Mobile Phone Video
Down the Bay, Is it?

Our final brief of the year was to create a 1 minute video specifically produced to be viewed on a mobile phone. The mock brief was to promote a youth magazine show called 'Is it!' based in Cardiff.

We had a day's refreasher in editing using Avid with Dylan Jones. It was great to get some more experience using Avid, but it's range of editing tools are not really needed when working with the limitations of current mobile phone technology.

Part of the brief was to ensure the final clip was under 1MB. To try to keep the file size down without losing too much quality we chose to use relatively still camera shots. We also avoided using any transitions and chose to stick to cuts. Aesthetically, we decided to use the style of 1950's British television documentaries. This was partly because we thought black and white video would keep the file size down and also because we wanted the style to clash with the modern mobile phone platform on which it is viewed.

We had a few technical difficulties trying to get the video out of Avid and onto a mobile phone. This was mainly due to the fact the version of Avid we were using was not designed to output to mobiles and therefore has no suitable codecs to compress the file and image size by so much. Stylistically we wanted to use a old film style plug-in, and decided to abandon Avid and export the edit to Apple's iMovie. This was no easy task though as the codecs used by each piece of software vary so much. After a couple of failed attempts at copying the file across, we opted to record back to DV tape from Avid and inport again into iMovie! Even then we had technical problems with some of the still photographs we had used. It was worth the effort though as despite the enormous difference in price, iMovie was far more suitable for exporting to mobile phones, (if you go into the Expert Settings under the QuickTime export option you can export to 3G or MPEG4). Eventually we managed to send the video via bluetooth to our mobiles. It was a fun brief and great to learn more about how to produce videos for mobile platforms.

Thomas the Tank Engine Game Presentation
S4C, Cardiff

We visited S4C again today to present our Thomas the Tank Engine Flash Game. We talked a lot about the usability testing of the games that we carried out with 2-4 year old kids and how we adapted the games afterwards. The main changes we made was to make the navigation buttons more obvious, and to use symbols wherever possible instead of just text as children have limited reading skills at that age. We also added audio to supplement any areas of the game that relied on reading skills.

View the final game

View the version before usability testing

View usability testing photos

Sound Design
Friday 16th December

Today we had a break from Flash to look at sound design. We played around with Audacity, a cross-platform sound recorder and editor. It's pretty basic, but simple to use and great because its free to download.

We also looked at Reason which unfortunately isn't free, but is a lot more complex than Audacity. It is a 'virtual studio rack' - basically allowing you to emulate synthesizers, drum machines and samplers digitally. I definitely didn't master the software in such a short space of time, but I loved the graphical representation of real studio equipment stacking up on the rack, especially the feature that lets you flip to a back view where you see how all the cables are linked up.

The Golden Pixil Awards
The Point, Cardiff Bay
Thursday 15th December

Last night we went to The Golden Pixil Awards, an award ceremony honoring new media design both from newcomers, community projects and the industry. I had a really enjoyable evening, it was particularly laid back with caribbean rum punch and red wine running freely - perhaps not the best combination.

Ex-Cyfle trainees had an especially good evening with 5 pieces of work shortlisted. Miguel Costa and Louise Evans, ex-Dimension 10 trainees won the Best New Media Game award for their Flash game, "Sheep Paintbrawl".

Amongst the other winners was Dan for www.danhero.com, DJ Keltech for "War of the Words" and 6721 for BBC Radio Wales.

Thomas the Tank Engine Flash Game
The Kids Verdict

Today 4 local kids between 2 and 4 years old came to the office to try out our Thomas the Tank Engine Flash Games. It was really interesting to see what they thought about them and how difficult they were to play.

The game I had developed, Track Trouble, proved a bit too challenging for the 2-3 year olds, some of which had never used a computer before so where having quite a bit of difficulty mastering the mouse. For the kids this age Sioned's colouring in game and Ian's jigsaw puzzle game were better successes.

I was pleased though that 4 year old Oliver managed to play my game and said it was his favourite because 'it was the hardest'. He had had more experience than the others using computers and had played lots of games on the CBeebies site so was able to use the mouse well and even type his name.

It was an invaluable experience to see how kids would play our games and really helpful as we have a bit of time to change the games now to make them more kid-friendly before we present them to S4C next Tuesday.

Iona Jones
Chief Executive, S4C

Iona Jones came to visit us today. She talked to us about her 5 year Programme Strategy for S4C, particularly in relation to the use of interactive media.

She was pleased with the recent launch of Dudley on Broadband (www.s4c.co.uk/dudley) and the new Bandit website (www.bandit247.com), but also seemed keen to expand on websites like these to attract wider audiences for S4C programmes.

Iona was enthusiastic about the possibilities of exploring new methods of communicating with audiences, and said that hopefully more and more new programmes on S4C would be developed to exploit new media technologies from the outset, rather than being an afterthought 'add-on'. She also mentioned Node, a location based media company based in Usk that she had recently met with. They have developed an interesting piece of hardware that enables people to watch different video content on a handheld LCD screen dependent on their GPS position. Iona seemed interested in exploring how similar equipment and technology could be used to enhance/supplement S4C programmes.

I was very grateful of the opportunity to talk to Iona Jones in such an informal atmosphere and pleased by her enthusiasm to explore new media technologies. She seemed especially keen to try to experiment with new media in innovative ways, so hopefully S4C will surprise us with their use of new technology over the next few years.

Acen Visit
Monday 12th December

This morning we went to visit Acen, an organisation for Welsh Language Learning. They have recently launched a joint online project with S4C, www.learnons4c.co.uk. The site is a great resource for Welsh Language Learners, from complete beginners to advanced level. The site features video clips of characters from S4C programmes, designed to help people learn welsh and improve on this foundation by watching the television broadcasts on S4C. Acen are also currently working on developing short video clips for Welsh learners that can be downloaded to mobile phones.

It was interesting to see how Acen's learning resources have shifted from magazine and book publications to online sites and CD-Roms over the past 15 years. They now even have a online radio station www.radioacen.co.uk that features Welsh music that has more than 12 000 listeners and is broadcast from Greece!

Flash Brief
Thomas the Tank Engine Game

This week we have been working on a brief for S4C. The task is to design a online game using Flash based on Thomas the Tank Engine. The game needs to be designed for kids aged 3-5 and should introduce them to the various different characters of the show.

It's a really fun brief, but also quite challenging as I'm finding it difficult to judge the skill level of kids that age, especially as when I was that age playing online computer games was not exactly an option! Hopefully though some local kids will be visiting us next week so we can see how well the games go down with them. My biggest worry is that they will find them way too easy.

I'm working on the brief with Sioned , and we have decided to make a game each that can be accessed through a mini flash site. She is working on a colouring in game and impressively has pretty much finished it already. I chose to design a game where the player needs to rotate pieces of track to enable Thomas to get to the train station. It is a great challenge to improve my ActionScript and I have managed to get the first level of the game working which I'm really pleased with. Now I have the foundations in place hopefully making slightly harder levels shouldn't prove too difficult. Although without Nick Butler's help I don't think I'd have known where to start.

Illustrator
Friday 2nd December

We had a break from Flash today for a one-day workshop on Adobe Illustrator with Eleanor Beer, an ex Cyfle Trainee. It was useful practice to have a go drawing with the bezier pen, although I still haven't quite mastered it. Illustrator seems most useful for creating text logos. Overall I prefer using Flash for designing illustrations as it is so much simpler. I am pleased that I had the opportunity to learn more about the tools in Illustrator though and now feel a lot more comfortable using the software.