During the seventh session for communication skills, we planned out a short film in which the brief had stated must be about an encounter. Together we decided on a story line, characters, settings etc, and wrote a treatment. We then allocated each other to work on the rest of the pre-production stages in which I had to make the storyboard. We then went out together to discuss the settings and visited them after the session, in order for James to successfully complete a risk assessment sheet.
Our film is called 'An Unlucky Encounter', in which a stalker is watching his ex-girlfriend (Sarah) and her new boyfriend (Steve). At first, it seems he is more concerned with Sarah, due to her facing the camera and being in more shots than Steve, but in a twist the Stalker ends up following him instead. The film shows the journey of Steve walking home without knowing he is being followed. We made sure this simple idea was kept interesting and tense with varying shots, angles, and camera movements, such as panning and tilting down to Steve's feet as he walks, then a few seconds later, the mysterious stalkers feet follow. We made sure not to reveal the stalkers face to keep it mysterious and creepy, until the ending where he is revealed to be holding a knife and has bad intentions. Even so, this shot of his face is dark and menacing due to the red lighting coming from the street lights. We made sure to use the lack of light to our advantage, as the film starts out in the bright daylight, but as the film progresses it becomes darker and darker, reflecting the character of Steve walking into danger. The ending scene is very dark but the street lights helped us in finishing the short film, and the redness and contrast in the stalkers face is aesthetically interesting but also mirrors the stalkers motives and adds a a sense of fear and tension to the ending.
I also carried on working with the Milk Tray project over the weeks, and came out with some packaging re-design. I studied the products 'Screme Egg' and 'Malteaster Bunny' and noticed how the use of colour is important in changing the theme, as the Screme Egg used green to represent Halloween. The Malteaster Bunny is of course in the shape of a rabbit, which highlights that conventional ideas (such as the easter bunny or a green halloween witch) are successful in that they appeal to wide audiences, as everyone can identify with them. I came up with 4 Box designs, in which I used Photoshop to create prototypes for. I downloaded custom fonts from www.Dafont.com to create different themed holiday chocolates. I kept the overall design/structure of the Milk Tray box and the iconic purple packaging, so people can still recognize it, but changed the fonts, background swirl colour and embossed image.
This session we looked at multimedia and webpage design, and carried out a task where we created a basic piece of interactivity in MS powerpoint. We worked in our learning group and created a photo gallery, using hyperlinks and having the basic structure of a home page and navigation links. We sketched the layout ideas onto paper before creating them, and thought carefully about design consistency, where each page should have the same structure/design/colours to let people know they are still on the same website and it all links smoothly together. We also took into consideration hierachy of information, colours and typefaces, and everything that adds to making a successful webpage design.
We also worked on our assessed project, and I did some individual research. I had decided last week how I would re-brand 'Milk Tray' after researching the product, and finding through the many milk tray TV adverts that its main audience is for men to buy for their wives and girlfriends. The tagline 'All because the lady loves Milk Tray' also emphasises this. I also did a textual analysis on a box of milk tray and found that even the packaging highlighted this. The typography looks formal and hand-written, giving the impression of a love-letter, and also looks like ribbon suggesting the idea of a romantic gift. There is an embossed kiss (x) after the title, and the use of the colour pink in the swirl connotates femininity or romance.
I had decided to re-brand 'Milk Tray' as a box of chocolates for any occasion, not just as romantic gifts. This would produce a wider target audience thus make more sales. I did some research on chocolate products that I know had already done this, such as Creme Egg bringing out 'Screme Egg' for Halloween, and Maltesers bringing out 'Malteaster Bunny' for Easter.
I sketched some ideas for print adverts where the milk tray box has different hats on it, representing different holidays (santa hat for Christmas, witches hat for Halloween). I will later move onto re-designing the packaging and typeography on the box, to further bring it out of it's stereotypical role as a romantic gift for him to her.
The fourth session of communication skills mainly consisted of an introduction to Photoshop. We looked at the basic principles of photo manipulation such as levels, brightness and contrast, curves, hue/saturation and so on. Though I already know the basics of photoshop, it was useful to have some practice and help out fellow peers, I also learned new facts about Photoshop such as what the histograms mean. At the end of the session we were put into groups and given the assessed project briefs, in which we had to choose, as a group, which product we wanted to rebrand. The product our group have chosen is Cadbury's 'Milk Tray', as the two members of my group and myself had already clear ideas in ours heads of what we could do. We then carried out individual research on visual and contextual aspects for the project brief, and will come together in later sessions to further discuss and develop ideas together.
Session five introduced us to risk assesment and health and safety, where we had numerous presentations on the subject and carried out a risk assessment exrecise. As a group we were required to find an area on campus and fill in a risk assessment sheet about the specific area, which was good practice as we are required to complete this sheet for future projects.
We looked at a brief history of Digital Media during session 3, and I drew out the timeline of important inventions starting from the Paleolithic cave paintings of 32,000 BC, to Microsoft Windows in 1985. Then, working in small groups, we had to choose a topic off the timeline to complete a research task within the library. Though I struggled with this task, I also learned valuable skills such as how to search for books in the library online, how to use the Dewey Reference system, and again furthered my communication skills through group work. I found using the library quite difficult due to our group changing our topic too many times, as we couldnt find many relevent books using the online search tool. I later learned that it is a good idea to just take a selection of books from the relevant section of the library, but did not manage to research our final topic choice 'Radio' enough in time to give a good presentation. The topic of 'radio' is just too broad and I should have narrowed it down, but now I know for next time. The library and the books within it are reliable and valuable research sources, and I will make sure to use them in later projects. The last task of the session involved a presentation on 'Planning Digital Media', where we looked at the three stages of digital media production; pre-production, production, and post-production. We particularly looked at pre-production as it is a vital part of any project, it involves writing down initial/conceptual ideas, research, scripting, storyboarding, flowcharts and prototypes. Our last task was to work on the pre-production of a made-up project, in order to gain experience in these particular areas.
During my first two lectures for Communication Skills for Digital Media, I learnt what the module is about and what skills I will be gaining. The group was split into smaller groups during the first session, in order to let people get to know eachother by asking questions about one another. We then had to present each other to the rest of the group ( for instance; names of people, what courses they are doing and where they hope to be in the future) so straight away we had practice in presentation skills and speaking in front of an audience. We were then put into different groups to get to know more people from the module, and given the task of creating a presentation in which my group chose the topic of '2D animation'. We had to plan when we would be meeting up to work on the project and each had individual research tasks to do. We decided on which slides we would each present, making sure we had an even amount to present each. During the other groups presentations we partook in peer assesment, writing down the pros and cons of each presentation. From this I learnt how to improve myself for next time I give a presentation, and that small things make a big difference. For example, speaking loudly and clearly, making sure a presentation isn't too short or too long, and making sure to include examples of certain artists that you have discussed.
We then completed two internet research tasks, where we had to evaluate which websites were most reliable for certain research briefs. This taught important skills for internet based research as I learnt how to ensure reliability through looking at; the author and their motivation/qualifications, if the site is published by a credible organization(government/academic institution), if the information is consistent with other reliable sources or based on scientific/practical evidence, and so on. I found this task extremely helpful as the ability to recognise reliable sources is a critical skill. Also, many discussions were had throughout the task which further encouraged group work and communication skill.
