Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Finished Compass Leaflet

The Compass Program Leaflet has been fully completed. I felt that Adobe Indesign was quite a useful software to create brochures like mine as you could edit it like an image in photoshop. Anything could be done on the template ranging from simply inserting text to creating image and blending effects of images on to the template. For my final leaflet I have included information on:
  • Introducing the program
  • How it benefits the children
  • The teachers in the Program
  • The school system
  • The School Curriculum
  • The current state of the program
  • Contact information for the program

Apart from all these information I have also included many images on the leaflet. There are unages if students working and also of a recent sports day event. The background has a gradient which makes it much more attractive and not just plain white. I have also used transparent effects on images such as the logo which I put behind the introduction of the program. These images could be faintly seen but still adds to the attractiveness of the design. Last of all I made sure that the last page of the booklet contained the contact page as it is how most commercial leaflets are laid out.

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Compass Leaflet

Other than the documentary video of the Compass I have also created a leaflet to inform parents about the program. The leaflet is a tri-fold brochure that contains information all about the program. This information I have gathered from the Powerpoint that I has already been finished and been sent to me by my clients. The leaflet contains a cover page which is seen on the left side. This is what the parents would see when handed the brochure, a cover containing the logo of the program and also the school logo. This cover aims to attract the attention of parents as compared to a PowerPoint it is quite colourful and flashy.
Inside the Leaflet, apart from lots of information written in text I am also aiming to add in quite a few images to make the leaflet more attractive. Each fold of the leaflet should contain at least one image or it would be quite dull to read a page that is full of text. One of the sections I have finished inside the leaflet would be the teacher introduction section. This section contains images of the teachers themselves followed by captions introducing them.
Other than starting on my leaflet another thing I learnt from Adobe Indesign was the use of guidelines. I drew up guidelines to help show where fold lines for the leaflet would be located and also margins to limit where my words go. These are very useful to me as it makes sure that when the leaflet is printed each fold would be of exact width as I could type it exact positions of guidelines in Indesign, and this also ensures that no text would cross fold lines and be in other folds. I hope to finish the leaflet soon.

Monday, 13 February 2012

Documentary Video

The progress in this project has been quite satisfactory. Currently I have been focusing on the documentary video which is to be an informative video that is viewed by parents. I already have the plan of the entire video which I would include as part of my design work in the final portfolio of the entire project. The documentary is beginning with the logo of the compass program and the compass hands in the logo would spin. This is quite an intriguing effect we are using and we plan to use it not only for the documentary but also for the promotional video. This spinning logo introduction is to represent the program like a banner to show that it is an entirely separate program from the school itself and that it has its own aim. For the documentary I have also included many interviews from both the students and the teachers. The teacher interviews are used to explain about the program itself and how it differs. Student interviews are a chance for the current students to express their own views on the program. Different shots of lessons in the compass program are also used.
Below is a screen shot of an interview shot. It was originally filmed from a distance but by using the Event Pan/crop tool that is available in Vegas I moved the clip so that the teacher would be speaking from the left side of the screen and also a closer view. This lets the teacher be the dominant image in the video and causing the viewer to concentrate mainly on her.












On the right side is a screenshot of a freeze frame which I used in the video. This freeze frame is used to introduce the teachers as the name of the teacher appears just as the picture freezes. This is a effect where I got the inspiration from advertisements. This freeze frame is during a clip of the teacher teaching the students or student



On the left this is the screen shot of an interview with one of the students. This particular student had a slight problem with speaking and to help with the viewer understanding what she is saying I added some subtitles to aid the viewer




The last screen shot I have here on the right is what I am using for the end of the documentary. For this scene I am putting 4 clips together they would be playing at the same time but in 4 separate parts of the screen. In the middle I would be adding the compass program logo with the spinning compass hands which is to help show that the compass program consists of all these types of teaching. The 4 clips include a clip in the library, students working hard in the room and also the teacher teaching.

Thursday, 2 February 2012

Current Progress

By now I have made progress on both the video and started the leaflet. The information needed to be included on the leaflet could be found in the PowerPoint my Client had sent me. It needs to be as informative as the PowerPoint but the difference is that it needs to be attractive, not dull like a PowerPoint. To make it attractive I have decided to add images and not just plain text. The leaflet is the most informative piece of promotional material in this project. I have decided to create a fold up leaflet that has 3 folds with information printed on both sides. The program I used for the leaflet is Adobe Indesign. I am slowly getting more familiar with the program as it is quite a different program to Word or Publisher.
On the left you could see the layout of one side of the leaflet. The blue guide lines are there to guide me on where to insert images and words. The line in the center shows where the folds are and the other two guide lines are margins.




For the documentary video I have been adding effects to the clips and putting the whole video together. The process is surprisingly easy as all I have to do is follow my notebook which I had planned the scenes of the video and also included what effects I need to add. All I have left to do is to test the effect out, make sure it runs smoothly and that the result is satisfying. On the right side is a screenshot of what I have done. There are still a few clips missing, but apart from that I have almost completely finished the video. The screenshot on the bottom right is of a small section of the video. Here I have wanted to create a freeze frame and to do this I have inserted the velocity envelope and reduced it to 0% for the video to be still. I found this quite easy to do and currently finding Vegas a very user friendly program.