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Digital Media Design: D&AD

For this project I chose to do the E4 Monday Night Movie Ident, this requires a 30 second ident and one 5 second sting.

Brief:
Create a TV promo for E4 publicising their Monday Night Movie Strand.

Target Audience:
E4’s audience are young and savvy.They come to E4 for a good dose of escapist entertainment. Some of it is brand defining, high quality and innovative – shows like DeadSet, Skins and The Inbetweeners,whilst some of it is good fodder for when you want to chill out – a classic episode of Friends anyone? E4’s viewers have a strong relationship withthe channel but increasingly spendtheir time media stacking – watchingTV whilst texting, or hanging outon social networks. It is harder and harder to getviewers’ attention…

Sources of inspiration
I've watched some of the current E4 movie night idents on TV and have noticed that E4 in general has a recurring theme. It usually has wacky, obscure humour that is targeted at teenagers, 16-30.

The current E4 Movie Night ident uses a very cartoony style yet also looks like a design for a tshirt. It is exaggerated and entertaining to watch, I feel that is what E4 is all about wacky, new but overall just fun to watch.

Digital Media Design: Design for Interaction

Our latest brief we have been set is requiring us to design and develop an interactive product. This could be an interactive website, game, interactive art piece, a non linear storyline or an installment. The aim is to to explore and create something original that creates interaction with the user.

First I began to look at the various ways we can interact with technology.

• Touch Screen
• Use of Narrative
• Gaming
• Motion Sensors
• Haptics (rumble features in controllers)
• Simulators
• Forums and chats (msn, yahoo messenger etc)

Interactivity is more apparent in different mediums in others for example there is interaction when looking at an art piece, but this may not seem too obvious. When playing games immediately interaction comes to mind as it engages the user.

What is interactivity?

Interactivity is a common thing, we interact with people and objects everyday, whether its simply conversing with someone to using a computer. The area of interactivity im going to explore is person to computer interaction, a dialog that occurs between a human being and a computer program. There are many ways now we communicate and control computers as we use computers so frequently, whether is checking email or buying train tickets, using computers has become very important. A good example why human to computer interaction has also become more apprarent is the iPhone. We would originally just use phones for its one purpose, to communicate to another over long distance, however now the mobile phone has many more functions. The iPhone can use internet, take pictures, run games, play music, video etc. Years ago we would use a different device to do each of these things now it is all available on one single device.

Also more recently consoles have taken a different turn, originally consoles would be controlled by using buttons however now all consoles are trying new and different way to make a more fun and innovative way of playing games. Nintendo Wii was the first big console to rely totally on motion sensor control, older consoles such as the snes did try to use different methods of controlling however wasn't very popular due to bad functionality. Only recently have the other consoles begun to implement new interactive ways of playing as the Nintendo Wii did so well in the gaming market. Playstation 3 released a new Eyetoy and the Xbox 360 will soon be releasing Natal a full body motion sensor.

Xbox 360 Natal: Milo

PS3 Eyepet

EyePet interaction from antjeverena on Vimeo.

The new Project Natal is really pushing the technology forward with the all-sensor control, this will enable people to immediately play without having to learn controls.

Arduino Boards

"Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or it can be connected to a host computer."

Arduino Boards have become very popular when creating new and interactive projects, the can enable to code and have control for motion sensors, lights, movement etc. I found a website that showed some of the top examples of using a Arduino Board and some of the results are truly spectacular.

http://hacknmod.com/hack/top-40-arduino-projects-of-the-web/

Here are some examples I liked:

Both of these are run by using Arduino boards to process the information, by using the program "Processing" you can function many different things. The first one, "The Lazer Harp" i really liked changing the way you interact and play with an instrument. By replacing the instrument with lights you can wave through creating sounds makes a fresh and innovative idea that could be developed further and possibly change the way we play music, there are plenty of music controllers but this one looks fun to play with and also not too complex, it's immediately obvious how you play with it.

The second idea, "Etch-a-Sketch" clock also caught my eye. The arduino board reads the time and feeds the information to the Etch-a-Sketch, it then draws out the time.

Touch Screens

"A touchscreen is a display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touch or contact to the display of the device by a finger or hand."

Touchscreens have been around for a while its only till recently they became more public in the 90's. They were first developed by a company called "Elographics" in the 70's and became popular in the 90's. We've been using them ever since at train stations, self service checkouts in supermarkets. The games company Nintendo decided to make a touch screen based handheld that is controlled by using a stylus. This handheld proved to be very popular as people crave for new forms of interaction.

Here's an example of where touch screen control is going. This product is a touch screen table being developed by Microsoft, it works very much like the iPhone though with some additional features. The touch screen table has a feature where you can place a mobile phone or camera onto the table and it automatically connects with the device displaying pictures and various other details, a very simple and efficient way of file transfer. The table could also be used commercially, for a restaurant as it has features such as bill payment, and menus which would bring on a whole new take of eating out.

Interactive Narrative

Narrative can also be a form of interaction and has been around for a while. Books I read years ago as a child had interactive narrative, the Goosebump series for example, the story would be split up randomly on different pages, as you progress through the story you can make decisions this would lead to a different page and each route you take there is a different ending for each route. However when talking about digital artefacts and games Interactive Narrative is still new and upcoming. A games company called Quantic Dream's is developing a game that is creating a lot of hype. The game is called Heavy Rain and has been described as an "interactive drama" the game plays out like any other game however depending on what decisions you make the story and ending outcome differs. This is new to the gaming scene as most games play out as a strict set linear path.

Heavy Rain

This is just one of the character's storylines, if this character dies the story continues, this is also new in gaming.

Digital Media Design: Viral Ad

For this project I am to produce a Viral Advert for a company that produces a new equivalent to bottled water. Aquapax is an eco-friendly and aware company that produces drinking water sold in cartons that has been proven to resist any substances that could possibly pass through, plastics on the other hand can be contaminated. The water is from Hoher flaming spring in a german nature reserve and is better drinking water than both Evian and Volvic.

I have first begun by looking into what Viral Ads are and what they achieve.
" marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives"
When I think of Viral Ads what first comes to mind is videos on Youtube, amateur videos that have been bought by large companies and spread over Youtube and later appear on TV to gain high popularity and viewings. Here is an example I found of a Viral Ad:

This video has achieved over 4,000,000 hits, usually videos like this that are either funny or shocking tend to get attention. Here is another video of a viral ad however this one conveys a serious message:

These videos become virally popular as people spread these videos over YouTube and the more entertaining or shocking these videos are the more views the videos will recieve. It is the type of videos that are uploaded where people will comment saying "Is this video real?", these adverts are bought by companies and linked to their product to get plenty of attention.

I began first by thinking of ideas of how I could somehow relate a funny viral ad and the product, Aquapax. The carton is an alternative to the plastic bottle and is better than one in many ways. I though of using the plastic bottle as something that would make it look lower than the Aquapax or using the plastic bottle for something comical. I began to sketch out some ideas and came up with the idea of using plastic bottles as a "board" (see images below). This concept came about when I was exploring YouTube for inspiration, i saw some badly filmed footage of people riding on a small plastic bottle, and thought I could do better by actually making a board. The storyboard goes as follows: The rider is with friends, takes aquapax bottle and drinks, starts riding plastic bottle board, trips and falls off, friends run towards boarder laughing, caption appears. The caption I decided to go with in the end was "Plastic bottles are dangerous to the environment..." and as i fall off the next part of the caption fades in, "...and to yourself".

I enjoyed producing this piece of footage however I scrapped the idea as I wanted something that looked more appealing, I felt that it was slightly lacking so I went back to the drawing board..

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