Changing to Stop motion/ Planning and 5 hours of work

Since Last time I blogged, we have made ALOT of progress.

We managed to get all the content needed to build our website, by taking various photographs and creating a our walking experience video.

After editing the video in Final Cut Pro, we decided that it was too jittery and jumpy, so we decided to make it smoother looking by opting to create a stop motion of our walk.

I personally went up onto the Barbican last Wednesday and did this by using a Nikon D80.

Once, we had the final footage we needed we all met in the web designing room to start the planning of our website pages.

Our idea changed quite a lot, as we went from wanting to make the video interactive so the viewer could choose which way to go, to just making the front homepage interactive and using different slices over a particular picture we took of the water front.

We then made these slices into separate pages, which gave you information about a handful of the shops/cafes/bars on the Barbican as well as some of the Barbican's history and the Mayflower steps.

We only decided to pick the most popular places on the Barbican to give the person a taster of what is there and where they could go if they decided to go there.

After a lot of time creating the slices and making them into separate pages, we placed a START button in the right hand lower corner of our homepage which takes you to our stop motion video.

The process, of the video consisted of uploaded it from the camera card into flash, changing the image formats from NEF's to JPEG's and changing the resolution of the pictures, so they didn't turn out to be pix-elated.

Once it was all uploaded we reversed the image frames so they played in the correct order then started work on creating a backing soundtrack to loop in the background.

We did this by using Garage band were we decided to choose a plain and simple acoustic guitar loop, which we thought complemented the video.

This was then converted to an MP3 format and saved and copied to one of our memory sticks. We then opened it up onto the same computer used to build the website and added the music into flash, which we then sped up and put on a loop to match the video.

We then created a linking page from the homepage to the video which allows you to decide to go back to the starting homepage after you have watched it. We then added this link to all other 6 pages we created.

This was the final touches to the website, we made sure it worked by previewing it in safari, which it did and were very very pleased with the outcome. :D

Our day on the Barbican

Today we managed to go onto the Barbican, have a look around and take some photographs, Faye's going to post them up on Facebook shortly so i'll get a link and post that up shortly.

We managed to look around and see what we wanted to film, and decided it would be a good idea to film it like we were doing a virtual tour of the Barbican, we took it in turns with the camera and found a good walking route, where you could see all the different shops and restaurants.

We filmed inside a few places as well, for example, The House That Jack Built, and one of the traditional sweet shops to really get a feel of the place, we also took pictures inside a place were we went and got a drink.

After, we had collected all our filming, we walked back the to Scott building to start our editing. We broke down the sequence, in order to be able to edit in option buttons later on, and sped some of the footage up. We adjusted the sound and made sure it wasn't out of time, we also edited out parts of us talking and the rustles that happened around us.

Now, we have our images and footage, it's a case of showing Mark on Thursday/Friday and see what he thinks...how we can improve it.

Then we can get on deciding which software to use to create the site in, whether we choose fireworks or dreamwever.

I shall keep you up too date.....

Our first tutorial with Mark..

So yesterday we had our first tutorial with Mark James. Here we discussed our possible ideas, and the one we were kind of set on which was the Barbican one. Although it seemed like a good idea at the time, after having spoken to Mark about our idea, we have decided to take a different approach on it. After, concluding that it would be for tourists rather then an "experience" that anyone could have when going on the website, we decided that instead of asking the public questions of where they like to go and what they like to do, we decided to change it so it was more personal to us.

Today, our aim is to get out a D80 and an camcorder and take a trip to the Barbican and see what appeals to us. Hopefully, by the end of the day we shall have more of a basic layout of our idea, some photographs of the place and more content to work with.

We will be looking out for key areas or activities to see how we could make it interactive for someone who has never been there before.

I also thought it would be a good idea to possibly go on one of the boat trips which runs too and fro the Mayflower steps which is a historic part of the Barbican, whether we do that or not, I'm not sure but I'll post a new blog tonight to tell you how we did.

The sun shining so hopefully it should be a good day!! :D

Word of PlyMouth- Module 116

This is my First online blogging project for module 116.

Our aim is to produce a fully working, interactive website based on a place in Plymouth.

Our deadline: Thursday 31st March.

Ideas:

Me and my group met up this week and spoke about possible ideas,

and this is what we got!

1. The Hoe
2. The Barbican
3. Big-bury beach
4. Plym-Bridge woods
5. Places to eat in Plymouth specializing in one place
6. Civic Centre
7. Jenny Cliff
8. Crownhill

After much deliberation and frustration we decided that the Barbican would be the best place to look into. We thought about it's pros and cons of using it as a place to base our website on:

Pros:

• It has a new/old part
• Lots of places to eat/see
• Lots of things to do, e.g the Aquarium, the antiques museum they have, boat tours, sailing and diving, swimming.
• Right by the seafront
• tourist place to visit
• History
• Place for old and young people
• Something for everyone
• Night life

Cons:

• A vast place
• Gets busy

We decided that the Barbican was a perfect place to feature our website on.

Development of Idea:

Thinking the project through, we came up with a good idea, to involve the public and get an honest opinion of the place from the people of Plymouth. Our idea was to ask ONE question PER PERSON and film it, in a particular place on the Barbican, for example, on the mayflower steps or next to "The Big Carpe" which is one of the Barbican's main domineering features. We would ask them questions such as, Where's your favorite place to eat on the Barbican?, Where do you like to drink? Have you ever been to the Aquarium, if so what was it like?

I think it's important to be able to get the views of the people of Plymouth as to what they think of the place and where they like to on a day out, this makes it seem more real and inviting to tourists who may have never been to the Barbican before. It could also just inform those who already live in Plymouth of a good place to eat where they may have never tried before.

The Idea for the website is to create the questions and ask a handful of people, videoing them in an informal interview stlye, these will then be uploaded and imported to our website on to a grid. There will be categories also for example:

Food, Drinks, Activities, Night Life, Photographs etc.

There will also be useful links to websites which are mentioned in the videos, so people on the site can access them to find out more information if they are interested.

The NAME of our website is going to look like this:

Word of

PlyMouth

A play on the words of "Word of mouth" as it's literally like having a conversation with a local, which I think gives it a nice friendly touch.

A prototype of the website has taken place, using the software, Dreamwever. However, it is still early days and our next step is to rent out a camera and find out spot on the Barbican. Take some photographs of its surroundings, and think up the questions we will be asking the public....