This is my formative presentation for my design thinking project, this includes movie structures analysis, design methods, survey results, prototype ideas and the contextual background of my featured film.
After doing survey for my users on google form, I would like a develop my feature film as a monthly calendar with a Japanese food theme, as most people wanted the film to extend as a cafe and stationeries. Therefore, I have done some research of the calendar prototype concepts online, including a hand drawn (physical) calendars and a virtual calendar (online).
For my prototype concepts, I would to use my tablet to design a monthly calendar for my users on illustrator, with the food theme. I honestly find it quite hard to extend my feature film to a cafe because during this period most of the people are working from home, so after some consideration I would like to develop an online calendar app for my potential users.
Below is the survey result of my feature film, I have been posting on Facebook and instagram asking people and my followers to fill in the survey, although there are not many people answering but I do feel thankful for their contribution.
From the result of the ages and gender, I realised that there more people watching My neighbour Totoro from the age of 16-20 years old and most of them are females, but there might be some bias in my survey result as I got more female followers or friends.
From the result of the themes that people like about my film, surprisingly they like family love more than accepting challenges and be adventurous as my assumption result. Moreover, my users are more likely focusing and admiring the animation, illustration and the background music in the film.
From the results above, most people have only watched it for one time which is not as what I expected for my assumption, as I thought most people have watched it for more than three times, from this, I can identify that there are 31.3% of my users are the fans of neighbour Totoro.
For the film expansion, surprisingly most people want a cafe or a restaurant from this film, maybe because there is no any Totoro cafe and this is what they really wanted to see it happen in the future, as there are so many place selling Totoro stationeries or toys already, therefore people might want to see something brand new about Totoro.
For the emotion/mood of the people watching this film, they are more likely feeling heartwarming, touching, exciting and nostalgic, from this result I can tell that people are more focusing on the positive emotions rather than the negative emotions.
I have also ask a few questions for my users to give the long answers, I found that there are more people liking the cat bus/ Totoro screaming on top of the tree part as it is the midpoint (rising action) of the whole film. Moreover, there are not many people giving feedback of the improvement of the film, this means that most of my viewers like this film which is good to know about it.
Below are the bar chart results of my instagram poll and survey answers, I have separated them into female and male so that I can calculate the total amounts of each genders more detail and thoroughly.
These two bar charts are a basically a summary of the gender and the age of the people who have answered my poll on instagram. By looking at the results, I put them into different ages group and genders so that I can find out what my potential users would be like. By looking at the answer, most of the answers are from the females and my biggest age demographic is aged 16-20 years old (38 out of 92)and also 21-25 years old (23 out of 92). There are 81.4% of people who like my neighbour Totoro and 18.6% of people who does not like my neighbour Totoro in total.
But this poll has some bias as my followers have more females and some of them did not answered my poll, there are only 92 people who has answered my poll. And these answers are only collected by my followers, so I just collected these data from people I know.
After having more information of my potential users and knowing the age demographic, I then created a survey. Through that survey, I am now able to some having some more insight of what my potential users wanted My neighbour Totoro to extend as. Also, I got 3 types of expansions that my potential user want by expanding my chosen film into something else. The expansions were mainly toys and stationeries. Therefore through this result, I decided to develop an app relating to toys.
After remaking my video in premiere pro from iMovie, I realised premiere pro has a lot more functions than iMovie, such as colour grading, transitioning, animation of the texts etc… I spent a long time watching tutorials of the basics of premiere pro as I am a slow learner and needed to learn everything about premiere pro start from 0 step by step. After few days of learning about the basics, I started to get used to the functions and tools when editing my promo video, it was not an easy progress but surely I learnt a lot from that!
Improvement: There are some improvements I have to make changes on, such as the transition of the text, as they don’t move naturally in to the footages, and also the closing of the video, it shut too sudden and not looking so smooth too.
The whole video editing process was quite interesting and I think was quite useful for my future, because video editing is a very common skill of some people especially people who studies media and design, so I think it is essential and compulsory for me to at least learn about the basics, I enjoyed the process watching the tutorials on YouTube and gradually learning more about the techniques.
My favourite part of working on my promo video on premiere pro is definitely doing colour grading on my footages, they looked a lot better and have more welcoming feeling after I added the adjustment layers on them. Premiere pro has now became my favourite video editing app, although it is hard and really needed to take time to learn, I feel good when I recognised that I have actually learnt something from it.
Today we learnt about colour grading and the uses of the colours that they can work on a film. Colour grading is a process of bringing up the tension and emotion of the videos or images. I chose to study the two scenes, Life of Pi and Edward Scissorhands as these scenes interested me with their colour usages, film content and visual aesthetic . I like Life if Pi the most because its colour grading has explained more emotions and the thinking of the main character than Edward Scissorhands.
Below is the storyboard I created before I combine my footages together, for my promo video, I decided to keep everything clean and clear, with not too many words and not too much information, but can tell the audience what are the purposes for me to promote AUT south campus with these footages and descriptions.
Short list of the information for each of the footages:
These are just the rough idea and the progress of my promo videos, I still have to work on the color grading, putting the AUT logo into the video, use another better font to replace the current font or perhaps make some changes on the transitions and the editing of the whole video, as I think the video does not look as smooth and not really well connected with each of the transitions. I have also asked for the permission from Christene’s group with using their footages, as their groups footages are really diverse as well as I think their footages could tell so many stories and the echos of the campus.
Changes I can make:
These are some no copyright background music that I found on YouTube and considered might be useful for applying into my AUT promo video. I have been looking for some relaxing/ educational/ inspiring background music as to give my viewer a sense of welcoming. These background musics are found on YouTube and they are no copyright.
And finally I have decided to use the educational music because I think its beats and feeling is more suitable for using in south campus as it gives a feeling of welcoming and inspiring, and this is what I wanted for my promo video background music.
Here are some collections of survey answers I have got from 5 teenagers respectively, their ages are around 10-20 years old. I have designed four easy-answering questions for my users as I wanted to collect data from them in a easygoing and diverse way.
User 1: Zoe, 17 years old girl
From this survey, I discovered that this user found this film so encouraging as she likes any types of adventurous films or animations. This user grown up with watching tones of animations so My neighbour Totoro is one of her favourite film in her childhood, in the last answer she made a comparison about the first and the last time she watched this film, she emphasised how important and cherish family love is from the last scene of the film.
User 2: Shelly, 10 years old girl
This user is the youngest user from 5 of the people I have interviewed, I can see her pure and simple understanding of this film as well as she values on the friendship idea in the whole film, I can tell that she really like making some friends because she is scared of being left out/ staying alone. In her age, she could not understand as much as how we understand this film because she is still growing up, but she enjoys watching this film because she likes the characters in this film.
Rex, 20 years old guy
This user is the oldest in my 5 interviewers, I can tell how much he likes and understand about Miyazaki’s films including My neighbour Totoro, and he is a really passionated fan of his films, therefore he has given me many information and he thoughts about this film. He like the main character Totoro and he explained it as a childlike way, he has also learnt about the purity of friendship in this film like Shelly too, he said “They don’t have complicated mindset”. He also did a comparison of the first time and last time watching this film when he was 6 years old to 17 years old, I am sure he will recommend others to watch this film because I can tell how knowledgeable he is from his answers.
Carmen, 15 years old girl
This user is at the middle age of 5 of the interviewers, she likes how this film is so encouraging and adventurous as well as Shelly’s. From this survey, I discovered that this user found this film so encouraging as she likes any types of adventurous films or animations. This user grew up in a family without her dad in most of the life time, so she seems could find some family love from this film since she admired the dad in my neighbour Totoro so much. As well as in her answers, we could tell that she really value on the idea of family love from this film, in the last answer she made a comparison about the first and the last time she watched this film, she started to learnt about the messages in an educational perspective in this film.
Eunice, 20 years old girl
This user has limited understanding of this film because My neighbour Totoro is not her favourite type of film. However, I could see how she understands and admires this film from other perspectives like, music, childhood memories, and relationship. She learnt about the importance of accepting challenges and we might be rewarded by something we didn’t expect. She had the same thought as some of the other users that the first time she watched this film was only focusing on which character she likes but the last time was more focusing on relationship in the movie.
Overall findings and reflection: After surveying a few people from the people who voted that they liked this film, I discovered that there are some similarities to their answers, especially when it came to their understandings and comparing the first and the last time they watch this film. Two of them wanted the film to expand to stationeries and two of them wanted to expand it to soft toys and they are something that are cute and essential. It was quite surprised that they did not wanted to expand this films to apps or games which is something that I assumed before I did this survey.
I also noticed that they really valued a lot with the idea of family relationship and friendship, and they have learnt about the positive attitudes and accepting challenges from this film. From the survey I did, I think have have got so many positive and helpful feedbacks for helping myself to have deeper understanding about My neighbour Totoro too.
Reflection: After finishing interviewing few people of their answers, I realised that I could have asked some people who are younger or older, as this is a family welcoming film, therefore if I have got some answers from the adults I think I would have seen some more diverse and different answers. But I think the answers I have got have given me more of a perspective and see how my potential users look like and what they expect.
Left hand side is the storyline I created for my part moving image, it is basically about how I have found sense of belonging in my location through following the feather I discovered in Macleans park, it brings me to pick up a piece of jigsaw puzzle and I accidentally found my friends there too, they were playing with the same puzzle and was about to finish it off, but they got one puzzle missing, which is the one on my hand, and eventually I put mines on it and completed the whole puzzle, I wanted to use this short story to tell the audience of how I could find the keywords: identity, sense of belonging, passion and faith etc.. but I think the whole story is not strong or standed out enough, I think I will need to draw another refined storyboard soon.
I have also considered about the camera angles, movements and shots I will possibly apply in my part two project, hopefully I could have a chance to borrow the gimbal from the school and could complete some of the footages like crane shots, pedestal shots, and dolly out shots.. I realised how important gimbal and tripod are after experiencing the challenges using these shooting tools as well.
Sharon's daily