All Of My Final Out Comes For My A2-Media Studies Coursework!!!

Evaluation - 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Conventions from JamesWeston18

Evaluation - 2- How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Final Draft Of 'Bernard the Bird'!!!

The reason that this is here is because this is a version of my short film in response to my audience feedback. The only thing that I have changed is the sound because I got a lot of negative feed back about the music transitions. So in response to this I have extended the fades between the music to make the transitions smoother.

Evaluation - 3 - How did you use media technologies in the construction, research and panning, and evaluation stages?

How did you use media technologies! from JamesWeston18

Evaluation - 4 - What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Short Film 'Bernard the Bird' Audience Feedback 17-18 from JamesWeston18

Filmed Audience Feedback

To get a true reaction of what the different age groups truly thought of my animation, I asked some members of my family that haven’t seen any part of my short film to watch my animations. I got 3 different age groups to do this for me. I got the younger children ages 5-10, I got a middle aged group and some older grandparents to watch it. When they were watching it they had no idea that they were been filmed. At the start I told them that I just wanted them to watch it and I was going to record them answering some of my questions for me afterwards. But what I didn’t tell them was I was recording them on my built in web cam on my laptop. Therefore all the reactions you see in the video are 100% real.

The younger aged children were my target audience age. Sadly I miss calculated when setting up the secret camera and cut one of the boys off but we do see some of him. Just from watching their reaction I found some interesting things. I mostly saw some very positive things, for example I could see them bobbing along to the catchy theme tune that it has and when it was a happy part, reinforced by the music, you could see them all cracking a smile. So this was very positive and means they understood the story and understood the happy and sad parts.  The only thing that doesn’t look to good is the face the boy is the middle was pulling who is aged 5. He is sat with his head in his hand and looks very board, but he does crack a smile and few times telling me that he might actually enjoy it.

The middle aged group gave a very positive reaction to my animation. As they are adults who have children they are used to see pre-existing animations for children. As a hole they really seemed to enjoy the animation because they were laughing at the funny parts and felt sympathy at the sad parts. They also made comments like ‘you can tell so much just from his eyes’. Even though they are not my target audience, they still really enjoyed it. Whether this is because they know that children will like it, therefore they enjoy it knowing that or they did generally enjoy it, either way they seemed to have fun watching it.    

The elderly age group gave me the most interesting reaction to it. Throughout the hole animation there wasn’t a greater amount of emotion showed. They did make a few positive comments but not as much as the middle aged people. There could be a few reasons for this. The biggest thought I have about this is, is because the target age is 5 and they will be a fair bit older, therefore they may not understand it and find it boring because it’s too simple to keep them engaged.

When I interviewed them afterward I got some very useful information off them. The biggest relief for me to find out was the little boy in the middle did really enjoy it as he gave me a 10/10, he said to me that just how he watches things. Overall the feedback was very good as they said almost everything that I wanted them to say. They made some comments about changing the animation were the big Jock lands on the wire, but due to time that will have to be left I can’t change that. The younger boys did make some comments about the birds talking which was very interesting for me to find out as other feedback as resulted in leaving it as it is.   

My Film Poster In The Real World!

I have decided to put my poster over the top of where true film poster used to be to give example of how my poster works and looks. I think that my poster does work quite well as it does look tack mixed in with all of the other film posters.

'Bernard the Bird' In Response To My Audience Feedback!

The reason that i have put this as my second complete draft is because this is a response to my audience feedback. From the comments they have made about the music transitions, i have re-looked at all of the music in my animation. 

The changes that i have made in this draft are, I have completely removed the opening scene sound track and replaced it with the catchy happy tune i have all the way through my animation. I have also looked very carefully at all of the music transitions and made them more gradually in response to the feedback.

I do like the change that i have made, however there is one thing that i do not like. This is the music at the beginning. Because i have replaced the opening scene music with the happy music already in the animation. The opening scene and the first scenes music now clash making the sound seem very repetitive. So what i will be doing is putting the sad music for the second scene instead as that scene is sad anyway. 

Completed 'Bernard the Bird'!!

After 5 months of working on creating this short animated film, i finally have my first completed draft with music, some sound effects, editing and end credits. The process of making this short film has been very educating for me as i have learnt many new skills such as gaining many new skills in Photoshop, Flash Professional, After Effects and Premier Pro. These skills will be very help full for my in the future as i aim to go into animation at university.

From looking at the start of this project were i just have a few simple pictures on my story bored and developing that into this final outcome that i have now has been my favorite part about this projects and knowing that everything you see on there (except the music) is fully my own work that i have drawn in Photoshop from my head. 

I really hoped you have enjoyed 'Bernard the Bird' and feel free to leave me any feedback you may have!

Bernard The Bird With Background Music Draft 1!

As i now have the first fully competed version of Bernard with the story and editing, all it needed was some sound. Choosing music for this was extremely hard and i had been searching around YouTube for ages trying to find some appropriate music that was happy and upbeat and then some music that was sad but still upbeat 

I came across this Ukulele music when searching around and i got an images of the bright country side in my head. Because of that i new it was perfect for Bernard as that was the exact imagery that i wanted to portray. The sad music was very had as sad music is normal very depressing and slow in tempo. As Bernard is meant to be happy all the time, but the music is only there to represent bad things happening i wanted it to be still upbeat. I finally found some music that was do for it and lucky there was an instrumental version of it as well.  

I am well aware that the sounds in this are not perfect, but for a first effort i don't think it was to bad as the sounds fit well to help tell the narrative better. The things that i am going to do for next time is add in some more sound effects such as whistling noise and yawns. Some other things that need changing is the volume of the music at points. Its hard to notice but the sounds are actually at different volumes because when i was experimenting with sound i wasn't sure what i was doing. But on a hole i don't think that there is that much to change and i should have the sound done soon. 

Sounds For The Animations!

Opening Music:

Background Music:

After watching countless amounts of different music tracks on YouTube, I have finally narrowed it down to these three tracks to be used in my animation. The top piece of music is going to be used for the opening scene. I have decided to give the opening scene a different piece of music compare to the other pieces of music that are going to be used in the animation because I wanted to make it clear that this is the opening scene and not part of the narrative. 

The second piece down was my favourite piece of music out of them all. This was a very difficult piece of music to fine as I wanted a happy, upbeat music but not to distracting to the narrative. When I came across this, I new it would be perfect for the target audience and it fits in with my animation. It is played from a Ukulele and is played at a fast tempo giving it a very upbeat and happy feel to my animation. 

Then we have the third piece of music. This one was the hardest one out of all of them to find. This was because I was looking for an upbeat tempo music but I needed it to still be sad at the same time. Eventually I came across this. This originally has lyrics for it but this is the instrumental version for it. From what I can tell it is played on a guitar so it has an upbeat tempo to it but at the same time it still sounds sad.   

Bernard The Bird Complete No Sound Draft 1!

Misfits Scene Complete Draft 1!

Misfit Birds!

Nerd Scene Complete Draft 1!

Nerd scene Draft 1!

Other Nerds!

These extra nerd birds are based on the same idea as the main nerd. They have all got the brown and white colour scheme with glasses, freckles, bowl hair cuts and been smaller then the other birds. I have made each one of these birds another form of stereotype of the nerd stereotype. I have decided to make one of the nerd birds fat and small as that is stereotypical how they are seen and the other one I have made tall and skinny because that is also how they are seen. 

Main Nerd!

What I have here is the main nerd for the nerds scene in my animation. From my knowledge from films and cartoons that I have seen in the past, I had a pretty good idea about what I wanted my nerds to look like. I new that my nerd bird had to have glass, a bowl hair cut, freckles and be a lot smaller then all of the other birds. From the drawing that I did of the nerd back in October time, I think I have got a very close to my initial idea. My favourite part about this bird is the colour scheme. I have gone for a brown and white colour scheme as nerds stereotypical do not go out into the sun light. So I have acted on that in an extreme way to get that point across to the audience. 

The nerds main movements that he will be doing is laughing, and thinking. This is made possible by the wing shapes that I have drawn for him. I have drawn a variety of different wing shapes so he is able and look correct no matter what I need him to do. 

Nerd Scene Backgrounds!

Everything that you see in the picture is all and drawn by me on Photoshop using my graphic tablet. This is the tree house background scene that will be used for the nerd scene. The reason that I have chosen to uses a tree house for this scene is because that is stereotypical a nerds place to be. After producing the reader profile for a nerd and from my knowledge from watching past cartoons, I came up with the idea of the nerds having a tree house with sums on the wall. 

The chalk board in the wall is the most important part out of the hole scene to reinforce to the audience that there birds are nerds. The reason the sums are so simple s because I had to think who would watching the animation. As my target audience is very young children I felt it was appropriate to have very basic simple sums as the children can try and work them out and become more engaged in the animation.The rocket on the screen is another extra feature and that will be moving in the animation. 

Stereotypes Of Nerds!

Magazine Film Review!

Magazine Film Review Analysis!

Final Film Poster For 'Bernard the Bird'!

I have chosen to use this as my final poster design. This is because i had a vote with a group of people to decide which one they preferred the most. The majority of votes went for this one. 

The reason that they chose this one is because they said they liked the fact that Bernard (the main character) was in the middle. This made the audience aware of who and what they are going to be seeing. They said that the background was good as it matched the backgrounds in the short film, instead of just making it up to make it look good. 

I personal thought that this one was the best to because i think the use of  space on the page was used well, for example there isn't to much sky as the titles fills most of it up, the Bernard fill most of the middle part of the poster and the release date is at the bottom. The background is very colourful and bright which make that animation seem very happy and will draw the younger ages to want to watch it. 

Film Poster Composed Ideas

Initial Film Poster Ideas!

Analysis Of Animated Film Posters!

Editing The Girls Scene In Adobe After Effects!

This is me doing all of the cinematography edits for the girls scene in After Effects sped up. When I was doing the edits, I set up a camera to show you what its like when I have to edit my animation. This video was actually two and a half hours long as the video has been sped up 64x. As you can tell from the video doing the edits is a very tedious job but the results from it are worth t as it improves the story because I get to tell the audience what things to watch. 

Bernard The Bird Opening Scene - Girls Scene Draft 1!

This is the first draft of my animation from the opening scene to the girls scene. As you can see I have got four fully animated scenes now with a wide range of camera shots I there to. This isn't the full animation as there is going to be a nerd scene and a misfits scene till come which I a in the process of animating now. Also as this is the first draft of these scenes there will be some changes to make for example I noticed the clouds and the sun not quite doing the right thing some times and these are the types of things I ill be getting sorted out for the next draft. 

Whats Its Like to Edit In Adobe After Effects!

I took this screen shot of what I was doing in Adobe After Effects. As you can see I have used duel screens so that I an get a full-screen shot of the animation and also enables me to see all the different layers on the there. Each little star you see on the left hand screen represents a key frame for a different layer. Those key frames are all the different camera shots as this software allows me to do all the cinematography such as the close ups, zooms, ect...

Girls Scene Draft 2!

After I had created the first incomplete draft, I left animating this scene for a couple of days whilst I edited the first few scenes.So when I came back to finish the animation off I realised that the actual animation was to fast and when it would come to adding in the edits, it would look to fast. As a result of this I went back through the animation and slowed it down by adding in longer shots and longer pauses. 

After I had done that it was time to finish off animating it. My aims from this scene were to make it look like Bernard is hitting on the girls and then gets rejected. So for this scene I drew Bernard some red checks to give him the impression of blushing when he gets all embarrassed. This scene went extremely well for me as what I wanted to get across to the audience was a difficult topic, but I think I managed to do that. This is because I got across that Bernard was nervous but at the same time he thought the girls were very attractive. Then I added I the slight edging towards the girls to suggest that he was going to try something. Then Bernard does the yawn and does the move on the girl before getting rejected by her. This scene was by far the most complicated to animate as there is so much stuff going on in it.  

Bernard Scene One, Two & Three With Editing - Complete Draft 2

So this is the second draft of the video bellow. The difference between the videos is there is an extra 21 seconds. I did this by going back into Flash and re-animated the scene this was not a quick job as i had to extend all of the pauses in the animation making all the face expressions out of time, meaning i had to just about start again. 
The scene now looks a lot better and the edits are not rushed and it fits in with the rest of the scenes. The only problem with this scene now is the clounds need sorting out as they move in the wrong place but other then that there isnt much wrong with this scene, so i will be keeping it the same untill i get more feedback.   

Bernard Scene One & Two & Three With Editing Complete Draft 1!

Now i have the finished the third scene with the jocks, i was ready to edit it in Adobe After Effects. As this was second scene of the narrative i could do a straight jump cut to the next scene as you saw the bird leave the scene and come in at the same point so it looks as if he has flown from one location to another.

The editing in the scene was good and went as planned when i created it in Adobe Flash. But i had one slight problem. This was when i rendered with video i had created in After Effects and watched it back. The problem was i has been watching it in a slower time when editing it so when i watched it in real time the editins were way to fast and it looked like it was in fast froward. This was a big problem as it meant that the animation was two fast as well. So to solve this problem i had to go back into Flash and re-animated the scene. 

What I Did/ Didn't Do During My Christmas Holiday!

It has been about a month since my last post, however i have actually been doing work. Instead of advancing with my project, i decided to go back to my previous work and refine that until i was happy enough with it. There is still a lot of work to go back to and make better but i will be gradually doing this over the next couple of months left. For now with the majority of my time i will be finishing off my animated film and be experimenting with sounds to add on to the animation. The shortly after that is completed i shall start on my poster and magazine review.  

Bernard The Bird - Scene one and two first draft no sound

This is the first time that i have put two scenes together finished with the editing. Due to the fact that the first scene is an opening scene and is not relate to the story at all it would work if i had simply put a jump cut to the first scene of the story (were he gets kicked out of his nest). So i had to think of a way to change the scenes over without doing a fade  because they don't look very professional. So i decided to make it looks like a cloud front is going across the screen meaning that it would cover up the background changes. The after has work okay as it does what i wanted it to do however there are a few things that i would like to perfect about it. There is one cloud that is last to leave the screen and it moves a lot faster then the other drawing the audience to look at that and not the animation. The next thing i would change is making the clouds look realistic. Due to my lack of skills in Adobe After Effects i am still unsure on how to do a lot of things and making the clouds look more realistic and making them move more realistically is something i do not know how to do yet. However if i do develop these skills then i can always come back to it.

These two scenes edited together like this is only draft 1 and i'm sure it will change and develop a lot more with more and more edits. But as a first attempt i think its turned out really well. The edits are sharp were they need to be and the effects have worked really well. I need to work on the sun as it was in the wrong places at some points during the animation but that's not hard to change. If i could i would make it a bit higher quality in some points, but due to how I've made the animation this wont be possible.    

The Equipment I have used to Create My Animation!!

Having the correct equipment is a very important thing when it comes to making anything. Therefore to make this Animation i had to go out and buy a few thing to help me out. I think that if i hadn't bought these things to be able to do my work at home and to become better on them, i don't think my animation would have been half as good as it is now. 

One of the first things that i bought to help me out was a Wacom Bamboo Graphics Tablet. What this is is as a tablet were you get a pen and you draw on the tablet like you would with pen and paper. However when the pen is touching the tablet the pen then turns into a mouse. This means that i am able to do more fluid lined drawings and shade faster and more realistically then i would have been able to do with just the mouse. In my animation, everything you see in the scenes has been drawn and coloured in was all done by me, and to aid me to do this i used my Graphics Tablet. 

The next thing that i have to aid me with my animation was my all-in-one Epson printer. This printer doesn't just print but it also as the functions of a photocopier and a scanner. It was the scanning capability that has really helped me out with this piece of equipment. This is because when i have sketched out one of my designs it means i can scan it into the computer and post it on my blog. It also means that i can use the drawn images as a template when i starting to draw my images in Photoshop. 

Just because you have the equipment doesn't mean that its good enough for the job. For example you may have a computer to make an animation one, however if it has very low specification then it wont work very well compared to a high specification computer. This is the computer that i use to make my animation. Its a Lenovo H530s. This computer has an 8GB RAM meaning that it can handle big tasks and work with high end software such as Abode After Effects and is able to render the videos without freezing or crashing. 

   

The most important piece out off of the equipment that i have is a new thing that Adobe has released and that 'Adobe Creative Cloud' What Adobe have done is, instead of making you buy one piece of software at a time for a lot of money, that have instead decided to give you all of the products for a monthly subscription. When i discovered this i thought i was the best idea very. Because i am a student in full time education i get the monthly subscription for more then half the price as a normal subscription. The main four software's that i use out of the package is Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. Photoshop is an important piece for this animation as this is were i create my backgrounds and create them in layers so when they are imported into aftereffects i can add effects to them to make them look better. Once the backgrounds are complete i then import the background into flash as a template to see where things should b animated to make them match the background. Once the animation is complete in Flash i then export the animation into a PNG Sequence. In After Effects i then import all the background layer, the animation and i start the editing such as blurs and zooms. I haven't yet used Premiere Pro however what i will be doing with is is adding the sounds into my animation. 

Health and Safety Warning Sings!

As i am creating a fully digital animation there is no need for me to go out and film, therefore reducing the risks of having as accidents. However there are still things that could cause harm to me whilst creating the animation as computers can still go wrong.