Videocopilot

An extremely useful website for creation of digital effects is videocopilot, it helped me to create my Ident through it's online tutorials, guidance and downloadable packs of how to use adobe after effects. it is hosted by Andrew Kramer.



The site has a range of adobe after effect tutorials and even has their finished products on show so you know what you'll be making exactly from the start.

The site: http://www.videocopilot.net/

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Adobe After Effects

Adobe After effects is video editting software specified in constructing special effects in videos, these can range from a simple lense flare to slowing time in certain parts to even creating a entire virtual scenario in a scene.



I used Adobe After effects to create my Video Identification (Ident).

Evaluation - How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the project I used many media technologies such as Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Fireworks and the internet and word, the internet was an essential tool as I used it in order to research information necessary to creating a website, as well as being able to create and update my blog and look for other ideas and websites. The main tool I used for the website design was Dreamweaver 8.0, which is website creation software, through this programme I was able to construct the most part of my website.

Photoshop CS3 was also fundamental to the websites design for creating images and buttons seen on the site. For my ancillary tasks I also used Photoshop and fireworks 8.0 to create each task. In the construction of my website, I found it important to use a combination of these tools together in order to get the results I wanted. I was allowed to be given a laptop that had these programmes installed onto it as I do not have these programmes on my home computer.
Adobe software was the key component in the construction of my website, particularly for construction of my Secondary tasks such as the Ident and Advertisement. My Ident was created through Adobe after effects, through using Adobe after effects and the help of the website Videocopilot, I was able to create a working animation of my channels symbol.

The creation of the Ident was quite difficult, but taught me a lot about using the software from setting up different layer types, to creating time stamps in order to animate properly, animating layers to create water like skins, lens flaring etc.
Photoshop was useful for creating a newspaper advertisement, as there is only small space on newspapers for an advertisement, I decided to go with a similar looking design that would emphasise more on colour than size or complexity, as newspapers are of course mostly black and white with the exception of other advertisements and article images.

The internet was obviously a vital tool for my research, from it I was able to find many different examples of websites over the internet to help me gather ideas for my own. Through research I learnt that there are different genres of websites from minimalistic, Colourful, business, informative and so on. I was also able to use the internet to find out ways in order to construct my website on Dreamweaver.
Blogger itself has been a very useful tool in its use of categorizing, archiving and helping me to plan my site and to calendar my progression throughout the project. I have been able to input images and movies of my products. Also using the blog has allowed me to see what other students have been doing, even if I am doing a separate project type to the majority, if not all, of the other media students in my class, I can still see what kind of input they are adding into their work and take it out of context and into my own.

Evaluation - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

From my audience feedback I learnt that my website was in need of a few things, the website colour scheme was vital to keeping similar throughout the whole theme of the products so as to let the viewer see the continuity between the products, further symbolizing them to be all part of the same collaboration. The main criticism of my website is that it is in need of interactive activities within it.

Evaluation - How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think that my ancillary tasks together with my main combined together well, I think one of the most important points to keep in mind whilst making the ancillary tasks was to make sure they all followed a similar theme and colour scheme, so that the viewer would be able to quickly distinguish the products and would know that they are all connected to one another, there were two ancillary tasks, one to advertise the website within a newspaper and the other to give a listing of shows on a television guide style magazine. I made sure the information on both tasks was relevant and connected to each other in order to create a good convergence. I think my Ident in particular will be very effective as it converges very nicely with the colouring of the website, as well as it looking professional and authentic.

My ident and website in particular have a good theme synergy as they are both the same colour and look as if they fit together nicely.

The ident has definitely served its purpose of being an identification tag for my new channel; It is short, interesting and does catch the eye of the audience. I have also found that the ident can be a very good brand identity due to its professional look and simple layout.
My newspaper advertisement works well for its purpose, it is a simple and easy to understand design, indicating what genre of channel it is at first sight, it’s colour set is similar to that of the website and ident but I did want to make it show out a little more with bolder colours in order to attract the attention of the audience in newspapers through all the other advertisements.

I think combined that all of these project pieces together make quite a effective unifying theme, following the same themes, giving the audience a sense of familiarity with each of the parts, this is important to do in order to make the whole product look much more genuine, believable and professional. Giving it a much stronger unison in and looking like a official brand.

Evaluation - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My websites conventions are primarily based on how other successful channel websites work, such as E4, Sky and BBC, I do not believe that for a website to challenge normal forms and conventions when its main purpose is to distribute information about something as this would in only make the website harder to understand and so consequentially make the information wanted take longer to get to for the websites audience.
Typical conventions of website include website design and layout, probably the most striking and crucial part of making a website, whilst the site must look appealing and eye catching, it is also important to remember layout so that the website is easy for the audience to navigate and use.

Consistency throughout the website is another convention, if the site does not look the same through theme and colour then the audience will be confused and won’t be persuaded that the site is serious as it does not look professional. The websites content structuring links onto design and layout, the typical website will have navigational areas, in particular these can be found on the sides and/or top of the page, when this is common knowledge to the audience, they will automatically expect the sites navigation to be similar to the convention of other websites, if they do not find the navigation part of a site in these places or even in a new place that is just as easy to spot, they will become frustrated and bored of the site very quickly.
My Ident also followed the conventions of the genre, as this is the callsign of the channel, it also becomes a symbol for the whole product. Idents (Channel Identifications) usually come just after the adverts and before a programme starts, they often last for a few seconds to that of a whole advert (around 30 second). Sometimes they have a voice over stating what is on the channel next as they are playing. My Ident is quite simple and its complete version lasts for around twelve seconds. But it follows all these conventions and is eye catching and interesting visually as well as audio wise.
My advert I felt would be best not following normal convention as you do not want something that you want to be eye catching to look the same as many others of its kind.