Although it doesn't cover my specialist focus, I found our visit to Clearleft very useful for a number of reasons. It gave me a good insight into how designers test their work and how the process of iterative design works. We were also able to take part in user testing workshops, below are my notes from the session:
Setting tasks and finding problems to solve.
When you think you know something, you are probably wrong (accept failure). Usability testing is seeking failure.
Main advantages to User Testing:
Informing design
Growing as a designer
Objectivity in opinion battles
Explore users mental models
Fix problems early
Test assumptions
Stakeholder buy-in
Designers bring a lot of judgement and baggage to a design that should be left out.
Usability (how easy) vs Desirability (How much users want)
Guerrilla Testing:
Pros:
Quick
Easy
Inexpensive
Fed back into design progress
Cons:
Arrange it yourself
Familiarity will introduce bias
Not scientific
Planning:
Introduce
State the goals
Profile test subjects
Subject screener
Outline methodology
Define tasks
Testing script
Post test survey
1 Hour Test:
5 min Intro
10 min interview
40 min tasks
5 min wrap-up
Keep tasks as open as possible
Keep testing until you start to get the same answers (5-10 people)
Doesn’t matter what you test as long as its early and regular.
Showing posts with label Professional Practice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Professional Practice. Show all posts
Career Pathways: Liquid LIght
For the next visit we went to a Brighton agency called Liquid Light. They gave us a good idea of the general working environment and the hiring practices of businesses, as well as how to prepare for an interview. Below are my notes from the presentation:
Always research companies before an interview and find out some of their clients.
Freelance can be much more exciting but there is much more security and defined career path.
Make sure that there is plenty of self motivated and outside work in your portfolio rather than just stuff done for uni.
The more you work in the field the more skill you be able to develop (make sure you’re always doing something).
When working as a designer most of the time you’ll be managing time and clients rather that actually designing.
Hiring freelancers into agency roles can be a good thing because they have experience in client facing work and making sure a project is on time and on budget.
Being self sustaining and thinking about other perspectives is a good thing.
There are plenty of stepping stones from design work into SEO roles, producing, strategy and project management.
Things are being tested before going live much more than before through extensive user testing.
Place more emphasis on actual quality of work rather then client profile.
Showing process in a portfolio can be useful, not just the final product.
Active engagement with social media, conferences and the digital world is also important.
Always research companies before an interview and find out some of their clients.
Freelance can be much more exciting but there is much more security and defined career path.
Make sure that there is plenty of self motivated and outside work in your portfolio rather than just stuff done for uni.
The more you work in the field the more skill you be able to develop (make sure you’re always doing something).
When working as a designer most of the time you’ll be managing time and clients rather that actually designing.
Hiring freelancers into agency roles can be a good thing because they have experience in client facing work and making sure a project is on time and on budget.
Being self sustaining and thinking about other perspectives is a good thing.
There are plenty of stepping stones from design work into SEO roles, producing, strategy and project management.
Things are being tested before going live much more than before through extensive user testing.
Place more emphasis on actual quality of work rather then client profile.
Showing process in a portfolio can be useful, not just the final product.
Active engagement with social media, conferences and the digital world is also important.
Career Pathways: Poke Visit
To give a better idea of what the professional world is like we had visits from people in the industry. The first was from an ex student of the course working at a company called Poke. He gave a very good presentation that clarified the structure of freelance vs agency vs running your business, below are my notes from his presentation:
Freelance:
+flexible
+own boss
-no career path
-high pressure
-no personal projects
Full time:
+part of a team
+time to develop
+start to finish on a project
+stability
-not the boss
-not flexible
Own business:
+you’re the boss
+choice of collaboration
+Satisfying
-Hard work
-High risk
-Need a good business mind
Looking for a job:
Find a good match for you in the business
Look for what agencies are doing
Follow on Twitter
Could they be your friend?
Could you work there?
Once you’ve found a place, get to know what they do
Tailor your portfolio
Have questions
Look at their portfolio
Outside Work:
Show them who you are
What do you do outside of Uni
Personal Projects
Qualities:
Be yourself
Arrogance is not key
Be passionate
Eager to learn
New
Being new can be good
Fresh pair of eyes
Portfolio
Clear
Show the best
Tailored
Show production
Personal Work:
Redesign things
Mock up
Design posters
Make up brands
Shows off qualities and skill set
Keep learning:
Learning never ends
Have no fear, you can look stuff up
Keeps things fun
When you start your way isn’t always best
Collaboration
Process negative feedback and learn from it
Freelance:
+flexible
+own boss
-no career path
-high pressure
-no personal projects
Full time:
+part of a team
+time to develop
+start to finish on a project
+stability
-not the boss
-not flexible
Own business:
+you’re the boss
+choice of collaboration
+Satisfying
-Hard work
-High risk
-Need a good business mind
Looking for a job:
Find a good match for you in the business
Look for what agencies are doing
Follow on Twitter
Could they be your friend?
Could you work there?
Once you’ve found a place, get to know what they do
Tailor your portfolio
Have questions
Look at their portfolio
Outside Work:
Show them who you are
What do you do outside of Uni
Personal Projects
Qualities:
Be yourself
Arrogance is not key
Be passionate
Eager to learn
New
Being new can be good
Fresh pair of eyes
Portfolio
Clear
Show the best
Tailored
Show production
Personal Work:
Redesign things
Mock up
Design posters
Make up brands
Shows off qualities and skill set
Keep learning:
Learning never ends
Have no fear, you can look stuff up
Keeps things fun
When you start your way isn’t always best
Collaboration
Process negative feedback and learn from it
Career Pathways
Now that I am graduating and heading into the world of employment, some research into potential jobs and career development would be very valuable. When I started this course I had very little idea of what field I'd like to specialise in, but over the the last 3 years my focus has narrowed significantly. After the first year, I started to lean slightly towards video work after the speech project but it wasn't until the second year animation project that I became more certain about a path in film/motion graphics. Over the third year I had the chance to do 2 projects that involved film work and motion graphics, furthering my interest and drive into the specialism.
After doing some research into the job and career path, I found some general expectations and requirements of employees. The vast majority of companies will require a Bachelors Degree and a strong, consistent portfolio, 2 things I think I will hopefully leave this course with. The field is also expected to grow around 6% over the next 10 years, making career prospects very hopeful.
Film work is something I'd also like to potentially get into as a career. As well as having a degree and a good portfolio, the standard career progression also involves starting as a runner while you get used to the environment of the industry. While I have been studying, I have been working as a freelance video production assistant so feel I like I have built up enough experience that starting as a runner won't be necessary.
The final option I would consider would be starting as a junior creative in a design agency, or in the design team of a larger agency. Over last summer I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work for several months on a design team as part of a technology PR company as a junior creative designer. I really enjoyed working in a wide variety of fields during my time there and I think a job like that could easily allow me to shift between specialisms very easily. After talking to a few people on the job, there some good career pathways available through a job like that, leading to something like a creative strategist or creative director. Creative strategist is something I would like to aim for in the long run as working with the overall strategy and roll-out of campaigns is something that really interests me.
After doing some research into the job and career path, I found some general expectations and requirements of employees. The vast majority of companies will require a Bachelors Degree and a strong, consistent portfolio, 2 things I think I will hopefully leave this course with. The field is also expected to grow around 6% over the next 10 years, making career prospects very hopeful.
Film work is something I'd also like to potentially get into as a career. As well as having a degree and a good portfolio, the standard career progression also involves starting as a runner while you get used to the environment of the industry. While I have been studying, I have been working as a freelance video production assistant so feel I like I have built up enough experience that starting as a runner won't be necessary.
The final option I would consider would be starting as a junior creative in a design agency, or in the design team of a larger agency. Over last summer I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work for several months on a design team as part of a technology PR company as a junior creative designer. I really enjoyed working in a wide variety of fields during my time there and I think a job like that could easily allow me to shift between specialisms very easily. After talking to a few people on the job, there some good career pathways available through a job like that, leading to something like a creative strategist or creative director. Creative strategist is something I would like to aim for in the long run as working with the overall strategy and roll-out of campaigns is something that really interests me.
Personal Promotion on Social Media
As part of my promotion attempts in the lead up to the transition between University and employment, I have decided to promote myself and my work on various social media. I have chosen to concentrate my efforts on LinkedIn and Twitter as they both have a mix of public outreach and pool of professional people.
For LinkedIn I went through all possible contacts, adding people I have worked with in the past as well as following relevant companies. This action didn't yield much success to begin with but eventually led to someone I added recommencing me for a job at a friends agency in London, making it a very successful activity.
For Twitter I went a slightly different route because of the colossal volume of people on there. After noticing how Twitter recommends followers to people based on mutual follows of people in your network, I decided the most effective way to gain exposure was to follow companies or large profiles that had many shared followers. After following Wired Sussex, Capacitor Creative and Bite Global, I managed to get a total of 16 people and companies in the creative and digital fields without having to follow them first. This was a massive change from the previous 2 that had followed me in the 3 years I've had my Twitter account.
A strange side effect of this was getting followed by 5 different video production companies on Instagram. I think this was down to me posting photos of me doing film work to my Twitter via Instagram. Although I didn't initially target Instagram I'm happy to have a more professional following on there.
For LinkedIn I went through all possible contacts, adding people I have worked with in the past as well as following relevant companies. This action didn't yield much success to begin with but eventually led to someone I added recommencing me for a job at a friends agency in London, making it a very successful activity.
For Twitter I went a slightly different route because of the colossal volume of people on there. After noticing how Twitter recommends followers to people based on mutual follows of people in your network, I decided the most effective way to gain exposure was to follow companies or large profiles that had many shared followers. After following Wired Sussex, Capacitor Creative and Bite Global, I managed to get a total of 16 people and companies in the creative and digital fields without having to follow them first. This was a massive change from the previous 2 that had followed me in the 3 years I've had my Twitter account.
A strange side effect of this was getting followed by 5 different video production companies on Instagram. I think this was down to me posting photos of me doing film work to my Twitter via Instagram. Although I didn't initially target Instagram I'm happy to have a more professional following on there.
Personal Promotion and Show Invites
Bite
This digital PR company based in London deals with a wide variety of technology based companies from Amazon to Sony. Over last summer I worked as a freelancer for them in the Content Lab department. I think it would be very useful for me to promote myself to them as they already have a good knowledge of my skills and abilities.
Nice Media
This more local video production company specialises in creating video content for education. After visiting them for a lecture I was able to see how they work and the the products they offer. I think inviting them to the show would be a good ideas because the sector they specialise in is growing very rapidly, meaning much more job opportunities.
Pegasus
Pegasus are a healthcare PR company that I currently do freelance work for. I plan to invite them to the show to increase my career and permanent job prospects there. I think it would be a good opportunity to show them the kind of work I do outside of my filming for the company.
Jellyfish
This Brighton based company would be a good one to promote myself to and invite to the show because they handle a wide range of digital services, much like our course. Although they do have a distinct creative team they also handle web and SEO based teams that should offer a wide range of potential jobs.
Kineo
Kineo are another e-learning company that offer a sever good career paths within their company and are very well integrated into the digital landscape and culture. They have not only hired several people from our course, but have already confirmed that several senior directors will already be attending our show.
BozBoz
A Hove based company, BozBoz are one of the fastest growing digital agencies in the South-east and are actively recruiting for new talent, making them ideal candidates to concentrate promotion for the show on. They were invited to the show last year but were unable to attend due to not being given enough notice.
Tilt
With a client list containing BP, RedBull and Nickelodeon, a company with such big links would be very valuable to have attend our show. They oversee and execute every part of the digital process so they should also be recruiting for a very varied range of roles in their company.
Misfit Creative
Another Brighton based company, Misfit Creative specialise in branding projects, taking on new brands as well as offshoots of more established companies. This company would be very good for anyone looking to specialise in company branding.
Jumpstart Productions
This company specialises in creating engaging short and feature length films on a small budget. They are very open to hiring graduates and have a track record of picking up very young film makers that match their aesthetic. This one would be good for people looking to get into film work.
Bliink
Anyone looking for career in content and creative strategy would find it very valuable to have this company in attendance. They not only cover the actual content creative but also deal with the overall strategy of how and what is rolled out. The are also very local to the show venue with increases the chances of them coming.
O-Motion
This company exclusively do motion graphics for film, tv and web. Although it's a very specific focus, there are quite a few people on our course (myself included) who specialise in this area, making them a good candidate to invite to the end of year show.
Fruit Media
Another Brighton based company that exclusively deals with video production. They have a client list including Nokia, Microsoft and the NHS, meaning they should have some high profile work to add to the portfolios of any new employees.
Butchers Hook
Butchers Hook do a range of products from film and TV to promotional material and animation. They have a focus on technology and music, ensuring a focussed career development. This company aren't as local as the others but are still worth targeting as guests to the show.
Atom Graphics
This company are a Brighton based group that produce motion graphics, animation and illustration. The style they gravitate towards is very similar to a lot of people on our course so I think they would very much enjoy our show if they were invited.
Crushed Creative
The final company I think will be worth inviting is Crushed Creative. They are a design agency that deal with typography, branding, video production, web and graphic design. They have an already large but growing team, meaning they might be looking to hire some new talent, being very local also puts them in the running as potential guests.
This digital PR company based in London deals with a wide variety of technology based companies from Amazon to Sony. Over last summer I worked as a freelancer for them in the Content Lab department. I think it would be very useful for me to promote myself to them as they already have a good knowledge of my skills and abilities.
Nice Media
This more local video production company specialises in creating video content for education. After visiting them for a lecture I was able to see how they work and the the products they offer. I think inviting them to the show would be a good ideas because the sector they specialise in is growing very rapidly, meaning much more job opportunities.
Pegasus
Pegasus are a healthcare PR company that I currently do freelance work for. I plan to invite them to the show to increase my career and permanent job prospects there. I think it would be a good opportunity to show them the kind of work I do outside of my filming for the company.
Jellyfish
This Brighton based company would be a good one to promote myself to and invite to the show because they handle a wide range of digital services, much like our course. Although they do have a distinct creative team they also handle web and SEO based teams that should offer a wide range of potential jobs.
Kineo
Kineo are another e-learning company that offer a sever good career paths within their company and are very well integrated into the digital landscape and culture. They have not only hired several people from our course, but have already confirmed that several senior directors will already be attending our show.
BozBoz
A Hove based company, BozBoz are one of the fastest growing digital agencies in the South-east and are actively recruiting for new talent, making them ideal candidates to concentrate promotion for the show on. They were invited to the show last year but were unable to attend due to not being given enough notice.
Tilt
With a client list containing BP, RedBull and Nickelodeon, a company with such big links would be very valuable to have attend our show. They oversee and execute every part of the digital process so they should also be recruiting for a very varied range of roles in their company.
Misfit Creative
Another Brighton based company, Misfit Creative specialise in branding projects, taking on new brands as well as offshoots of more established companies. This company would be very good for anyone looking to specialise in company branding.
Jumpstart Productions
This company specialises in creating engaging short and feature length films on a small budget. They are very open to hiring graduates and have a track record of picking up very young film makers that match their aesthetic. This one would be good for people looking to get into film work.
Bliink
Anyone looking for career in content and creative strategy would find it very valuable to have this company in attendance. They not only cover the actual content creative but also deal with the overall strategy of how and what is rolled out. The are also very local to the show venue with increases the chances of them coming.
O-Motion
This company exclusively do motion graphics for film, tv and web. Although it's a very specific focus, there are quite a few people on our course (myself included) who specialise in this area, making them a good candidate to invite to the end of year show.
Fruit Media
Another Brighton based company that exclusively deals with video production. They have a client list including Nokia, Microsoft and the NHS, meaning they should have some high profile work to add to the portfolios of any new employees.
Butchers Hook
Butchers Hook do a range of products from film and TV to promotional material and animation. They have a focus on technology and music, ensuring a focussed career development. This company aren't as local as the others but are still worth targeting as guests to the show.
Atom Graphics
This company are a Brighton based group that produce motion graphics, animation and illustration. The style they gravitate towards is very similar to a lot of people on our course so I think they would very much enjoy our show if they were invited.
Crushed Creative
The final company I think will be worth inviting is Crushed Creative. They are a design agency that deal with typography, branding, video production, web and graphic design. They have an already large but growing team, meaning they might be looking to hire some new talent, being very local also puts them in the running as potential guests.
Portfolio Research: Blur
Blur are a production company from Calfornia that carry out a wide range of digital production. I'm a big fan of their hyper-realisic 3d work and vfx for film and tv. Their site is quite dark and very heavy on visuals, which reflects their style very well. the site is slightly cumbersome to navigate due to the large amount of content but this is to be expected from a company that produces such a differing amount of media. Their implementation of social media links is one of the best I've seen, with a link to major profiles embedded at the the top of each page, as well as a link to their blog in the main menu.
Portfolio Research: Gmunk
Ever since watching him speak at Reasons to be Creative I have hugely inspired by the work of Bradley G Munkowitz (Gmunk). His very busy and a full on visual style is perfectly reflected by his personal website with its monospaced and computerised font, and finer tiling of all his work. The dark theme very carefully sticks to his work and showcases it very effectively. His heavily animated and very surreal visuals have always sparked my imagination by I feel like I am still lacking the skills needed to have his work make a noticeable influence on my work. Like my previous examples, he has chosen to put his social media links right at the bottom of his about page, but given his immense popularity I think it is the least of my worries.
Portfolio Research: Benedict Redgrove
One portfolio that really inspired my was Benedict Redgrove's professional work. He focusses mainly on product and location photography, and promotion based moving image. I'm a huge fan of his seemingly bleak but very emotionally involved photography work, along with his ability to create depth and drama to simple subjects without becoming overblown and cheesy. His very selective cropping of his images and massive depth of field are able to draw the viewer into the product photos in the same way a landscape photo by someone like Ansel Adams would. The selective cropping and very static camera positions also translate very well into his moving image work, his clips showcasing the sheet metal folding robots in particular impressed me with how many emotions are imparted into the very wooden and mechanical movements.
His portfolio design reflects his work very well with its simple and minimal qualities, making sure the viewer focusses on his work rather than his portfolios design. One aspect that it fails in my opinion is its presentation of social media links. Rather than placing them on the home page as icons we buried them at the bottom of his about page.
Portfolio Website
As part of our Professional Practice part 2 module we were asked to create a live and responsive portfolio website. As I already have a portfolio site that is powered by Tumblr, I took this opportunity to move my content over to my CMS of choice, Wordpress. My main reason for this is that although things like domain redirection, posting and themes are fairly simple, the sites functionality pretty much ends there. I would have liked to add a proper content form and a twitter feed to my original portfolio but these things were either impossible, or had very bad implementation.
At first I considered using Squarespace to move my work to but after signing up and moving some of my content in I found that there is no cheap option to maintain a fully featured site. Although the themes and plug-ins are very well thought out and designed I wanted to keep it as cost effective as possible.
The next option I looked at was Wix but I found the interface for managing the content very hard to use, something which is a deal beaker for me. I did use Wix for my very first portfolio about 5 years ago but at that point I wasn't aware of anything else.
After settling on Wordpress for its flexibility and familiarity I investigated how to set it up using my existing domain registration company. This method turned out to be fairly costly (about £30 a month) so I started to investigate other methods. After doing some thinking I decided to run my own server from home and use my existing internet provider to save myself some money.
As my main computer is my laptop, which comes out of the house and isn't always on, I went for the option of using my Raspberry Pi to be the location of my server. The main advantages of doing so are reduced cost, very small size and the fact that is runs a very light-weight Linux already making server installation very easy.
Once I had my Raspberry Pi up and running an optimised version of Debian (Raspbian) the first thing I need to do was change my hosts file to include an entry for my pre registered domain.
The next step was to install Apache2, a very well documented HTTP server software package that will form the base of my portfolio site. To install this and 2 preference changes that enable https secure browsing, I entered the following commands into the Debian command line interface:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo a2enmod sslNow that I had Apache2 installed on my server I needed to change the override properties in 2 files to allow Wordpress to make changes to the files that my server will utilise. These apply to the rewrite properties of both standard http browsing as well as https (SSL) files, allowing Wordpress to make the necessary changes it needs to. To do this I opened the text files in the GUI interface containing the preferences for both, using the 'sudo leafpad' command and changed the AllowOverride parameters to "All"
sudo a2ensite default-ssl
Now that the base software was running the next step was to install the software that Wordpress required to function correctly, the first being PHP. To intstall PHP and enable PHP cache to speed up loading times I entered the following commands into the command line interface:
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5sudo apt-get install php5-mysql
sudo apt-get install php-apc
MySQL database software was also installed using the following command:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client
In order to easily set up and maintain my sites PHP I also installed myPHPadmin so I could use a GUI to change and add records.
The next step was to download, install and copy Wordpress into the right directory using the following commands:
tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz
cd wordpress
sudo cp -r * /var/www/
I then created a new user with full permissions in myPHPAdmin along with a matching database, which I then transferred the details of into my 'wp-config' file (I have omitted the actual details for obvious security reasons).
To finalise my Wordpress account I headed over to http://192.168.1.238/wp-admin/install.php where I created my account, logged in and proceeded to my dashboard.
Now that everything was set up and running nicely I went about searching for a theme to use. At first I considered using Hueman, which I used for my first Wordpress project due to my familiarity to it but eventually decided against it. This was because its a very general theme with a skew towards events and site with lots of info to display at once and want my site site to look much cleaner.
After trawling many portfolio theme round-ups I found one I really liked called Stanley. it is a purpose built portfolio theme with plenty of great features baked in like portfolio grids and contact forms. It also has a very clean-cut look which I think will complement my existing work very well.
Once I have added all the content from my previous site to the new Wordpress powered one all that remains is to change the DNS records on my existing domain to point to my new server. I will provide a short update on this towards the end of the project to show my progress.
Overall I have found this experience quite a steep learning curve as I previously struggled with file management through a command line interface. I think it has forced me to learn much more about how websites function as well as visualising folder structures and getting a better grasp on different commands and how they work. I found it especially satisfying being able to look at the actual server space that is hosting my personal portfolio.
Evaluation
Overall I'm really pleased with how this part of the professional practice brief has gone. I've really enjoyed working as part of a group and I feel like we've been very decisive in coming up with a consistent style and executing it. I think our branding and promo video have been received fairly well and hopefully they stand a good chance of being chosen as the final style. Below is the final version of our promo video:
Poster Crit
Now that Ani and Connor have finished their designs for the posters we submitted several different options for our class crit to help decide which to use. After showing the class they seemed to agree on using the plain green balloons which were also my preference.
Titles
The next step was adding titles to the promo and correcting the colour to make it look more appealing than what comes straight out of the camera. To make sure the branding stayed consistent I used the font Lato light which Connor had used for his post drafts.
In terms of colour grading I just used a simple contrast adjustment, curves adjustment and then used the tint function to add some split toning to the footage.
In terms of colour grading I just used a simple contrast adjustment, curves adjustment and then used the tint function to add some split toning to the footage.
Keying Out
Now that the footage was edited in Premiere Pro I then imported the project into After Effects to begin the process of keying out the green parts. The first step was to apply a colour balance effect to each clip and reduce the amount of green in the highlights in the backdrop to ensure a cleaner keying. I then used Keylight 1.2 as before to remove the green parts we needed to, with a slight adjustment on the black and white clipping levels to clean things up.
Stock clips of surreal visualisations, space time-lapses, static glitches and macro shots of colour changing glitter balls were then placed in the layer below to finish off our desired effect.
Editing
Once all the footage was shot I imported all the clips into Premiere Pro. This was my NLE of choice for this project because it's easy to import edited project files created in Premiere Pro into After Effects for keying out and other effects. Some clips were also slowed down using the interpret footage feature which brings them down from the 50fps they were shot at to the 25 of the project file, resulting in slow motion effect.
Wax Titles
For our end title we came up with the idea of doing a kind batik-style physical title using white wax on white paper with coloured liquid thrown over the top to reveal the lettering. For this we did a short test inside and then headed outside to film a larger scale version. It didn't turn out as clearly as I'd hoped due to the ground being to uneven for water to drain away but it is still clear enough to be legible.
Filming
Today we filmed all of our studio shots using the items we bough previously. As the studio didn't have any continuous lighting available in the right white balance for video I brought in my lighting as well as my camera equipment for filming. Ollie also brought in his 7D which we did most of the filming on because it can record a higher bitrate on CF cards. For actors we all took a turn a standing in various shots with me and Ollie doing the camera operation.
Overall it went really well and we got pretty much every shot we needed apart from the messy ones that will need to be done outside later this week. I think the relaxed and freer attitude to filmed really helped us experiment with shots a lot more and I think the footage we shot benefited from that greatly. Below is a short video showing what we did during our time in the studio.
Testing
While we were waiting for our studio booking to come around we thought it would be a good idea to do a quick test of the concept. To do this I put some of the green felt we bought into my mouth and filmed me opening it with my phone. This footage was then imported into After Effects and the green was keyed out Using Keylight 1.2. A simple GIF of a lightning strike in slo motion was then added to the background layer. Overall the test was a great success and although it was fairly low quality I'm fairly hopeful of how our footage will turn out in the studio.
Thumbnailing
Before filming Ani decided to draw up some thumbnails that will help us with composition and remembering which which shots to film and how. We decided not to do a detailed storyboard as it made more sense to keep things quite loose for such a short video and work our timings and spacing out in the editing process, depending on how we film things.
Shopping
Now that we had our ideas list of what shots we needed to fill we went shopping and bought the following:
- Green bag
- Icing sugar
- Food colouring
- Green table cloth
- Confetti
- Green shower gel
- Spray paint
- Green Felt
- Paper
- Green Balloons
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