1. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
Use of text: I am going to analysis the Avengers interactive menu 0.00-1.13.
(Title, Credits, animated captions, stings,
indents, interactive menus, web banner)
Brief description: The clip starts off with showing us a blue print of what we can make out to be a ship, while
What do you see? showing this the camera takes through all the out lays of the ships and shows us inside. As we
follow the camera it takes us to a screen which appears from the side with the letter A on the
screen to remind us of the film were watching. The screen then shows the characters of the
film all next to one another the shows Iron man shooting towards the camera. The blue print is
very detailed and as we further into the ship we can see how complex it is. This could
symbolise one of the characters in the film which is Iron Man due to the fact that iron man is
very into technology and we see a lot of blue prints when we first meet him. This suggest that
the producers have done this because Iron Man in the most popular character in the film
amongst the audience so by doing this it grabs our attention straight away. The images of all
the characters have all been combined into one and of we look it looks like a domino effect.
Once one appears another one appears like its being pushed out from the image before it. As
each characters picture appears we see short clips of their primes time in the film which
consists of them mostly fight establishing the genre of the film which would be fantasy and
action. However the interactive menu mainly consists of Iron Man and his main scenes
tempting the audience to watch it.
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2. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
Techniques used: At the start of the clip the blue print of the ship is made by CGI which is basically animation.
Animation, Visual Effects, Colour Rendering, CGI is short for computer generated image which can be done on a computer on programmes
Graphics, Movement such as Photoshop, however ways of doing this can be a very long process e.g. the designer
could do this frame by frame to give it more of a precise look.The blue print of the ship isn’t
moving in fact it’s only the camera that’s moving from angle such as a bird’s eye view shot to
show us the entire ship and the detail that’s gone into creating this object. This visual effect
can be done on a programme called lightwave which Is a 3D computer graphics software.
When the screen appears showing the characters the camera stays still allowing us to think
that were watching something of another screen. The screen shows parts of the film which are
all very CGI due to the fact we can see Iron Man flying in the sky which could have been done
in front of a green screen which allows you to create an image of someone being somewhere
they’re really not. The graphics are very detailed to make it look real especially on most
characters e.g. Iron Man because it allows us to believe that this is actually happening. As we
see Iron Man fly we see the back drop of New York city which has been edited in to allow us to
believe this is taking place in real life. This can be done on Photoshop frame by frame which
would take a great deal of time. Colour is very important in the clip and in the film, when we
watch the clip each character is associated with a different colour such a Iron man is associated
with red and the hulk is associated with green. The colours could represent the characters
personality’s or the colour of their alter ego.
Advanced techniques: The images of the characters have 50% opacity due to the fact we can see their scenes behind
Blur, Sharpen, Distortion, Rotation, Opacity them which gives us more idea of what the characters part is in the film. The blue print has
been sharpened to give us more detail of the ship and to make it look more realistic. Also if we
stop the clip we can see that in each from each picture of the characters blur into one another
to create an overall image. This could be done to suggest that all the characters in the film all
have something in common and in a way they are all connected. If we pause the clip at 0.20 we
can see that the screen has been split into two showing two separate scenes going on e.g. a
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3. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
close up of iron man and then a extreme long shot of iron man flying. This gives the audience
more of an insight to the characters and what their role is in the film.
The colour in the clip has also been sharpened to give a better detailed image of what’s going
on. It also gives the audience a better viewing experience. In motion graphics everything is
done frame by frame to give more and better detail.
Technical comments: When we look at video format we understand that this is very important due to the fact this is
Video Format, Screen Ratio, Resolution, what people need to know when their downloading anything. This clip of the Avengers can be
Frame rate, Compression downloaded as a MP4, M4V, MP3 (this is what songs are usually formatted as) or a MOV. Each
software on a computer uses a different format suck as quick time which is part of Apple which
uses QTFF.
If we also look at the clip we can also see that we can change its resolution from 360 to 1080.
360 is the type you’d expected to watch clips in on Youtube because it’s faster streaming but
poorer image quality while if we change the resolution to 1080 which in this case is HD we can
see that the image quality improves by a big amount making it a clearer image and it gives
more detail. However a downfall with this is that the speed of the clip slows down and begins
to buffer which can cause annoyance.
Many films are done with 24 frames per second which is why some on the images look
distorted on the big screen which is why higher detail makes the image quality better.
Motion Graphics and Video Compositing Unit 64
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4. Salford City College
Eccles Centre
Creative Media Production
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).
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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