Colours of Imagination

Critical evaluation

Individual evaluation for Digital Media Foundations

I am very pleased with the project, as the group worked really well together. The members of the group always showed up as planned, took the project seriously, and were cooperative and positive. Everyone made an effort, and contributed where it was needed, and all of the members did a lot of research and sharing of ideas and visions, and being motivated to deliver a good project at the end of this module. Everyone listened to one another and worked on incorporating parts from all of the group members.
We started organizing and planning with a schedule early on, and we kept finding more inspiration to keep improving our vision and being open to keep developing our vision.
During the time of this project, I believe that I have learnt so much from my group members, since everyone contributed with the skills they had. It was such a great experience to work with these girls that I did not know beforehand.

The original idea for this project was to create a video seen through the eyes of a child, and create a video that shows how children use their imagination in everyday life, making everything brighter and happier. We wanted to express how people should be more able to appreciate the beauty in the surrounding simple things, inspired through the child like way of experiencing the world. The target group for this video is mainly adults who could use that kind of reminder, however we experienced it as rather challenging to find a child to participate. Therefore we decided to create an image as it is suggestive to be through a child's point of view. Even though we decided to make a change in the initial plan, I believe we managed to come up with a good solution when facing this challenge. I think it's important to be open to the idea of having to make some alterations along the way of a project like this, because the first ideas and plans might not be the best ways of executing the project.
We also took the feedback from out presentation into account when finishing the video, by brightening the colour on the side representing childhood to create a stronger understanding, and adding some more details to the video. We put a lot of effort in to finding the right music for our project, so that it would bring the whole video together, rather than being like “a video with music in the background”. This was important because it has so much to say for the final product, as it can rise the level of the whole thing. We worked on making the music synchronised with the visual, to make an even better fit.

All in all, we've met some challenges in terms of finding the best solution for the technical work, like finding ways to make our ideas and plans work technically in the video, and trying to find a way to not make things too time consuming. We ended up having to retake all of the photos, because they were too different from one another, however the group handled it well.
It is a very good feeling to now be done with the project, which has been challenging and educational, as I have never worked with something like this in the past. The group was very supportive and hard working, which was very motivational.

Presentation

We gave the presentation today, explaining how we have worked with the project so far, and how we intend to make some changes after the presentation.
Overall, we received very positive feedback. Now we will work on incorporating the suggestions we got into the film.
We still have left to make some alterations and adjustments for the animated elements in the film, in terms of adding some more flowers, birds etc. to improve the impression of the childlike imagination.

Music..

We are working on finding music for our film.. 

We want something that fits the theme and sets the right mood.

Some suggestions..

Daniel Powter - Bad day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH476CxJxfg

Justin Nozuka - After Tonight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgGkJez6pcM

The XX - Crystalised
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pib8eYDSFEI

Pictures for the film..

We have decided to take the pictures for our film in Kingston, around the flower shop in the middle of Eden Walk, and in the market place. We believe these places will work well with the animated elements, so we plan to add animated flowers and other elements that will fit with the 
flower shops and small shops in the market place. 
We will use Stop Motion, as we think this is the best solution for getting the best possible results.

Proposal

By now, we have come far in the planning of the film. We are all working well together, and have cooperated to come up with the best possible way to make our film.
I have rehearsed my StopMotion skills in the lab in uni, and done some more drawings.
We are on time with our project, still following our schedule!
Our project is called" Colors of Imagination"

Here is  our proposal:

                                                   Colors of Imagination

 When starting our project we did individual research to bring back to class to share. In our first group discussion we exchanged video and material we had found on the Internet from sources such as Youtube, Vimeo and Google that we found interesting and gave a feel/understanding of what we wanted to create. Secondly we discussed what techniques and aspects of creating we each were best at. We felt this was important as these talents combined would make a project to the best of our ability and enables us to teach each other new skills. We came to the conclusion immediately that our creation needed to uphold a strong positive message, as this is what all resource provided had in common. Strong connotations of happiness are related to childhood, as this is a stress free time, this was a good place to begin our development. The message should influence adults to think about this period in life and consider life through the eyes of a child. Another aspect from the resources we liked was the idea a split screen, projecting two different images or points of view.

Combining our ideas, strong points and resources we came up with the concept of a stop motion split screen from two different points of view incorporating illustration. One projecting the image of everyday life from an adult’s point of view and the other the same image but a child’s. The market is a great location for this as it is an exciting everyday environment that can be interpreted differently with age. The image when seen from the youthful point of view will be colorful and evolve in illustration such as flowers growing and birds flying. This will be in juxtaposition to the adult’s projection, which will stay realistic. Although the same image, the child point of view should be in black and white to suggest difference and the illustrations in bright colors suggesting imagination. We felt from this idea our message should be ‘let imagination color your world’. We don’t want to limit our self to stop motion although this is our initial idea, as we would like to play around and conduct trial and error before deciding what is best for our project.

The music we choose need to support the image we see strongly as this will create the overall obeisance for our piece. The introduction will consist of diegetic sounds supporting the realistic location of the film. When the split screens are introduced this will change to a more upbeat positive non-diegetic sound track of a specific song which we feel create the right atmosphere. We are going to look for the music before the piece is finished but only when our project is created and the soundtrack added would we know if it is the correct piece for out project.

The project target audience is catered for adults that have lost the flare for life. Although directly created for adults it is consumable for all ages but the subconscious message is only going to be apparent to adults. We are going to do this by shooting the images over the shoulder of a child suggesting, but not making the mind up for the audience, that its from their point of view.

Programs we have decided to use are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash, Adobe illustrator, Adobe After Effect and Adobe premier. Each of these programs will bring and benefit our project in a different way. Another reason we have chosen to use lots of different programs is because we want to try different techniques to see which are more effective and don’t want to limit our self’s to one or two when we can benefit from all as we will learn from what doesn’t work. We will also use a camera and video recorded hired from university. Maybe a Dictaphone for diegetic sounds.

After our first week we have created a time scheme to help up keep on track. Week one was dedicated to research and brainstorming ideas, week two we had an initial idea giving us a seven days to develop this and create a presentation to share our idea. By April we plan to have a rough first draft. With our first draft we plan to show and receive constructive feedback from viewers, this enables us to create a stronger, more viewer friendly final piece.

Development of the project

We have now come up with the idea of making the film with split screen, with one side having animated elements. We want it to be a positive message, something that can bring out a smile in the audience. 
The idea is to incorporate more colorful and childlike notions in order to encourage people to reconnect with their "inner child", to see the beauty in surrounding things, and let the imagination run free, just like from the eyes of a child.
One side of the split screen will represent the "realistic" view, where things could be a little bland and boring, while the other side shows how exciting and wonderful the exact same things can be with a different point of view. 
The message we want to spread is to use your imagination, see the beauty in things, and enjoy all of the good things in life.
However, our target audience is not children, but adults who might need that type of reminder. 
The video will still be appropriate for everyone to enjoy.

While working with the idea of adding animated elements to the video, 
I've been drawing a little..