The interactive menu for the James Bond film has a simple but elegant design consisting of a play button, scene selection, and special features button on a still background image of James Bond. The menu only uses black, white, and red colors to give it a dramatic feel. When buttons are selected, the background image fades to black where the buttons are displayed. The menu itself does not use any advanced technical or motion graphics techniques beyond basic button interactions on a still background photo.
1. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
Use of text: Interactive Menu
(Title, Credits, animated captions, stings,
indents, interactive menus, web banner)
Brief description: The James Bond interactive menu has a simple but elegant display consisting of a play button,
What do you see? scene selection and special features.
Techniques used: The menu seems to have a still image with no obvious signs of movement of any sort except
Animation, Visual Effects, Colour Rendering, when you select the play, scene selection or special features button. The Menu has a simple
Graphics, Movement but effective image of James bond in the background.
Advanced techniques: The background image fades into black in which the 3 available buttons are seen. The menu
Blur, Sharpen, Distortion, Rotation, Opacity also notably only uses black and white and red colouring, maybe to give it a more dramatic
feel.
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2. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
Technical comments: The menu is a still image so there isn’t really anything technical too it.
Video Format, Screen Ratio, Resolution,
Frame rate, Compression
Motion Graphics and Video Compositing Unit 64
Glossary
Motion graphics - Graphics that use video footage and/or animation technology to create the illusion of motion or rotation, graphics are
usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects.
Compositing video - When there are several different clips of video are layered over one another to create a single image.
Interactive Menus – DVD Interface or Interactive Menus on a web page
Ident– The ‘call sign’ of a channel or production company to identify themselves on screen, usually shown before a programme.
Animated Captions – Animated Graphics layered over an image / video
Web Banners – A form of web advertising that is embedded into a web page. They are used to attract a viewer to their website. A Web
Banner usually a mix of motion graphics and video
Video Format - 3 Main Formats HD, PAL, NTSC. HD is the highest resolution (720 or 1080 vertical lines in the image). PAL is the UK
Standard definition image (576 vertical lines). NTSC is the US Standard definition image (480 vertical lines). Now in the
digital age we now look at video format in terms of pixels (i.e. High definition 1080; 1920 x 1080 or 2,073,600 pixels)
Screen ratio – Standard TV ratio is 4:3; this means that for every 4 units wide it is 3 units high. It is likely that the screen ratio will be
Widescreen (16:9) in a cinematic sequence.
Resolution – The amount of detail in an image or signal, such as Standard TV Definition and High Definition. See Video Format.
Frame Rate - The number of video or film frames displayed each second (frames per second; fps). PAL frame (standard UK TV) is 25
fps, NTSC (standard US TV) is 30 fps, film is 24 fps. This means as NTSC updates more regularly there is less strobing
(jerkiness).
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3. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
Compression – The use of Codecs (WMV, DivX) to reduce the file size of a video by a variety of methods.This sometimes means a loss in
image quality (a “lossy”). Codecs are found in Video Cameras, DVD players / recorders, Editing Packages, Video upload
sites)
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