Here as well before I sign off for the night and focus on 117, is our script for you to read in it's current state. No doubt after we meet up tomorrow before the presentation it will have been altered again but here it is so far:
MEDI 116 PRESENTATION SCRIPT
1ST SLIDE TITLE
Amy: With our website we started off researching many of the websites from the module brief and from other sources to see what type of website we wanted to create.
From each of these websites we looked at the good and bad qualities and found aspects of some websites, such as Gorillaz.com’s interactivity on the “Plastic Beach” game or the ability in the Folk Songs for the Five Points website to make your own unique music using their sound clips, very inspiring towards how we wanted our own to develop to the viewer.
With this research we were then able to have a clear idea of what we wanted the website to look like, leaving us with the question now of what area we wanted to express. Here are the links to some of the websites we looked at.
Jeff:
We began by spider diagramming for places around Plymouth, a place we could all access easily, for ideas on where we could base our website.
Our initial ideas consisted of main tourist areas such as the Bus Station for example, which is a large focal point of the city, but these areas seemed too obvious and simplistic so we tried to make the area the website expressed more abstract and interesting.
From here we used the Bus Station as the subject and tried to think of ways to express the area using objects and unusual mediums.
Ideas stemmed from using a chest of drawers where each separate draw held different information or an area of the bus station, to a sink where sounds of water and the gushing taps could be used to melt one area into another.
We certainly got the abstract aspect right, but trying to explain and link the two aspects e.g. why a chest of drawers would be connected to a bus station and so on proved more hassle than it was worth and so we opted for a different subject and approach.
Anastasija: We tried a different tactic and as we liked the chest of drawers idea, we started thinking of where we could find such an object and so fell upon our chosen subject of Plymouth’s Indoor City Market.
With the Market, we had a wide range of areas with which to incorporate and express into each drawer.
We eventually decided to drop the idea of using a chest of drawers as we did not see the need for it when the market has so much we could express already, but this does not mean we just listed what each stall had to sell.
Instead we wanted to go a step further and create a more personal experience for the viewer to explore.
Joe: Whilst me and Jeff worked on actually making the website using flash, Amy and Anastasija went out to the market to collect photos and information on the market such as the history, layout and so on.
However to take the website a step further, they gathered interviews with the stall owners and shoppers so that alongside the photos of the market, the viewer could get a more realistic feel and understanding of what the market is like, through the real opinions of those who work and shop there.
On the link are the interviews Amy and Anastasija collected and some of the photos we used on the website.
Amy: Although we worked efficiently and to the best of our abilities as a group, there were inevitably going to be a few problems we encountered.
The first of these was that the original website was quite standard and boring at first which led us to want a hand drawn map of the area to emphasise an overall more personal feel.
The original idea was to have a flash of the markets doors opening and then a film of someone unscrumpling the map and laying it flat. We tried filming this but found many problems in trying to get the right effect and so in the end opted for stop-motion animation of the map ball unfolding by itself.
This worked much better and for added effect we added sounds of the paper being scrunched up.
We also were going to add the sound of a pencil scratching as it drew a circle for when certain stalls on the map were highlighted but found from our research that websites became very irritating when repetitive sounds were used so we opted for a more simplistic approach so as not to annoy the viewer.
Jeff: The main problem with this project was that we found the first interview recordings we collected were far too quiet to be heard and so new interviews had to be collected.
This was quite a big setback but whilst Amy and Anastasija did this me and Joe again worked on the website so when they returned we were ready to add the interviews straight away and make up for lost time.
Anastasija: We also realised that this website should be accessible to everyone and since our interviews are audio files, we have included the scripts for each interview.
This aspect of the pages did make them text heavy but we want all people to be able to understand and enjoy the content so by having both audio and visual content for the viewer, those with hearing or vision impairments for example can still enjoy our website to the full extent.
Joe: With the website itself and using flash, there were no major problems and all ran smoothly in making the website, however when we came to publish and open the website in firefox there was an error and it could not be opened.
At first we tried changing all names of the files into lower case as for some strange reason using capitals can affect the website working? But eventually we came to understand that it was because we were using an old version of Firefox and so once firefox had been upgraded it worked fine.
Amy: Overall, the website worked really well to give the personal and modern feel to the market that we wanted to express.
For example using our own scrunched up effect of the hand drawn map instead of Plymouth Councils actual map of the area and sketchy style titles coupled with quality audio and visual content worked well to portray a more human feel to the website which we feel helps the viewer interact with the site more and get a better taste of the friendly levels on which Plymouth Market operates and the unique shopping experience it has to offer.
Check back tomorrow for how the presentation went, take care,
Joe.
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