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Wednesday 13 June 2012

Pre-Production Essay


Introduction



During this essay i will be explaining different types of pre-production methods and give examples to help explain. Pre-production is used throughout the media industry to make a project less complex, less expensive and gives the overall product better quality. In film and T.V, pre-production involves storyboards, scripts, castings and location recces. Game pre-production involves story boarding, voice casting, target audience research, basic level concepts and character concepts. In website design pre-production involves Mood boards, mock ups, target audience research.



As you can see it is used throughout the media industry to make things more efficient, but what are these methods?



Story boards are usually an illustrated concept of what the scenes are going to look and includes, what camera angles are going to be used during the shot, as well as sound effects and lighting. Very important in the film and T.V industry, without it things would be confusing.

A script is a text version of a story board, it has the entire character dialog and how they are supposed to say it.

Casting is when you hold auditions for actors and crew members for your project; Voice casting is similar apart from your only looking for a voice to fit a game/animated character.

Location recces are when you send someone to survey an area you intend to film at. They note down safety hazards and to draw a bird’s eye view of the area.

Target audience research is when you research the target audience for you project, by sending out questioners, holding focus groups and other research methods. You can also buy/find information from companies that specialize in collecting consumer data.

Mood boards are a col large of pictures that you come across when researching into a project; it helps to inspire people to come up with similar designs, and help people think more creatively.



Finance is a crucial part in any project, without it there would be no money for equipment, actors and crew. Finance usually comes from banks or investors with the intention of both parties making a sum of money. In T.V Finance is usually secured by making a pilot episode first, this will give investors a taste of what they could invest their money into and whether or not it’s worth it. In film and game development you would prepare a pitch to show of your ideas, the investors will then think over if it is a suitable investment. Before any of the above happens you would need to work out an accurate total cost of your project. What equipment you’re going to higher, actors salary, crew members salary, transport cost, props, facility's and any licences you might need in order to film, will all need to be accounted for when you present the total cost of producing it.

In filmmaking and video production, pre-production formally begins once a project has been green lit. At this stage, finalizing preparations for production go into effect. Financing will generally be confirmed and many of the key elements such as principal cast members, director and cinematographer are set. By the end of pre-production, the screenplay is hopefully finalized and satisfactory to all the financiers and other stakeholders.”

Wikipedia. (2012). Pre-Production In Film. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-production. Last accessed 13th June 2012.





Finance in computer game development is a bit different then film and T.V. You would create a pitch to present your ideas to investors to try and persuade them to invest in them, showing them mood boards, audience research and other important factors about your game. If you are given the green light then you can go about hiring programmers, graphic artists and audio technicians. You will also need a place for all you employees to work. They will also need top of the range computers and equipment to work with.

 Pre-production or design phase is a planning phase of the project focused on idea and concept development and production of initial design documents. The goal of concept development is to produce clear and easy to understand documentation, which describes all the tasks, schedules and estimates for the development team. The suite of documents produced in this phase is called production plan. This phase is usually not funded by a publisher, however good publishers may require developers to produce plans during pre-production.”

Wikipedia. (2012). Video Game Development. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_development. Last accessed 13 June 2012.





Before anything is presented to the public you want to ensure your ideas/product are patented. This will mean that you would hold the rights to that idea/product and no one else would be able to use them unless they wanted to be taken to court for copyright infringement. At the same time you must insure that you yourself are not using copyrighted material in your own work.



Location is important, it must be right for the product you are producing it must also not be too far away otherwise it will cause an increase in the finance you will need. Not only would you have to pay for you and your crew to get there your company would also have to pay to bring all the equipment, actors and props along as well. As mentioned earlier you would need to send someone to do a location recce to ensure the area is safe and suitable to film in. If you are going to film in a public place you will also need to ask the local authorities if it’s ok to film there.



In conclusion every step take within the pre- production process is required since it helps increase efficiency. With that in mind it can help reduce the time taken to produce a media product since it helps with organising and ensuring everything will be planned and laid out in a clear form in case so a manager or someone needs to look at what they have done, what they should be doing and what they will be doing. Overall its very efficient and useful , giving only positive benefits towards the final product.

Thursday 29 March 2012

MX.TRANSISTIONS

Today we experimented with a hidden libary MX.TRANSISTIONS
http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1333011928

We made the box resize depending on the screensize aswell as the nav bar sticking to the side of the box no matter what size it is.


here is the code that was used. blue highlights the instance names if you want to try it out yourself. Code highlighted in yellow are variables. Code Highlight in red is the for the nav. bar (combined buttons into a movie clip) make sure you use nav. if you want to target that movie clip other wise it wont target all the buttons at the same time.

Blue = Instance names

Yellow = Variables

Red = navigation bar code (remember to group the buttons on your nav bar into a movie clip.)


import mx.transitions.Tween;  // IMPORTANT
import mx.transitions.easing.*; // IMPORTANT
var oldh = 0;
var newh = 300;
var oldw = 0;
var neww = 300;
//-------------------------------Fullscreen website code- ---------------//
Stage.align = "TL";
Stage.scaleMode = "noScale"
sizeListener = new Object();
sizeListener.onResize = function() {
 fullsize();


};
Stage.addListener(sizeListener);
_global.fullsize = function(){


 box._x = Stage.width/2;
 box._y = Stage.height/2;
};
fullsize();
onEnterFrame = function (){


 nav._x = Stage.width/2 - box._width/2 - nav._width
 nav._y = Stage.height/2 - box._height/2


}


new Tween(box, "_height", Elastic.easeOut, oldh, newh, 2, true);
new Tween(box, "_width", Elastic.easeOut, oldw, neww, 2, true);
nav.btn1.onPress = function (){
 oldh=newh
 newh=100
 oldw=neww
 neww=100


 new Tween(box, "_height", Elastic.easeOut, oldh, newh, 2, true);
new Tween(box, "_width", Elastic.easeOut, oldw, neww, 2, true);
};
nav.btn2.onPress = function (){
 oldh=newh
 newh=300
 oldw=neww
 neww=300
 new Tween(box, "_height", Elastic.easeOut, oldh, newh, 2, true);
new Tween(box, "_width", Elastic.easeOut, oldw, neww, 2, true);




};


nav.btn3.onPress = function (){
 oldh=newh
 newh=500
 oldw=neww
 neww=500
 new Tween(box, "_height", Elastic.easeOut, oldh, newh, 2, true);
new Tween(box, "_width", Elastic.easeOut, oldw, neww, 2, true);
};

Friday 23 March 2012

Stage.align = "TL";
Stage.scaleMode = "noscale";
sizeListener = new Object();
sizeListener.onResize = function() {
 fullsize();

};
Stage.addListener(sizeListener);

_global.fullsize = function() {
 
  navBar._width = Stage.width
 
};
fullsize();
resizes the navigation to fit the screensize

Thursday 15 March 2012

GL Basic Game Update

During julians lesson today i managed to create a character to go into my game. It is a simply stick man right now and i intend to add more detail soon. I managed to implement a start up screen to the game aswell.

I intend to make it a bit more flashy soon.

Friday 9 March 2012

After Effects Animating


A short animation to learn how to animate using after effect.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

E-Zine Essay - Youtube


E-zine essay

Introduction

The interactive industry has grown a lot in the past few years, as technological advances have led to faster bandwidth and computers are being more widely used throughout society, it has become possible to make the user feel immersed in an interactive experience. Websites such as YouTube have revolutionized the way user generated content is shared and viewed, viral videos make people internet superstars in the matter of hours. The basic interactivity that used to occur was simply pushing the red button on your remote, but now you can acutely have an influence over what you watching by phoning in to vote. Also on the internet web 2.0 has enabled websites to be much more interactive. Web masters can now design interactive websites in flash that get the user more involved in the website,  instead of the old sites which were spammed full of flashing adverts and didn’t look to nice.

YouTube began in 2005 as a video sharing site, it was sold to Google in 2006  after it had a boom in popularity, soon after in 2007  Google announced the partnership programme, this gave content creators a more sustainable living which  in turn leads to more better content being brought out and more regularly.

YouTube is now one of the most viewed sites in the world and is visited by over 800 million unique visitors per month

Tonnes of user generated content get uploaded to YouTube, approximately 1 hour of footage every second. About  

Ray William Johnson is estimated to make over 1 million dollars a year through advertising, he has a team of about 6-8 people that help him make 1-2 videos a week that reach 3-4 million views per video. He interacts with the audience by asking those questions at the end of each video and then featuring some of their answers in the next video.

Many other big youtubers interact with their audience that way and get nearly the same amount of views.

Viral videos are videos that generate a lot of views in a short time, they are usually short and most of them contain someone doing something out of the ordinary, they get lots of views quickly by people sending the video to each other. Advertisers are seeing this as a big opportunity because they can spread their messages across to a large, diverse group of people in a short time. The problem is it’s hard to make a video go viral.

YouTube allows content creators to interact and receive feedback from the viewers by have a comments section, ratings, messages, and video statistics. This allows the content creator and youtuber to interact in a way that was never before possible with technologies such as TV or radio.

“Content then get a better understanding on what content the viewers do and don’t like and create better content for their audience. While other video hosting websites had been launched before YouTube in 2005 (including Metacafe in 2003 and Vimeo in 2004), YouTube was conceived to be, in the words of Jawed Karim, a video version of the rating site Hot or Not. Karim commented that hot or not was a site "where anyone could upload content that everyone else could view. That was a new concept because up until that point, it was always the people who owned the website who would provide the content." In December 2006, Time magazine wrote: "YouTube is to video browsing what a Wal-Mart Supercenter is to shopping: everything is there, and all you have to do is walk in the door."

Wikipedia. (). YouTube. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube. Last accessed 7th Mar 2012. <!-- google_ad_client = "pub-9983032687302035"; /* Toolbox Referencing Inset */ google_ad_slot = "4903993350"; google_ad_width = 336; google_ad_height = 280; //-->



 

 

Friday 9 December 2011

I Have managed to achieve a functioning website with navigation, pages and some nice looking effects made in after effects. All i need to do now is fill the pages up with text, pictures and videos.
I am pleased on how the animated background has turned out.