The Piano

A simple animation with a lot of meaning

Holland's Pies Pie Maker TV Advert

This advert is about Holland's Pies & Puds.

It can be misleading as the boy in the beginning of the video does not appear after the first few seconds. Judging by the woman's look & by the Pie maker not wanting to give the woman the recipe, I've come to a conclusion that he used the boy to make the pies' filling.

It's target audience = Those who like pies & puds or those who are hungry [obviously not for vegetarian people haha!]

The Graphic Designer

The Graphic Design area is a very competitive field.

When you read a magazine, use the internet or go shopping, you encounter the Graphic Designer's work. They are responsible to make the product eye-catching and informative as possible.

Graphic Designers may work in a variety of fields; Print Design (magazines/newspapers), web design, advertising, product development, logo design and sign-making. Two programs that are often used to facilitate the process are Adobe Photoshop or QuarkXPress.

Two types of designer  are In-house and freelance:


In-house - An artist that works for a specific company and is paid by that company for their work

Freelance - Works on a job-by-job basis, and is responsible for seeking out his or her own clients and negotiating a contract for payment.

Approximately one-third of all professional designers fall into the second category. [Source]


"They find the most effective way to get messages across in print and electronic media using colour, type, illustration, photography, animation and various print and layout techniques.

They develop layout and production design of:

• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Journals
• Corporate Reports

They also produce promotional displays, packaging and marketing brochures for products and services, design distinctive logos for products and business and develop signs and signage systems (environmental graphics; for business and government, develop material for Internet Web pages, interactive media and multimedia projects. Graphics designers also may produce the credits that appear before and after TV programs and movies." [Source]

Idea Development & Pitch: UPDATED

Background


The Brief

"An international publishing house is going to start a new advertising campain via adverts broadcasted on diverse television stations... They are organising a world-wide FICTION competition for the best one-minute advert..."

For Unit 30, Advertisment Production for Television, we must work in teams of three to produce a promotional video for a non-fiction book. It must be short, fun and entertaining (NB: it doesn't mean that it must be comedic or funny). The main aim is to not promote the publishing house but for individual non-fiction books.

The video must:

Be one minute long
About a non-fiction book
Fall under the 'G' rating criteria
Be fun, short & entertaining

---

The Client

Allied Publications

Some books pulished by Allied Pulications:

"Il- Politika Tal-Perswazjoni / Politics of Persuasion (Hard case edition)"

"Il-Qari tal-Letteratura: Bejn Esperjenza u Kritika"

"Exploring the Maltese Media Landscape"

"An Introduction to Maltese Financial Sevices Law"

"Malta an Archaeological Guide"

"Oleanders in the Wind"

"At Home with the President"

"Small Island Great Riches - The Life of Paul Asciak, Tenor and Teacher from Malta"

"Strada Stretta - It-Triq li Darba Xeghlet il-Belt"

"Stickland House - The standard bearers and launching of the Times of Malta (Book One 1921-35)"

"Malta During the British Era - 1800 - 1964 Governorship Militaria, Commerce, Royalty - Visits and residence"

"Seasonal & Sustainable - Cooking For Healthy Living"

"The Times Picture Annual 2010"

"Valletta, Statues, Niches, Small Churches, Public Fountains, Public Clocks, Monuments and Marble Tablets"

[Source]

The Budget

Still being calculated



The Deadline

The promotional video is for May 23rd 2011. (The plan about shooting schedules, editing and such are still being discussed).


Technical Resources


Equipment that are going to be used; i.e. Camera, tripod, pocket record or boom mic, etc.




Technical Constraints


Still being discussed

Target Audience


The book is aimed at those who are interested in history, at those who would want to know about Strait Street in Valletta, aged 16+ in general. On the other hand, the video will be aimed at everybody since it has to be 'G' rated.

Legal and Ethical Issues


Permissions, release forms, etc

Regulation

Ideas

Ideas Generation

The main idea of the advert is to show the difference between how the street was and how it is now. The kid represents that the street was full of life whereas the adult represents that it's changed a lot and you're lucky enough if you see people walking through that street [people grow up and change, you know... ]

Recording Ideas - Throughout the production meetings, we've discussed how the story should be and develop it even more.

Initial Plans and Proposals - The initial plan was to show the difference through the people walking through the street. Since the street wasn't just about the people, but also about the shops, we've mended the story and put in some shots of the shops [which by the way have been closed and still are for about 40 years].

Identification of Message - To show the difference between how it was and how it is now

Pre-Production

The Storyboard [sorry it's not good quality but the scanner doesn't work]

Script - Will be uploaded later on

Production Schedule - Will be uploaded later on

Location Plans - Strada Stretta

Shooting Script - Will be Uploaded later on

Risk Assessment - Will be uploaded later on

Crew - 

Should I even bother?

New banner.

End of story.

I don't know if I should keep posting whenever I make a new banner. Haha!

Change. Again.

I probably have made you sick with all the banner & background changes I've done so far. Ha ha!

The font in the banner moves this time. I know it's sorta slow, I've done another one in which the font moves fasterish, but I don't know what the problem is, it doesn't work whenever I try to change it.

For the background I've used one type of brush & different colours together with the Gaussian Blur filter to blend the colors.

So until I know what the problem with the other one is/get it to work, this shall be my banner [for now, haha!]

Infographic

The Infographic for Unit 19, made using Photoshop & a bit of Illustrator.

I used pictures from the game Tomb Raider to explain the keywords: Pixel, Raster, Vector, Bit Depth, Colour Space, Image Capture and Optimising.

Definitions:

Pixel - A single point in a raster image. The more pixels an image contains, the higher its resolution is.

"The basic unit of programmable colour on a computer display or image; it's the smallest addressable screen element in raster graphics. They are the phosphorescent dots displayed on a computer screen, which merge to form the displayed picture. The more pixels there are on screen, the sharper the image, but to sharpen the image it's reduced in size in the display.

It follows that while a display of 800x600 pixels may strictly be sharper and clearer other than one of 640x480, it is also smaller and potentially not as comfortable to use." [Source][Source2]

Raster - Is made with a lot of pixels.

"Is defined as digital material where the information is made up of pixels. An example of raster data is a scanned image or photograph." [Source]

"A raster graphics image or bitmap is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels or points of colour, viewable via monitor, paper or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats." [Source]

Vector - Often serve better for type of settings or for graphic design. Complementary to raster graphics.

"Vector graphics use mathematical relationships between points and the paths connecting them to describe an image." [Source]

"Vector graphics formats are complementary to raster graphics, which is the representation of images as an array of pixels, as is typically used for the representation of photographic images. There are instances when working with vector tools and formats is the best practice, and instances when working with raster tools and formats is the best practice."

Bit Depth - The number of computer bits used for colour & tonal information; 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit, 36 bit, 48 bit.

"In computer graphics, colour depth or bit depth is the number of bits (binary data bits/binary digit) used to represent the colour of a single pixel in a bitmapped image or video frame buffer (A framebuffer is a video output device that drives a video display from a memory buffer containing a complete frame of data). This concept is also known as bits per pixel (bpp), particularly when specified along with the number of bits used. Higher colour depth gives a broader range of distinct colours." [Source]

"Also called pixel depth - measures how much colour information is available to display or print each pixel in an image. Greater bit depth (more bits of information per pixel) means more available colours and more accurate colour representation in the digital image." [Source]

Colour Space - The amount of colours one can work with (RedBlueGreen/CyanMagentaYellowKBlack)

"A method of representing colours in terms of measurable values such as the amount of red, yellow and blue in a colour image." [Source]

"A colour model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colours can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values of colour components (ex. RGB and CMYK are colours models). However, a colour model with no associated mapping function to an absolute colour space is a more or less arbitrary colour system with no connection to any globally-understood system of colour interpretation." [Source]

Image Capture - Obtaining a digital image of a picture by using a device such as camera or taking a screenshot using a computer program

"Create digital images from sources ranging from print to a computer display." [Source]

"The process of using a device such as a scanner or digital camera to convert images into digitized data." [Source]

Optimising - The filesize & picture quality. Three areas where bytes can improve your graphics are; bit depth, resolution and dimensions.

"Optimising images for the web is a tricky business. You have to get the right balance between filesize and picture quality. It is an essential step though. Look at any webpage, and you will see that most of its load time comes from images. Your website will needlessly slow if you don't drop the sizes of these images. There are three keys where bytes can be shaved off your graphics: bit depth, resolution and dimension." [Source]

Researching about these keywords I've come to a conclusion that one needs the other in order to function.

Did this during the Photoshop lecture today:

• Used two different background & blended them together
• Frames - Removed the unwanted fill using the mask
• Cropped the images
• Used Drop Shadow for the shadowy effect
• Et voilà!