In this video project, we made a tutorial for how to be an adult. We introduced it in three steps, which are Groom Yourself Like an Adult, Live Independently Like an Adult, and Take Care of Your Own Needs. The overall concept and aim of this project is that through introducing the three steps and including some funny moments, the young people who are on their way to be a mature adult can get some suggestions and find their daily routine moments in the video, then reflect and think what they can improve to be a real adult. In order to align with the concept, the theme of our video project is relaxing but mature. Our target audience could feel the liveliness from the website and humor from the video, but they can also get the sense of responsibility and profession from the perfect continuity and mature modern style of the website, as well as the calmness from the narration.By watching the video and filling the checkbox in each step, the audience will learn what the adult do, and check whether they have achieved some of the tips already. The return that they get in the end is written in a humorous tone.Our target audience can distinguish that the relatively subjective and limited criteria that are interpreted from the video and the simple threshold will not determine whether they are an adult, but they themselves can ask themselves: Shall I try to be delicate but be on time in the morning from now on? Or shall I try to eat more fruit and less junk food to stay healthy starting from today?
Each of us is the director of one step. I did the first step, Luize did the second step, and Simran did the third step. Though we did different parts, we tried to create the same format and the tone of the video. In general, the narrator talks about the criteria to become an adult calmly, and the character does what the narrator says, while sometimes she would do exactly the opposite. For example, in my scene, when the narrator says the adult is never late, and never run for work, actress is actually late for work and runs in the corridor in a rush. This way of contradiction can emphasize "what an adult should do" that the narrator describes, while in the meantime, some "non-adult" behavior that the actress acts out might remind the audience of their own lives, creating a connotative interaction between the website and the audience. In addition, this way of contradiction also makes the video a little funny, as if the narration tries to be calm and formal, but it turns out that the character doesn't follow what he instructs, which might make this voice-over embarrased if he was presenting in a lecture and the character was demonstrating in front of the audience.
While the tone and formate is similar for three steps, there are some differences between them. For example, the role of the narration varies slightly. In Step 1, the narration coincides with the character at first, but contradicts starting from "Late for work"; In Step 2, the narration is completely different from what the character does, and in Step 3, the character follows the instruction of the narrator, but when the character calles her mom, the narrator comments what the character does. However, we think that these differences add the variations in our project, making the whole project more comprehensive, and stimulating the audience to receive and experience the new variation and stays on the website.
For the technical part, we tried to edit the video as simple and close to the real life as possible, so we didn't utilize many fancy special effects. However, we used the "green screen" in the mirror shot, as the camera would appear if we shot the character in the mirror directly. Since what we wanted was people in the mirror, we printed out a green paper and put it on the mirror to film the mirror scene. After shooting the scene for the character and the mirror, we edited to achieve the final effect
We builded the website together. Simran did the homepage, Luize decorated the pages for the three steps and built the forms, and I worked for embedding the YouTube code and the javascript for the interactions.
The website consists of the homepage, and the three pages respectively for the three steps. Initially, Simran found and put the cartoon gif of people growing up on the homepage. However, since our background image for the three steps are more realistic style, the professor suggested that the general tone of the two parts are not consistent. Therefore, we decided to capture the gif that can represent "adult" from one of our scenes, and the background color is similar to the greyish color in the gif, which is also consistent with the grey color of the wall in the step 1 page.
We embedded our video using YouTube API rather than the iframe. By doing so we are directly talking to the YouTube video, so that the code will execute when the YouTube video finishes one action (e.g. finishes playing the video). We faced the obstacles when we were creating the form, as the values that we got from the single page is the local variable instead of the global variable, and the javascript will refresh when we landed on the new page, so that we could not pass one variable to the next page. We finally worked out the problem with the help of amazing Jack. The trick is that as url still works when we add "?" and other strings after "?" behind it, we can store the value in the url, and read the url and then get the certain value by using the javascript language. On the third page, which includes our final result, we can read the url and thus get the first two values, sum them together with the third value on this page.
In order to find the best way to demonstrate the form, we asked several "preliminary" or "young" adult for advice. Initially we have Submit button for every form, and the arrow that indicates to go to the next step will appear after the user click "Submit", and it navigates the user to the next step. However, all our users felt that it was not neccesary to have two steps to go to the next step. The procedure is a little tedious, and we actually can achieve the goal by simply adding "Submit and Next" button. Therefore, we later changed this into only having an arrow under the text, which tells readers to go to the next step.
We discussed a lot to reach the goal of creating a relaxing but helpful website with respect to the font. The original font is beautiful, but puttting it into the form is neither legible nor formal. In the end, we changed the font for form into a calmer and neat one, and this perfectly balances the fun and calm elements in our project
We met most of our goal for the initial idea. I really enjoyed the teamwork this time because every of us cares about the detail, and we exchanged our idea a lot to figure out the best solution.
This was the first time that I used the film equipment, so that I felt reluctant to decide how to shoot and decide the order of filming even though I have written the script and the shot list. The final foottage turned out to be a little blurry, but through this experience, I felt more confident of filming.
I intended to focus on the video more at first, and didn't know how to interact with the user. However, after throwing ideas wildly with my teammates, I found that the interactivity is vital to retain the audience, and every button as well as its function matters. Our final product is a complete version of the both website and the video, and we balanced the tone of humor and formal suggestions pretty well.