Year2 Assignment4: Creating the pitch and developing ideas

This evening I have been creating the part of the pitch which me and Simon will collaborate on. I have been creating this with simon using Team Viewer a remote desktop control tool so that we can both work on his Mac Book Pro at the same time. This has been really helpful and we have pushed our ideas loads during this time. here is a screen shot of how it worked

I just noticed I kind of messed up taking a print screen of that! well at least you can get the idea of how it was working.

Year2 Assignment4: Quick mobile framework test.

For my website I'm going to collaborate with my course mate Simon Sinclair. We are going to use the framework jQuery Mobile to build a mobile website which emulates a mobile app. I am going to have to code part of the website so I've been getting use to the framework and trying out what it can do so that when we put our heads together to design I will be aware of the possibilities and limitations of the framework.

after finding out that you can host websites through dropbox I have hosted the experimental site that I made here. (while it will stay there until I receive my marks for the project, 4-5 months, the link may not work after if I remove this from my drop box)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8522654/site/index.html

I'm quite excited by this framework as I think its going to allow us to produce something which looks really professional and has great usability.

Year2 Assignment4: Quick note on copyright

I'm currently planning on using vintage footage in my videos and I plan to get these from archive.org. the most common type of licence for the type of footage I want on this site is Public domain the legal text for this type of licence is as follows;

The person or persons who have associated work with this document (the "Dedicator" or "Certifier") hereby either (a) certifies that, to the best of his knowledge, the work of authorship identified is in the public domain of the country from which the work is published, or (b) hereby dedicates whatever copyright the dedicators holds in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the public domain. A certifier, moreover, dedicates any copyright interest he may have in the associated work, and for these purposes, is described as a "dedicator" below.

A certifier has taken reasonable steps to verify the copyright status of this work. Certifier recognizes that his good faith efforts may not shield him from liability if in fact the work certified is not in the public domain.

Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of the Dedicator's heirs and successors. Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work. Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.

Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.

From reading this I'm pretty certain that this allows me to use the footage for commercial use and that any infringement that may occur lies on the uploader of the footage. I will however check with my tutor just to make sure as I do not want to make it so either me or the client are liable to be sued.

Year2 Assignment4: Pushing video Ideas

I have been doing some more research into what video content I can produce for this festival. one of the initial ideas I had was to do a pencil drawn style rotoscoped animation of the bands playing. this has already been done and I found a video of it on vimeo,

I think this produces a really cool style but as a standalone idea it is not good enough to get the excitement for the festival that I need. The content has to be something the people really want to see.

I spoke to my friends Emma Van Diggele and Jemima about what kind of videos they would be watching if they where going to attend this festival. What came out was that they would not really watch the video content they would be going on the website trying to look for information on that the line up is like, what the Vibe of the festival is and what kind of clothes people will be wearing there.

I think that this feeling of the festival vibe and style will be really important when trying get a young audience interested. When I'm making the videos I need to makes these overt in the pieces.

the fact that they would not watch the videos made me thing that I need to produce very short videos that have information in which would be written down. such as the line up, activities and announcements. the videos should also be very short so that people will quickly watch them and get excited about the event.

existing youtube channels such as the one for bestival create video content before and after the events and you can see from the channel views that the ones which get the most views contain footage from the event. I think this is because people have been looking to see if they could see themselves in any of the videos. (this is something I should think about for the post festival films). what I also noticed was the the pre festival films only had a couple of hundred views even for quite a well known festival such as bestival.

I want ways in which I can increase the number of impressions that each of the videos generates. I thought of maybe posting the video production process in forums about motion graphics or advertising but that would only get people from those areas interested. I think there is potential in creating things which can then be spoken about in different forums that the target audience would use.

another Idea that would involve people would be to create video and poster competitions where the winners get featured on the website or given free tickets. A good thing about competitions is that they give people a reason to visit your site multiple times and if you allow them to vote for the winner the repeat visits increases loads.

on a quick note I really like this video from Camp bestival shot on super 8 film

Though this video dose not do it I think taking vintage footage that is no long copywrite protected and applying new visual graphics to it could create some really good shots to be part of a larger piece. the start of this promtional video for outlook kind of dose it

I came up with another Idea for a video which is to take the logo and a short 0.5-1second clip of music from all the bands and then string them together so that you get a very quick feeling about that the style of music is like at the festival and you see the names that are playing. for those that don't have logos I can get styling inspiration from there myspace sites.

I can create videos for each of the bands for them to put on there websites are promotional pieces. each of these videos can link back to there facebook page as well as the bands myspace or website.