Stage 3 Narrative

Today, we’ve finally finished Narrative stage 3. We were mostly done with the actual project and all we had to do was to create a DVD file burnt onto a DVD and to write the peer assessment form, but it actually took us quite a while to finish them. We’ve started to work on it right after the seminar we had in the morning (which was until 12pm), and finished at around 3:45-ish. Thank goodness we’ve handed in on time!

Basically, what took us so long was the rendering bit in Premiere. When we were testing and finalizing our stills, we’ve found one slide that has got no sound on it, so we had to re-record just one sound that we needed. Well, we also took some time trying to find the technician for to ask for a room and equipment. After recording the sound and added into Premiere, we had to render it and save a copy into the USB pen for it to be burnt onto the DVD in W207. Since it was a heavy file, it has taken ages to render and save the files. And on top of that, the computer that we were using was one of our group member’s laptop and it was running out of battery!! But just by luck, we’ve managed to render and save a copy in the USB pen right before the battery was out.
We also had a problem with burning the DVD file onto the actual DVD-R, but we managed to sort that out changing the computer. The computer in W207 with Windows 2000 was giving us some problems (it wasn’t allowing us to burn the file on the DVD) but we luckily sorted them out after using another computer that has got Windows XP.

Anyways, I’m really relieved that we’re finished with creating the 2 minutes narrative. It was fun working with the people in group 14 and I think I’ve learnt new things throughout this project.

Just thought it might be nice to put 2 images of the cover of our narrative:
Here is the front cover:



This is the back cover:

Presenting web page

Today, I had the last seminar for Interactive Narrative. Before presenting to the group, we were given some time to fix the last of the work. I was actually quite please with my work, as I managed to link many pictures, which allowed the viewer to explore ‘the space’.
But I did face two problems when creating this Interactive Narrative work, one of the problem was that the text box was appearing in front of the image when I actually encoded as ‘background: none’ (meaning, only the text appears on the image and has got invisible text box). By looking carefully through the code view, I managed to solve it straight away, the problem that was causing this was because I misspell the word ‘background:none’ to ‘backgroud:none’. Just a little tiny mistake can cause a huge problem on the web page!
The second problem, which I didn’t really manage to solve them was that the text was appearing when the mouse was not on the hot spot, and the text disappeared when the mouse was over the hot spot. I thought it might have been the problem with the coding in ‘document.house.streetvalue=message;’ which was under the script tag, or the problem with using Firefox and Internet Explorer, as the outcome in Internet Explorer and Firefox can be different when doing javascript.
I think it was a very fun working with javascript in Dreamweaver. I now know how to work in Dreamweaver, which will allow me to produce web pages in the future. Although we are finished with Interactive Narrative seminar and lecture, I think I’ll use Dreamweaver to practice in my own time along with the course.
What I liked about the Interactive Narrative seminar was that it has given me some time to face problems and solve them with some help from others. Solving the problem has made me learn the best!!

Working in Dreamweaver

I finally managed to put print screen of the images from Dreamweaver that I used to work on my Interactive Narrative.

Here is the Code view of my index page:



This is the Design view:



And this is how it looks in the web page:

Recording sound

On 24th of November (Friday), after the lecture in the morning, I’ve stayed at the university to record sounds for our Narrative project. As I’ve managed to book the equipment a day before, we (me, Sid and Rob) were able to start recording sounds straight away. We were actually planning to use the sound booth in W106, but we found that the room was already booked for lighting seminar for group A. So instead, we’ve asked nicely to one of the technician if we could use the sound booth in room 207. We were lucky to use the sound booth as we were actually supposed to book a room before hand. So for next time, I know that not only the equipment but I also need to book a room as well.
It was my first time using or even being in the sound booth. It was really exciting to see all the technical equipment being arranged on the table. Once we close the room, we can’t hear anything from inside and outside! I think it was a good experience for all of us to work in the sound booth, as we’ve all learnt how to connect microphone (a proper one that is set inside the sound booth) to the DAT tape recorder and edit it in the computer in Sound booth. I now know at least a little about using the equipment in sound booth as well as how to use the DAT tape recorder, which will be beneficial for future project.

Here are some of the pictures I took inside the sound booth, working on the Narrative project:

Narrative group work

Today, we’ve worked on the Narrative project almost for the whole day. I’ve got to see most of the edited pictures (with comical effect), which we then discussed it, gave feedbacks and made sure that we (or the people who attended the meeting) has seen all the edited images. Then we started to sort out the dialogues that will be put along with the edited images. We’ve also practiced putting speech bubbles onto some of the edited images to make sure that the images and dialogues are properly laid out. After making notes and writing down the dialogues, we’ve then started to search on the sound we can find on the internet (free download ones, so that there isn’t any copy right problem). But through searching some of the websites, we found that most of the sound effects on the internet aren’t as good. So instead, we’ve decided to use some sound effects from the internet, but most of the other sounds will be recorded with microphones (i.e. dialogues and some other sound effects that we need in our stills (e.g. sound of a traffic, bottle opening..etc.)

I managed to book some sound equipment for tomorrow so that we can start recording sounds. We’re aiming to finish recording the sounds tomorrow, so that we’ll have all of next week to work on Premiere.

Interactive Narrative

I tried to put three print screens showing some code views, but the blogger keeps on giving me an error, so I think I'll try and post them some other time. Instead, I'll write what I did today for Interactive Narrative.

Today, I’ve finally managed to finish most of my Interactive Narrative work. I’ve finished linking all the pictures, put texts and making them appear/disappear when Mouse is over the picture. All I have to do now is test to run all of the pages inside web page.

Through the process of getting this project nearly finished, I had several problems. One of the biggest problem was to get the text appear and disappear when the mouse is over the image. At first, I couldn’t make the text disappear when the mouse is not over the text even though I’ve put in the right function (i.e. onMouseOut and onMouseOver). After a while sitting in front of the computer staring at the screen, I managed to realize that one of the function ‘ShowMe’ was typed in upper case and also in lower case. So the reason why it didn’t work was because I didn’t type exactly the same spelling of the function. So the computer thought that ‘function ShowMe’ and ‘function showMe’ is totally different thing and it didn’t trigger the function.

After understanding that a tiny little misspelling can cause a big problem, I’ve learnt that it is much better to copy and paste the text to avoid misspelling. So after sorting out one of the html page, I’ve copied and pasted onto all the other html pages in Dreamweaver. This allowed me not only to avoid misspelling but also increased my working speed.

Although I had quite a lot of problems in working in Dreamweaver, I’ve learnt a lot through struggling with such problems. I think for this Interactive Narrative project, I was concentrating more on the actual javascript and learning how to work in Dreamweaver rather than thinking deeply about ‘The Space’. But since I’ve now learnt how to work in Dreamweaver, I think I can use this knowledge for future project. Furthermore, even though I was struggling most of the time using Dreamweaver, I still had fun creating html page!

Posting Youtube 2

As I’ve already mentioned before, I have been having some problem with uploading a video response on Youtube. The first problem was that my video response wasn’t appearing as a video response under the chosen video blog (called ‘Power of Web 2.0’) but I had them uploaded in my account in Youtube. The second problem was that although I got the video uploaded, the audio was missing! So basically there was no sound playing in my video blog.

For both of the problems mentioned above, I finally managed to solve them today!!! What I did was to delete my video response that was sitting in my account in youtube, and re-post them again!!!
The reason why I couldn’t get my audio playing was that I actually exported a wrong file that apparently got no sound on it. So when I re-posted my video response, I had to make sure that the audio is working along with the video. Thank goodness it works now!!

Oh and also about the problem with my video response not appearing in the ‘Power of Web 2.0’, I realized that because the person who posted ‘Power of Web 2.0’ has not yet accepted my video response. So basically my video response have to be accepted by him in order for it to appear in ‘Power of Web 2.0’

Here is the video ‘Power of Web2.0’ (I’ve also put a address linked to this page in previous blog):



And this is my video response:

Posting Youtube

On Tuesday, I've tried to post video response on Premiere trying to compress it before posting it onto Youtube. After compressing the video, I followed the instruction on how to post video, but when I was trying to recieve e-mail confirming about posting a response, I kept on having a problem with opening some pages in Youtube...after repeating same step for posting video blog, I finally got them posted...well actually I thought I managed to post it on as a response to my chosen video blog ('power of Web 2.0') at that time.
Right after posting the video, I went to look into 'Power of Web 2.0' to see if my video response is being posted, but apparently it takes few minutes to upload video blog...So I decided to open them up today, giving enough time to upload.
I found my video response in my account in Youtube, but when I went into 'Power of Web 2.0', I couldn't find my video response anywhere!!!

I don't really know why my video response is not posted into 'Power of Web 2.0', but anyways I need to try and re-post it tomorrow. The problem might have been that I didn't post my video properly, or Youtube couldn't post the video properly because at the time when I was posting, I had problem with opening some pages in Youtube.

Narrative group work

Yesterday was a very busy day for me. I had a lecture from 9am, then I was working on Interactive narrative during the break, then I had 2 hours seminar, and then I had one hour break for next lecture. We tried to finish taking all the images on Monday but because we ran out of time, although we got most of the pictures, we've decided to finish off (couple of more shots) on Tuesday. So between that one hour lecture, Sid and I had to quickly go to my flat to finish taking the photos for our narrative project.

By fast walking, going from my place to university takes about 15 ~
20mins. So right after the seminar, we had to quickly go to my flat, take the pictures, then quickly go back to the university for the lecture. It was very tireing but we managed to finish taking the photos!! Also, we were lucky that the pictures that we had to take on Tuesday was indoor picture only and not outdoor. Because it started raining in the afternoon, it would have ruined our schedule if we were taking images outside!! Thank goodness!

Seminar for Interactive Narrative

In yesterday's seminar for Interactive Narrative, we were able to individually work and ask questions, which I found it very productive. I've already had all of my pictures edited in the right size using photoshop, I was able to start creating this project in Dreamweaver. From previous seminars we had, I've already learnt how to put images and how to link them together. So by refering to the notes I took during previous seminars, I was able to link all the images together!!! But since I had soooo many images, it took me a long time to link everything together.

After linking all the pictures and testing them on Firefox, I started to put text onto the photos so that when the mouse go over the image, the text appeares on the photos. I used 'Form' for to put text in, but it seems that this is used for putting text underneath the images and not on the text, so instead I used 'layer' to put text on top of the image. When I tried to test this on Firefox, the text appeared on top of the image but when I put the mouse away from that image, the text was still appearing...and so I had to think of a way to make the text only appearing when the mouse is over the image. After a while, flicking through my notes, I realized that I had to put 'MouseOver' between body tag.

The website that Simon has told us about, which has got previous student's work is very useful. Because if I can see the code of the html by clicking 'source' button.
You can find this website by clicking the web address below:

http://www.lab.constellations.co.nz/VNTH06/

Narrative work

After the Production Surgery seminar today, me and Sid went to take the pictures for our stills. We were planning to take the images last week, but due to the problem with arranging cars (for taxi) and police officer,being consistance in clothes..etc, we've decided to work on it today.

Since we've made a detailed lists (story board) of what pictures need to be taken, so at first I thought it wouldn't take too long taking the pictures on my digital camera..but I was wrong!! It actually taken us about a whole day do take pictures here and there in Nottingham.

Although we knew what pictures we needed to take, we had to decide carefully on how the image is being taken i.e. what sort of angle is effective, what kind of background is relevant..etc.
We discussed on the image taken and if it doesn't look good, then we took another one.
The greatest achievement that we had today was that we actually got a permission from the police officer to be in our narrative! (But its just two shots!) Anyways, it is better to have a real police officer rather than having to have a student dressed like a police officer.

What I've learnt today was that 'Just taking pictures' can take ages! A small tiny thing can ruin our plans when working outside and in groups. For example, weather can cause a great effect, if it rains we have to take the images some other day and this will ruin our plan (timetable). Or another example, if the actor (a main character) is ill, then it'll also change the whole schedule. So I think planning ahead would be the key, because anything can happen during our production whether we like it or not!!

Working in Photoshop

Today, after the group tutorial at 9am, I went into W105 to work on my Interactive Narrative.
I tried to do them at home during the weekend but my PC was working too slow and so I just decided to do them at Uni.
I had 2 hours to work on it until my seminar at 12 pm (which was the Productin Surgery). At first I thought I could finish them just like that...but it actually took me a whole 2 hours just to crop the images in the right size (800 x 350)!!!! I'm not use to working with Photoshop and Dreamweaver, but from few of the seminars that I've had previously, I thought I could do them without using much time. But through struggling in working with images in Photoshop, I got to learn how to use image-adjustment tools which I could put some effect such as putting shadows, making it bright..etc. So I think it was good that I had to stuggle through as in this way, I would remember each step in using Photoshop.
Hopefully I'll get better at it from practicing and using Photoshop and Dreamweaver much more.

Youtube publish

Thursday the 9th of November:

In todays seminar, we've learnet how to edit moving images in Premiere. It was my first time using premiere and it was quite challenging for me to memorize all the settings for the right purposes. We got to edit a short film done by someone else just for practice, we were all given couple of minutes to edit the film. It was really fun and I've learnt how to dissolve from one video to another, increasing and decreasing of volume, cutting and deleting some sections of the video and much more. It was fun playing around with Premiere and I think the more I play with it the better I get in understanding how to handle Premiere.

Everything was going great until we had to put our video response on Youtube. I've record my response on the DV tape, so what I had to do is to connect the video camera that has got the DV tape in it onto the computer. But for some wired reason, Premiere wasn't reading my video. After asking for help, we've tried on 4 different cameras but it still didn't work. But with the 5th one, we finally managed to put my response on to the Premiere.
Although it took us some time, I've got to learn that anything can happen using computers and technologies. I guess in order to solve this is to keep trying and to see what is causing the problem.

Also, the most important thing that I've learnt today in the Youtube publish/post seminar was that whenever we save a video file (basically a big file!), we should always save them on the D drive rather than the C drive. Because if I save my video file onto the D drive, then there might be the possibility of getting that file being erased and I can never get them back!! So we all have to be careful!!

Response for YouTube

I've chosen to post a respond to a video called 'Power of Web 2.0'
you can find this by clicking the website below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6SefbFbixI

It's about how the technology has been developed through centries, which lead to have a better ways of interaction. I found this video blog very interesting because there was a clear timeline of how the ways of interaction got better and better. He showed how he first started to broadcast with his own radio station which can only be seen from his neighbors. But now a days there are what we call 'Web 2.0' which is a term often applied to a percieved ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. For example, Blog, Nepster, Google AdSense, Web server and many more. Which helps us increase the ways in which we could interact with people world wide.

I was first going to just talk in front of the camera for the response but since I don't want people (around the world looking at Youtube) to see me...so I've decided to put my camera by the window facing outside at night. Since the videoblog that I've decided to post a comment on was based on 'interaction', I thought it might be nice to show buildings with lots of light.
building with lots of light = existence of people = interaction must be happening in some kind of ways.
I'm not use to speak in front of the camera, so my voice sounds really low and fast...I felt really weird talking to myself in my room.
well..I'll try and put more humor in next time!! I actually did try three times but they all sounded the same...I guess I need more practice!!!

Narrative Powerpoint presentation

Today our group 14 had the narrative presenation on powerpoint. We were rehearsing the presentation from the morning, finalizing and fixing few bits on the slides. To be honest, I thought our presentation will go pretty well because we thought (at least before the presentation) that we've put in every detail that we could think of. But after giving the presenation, the feedback we got wasn't really what we were expecting. But I think it was good that we've got to learn many things that need to be considered when presenting a narrative to the audience (or in the real world, will be the client). Furthermore, it also allowed us to realize the points that we didn't think of when developing the narrative. For example, we should have put speach bubbles and some sample of the sound effect so that it'll make the audience understand how our project will be more clearly.

The biggest thing that I've learnt today was the requirement for 'the storyboard'. I thought the storyboard are just a few picture/image that roughly explains what the story will be about. But as Debora mentioned in her comments, storyboard should have everything in it. Basically the storyboard should show the final piece (for example; we are doing stills, so rather than putting some images of how our story is being layed out, we should have put every single bit of images that will be used in the final project).
The reason why we didn't put every single image in our presentation was that we didn't wanted to give all of our ideas away. Because we thought it would be boring if the audience sees the storyline before actually seeing the final project.

Although it didn't go as smooth as we (the group) thought, I think I've learnt many things in this presentation and I think the whole point of having feedback is to make us learn and develop in depth to make sure that our final project in a better quality.

Image meaning & Composition

We had to choose an example from either your own possessions or a photograph of an object that has value to you in terms of both fine and applied (design). Make a list evaluating its functionality, its aesthetic beauty, communication, and its decorative or entertainment value.

So an object that I've chosen is my PC. I've been using this for quite a long time now and I always take them around whenever I go home during the holidays.

Functionality:
I can do many things with computers, there is no way I can get bored using PC. I've been storing many of my works from years before, I've got pictures being stored that were taken by my digital camera, I also use my PC to store my music..etc, basically I use my computer for numerous things. I believe that without computers, living in this world would be impossible!

Aesthetic Beauty:
The whole body of my PC is white, I like white as it suits with any kind of surroundings. Sony's 'VAIO' logo is very simple but carefully designed that goes with electronic devices. This PC has got a 'motion eye', which is the webcamera (it functions as a video and a camera) in the top center of the screen. At the right hand side of the frame of the screen, there are four buttons: one for captureing images, two buttons for adjusting volumes and the last button is for to zoom in and out of the screen, which is very useful. It has got a DVD player and a compact rewritable disk.

Communication:
I use internet to communicate with my family and friends all over the world, without PC it will be very hard to do so. I use messenger and other software that allows me to evern make a call oversea for free of charge. 'Communication' is the most important thing to live in this world, thus PC is doing a major role in our lives. Through internet, i can also search different genre and information with easy access without having to go to the library or a book shop in the cold weather. As the time goes by there are better computers being sold, better CPU, quality of the screen and sound, more capasity..etc. The possibility of inventing better computers are infinite.

Entertainment value:
Like I said before, I use my PC to listen to music as well as watching DVDs. I use iTunes to put music while I'm in the room. I can't live without music!! -Like the famous catch phrase "No music, No life."
With the using the Internet, I can spend a whole day in fron of my PC. I can play games, edit and play around with images and videos..etc. So there is no end for using the computer.

Response: I've decided to make a comment on Carol's chosen object (mobile phone), as mobile phone is another electronic device that is closely involved in our daily life like the computers.

Tutorials and Seminars in week 14

Monday 30th of October:
We had a seminar with Joools 'Reflection on Team Process' on the big group C project that we did last week. We had to prepare a powerpoint presentation discussing about issues of people not turning up to group work. We had a good 3 hours discussion! (We were even late to the next lecture.) All of us who attended this seminar has put forth many points and we've managed to expand on this issue at large.
The whole point of working in the group is to communicate and co-operate with one another. I think 'Trust' and 'Responsibility' plays a major role in working in teams.
If the person doesn't turn up several times, then that person will lose the trust from other members of the team.
It is not fair for those of who worked and those who didn't gets the same mark. Thus the idea of writing feedback sheet is good, as this will allow us all to identify who worked and who didn't.

Tuesday 31st of October:
In Interactive Narrative seminar, we were suppose to use Dreamweaver but due to some technical problem, we couldn't use them for our lesson. So instead, we used Flash. It was my first time using Flash so everything was new to me. We first did some scripts then we tried to put pictures on the form. It was hard to understand the process as Flash looked much more comlicated compare to the Javascript we did last week. Although I've learnt how to put pictures on Flash, I think I should practice couple more times in order to memorize the process. But I guess the more I practice, the more I can control and be good at it.

Thursday 2nd of November:
Today I was working with the Narrative project with my colleague (group 14). I think we were very productive and managed to work smoothly. Before coming into today's meeting, we've already made the powerpoint presentation together and all we had to do is to finalize and time it to make sure that it doesn't go over 10 mins. We've decided on what we are going to say in the presentation, then finalized the powerpoint (adjusting a bit) to be ready for tomorrow's presentation. I think our group is working quite well and I'm very pleased. Compare to the first day that we met as a group 14, we know each other much more and this helps us to co-operate even more.