With the first brief for our Principles of Computer Graphics nearing it’s completion, now is a perfect time to give the Principles of Sound and Video Production a good airing.
With the recent release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, came a whole hpye of related media, made either by activison to promotew sale,s or by fans to pay homage to their favourite game. It is the fan made material that intrigues me. With the emergence of DSLR filmmaking and the rise in number of “bedroom filmmakers,” even a fan made film can be incredibly polished, professional and stand up against a commercial product. An example would be the “Trailer” for Modern Warfare 3, and it’s successor, “Modern Warfare 3: Operation Kingfish”:
Good iPad apps, as with all the best things in life, have one thing in common: they are built form the ground up. The first thing the Pegg-Meister had us do was consider the content, rather than plugne head-first into design. Reading the text, and understanding it to a degree, was essential.
The text itself is an extract (possible the introduction?) to a new Book by renowned Particle Physicist Brian Cox. While loaded with scientific facts and statistic, Cox has clearly taken effort to write it in a almost poetic fashion, considering order of content, choice of adjectives and phrases in order to engage the audience to the best of his ability.
This made our first decision a hard one: how much of the text to use. Initially, Pegg suggested animating and illustrating just 3 paragraphs, to limit work load and allow for maximum attention to detail on each paragraph. However, the team came to agree that the content had been written in an almost narrative fashion, and that to take any 3 paragraphs out of the context in which they were written, would butcher the sense of flow and continuity which Cox had clearly intended. With this in mind, although it meant having an increased workload, we decided to utilise the entire text. In order to not saturate the piece as well as the audience, a section by section approach was adopted, in order to pick out the parts best suited to animation.
We then began to think about UI, and how to best display the content. Team-Member James Guyan suggested the idea of Info-graphics (colourful, fact-based charts and graphs which are designed for maximum information retention by the reader), which went down a storm with the class.
With the just 20 days til’ Christmas, the only object darkening our horizon is the Principles of Computer Graphics critique, Todfay has been a day of furious editing, rendering, exporting and re-rendering. So much so that I had time to throw together this making-of documentary! 😀 Have a gander…
Editing proved quite difficult: blending after effect videos with real footage wasnt so much the issue, but the main problem we had , due to transfer of pre-rendered footage, was a steady decrease in quality. After numerous edits, re-edits and exports, the final film was looking rather sorry for itself. However, for a basic youtube video, this wasn’t so much of a problem.
At last, Digital Publishing kicks off with a vengeance! 😀 After finally receiving our brief from the nice people at Harper Collins, we could finally get a handle on what Digital Publishing means to them, and therefor, us.
The use of ebooks has taken off of late, ranging from top-brand products like the Apple iPad, to more affordable, dedicated e-book products such as the Amazon Kindle (which has moved into full tablet-PC territory with the new Kindle Fire, http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Fire-Amazon-Tablet/dp/B0051VVOB2)
The importance of Digital Publishing to us as students, seems to be underscoring the validity of the use of interactive media to read material instead of conventional paper. Some applications, such as the dedicated iPad “iBook” app, attempt to emulate the experience of reading a book, right down to layout of pages which turn, conventional chapters and page numbers:
However, for some, the best way of securing Digitally Published material is to set it apart from traditional books, and utilise the full functionality of the device which is displaying it: Accelerometers, gyroscopes, audio and video. While not a traditional reading experience, the importance of device-based reading is that it doesnt have to be.
One of the most popular, and in some cases, virulent forms of Digital text is Kinetic Typography. KT takes audio clips from films, speeches and lectures etc, and animates the transcript using basic (or not so basic) computer animation. This allows people to view the audio track as well as hear it, creating a multi-sensory media experience.
After an initial burst of ground-breaking videos, the internet became flooded with copycat pieces, either lacking in originality, or were too simplistic to impart the audio with any visual impact.
However, there are many exceptions to this. The sheer saturation of the web with Kinetic Typography shows its effectiveness; it’s audience has embraced it, and it has now infiltrated advertising on both television and the internet. The following Kinetic Text was cited by Harper Collins as an example, but not a template, for what they wanted to see:
Another interesting example of Digital Text is the partial transcription of a speech by Ken Robinson at the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). It follows the guidlines of KT by utilising text alongside an audio track, but utilises far more graphical content that almost borders on Inforgraphics: charts, graphs and illustrations:
Indeed, the entire back-catalogue of the RSA Animate page is full of similar animations, that enhance the reading/listening experience of the audience without detracting from the meaning of the text:
Although a long animation at 11:41, the majority of the class, myself included, found the video to be both entertaining and engrossing: the illustrations perfectly underscored what Ken was saying, and moreover, made what he was saying easier to comprehend, much like a school lesson (is it pure coincidence that the style very much resembled a school whiteboard?)
Having processed (or so we thought) what the Brief wanted from us, we hit upon an interesting divide within the Digital Media group: how far to take the Digital side of the project.
Point-5 lecturer, App-genius and all round nice guy Chris Pegg (whose WP site can be found here: http://wickedysplits.wordpress.com/) advocated the full utilisation of our iPad’s and X-Code to create an iPad App to display the content in a dedicated fashion, specifically tailored to compliment the text.
Head Lecturer, Industry-Veteran and owner of the quintessential Brummie accent Phil Beards proposed utilising Adobe InDesign to create an e-magazine type document to view on the iPad. Both were equally valid, but explored 2 different focusses of the course; functionality vs aesthetic design.
While the App design with Pegg would certainly require considerable thought concerning visual style, it would mix in considerations for interactivity, animations, use of audio and video, and how Digitally Native the audience is. The Digital Publication side with Phil, while just as important, focused more on one aspect of the module.
While much more challenging for someone with little-to-no code knowledge, I chose the Application Development project, simply because it would enhance me as a practitioner in ways I haven’t been enhanced before (giggity). And that, I’m sure, will be the focus of my next blog post 😀
After several weeks of semi-frinzied activity, its about time another blog post surfaced! The main focus of our work of late has been our “Night Out” Project for the Principles of Computer Graphics module, a brief outline of which as been given in my previous post.
The original concept came from an idea of Rob’s of using iPads as a transition between scenes and locations. Upon expressing this idea, our friend Dan showed us the music video for “Good Feeling” by Rapper Flo Rida (the scene of interest starts at 0:43):
The idea grew, and started to evolve into the idea of what our personal ideal night out would be like. Rob and I share a like of Rock and Metal music: in the local area, “Sound Circus,” a Metal/Alternative club, definitely catered to our tastes more than other clubs (not to say they aren’t good :P).
We initially approached Sound Circus proprietor Keith Grant about filming inside The Circus, but after no response, we had to rethink our strategy. Up until this point, we wrote the idea based around my personal night out experience.
However, finding a person who accurately fits both my physical appearance and personality, we opted to adjust the script to fit the actor playing the Protagonist, in order to give it a more personal feeling, and to be more immersive for the audience.
With scripting being complete AND ongoing, auditioning is still underway, and with the iPad, updating and changing the script on the fly is s breeze, thanks to the EXTREMELY useful Celtx app for the iPad: a (free for pc) program with presets for screenplays, stageplays and radio plays etc, that makes writing on the move a breeze. You can find it here: http://celtx.com/mobile.html
Oooh, and here’s a copy of the script 😀 written by yours truly:
pneumatictuna 