More accessible high quality DV cameras and applications such as Adobe’s After Effects, Premier, and Apple’s Final Cut allows designers to explore this area without the need for separate editing and post production departments, allowing work to be fully created in house, with special effects added and editing done on the desktop.
Compositing is the combination of visual elements from different sources into single images, this often creates the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. All compositing involves the replacement of selected parts of an image with other material, usually from another image. In television studios, blue or green screens may back news-readers to allow the compositing of stories behind them, before being switched to full screen.
Motion graphics are used in the media for such things as:
Title/Credit Sequences: In a motion picture, television programme or video game, the opening credits are always shown in the beginning and lists the most important people who were involved in the production. The correct term for them is a title sequence, such as in Ocean's Eleven and Lost.
The most common opening credits order, is as follows: Name of studio, production company, producer, starring, title, featuring, casting, music, production design, editor, director of photography, producer, based on, story by, written by and directed by.
This is the title sequence for Oceans Eleven (1960)
At the start, there is a shot of a pot of Hartleys jelly pot behind a pink background because this Sting is a sponsor for a romantic movie and the colour pink represents “love”, also it is a lighter colour than Red so the strawberry jelly stands out of the background. Then there are 2 spoons jumping towards the jelly pot and they unite by the spoon handle twisting around eachother and then the spoons kissing to show romance. Then the spoons dip into the jelly pot and this may represent that a couple might share a pot with themselves. Finally the Hartleys logo wobbles on and “Sponsors The Big, Big Movie” comes up in a red glossy text to represent the strawberry jelly.
Web banners are another form of motion graphics, it is a custom advertisement for a company or product found of the internet. This includes embedding the advertisement onto a certain web page with the same target audience as your product or company. Larger banners can reach 486x60 pixels. The content of the ad can range from a small section of text, images, or a small video. The advantages of using a web banner is that you can upload it onto a popular website such as Hotmail, Aol, YouTube which have the same audience as the company and attract them onto your website. Disadvantage of a web banner is you only have a small space to get your information to attract an audience onto your website.
An interactive menu, is used on both DVD’s and websites to take you from one place to another by a simple click, whether that be from the title page of the film to the behind the scene shots, or from the home page of a website to a news story. The interactive menu’s allow producers of films to add more features onto the DVD such as; deleted scenes, scene selection etc. This has the same objective as idents, stings and web banners which is to grab and keep hold of the audience’s attention. Some disadvantages are if it isn’t done correctly then the audience would switch off not bothering to watch the film. The interactive menu for a film gives us a feel for what the film is going to be about for example if it is an action film there will be use of bright colours; red, yellow.
Video format is the technical structure of an electronic movie or video. The main types of video format would be HD, SD, PAL etc. HD is the highest resolution. It either runs on 720p or 1080p. The ‘p’ means progressive scan. Now with the modern technology of videos we look at video formats in terms of pixels. The more pixels you can get in a video the clearer and better it would look visually.
The original footage of the Indent is viewed on the BBC Indent gallery and it is viewed on 1080p. In my blog below the Indent was viewed on YouTube at a 380p which is standard viewing in terms of quality.
Advantages of HD Viewing
· Clear crisp viewing
· In my opinion It looks amazing
· You can see a lot of detail due to the high resolution
Disadvantage of HD Viewing
· It would buffer a lot if your internet bandwidth is slow
· Some computers aren’t capable of running HD due to the fact that their computers might be old in terms of hardware
In my blog the footage of Thor interactive menu is on YouTube viewed at a 480p format.
Advantage of SD Viewing (Standard Definition)
· The video runs very smoothly without buffering
· Nearly everyone can view it because it is in standard definition
Disadvantage of SD Viewing
· The resolution is not as high and therefore the clip lacks detail
In my opinion If were to upload a video I would view it in a HD format. The reason for that is that the average bandwidth in the UK is 7.6mps (pcadvisor.co.uk) this is more than capable of handling HD video without significant lag. In addition according to OFCOM (2012) 42% of homes have HD TV’s. I would also use a HD format due to the fact that it looks a lot better and you see more detail in the video. Using HD format would attract more viewers as well due to the amazing footage of the video
There are lots different types of file formats including mp4 and flv and much more. MP4 is mostly used for sharing videos on the internet such as YouTube and is a relativity small file size so can be stored in emails or devices such as phones. FLV file format is a good choice for embedding videos on the internet, Most big video sharers on the internet use it from YouTube, Google videos and yahoo videos. FLV can be watched by anyone with a flash player installed although FLV files can run slowly if your computer isn’t that fast.
