Project 3 Concept & Making Video Research

Good concept video: This video has good sound and background music design. Although there's inter-cut in between ideas, the narrative is clear and moving. 

Good content video: This video has more documentation of project development and production records.

Google Art Project - making video

Behind the scene video of how the White House is operating! Impressive!

Voice Over & Sound

Due to the time limitation, I decided to use quick and easy tool to record my voice over. The explanation of my video concept from previous post will be the guide for me to do my video editing as well. 

The record and preview of the voice memo is quick and easy. The only struggling part is the data transfer part. As it's a little bit complicated for me to sync the voice over files to my work station, I emailed all the voice over clips to my email and then download them onto my work station.

After adding the voice over (VO) into my video timeline, I need to do some amendment from the video arrangement so that the "said" is complementing with the video footages showed.

Once the narration of the video clip deliver the message I intended to present, I proceed to looking for background music to lighten up the overall mood and feel of the video.

From this 50 plus minutes of music compilation, I found that the music from the 6th minute to 9th minutes suits my video timing and narration quite well. That part of the music consist of building up the beat which serve as intro music. The middle have more elements of drums and beats to serve as highlights of the app feature. The final part of the music has some variety of tones allow audience to feel that it has come to an end. So by getting some of these structure prepared, I'll then use some of the fading techniques to make sure the music volume is working well with the voice over

After Effect - Post Production Tutorial

This video tutorial helps me to understand the colour adjustment of the video to make my app demo video more stylish the trendy.

Demo Video Script Writing

Everyday, we express ourselves through our fashion style. Whether sporty, edgy, vintage or unique. To keep fashion inspiration interesting and fun, ASOS would like to introduce "Fashion Blender", a mobile application that share fashion inspiration in a unique way.

Using the dynamic photo tagging system, Fashion Blender allows user to customize their fashion inspiration based on the level of fashion exploration they want. By tapping on the layout mode, then select the items that user wanted, the smart searching feature of Fashion Blender will pull live data from the pool of users' library and form a new set of fashion combination. 

When user found that other user's outfit item are inspiring, simply tap on the photo, the image recognition system will identify the item and add them into user's personal inspiration library. These collected item will then be remix in the blender section. 

The map feature also allow users from different side of the world to share their fashion style and remix with other's fashion pieces. The idea of remix and recreating style allow the fashion item to appear uniquely stylish. 

Getting bored with mainstream fashion style? Use Fashion Blender. Fashion Blender, remix, recreate, restyle street style. 

Prototype Making

The following days will be the most crucial days I had to complete the project within the timeline. I've got the mobile ui 80 percent done. Because of time limitation, I'm considering dropping the plan to produce a demo video and change the submission of app concept through poster design.

Thinking to use poster design to explain the mobile app concept could save me some time, I'm also worry that print images could not illustrate the excitement of this fashion app.

Since making an appealing poster to explain the concept will also take times, plus if my copywriting does not excite the judges, I might not be able to present the project well. And to montage the app and make it exciting is also a lot of work. I need to highlight the detail, display in a dynamic layout, typography treatment and crafting the words to complement the ui... etc.

Example above is a good way to present mobile ui in a pleasant looking and dynamic way. But it's all too quiet and stagnant. With that much of work to do in order to impress the judges, but at the same time the user experience is not being clearly illustrated.

So I decided to stick back to the old plan. Film a concept & demo video.

First of all, I'll have to make a simple prototype of the app using Flash Air to make an android apk file so that the interactivity of the app can be demonstrated. There's a coding work to do and I allocated one full day to complete that. Then I'll have to plan a quick and interesting storyboard so that I can do a quick video shooting to collect enough footages for the editing.

I re-look into the winner's video. After observing how their video narration works, I've got my video content in mind. I borrowed a DSLR camera from a friend and go for a street video shooting around Sunway Pyramid street area. I'm quite blessed and lucky in this case as the students and working adult around this area normally wear fashionable attire. So it's not too difficult to find talents for a quick profile video shoot.

At the end I manage to get some of the diploma year three students and some TOA working people to be my talent instead of getting stranger on the street to help me film the street fashion scene.

UI Design Concept

Because ASOS product has variety of colour, print, patterns and fabric texture, the app ui design that display such dynamic fashion photo will have to be simple and easy to recognise. 

The hipster style of black and white (grey), design treatment with minimal lines and shapes give a trendy yet clean environment for the target audience to browse through their fashion inspiration easily.
Below is one of the sample hipster graphic style guide board I found online.

Hipster graphic style reference

My app design - colour palette and testing with ASOS fashion item side-by-side

D&AD New Blood Winner Entries Analysis

All of the winning work, submitted video demo presentation with approximately 1 minute duration. Not all of the entries supply with poster image. 

One of the best entry format: Clear video concept, the submission of visual montage successfully explain the use case of the project. Link

From my observation, the winning works doesn't really have very detail information architecture and ui connectivity. The shared common points are the innovation and behaviour changing concept that reflected ASOS aim in connecting the target audience with the feature of mobile network. The usage of camera function allowing them to publish themselves into the social media channels every now and then. ASOS products will need to be featured with the look and feel that is in line with the ASOS brand and aesthetic. It must be viewable on a smartphone. But it’s not a must to actually create an app or site, but must clearly show how it would work, look and feel. 

From the direction of how the judges define winning work, I will need to produce a clear summary of the reasoning behind my idea and creative solution in answering the brief. The submission of research references and/or moodboards will help to explain my creative solution. A clear presentation of understanding of the proposed user experience is also an important criteria for the award judging process.