Research and Development

Research and Development

 

Together as a team, a group of individuals got given the task to build a tower out of spaghetti straws and making tape in order to support a marsh mellow on the top of it. The aim of this task was to show teamwork and leadership. Communicating with each over to get a stable stand to support the marsh mellow.

Each team was given a camera to take photos as we went along to complete this task. Every 5 minutes we swapped over the camera to one enough to we each get a turn to work on our tower.

Each of us had some really good ideas that we wanted to take into consideration, but the one idea that we all seemed to agree on was to make the design of a tripod. This means that each of the three legs of the tripod should stay stable and hopefully will support the weight of the marsh mellow.

What we all need to take into consideration is the fact that we are using spaghetti, this means that it's not going to take much for something to topple it over and possibly snap one of the legs in half, ruining the stability.

As you can see, the outcome wasn't so great. During the task, we so very greatly under estimated the weight of a marsh mellow. But lets be honest, who wouldn't? The great news is that we understand where we went wrong and we all figured out how we could have potentially made it work. Due to the time we had for the task, we weren't able to proceed with out idea, but we all came to the conclusion that if we would have used more than one spaghetti stick for each leg, it would have been more stronger with holding up the weight of the marsh mellow.

 

My Idea

My idea for my final major project is something that I'm really excited to make. Because I'm a YouTuber, vlogging is something that I sometimes do when I'm away from home. It keeps my channel up to date with videos so that my viewers don't miss out. If you haven't guessed already, my final major project is going to be a VLOG that is interactive.

How is this going to work? If that is a question you're thinking, allow me to explain how. Essentially, this VLOG heavily relies on YouTube annotations, as long as the views has them switched on, there shouldn't be a problem. The viewer has the power to control various decisions through the VLOG. An example would be, if I were to walk to the shops, the viewer can choose whether I walk the long way or the short way. Something like that.

Now this project isn't just grab a camera, record it and then upload. I want to map out my day and plan it so that the viewer can make some really interesting decisions. My passion is editing, the interactive VLOG is going to have lighting enhancements, green screens, pitch shifts etc. A ton of editing is going to be done throughout the VLOG. I will also be putting up screenshots showing the process of making it so that people can see how I got my end result. What path will you take me on? What decisions will you make that will change how I go about my VLOG? The power is yours, have fun!

 

Interactive Videos

A lot of interactive videos are on YouTube simply because YouTube has the option to have clickable annotations. It's also the most easiest way of showing off your videos as well because YouTube is the second my visited site on the planet today. This is also the website that I will be using to upload my interactive video. 

There are many different ideas around interactive videos as well, not just a short film like what I'm doing. There are other ideas such as quiz games, VLOGS etc.

When it comes to choices and interactivity, I think of RPG games (Role Playing Game). Games such as Divinity: Original Sin, or The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim have a very extensive degree which choices. A few examples would be, in Divinity: Original Sin there is a really simple quest where someone tells you that his staff has been stolen and he gives you the choice to go recover it or not. Pretty basic choice right? The choices get really in-depth later in the quest though. When you find the guy who has stolen the staff, you can choose whether he can have the staff and carry on with his life, or if he gets arrested, or if you want to have the staff for you to keep for yourself at the risk of you being arrested, or you can give it in to the police, or you can give it back to the owner. So much choice that branches off into different directions that some people probably haven't even discovered yet. 

 

Editing Techniques

The editing software that I'm going to be using for my videos is Sony Vegas Pro 12. This is the software that I have been using for roughly about three years now so I'm quite experienced with it when it comes to different techniques like green screen, pitch shifting, reverbs etc. The video below is a playlist of all my 'How to' guides on different techniques that I uploaded to my YouTube channel.

Multiple Choices in Games


Borderlands 2

As you can see on the left, I have made a gif of Borderlands 2. The gif quickly shows how you can make the choices to choose different missions at any time you want.

Choices like these are so important when it comes to games because it makes the player feel like they are in-charge and have that sense of power/freedom of doing what ever they want when they want. A game like Borderlands 2 requires is essential to have this feature because each main mission you come across, threats get significantly stronger and stronger throughout the game. Being able to switch missions in just a few seconds with a few clicks allows the player to level up their character, gain more XP so that they are more eligible to take on these threats with ease.

The choices you make when it comes to switching missions has no effect on the main story-line what so ever and there are more choices that you can make throughout the game that are only minor, but still have no effect on the main story-line. An example would be when you complete a mission, the player sometimes will be offered to choose between two weapons as their reward. Another small example would be during one of the side missions, these two rival gangs are about to go to war and you can choose which side you are fighting with, which ever side loses also has no effect on the story-line what so ever. But it's these small decisions that the player can choose themselves that make them feel more involved in the game and get a great experience out of it at the same time.

This screenshot on your right is quite literally a picture of pure genius. But why? It's just a picture of two doors. This game is called The Stanley Parable.

The Stanley Parable does something absolutely spectacular which I haven't saw any game developer do before. It completely relies on the narrator and the player, now, don't get me wrong, every game requires a player in order to complete it, but that's not the point with this game. As you walk go through the game, the narrator is telling a story, the story he is telling is the exact journey you are making. For example, if you were to take that left door, the narrator would then lead on to say, "And then Stanley took the left door". But believe me, it's not always like that. Most of the time, the narrator tries to control you by making your decisions for you. If we take those two doors for example from the game, if the narrator says, "And then Stanley took the left door" before you'd even made your decision but then you decide to go through the right door instead, the narrator would then start telling you to go back, or you're messing up the story etc. Because you didn't listen to his decision, it completely changes the story entirely.

I've played through this game about four times, and every time was completely different. There are so many decisions that you can choose to make, not to mention whether you choose to listen to the narrator or not. What this game does is pure genius and the player can choose pretty much everything. You can even choose the mood of the game. If you were to listen to the narrator completely, you'd be on his good side right? No harm done. If you were to listen to him a bit, but then go slightly off track and then go back to listening again, the narrators mood will change and he will start to not trust you and then make deliberate decisions to put you in difficult situations/scenarios. If you were to completely ignore him, the narrator will get so mad that he will do everything in his power to deliberately lead you on to various rooms that can quite simply kill you.

This is why The Stanley Parable is such genius. The voice actor of the narrator pulled it of brilliantly and when it comes to multiple choices for the player, it just feels completely endless with possibilities.


Mood board of Editing Software I'm Using

Interactive VLOG Choices

This is a simple choice that I have made on Spiderscribe. I chose to use Spiderscribe because it's an easy to use website and I feel that it's a better way for showing off different choices.

Looking at the screenshot you'll notice that I haven't got many choices. Infact, the user can only choose two options at the moment. The reason for this is because I want to get out an interactive VLOG to pass for now. But I also would like to carry on with this throughout as well and try and get more choices in the VLOG. The green coloured text boxes mean start and finish, the pink boxes mean choices and the cream boxes mean carrying on the VLOG. Later down the line I do want to add choices underneath choices, but that requires a lot of back tracking and a lot of thinking of how it would work, but I'm definitely going to look into it and am more than likely going to consider it depending on time.


Editing/Putting Together the VLOG


Step 1

So what I've done here is import all the footage that I am going to be using to start editing the introduction to my final project. The box that all the footage has been dragged into is called the Project Media, and the black box on the right from that is the preview screen of your video. To the right of that you have the audio gauge which shows you how loud your audio is, if it reaches the top, it will turn red meaning that you need to make some audio adjustments because it's way too loud. To prevent me from forgetting this, I have already made a pre-set to make sure all the audio stays the same at a decent level, I then set this a the default.

The wide box underneath is where all the cool stuff happens! That's the time-line that you drag your clips in to start editing.

Step 2

From the red indicators that I have placed onto this screenshot, you can see how I've enabled the correct volume for my audio. Going back to what I mentioned in the last paragraph, I made a pre-set of the volume I need to keep it at a steady level. The green icon that I have clicked first on the far left hand side of the screen brings up the event panel, which is the window covering up the Project Media tab. From there you can see that I have clicked on volume, this will then add that specific plug-in into the event pan of the audio slide which will then apply to every audio track that goes into that same slide.

Because I've added the volume plug-in, it the brought up another window showing various options I can tweak to get the volume exactly the way I like it. Luckily for me, I don't have to go through much because I already had a pre-set saved from previous projects.

Step 3

Now I'm pretty sure that to most people, that line curving straight up both the audio track and the video track is obvious to know that it is. Rather than have my video play and the footage instantly is full on with the music instantly playing, I wanted to fade them both in. And that's exactly what that curved line it. If you take a look at the nine tutorials I presented at the top of this blog, my transitions tutorial shows you how to do this and how it's effective with certain clips.

The colour corrector tool was essentially my best friend throughout the entire project. It was used on every single track I put into my video because it quite literally fixes the lighting in my video clips. A lot like the volume pre-set I made, I have also made a colour corrector pre-set to the right tone that I feel is necessary for my videos.

As you can see from this screenshot, the side without colour corrector on it, makes it look very grey, very dual and gives it a really bland feel as if it has no life to it if that makes any sense.

Although, the side with colour corrector on it, clearly shows that the video clip has a lot more of a vibrant feel to it, it definitely gets rid of that dual, boring feeling and I personally feel it makes my videos look a lot better.



Step 4

At the end of the introduction video, I ask the viewers to make a choice of which route they'd like me to take in order to make my way to the shops. When it got to the point where I said, "choose now" and I point at the screen, I took a screenshot of that, cropped it down so I'm only left with the image and then imported that back intro Sony Vegas and changed it's contract to black and white. I stretched that clip out so that it lasts longer whilst it's play giving the viewer time to make his/her choice.

Step 5

Any choices that will be made throughout my VLOG will only range up to two choices. So I started to make the template of choice boxes. Believe this or not, but this took forever. to get those lines like that, you have to import a solid colour and the resize it down to a thin line. I'm made it sound simple but wait until you have to start lining them all up. Some lines will for no reason what so ever, be bigger than the other, or not move over far enough to sit flush with the other line to hide any gaps you may have.

The white background that you see in the first screenshot I put there so that I could see a lot better with what I was working with rather than having a black background like in the picture on the right. The reason to why I have a black background is because I had finished making the template for the choices and then decided to re-size the white background to fit the boxes and make it look a little bit better, The black background is there to let you know that there is nothing behind what you've created. Otherwise when I got to put the template in the videos, I'd have a massive black ground hiding my footage. A common mistake that people make all the time, and even I still do today, is that when your making a still image with no background, you want to make sure that you render only ONE frame of that image as a .PNG. Otherwise you'll save it as a JPEG with a solid background, and also if you don't save one frame and instead save the entire clip. you'll have a thousand images saved to where ever your save destination is set to.

After I had completed the template, I was then able to put that into my project and add text into it. I wanted to font to be a quirky/fun type of font so I went with the Team Fortress 2 font. I gave it a thin white outline with a faint shadow effect directly behind it.

Because I didn't want it to be dead silent throughout the VLOG and the waiting time, I added music as a background track. I went for a bubbly/fun track to go with the VLOG into but when it came to the "making choices" part, I decided to go for the more elevator music theme. Because when you're in an elevator, your just waiting until you reach the floor that you are going to whilst listening to music that sounds like music for waiting. So that's the approach that I wanted to take.

Final

This is what the final thing looked like when it was completely edited. I finished off the video by adding a few extra effects etc. I didn't want to crowed the video up so much because otherwise the video would feel full on. So I only added little things like audio enhancements and small special effects. If you look close enough you'll see in the screenshot that the video looks to be more yellow than a natural colour. This is because at that point I say that the viewers are going to be given a ton of power. To emphasise this a bit more, I made the sentence into a reverb which is another way of saying echo, and then I made the background and my face slightly glow yellow which the fades back into the normal natural colours.

Link you my Project: https://youtu.be/MmdXVSloLmM