a new tape. I have got one of my mates to act as my 'gamer model' as well so shooting shall commence tomorrow night :D