Jungle Fever

Held at the beginning of August during term 3, Jungle Fever was running through the school. Most of the secondary students were gearing up and rehearsing their lines ready for the performances on the 7th and 8th of August. 
This year they decided to make it a little different, by turning it into a theatre/restaurant. All up, around 250 people attended the evening sessions. The highlight of the performances would have been the boys dance to ‘Salmon’ by the ‘Chemical Brothers’, especially Brad Robinson’s ‘robot’ dancing!

Emily, Lauren and I were assigned the job of designing the posters, tickets and shirts.
We used Adobe Photoshop to create all of these.

Below is my final design for the Thursday dinner ticket;

With the Thursday ticket, I made it look like a sunrise, because Thursday was the first day of real performances. Using the soft colours in the sky gave it a sunrise effect. 

 

 

 

 

Below is the final design for the Friday dinner ticket;  

The Friday ticket was slightly different, I used darker, bolder colours to give a sunset effect. I wanted the sunset effect, because Friday was the last night, and the last performance of the “Jungle Fever” production, 2008.

 

 

 

 

Left; is the expermenting I did to create the sunset effect. I used graphics textas quickly to get a rough idea for the sunset. I used canary yellow, poppy red, pink, crimson red, violet, violet blue and black. 
I started with the lightest colour and worked my way up, making each layer less to make the gradient. I then used the black texta to make the horizon and the tree.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the final design for the poster;

The production was to do with Africa (sort of) so I chose to make my design like the African desert with the sunset and silhouette of elephants and a tree in the foreground. Using the sunset gradient in the radial style I could make it look like there was a sun. I put the ‘sun’ behind the elephants to make them stand out. I downloaded a jungle-like font for the title of the production. I then came up with the idea of Witch Doctors, because they have something to do with Africa, and its ‘Voodoo’. So I put a Witch Doctor in the foreground, and put all the information down the side of the Witch Doctor.

Bitmap and Vector Images

Bitmap Images are mostly used on the web and the computer. Bitmap images are composed of individual pixels, and each pixel contains its own colour information. A pixel is really small, and a single image may be composed of hundreds of thousands or individual pixels. The pixels cannot be seen unless the image has been magnified. 

The formats in which bitmap images can be saved in are:
• BMP 
• GIF 
• JPEG, JPG 
• PNG 
• PICT (Macintosh)
• PCX 
• TIFF 
• PSD (Adobe Photoshop)
The programs in which you can create these bitmap images are: 
• Microsoft Paint 
• Adobe Photoshop 
• Corel Photo-Paint 
• Corel Paint Shop Pro 
• The GIMP 

Vector images are composed of pixels, the images consist of points, lines, and curves and when combined can create complex images. When a vector image is enlarged it keeps its quality, unlike the bitmap image, which looses its quality and clarity. 

Formats in which vector images can be saved are:
• AI (Adobe Illustrator) 
• CDR (CorelDRAW) 
• CMX (Corel Exchange) 
• CGM Computer Graphics Metafile 
• DXF AutoCAD 
• WMF Windows Metafile
Programs that are used to create vector images are:
• Adobe Illustrator 
• CorelDRAW 
• Xara Xtreme 
• Serif DrawPlus

History of Multimedia

Visionaries: From the ingenious idea of the programmable computer, trace the innovations of the outstanding thinkers that had a direct impact on the explosion of the technological age. 
Text, Processing and Software: Inventions and innovations that spawned the development of software enabling computers to move from mathematical processing to technology that creates and delivers multi media.
Computers: From the printing press through the exclusive military and academic and corporate worlds trace computer development into the ubiquitous role of the desktop personal computer of today.
Audio & Communication: From the telegraph signal to cellular telephones, follow the development from signal transmission to digital transmission of voice.
Video &Animation: From manually manipulated negative film and hand drawn sketches, video and animation develops to sophisticate digital creation and rendering of motion. 
In more depth: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~edtech/688/hist.htm#Beginning

Bronze Coast

Go to the URL below to view the advertisement of Bronze Coast.

 http://www.rushworthp-12.vic.edu.au/home/wes11/bronzecoast.swf 

Macbook Air

    

 

Starting at $1799


Design  
MacBook Air is nearly as thin as your index finger. Yet it has a 13.3-inch LED-backlit display, a full-size keyboard, and a large Multi-Touch trackpad. It’s incomparably portable — without the ultraportable screen and keyboard compromises.

Graphics
The NVIDIA GeForce 9400M brings amazing, high-speed graphics to MacBook Air. With up to a 4x graphics performance boost, graphics-intensive applications now run faster. Movie and video playback is now richer. Even Cover Flow flips more smoothly. It’s a quantum leap for MacBook Air graphics.

Storage
The MacBook Air hard drive is now larger at 120GB. So now there’s plenty of storage space for your photos, movies, documents — basically everything you want and need to take with you. Or upgrade to a 128GB solid-state drive, which has no moving parts, for enhanced durability.

Wireless
MacBook Air takes full advantage of the wireless world. A world in which 802.11n Wi-Fi is so fast and so available, you can truly live untethered — buying and renting movies online, printing wirelessly, and sharing and storing files on the web

The iPhone

The iPhone!


 

Revolutionary Mobile Phone

iPhone is a revolutionary mobile phone that allows you to make a call by simply tapping a name or number in your address book, favorites list, or call log. It automatically syncs all your contacts from a PC, Mac, or Internet service. And Visual Voicemail lets you select and listen to messages in whatever order you want-just like email.


Great Widescreen iPod

iPhone is a widescreen iPod with touch controls that shows off your content-including music, videos, podcasts and audiobooks-on a beautiful 3.5-inch display. Sync content from the iTunes library on your Mac or PC. Scroll through songs and playlists with the touch of a finger. Even browse your album artwork using Cover Flow. 



Internet in Your Pocket

iPhone uses fast 3G and Wi-Fi wireless connections to deliver rich HTML email, Maps with GPS, and Safari-the most advanced web browser on a portable device. iPhone automatically syncs bookmarks from your PC or Mac and has Google and Yahoo! search built in. Since iPhone multitasks, you can even make a phone call while emailing a photo or surfing the web over a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. 



3G Speed

iPhone 3G harnesses the power of AT&T’s broad and powerful 3G mobile broadband network, which offers 3G mobile phones download speeds of up to 1.4 Mbps**. AT&T’s 3G network is currently available in 280 leading U.S. metropolitan areas; by year-end, the company plans to offer 3G service in nearly 350 metro areas.



Maps with GPS

Find your location, get directions, and search for nearby businesses-all from your phone. Maps on iPhone 3G combines GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower location technology to create the best map application on a mobile phone. 

Identifying Components of Multimedia

Multimedia Products


Choose on multimedia product; describe its purpose; show its features; analyse its strengths and weaknesses. Describe the levels of interactivity in the multimedia product.

I have chosen to do my review on the Boost Juice Bar website. Its purpose is to inform, educate and entertain and entertain it does, there is a ”link” that says ‘Don’t press here’ when its pressed, fruit falls from the top of the screen and splatter the the bottom of the screen, there is a game of connect 3, where the junk food verses you, as the fruit. 
This website has a competition on the home page as well as a koala (which tells you its an Australian owned company) drinking boost juice, a link to the ‘food fight’ game, on the right hand side of the home page there are updates, and the bottom right there is a VIP club link. At the bottom of the page there are tabs (links) to other pages. 
On the up side, the boost juice bar website has information about the Juice Bar, it has history of the bar and the people, info on franchising, their products, locations and heath, they even have a game and ‘random stuff’ for the younger audience, and the whole website is in uniform.
 On the downside,  the side is a little plain for my liking. The site could also have what could go into a boost juice drink (meaning the fruit etc that could go into it).


The whole site is interactive, each page is set up like a fridge door, and the photos and links are ‘pinned’ onto the fridge door with magnets and when you scroll over the link/photo, it moves/swings. 

 

Multimedia Interactivity
Genre: one of the categories that artistic works of all kinds can be divided into on the basis of form, style, or subject matter. Movies have different genres, these could be; comedy, drama, action, horror etc. 

Format: the way in which something is presented, organised or arranged. Files can be formated and saved into different file names; .mp3, .m4a, .wma, .avi, .psd, .fla, .swf, .jpg, .gif, .tiff etc.

Viewing/Listening: an act or the practise of watching, seeing or inspecting something/to concentrate on hearing somebody or something. If there is audio in video, you can listen and visualize at the same time; TV, DVD. Music on the other hand, is just something you listen to; radio, mp3′s.

Portability: designed to be light or compact enough to carry or move easily from place to place.
 Video games have been made in the past years, and they can be taken anywhere. Laptops are portable, and there are wireless internet connects, so that the net can be everywhere your laptop is.

Immediacy: happening or done at first, at once or without delay.

Currency:: a system of money, or the bills and coins themselves, used in a particular country. 

Engagement: an act or condition of being activated or becoming operational.

Intimacy:: a detailed knowledge resulting from a close or long association or study.

Linearity: relating to a straight line or capable of being represented by a straight line.

Scope:: 
freedom, space or capacity to act.
Interactivity: involving the communication or collaboration of people or things.

Select a media text (print, film, video, audio) and describe how best to convert this into a multimedia form utilizing the features of multimedia. 


 

Operating Systems and Storage Devices 
What impact do the various operating systems have on multimedia products?


Choose 2 alternate means of external storage and compare strengths and weaknesses.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Software Management

Most applications for Mac OS X use a “package” design.

Nearly all Windows applications are installed using some type of install wizard.

Graphic user interface – Window Management

The top left corner of every Mac OS X window contains close, minimize, and zoom controls. The red close button will close the window (obviously), while the yellow minimize button will scale the window down into a small dock icon (complete with a gratuitous “genie” animation), overlaid with the icon of the parent application.

Window Controls in Windows Vista are found in the top-right corner of each window, and are, from left to right, minimize, maximize, and close.

Internet – Web browsing

Users can access their bookmarks in Safari through Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks from the menu bar or clicking the open book shaped icon located on the far left of the toolbar. Safari’s bookmark window uses a layout similar to other library-centric applications on Mac OS X such as Address Book or Font Book.

Bookmarks in Internet Explorer are called favourites and can be accessed from the Favourites Centre by clicking the star icon in the toolbar.

Digital Media – Media Playback

Both Quicktime Player and iTunes support the playback of the following media file types: Audio: MP3, AAC, AIFF, AIFC, SND, WAV, MIDI, AU, MP2, WMA (iTunes) Video: MPEG-1, MPEG-4, h.264, QT, DV, FLC, Flash (subset of version 5 only), 3GPP, AVI (container), MOV (container), VIDEO_TS (DVD Player) Playlist: M3U (iTunes) Streaming: SDP, SMI

Windows Media Player supports playback of the following media file types: Audio: MP3, MP2, WMA, WAV, MIDI, RMI, AU, SND, AIFF, AIFC, CDA (CD audio) Video: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, DVR-MS, AVI (container), ASF (container), IVF, QT (only version 2.0), MOV (only version 2.0) Playlist: M3U, WPL Streaming: ASX, WAX, WVX

Choose 2 alternate means of external storage and compare strengths and weaknesses.

USB                                                   External Storage


Sizes

512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB 8GB 16GB 32GB

80GB, 120GB, 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, 400GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1 terabyte +

Brands

SanDickk Cruzer, Apacer, USB Pens, Diamond, BusLink, Omomory, Lexar, Samsung

Hitachi, Qmemory, Vantec

The up side

Memory sticks (USBs) are more portable than the external storage unit. They can be put in your pocket and put on a key ring. Also when they are accidentally left in your pocket and gone through the wash, they still work.

The external storage unit holds just as much, or more than the average computer.

The down side

Memory sticks don’t hold as much as the external storage units and can be lost easily.

The external storage units aren’t as portable as the memory sticks

 

 

Media Elements, Digitization, Compression and Delivery

DIGITIZATION…
Text: Can be scanned onto the computer as a document file or typed directly into any program that allows text.

Graphics: Can be created using programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash

Photographs: Can be scanned directly onto the computer, or uploaded from a camera.

Audio: Able to be recorded and uploaded to the computer, or recorded directly onto the computer.

Video:: Can be filmed with a video camera and uploaded to the computer, or filmed directly on the computer.

Animation: Can be created directly onto the computer using animation programs, such as Flash

COMPRESSION…

Text: Data compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits (or other information-bearing units) than an uuencoded representation would use through use of specific encoding schemes.
Graphics/Photographs (Images): Image compression is the application of data compression on digital images. Doing this you can keep the quality of the original image, but the size of the file would be much smaller and much easier to use on the web.

Audio: Audio compression is a form of data compression designed to reduce the size of audio files.

Video: Video compression refers to reducing the quantity of data used to represent video images and is a straightforward combination of image compression and motion compensation.

Animation: Animation should be compressed so that it loads quickly onto the internet.

DELIVERY…

Text: There are different ways in which text can be delivered. SMS (Short Message Service) is one example of delivery or text. Email is another. It could also be on a website or magazine and newspaper.

Graphics: website, able to load quickly etc 

Photographs: same as ^^, compressed, optimised etc

Audio: load quickly, compressed, appropriate format
Video: if on website needs to load quickly, compressed etc, and can be put onto a DVD.

Animation: ^^^ appropriate format etc

Multimedia Authoring
Select 2 Multimedia authoring tools used for the same purpose and compare strengths and weaknesses.
 

Offered Career Paths in Multimedia

What is actually offered in the career path of multimedia:


Bachelor of Multimedia
Bachelor of Multimedia (Business Marketing)

Bachelor of Multimedia (Games & Interactivity)

Bachelor of Multimedia (media Studies)

Graduate Certificate of Multimedia

Graduate Diploma of Multimedia
Master of Multimedia

Master of Multimedia Technology