evaluation

in evaluation to this project, i would say it has gone pretty well, i have learnt alot more on dreamweaver, flash and avid, and ita made me think alot more about the audience.

we have to make things usable, and interactive in todays technology, otherwise people loose interest and we have wasted our time.

As for my artifact, i would say i have changed my idea far too many times, if i would have stuck with one idea it may have turned out better. The concept was sort of lost a few times on me, but i got there in the end.

i ended up making about 5 final pieces, but i think the mcdonalds idea worked the best as a representation of interactivity.

second attempt at website.

I looked at more dreamweaver tutorials and downloaded a version of dreamweaver for my windows computer.

I found it alot easier in this format, and got the hang of dreamweaver more.

The main changes were visual, but i think this is a large part of interactivity, if something doesnt look right then the user will lose interest and not want to interact with it.

Although i have lost the visual element of it being in the Mcdonalds trade colours, of red and yellow, i think this cheapened it, and the bright colours distracted the user, so i used black, it just looks alot better.

I also made more links, such as back buttons, to go to a previous page and also put play stop and rewind buttons on my videos within flash.

I am alot happier with this artifact to my previous ones.

not happy

so i had all all my videos on youtube, so they are in a web format and all the same. (i used different devices to film on) so have created a website in dreamweaver which links to eachother.

there are about 7 pages, and together i was aiming at making a virtual drive through. my dreamweaver skills are obviously not up to scratch thou, and im really dissapointed in my final piece.

i still have a day and a half though, so im going to try and make it look alot better and start from scratch.

i have drawn up a much more user friendly, and visually more proffesional looking piece, and have found many books, and online tutorials to help me get there.

i shall hand in my first draft so that you can see the process.

edited some videos

if that fails to work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJTOY5-1ETc

this is the first of the studio footage, this isnt the music ill use, i was just playing with the audio, i have to put the clips into flash and create the menu and paths yet, this is just the mooving image part to it so far…

Producing the Videos

Im not sure what made me focus my project around the happy meal idea, other than the idea springing to mind when i was looking at other videos on youtube. I love the style of the bold colours that are used in the childs box meal, and the whole feeling of fun around it. I had remmebered an advert i saw for a japaneese mcdonalds, which showed stylish clowns in a very ‘high fashion’ way, eating a burger. This look inspired me to do the videos in the studio setting, i loved how the white background made you focus on what the clowns were wearing. im going to try and make as little shadows as i can on the white background, because i dont want the viewer to be distracted.

i decided that my videos would be similar to these stylisticaly, however my subjects would be contrasting these videos, as they will be childlike and sadistic.

the male role will be played by my friend luke, i have purchaced on a budget a yellow teeshirt and lots of fake blood.

the contrast of yellow and red worked well, and i got him to smear the blood around his mouth at the end and smile sadistically into the lens. he looks very clown like.

the female role was played by my friend ruby, and i dressed her in a yellow oversized teeshirt and red tights. i also found a red and yellow bow and a nose and also fake blood.

i enquired in my local mcdonalds and got some empty happymeal box’s so i used them as props.

there was no real structure to the female role, i just got her to play with the box’s as a child would, and then to spit up some blood.

i later edited the videos into short films, with individual sound tracks.

the gorier of the two is the male one, and this is much creepier than the female one, so i will use this to represent the burger meal, as it has more calories and fat in it.

The traditional connotations of a happy meal, is in the title, ”happy” food, children get ”surprises” and the whole culture surrounding the happy meal, such as the resteraunts having play areas, and clowns for partys drew me in because although most of us have grown up to accept something that is so bad for us to be such a treat, it is bad for us.

I wonder if we had salad bars with play area’s, if we would grow up with the idea that salad is fun, and if we were given toys when we got our salads if we would grow up thinking it was a treat to have them.

Or is it just because mcdonalds are amazingly good tasting?

Mcdonalds idea continued…

i had realised i have been doing alot of things towards this module and not been putting them in this blog, so its time to catch up on everything

after decideing to change my idea to a ‘virtual drive thru’ i needed to shoot my films that will show when the user chooses different items.

i went into my local mcdonalds, and got a copy of the nutrition, and looked at some statistics as to the sales of happy meal items.

the most popular choice is the cheeseburger happy meal, which is also the highest calorie item on the happymeal menu, and the second highest selling was the chicken nugget meal.

i have decided to use these two as the menu choices.

i then storyboarded how i would present the ‘avant garde’ video’s as an interactive artifact.

this was on paper however i can give a brief description:

welcome screen( happymeal box image with smily face then sad face) this will be a youtube video with an ”enter” sign below

this will direct you to another screen, which will be an embeded video of approaching the drive thru.

there will be a link underneath saying ”order”

when clicked, you will be directed to another screen, i will build an image in photoshop with the links inside to each video.

there will be the choice of the 2 favorite meals ”chicken nugget” and ”cheseburger”

which will link you to one of the gory videos.

inspirations

complete change of idea :|

I decided after filming insdie and around coombe, it proved impossibe to get bright enough shots, as the building has barely any light, and without being disterbed by staff asking if i had permission to film mid-shot. I did have permission to film, however its their company policy to ask. Also on the day of filming the only rooms i could film in were in the old end, and the electricity cut off as soon as i pressed record. (how ironic)

I was planning on going back but the whole idea seemed like it had been pushed into different routes and wasnt even relevant to me, the task, the course or coombe anymore. I had a really simple, and more relevant idea, to show statistics in an interactive and avent garde way, which seemed really clear in my head whilst i was watching a wierd gory cheap horror.

The idea is simply to show the items off either the mcdonalds pound saver menu or the happy meal box’s and flash them with images of gore, the amount of gore being representative of the calorie content.

This thought then escilated to the vision of lots of people in a white studio setting sat at a simple white table, eating each item off the menu, looking blankly into the lens (emotionless and robotic) then when each is clicked, it will be flashing as them eating the item full screen to them thowing up gore, fake blood etc. (representative  of the calorie content).

Im not sure why i want to do this, im not a vegetarian or against mcdonalds, infact quite the opposite, i justthink it will work visually, and meet the brief better.

research

now i have an idea, i need to work out how im going to present it to make it interactive , i had a few ideas such as creating the halls of the hotel in 3d google sketch up, and have 360 video’s of inside the rooms play when you open the door, i also thought of having a web page that has information about the different horror storys, and reconstructions of each story, then a video/images like archive footage.

With this idea, i looked into how i would get hold of archive footage and request permission to film inside the building and in restricted areas.  The general rule that coombe has is ”no filming unless authorized”, however, as i work in the hotel i am going to see if i can get special permissions.

I asked my boss if i could film after work, and she put it through to the boss’s and got me persmission, however on the day of filming, the only rooms i was able to get in, the lights wouldnt work, which was odd, and instead i filmed around the and the grounds of the hotel.

i managed to get some good shots, then went back to talk to the staff that have been in the hotel since the renovation, and managed to get hold of some slides from the ruins of the hotel which i can develop in the darkroom, and scan into my project

the Cravens story research

i git the inspiration from todays lecture to do my final artifact surronding some of the storys that circulate around Coombe Abbey hotel, where i am a maid.

Working there you hear alot of storys and see alot of spooky and questionable things, but there are some ‘ghost storys’ that are actually proven to be true, wether it be a coincidence or not. Working there you have to just ignore things and put down everything to the fact that its an old place, and theres bound to be creaks and shadows.

The building used to be a monastery, untill henry 8th got rid of the catholic church, and the monks were forced out, many of them died of starvation in the walls of the building, when skeletons were pulled out recently with renovation work.

In the 1600′s, Lord Craven took over the house, one of the richest men of the times, and untill the past 100 years, it was passed down through the generations of Cravens.

One of the main scary stories is that a gypsy girl was taken in by a craven male, and made pregnant, then thrown out of the house the next day, the story then goes that the gypsy girl lived in the forests around the house until 9 months later when she returned to the house looking for help with the child  birth, she was refused help and she gave birth in the Abbey gate stables, which exist now as a medieval banquet hall.  Before she died she cursed the men in the family, and since then, all Craven males have died at an early age, although as far as we are aware, the latest Craven is in his 40′s.

In the hotel today, there are new sections that have been made to look old, and there still stands a large amount of the hotel that was in the 1600′s. in this end of the hotel, which us maids call ‘big end’, its very unsettling to work there, there’s a continual essence of someone watching you, as if there is something there. There are 5 rooms in particular that just make me feel really scared, for no particular reason.

In the ‘big end’ there are grand bedrooms, secret passage ways and luxurious decor, however there have been lots of expieriances of ‘paranormal’, or un explained things, such as people shouting when theres no one there, a child has been spotted on a few occasions (its said that there was an incident in the 1700′s where a little girl fell out of the window of room 142) and many guests claim to have seen people standing or walking around their rooms.

these are images of the hotel from the time that the Craven family owned the hotel. Images from (www.coventry-walks.org.uk/coombe/ca-ch5.html)

 

The hotel is now a luxurious countryside manor, where they host many weddings and banquets, the interior designer has kept alot of the original features and the style and decoration has remained the same. In one of the rooms the have even kept the original wall coverings.

 

see the hotel now at :  coombeabbeyhotel.com