Week 11 - Video Time.

So today we had a fun session watching all of the groups videos on the big screen and getting feedback from the group as a whole. I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of the videos were still very rough with some having simple placeholders along with audio and frame issues. Not in the sense that I do not want the other groups to have a better video than ours but I knew that our video still needed a lot more polish to be ready for the exhibition.

Most of the feedback from the tutors and the other groups were things that I had already picked up after watching through our video a few times but it was good to be able to clarify the areas we should focus on improving. I think the better part of the experience was being able to see all the different approached that the groups took in making their videos. Some used a lot of interview style pieces with product shots while others created a story with cute wizard of Oz style animations. Being able to give other groups feedback on their video (after Steven of course) was good, but I am not sure how much time each group will have to implement changes given that the exhibition is next week and the prototype is arguably a lot more important to polish.

Either way the general feedback on our video was that it was too heavily scripted and sounded a little too much like an infomercial. So we will need to cut down on the superlatives and let the product shots do more of the talking for us in explaining our concept. We also need to provide a better frame for the problem and explain WHY we are actually doing this to better sell the idea and usefulness of the project to people. Then another common theme throughout the presentations was the lack of product shots with users interacting, which we will be able to fix up after the exhibition where we can gather extra footage. We will need to ensure we have a good plan to get this footage during the chaos of the exhibition maybe setting up two cameras, one stationary to do a time lapse and one to capture more intimate moments and close ups with users.

Regardless there is still a lot to get done next week!!!