Design

Stage 2 - Theatre Set Design

Task: Create a ‘pitching package’ for Crowbar Theatre’s play.

“Multimedia students from the School of Art and Design, Nottingham Trent University (NTU), are offered the opportunity to collaborate with Crowbar Theatre Company (CTC), with creative and practical ideas for staging, imagery and production, for a theatre play called Dark Angels. The collaboration will be in the form of a negotiated project between the theatre company, the NTU students and NTU course tutors.”

Elements required:
1. Research material i.e. background & inspiration, ideas, mood/design board(s), photographs etc sketches, plans
2. Rationale for the project/aims/context & Design team profile, audience research, where appropriate.
3. Technical specifications (including a Location ‘profile’ for installation) & equipment required
4. Budget, based on projected costs from real sources
5. 3D model, indicating materials to be used.
6. Prototype sample of one multimedia element.

My Initial Ideas
•Use some kind of projection within the set design.
•Create a dark and gritty feel:
- to immerse the audience in the story
- to reflect the situation/mood of the characters onstage at any given time
•Use equipment that is easily and quickly setup and packed
•Somehow incorporate the space in the play

Project Aims
•To create a practical set design that can be easily setup in a number of small spaces and packed away to fit into a standard sized van.
•Depict the mood and feelings of the characters onstage through lighting and projected images.

Equipment
•Projector:
- cheapest - £400
- reasonable - £680
- expensive - £11,000
•Projector mount - £50
•Projector board (optional)
•Lights:
- simple and cheap - £9 each
- more suitable - £200 each
•Lighting gels
•Lighting rig:
- first choice - £500 (total)
- cheap option - £75
- ebay cheap option - £56
•Black sheets

Examples of Set Design

Audio Visual Production

Stage 3 - 90 second Narrative (Proposal)

Brief: Produce a proposal for a 90 second narrative and pitch your idea to a producer.

'The Escape'

STORY
This is an animated chase story between the police and the main character, who remains anonymous throughout the film.

The story starts off in a village at dusk. Two police cars screech to a stop, lights and sirens blazing. The next shot is lower to the ground at bonnet height of the car. Just as the car door opens, a silhouetted figure's legs can be seen as the main character (villain) runs across the screen from left to right.

Next there are various angles of the villain being chased through dark streets with the police cars on his tale, creating suspense . The villain leaves the streets of the village and runs into a field. A shot over the shoulder of the villain shows an unrecognisable object in the distance. As the villain runs forward, the object gets closer, lens blurred, but still unrecognisable.

The villain appears to jump over something and turns to face the police. The police car door opens, police officers get out of the car. The villain pulls out a weapon, a long bladed knife. The villain is still only a silhouette, but the knife glistens in the, now, half dusk/half moonlit light. Next shots are ropes being chopped, frantically, with the knife. Shot of the villain (from front). Suddenly a bright light, like an explosion or a fire, engulfs the whole screen (except for silhouettes villain).

The figure moves upward and a basket follows from below.

A wide shot of the landscape reveals the police cars, village, mountains in the background and a hot-air balloon! A shot looking down from the balloon shows the police and village get smaller as the balloon rises upwards. Next are a few scenes of the balloon and the landscape.

The story ends with a shot from the balloon traveling towards the sunrise.

STORYBOARD

JUSTIFICATIONS
The style of the film will be quite dark and mysterious (at the start), and so the story/audience will be reliant on the audio content to gain information about what is happening and create the suspense that is needed.

For this reason I will compose a track for the music. This will start with having a tempo that building quickly and include sharp samples of strings such as violin (for the chase). I will add sound effects of heavy breathing, footsteps and sirens to create the suspense.

The second half of the track will be slower in tempo. It will use strings, but instead of being sharp, they will be smooth and gradually build for a feeling of relief (the escape). Multiple versions of the two halves will be made and a final music track blended to correspond with the visuals.

I realise this is an ambitious project which is dependant on me sticking to my schedule, but by taking some precautionary steps, I am confident that I will achieve my deadline. At the start/end of every week I will review the progress made and plan, in advance, the next course of action.

To avoid confusion between scenes, I will split the story up into three-30-second sections and store all relevant work in three folders, respectively. I will also keep a hard copy backup of these files as well as in my home and university documents. Before animating the sections, I will compare the un-animated scenes with the storyboard, and then double-check.

I will be using Macromedia Flash MX to create the animation. I am familiar with this software and i have the software on my home computer, which will allow me to work on my project easily during weekends and the easter break.

Web Design

Stage 2 Coursework

There are many aspects which need to be thought about when creating and designing a website. Often, people try to create visually impressive sites without thinking about how the user will navigate around the site.

The key in creating a good website lies in thinking about what information you want the user to get from the website, and then positioning that information logically.

Space/Screen size
Space Division
The first issue to look at when talking about design is space division. Whether you are working with a computer screen, magazine, or movie screen, there is the concept of space. A computer screen is wider than it is tall and has a ratio of 4:3. This space should not be divided down the middle as the eye keeps switching from one side of the screen to the other. An example of bad space division can be found at http://www.helptheendorly.co.uk/.
It is generally better to make the division closer to one edge of the screen.

The rule of thirds means that you divide the screen into three divisions, both top and bottom. The idea is to put the centre of interest at the intersection of the lines. A good example of this is the home page of http://www.rotary.org/ where the organisation’s main project is displayed in the top third of the screen. This creates a nice composition.

Scrollbars
Another instant when the space design of a page affects the user is in scrollbars. Horizontal scrolling is extremely annoying. Online journals and social networking sites are prone to this problem. http://www.myspace.com/
(e.g. http://www.myspace.com/radarnottingham)
A good example of a design fitting the size space is http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/


Colour Scheme
The colour scheme in websites, and indeed all types of design, is integral to the feel and function of the design. If the colours used don’t compliment one another, the design will fail. A good example of bad colour scheme can be found at http://www.helptheendorly.co.uk/. The red ‘upcoming gigs’ section of the page is eye-catching and always in the same place, which makes reading the black section difficult.
A good example of a well-designed colour scheme can be found at http://www.ntu.ac.uk/.
The colours are mainly used in the middle section which draws the eye to the most important information. The other colours in the page compliment each other and are not too vibrant, and so aid the user, whereas http://www.helptheendorly.co.uk/ detracts from the information on the page.

File Size
Tables
An important consideration when creating a website is file size. A large file size loads slower and costs more to host. “Using tables to create a website makes the file size of pages unnecessarily large, as users must download this presentational data for each page they visit.” – (http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/)
http://foxie.ru/ is an example of a table-based design. The long load-time of the home page is annoying for users on a slow connection and suggests an inefficient organisation.

Cascading Style Sheets
“By using structural markup in our HTML documents and Cascading Style Sheets to lay out our pages, we can keep the actual content of our pages separated from the way they are presented.” - (http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/)
This makes it easy to change the layout of the site, by changing the style sheet, without editing the pages themselves. The main advantages for using CSS is faster load times of pages, easier to redesign, and more accessible to everyone. An example of a website which uses CSS is http://www.csszengarden.com/.


Accessibility
“Good web site accessiblity isnt just about achieving the highest accessibility ratings, it's about making sure your site meet all of your visitors' needs.” – (http://www.nvisage.co.uk/).
http://uk.yahoo.com/ is an example of a site which has the ability to re-size the text. This makes it more accessible to users with visual disabilities. http://www.thefwa.com/ is an example of a website which has a fixed text-size.
The contrast between the text and the background of a page should be sufficient enough to be accessible by users with colour blindness. I couldn’t find an example of a website with an insufficient contrast, but they’re out there! Most likely on someones page on http://www.myspace.com/.
Using Web standards also makes pages much more accessible to users with disabilities and to viewers using mobile phones and PDAs to access the Web.

Navigation
“One of the key rules of design is that form follows function. Although most obvious with industrial design, it is also a very important principle for Web Design and interactive applications. No matter how brilliant the design, if the user cannot navigate easily and intuitively through a Web site, the designs a failure.” - (Digital Creativity, Bruce Wands)
A good example of this is http://www.amazon.co.uk/. This site uses a hierarchical structure with the most important options being in a horizontal menu at the top of the page.

A bad example of this is http://www.improve-education.org/. The unclear links used in the vertical menu (left) are not helpful to visitors.
“Designers are experts in typography, space, colour, composition and form. Information architects are experts when it comes to the look and feel of a Web site and the factors that influence navigation through it.” - (Digital Creativity, Bruce Wands)
For individuals creating Websites, they must display all of these skills in providing the user with a website that both looks good and is easily to navigate.

Audio
http://www.improve-education.org/ is a badly designed website for many reasons. Its audio content is particularly bad. When the page first loads there is a sound file (with a glitch) which automatically plays in the background. This music is on a loop and gets very annoying after a short time. Also there is no way to turn the music off and so the user is resorted to muting the volume on their computer or, as I did, exiting the page as quickly as possible!
Visually impaired users of the internet can use audio screen readers to view websites. I haven’t been able to find any examples as you need special software to hear the audio, but the most common screen readers are compatible with Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers, so in effect most website will support screen readers.


Typography
The most important consideration when choosing a typeface is readability. Certain typefaces lend themselves better to titles, than they do to body text.
The four major fonts used in web design are Helvetica, Ariel, Times New Roman, and Verdana. “A good general way to work with type is to isolate the most important concepts and ideas and place them in the heading or subheading.” – (Digital Creativity, Bruce Wands). http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ is a good example of text that is clear and concise.
www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/mearchlar/fonts.htm uses an italic font at the top of the page which is hard to read.

Graphics
Favicons
“Favicons are mini graphics for a particular web-site which can be displayed in the browser’s URL bar, next to the site’s name in lists of bookmarks, and next to the page’s title in a tabbed document interface.” – (www.smashingmagazine.com). Favicons are normally the logo of a company so that it’s recognized immediately. Favicon are much under-used in bookmarks where users can easily find the link to the website. http://www.yahoo.com/ has an easily recognizable favicon, as shown here.
Websites that don’t have favicons appear as explorer graphics. Favicons are designed to stands out.

User Experience
The user experience of http://www.travelersinsynch.com/challenge_popup.html is excellent. “The website is an interactive 3D experience for risk managers to test your knowledge of safety, security and maintenance issues in relation to your home and business.” – (http://www.thefwa.com/). The site is fun, immersive and educational.
http://www.improve-education.org/ is probably the worst website I have ever visited. Ironically called ‘Improve Education’, most of the links I clicked on the page lead to a blank page! The site is rubbish, basically.

Ahh, long time no posty.
This is a quick message to explain that the reason i havn't posted in a while isn't that i havn't been doing work, but that ive just been too busy to post about it.
Also, as its easter, i am at home and ive been having problems with my the internet connection on my parent's computer (its rubbish).
Rest assured though, I have been making progress with all of my wonderful projects!

I will spend the next few days recapping on whats been going on over the last month. And ill make a conscious effort from here on to post more often.

Design
Model Making

Today we looked at scaled model making and how they're used by threatre designers to plan an accurate design of a space to scale.

This is the result of our first lecture/seminar about model making.

My model took an (obviously) short amount of time to make. The purpose being to get a sence of scale by placing a scaled model of a person foreground.

Next week i will be making a 1:25 scaled model of a 3 meter square interior space, incorporating a scaled model of a person.

AV Production
Stage 2 Coursework: Street Life Documentary

We decided to extend one of the flashback scenes and add text overlays for important phrases and statistics. All of the changes were in response to feedback that it was a little boring just watching the silhouetted interviewee. We added the changes to break up the interview and add more visual interest for the audience.

Here is the finished version of the 4-minute-documentary about the life of a youth offender.

Web Design
Stage 1 Coursework - Advertising Banner

Task: You are required to produce an online advert. It can be for the company, service or institution of your choice. It can be static, animated and/or interactive. It can contain audio and film footage if required.

Because Tesco sells pretty much everything nowadays the idea I came up with for the final banner was a shopping list theme.
The banner starts with a blue background and a pencil scrolls across, writing some text.
The pencil doesn’t actually write the text. I used a guideline for the pencil to follow and a mask over the text so that when the pencil runs across the banner, the text appears at the right moment. I used the font style “Bradley Hand ITC” because I wanted the text to look like handwriting. The first line of text says “Bread. Milk. Car insurance?” The point of the banner is to get across the message that Tesco are now selling specialist goods as well as everyday groceries. The first two items are everyday items that are on everybody’s shopping list. Adding “car insurance” gets the audience’s attention because people wouldn’t normally associate specialist and everyday goods in the same place.

Next, the pencil rotates and moves back to it starting position. This time it rubs out the first line of text. To do this I made the pencil’s rubber end follow the same guideline as the first animation. I used a mask like in the first sequence, but this time the words disappear when the pencil passes the text.

Next, text fades in and out saying “Everything you need”… “in one place”. This clarifies the message behind the banner (Tesco are now selling specialist goods as well as everyday groceries).
A white bar moves from right to left, leaving a small section of blue at the left of the banner. The Tesco logo then appears, shortly followed by the “Every little helps” slogan, which is constant on all of Tesco’s advertising.
I did originally use Action script with a Bounce easing class for the white bar, so that the bar bounces into position. Unfortunately, I had to remove this because when tried to publish my banner with this selected a ‘Syntax error’ was displayed. I found out where the problem was, but was unable to fix it. The bar works well though.

The colours I used in my banner advertisement were red, blue and white. I chose these colours to match the Tesco logo and give the advertisement consistency. They are also primary colours and so are eye-catching.

The banner advert follows a consistent narrative and presentation style concerning fonts and colours which maintains the brand’s identity. The images are compressed, resulting in a file size of 18Kb and the banner’s dimension’s are in the standard size of 468x60, and so will load quickly slow dial-up connections. I used a .swf graphical format.

Design

Mind Maps

We were told to document a journey of discovery in groups by coming up with a random route formular (e.g. walk for 30 seconds, cross the road and take the next turning) - and stick to it.

However, i missed the seminar and so wasnt in a group..

I think the idea was to discover areas of a city you dont normally get to see in your day-to-day life. Although, my mind map documents a direct journey through nottingham, when i was out on my journey i tried to look at the surroundings in more detail and in different ways. So that even though i wasn't able to find new areas of the city, i did notice new elements of the places i had already seen and my understanding of them was now slightly different.

Web Design
Banner Advertising

Recently in Web Design i have been creating animated banners such as the one below.

Audio Visual Production
Documentary Progress

On 20 Nov i learnt that Airon, the Producer, had left the course. (Been kicked off for not enroling). This left us without a Producer and only four group members. The group had many discussions about how to cope and what we should do. We came to a decision on the current and FINAL idea for our documentary project, which was not to be commical, but is more alone the line of what i was wanting to do. So although i was annoyed that Airon had left, i was happy about where the project was heading.

We basically kept the old idea of making a documentary about youth offenders but we now concentrate on one single youth offender who we'll interview. The documentary's working title is 'Street Life - the story of a youth offender'. The 4-minutes-film should start off with some vox pops and people telling their (short) opinion about youth offenders, then it leads over to the title screen.

Now that Airon has left, we seem to be progressing fast with the documentary and i feel that everyone has an equal say in would should be included.

We have already produced a short trailer of that first part of the documentary as seen below. Christian (Editor) has edited the vox pops we did last week and created a rather fitting title screen. The style of the pilot uses scanlines on the vox-pop shots to make it look like its filmed off a TV screen. I think we will use this style for the vox pops in the final edit of the documentary.



After that intro there will we some random street scenes with narration over it telling some statistics and leading over to the actual interview. The interviewee's face will not be shown. We plan to shot that interview with two cameras - one main camera and one camera that works in the hidden-camera style (so filming close-ups of certain details like hands while the interviewee's speaking).
We'll try to include cuts to re-enacted flashbacks into the interview based on what the interviewee says. Those flashbacks will have special effects on them to make them look like a dreamish kind of style. The documentary then will end with a summary and the credits - of course.

Audio Visual Production
Documentary Summary 3

This post documents the events after 14 November, 2006.

In a meeting on 15th Nov, with Deb Tuck (Module leader), we discussed an overview of 'where we are now' in terms of the project. This contained a 30 minute or so discussion between Deb and Airon about how he hadn't enroled for the year yet. (I will explain later how it would turn out to affect us all)

The major concern that was raised was 'what is the documentary trying to portray'. Group members were either divided, or even unsure themselves, about what infact was the angle/style we were trying to investigate the subject from.
My view was that i wanted to document the youth offenders' view. What they thought about themselves and how they are portrayed.
This was kind of where we were at at the end of the meeting.

Audio Visual Production
Documentary Summary 2

This post documents the events between October 20 and November 03, 2006.

We have had many problems over the past couple of weeks.
Firstly, the director doesn't seem bothered...which is bad...*as he's supposed to be the director!*
Secondly, we are having trouble securing an actor for the 'reporter' role. Airon (Producer) found two actors to audition for the character, but unfortunatly, they failed to make an audition.

Thirdly, I am unhappy with the way the project is going. Airon is the producer and it is clear that he does alot of film production outside of university.
Although it may be true that it is the Producer/Director's vision that the rest of the crew should work towards in the big wide world, outside of university, I feel that Airon is taking over (possibly oncontiously). Nevertheless, i am unsure about the commical style we have adopted for the documentary. I think we should stick closely to the project brief, as i fear that we may get marked-down if we deviate in the genre of production we are aspiring towards.

Audio Visual Production
First Project: Documentary

The first audiovisual project is a group based project and requires you to create a four minute documentary upon DVD.

This post is a summary of the project's initial stages.
We were seperated into groups, mine is as follows; Airon Bunning - Producer, Ryan Jeu - Director, Christian Juentsch - Editor, Richard Solaini - sound and I, Rob Hammerton - Camera.
Our first meeting in regards to this project was on Thursday 12th October at 2pm.

The initial idea was a documentory based on 'Townys' a stereo-type that certain young adults fall into. We wanted to approach the program from a commical point of view, rather than a serious POV.

The productions intial aim was to discuss what can be done by you or me to combat these youths legally and safely. There will also be a section helping the everyday person identify a violent youth, or a crime being commited by one. In doing so, raising awareness and hopefully making the world a nicer place for us all to live in. The style of the documentary was to take a commical look at a serious subject.

Audio Visual Production
Module Brief

This Component will build on the experience and knowledge gained in year one.
You will learn about industry practice and through the production of coursework improve and advance your production and technical skills and knowledge of the field.

Every student will produce their own audiovisual work and work produced as a team. Students will also produce reports that demonstarte their knowledge of the field and professional practice.

Design
City Symphony: A Journey through Nottingham

The idea was to go out & about to shoot a ‘city symphony’ by photographing (& abstracting) detail of pattern, shapes (2D), form (3D), colour, texture.

I took alot of photgraphs of buildings, places, and compositions that i found aesthetically interesting in various locations around Nottingham.

As well as this, i edited specific video/images together to create a journey through Nottingham, from the train station to Trent Uni campus. However, this file was too big to upload.

Design
Site-specific Design

Site specific design is when a design/event/performance of aesthetic value is designed specifically for, or influenced by a place.
The following are examples of site-specific design which I have found:

Wind Turbines
A wind turbine is a machine for converting the kinetic energy in wind into mechanical energy.

Wind farm siting can be highly controversial, particularly as the hilltop, often coastal sites preferred are often picturesque and environmentally sensitive. However, one 2MW wind turbine in a good location can cover the electricity consumption for 2000 households per year. Turbines also reduce CO2 emissions.
Personally, I find wind turbines aesetically pleasing and I would like to see renewable energy, such as the wind, being used more to create electricity.
I like how the turbines are positioned in most wind farms, one next to the other in a line. When the blades are spinning, there is a feeling of orgainised chaos! as shown in this picture.



Boots Library, Shakespeare St, Nottingham
The Boots Library opened on the City campus in 1998. The university's traditional library collections hold over 400,000 books, plus 2,500 current journals, as well as an extensive audio visual collection of videos and slides. I chose this building because it's site is directly linked to it's design. Being where it is, in between two roads that junction at the front of the library and the angle away from one another.
I like where the entrance is. It is situated at the junction of the two roads, which is not just functional and convieniant for visitors, but also aesthetically/architectually pleasing.

Welcome to my Online Journal.
I will use this as a way to document my progress throughout the course of the year and beyond. As well as the work i produce, it will hopefully offer an insight into my thought processes, as i explore and develope my skills as a multimedia practitioner.
The modules i am cureently studying are AV Production, Design, and Web Design.
I am eager to hear feedback so feel free to comment on any of my work, and ill try and do the same.