post production

 Hello, for todays blog I am going to be talking about this weeks progress with the group project on Play, agency, and interactive narrative. Last weeks blog on my project mentioned the research and trying to make a script for each of our segments in the video. I also mentioned that we didn't have much experience with video editing and I will be talking about what we have done to learn so far.

When we made our scripts for our topics we had to make sure that all of our timing in our recordings together were not over the maximum of 6  minutes that we were given. This required us to trim down parts of our videos that were not necessary for understanding the topic and making our scripts a bit smaller.

When recording my segment of the video I kept an eye on the time that I was taking to talk so that I wasn't going over the time that I thought was the maximum that I could talk for. I did a few test runs to make sure that both my audio and visual quality were up to the standard that I needed them to be. It took me a few attempts  to get the perfect recording that I wanted but was worth the time in the end. My other group members were also able to complete their segments without much problems which allowed us to move on with video editing.

For learning video editing I watched a fair amount of YouTube tutorial videos on how to do certain features in the video that we wanted for our own. I decided that I would only learn the few things that I needed to know rather than watching a lot of videos because video editing tutorials tend to be over 20 minutes in length which all together would be a few hours of watch time.

Another part of our process that we managed to get was getting an interview with someone that streams on Twitch. We were able to contact the streamer through one of our group members that knew them and we compiled a list of questions from all the topics that we needed to talk about because we were very curious to see what a streamer thinks of the topics that we were going to talk about.  

What I am currently enjoying about this project is learning about the topics that my other group members have been researching as there was a few topics that I wasn't fully familiar with like agency and interactive narratives.

What I found frustrating so far in this process is that the maximum time of 6 minutes felt too short for all the information that we have to give on our topics because we feel like we cant give the proper explanation and examples that we want to which makes us feel that we are not giving as much representation that our topics need.

Sources:

- PNW Production - Creative commons zero license - Pexels

Finishing production of the group project

 Hello, in todays blog post I am going to be going over the work that me and my group have been doing for our group project on the topic of  play, agency, and interactive narrative. At this stage in the project we are confident and excited to finish the project so we can see what the end product looks like. Each of us in the group have our strengths in certain areas in the project which helps us benefit off one another.

So far each of us have done extensive research into our topics and are able to confidently speak about them. We have been script writing our sections in the project that each of us are going to speak on and had to make sure that our scripts remain in the maximum that the video length can be.

Prior to this project most of us have had limited to no experience in video editing but through learning with tutorial videos and also through someone in our group who is experienced with video editing we have been able to learn the basics in order to make the video. We planned that our video wouldn't be too complicated to avoid us getting stuck or confused. We are using stock videos and also footage that we have captured ourselves in videogames to show examples while explaining them. We noticed the importance of having subtitles in our videos and have made sure to pick a font and colour that is easy to read. We also planned on adding copyright free music at a low volume in the background of our video that suits the topic that we are discussing.

To add more information on the topics that we discussed, we made a survey to compile information from people and what their opinions are on topics. The survey was a big success because we had so many different opinions and views on topics and unexpected majority votes we didn't expect.

This whole project has been a great learning process for everyone in our group as we all learned something new like for example someone in our group didn't have much experience with gaming but was able to learn about the topics quickly. Another example would be that we have been learning off one of our group members on editing. We also learned how critical it is to keep communicating with our group members often so that we can help and update each other on the progress that we have been doing in order to work more effectively. Group chats and voice calls were very effective for this.

Sources

- image by Canva studio - creative commons zero license - (link to image)

My preparations towards production

 Hello, for todays blog I will be giving an update to what work I have been doing this week for my group project. This week I did a lot of research into the topic of console and PC games.

So far I have done some in depth research into the topics of console and pc games as well as monetisation in gaming. Console and pc games both have their own strengths and weaknesses and I decided to look into this. Console gaming is usually the first platform that people that want to play games that are high in quality usually go for and there are reasons for this. The first reason is because consoles are heavily advertised on television, billboards, on the internet and also through your friends mentioning them. Even if you are not a gamer everyone has heard of the big names such as Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo. Each platforms have their own exclusive games and its up to you which one tailors to you the most.

Consoles are also very easy to operate because of their main function is to play videogames. This makes playing games with your friends very easy. PCs are not solely designed to play games so if you are not very good at navigating a computer  Console exclusive it can be difficult. games that are not available on other consoles and PC makes them a big pull factor. Their relatively small price in comparison to PCs is also a big factor that affects peoples decisions. 

Now that I have talked about the positive reasons for console popularity, I will now talk about the reasons why people play on PCs. The absolutely huge library of games that you can choose to play on PC is endless because of the many games providers and websites that do not exist on consoles as consoles only have one store to buy from. Most PCs depending on how good their components are usually perform much better than consoles. On PC you also do not need to buy a subscription in order to play games online.

In this group project I think that I could contribute well in the video editing. I have previously used Adobe software's such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom and Animate. Although I only have little skills in video editing software's such as Premiere Pro I still think that I might be able to pick up on how to use it very quickly as the Adobe software's do have a lot in common with each other in terms of layouts and tools. 

Another way that I can see myself being helpful in a group project is sharing some of my knowledge in certain categories in this project. This project has a big focus on gaming and I have always played games since I was young and have seen a lot of these topics around me over the years that I have played.

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- Image by RF._.studio - creative commons zero license.