Lisa's Year 2 Blog

At the beginning of this module, I wasn’t sure of what to expect all I could be certain about was that it was definitely going to be hands on in some way. When we were set our first task of collecting the sequence of still images on a specific walk I thought it was a bit weird but it was fun to do so I didn’t mind. We then had to improve on that in whatever way we wanted, I decided to keep the route and add video and maps as you have seen in my blogs. I thought we were then going to be set something else but i was wrong we just had to make what we already had interactive. This wasn’t what I expected.

I expected that the video was going to be like a welcome page on a website or something like that. Because I thought this I was completely thrown off and didn’t know how in the world I was going to make my little video interactive. I then had a light bulb come on in my head, why dont I just do what I thought we were eventually going to be doing … create a website… and that is exactly what I did.

I feel that as a person, this module has taught me to be more creative with what im given, I tried lots of different software (granted I didnt really get on with half of it but at least I gave it a go), I made a 3 way split screen video without someone telling me how and I created a website without help from anyone… something which I didnt think I would be able to do, so this module has taught me how to do things for myself a bit more rather than have tutors telling me how to use software and do slightly complicated things. Thanks google!

Wikitude looks pretty awesome and can be used by anyone* just by shooting your phone at something, using the wikitude app, you can get details of the surrounding area such as photos, information and things of interest. It would be like having your personal tour guide without the boring tour of visiting places you dont particularly want to go! Who wouldnt want this its pretty darn cool!

*oh yeah forgot to add you can only get this if you have an iPhone 3Gs.. sorry all the people with ordinary non-overpirced phones.

So my ideas went through 3 stages, two different video sequences and ended up as a website … heres how i got on…

I decided to stick with my idea from the last post and make it so that the viewer of my website could choose between two routes .. ‘What I See’ and ‘What I Miss’. 

The “What I see” route will take the user to the next page which presents a still image that I took on my route to uni and then you click  “carry on walking” it takes the user onto the next page and a different picture is presented and so on until the end which will say “What I see and What I miss merged” which when the user clicks on this will take them to my original video.

The same happens if they click on the “What I miss” route … except with different still images but it leads to the same “What I see and What I miss merged” page and leading to my video because after all, whether im looking at the ground doing my route or whether im taking notice of my surroundings, I still start from the same place and end up in the same place.

From the 1st page shown above… once the users of my website have chosen their route, they can then view a collection of pictures one by one that coincide with the route they selected, below are some examples of what the viewer would see if they chose the ‘What I see’ route:

And here are some examples of what the user would see if they chose ‘What I miss’

Once the user has viewed the 10 photos in the chosen sequence… both sequences lead to the same page, again shown below

When the user clicks on the words “what I see and What I miss merged” it will then take them to another page on which my original video idea is presented as a kind of rounding off piece to the website and they can watch the journey, they just took through pictures, through video, map and pictures. Afterall I had already made the video so why not include it in my final piece.

Reflection time…

I quite enjoyed making my website, I didn’t really have many problems with making it except trying to remember how to use Dreamweaver from the 2nd term of my 1st year but once I got into the flow of it, it all came flowing back to me, which was very helpful indeed. I did have to keep going backward and forward for linking my pages because i seemed to always forget to do the “Psychogeography Home” link so every time I tried out the page I always came to a brick wall with that link which got annoying after a while but it wouldnt have been right if I remembered to do everything 1st time round… its more challenging this way.

After the workshop for Interactive Media, I decided my first idea of the 3 way split screen was a good idea, however it lacked interactivity! Which lets face it is the WHOLE idea of this module.

In this case i thought long and hard about what I could do to my video to make it interactive. I then thought about how successful I was at making a website and thinking back to how the Penguin story ‘The 21 Steps’ worked, I wanted to make a website that allowed people to make their own choice about which route to take … Ive just got to think up an idea of the routes and how Im going to make it so they have to choose a route, maybe  ‘what i see’ and ‘what i miss’ routes. Lets see what I can do with that idea .. who knows it might just be my final piece!

Okay so im a media student and we’re meant to think outside the box but for me .. experimental is NOT the way forward.

Every time I watch an experimental film I always have the same expression both on my face and in my mind and that expression is What the hell is going on!?!?! I know most are meant to make you think that so terms of that, they are very successful but i don’t want to make a video or artefact that people don’t understand, I like to have clear narratives whether they’re thought outside the box or not … In my own opinion experimental films should not exist … a prime example of an experimental film that confused the hell out of me was Eraserhead by David Lynch(and i only watched the very 1st part of it!) granted he was only a student when he created it just like me but I wont be making anything like that … maybe thats where i could go wrong … but I dont care, I want my films to make sense.