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Major concept: cancelled

Relating to my previous major concept post. After speaking to many people - family, students, staff and Internet randoms - I've decided finally that my Interactive Parallel-Narrative Documentary About The Making Of Itself is simply too ambitious to complete in a single year of university.

I definitely want to make it some day, but it'll have to be some time in the future when I don't have a deadline to work towards and enough time to do it properly. And, of course, the funding to stay alive during.

Instead, I have an idea relating to Internet video subtitling, which is of particular personal interest, being deaf. I do, however, need to think ahead, as it's possible services like the BBC iPlayer may start implementing the same ideas this time next year without me even realising. It might be smart to get in touch with the BBC about it...

Maybe I'll elaborate in a later post.

Student voice gallery #2

Another update on the Student Voice Gallery. Although it's very bandwidth intensive and nothing is preloaded, the menu excepted, it so far looks good. Have another few development screenshots.

First, the 'browse' feature. Browse all photos by date, rating, alphabetically, forward or in reverse. Pretty standard stuff. The tag browsing feature looks basically the same, but the very small amount of test content means it's difficult to demonstrate effectively in an image, so I won't bother screengrabbing that.

Second, the login page. The problem with login pages is that they're usually really, really boring, an afterthought, because it's always the programmers that get the task of designing the login page. Web designers just aren't interested in that. So, below is the current login page:

I do think it's a little unbalanced at the top, where the actual login bit is, but maybe I'll come up with something to improve it. For now, it works. If you have any suggestions, feel free to email me.

Major concept

Although I should really be concentrating on my essay right now, I've come up with what I think to be a completely brilliant idea for my major project next year (BAIMP3 08-9).

Although I have no intention of baring all yet, I will say that it is a feature-length documentary with the working title Interactive Parallel-Narrative Documentary About The Making Of Itself. I hope that is enough to pique your interest.

If it is to be feature-length, then I will need to script, film and edit - at a guess - about ten hours of documentary. That's a low estimate, by the way.

Ambitious? Oh, certainly. I spoke to Mik earlier today (one of my tutors for those not in the know) about the idea, and he seemed quite opposed to it on the grounds of the extraordinary amount of work. I see where he is coming from. I do, however, really want to create an exhibitive piece for my major, and I think I've nailed the concept I want to work on. I just need to flesh it out.

Obviously, there being this much to do, I expect that this project will eat up the next year or so of my life completely. I will have to drop all my other personal projects, even Blinding Flesh. But, frankly, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to spending the entire summer scripting it. I'm daydreaming about the possible narrative arcs I could use (hence having still not done my essay). I have to think about this, though. No point creating a feature-length film if the most fundamental part of it sucks. Apparently the BATV students only have to create twenty-minute shorts, but I'm confident that I can make a 60 to 90 minute film work, and work well at that.

I'll be using this notepad (blog for the unpretentious of you that call it what it is) to record my progress on the project, though I will not actually be elaborating at all further on the concept. I want to keep it as secret as possible until I release the film; partly to keep it fresh, and partly because I have no doubt someone will attempt to rip off the idea before I've even finished.

I won't be starting proper until the end of term, but while it's on my mind I felt this was worth posting along with the item on SVG. Now to the front room with my headache and a notepad to try to get on with this essay.

Student voice gallery #1

For those interested in the visual work I'm doing on the Student Voice Gallery website, here's a screenshot of a prototype page.

Yes, that's an actual webpage, replete with transparent PNG backgrounds and all. Normally I would be totally opposed to the idea of using that type of image in a webpage, mainly because of the accumulating filesize - I only ever use them in Flash, and liberally at that - but I genuinely fail to see a solution to the graphical brief without using them.

If you have any suggestions in regards to the transparent PNG approach then don't hesitate to email me with them. I'm not making everything fixed size, by the way, so that I can use simple JPG backgrounds. Parts of the site have to be modular and re-positionable. Ouch.