Fire Website (third version)

Today I had a chat with one of my relatives who is a graphic designer and got some useful tips about ways I can improve the visual aspect of my site. I was told that the imagery of fire matches my style and music rather than ice.

It was suggested that I try using a blue fire background rather than ice cubes and get rid of the snow flake design in the logo. I had an image of flames which I really liked and have used on other social media sites; I took this image and changed the colour balance so it turned blue but this did not look good at all. I decided it would be best to leave the flame background the original colour and instead changed the entire colour scheme of the site to match the fire colour. I redesigned the logo and added a small image of my guitar in the corner; this immediately shows the viewer that I am interested in rock music.

Here is a screen shot of the new design:

I also changed the colour of the unselected social media icons so they now match the red colour scheme (these were previously grey).

I am still looking for ways to improve my design so I will ask for more feedback from my tutor at the next session.

Ice Website (new design)

Here are a few screen shots of the first draft of my new web design. 

I showed the first draft to my tutor and got some helpful feedback:

- Make the background image more transparent so the logo stands out more.

- Change the links in the navigation to Javascript buttons.

- Change the Times New Roman font to a more attractive font such as Arial.

- Change the social media links into Icons (the default icons for those sites).

- Add an image to the home page to make it look more interesting.

- Add a mail form to the contact page instead of a mail to link.

I was able to implement all of the changes above except for the email form which I found far too complicated; I would have needed to create a separate PHP page which lots of complicated code to make it work, at this stage I do not have enough knowledge to make this happen but I will consider it for the future.

The second draft of my design can be found online at this link: http://nimahedayati.com

Here is a screen shot of the new and improved home page.

The 5 links on the left side of the navigation are buttons which change colour when the mouse rolls over them. The 7 social media icons on the right of the navigation are also buttons which change from monochrome to full colour when the mouse rolls over them. 

The other changes I made to the home page are:

- I added a purple gradient to the top of the background image to make the foreground logo stand out more.

- I added a small colourful image to add character to the page.

- I changed the font of the text in the content area to Arial.

As all the links are now in the navigation bar I got rid of the links page and replaced it with a news page which I will update regularly.

I believe that the changes I have made make the site slightly more professional looking and better from a design perspective. I know I still have much to learn about design and coding but I look forward to the challenge of creating websites for clients. I hope to extend my knowledge of design and coding over the next two years and gradually begin freelance work.

Fire Website (my old site)

Here is a screen shot of the home page of my 'fire' website which has now been removed and replaced.

Mood Board

This is a mood board; I made it in my interactive media seminar last week. It shows a collection of images and fonts which represent my personality, the things I like and my cultural background. This is the first step in researching ideas which will be incorporated into my design of a portfolio website. The next step will be to refine my ideas by choosing colours, shapes and fonts to go in my website. My existing website (nimahedayati.com) uses a background of fire and brushed metal textures in the foreground; I was thinking of creating a mirror site with a contrasting theme of 'ice', this was inspired by 'ice and fire' which is a manifestation of the classical Chinese philosophy known as 'yin and yang', these are polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces which are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world. It is said that Yin is black and like ice or water whereas Yang is white and like fire. Here is a well known image which represents this:

DP2 – Film Project

This film was created over a five week period, starting in the second week in January and ending in the second week in February. Here is a summary of the filming schedule:

Week 1

Our lecturer Phil Nodding split the class into groups, each group with seven to eight people. Phil also provided each group with a script he had written; he gave us the task of interpreting the script and developing it into a short film. During the first seminar we watched examples of short films and TV programmes to give us an idea of camera angles and storytelling techniques.  

Week 2

We assigned a role to each member of the group and began to research the roles individually. As I have experience in music production and sound engineering I volunteered to do the sound recording. The other group member’s roles can be seen in the final credits of the film. We began to meet as a group outside of class to plan our pre-production; this included creating a storyboard and editing the script. We also started to think about costumes and actors.

Week 3

We had planned to start shooting our film on this week but we had difficulty finding actors; instead we used this time to test the camera, sound and lighting equipment. We inspected the location and tested the equipment while we were there; this helped us to plan the camera and lighting positions in advance of the shoot.

Week 4

By this time we had managed to complete the pre-production and found actors. The shoot began on Monday 30^th January and ended on Wednesday 1^st February. On all three days we tried to shoot within the early afternoon period (around 12pm to 4pm) so the lighting would be fairly consistent throughout. We had our storyboard and script with us during the shoot but we were still flexible with our choice of shots. After the previous film project we all knew that we would need a multitude of shots in order to make a good edit; therefore, we shot most scenes from more than one angle to allow for variations in individual edits.

Week 5

I began my individual edit on the Thursday of week 4 and finished on the Saturday night before week 5. I spent around 10 hours in total editing. I also spent around 6 hours composing, recording and mixing my own original music for the film on Saturday afternoon. The music was mixed in reason 4 and editing done in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. While editing I used a variety of techniques to make my video and audio smoother. For the audio I used a compressor/limiter on all the dialogue; this increased the level of the quiet parts and decreased the level of the loud parts to give a balanced level on the dialogue track. The sound effects, atmosphere and music were all on separate audio tracks which did not require any compression. I also used cross fades between sound clips to eliminate clicks and pops in the audio. For the video I used colour correction and adjusted the brightness/contrast on some of the shots to give continuity in the lighting. I only used subtle amounts of colour correction as I didn’t want the video to look unnatural; as a result some of the shots are a bit darker and bluer than others. Overall I am happy with the way the film sounds and looks.

I chose to upload my completed film to YouTube instead of Vimeo; I did this as Vimeo has an upload limit of 500MB and I did not wish to compromise the quality of my 1.1GB video.

This has been a very challenging and time consuming project but very enjoyable. I wish to thank all the people I worked with to make this film; everyone worked hard and brought their own ideas and enthusiasm to make this project a success.