Digital graphics evaluation For my digital graphics unit the client, Rebecca Shackley set us the task of creating two graphics for our short documentary ‘Media Censorship: Do we need it’. The brief stated we could make these graphic in the form of either a ‘DVD cover, Billboard, Magazine poster’ and ‘as well as DVD Menu intro for your documentary’. The client asked us to create three draft graphic then she would then choose two of these three ideas for me to develop further. Creating these three graphics fulfilled the part of the brief ‘you must produce 3 draft versions’ as well as allowing me to give the client a broader scope of my ideas for her to chose from. In the brief we were also set the task of creating a DVD title menu screen for the DVD of our documentary. We were set the deadline of the 4 July. I think the brief we were working to was a formal closed brief as the client set out exactly what she wanted us to create ’two forms of graphics; DVD cover, Billboard, Bus Stop, Magazine poster as well as a DVD Menu’, what programs to use ‘using Photoshop and Illustrator with either After Effects and Flash’ and what we must consider when making the project ‘You must consider your documentaries target audience’. The brief stated we needed to ‘consider your documentaries target audience’ which makes sense as these graphics were marketing and therefore representing the documentary the target audience of the digital graphic will be the same target audience as the documentary. The primary target audience are reformists aged 40 and upwards of the A to C on the S.O.C class. The secondary target audience for our documentary are reformists aged 16 to 39 of the D to E on the S.O.C class. We weren’t trying to attract any specific ethnicity, race or nationalist but I think we are attracting English speaking people by default due to the fact my digital graphics will only feature text written in the English language. We had the choice of whether we created a Vector or Raster based graphic and we had to use the software ‘Photoshop and illustrator with either After Effects or Flash’. I used the Vector based program Adobe Illustrator to create the actual graphic and used I used the Raster based programme Adobe Photoshop to cut out images that would go into the graphic. I used Adobe After Effects to create the DVD menu into for the DVD menu. th
When I started the project I made a gantt chart, which scheduled out the process of making my digital graphics, which also fulfilled the brief ‘gantt and proposal are expected to be considered and produced’. The gantt chart allowed me to manage my time effectively so I didn’t spend too much time on one aspect of the project for example I didn’t spend multiple weeks on idea development. I think I may have underestimated how difficult this project actually would be as I only gave myself a limited amount of times to complete the tasks. For example I only assigned one week to generate ideas for my digital graphics. Originally I planned to create three DVD covers for my digital graphics. I wanted to get a mix of types of concepts. I had been watching this five disk box set called the ‘History of Film: An odyssey’ at the time so I was frequently looking at the DVD cover and I really liked how simple it was. It was simply the logo of the documentary against a black background. I liked this idea because you instantly were drawn to the title of the documentary and from the title you knew what it was about ‘History of Film: An odyssey’. It gave
the documentary a classy sophisticated look that I think would attract an older A - C audience so I therefore based my first idea on it. By doing this I would be releasing the brief ‘you must consider your documentaries target audience’. I decided to get the logo of my documentary, which was a take on the no smoking signs but with the title of the documentary in the centre of the circle with the line going through it. As well by doing this I would be fulfilling the part of the brief where I had to include an ‘original photographic and draw/design’. I thought that this was a really good way to target the older primary A - C audience, but also conceptually it worked with the theme of censorship. That idea I was really confident about however after that I came up with several ideas, which I wasn’t sure about. I came up with the idea of a close up of camera with the media censorship logo in the lens with the lens in slightly lower opacity so both the lens and the logo are visible however I didn’t feel this was a strong enough idea. Another idea was for a hand covering a famous film scene which can be seen through the fingers of the hand with the title of the film written on the hand however I think this could make a documentary look like a light hearted mockumentary which would probably deter our primary audience on first sight. Another idea was for a naked woman to be on the cover with her genitals covered with censorship logos however I think this would turn women away from watching this documentary. I listed these ideas among the other ideas I had on a Stixy, which was acting as my map. All these ideas were more visual than my first ideas because I wanted a contrast in the concepts of my ideas. I ultimately decided to go with an idea I had for a giant human eyeball to be looking through an open window that was proportional to the eyeball against a white background with the title at the top of the image. This idea came from a line from the intro of my documentary ‘the media is a window to which we view the world’ which is a line I really loved and I thought if I visually illustrated that line it would make a very powerful striking metaphorical image that would attract the older primary reformist audience as it would be thought provoking and engaging as it’s meaning isn’t obvious it has to be thought about and interpret. I thought this idea was much more interesting than the other ideas and it looked philosophical in contrast to the plain simple straight to the point first idea. The third idea I came up with was to have a selection of images that illustrate topics that are related to media censorship and topics that are discussed in media censorship. I wanted a collage of images neatly organized with no space between the images and some images on top of other images. This idea I really liked because it clearly told the audience what was in our documentary and the combination of all of these serious images would attract the primary older, reformist A - C target audience because these are serious important topics that this intelligent audience will most likely be interested in. I wanted to make sure that this DVD cover also attracted the secondary audience by using pictures from recent topics in the news such as the News of the World scandal and the Australian DJ hoax call as this younger secondary audience will be more likely to relate to this issues than some of
the other topics discussed in the documentary such as the Tiananmen Square Massacre because those topics were largely in the news before the secondary audience were even born whereas this audience would have most likely seen topics like news of the world being discussed in great length in the news as they occurred recently. I also think the fact that there is such an array of imagery all over the cover it will not bore the younger D - E audience would be used to seeing this kind of marketing through their exposure to modern society such as action films. Even though I wasn’t trying to target a specific race, ethnicity or nationality with my digital graphic I think I this DVD cover might attract a more diverse audience as I planned to feature images from news events all around the world so a more international audience would be able to relate to this documentary. By generating these ideas, I was able to realise what was expected by the client, realising the brief and the process that would need to be undertaken to achieve it. There weren’t too many constraints that I ran into during this project as this wasn’t a project I needed a large budget to complete I had the software that was perfectly equipped to creating this project and I had the skills and experience with this software necessary to create this project. However a big constraint we had was one of time as we only had a very limited amount of time to finish this project. This meant that ideas didn’t have a lot of time to fully develop before it had to be put into production for example I only allotted myself one week to generate ideas for the graphics. Another constraint I had was that in the brief it stated I needed to ‘include an original photograph and drawing/design or part of an image’ which limited the creativity of my graphic because it meant my idea must incorporate an original drawing/design and photo. It was easy to incorporate these ideas into graphics as the no censorship sign was an original design and for the original image I just used a real eye instead of an eye I sourced from Google images so this constraint didn’t really alter the content of my graphic. The biggest constraint to my work however was the fact that I lost my work and had to start my project from scratch three weeks away from the project deadline. This was frustrating as I felt all the time spent making the DVD cover and film poster was wasted and it also added a huge workload to my existing one because I had to work from the draft DVD cover which was so primitive and undeveloped. However this constraint wasn’t too great as the fact that I had already created a version of the DVD cover and Film poster that was close to completion before it got lost so the job of decision making was largely already done it was a job of remembering what I had done. For example when I was designing the back of the DVD for the new DVD cover I remembered what I needed to place at the bottom of the back cover and where it went such as the barcode being situated next to the parental guidance warning. I managed to finalise my choice of these ideas mid way through that week I had assigned for idea generation. To plan how I was going to create these ideas I made myself a visual proposal for each one on Stixy. On this proposal I outlined the concept of the DVD cover, the length of the DVD cover, what was the layout going to be like, the format of the graphic, the style and tone of the DVD cover and how it would attract the target audience. These are
essential things to consider when making a project and these were also things the brief obliged us to include ‘along with a proposal that must include; concept, length, format, target audience, style and tone and layout’. This proposal was very useful when making the DVD covers because I knew what I wanted from DVD cover, as all the elements of my idea were broken down into different elements and laid out in the same place so I could see all these little elements which made up my idea. For example if I could see what the concept of my idea was as well as seeing what style and tone I was trying to achieve so when I wanted to change the background of the second DVD cover to purple I looked at the style and tone and agreed to keep it white because I wanted to achieve a philosophical tone to our documentary. Also making this proposal got me to research what is the standard length of a DVD cover. Making the proposal also fulfilled the part of the brief where it states ‘another piece of planning I did for project was making some quick sketches to see what the DVD covers would look like. These were only rough drawing and I’m not a great artist so these drawings weren’t a detailed illustration of the DVD cover however they did help me better visual my ideas, which gave the confidence they would work. Making the first drafts of the DVD cover were relatively easy as I was only really concerned with the front of the DVD cover. I started out each design by setting the size of the art board to 273 cm in width and 184 cm in length and then using the ruler tools at the top of the page to make out the right length for the front cover of the DVD the spine of the DVD cover and the back cover of the DVD. Prior to this project I didn’t know what the measurements of a DVD cover were and how to access the ruler tool in Illustrator. These were quite simple technical and design skills they are always useful to know for future use. When making the first design I selected the rectangle tool and made a rectangle to cover the whole of the front cover and then coloured it in black. I did the same to the back cover and the spin. I knew that the font I wanted to use was Copperplate Bold because I used this font for the text of the title screen of the documentary. For the first idea I simply imported the logo of the documentary which had been created in Photoshop and placed it in the centre of the front cover and then selected the text tool and typed ‘Director Luis Sanchez and Kieran Gibbons’ not realising I should have used the plural of director which is directors. I then went onto Google images and sourced the PG certification sign the BBFC puts on DVD covers it deems to warrant their Parent Guidance certificate. I went on the BBFC and looked at what would be certified as a PG film and I thought our documented fitted that description. For example the BBFC states that in a film given the PG certificate ‘No theme is prohibited at PG, as long as it is treated in a manner appropriate to the category. PG works can explore challenging issues such as domestic violence, bereavement or racism’ I think our documentary explores ‘challenging issues in a ‘manner appropriate to the category’ which I think we do by simply discussing these issues with balanced arguments without glorifying the issues to incite imitation in a young audience. Furthermore our film complies with the guidelines ‘There should be no detail of violence’ and ‘References to sex are acceptable if the activity talked about or shown is implied and lacking in detail’ with examples of violence and sex not shown on
screen but only mentioned and not in detail. For example the only time we make a sexual reference is in the voice over when we state that some TV shows have material that is ‘deemed to be too risky or sexual’ cut out and the interviewees also make sexual references but they don’t go into any detail. I also sourced the DVD video sign that you see on DVD covers. I decided to source these two signs and place them on my DVD covers as they often are the only thing to appear on the front cover of a DVD apart from the title, the name of some of the cast or the creators and the actual graphic to appear on the front cover. Making the first draft of my second DVD cover idea was also very simple as I simply had to source an image of an open window and an eyeball combine them to make the image I wanted and add in the text and the two signs on the front. However I was told by the client that she wanted me to include at least one original image that I had taken/created myself in my digital graphic work so I took a photo of an eyeball opened it with illustrator used the magic wand to select the eyeball set it to inverse and deleted all around the eyeball. I then imported this into Illustrator and put it where the previous eye was. I put the eye on a separate layer to the layer I put the window on. I then placed that layer under the window layer so the eye would be behind the window and therefore look like was looking through the window not the window simply being around the eye. I then added the text and since I was ahead of schedule I decided to make a rough layout for the back cover by indicating with coloured squares labelled ‘text’ and ‘picture’ where the text and pictures would go. I ultimately ditched this layout for the back cover. I added text in the spin also writing the title of the documentary in the same copperplate bold font that I used for the text on the front covers. The third DVD cover was much harder than the other two DVD covers as I had to finally decide what exact images I wanted to place on the front cover and how exactly they should be laid out. I had a list of topics discussed in my documentary and looked on Google images for the best images. Not all the topics made it’s way onto the DVD cover because then the DVD cover would look messy which wouldn’t set the mood for our documentary and may turn away the older primary audience. I only got what images I thought would look best. I got a picture of North Koreans all worshiping the government in unison and placed that in the top corner and then decided to get an image of the news of the world sign and place that next to it. The imagery I was really most proud of was the choice to put a shot of the CCTV footage of the columbine killers holding guns and placing next to it a shot of game play from the ‘Enter the Matrix’ video game of some of the characters holding guns which the audience would hopefully connect the two to show we were discussing the media’s influence on people because the images suggest that the columbine killers may have mimicked the Matrix video game. I also was really proud of how good the cut out pictures of the Chairman Mao statue, the Ofcom logo, the BBFC logo and the 18 certification sign. I was really happy of how they were placed in a way that made sure they didn’t take too much attention away from the images they were placed on top of. I used Photoshop to separate these images from their background because Illustrator doesn’t have the tools to do this and Photoshop is a bitmap based program so you can simply select
pixels you want to cut out whereas you can’t do these with a Vector based program like Illustrator as it simply deals geometric shapes it can’t select pixels only paths. Separating the background from an image isn’t a new skill I learned during this project however I did get to perfect this skill during this project as I now know better/quicker ways of removing the background from an image in Photoshop. For example when removing the background from an image I have recently learned I could use the background eraser tool which is an easier tool which makes whatever you rub out transparent, this could be useful when you have small groups of pixels that are difficult to detected with the magic wand tool because they are so small. Perhaps the only disadvantage of this DVD cover was that the documentary logo got blocked the images of the camera looking at the audience, the Australian hoax call radio DJs and a headstone of the nurse who died Jacintha Saldanha. I placed text on the spin in the same font as the text on the front cover, which was Copperplate Bold and placed a miniaturized documentary logo on the spine to. The text on the side of the DVD was copperplate bold. I also decided to make a rough layout of the back of this DVD cover with labelled coloured boxes. I would have gone back and entered text on the spine of the previous two DVD covers with the miniaturized documentary logo and tried to make a rough template of the back of the first DVD cover but I had to present my first drafts to my media class and the client said I didn’t need to make a layout for the back cover and the spine. I presented my first drafts in the centre of their proposal Stixy’s because I thought that was the best way to illustrate these ideas and the thinking behind the ideas on the interactive whiteboard in room 1116. The client also informed me this presentation wasn’t very formal and I could look at the Stixy for things to say. I think the presentation went well as I expressed all my ideas fully and the justification for these ideas so the audience knew what I was going for with my ideas so they could give constructive criticism I could use when making my final graphics. Some of the feedback my classmates gave me was useful for example Chris Walsh said the logo looked a bit plain the first DVD cover which led to me bevelling the logo to make it stand out from the background. The students were only really there watching the presentation for the purpose of supplying the client who was also watching with ideas to make her suggestions on how I should redraft my DVD covers. The students also were reluctant to give their opinions often as they were working on their own work at the time and their criticism was generally vague and not very detailed. Based on her own judgements with some input from the class feedback she told me for one of my DVD covers to take the front cover of idea 1 with the logo made to stand out from the background and for the back cover to be the photographic collage of idea 3 placed behind the blurb. The client suggested for the second idea that I take the eye and window image of idea two and make background outside of the window black and keep the background in the window white. I agreed that the clients suggestions could make my work better as the logo did look slightly plain against the background, it didn’t really jump out at the audience. The client suggested I apply some kind of effect to make the so making style sign stand
out and an effect to make the text stand out. I agreed with the clients feedback for my second DVD cover 2 also as separating the window and the eye from the rest of the DVD cover may draw attention to the metaphor more however I didn’t completely agree with her reason that the eye looked a bit like a planet. The client later that day suggested that I make the front cover of DVD cover 2 into a film poster. At first didn’t like this idea because it required me to research what size an average film poster is in cinemas and what’s the typical layout for a film poster. I got to work on making the final versions of the DVD cover and film poster. I found it easy to transfer the photographic collage onto the back of my DVD cover however I soon realised that a consumer would not be able to read my blurb over the collage as it blends in with the dark toned colours in the photos. I therefore quickly came up with the solution of turning down the opacity of the photographic collage. I turned all the photos down to 53% opacity because this meant that the photos were still visible but so was the text. The blurb was very easy to write as I had to explain the concept of this documentary several times when making it, whether that be to interviewee’s, my partner Kieran Gibbons or anyone who asked me about our documentary in general. I completely ignored my vague plans of how the back of my DVD cover was going to look as I wasn’t too pleased with it’s appearance and it didn’t comply with the clients suggestions for my DVD cover. When making the DVD cover I had to look at a lot of DVD covers to see what information to know what information to include on the back of my DVD cover and how it was written. I noticed that I needed to include information such as the approximate running time, the language the film is, whether it has subtitles, whether it’s in colour, what region the DVD is compatible with among other information. I put all of these information mentioned here in a grid I created using the ‘rectangle tool’. This information is displayed several different ways on different DVD covers however I chose this way of laying it out because it was the most common way I noticed. I also had to add other things such as a barcode and the production company logos. Even though illustrator is best suited to creating lines and drawings I didn’t really have any trouble dealing with imported photos in Illustrator. However when I wanted to upload the production company logos I had to first use Photoshop to cut out all of the background of the logo and the colouring in between the letters as I couldn’t do it on Illustrator because Photoshop is a bitmap program so I can select pixels to delete where as I am only able to select paths in illustrator. It was easy to source all of the necessary images that I would need to make my DVD cover have the appearance of a DVD cover you would see sold in retail outlets, such as the barcode or the Dolby Digital logo. I also had to add the credits to the bottom of the back cover. To do this I had to look at several DVD covers incredibly closely to gauge what credits are usually included on a DVD cover for example a credit for a driver wouldn’t make it onto a DVD cover furthermore I had to look at what kind of order the credits usually go in. For example the production companies usually get mentioned first then the main cast, then directors, writers, editors, then producers, executive producer. There were several credits, which are commonplace on a DVD cover which we didn’t use because we didn’t have those roles in our documentary such as costume designer and composer. I then added a copyright sign and a parental
guidance sign. Creating the spine was easy as all I had to do was use the vertical text tool to write the title of the documentary ‘Media Censorship: Do We need it’ which I typed in Copperplate bold text, then I just had to copy, paste and minimized the production company logos as well as documentary logo and placed them at the bottom of the spin this would be typically found on most DVD cover spines. The front cover of the DVD was incredibly difficult. I found it relatively easy to create the back cover and the spine however the front cover was incredibly difficult. I searched the internet for tutorials on bevelling shapes in illustrator but for some reason none of the tutorials helped me create the bevel effect. Maybe I was too distracted in class to correctly follow the instructions in the tutorial to exact detail. I tried the 3D Extrude and bevel tool however it made the text look tacky and cheap. With the text the client suggested I two versions of the same text in a slightly lighter colour and place it slightly behind the original text so it would look like the text was expanded. I did this but she then suggested I do this with two versions of text one in a slightly lighter colour still. I did this however because I was using copperplate bold as it was the text I had used for the title screen in my documentary there words that stuck out and didn’t look right. For example the ‘E’ character would have spokes stick up in the middle of the E in the foreground. I then came to the solution of placing a rectangle coloured in the colour of the background around the area which was either white or red and placing the rectangle over the area that sticks out and putting it on a layer that would be placed behind the foreground text and in front of the text I’m trying to cover. This technique worked however it was very time consuming. This would have been a solution I could I have applied in either Photoshop or illustrator because both programmes have the tools required to perform this operation. I created the DVD cover quite easily. I just used the rectangle tool to give my poster a background, then used the rectangle tool to create a rectangle for that area for the eye and the window. I then inserted the window and the eye and put them in place. However I was then informed by the client we had to include one original image in either of digital graphic works. I therefore decided that original image should be the eye. I therefore asked a few people If I could take extreme close up photographs of one of their eyes and they kindly said yes. I took the photos against a white wall in media room 1116 which did cause me to have glare in a few of my photos as that room had big windows which let a lot of light in however we also had big shutters to block that light. After I took some photos I was happy with I imported them onto the computer using iPhoto and then I cut out the eye in Photoshop using the magic wand tool. However this meant that the image was rasterised so when it was enlarged it would appear pixelated, which I think slightly comes through in the final DVD cover although isn’t very noticeable. I didn’t really like that we had to include an original image as it could potentially limit the execution of an idea which it did for my colleges Chris Walsh as he had to include two original photos that looked out of place in his work. I then had to add the title of the Documentary which I put in large Copperplate bold and I put the release date in a large Birch std font. I then added the credits; the production company logos and some fake websites to make the poster look like one you would see
in a movie theatre. The credits on a DVD poster are slightly different from the credits on a DVD cover for example when a role has too words in it the shorter word will go on the bottom and the longer word on the top for example: PRODUCED BY By this point I had completely forgot about the schedule of production, I was just trying not to go over the 4 of July deadline. The client called me over for a meeting to give me feedback on my DVD cover just after I had created it. At this point I was in the process of trying to sort out the text on the DVD cover as mentioned earlier and finding a way to bevel the circle of the logo so she didn’t offer any new feedback on the DVD cover however she said on the poster I needed to make where I had written media censorship on one line and then she suggested I needed to made the window and eye bigger. I didn’t agree with these changes as I thought the DVD cover was in a finished state and enlarging the eye and window would make them appear pixelated but they were only minor changes that were easy to make. th
I was just going to start to make those what I hoped were the final changes however the computer my work was stored on wasn’t allowing me to log on to access it so I had to ask for technical help. The two weeks in which I couldn’t work on my digital graphics work destroyed my hopes of sticking to a schedule. Although this incident has made me learn the lesson of always backing up my work. I had a version of my work saved however it was a very early version with none of the credits or the text effects. I also didn’t have the files of the photos I used in my DVD cover saved. While I waited in hope of the technicians from CAPITA resolving the problems on my computer I created the DVD menu on a different computer. This was a much more difficult process than creating the DVD Cover or the poster. To create this DVD menu I used DVD studio pro and followed an online tutorial. Before I starting creating the DVD menu itself I had to create the digital graphic that appears on screen before the play button appears. The client said this could be very short and basic so I simply made my censorship logo without text in rotate at a rate that increases to get become very rapid a few seconds into the graphic with the text fading in. I’m not sure how I thought of the idea I think I saw a similar idea on a movie channel years ago and that might have been in the back of my mind. I created it in After Effects and it was very easy I simply imported the logo without text made it a 3D object key framed the rotations to increase as the animation went on added the text in the program with the text tool and then key framed the opacity to increase while it was spinning. Next to the little cube icon that makes an image 3D is an icon that when selected makes the image appear blurry when it moves, I selected this option to give the graphic a nice effect. The graphic was only approximately 9 seconds long. To create the DVD menu I used DVD Studio Pro. I adjusted all the settings as advised in the tutorial. I made this DVD menu a 16:9 PAL of about 16 seconds in duration. I imported my animation I created and which appeared in the timeline as a separate video and audio file. I then created a button by inputting some text in screen using the text tool in the program and then dragged out a rectangle around it, which created a button. Along the left side of the screen a pallet will open with the settings to create a button. I wanted to keep the menu simple so I didn’t really touch the settings I adjusted the text to
be in the centre of the button but left it in the same font and colour and size. Then the difficult task of making the button function, to do this I had to link the button to a track, which would be my documentary. I clicked on a box next to where it says target and on the drop down menu that appeared I clicked on ‘Tracks and Stories’, then went on track one on the menu that appeared next to it and then track on the menu that appeared next to that. In the menu on the right hand side of the screen a link appeared between track one and menu 1. Menu 1 is where the button and animation is and track one is where I’d place the documentary. By setting the buttons target I’ve selected what will appear when the button is selected. I then clicked on the box next to where it says ‘End Jump’ in the pallet for the button settings and on the drop down menu clicked ‘Menus’, then on the drop menu next to that clicked menu 1 and in the drop down menu that then appear clicked on where ‘Menu’ appeared in brackets. Now after the track the screen turned back to the menu. There were a multitude of different transitions I could chose from to go back and forth from the button and the track but I kept it simple I didn’t really chose any. I previewed back my DVD menu and I liked it as it looked pared down an simple which was the vision I had in my head and the client also said she liked it. However if I could do it again I would maybe add in some background images in the DVD menu and add in some kind of transition, maybe create some bonus features so the DVD menu looked more appealing. At the current moment the DVD menu didn’t really serve much purpose as if it weren’t there the documentary would just start anyway this DVD menu only performed the task of keeping the start of documentary on hold for the viewer. I would like to have added some extra buttons such as special features like deleted scenes or director’s commentary so the DVD menu screen would have more purpose. Also there is a lot of edited footage we were very pleased with but were required to cut out of documentary and we would like to have shown that. If I could go back make this DVD cover again I would definitely add in a deleted scenes. I would however still keep the same plain background and simple animation as I think this would appeal to my primary older, A – C target audience as it makes the film look like an art movie. I liked this part of the digital graphics process as it allowed me to learn skills I have always wanted to learn. Now if I want to make a DVD menu I know how to easily. Finally I took the decision that the computer wasn’t going to be fixed before the July 4 deadline so I recreated the DVD cover from the primitive first draft it was saved in and I created the poster again from scratch. This was a frustrating process but it didn’t take long as I just retraced my steps. When I had my work to the state it was in before and then started working on it again. The client suggested that the front cover of my DVD cover looked a bit plain so she suggested putting some kind of symbol on the front cover, I then came up with the idea of putting an image to represent surveillance which was an image I found on the search results on Google images when I typed in surveillance. The image is of a man sitting in front of a wall of TV monitors. I decided to make the image black and white, place it inside the circle of the logo and make the image and the logo grainy so it gave of the look of old CCTV footage. Apply these black and white and grain effects were one of the only times during the project I learned new skills that I hadn’t already learned th
prior to completing the project. It wasn’t hard to apply these effects as I just watched quick tutorials. I had to change the colour of the text in my logo to blue as now the black text would not be completely visible against the background image inside the logo. When looking at my new logo I really liked how my DVD cover was turning out as I this new logo reminded me of the Simon and Garfunkel Sounds of Silence album cover for some reason, I think it was the blue text against the grainy background. I think the new image looked classy and sophisticated. The theme of surveillance was something I thought I had perfectly captured with the eye looking through the window image on my film poster but maybe I have a better image here. Another idea that came out of the a class discussion was the idea of having someone’s face on the cover of my documentary with the eyes covered with a trip of colour which turned out to be black and the title of the documentary written over it. The idea came when we were all looking at example of old DVD cover clichés and we noticed how many DVD covers had this idea on them. I liked this idea as it suited the theme of my documentary, which is media censorship stops what you can see, which is a basic concept summed up so basically with this image. I wasn’t sure who exactly to photograph for this DVD cover as I was considering asking someone who was in my documentary to pose for the photo and I did when I photographed Chris Walsh for the front cover, I also asked someone to photograph me also and I also photographed the co creator of the documentary Kieran Gibbons as I wanted a creator of the documentary on the cover. I took all of these photos against a white wall in room 1116 like the eye photos. I decided to use Kieran’s photo rather than mine as my hair would take too long to select with completely and accurately with none of the background in the image, I therefore used Kieran’s photo. It was easy to cut out Kieran from the background how I did have to use the background easier tool, as the quick selection magic wand tool didn’t get all of the background. I put Kieran’s photo into illustrator and there still seemed to be bits of background in the image. I used the brush tool to colour black over this. Maybe I could have found a quicker way to do this however this ultimately did the job. The only disadvantage is that because this is a vector based program when I use the brush tool it just creates paths rather than colours pixels so when I move the image around the bits of background are visible again and the paths stay where they are. After the photo was in place I put a black rectangle over his eyes and used a red copper plate bold font to write the title of the documentary over it. I didn’t think that this DVD cover was as strong as my other DVD cover with the surveillance camera behind the logo as it looks more professional in my opinion. I showed the two DVD covers to the client. I thought the DVDs were definitely at a finished state however she told me I still needed to make a few changes. She said that Kieran’s hair gave off a glow which made it look strange against a plain background and the images on the back of the DVD looked too squished together and the blurb wasn’t completely visible. I wasn’t happy with the fact I would still have to make corrections to my DVD cover I thought were of little significance and barely noticeable but I wanted to get the best grade possible so I made them. To reduce the glow on Kieran’s hair I simply used the clone stamp tool to clone a darker part of his hair and then used it to go over all the light shades of hair that gave Kieran a glow. This
wasn’t too difficult of a correction to make as I learned how to use the clone stamp tool prior to starting this project. Trying to make the images on the back of DVD not appears squished was very difficult. I opened all the original photo files and saw that all of the photos had been resized dramatically so I would need to find smaller photos or crop these photos. I cropped a few of the existing photos such as camera, the columbine photo and then I sourced some smaller photos of Joseph Goebbels, PEGI warning signs, a clip of a character from the Matrix holding a gun and a picture of the last issues of the news of the world paper. I also decided to reduce the image size on the Korean parade photo. The pictures I took out were the Jucintha Saldana photo, the Australian DJs photo, the original matrix photo and the PEGI 18 sign photos. I made these changes to the photos because I thought that while I’m altering the photos on the back cover I might as well change some of the photos as it might make the DVD look cover look more impactful by having even more serious images on the back cover. For example a picture of Goebbels I thought would be more eye catching and impactful than a picture of the two Australian radio DJs. Looking back at the two DVD back covers I think I made a good decision even though I still like my original DVD cover. After I got all of the photos in place I decreased the opacity to about 33 percent. I then decided to apply a graphic pen effect I found when I selected ‘Sketch’ on the effects drop down menu and ‘Chalk & Charcoal’ on the drop down menu when I clicked on ‘Sketch’. I then changed the title of the documentary to a white text to keep the black and white colour scheme created with the other text on the front cover and fact Kieran is not in black and white. I this DVD cover now looks much more professional and interesting as Kieran doesn’t look so plain and slightly washed out. I didn’t really learn a lot of new skills throughout this project in Illustrator or Photoshop but I did get to practice a lot of my existing such as how to crop images, how to cut the background out of images, how to use the clone stamp tool, how to apply effects pictures, how to change opacity of images or how to create rectangles. This project has increased my confidence in using these skills and at times showed me how to use these skills more effectively for example I learned a background eraser tool is useful when needing the remove small pixels that are difficult to select with the magic wand tool. I’m sure I’ll apply this knowledge to my work in later life. This project did also give me new knowledge of how to layout a DVD cover and Film poster as I’ve had to look at many examples and think about the layout in detail throughout this project. The final outcome of my digital graphics work was different from what I thought it would look like on my proposal. For example in my proposal I simply imaged the basic documentary logo against a black background however I didn’t think that this logo would include a picture in the circle and text would be blue instead of black. I also didn’t think the photo collage would look so different because of all the photos I replaced and I didn’t think it would be on the back of the DVD cover. I also didn’t think I would make a DVD cover with someone’s face on it and I didn’t think I would be making a film poster at all. However a lot of the original ideas made it through to the digital graphic final product as the framework of the logo stayed the same just with a picture
inserted and it did remain against a black background, the eye looking through the window image stayed the same it was just on a film poster and with a black background around it. I think the changes mostly improved the project as my new censorship logo looks a lot more aesthetically appealing and interesting than the original censorship logo I think the black background makes the eye and window stand out a lot more than they did against a white background. I think the new DVD cover also looks really interesting and professional more so than the idea I dropped. The photo collage on the back of the DVDs I think was a change that negatively affected my work as the new photo college looks less vibrant and exciting than the original especially the black and white photo of Joseph Goebbels. I think my digital graphics turned out well. I think the DVD cover with the modified censorship logo looks classy, sophisticated and aesthetically appealing more so than the DVD cover with the original censorship logo as it looks too plain. I think this final DVD cover looks a lot more interesting but still retains its simple elegance that will attract the primary audience. A criticism that could be made of this DVD cover is that the title of documentary isn’t very big but that’s because I had to actually try to make it fit inside the censorship logo. I think the DVD cover with Kieran on the front also looks great as it looks aesthetically appealing and generally cool which would make it more likely to attract the secondary younger target audience. The idea of someone’s face that has their with the title of documentary written across where their eyes should be has been done many times before. However I don’t think any idea is completely original anymore and this lack of originality I don’t this is likely to turn any of the audience off the documentary. The back covers are both the same and I think they look really good. They look like of professional DVD back covers and contain all of the information that you would usually see on a typical DVD back cover. I could make the DVD covers again I would perhaps have enlarged the modified censorship logo. I would also have maybe kept the original set of images I used for the back cover originally. I would also like to have kept the cut out photo of Chairman Mao because I think it added to the drama of the back cover. I might actually consider asking the client if I could not have any photos on the back cover as they are barely visible due to the opacity being turned down. I think all the images are displayed well and none of them are stretched or squashed except for the North Korea photo, which looks slightly pixelated. Although the opacity is turned down so low and there is a lot of text in front of it so I don’t think it’s noticeable. I also think the credits don’t appear long enough compared to other DVD covers however our documentary was a very small no budget production and we had a very small cast and crew so there was no need for larger credits. If I had to chose which DVD cover to be sold at retail stores I would chose the DVD cover with the Censorship logo as I think it just looks more aesthetically pleasing than the other DVD cover maybe due to the other DVD cover’s lack of colour in comparison. I think you could say the DVD menu could maybe have had more to it and should really contain the updated documentary logo. However I decided to keep the DVD Menu simple as this documentary is a mellow documentary aimed at the same A – C, older, reformist audience I am targeting this DVD menu at. I think this DVD Menu might not appeal to the secondary younger audience as it could be seen as a bit too boring and not
very aesthetically exciting. Although I don’t think it is enough to make the audience dissatisfied with the whole product and if you paid for a DVD I don’t think you would refuse to watch it due to the DVD menu screen. If I could make the DVD menu screen I would add in some deleted scenes as we made a lot of footage that didn’t make it into the final cut of the documentary and I feel that maybe all that hard work wasn’t fully utilized. The project differed greatly from how I originally planned it as I didn’t know I would be making a DVD poster and my DVD covers looked different from the ones I ended up making. However the DVD menu screen was exactly how I imaged it to be and the DVD cover with the logo still retained my original plan for the layout and the original logo it’s self just with the surveillance image added in the middle and the poster doesn’t differ from how I imaged that idea to be shown on a DVD cover as the image of the eye and the window is still there the background is just black around the window. I am very pleased with the results of this project and although I didn’t really learn many new skills apart from the skills to create a DVD Menu I think this project was a good experience and client gave me a clear idea of what she wanted throughout the project and her creative input I think greatly improved my work.