Thursday, 19 January 2017

Assignment 2 - Devise and create a digital video sequence for use in an interactive media.

Unit 62 Digital Video Production for Interactive Media Production By Claire Peak.

Assignment 2 - Devise and create a digital video sequence for use in an interactive media.


Task 1: Some brainstorming ideas for the gingerbread man story:

Film a boy in a ginger wig and call the story: The ginger haired boy!

Buy a Onesie with gingerbread on it and film someone wearing it and they are the gingerbread man.
Use some real gingerbread men and put them on sticks and film their movements.

The Gingerbread Man is an illustrated story of the Gingerbread Man.  This traditional story is ideal for use as a literary text in schools as well as at home.

 An online story of the gingerbread man is available at: http://www.topmarks.co.uk/stories/GingerbreadMan.aspx

And animated Fairy Tale story on YouTube can be found at: https://youtu.be/U89dkGrsYZY


I have decided to make an interactive short film about The Gingerbread Man.


The Gingerbread Man by Claire Peak

Once upon a time a young girl lived in a farmhouse.
One day a girl decides to cook some gingerbread men. She uses some sugar icing for the eyes, mouth and buttons on his jacket.

Interactive element:
What type of flour does the girl use to make the Gingerbread Men? Answer Plain or Self-Raising!

As soon as they are cooked, she notices that one of the gingerbread men is slightly larger than the other, so she puts the large one in a tin.

Interactive element:
Identify which one of the gingerbread men is larger than the other? Make a choice.

Just before she closes the tin, the gingerbread man jumps out of the tin and exclaims: “Don’t eat me!  Don’t eat me!”

The girl runs out of her kitchen and shouts: “Stop!”  But the gingerbread man runs even faster singing “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man.”

Interactive element:
Which direction does the Gingerbread man run in, left or right? If you choose left he runs out of the window, if you choose right he runs out the front door.

The Gingerbread man meets a goose and the Goose says: “Stop, I want to eat you”, but the gingerbread man keeps on running.

He runs across the field and says: “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man.”

Then the gingerbread man comes across a dog and the dog is too quick for the gingerbread man, and opens his mouth and gobbles up the gingerbread man!

“Poor Gingerbread Man!”

The End.


I have decided to shoot this short interactive fairytale story for children with a Sony FS100 camera.  The location for this story is at my home on the farm, a perfect place to tell the story.  There will be one person playing the role of the girl and I will use real gingerbread men on sticks to play the role of the gingerbread man.  Using a gingerbread man on a stick will allow me to capture the gingerbread mans movement for example when he runs away from the girl and runs out the back door and into the garden where he will meet a goose, one of the animals I have at my home. This will be interesting to shoot as I hope the goose will be hungry. I know that when the gingerbread man meets my dog the dog will eat the gingerbread biscuit so there won’t be too many problems.  The story is short but will be full of effective shots. I feel excited about this project.


Who wrote the Gingerbread Man?

Although the tale was not an original work, in May of 1875, “The Gingerbread Boy” was printed for the first time in St.Nicholas Magazine.  Before this print copy, “The Gingerbread Boy” was a  traditional tale that was spread verbally from one to another.

As the years have passed many authors have put their own spin on “The Gingerbread Boy” to create inventive childrens tales.  Today, the story is commonly referred to as “The Gingerbread Man.”  The tale is of a couple who has no kids and bakes a gingerbread boy only for him to dash away.  The boy likes bragging and is certain he can escape every obstacle.


What is the moral of the story in “The Gingerbread Man?”

"The Gingerbread Man" explores possession and what really makes something someone's possession. Throughout the story, people keep acting like they are the owners of the gingerbread man.

This is a children's fairy tale and it seeks to help children learn that not everything belongs to them. For example, if a child has a video game that they play often, their parents can take it away for bad behaviour or bad grades. Just because they are currently in possession of something, it does not mean that they will always retain possession. Another moral is that just because someone wants something, it does not mean that they can have it.


I will use Interlude or Youtube to produce my interactive story and will make it effective in a child friendly way. I will change the narrative slightly from the original story and I will source clips and shoot my own story including an interactive element.

 
Snow White: Megan, Claire and Josie.

Pre-Production:

1. Producer is Josie who will be in charge of the risk assessment.
2. Story Developer is Megan
3. Production Designer is Claire in charge of mood board, colour palette, costume design and Location design.


Production:

1. Director is Megan.  Director in charge of locations, lighting, costumes, actors and props during filming also in charge of continuity.

2. Sound role will be Claire.  Recording sound/sound quality control.

3. Cinematography will be Josie. In charge of Filming, director of photography.

We will be filming at Megans House and there are some woods nearby where we will film snow white. We need some crowns for the King and Queen, two capes and i have ordered a fancy dress costume from ASDA for snow white.  We have asked a member of our class to play the role of Snow White and they have agreed.


Casting:

King: Megan

Queen: Sara

Snow White: Adriana who is not available on Monday 12th and Sunday 18th December so we will need to shoot our film on a day that she can make it.

 Evil Queen: Claire Peak

Huntsman: Josie

Dwarf: Konrad

Narrator: Megan will take on this role to make the story more child friendly. 



Production Design:


Mood Board:


This image of Snow White will be similar to the photographs and shots we will be taking and filming in our SnowWhite interactive film.  We have chosen to keep her outfit the same as in the traditional story of Snow White, so it will be easier to understand and this will be necessary as it is aimed at Children who are the main target audience.

I liked this image of the evil queen below, giving the apple to Snow White. We hope to reenact this scene in our project!



Snow White is a famous fairytale story.


There are many adaptations of the story of Snow White. There is the Disney film of Snow White  shown above.




Above, another story of Snow White featuring the Evil Queen.

And finally The famous story of Snow White and The Huntsman.  This film featured some famous people who starred in the film making it a very popular story.




I am in charge of Production Design so I will be the production designer and create some ideas for costumes the actors will wear in the interactive Snow White film.


Costumes:
We have decided to keep our costumes traditional and recognisable for a children's story. Not all
costumes are traditional as they are difficult to get hold of but they will be smart.


The image below is of a Queen. We will make our actor look like a Queen by making them wear a crown and a cape. This should make the audience aware that the Queen is an important figure in the story of Snow White and Children should be able to identify with the character as The Queen is featured in the fairytale story of Snow White.







The image above is of a King. The actor playing the role of the King will also be wearing a crown and a Cloak.

We will need two crowns and a couple of capes for the roles of the King and Queen at the beginning of the story. 


These two crowns will be similar to the ones we use for the King and Queen to wear at the beginning of the story.





Snow White's Costume:


 
This is our snow white costume that our actress Adriana will wear to play the part of snow white. Our group decided in order for our film to work we would need to use child friendly costumes so that the children who watch this interactive story will relate with the characters they are familiar with in the story keeping it traditional. The costume is brightly coloured and will hopefully capture the imagination of the children who watch it. 
As a group we decided to buy a snow white fancy dress costume from ASDA's which cost us £20.  We think this is a good idea as it will be effective in presenting an interesting and colourful film aimed at children who will be engaged with a fairytale theme.





These images of cloaks will be the type of cloaks we will use in our Snow White Story. The King and Queen will be wearing these capes in the film we are making.



Colour Palettes:

Snow Whites colour palette has an array of colours, so skin colour, she wears a blue, red and yellow dress which is bright and colourful and the rest of the colours are found in her scenery, the animals and the grass.


Below is a picture of our Snow White:


The Evil Queen's Outfit and Colour Palette:
The Evil Queen will wear smart clothes in keeping with the original colour scheme of the story of Snow White. So the actor will need to wear something purple as that is one of the main colours used to represent the queen. Also she will wear a crown to symbolise she is a Queen.


Colour Palette for The Dwarf:

There will only be one dwarf in our story of Snow White. We have decided he will be wearing a smart outfit with a smart shirt and a blue waistcoat. This example is of Happy the Dwarf. The colours are red, brown and blue, but we will make our dwarf appear smart.
The huntsman will be a female instead of a male and she wear a checked shirt, jacket, jeans and boots to fit in with her character.




Location Design:












The location for Snow White will be at Megans House in Welwyn Garden City.  We have chosen to shoot the film at Megan's house because she lives in a smart looking house which would be ideal for the set of our film.  For example, the King and Queen scene will be set inside her living room which has a rusty colour scheme. Her living room has large sliding doors which may help us to create a dramatic effect.
 Also we will shoot some of the film in the woods near her house and this is convenient for the filming as it is close by. For example when the Huntsman's scene takes place when he has two choices either to kill snow white or let her go. In version 1, he would kill her, try to but fail and in the second version he would let her go like in the original story of Snow White.  We will need the scene to be in the wooded area to make it effective.


Assignment 2 - Proposal - blog post 4


Outline the requirements of the brief (the rules) and how your idea meets this.


1.You must film the story (no animation)
2.You cannot use found footage
3.You can modernise the story and change things like locations, costumes etc.
4.You must include at least 3 strands (3 decisions that the audience makes)
5.Your film should last no more than 5 minutes
6.The story must be child friendly but you can include subtle dark twists (like the Bros Grimm did.)


We will be filming our interactive Snow White Film at Megan's House in Welwyn Garden City as she has a smart front room. We cannot film at a castle but her living room will be just as good! We will also go into the woods to shoot some of the scenes. All filming will be filmed during the days we have planned to shoot and we are not using any animation. We have kept the costume of Snow White traditional because we feel that children will want to watch the film more so they recognise the main character in the film like the Disney story of Snow White. We have changed a few characters to be female instead of male, for example the huntsman is a female but we have made the character masculine by making the actor wear a male outfit, so a checked shirt with dark trousers. This should still portray a good effect. The King is also a woman, they will tie their hair back and wear a crown and a cape to disguise their look.
Although we have quite a few strands in our film, we are planning on making the film no more than five minutes long.
The story will be child friendly but we will include a few twists in the story, for example Snow White dies at the end, either by suffocation from a corset or from eating a poisonous apple given to her by the evil queen.  Making this storyline will be exciting and will hopefully add a good twist from the original story of Snow White.


Outline a synopsis of the idea:

A beautiful girl called Snow White, takes refuge in the forest in the house of a dwarf to hide from her stepmother, the Evil Queen.  The Queen is jealous because she wants to be known as the "fairest in the land", and snow white's beauty exceeds her own.

There will be lots of twists in the story as we want to make it a good interactive fairy tale story and there is only one dwarf in our version of the story.

We will also be using a Narrator to tell the story so there will be less acting taking place.  We feel a narrator would work because we want to make our interactive fairy tale as pleasing as possible towards children and in doing this we hope they will watch our film. 

Outline the decisions and strands and where they are in relation to the narrative structure

SNOW WHITE:

Twists to the plot line:

The King is not seen, doesn't play a big part.

When the child is born, instead of having the queen die, she survives and they live a happy life!

The new queen didn't have a magic mirror.  She still had magic but the voice telling her that snow white was still alive, was a split personality, two sides to the queen/crazy. (Humour?)

One side of the queen would want to do the right thing. Three sides? (like an angel and a devil on her shoulder!)

The Huntsman: He has two choices either to kill snow white or let her go.  In version one he would kill her, try to but fail.  In the second version he would let her go like in the original version.

In the first version he would pursue her because of her beauty, she would get away, but he would be humiliated and then try to hunt her down.

Snow White would run away from the huntsman, he would tell her to run away depending on which choice he made.

She could come across a path.  One would lead her to the seven dwarfs house or another would lead her deeper into the woods and she would be killed by wild animals.

The Queen is crazy in our film.

And finally the seven dwarfs are only one person in our film.


"Snow White" is a nineteenth-century German fairytale which is known today across the western world.  The Brothers Grimm published their story in 1812 in their first edition of the collection Grimms' Fairy Tales.  They completed their final revision of the story in 1854.


Outline relevant ethical and legal considerations (use your ideas development)

"It’s a common misconception that Disney “owns” the Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. After all, one may think, they are all Disney Princesses that hang out together on backpacks and bed sheets. And Sleeping Beauty’s castle rests in the center of Disneyland.
In actuality, however, the intellectual property rights of these famous characters belong to the public domain or book publishers. Hans Christian Andersen created The Little Mermaid; Cinderella was penned by Charles Perrault; the Brothers Grimm wrote Snow White."(Forbes Welcome, 14, December 2016.)
Forbes Welcome. 2016. Forbes Welcome. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larissafaw/2013/12/10/doll-fight-is-disneys-snow-white-the-fairest-of-them-all.. [Accessed 14 December 2016].

Symbolism in Snow White

"Snow White" is actually an ancient fairy tale, which was documented by the Grimm Brothers in 1812. It has variations in other cultures, but the most well-known version today is likely to be the Disney version. 

Many fairy tales seem to be a simple children's story on the surface, but there are messages, morals and symbolism contained within the story. A closer look a Snow White will reveal some messages that you may not have noticed before. Much of the symbolism is Christian based and there are several parallels to stories in the Bible. Other aspects of symbolism are tied to common story lines in traditional fairy tales. 
The colors White, Red and Black 
The colors presented at the beginning of the story (skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, hair as black as ebony) provide a direct indication that Snow White is a "coming of age" story. White represents innocence (birth), red represents life and passion, while black represents death. The story of Snow White starts out with Snow White being a young girl in the original versions, and a rather naive young woman in the Disney version (the white phase). She undergoes maturity through the movie (the red phase), and experiences death (in her sleep-like state, the black phase). 
No mother: 
The absence of the birth mother makes it possible for storytellers to introduce the role of the evil stepmother. The evil stepmother is a common element of many fairy tales: Snow White, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel. The lack of a mother at all is also common, because if a mother were present, the series of events would not unfold as they do in stories where there is no maternal influence. People have often accused Walt Disney as being a proponent of stories without mothers (it is true that many Disney movies do not have mothers) but Disney re-created classic stories where the mother being dead was already a part of the story development. This element of story telling aims to engage the readers sympathy and it does that very well. 
The poison apple: 
This would seem to point all the way back to the biblical reference of the apple which was offered to Eve by the serpent (evil/Satan). The evil queen offers Snow White the apple in much the same way. Snow White knows she should not be speaking to strangers, but she does it anyway and she pays for that mistake by falling under the spell. 
The significance of seven: 
The number seven was used many times in the Bible for signifying perfection. The book of Revelation contains numerous groups of sevens such as angels, churches, trumpets, crowns, mountains, stars, and kings. It is one of the most significant numbers in Christianity in the sense that "God created the world in seven days", or rather he created the world in six days and on the seventh he rested. 
The names of the dwarfs: 
Some people have thought to correlate the seven dwarfs with the seven deadly sins, but that correlation doesn't hold water. In the Grimm version of Snow White, the seven dwarfs do not have names. In Disney's version of Snow White, the dwarfs do have names but those names were chosen out of sixty or so possible names and they do not correspond to the seven deadly sins. The names of the seven dwarfs are: Dopey, Grumpy, Doc, Happy, Bashful, Sneezy and Sleepy. These names are more aptly "the seven moods of man" rather than sins. 
The Seven Deadly Sins: 
The Seven Deadly Sins are represented in the story of Snow White, but not in the form of the seven dwarfs. 
Pride/Vanity: Clearly the vanity of the Evil Queen. The mirror is clearly a direct reference to vanity. 
Lust/Extravagance: Again, the Queen as royalty is extravagant 
Gluttony: The seven dwarfs eating (maybe a stretch). Or in the original tale, the Queen actually eats the heart of Snow White. 
Greed: The Queen again 
Sloth: Originally meant sadness, melancholy,apathy, depression, and joylessness which would distract from attention to god. This applies to the dwarfs after Snow White dies and sloth in the form of sloppiness certainly applies to the seven dwarfs in their manner of housekeeping. 
Wrath: The wrath of the seven dwarfs upon the witch after they discover Snow White dead. 
Envy: The Queen (again) 
The seven deadly sins have opposites in the seven holy virtues: Humility, Chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patiences, kindness. All of these are characteristics of Snow White. 


Resurrection: 
Snow White "dies" and comes back to life. This certainly parallels the death and resurrection of Jesus from the Bible. 
The hand washing: 
The part of the story where Snow White demands that the dwarfs wash could be related to the cleansing of baptism. After the dwarfs have washed, they become people that seem to have a new purpose in life, except for Grumpy who protests the most. Grumpy does undergo a transformation throughout the movie though, from a skeptical dwarf into one that is very devoted to Snow White. 
The Work Ethic: 
Snow White cleans the little house without prompting and cooks without being asked. The seven dwarfs also are hard at work in the mines (Hey Ho...). 
These are a few of the symbolisms that are the most visible in the story of Snow White, and there are probably some more! "(Symbolism in some children's books, 14, December 2016.)
Symbolism in some children's books. 2016. Symbolism in some children's books. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.jenericbooks.com/symbolism.php. [Accessed 14 December 2016].








Outline relevant technical consideration (again use the work you did in task 1)

We will be using Interlude to show our finished interactive film.

Interactive videos have been around for quite some time, however the tools used to make them, have been less than friendly.  Interlude is harder to use than a platform like YouTube as the files take longer to upload but the quality of the film will be better with Interlude.  If you enter Interlude's Treehouse you get an online video authoring site.  Treehouse has been a tool for creating "Choose Your Own Adventure" - style videos, where viewers can choose from multiple options to determine the path that a video takes.

Interlude has this authoring suite which is very powerful called TreehouseTM, it is a simple authoring suite where you can design your own interactive video.  Their HTML5 and Flash players guarantee a consistent experience across mobile, TV, tablets and desktop.
EKO studio is where you can build your stories in a powerful new medium.  You can create, edit and publish your own EKO stories.  It is a free simple and powerful tool for creating stories your audience will engage with.  Also, EKO stories play natively in Facebook and Twitter feeds.

They also get ninety percent engagement rates and 3 times more shares than traditional media.

Video streaming is a low-cost effective tool to enhance communications to customers.

We may use windows media player to view our interactive film or maybe quicktime.


Who are your target audience - psychographics, socioeconomics, age, gender, self/identity - justify how your ideas meet their needs.


Our target audience is towards young children up to young adults between the ages of 5-30. Older people may also like this film too.  It is more directed towards young females; however, we will include some dark scenes which may attract the younger males.  Our target audience mainly aimed at females, means we need to include the basics of what children love to see, experience and feel and since we are inspired by Disney we look into how they include all these in their films, which we would like to incorporate in ours.
Snow White is a "cute" character and we hope children will like her cute appearance in our film!
The dark sides in Snow White consists of the evil queen and the huntsman who eventually turns innocent and he cannot bring himself to kill snow white.
Walt Disney has done an excellent job of using stereotypical ideas of what children find frightening, such as the dark.  One of the scenes is where snow white is running away and gets lost in the dark, scary forest where all the trees and branches seem to turn into life and try to scare her even more. We hope to achieve some sort of frightening element in our story like this.
The film will be colourful and we will try to create eye filling images and these will hopefully capture the imaginations of our main target audience.
The Socioeconomic status of the viewers is A-E because almost every class of person would be interested in watching Snow White.  Mainstreamers, Aspirers and Explorers would be the psychographics of this type of film as it is a fairy tale story aimed at people who like a creative sort of film.



Task 3:
Create a digital video sequence for use in an interactive media product following industry standard.
 
In order to view the interactive fairy tale video you need to open it in google chrome.
The link to the Snow White Interactive Fairy Tale is:https://video.helloeko.com/VvyxNA?autoplay=true


Firstly I edited my assets on Premiere Pro. I cut out the action and cut from each clip using the razor tool and I also added some subtitles so that the reader will understand the story more easily as I feel that the story was quite hard to tell. I then mapped out where the strands would be in the film and made a diagram of what I wanted the interactivity to look like.  Below is a rough drawing of this:





I then looked at a few tutorials on YouTube about how to use Interlude and I found them to be very useful.


It was then time to export the files as mpegs to my hard drive and then upload these sequences to Interlude, the Eko Studio. Below is a screenshot of what the interactive diagram shows how the interactivity will take place in the five minute short film for Snow White.














Above shows the sequences that I made in premiere pro and then using the Eko studio I uploaded them to the interlude programme in order for me to then place them in the right sections in the diagram. I found this took quite a long time but I downloaded the uploader tool which made uploading the movie files quicker and I did this at home because my broadband is quite fast at home.


I found editing the footage was fairly easy using premiere pro as I have used the software before to edit a film.  However, I noticed that we were missing some of the scenes when it came to making the film interactive and we did not have enough time to film them again.
Also for some reason when I uploaded the sequences I had made on Premiere Pro to interlude, I noticed that the quality of the film was in low quality and found this a bit strange as we had used a Sony FS100 Camera to film with and usually this camera shoots a good quality film.
There were a few scenes where the shots were too bright and this was hard to correct using brightness and contrast in Premiere Pro.

Another problem I faced was that we made a narrative voiceover to follow through our film but when it came to editing this voiceover, I felt it did not work well because the narrator was muffling the voiceover, so instead I decided the only solution would be to put subtitles throughout the film.  I am not that happy about it because I feel that this breaks up the film too much but it was the only solution.

The film I feel, is not too offensive even though the story does not have a happy ending.  I feel the story may have been a bit too complex to understand. It would be fine for children to watch.  But as some of the scenes were not shot I feel it may be harder for the viewer to understand the story.

I think that we had some good ideas for our Snow White Interactive video and a very well thought out storyboard and script.  We did work well as a team and tried hard to get the storyline and pre-production details accurate but I sadly feel we did not have enough time to make this project as successful as we would have liked due to the weather not being good and it was difficult to find a day when we could all film.



I decided to upload my final interactive video to Facebook. I only posted it to be viewed by me only as I did not feel it was good enough to go public.
 
I also embedded my interactive fairy tale into my website. It can be viewed in the additional section on my website. The link to this is:http://claireloupeak81.wixsite.com/mysite
 
Overall I enjoyed this project and even though it was difficult I really enjoyed being a production designer for the film.