Promo Video and Evaluation

Individual evaluation: Identify 

• Technical aspects of your promo video
• Framing/ shots/ quality of images
• Was it what you proposed to do? 
• Were your findings accurate? 
• Was it fit for purpose?
• What did you target audience think? 
• How does it appeal to your target audience?  

Technical aspects of my video are making sure that the audio levels are in order and that the videos are well cut. The volume of the music playing in the background had to be modified so that when someone in the video speaks the music fades into the background.

Framing and quality could have been better, but I am happy with what we've got.
We should have used a tripod in more shots to get them as stabilized as possible.
I have experienced some problems with Final Cut Pro and thus the video looks a bit stretched. 
Our target audience are people who just left secondary school and people that are planning to continue their education regardless of their age. Although my video has modern hip hop music in it, it should attract others than just hip hop fans. The hip hop music was placed in the video strategically, because the video starts with "boring" music with not so much exciting shots, and as soon as you are about to think "Oh, this is boring" the screen goes black, music starts and video follows the pattern of the song leading the video to the interview part. As far as opinions on the video from other people go, it seem to be a great take on promoting this College.
The purpose of it is to get people to choose South Thames college over some others, and as far as I'm considered it does the job. The opinions that students and employees at STC gave were honest and overall positive, no scrips were used and our findings prove to be accurate.
From the initial idea to the final product, I am happy with it how it came out. It was not exactly how we planned due to some technical difficulties but it came out alright.



The Final Video:

SHOTS WE DIDN'T USE

...

Unit 63 - Task 2 and 3 - Pitch

What are sound assets? And list those that will be used in your production.

Sound assets and software programs allow you to record, edit and playback media. Sound assets can also be sound effects such as delays are distortions.

Whos is it aimed at?

Our target audience will be students who just finished their secondary school and are about to apply for college at South Thames. The promotional video will include a clear intro so they know what the college is called and how other students view it. They can get an idea of how the college works.
The question we're going to use are:

• How old are you?
• How long have you been at this college?
• What course are you doing?
• What is your favorite thing about this college? etc.

What styles of music are you going to use and why?

We will use upbeat music, with appropriate audio levels to avoid for music to be too dominant over the video. Audio bites and loops will be used during the production from royalty free sources to create the intro or simply use garage band only, to avoid any copy right issues.

Include evidence of two existing music intros and identify why they are fit for purpose.

We might use  Bright, Uplifting music from icoompetech.com (royaltyfree).

And we made two different intro versions for the video:

 http://www.datafilehost.com/d/dc571029

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/041eb22e

EXAMPLES OF SOUND INTROS

Why should we consider take account of copyright and other issues?

For the legal side, we will need release forms for people to sign, which allows us to use their faces in production. Ethical side includes taking care of swearing, bullying and things of that sort, we are keeping that out of our production process.  We must make sure that we don’t use any copyrighted footage, images, music. If copyrighted footage is used, the production team might get sued, and the video taken off youtube.  So basically all the content used in our video must be paid for or royalty free with some recognition in the credits of the video.

Unit 63 - Task 1

Sound Theory

Sound Is an vibration in an elastic medium such as air and water. It is generated by vibrated bodies in the form of waves of compression and rarefaction in the air. Waveform is a curve showing the shape of a an audio wave at a given time.

Wavelenght is the distance between waves.

A sound wave is the pattern of disturbance caused by the movement of energy traveling through a medium (such as air, water, or any other liquid or solid matter) as it propagates away from the source of the sound.

Response:

We generally measure sound in terms of pressure level or decibel (dB).

Amplitude is a measurement for change in atmospheric pressure cause by sound waves.

Frequency – Represents the number of times that a repeated event occurs per unit of time.

Hz and khz – Are the units for measuring frequency.

Basics of Sound Recording?

To record a sound you would need a microphone and a computer of some sort.

There are two types of microphones. Condenser and Dynamic.

Mono – stereo – Mono usually represents one audio channel, stereo is dual channel.

Digital audio – Digital audio signals are encoded in digital form.

Analogue distortion – Analogue distortion can be cause by multiple factors. Electrical interference, by amplyfing the sound… The length of the cable that the audio is being transferred by.

File formats – wav, mp4, aiff, aac, atrac…

The dynamic (moving-coil) microphone operates by electromagnetic induction to generate an output signal voltage . It is like a miniature loudspeaker working in reverse. The diaphragm is attached to a coil of fine wire. The coil is mounted in the air gap of the magnet such that it is free to move back and forth within the gap. When the sound wave strikes the diaphragm, the diaphragm vibrates in response. As the coil moves through the lines of magnetic force in the gap, a small electrical current is induced in the wire. The magnitude and direction of that current is directly related to the motion of the coil, and the current then is an electrical representation of the sound wave.

The other major microphone type is the condenser. The diaphragm of a condenser microphone is a very thin plastic film, coated on one side with gold or nickel, and mounted very close to a conductive stationary back plate. A polarizing voltage is applied to the diaphragm by an external power supply (battery or phantom power ) or by the charge on an electret material in the diaphragm or on the backplate charging it with a fixed static voltage. The diaphragm and back plate, separated by a small volume of air, form an electrical component called a capacitor (or condenser). The capacitance between these two plates varies as the freely suspended diaphragm is displaced by the sound wave. When the diaphragm vibrates in response to a sound, it moves closer to and farther away from the back plate. As it does so, the electrical charge that it induces in the back plate changes proportionally. The fluctuating voltage on the back plate is therefore an electrical representation of the diaphragm motion.

You can also produce  sound and music digitally with computer software.

Define Analogue/Digital Sound:

An analog recording is one where a property or characteristic of a physical recording medium is made to vary in a manner analogous to the variations in air pressure of the original sound.

A digital recording is produced by converting the physical properties of the original sound into a sequence of numbers, which can then be stored and read back for reproduction.

Two prominent differences in functionality are the bandwidth and the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N); however, both digital and analog systems have inherent strengths and weaknesses.

Advantages of both:

Advantages of Analogue

Once recorded, audio is stored/archived.

Warm and natural sound.

Theoretically better audio bandwidth (this is arguable).

Tried and tested format.

Editing limitations discourage constant tinkering and procrastination.

Advantages of Digital:

Better sound for cheaper equipment.

Potential for very low distortion and noise/hiss.

Variety of recorder options (tape, optical, hard disc, RAM etc).

Non-linear operation (random access).

You can access any part of the recording almost immediately.

Massive range of editing and processing tools.

Non destructive editing (you can make copies of data and undo decisions).

You can clone data.

Audio can be transmitted over networks.

Which application are suitable for interactive media products?

We can intergrate sound into multimedia:

Websites

DVDs

Games

Videos etc.

Why is sound important?
Sound it important for a couple of reasons.  We use sound for signaling and communication. When a film maker makes a video, he needs to communicate with the audience not just with visuals, but with sound as well. Sound can cause us to feel certain emotions and connect with what we are watching or listening.

Legal & Financial

Legal & Financial

Financial – Raising money to start a Business

Before starting your business you have to make sure that you've done your market research,

which if done improperly can greatly affect your business start up.

If you are looking into bank loans you have to present your business plan to your bank

and prove to them that you'll be able to pay back the loan with interest.

You can get support from government schemes including:

• grants
• finance and loans
• business support e.g. mentoring, consultancy 
• funding for small and medium-sized businesses and start-ups 

Third option would be private/crowd fundraising.

There are number of websites that allow you to raise money for your business idea

or anything really that people would like and contribute to it. The idea behind

crowd fundraising is for you to propose your idea to the wider public and if they

like it, they will contribute by giving you a small (or in some cases big) amount

of money for your business idea. Now, people don't usually give out money just like that.

They have to have interest in your product and they expect something in return. For example

if you are making a technological product like e.g. a new fitness band, your supporters will

expect for you to ship them the final product if they have pledged more that the products value.

These are some of the website that do croud fundraising:

• Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/ 
• IndieGoGo - www.indiegogo.com/‎
• Crowdfunder - www.crowdfunder.co.uk/

The forth and the final option is selling shares.

You can fund your business by selling shares in your company.

How does it work?

Selling shares is basically selling the percentage of you company to the investor that is

investing in your business. They would give you a certain amount of money in exchange for

a percentage of your company. There are multiple types of investors when it comes to shares:

• ‘business angels’ (wealthy individuals who invest in start-up businesses)
• ‘venture capital’ from companies who invest large sums of money in businesses that they think will grow quickly (known as ‘private equity’ companies) 
• Crowdfunding (where a large group of people invest money in a business idea, usually via the internet)

Sole trader, Partnership and Limited Companies.

Sole trader is a exclusive owner of a business, and entitled to keep all profits after the tax

has been paid. Sole trader is also responsible for all losses.

Business Partnership – A company that has two or more individuals that mange and operate

the business. They're equally and personally liable for all debts and profit of the business.

Limited Companies - A limited company is an organization that you can set up to run your business. It’s responsible in its own right for everything it does and its finances are separate to your personal finances. All the profit the company makes is owned by the company after it pays Taxes.

Pros and Cons.

Of being a Sole Trader:

Pros:

• You get to keep all the profits
• You don't have to report to anyone, you are your own boss
• You have the full control of your business 
• If you feel like taking a day off, you can

Cons:

• You are responsible for all losses
• If you don't work, you don't get paid
• You must be a self-starter

Of business partnership:

Pros:

• You split costs and share risks with your partner
• Bigger network
• Sector knowledge  
• One can take a time off while the other partner works.

Cons:

• Conflict over being the leader  
• Hard to find the right person for a partner. 
• Less independence

Of Limited Company:

Pros:

• Lower personal financial risk
• Credibility 
• Better tax rates

Cons:

• Accountancy fees are generally more expensive 
• There is less privacy than a sole trader.  
• More costly starting up as you will have to pay to form a Limited Company

Kraftwerk Magazine

Magazine development

Designers Technical Commentary

These are different types of file formats. File formats are orderly sequences of data used to encode digital information for storage or exchange. Digital media files may be large. By compressing them, it makes storing them much easier. When you compress some of the files this may lead to losing the quality of the the media. 

Vectors images are made and displayed within drawing programs. Most vector images include 2 and 3-d drawings, logos and fonts. They are made up of lines, curves and shapes with editable attributes such as colour or fill. Vector images are "resolution independent": they can be reshaped or rescaled without losing quality. 

Bitmap images are created when you take a photograph using a digital camera or scan an image from a magazine.
A bitmap image is made of many parts, called pixels, which are often many different colours. its is possible to edit each individual pixel.
As the computer has to store information about every single pixel in the image, the file size of a bitmap graphic is often quite large.
Resizing a bitmap graphic tends to lose quality.

THE FLASH BANNER
 I've composed my flash banner in After Effects with each section having its
fade in and fade out time, this was made just in case if i decide to put in user control
in, in order for them to select the slide they would like to see.  After exporting the video
in .flv format I've placed it into Adobe's flash, did a bit of coding and exported it to .swf
Later on it was uploaded on joomag.com for my magazine.

THE MAGAZINE

For my Magazine's Title i used dafont.com to find the suitable font for the style i was going for.

The overall design of the magazine is based on black and white theme

with elegant fonts and decals.

 

Sponsor page leave a blank space for the advertisments (flash banner).

The only page that is covered in pictures is the Contents Page.

But it also features black and white theme.

 

The first article should give out that "wow" effect.

Bentley Continental GT and darth vader really do give out

that dark image.

 

I used the double page to make a comparison between Nissan GTR

and Ferrari 458. I made the two pages merge together and split the content

between the pages.

 

The back page. I kept it simple with the magazines logo and a bar code.

 

Copyright 2014 - Kraftwerk

Ideas for my Magazine

The first idea was to make a Gaming Magazine.

 

The second one was to make a motor sport magazine, 

later i decided that i should stick with this one.