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Video for Interactive Media | IMD314

Week 1 consisted of the “Video Pre-production Planning” that would initiate the work involved in preparing a video file for viewing on the Web, consisting of a balancing act between audio-visual quality and bandwidth practicality.
The pre-production planning document should consist of:
A paragraph describing the general concept for the project and its genre (i.e. commercial, public service announcement (PSA), or artistic expression).
A paragraph describing the demographic characteristics of the target audience.
Simple storyboards illustrating the general compositions of your shots and the approximate duration of each shot (if the shots encompass movement, please illustrate this movement with text and/or graphics)
Introduction
Aristotle and Plato greatly recognized the importance of play and leisure as a foundation to learning, a philosophy that is just as, if not more relevant in this present day and age. The project will be a public service announcement (PSA) targeted at urban stress, and the importance of "time out." This involves the busy lifestyle that many people (young and old) have become accustomed to in a "all work and no play" environment. While it is understood that the present economic climate has had a negative effect on living standards, and many working people naturally think they do not have the time or capacity for relaxation, this PSA is aimed at stressing the importance of taking/making time for periods of leisure through the use of contrasting scenes of both lifestyles.

Storyboards

scene 1scene 2 scene 3scene 4 scene 5scene 6
Concluding thoughts/suggestions for week 1 progress from faculty:
I have a few thoughts in terms of your images and music. First, I always try to encourage my students to not use copyrighted music. It's not the biggest issue because you will not be selling this piece, but with all of the programs available like GarageBand, I will find a comparable one for PC, there are so many "pre-made" audio clips that you can be creative with yourself. In terms of your fonts and colors, I think the most effective one is the "Strife" in scene two, I would use this font for ALL of your stress words. It takes up the entire screen, it is "imposing," it is "non-emotional" in terms of being a sans serif font. You don't want to use a "cursive" or "flowy" font for the stress clips, you want an unemotional imposing font like the one in scene 2. I know you want to mix it up, but try using the one I mentioned on every clip. I think you will find it really supports your overall narrative much better. You can use different colors. You don't want to use this font for your sedate text, for the serene and sedate, you want to be using the serif, "emotional" fonts. Does this make sense?

Week 2 Raw Footage

Week 2 progress with the project utilized raw footage that would be considered towards the final project. “Your submission should include at least 30 seconds, but no more than 60 seconds of footage. You can generate your footage by shooting video, by using the stock clips provided to you, or via Flash or another motion graphics application. Your footage should employ the techniques and guidelines discussed in this week’s lecture. Your footage should adhere to your pre-production planning documents concerning genre, shot selection, and audience.”
The movie below is a selection of 7 clips taken from an original 49 clip sequences filmed in and around New York City during week 1 of this course. The 60 second movie, uploaded and then streamed through YouTube, displays the possible sequence of events pertinent to the movie structure - as per the storyboard sequence.

Concluding thoughts/suggestions for week 2 progress from faculty:

This footage is fantastic and was a great deal of work. Your stress images are great. The only thing I was thinking of when watching your calm images, was "this isn't really calm for me, still too many people!" If the point of your video is to find calmness in the city, then it definitely works. If the point is to find overall calmness, I would encourage you to get at least one piece of footage that shows one person by themselves!.

Week 3 Video Edit

Your submission should be exactly 30 seconds in length and contain your best footage. Here I have edited the movie down to six "5 second" sequences, one of which (sequence 3) is composed of still images animated in Flash. The audio is a selection of the various sounds taken from the initial collection of clips filmed during week 1, and a voice-over was added to the audio track. Additionally, titles were added in Adobe’s “After Effects” software. Finally, the clip concludes with the PSA message over the NY State Parks and Recreation Department logo.

Concluding thoughts/suggestions for week 3 progress from faculty:

This looks and sounds good. The animation you created under "stifled" really works. I have just a few suggestions. The "stress" texts need to cover the entire screen. I know this might not seem like a good idea, but they are not up all the time and they really need to "impose." Have them fill up the entire screen. Stifled can be the same size, but the other text needs to cover the whole screen. The other thing is that the calming text seems too imposing, I would make it smaller, more "fluid" or animate in. Otherwise, the voice is great, the text that is read is great. It's very strong.

Video Edit (W4) & Flash Project (W5)

Week 4: For this assignment you need to make an .HTML document to display your video project. Week 5: Completed Flash-based video file compression embedded in an HTML document. With both this weeks project and next weeks (W5) project, the results are viewable in the Home page of this Web site (W6 final project).

Concluding thoughts/suggestions for week 4 and 5 progress from faculty:

Week 4: The layout for the website looks great and your code works. Good job. The controls for your video are getting cut off, this means that for some reason the size of the video in the code is smaller than the actual size of the video. You can change the code to be a few pixels more in height and this will fix that. Let me know if you have any questions. Also, I would make the video size, in terms of pixels a bit smaller. 720 by 480 is too big for Internet publishing. Maybe go down to 600 x something. It also took a second to load. Making it smaller might help that.
Week 5: Do you think you can create a button to stop the video as well? I think this is a good idea and should be a similar process to the one you already created. Let me know if you have any questions.