OUDF503: Evaluation

Evaluation



At the beginning of this course we were given an opportunity to explore and create our own digital artefact that would have a potential to have its use expanded, reused and remediated into other mediums. Though this was a self directed brief, it was tough for many of us to choose exactly what it is we wanted to do, it seemed we would have much rather be given a particular brief to respond to. After reviewing the brief, I struggled a little in finding out what I needed to do so I begun doing research. Research was going as bit slow as I had a different module at the time I was focusing on, so therefore it was a bit half hearted. When I finally had the time to give it my full attention, I ran through a couple of Ideas in which most of them received bad critic from my teachers and peers. It was good that I had to explore a few ideas but it was time to choose one that would work as time was running out. We had a month left at identifying a self directed project.

From the many ideas I had, I ended up choosing to do a vox pop type of interview with kinetic typography animated on the screen. I begun by drawing out my ideas on a story board on paper and reflecting back to it, the video looks close to what I originally drew. I then begun to search for fonts online and I was mesmerized by a font named Bebas Nueu, on the response proforma, I mentioned that I would only use two type of fonts. Those were Bebas Nueu and Pacifico, the fonts complimented each other though they were from different font families, it was very important for me to choose the right type of design for the two font rule. The fonts were originally made for print and web but in my case judging by the evidence, they look outstanding as animated texts.

The filming process had its ups and downs, I was glad that I chose to collaborate with my peers as it would have not been possible to have done anything without them. The problems I encountered were the fact that I was working in Photography studio to do film work. The studio was double booked, meaning that there were photography students in the same room as us, this meant that the noise levels were loud and it was impossible to film. Their slot was booked at the same time as mine, this was from 9:30 am-12:30 noon.



The main source of the noise was coming from the flush gun firing and the students communicating to each other, not only was it the sound but my visuals were also compromised as their camera triggered our lights. Acting upon this, we politely asked the students to keep their noise to a minimum, they politely agreed and we also drew the curtain that separated the Studio A in which we were in and Studio B. To act out on this learning, I ran and booked out the collar microphone as the boom mic was still picking out a lot of unwanted background noise. I begun preparing my actors which were also my crew to get in their positions and begin filming during the time the other students kept the noise at minimal. All the actors had an opportunity to have a second take just in case the first had some unwanted noises in the background. To a certain point this was a success but it was not to professional standards. When the other students had finished, we had a small window in which I had an opportunity to film those second takes. What I've learnt to do differently next time is to not do any film work in a photography studio, instead to get a pop out backdrop and set up somewhere I would be able to control the noise. Overall, I believe I did a good job in directing my cast and crew, handling the situation and also filming the project.

Post production is and is always exciting to me, for the first time I was going to explore animating kinetic typography while synching it with sound. I learnt a lot of new things especially working with the new package of Adobe. I used Adobe Premier Pro CS6 for editing the footage and Adobe After Effects CS6 for animating the visuals. I thoroughly enjoyed this process, overtime I've learnt that I enjoy using After effects and it is one of the tools I'm willing to focus on my level 6 area of study. A lot of the animation was done manually and not using presents that After Effects provides for you, I did this so I could further broaden my skills on it. Some problems I faced during post production were losing power on my computer and having to begin my work from a previous save that was done a while ago. This taught me to always keep saving my work every couple of minutes instead of relying on auto save.

In conclusion, contrary to popular belief, a self directed brief is much hard than one which is set out for us. It was hard to find guidance on this brief but It definitely taught me to be more independent in my own work. It also taught me how important it is to collaborate with others in order to come out with the best work.

OUDF503: Conceptualising Into Trans-media

"What is trans-media? It is content created to exist on different platforms in different forms (e.g a TV program with a website delivering separate audiovisual content; a feature film with an associated game). May also be used as an umbrella term encompassing cross-platform, interactive and trans media content." 

There are definitely aspects of my project that can be re mediated into trans-media. The project I chose to do is vox pop style type of interview with added kinetic typography. The trans-media aspect I have identified is as follows:

The video could be turned into an animated banner of a website to promote whatever aspect, it can be used at a school or college website to promote the courses of undergraduate students. The animated banner could also be turned into a poster that includes good design typography in use for promotion and for people to click on, the link could take them to a different website or to something related to the topic.

Another aspect could be simply a radio advert used as a jingle, a short tune used in advertising for other commercial uses. It could contain one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote a certain product being advertised, usually through the use of one or more advertising slogans. It could also be used as a television commercial, the video can also be used in non-advertising contexts to establish or maintain a brand image. I've added some supporting visuals to help contextualise this 









Bibliography: Screen Australia. 2010. Definitions in all-media [Online]. Available at:http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/funding/allmedia/definitions.aspx

OUDF503: Sound Ideas & Inspiration

During the editing process of my video, I kept wondering what kind of sound I would need to compliment the video. The type of music I kept hearing in my head was Soundtrack music with featured instruments such as Pizzicato, Clarinet,  Flute, Percussion, Xylophone, Marimba, Celesta. I immediately logged into incompetech.com where I could find royalty free music to search for this type of music. Incompetech is a free music site in which you could use what ever sound you wish without having to worry about the copyright infringement laws. 

while doing research on the type of music I wanted, I came across a music producer by the name of Rob Simonsen. He has worked in the music department for such films as Life of Pi, Surfs Up, Money Ball and TV shows such as Blue Blood and Dollhouse. The one soundtrack I was intrigued by that he did was for the i-phone 5 advert and it's called Falcon Hero. The sound features the same types of instruments as I was searching for such as pizzicato, clarinets, xylophone etc. 

Below is the video of the i-phone 5 commercial that features Rob's soundtrack 

The sound I finally found from incompetech added a bit of a humorous feel to the entire video and overall it fits perfectly with the look of the video and gives it a good feel. I've decided to use it as the final choice. 

Below is a widget to Rob's Sound-cloud, another sound I really found interesting from there is called 'Facing the Obstacles'. His music is copyright protected therefore I couldn't use any of the sounds.

OUDF503: Storyboard & Shot-list

1. Medium angle shot of the chair without the person 00:05 
2. Medium still shot of the person sat on the chair from a different camera angle 00:05
3. Extreme close up of the person's face with animated typography around the screen (shot will last as the person talks)
4. Wide Angle from the main camera of the person sat left to the screen. Animated typography on the right side of the screen (shot will last as long as the person talks)
5. Medium close up shot from the second camera for a different angle (shot will last as long as the person talks)
6. Close up of the hands from camera 2. Camera pans up and down (shot will last as long as the person talks).

OUDF503: I Haven't Got A Catchphrase

Above is another video that inspired  me to do my video behind a white backdrop. This video named 'I Haven't Got A Catchphrase' by Kevin has some really interesting aspects to it such as camera angles and animated typography to it. The font they used is very similar to the one I have used in which mine is Bebas Neue part of the Sans Serif family. What I like about this video is the simplicity behind it but after working on my video I realised to achieve this kind of simplicity you real have to work hard setting up the right equipment. 

Analysing this video, they definitely used 3 point lighting if not more, to get the pure white look of the back ground and to also maintain the vibrant colours on the clothes, the skin and the hair on Kevin without bleaching him out. As for the camera work, they used an extreme wide angle lens, maybe a 10mm zoom lens that allows some of Kevin's features to appear distorted, for example in perspective, his head would appear way larger than his feet.

For my video, I worked in a much simpler way than that, I had my cast simple sat on a chair and talking towards the camera placed on a tripod. During post production I animated the typography around the interviewees. 

Critically comparing my video to the one above, my white drop is not pure white as the one on Kevin's video. The trick they may have used is the either by a clever lighting process in which I could not achieve, given that I was using a photography studio instead of a film studio, or they achieved the pure white at post production by keying out the person and placing a virtual background. 

OUDF503: Ira Glass On Being Creative

Ira Glass is an American public radio personality, host and producer of the radio and television show 'This American Life'. He was once interviewed about Story-telling by current TV and he gave some intriguing advice on how to stay creative in writing stories. I felt his advice applied to all creative work, not just writing, his advice can be applied to artists, filmmakers, games designers, animators, basically to anyone who is a content maker.

It is important to watch the video if one feels the need to be motivated. He explains on the video that, he himself took longer than anyone else he knows to be good at what he does, he just persisted and he never quit. He mentions that a lot of creative people have good taste but they can tell that whatever they are making is not as good, that is what leads people to quit. Most creative people that he knows including himself went through a phase of years in which they really had good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be and he explains that this is completely is normal. The most important thing we as creative people could do, is do a lot of work, to go through a large volume of work and set ourselves targets every week or every month to make sure we fill in that gap that will make us masters at what we do.

What I learnt from his advice is to not give up on myself and keep working even when I've not been allocated any work to do. To constantly learn during my spare time and to always have passion to what I do and most importantly to have good taste. 

Part 3 of the video was turned into motion graphics, in which it really inspired me during the process of making my own trans media motion graphics video, this video also applies to trans media. See below

OUDF503: Bing & Jay Z Trans-Media Marketing Campaign

Jay-Z's media campaign for decoded was created by a Miami Ad School graduate and industry practitioner named Jon Kubik, he is the senior art director on this campaign and is based in New York. Jon worked along closely with Jay Z and the search engine known as Microsoft Bing. Decoded is an auto biography book by Jay-Z that talks about the rapper's life over the years. 

The book is very specific to locations of things that happened throughout Jay-Z's life, so they came up with this idea of a geographic auto biography. Working with Microsoft Bing, this was a great chance for them to incorporate pop culture trans-media, so the idea of a geographic auto biography was to Geo tag each location from the book into Bing's maps online and places different pages on those actual locations so people could search and assemble the book ones by one. The most interesting locations were the time square in NY

The other was at the bottom of a hotel pool in Miami

And the other were pages printed in plates at a restaurant in Manhattan where Jay-z spoke about eating a burger with Bono.

With a project of this magnitude, it took them over a year to present all the 300 pages at different locations.

Jon spoke about how the collaboration process was important in this project as it was a production nightmare that needed them to be on top of their game constantly in order to keep Jay Z and Bing happy. 

OUDF503: Filming & Problems Encountered

Today I begun filming the footage for my response brief project, I faced so many problems from the beginning but I managed to pull through them thanks to my peers. I begun by booking out the following in advance:

• Photography Studio with white backdrop
• Canon 5D mk3
• Canon 7D
• Tripod x2
• Rode Mic
• Small collar mic 
• Lights

The first problem encountered was the studio that I was working in, it was a photography studio and there were other students doing a shoot. This obviously meant that there was going to be noise coming from them communicating and also from the flash firing. I wanted complete silence for my filming and this was impossible to get. Their session was booked at exactly the same time as mine 9:30-12:30.

At this point all I could do was to prepare my set for my actors to interview and the best I could ask for was for them to keep the noise down. When it came down to filming, I had to use a collar mic instead of a boom mic as it gave a clear and crisp sound with little to none background noise.

To some degree, this was a success but the sound quality is definitely not up to professional standards. After the photography's session finished, we had a short window in which we could do second takes with no background noise. We managed to film two interviews until we were interrupted and told that our session was over. 

Below is an image of myself directing and filming the actors in Studio A.

OUDF503: Interpersonal & Collaboration Process

Previously working with a third year fashion student, I managed to collaborate with him again only this time it was my project. Shaun had asked me to model in the clothes that he had created in a crit session. He had told me to contact him anytime if I needed any help from him, so during this responsive brief projects I figured it would be a great opportunity to work with him again. All that I asked him to do was to answer a couple of questions that I had for him while he was being filmed on camera. The great thing is that he also brought his own clothing line that he created in his course and wore one of the outfits during the interview. See image below: 

He did very well good job at answering the question, it was exactly what I was looking for and it was very professional.


I also collaborated with my peers from my own course. Daniel Scoffield, Jess Watson and Phil Jones. They helped me set up the lights and the camera and they also were involved in the interviews. I was truly grateful for them coming in to help me as I would have not be able to make the film without them. 

See images below of our collaborative process: 

My peers as the cast

My peers as the crew

OUDF503: Bebas Neue

Typography is a very important part of design and choosing the right type for your design can be very challenging. Bebas Neue is the primary font in which I've decided to use over Helvetica and Ariel. It has a good combination of typeface with OSP DIN, FRANCHISE & LEAGUE GOTHIC as they all fall under the same font family which is Sans-Serif font. These are a great collection of fonts and can be used for commercial use. The reason why I chose this font is because it looks professional, clean and it will work well through motion graphics. I want to experiment with it using various techniques in after effects as this font was made for web and print typography. I'm always cautious about the fonts I choose when designing, having a good Idea of choosing the right font combinations is always useful. Good use of typography and a combination of fonts can really help to add that extra wow factor to a project. 

It is important not to break the 2 font rule but once in a while it can be broken if the designer can make it work. Combining Bebas Neue with a font called Pacifico is something I'd be willing to try.

Below is an example of Pacifico Regular: 

Below is the font chart for Bebas Neue:

OUDF503: Asian Graphics Now!

Asian Graphics Now is a professional graphic design magazine I recently bought. It is filled with all kinds of inspirations from South Korea, China, Japan, Thailand etc. The book doesn't cover anything to do with motion graphics or typography but I found it as a useful way to find inspiration and stay creative. The magazine presents a number of designs that includes posters, wallpaper, storefronts and salad dressing bottles culled from around Asia.

It covers different categories including:

• Advertising + Poster
• Branding
• Editorial
• Non-Commercial
• Packaging
• Packaging Design 
• Graphic Design

The book doesn't actually cover anything in detail, it only illustrates a various number of designs from Asia that we actually wouldn't have had access to due to massive language barriers. 

Below are some of the scans from the book that I really found fascinating.

OUDF503: Kinetic Typography/Font/Typeface

Kinetic typography is the technical name for "moving text", its an animation technique for mixing motion and text to express ideas using video animation. This text is presented over time in a manner intended to convey or evoke a particular idea or emotion.

The reason why I'm choosing typography to be the main element of my video is because of how interesting it is to watch, it captures the viewers attention and develops them to take pleasure on what they are watching.

I've done a fair bit amount of research on different videos that incorporate typography into them. I've also done research on typography it self to figure out what type of font is best, what colours are the most effective and choosing an appropriate font that is best for motion typography and considering readability factors into it. Choosing a typeface from a font family can be tricky but it's all about personal creative choice. The beauty and complexity of type, combined with an huge supply of options to evaluate, can be too much. While there are no easy-to-follow rules on how best to choose a typeface, there are many tried principles that I can quickly learn and apply to make an appropriate typeface choice. The typeface I believe is of choice by most graphic designers is between Helvetica and Ariel, they have the same typeface as they are part of the same family, they are also my favourite when it come to legibility and readability. 

Besides Helvetica and Ariel, I plan to choose a typeface that is going to form a strong impression in terms of how I want the audience to react to the text and motion. The choice of typeface needs to strike a good combination of both legibility and readability, while remaining appropriate for the audience and the message. 

Legibility will be very important in my video as the font is designed to be read instead of just being stared at a quick glance, letter forms composed of unique shapes cause the reader to have to process what they are looking at first, instead of just taking in the message, communication comes before style.

What I plan to do next is to compile various fonts of the same family or extended family in order to have multiple choice when it comes to choosing a typeface. I will search online and try to choose the one in which I would primarily like to work with. 

The main software I will use is Adobe After Effects CS6, I already have a basic understanding on how to composite layers of texts, therefore this process should not take any longer than a week.

OUDF503: Equipment Needed

Below is the list of the equipment that I will most likely need.

• XDcam
• Or Canon 5D mkIII with a wide angle lens
• 50mm lens for either a 5D or 7D
• Boom mic
• 3 Enlichrom lights
• White backdrop
• Chair for the subject to sit on
• At least 3 people to participate on the shoot + to help set up
• Tripod

The shoot will take approximately half an hour to shoot, the set up will take approximately 25-30 minutes as it includes 

OUDF503: Vsauce // CGPGrey

Vsause is a you-tube channel by a man called Michael. What I enjoy about his videos is the way he provides in a lot of amount of information in a short amount of time. He also uses a white plain background and plenty of lighting to make his videos simple yet interesting to watch. He also uses a series of images, animations and screen shots from books to help illustrate what he talks about, I find this as a really useful way for me to learn. His videos are very similar to what I want to portray on mine. Below is an example of one of his works



Another you-tube channel that is similar is called CGPGrey, it is another informative channel but in this case it does not show the presenter/narrator. The videos are purely illustrated using images, but what I enjoy is the way the information is provided to us. 
Upon researching the owner of the channel's background, my findings were as follows, he has 2 college degrees one in physics and the other in sociology and is now a qualified physics teacher in England. How long does it take him to create his videos? He mentioned every minute of video he creates takes between 10 and 20 hours of work, so therefore a typical 5 minute of video that he usually uploads would take him 50-100 hours of work. This does not include the research faze as it is difficult to quantify the times it takes him, he could use research he did more that a year ago for example.

My idea for my video is very similar, instead of illustrating the video using images, I will actually provide the footage of the subject narrating. The subject will not be talking on screen, just a series of shots using a wide angle lens and a 50mm lens. If I'm not provided with a 50mm lens for the canon 5D mkIII, I will have to use my own 50mm f1.8 lens with my canon 7D. For the voice of the subject talking, I will either record them on set using the boom mic or I will record at the studio. 

Below is one of the videos by CGPGrey: 

OUDF503: 4thought.tv

While doing some reseach on what I'd like my video to look like, I came across the Channel 4 short documentaries called 4thought, they are a series of short films produced by Narinder Minhas filmed by Waddell Media for Channel 4. These projects simply ask known people from today's pop culture simple questions, the ones that I've enjoyed are when they asked comedians 'Is anything sacred in comedy' and the subject was on religion. These are a perfect example of what I want my short film to resemble, only on mine there will also be kinectic typography flying around the screen. I really admire the lighting used in the 4thought short film set, it gives a cool rather than a warm vibe to the set and the white background also compliments the atmosphere.

My idea to execute this short film is to

• Rent out the photography studio 
• Place a white background
• Rent out 3 Elinchrom lights
• Rent a 5D mkIII with a 50mm lens if they have it
• Get at least 3 people to interview asking them 1 simple question each
• Chair

Below are some of the examples of the short films shot by Waddell Media for channel 4:

4thought.tv Tim Vine

4thought.tv Stephen K Amos

4thought.tv Omid Djalili

OUDF503: Presentation Feedback + New Idea

Response brief presentation outcome.

After presenting my initial idea to my peers I received incredibly valuable advice. I received a number of opinions and recommendations regarding the short film I’ve decided to make. 

My original chosen self-directed study was a short film that involves street art and general typography found in Leeds. The objective was to create a sentence out of the lettering that I would have filmed; this was either going to be an interpretation of a short poem, film monologue or a famous quote.The strongest idea so far was to get an individual to read out a monologue from a film and match the words using the typography that I have filmed. The problems that were brought up are as follows 

· The film wouldn’t look very consistent, as the shots will jump from one to another.

· It would be hard to construct a sentence that makes any sense using different shots.

· It wouldn’t be visually appealing aesthetically.

· Filming in the city centre would be difficult in terms of acquiring permission, so I would have to sneakily use my smartphone, consequently the outcome of the images/footage wouldn’t be as good as shooting using an XDcam.


The feedback on what I should do instead

· Kinetic typography as it is much cleaner and visually pleasing.
· Film your subject reading out a monologue and animate the text around them.


· New Idea

I accept the new idea as it is less complex and I feel I can tackle the task with ease. My new objective is to now write/collaborate with one of my peers in coming up with a short monologue. I then plan on recording the monologue as audio first, then filming footage of the individual who read the monologue on film, instead of having them talking, I will have them stood there while the typography animates around them.