Sharon's daily

Week 2 homework: explore the campus and shoot some footage

In week 3 Monday, out group decided to meet up for making different shots around the campus in the early morning. We used two cameras and two tripods because there are same objects or same locations that we think we can use two cameras to shoot with two perspectives. We made the most shots of long shots, Dutch tilt, establishing shots and over the shoulder shots, as we are a bit shy to take close ups of people around the campus. I found the Dutch tilt angle is the most interesting one out of all the angles, as it gives the audience more information of the surroundings by moving the camera, and it’s pretty fun that my group mates were holding two camera taking different shots but with one person at the same time.

Our shots footage video: https://youtu.be/5fo3ed7FqzU

Week 2-3 Learning about moving image by transferring to timelapse

In week 2 we learnt about making a timelapse video by taking hundreds of images around the campus, we choose the entrance of south campus as we think it could be a good idea for people to know about AUT south campus from the beginning.

It was fun and exciting as we had to try our best to capture the moments that people walking through the campus and cars entering the entrance, we firstly set up the tripod then used the camera to take pics every 10seconds. Then we used premiere pro and bridge to put the images and edit them together.

Week 3 Design thinking: Understanding the potential of my choice & investigation of audience and potential users

Understanding the potential of my choice: in this lesson I learnt to analysis the SWOT analysis and trans media map of my chosen movie- My neighbor Totoro, by investigating its strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Basically the SWOT analysis helps me to understand more about the economical pros and cons of the movie or its company. My neighbor totoro is a really diverse and a good choice for SWOT because it’s movie studio-ghibili studio has produced lots of famous movies and most of them are well known around the whole world, so there would be a lot of things for me to investigate about from an economic perspective.

Investigation of audience and potential users: This class work is for me to design a potential user/ audience for my chosen movie, to think about where the location could be, what is the suitable age for them, how could this movie be used on them, what kind of messages this movie can tell or teach them. This class work helps me to think deeply how my chosen movie can suits and impact my user/ audience positively in a way of making them having interests on it.

Week 1- Design thinking – about myself

In week one design thinking class, we first work on knowing ourselves by getting an A3 paper and writting/ drawing the 10nouns, 7adjectives, 5favourite subjects and a quick drawing of ourselves, it was so interesting to see how each of us wrote their words out with using spaces on the paper differently. I am excited to know more about how this paper is going to work.

Week 1- Moving image types exercise

On the first week of class we also learnt about moving image, in my group we need to watch the video that has been allocated to us and analyze using the heaps, they are the description, settings, sounds, pacing, color, motion graphics, and the transition of the movie.

The movie we watched is called “when the fat girl gets skinny“. It talks about how much an orginal fat girl suffered from getting skinny from her perspective, how she got mental issues by that and how much she scared of peoples eyeing. There’s a quote I have dropped down and really influenced me to reflect on, “I am not obsessed of being empty but afraid of being full.” I could few the power from her quote by how her mental health is deeply destroyed by the poeple and society.

Week 1- My first hyperlapse attempt

On week one Wednesday class, we also learnt about making hyperlapse and a moving image. We tried to use premiere pro to edit the continuous images we took for making a hyperlapse.

However when I worked for my homework at home, I have some troubles of choosing the images by sequence, I couldn’t tick the sequence box even though my images are in JPG format. Therefore I decided to use IMovie to edit my hyperlapse instead.

This place in my hyperlapse is the path I would take everyday when I back home after school, there are always some cars going across the road and student walking around after school, with beautiful views and weather, these images are taken at 5:30pm on Monday.

Week 2- Film language and storyboard

In week 2, we learnt about film language, camera angles, shots and movements. Now I know that there are actually a lot to learn from a film or even a short clips, how they film the video with different angles, different distances of shots and different directions of movements.

We have also watch a short clip called “Pan’s labyrinth” and we drew a quick storyboard of what we encountered in the movie, by also writing down each of their camera angles, shots, and movements or dialogues. It’s a good way for me to have deeper understanding of a movies structure and how a movie works through illustrations.

Week 1- Research and Analyze an existing short film

For the first lesson being back to campus after the long as lockdown, we learnt about the analyzing an existing short film.

My group has watched the short film called “The landing”, and how we could watch a film with separating as three acting parts, they are the set up, the development and the revolution. Basically it’s talking about the beats/ ups and downs part of a movie. The antagonist and the protagonist helped to create conflicts and powerful ups contrast of a movie.

For the homework, I continued to work on “the landing” and went deeper to its structures and details. I drew a storyboard for the important scenes of Act one, two and three as well, as to help myself know more about analyzing a film by illustrating what I see from it as well.

Final game play with audio/ Reflection

Now my character can move and jump, the platforms and background are static, the enemies can be pushed by the player, and I have finally added the background audio for the game to make the game more fun and interesting!

The playing method is quite easy, the player just have to walk through the whole level design, skipping the holes and pushing the enemies away and this is how he could arrive the destination- Macleans Park.

Finding, challenges and improvement:

My computer kept crashing and had to go backward to redo the same steps so often, so I learnt that I have to always save my files after I have done each of the single things in Unity.

I forgot to separate the layers of the characters, platforms and enemies initially, wasted some time to go back and edit the background, if there is next time I will definitely draw them into different layers! That makes everything become easier and faster.

For some reason the unity app in my computer doesn’t have the complete options in the inspector bar, so I had to get so many help from Nivia, and I thank that she helped me to went through this struggle, otherwise I couldn’t have completed my game.

Game design coding process

In the coding process, I learnt how to code the characters and platforms on Monday at campus with Nivia, I realised that it is actually much more better and convenience if we can talk about the game face to face, because the teaching process can be more detailed and thoroughly.

And I feel less stressed after coming the campus and got feedbacks and helps from Nivia, because I sorted out most of my problems there and it is always good to have physical communication with people!

The coding process was not as hard as I thought, however due to the problems my computer has, my unity app doesn’t have the entire options for me to code my game completely, including coding the characters and the static bar etc… So I and Nivia had been sending files to each other for so many times just to work on my game in different platforms, sincerely thank you Nivia for your help and patients… Otherwise I would not have been finished my game!