Rationale.

- Rationale - 

The inspiration behind our topic choice comes from my own experiences feeling overwhelmed by assignment work and wanting to be able to still work on personal expression through drawing, writing and such throughout my day. I had heard of people doing creative challenges to commit to progressing their skill, ability, and learning more about their own creative capacity. It makes sense this is also a highly beneficial thing to us as designers, so should definitely be something that is encouraged. Often I was left feeling creatively 'drained' after inputting everything I had into assignments and the simple act of taking a little time for my self to express my own ideas however I wanted ended up having a more positive and uplifting feeling in my life than I had anticipated. Our call to action was a very straightforward one: 15 minutes, 15 days, endless ways to create. Join in on the creative challenge! :) And our target audience was people who are creatively inclined or aspire to be, and also might be motivated by social media as an outlet for their creativity.

Both Lani and myself had a very strong idea of a certain look we wanted for the identity of our topic - handwritten fonts, beautiful/colorful and artistic photos and imagery, a mix of gritty city environment with bursts of creativity like a hidden paradise in an urban jungle. We tried to portray this in a way that fitted the mix of "city meets art" aesthetic that the Wellington region is known for, and this can be seen throughout the visual elements of our website, video and whole project. The public seemed receptive to the logos and banners + dialogue we put upon the pages we created for out project, and some of the artwork shared on the facebook page for it has been amazing, the social platforms really did have alot of potential and opened up an entire avenue of interaction for this project.  We worked some of these contributions into the background image by the 'Join In!' portion of our website.

The website was a big learning experience for me and I'm hoping it will load right on the mac with the fixed div sizes, as it was coded entirely on pc. :P There was a bit more I'd have liked to included such as a gallery of peoples work with links to it etc, and maybe links to other challenges people have created elsewhere on the web, but overfilling the website with text probably would have been just as distracting as it would be beneficial. We felt that having a parade of statistics/infograms filling up the site would detract from the message we are trying to promote -- we want people to create, it's as simple as that. And given creativity is such a broad and subjective topic it doesn't feel right to narrow it down to certain figures or stats generated by surveys done on specific groups.

We are not trying to convince peoples intellect, we are trying to stimulate their imaginations.

Final Video Overview

I decided I would do a brief overview of all the key scenes used throughout our video, their intended purpose and a few comments about them, as well as a few little tweaks I would have liked to have made, in hindsight.

01 - The beginning of the journey - we wanted to show the mundane elements of every day life in the beginning of the video, and sterile, cold repetitive nature that is very present in city lifestyle. Power lines, traffic lights, train tracks are all very indicative of these themes.

02 - On the train, looking bored with life/everything in general, distracted by the nagging of a cellphone. These are the sort of moments we want to encourage people to fit spontaneous creativity into later on in the video!

03 & 04 - more shots of my journey. I would have liked to have had a busier shot for 03, but we hadn't quite figured out the best ways to get shots of crowds and also be able to not overstep peoples privacy. Hence the shot of legs walking beforehand. For 04, this was shot from my point of view - the walking was very in-time with the music track so we decided this shakiness was acceptable. It's sort of a matter of personal opinion though. Some people liked it, while others might think it was a little too much.

05 - this was one of the later scenes we shot to make the beginning storyline stronger. By having movement of moving forward as we walked we managed to get footage of crowds while not focusing explicitly on anyone and blatantly invading their privacy.

06 - bus scene -  we used depth of field to take focus off people in the background, I really tried to portray frustration with the every day situation/life in my expression here lol, it was one of my favorite scenes from this part of the video and fun to film. :P

07 & 08 - the school/uni part of the every day grind. the monotony of study, books, assignments, and everything that puts me to sleep at the mere thought. Adding in these little scenes after our critique session make the point we were trying to make more clear - spontaneous moments of creativity throughout your day are like a little paradise.

09 - traffic b-roll shot showing more city busyness, filmed at rush hour.

10 - again the distraction of a cellphone, this time exaggerated in a rather blatant manner on cuba street with a time lapse shot. My head isn't even shown in this, the focus is entirely on the phone. Basically trapped in the noise of social media, within an even gloomier busy reality.

11 - A B-Roll shot of midnight cafe with it's colorful lights indicating the next half of the video where we introduce the creativity. We quickly list the challenge: 15 minutes a day, 15 days, any creativity goes!

12 - having a daily coffee... I decide to add in my daily creative challenge and begin doodling on the napkin! :)

13 - B-roll of midnight cafe. The eclectic colors and textures really evoke a creative mood so it was a good setting for the beginning of this part of our video.

14 - A close up of the drawing on the napkin - I wanted this scene to last like 1 second longer to see more of the image but we had to trim to fit in the earlier text clip sadly. This was due to editing the timing/audio/scenes for later on in the video already and we would mess up that timing if we shifted things along. :P

15, 16 & 17 - The interview scene with Caela - We wanted to show an insight into the creative world of someone who had done the challenge, we showed several shots of her hard at work, and several of the stuff she has created. The editing of these was done to be in time to the music to make the flow of cuts more natural.

18 - We switch to a scene of me drawing a mural, expressing my creativity out and about on the city, throughout my day.

19 - Photography is also one of the creative avenues we wanted to show, so we have me out on a quick photo shooting spree on my way home.

20 - this shot is what I am seeing through my camera lens, a picturesque sort of scene with the moon in the background, the shift of focus is meant to represent that of a cameras lens adjusting.

21 - My journey home, satisfied having included this spontaneous creativity into my day. :)

22 - The closing scene is of city lights, but seen through a more 'creative' lens in a literal and metaphorical sense. We have added more creativity into the environment around us and it makes your outlook on life in general less one of gloom and overwhelming busyness and one where you think - I can actually still be creative and I choose to have that present in my life. :) I finish on our call to action here: "15 minutes, 15 days, endless ways to create. Join in on the creative challenge."

Creations I made doing our challenge :)

Here are a few of the many creations I made doing our 15 x 15 challenge. My specialty is illustration so it made sense to do sketches or digital art for it. :)

Narrative / Voiceover

Since I was in the video, we agreed it made sense that I do the voice of the main narrative. Fortunately, we got this recorded before I became too ill otherwise it really would have been a struggle lol. We literally recorded this after class one afternoon in one of the study rooms next to the studio haha. It was rather quickly written but here is the dialogue I came up with for it, I bolded the lines which we ended up using...

"Creativity is one of our most important tools, and often it is lost in the mayhem of everyday life without even realizing it.

We want to propose a challenge: 15 minutes, for 15 days spent on something creative. 

Removing yourself from the confines of assignments and everyday distractions, and giving you at least 15 minutes a day to let your creativity roam free.

Being creative has been proven to lighten your mood, allows you to take a break, and allows you to hone your skills.

15 minutes, 15 days, Endless ways to create. Join in on the creative challenge. :)"

I tried to put on a sorta deeper voice than usual.. so that it would be nicer to listen to and not distracting. :) I also tried to evoke mood in my voice that would fit the parts of the video each phrase would be used for. Anywho, it's really awkward hearing my own voice... and seeing my self in the video was a little embarassing as it is haha. :D

Website Icons

I came up with a few icon options for the social media links which are one of the main parts of our idea, to make our website look cohesive and tidy.

I created both a square and a circle option, and the icons either highlight with the main color associated with that site, or with the accent color we chose for our site (which actually turned out to be orange in the end lol) these icons will be fixed to the bottom right corner of the screen allowing people to find our social media profiles/submit work with our hashtag #15x15creativechallenge  to join in the creativity. The circles look less harsh and fit in better with the other visual elements in the website :)

Song for second part of film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfuXHIxb2uU

New song to use for the second more upbeat and positive part of the film. Previous songs we looked at didnt flow very well or were too overwhelming but i feel this one is perfect and is more cohesive with the previous song in comparison to any of the other songs that we looked at

Typefaces / Headings for website

Because the theme of our project is creating stuff, it was important to pick a few fonts which reflected that for the headings and such. A handwritten font really gives off that feeling of art and craft and creativity, so I looked at several considerations to pick something which would suit our project. Below is the logo that we ended up going with for the project, the fonts used give off an effect that it was written using different media and writing tools. Lani liked it so that was a pretty easy part of the process.:) I used a grid to make the logo, and we also use grids when placing it into any aspect of the layout. It is on all the icons we use for our social media accounts...

The fonts used in this are

Dragon Night - this font gives a painted look and really emphasizes that artistic feel.

Biloxi Script - This handwritten script font balances the logo with an element of delicacy giving a feel of a handwritten note. Creative writing is also an avenue people can do for the creative challenge.

A DAY WITHOUT SUN - this font looks like it was written with a pencil and captures a sketchy feeling perfectly.

The same logo as above, placed over a stylish bokeh capture from our video, adding a dash of vibrancy and color. This is the icon we used on social media profiles.