The second problem we encountered is the time management for our project. That was hard to find the right time that suits everyone to work on our project as after school everyone of us had a home duties and things to do. Therefore we picked the mid-term to work and finish our project. 

To support a good run of Adobe After Effects we will need a powerful PC which would cost approximately €2000.

The Adobe After Effects offers us a monthly subscription of €26 which is included in our budget plan 

Breakdown per month: 

• Script/Storyboard: €0 

• Stock Assets: €0 

• Voiceover: €0 

• Subtitles: €0 

• Discord Membership: €4-10

• PC: €2000

• After Effects: €26

With an average of 3 hours of discussion per meeting, once a week over an estimate of 10 weeks, the overall hours spent using our skills, efforts and time would amount to roughly 30 hours in total. If we were hypothesise that we were paid €30 an hour for our services, we would be payed €900 in total for this multimedia project.

-One of our group members will be leaving the country for a month which means he won’t be able to use his PC to work on the trailer, and his laptop isn't powerful enough to handle Adobe After Effects.

 -The second technical issue we encountered with the software Adobe After Effects keeps crashing as the project goes further on. 

-As we put more content in our video project the Adobe After Effects couldn’t handled it so we had to keep restarting after every save.  

-The WiFi is slow on some of our connections and might made communication more difficult. The call audio may glitch, Discord also has a problem with microphones and it took time for us adjusting our microphone settings before we could speak to each other.

1. Communication:

   
   

   This project was split into two assignments for us, and we had to manage our time and plan ahead if we wanted to complete our assignments before the due date. This involved a lot of communication as a team and team discussion, allocating each other specific tasks based on our strengths and weaknesses that we communicated to each other. This involved using our communication skills to ensure we worked quickly and efficiently, and no person fell behind or worked less than the other. We had to follow a timeframe to ensure our project was done before the due date, so we had to work quickly and efficiently. The team had different dynamics that often had different ideas and opinions that occasionally clashed. Emotions and stress were also at play because of the other assignments that needed to be done in the other classes, as well as availability and personal relationships with each other. There were a lot of factors that got in the way that challenged us: like the time frame before the due date being only 3 weeks after work experience week and midterm, the technical constraints like the lack of specific software needed (AE) and the wrong equipment at different locations and times throughout the 10 weeks. This meant we had to use a lot of communication to discuss these challenged and come up with solutions to overtake them. Decision-making and problem-solving were skills used very prominently and were improved massively during this project. Our leadership skills greatly improved as our communication with each got better and more efficient because of this project. These are all essential skills if we want to work as editors in a group or with other people.

   
   

We planned out our roles for our Multimedia project. We made a new Google Doc “Documentation 4 - 60%”, which documents our work in progress. (LINK OF DOC HERE)

• Karina - Allocating Tasks, Flowchart of production process, Milestones and Week Schedule documentation (this doc).

• Ian - Gantt Task Allocation Chart

• Maksym - Technical Constraints and Problem-Solving documentation, Budgeting Plan

{voice file here of the meeting}

• Karina - Planning and scheduling. Moving our Google Doc work to Padlet. 

• Ian - Working on the Gantt Task Allocation Chart, Flowchart, Week Schedule documentation

• Maksym - Technical Constraints and Problem-Solving documentation

  
  

We planned to work on our project documentation in class and work on the game trailer after school on discord over call. We continued working on our documentation in class. We decided to move our Google Doc work to Padlet because it is easier to input files and video, audio and picture files into it, and because we also didn’t like the look of the our work in Google Docs. We are still using Google Docs and Padlet for the project but transferred our work from this Doc(LINK HERE) into this Padlet.

{voice file here of the meeting}

1. In the first week we allocated our tasks to each other and what each member will be contributing to the project in the following weeks. We all decided that Karina would be working on the outlining of the production process for 5 marks and get it finished in the first week; as well documenting the milestones and schedule plan of the following weeks for 10 marks, Ian will create the Gantt Task Allocation Task Chart outlining the stages of our project’s development finished by the first week for 5 marks. And Maks will get the (b) budgeting plan and the (a) technical constraints and problem-solving documentation finished by the first week. 

2. Maks expressed that he would like to finish the video trailer before his work experience starting on the 10th of February- because he will be going away on the Erasmus trip and won't have access to his PC, so he won’t be able to work on the project with us. He says he will bring his laptop but will have limited resources and capacity on this device to work with Adobe Premiere on the trailer, so we will like to finish as much of the trailer as we can before the 10th of February.

3. Ian expressed a similar concern- that he would also like to get as much of the writing side of the project done as possible before his work experience, starting on the 10th of February as well, and ending on the 4th of February. Because he will be working, he won’t be able to work on the project. 

4. The entire group expressed that we would like to get both the documentation and the trailer finished before the 17th of February which is when our mid term break begins.

Ian- Input milestones into the padlet, Flowchart and stylising the documentation work. 

Maksym, Ian and Karina- researched music on Youtube for the backing-track of the trailer. We all put in our input & opinions.

{voice file here of the meeting}

-----------------------------------------------------------

Our purpose for this game trailer is for it to be watched on YouTube by people who enjoy story-telling games, Detroit Become Human, and video games in general. We want it to entertain, and also inform people who don't know anything about the game the events that occur and the story that unfurls in it. We want the trailer to introduce the characters and showcase their roles in the game while showing the choices that can be made by the player. We would it like it to be shared, and also show it off on our portfolios for our colleges and careers.

Over all, we were great at starting our project with the documentation portion of the project according to plan. But we started to become behind on creating the trailer on weeks 8 - 9 because of the Erasmus Trip, work experience weeks and midterm break which slightly held us back. We were planning in our Gantt chart and flowchart to have the majority of the trailer finished by midterm break but did not have enough time and began rushing the trailer on the last night before presenting. Over all, we can evaluate that the group dynamics worked well out in the end, Maks didn't have a stable consistent role in the first three thirds of our project but ended up being the main creator of the trailer in the last 2 weeks with Karina as the art direction and creative director. We switched roles and Ian did the documentation for the last 2 weeks of our project, and we communicated and allocated each other these tasks well. We got into disagreements at some points, but we managed to solve this by using compromise and clear and assertive communication. Over all, we like the physical changes we made to the trailer like the subtitles and effects. We initially did not plan to have obvious transitions like the black bars closing-in transitions, but we compromised on this decision as Mars really wanted to have them so we kept them in. We also removed some of the voice lines we initially had as it was starting to sound more crowded, so we removed them last minute. We also added new voice lines from the game last minute in parts of the trailer that sounded quiet. We also made some changes to the transcript we created before the trailer with some of the changes made and did some minor tweaks in the dialogue and script directions like sound effects and music.

Day 2 (29th Jan) - 3 hrs

Day 3 (5th Feb) - 2 hrs

Day 4 (19th Feb) - 4 hrs

Day 5 (5th March) - 2 hrs

Day 6 (9th March) - 5 hrs

Day 7 (12th March) - 3 hrs

Day 8 (13th March) - 3 hrs

Day 9 (14th March) - 5 hrs

Day 10 (19th March) - 3 hrs

Day 11 (24th March) - 3 hrs

Day 12 (25th March) - 3 hrs

Day 13 (26th March) - 2 hrs

Day 14 (2nd April) - 2 hrs

Contributions of others in a team: We are happy with each of our contribution amount, though some team members may have contributed more than others at certain points throughout the project, over all the amount of contribution each team member put in evened out throughout the 10 weeks. Karina and Ian contributed a large amount in the writing portion of our project because it fit our strengths, and Maks contributed largely for the editing portion of our trailer. We think we managed our time well, although because of scheduling issues we were behind on some of our milestones. We think we could have planned better for finishing the trailer before our Work Experience and Midterm weeks and did more after-school meetings online. However, for all the work we did do after school we are more than happy with all our hard efforts, and we believe it shows in the final quality of our overall project.

Overall, we are very happy with our final product. We think we communicated our message clearly and efficiently, and we had fun doing it. We ran into some disagreements and a few technological and scheduling issues, but over all we all each contributed an even amount of work and took away some valuable soft and hard skills that will be useful in our future careers.

If we were to do this project again, some things we would differently would be:

Use more clear communication and compromise on ideas more often, stick with one software program (After Effects) instead of attempting to jump between different editing programs as this arose issues as mentioned above, planned and managed our time better by spacing out our the work load and working weeks ahead, and using a more powerful computer to work on so that our projects would not crash and load our work more quickly. Be less obsessed with details and have a more big-picture mindset- spend less time on the unimportant details.

1. Did you enjoy the trailer?

2. Were there any parts that were particularly memorable?

3. Was the information in the trailer conveyed clearly?

4. Was 2 mins too long/too short for our trailer?

5. Overall, how much would you rate the trailer?

2. We are creating a padlet for this project and documenting all of our work in it.

3. We are voice recording our conversations and meetings in-person and online and screen recording our progress. (Uploading our voice records in Moodle, due to storage issues)

4. We are speaking over calls on Discord about how we want to make our trailer and making group decisions, collaborating and exchanging ideas and helping each other with the decision-making process.

5. We are documenting our creative process and discussions/meetings into our google doc (Documentation 4) and into this Padlet.

6. After showcasing our finished product, we are writing an evaluation on this project and holding a class survey about it for feedback.

Throughout the project we used different editing softwares. The main programs used for our trailer were Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects. Those gave us a good base in video cutting, working with the effects and transitions. Those skills are good for video production that would benefit us working in the filming field. For the thumbnail of the video we plan to use Photoshop so we would learn skills in graphic design, typography and colour correction- those will be extremely handy in the future for working on some design company.

-Ian helped with finding more music tracks and  SFX for the trailer while Karina worked on recording YouTube gameplay clips from our script and cutting them in Adobe Premiere.

-We discussed which SFX, music and voice lines to use over Discord call, while browsing through all the different choices on YouTube.

-We managed to achieve the first 30 seconds of the trailer in this Discord call session.

{voice file here of the meeting}

We continued to work on and finishing up this Padlet.

Karina: Finished “Project Proposal”, Finished Plan Flowchart.

Ian: Wrote “Day 5” progress in this doc, “No. of hours every week” section.

Maksym: Wrote “Skills set you're gaining for freelancing” section in Padlet

- Karina & Ian discovered the issue of there being music playing behind the characters speaking in our desired voice lines which we had initially planned for wanting to use in our transcript. Karina solved this problem by suggesting downloading the video as an MP3 and importing it into CapCut because it has a bacground-music-remover feature.

-Then she ran into a second problem of the feature being behind a paywall for Pro CapCut Membership. She solved this by screen-recording the sound in the app, exporting it to mp4 and importing it into Premiere. There were some more technical issues with importing the sound, but after some time it imported.

-Another issue came up in the video-editing process, Ian and Karina got into a disagreement of how long the starting logos should be. Karina liked the initial speed, Ian wanted to decrease the speed. We solved this issue by compromising and trying out both ways and deciding which option we liked better together.

MUSIC:

Cinematic Trailer True Crime by Infraction [No Copyright Music] / Superior Power - We agreed we liked this.

Epic Action Cinematic by Infraction [No Copyright Music] / Heroes  1:00 - We agreed we liked this.

SFX:

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - World of Light (Nintendo Switch)

Coin Toss Sound Effect - Free Download & No Copyright

Cinematic Boom - sound effect - [High quality]

Movie Trailer Impacts/Booms - Sound Effects

VOICE LINES:

Detroit Become Human - Meet Kara, Markus and Connor

Before first deadline:

Week 1:

We were juggling ideas of our video. Our main ideas were:

• Drag Queen video essay

• History on Irish Halloween

• Interview with Maksym's boss

Week 5:

We wanted to do a psychological video essay of "Detroit: Become Human" but decided to make a game trailer because it was an easier video, in terms of content and clips.

The trailer had some scraped factors that were considered:

• Voice Acting characters with our own voices

• Deciding what software to use = Adobe After Effects

Before second deadline:

In this Google Doc we documented our weekly changes we made to our trailer and to this padlet/document.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vS2BARRQzU_M-eEFqh6K56bPLmlDD1EG8MvecqSwOYd6QpnkIHZSqhY0PBVTyLYHNkMXIGzjdY3wl30/pub

Maksym: editing the trailer and adding clips in After effects 2021

Ian: documenting the meeting in this doc. Assisting Maksym with the trailer, along with the script. 

Notes:

• Maksym focused on adding transitions and filling out blank parts of the trailer with extra clips or video effects.

• The script we made  or the 36% assignment, we decided to add more material. Maksym said “It is not enough clips”. He suggested around 30 clips to be added in the trailer.

• The script is also having some changes with clips and transitions.

Issues:

• Maksym experienced glitching when rendering transitions between clips.

Changes during this meeting:

1. Transitions of cut to black are changed to smooth transitions effects or more clips to fill in.

2. The jump scene of Markus, is changed to the scene of him begging, sad moment

3. Swapped the two scenes of Kara’s part of robbing a store and running from Conner.

We will present the end product of the trailer to Karina to have an overall agreement.

Work we have done:

Karina: Skills set your gaining, freelancing

Ian: documenting the meeting in this doc and copy and paste to padlet, no. of  hours each meeting, changes/modifications made write up.

Maksym: critical evaluation write up

1. Transitions of cut to black are changed to smooth transitions effects or more clips to fill in.

2. The jump scene of Markus, is changed to the scene of him begging, sad moment

3. Swapped the two scenes of Kara’s part of robbing a store and running from Conner.

Karina: Assisting with the trailer

Ian: documenting the meeting in this doc, voice recording the meeting for the length and proof of working online.

Maksym: Making the trailer

New clips

• Connor sacrificed himself to save the little girl.

• Kara pulling out handgun

• Kara and Alice running

• Markus & co. skydiving/parachute

• Connor and Hank bromance/tragic scenes

• Hank suicides

• Ending section: Markus, Connor and Kara say dialogue “My name is (individual name), and this is our story”.

• End title “Detroit: Become Human”. 

• Black screen

Challenges

• Finding the clips and discussing different ideas with certain scenes.

• Many transitions to choose from, too many to pick for appropriate scenes.

• Screen recording and Voice Lines

Plan for tomorrow:

• Think about more clips between the parachute scene of Markus and the end section.

Karina: Assisting with the trailer, collecting clips

Ian: documenting the meeting in this doc, voice recording the meeting for the length and proof of working online, collecting clips

Maksym: Making the trailer

Little delay: UCC Skills Centre workshop

Note: don’t need many audio files to “proof” our project process online. 

Send a few audio files in Moodle itself, instead of Padlet.

Karina: absent

Ian: documenting the meeting in this doc, Project Proposal Screenshots

Maksym: showcased the rendered trailer to Ian

Karina: Assisting with the trailer, collecting clips/voice lines

Ian: documenting the meeting in this doc, collecting clips/voice lines

Maksym: directing what voice lines are needed, making the trailer

During this online meeting in Discord, we added some finishing touches of voice and text. Long discussions of agreeing with certain scenes with voice lines.

Karina: Assisting with the trailer, collecting clips/voice lines

Ian: documenting the meeting in this doc, class survey questions, Hours Documented, voice lines, suggested Credits

Maksym: finishing the trailer with Adobe After Effects

We resolved this issue by communicating and deciding that only one person would have access to the trailer project file on one PC and software (Maks, After Effects).

Throughout this project we exercised creative problem-solving and thinking skills. We needed to think creatively to decide how we wanted our trailer to feel- dramatic, sad, happy, inspirational, hopeful? We needed to use our creative muscle to envision how certain clips would look together and how we should order them, cut them, edit them, so that they fit the voice lines being said and the beats and flow of the music. We needed to create a creative piece that emulated the emotions the player feels when playing the game, by recreating the drama and emotions on from the characters and the story. These skills will come very useful in our careers in Creative Digital Media, as this field of work is very creative and artistic. Each individual needs to develop their own style and think creatively when creating work in Digital Media- Film, video editing, graphic design, as just some examples. Working in freelance gives you more freedom to express yourself creatively and if we decide to work freelance, these creative muscles we flexed throughout this project will come in useful and make us stand out against other freelancers in Creative Digital Media.

6. Self Discipline:

   This project required us to plan our time carefully and practice self-discipline- as we needed to meet up after school to work on our projects because of our schedules, which required will-power and motivation to sit down and plan out our own time to work on our project at home. We of course, helped each other out a lot in the process, but it was also largely self-discipline in deciding to work and contribute you fair share of work to the project.

Karina: Changes made from Original Plan

Ian: Documenting

Maksym: explained to the class the process of the trailer

My personal reflection of the overall project positive. I think I learned a lot of valuable leadership and communication skills that will come useful for my future career in Creative Media like speaking more clearly so others understand me better, and practicing compromise in a team project. There were times where Maks and Ian did not like the ideas I was suggesting, so I needed to learn how to compromise and let others take the wheel. I also learned to be more assertive and speak my opinions with more confidence both in-person and over the phone. There were times when we would get into arguments, but I learned how to communicate better to resolve it. This project helped me be more extroverted and taught me important skills in how to work in a team, which I was unable to do well before this project. There were also hard times I had to endure throughout this project, like facing the first deadline and staying up at night with Ian trying to finish everything before it's due. It was really stressful at times trying to juggle multiple classes and their assignments with project because of all the work we put onto ourselves. we wanted to ensure we got full marks on this so we took on an unnecessary amount of work for the writing sections and presentation sections of the project. However, I am also glad we did it because of the high marks we received.

The final product changed a lot over the course of our project- it started as a vague idea for video of an interview, then into a vague video idea for a video game analysis/review, then last minute before the first deadline we changed our idea to a game trailer. I love that we chose to do a trailer instead of a video analysis or interview video, because the trailer felt so much more personal. If we went to Cork city or travelled somewhere else like we initially suggested and interviewed a person, the project would have been a lot less personal and interesting to me. So I am glad that we chose to do a project on a game that we all enjoy.

Reflection on Feedback:

I really like how our project turned out, I am proud of the final product we created and am excited to be able to show it on my portfolio. However, I was slightly disappointed with the feedback we received, for all the hard work we put into it. We received a 4.7 star rating out of 5, when I expected it to be 5 for all the effort we displayed. However after further reflection, I recognised that sometimes your audience won't recognise that hard work you put into a project and judge solely off of first impressions and how the product made them feel. This means that for future creative projects I need to think of what the viewer wants to see, instead of trying to perfect unnecessary details that the viewer won't notice. The feedback made me realise I need to put more of my attention on to trying to create a product that the viewer will enjoy and thinking more of the big picture, and less on unnecessary details.

This project overall was a fun experience. My task for the project is to assist the team with any tasks they ask me to do. For example, screen recording clips, voice recording meetings, Padlet/Google Doc write-ups. With the team, we managed to create a trailer, which required teamwork. During the meetings, we had many discussions of decisions on making the trailer and write-ups. Overall, I found the project easy and difficult.

My role in the team was:

1. Document the meetings in Google Docs that we share together, copy and paste the write-ups to Padlet.

2. Help screen record clips fro the trailer

3. Voice record our meetings

Overall Reflection on the feedback

I am really satisfied with the final product, the trailer. Our hard work paid off. I do agree with the answers of the survey answers. But some answers are too vague with the question "Were there any parts that were particularly memorable?". I wanted the answers to be more specific, so when making a new trailer in the future, I would learn from mistakes and make the new trailer better. Besides the vague answers, I found the feedback mostly positive.

I'm really satisfied with the final result of our project. It's been hard but what I liked is that we worked as a group throughout the whole project. Everyone had been given the task and in my opinion everybody did a great job with completing his/her task. As well as that I enjoyed the process of doing the actual trailer, I've been having fun doing it in discord with the group but as well as having fun we were having some issues with the trailer/within the group but even the process of dealing with the problems was a great experience and a good lessons to learn from. Overall, I enjoyed working with the group and I'm looking forward to have more group's projects, as you can create really fascinating stuff by putting all yours ideas together.

Overall reaction on the Feedback:

Personally, the feedback is useful and it's something to learn from. I think people gave an honest opinion on our final product and I'm delighted that most of them rated it 5 stars. Some rated 4 stars but they still gave the positive feedback some of those

"The transitions and music", "The woman talking" and etc.

From those responses we can learn and put some of the techniques that works in our future projects or fix some of those that did not work for our future projects.

Karina: Preparation, testing and presentation writ-up, Progress of the changes/modifications made write-up, self-reflection write-up, adding voice recordings on meetings

Ian: Padlet/Doc writing, self-reflection write-up

Maksym: self-reflection write-up

Dip to black

Film Dissolve

Audio transitions

Fade in, Fade out

Constant gain