You might be thinking to yourself "Did they pull it off? Were they finally helpful? Did it all go well?"
I would answer this with a resounding "Yes, Kind of, Pretty much"
So we met an hour before the presentation, James Hustler introduced himself to me for the first time and we started to go through things. Kieron turned up a little later, and Richard about ten minutes before we went to present. Ric didn't make it as he had work. So I ran through all the work and my ideas with the guys, we spoke about which job roles they could take on for the presentation, based on what they had the best grasp on in that hour. They helped me with a couple of presenting ideas, which was good.
We were presenting first. Up we went. I think the others were a bit more nervous than me. I start the presentation in much the same way as for the formative. I get to the slide which now contains a link to the brainient video. Click it and it doesn't really work. That's fine though, because Linnéa paused the time while I bring the video up. That was nice of her. The video starts and it's super loud. I try to turn the mac volume up but the keys are assigned differently so it doesn't work. I must confess I got a little flustered at this point, turned the volume down on the video, but when I try to make my next point after I draw a blank mid way through. Luckily James jumps in and keeps the flow going. My God! Why did I doubt him? The boy's a genius! Saved the day!
The presentation continues without incident and they seem to like it. Well, Emi doesn't seem to be as big a fan as the other two. He got distracted by my slides. For question time they decide to ask the others about their job roles seeing as I've done most of the talking at this point. James does pretty well and answers convincingly. Richard doesn't do too badly either. Keiron freezes up and I have to help him out. And that's the end of the presentation. They liked it, so it's a win in my book
Pretty soon after my presentation I got a call from my teammate who I'm working with on my animation project, the deadline was the next day and there are rendering problems so I had to duck out early to help him out.
So in summary, my team were pretty useless up until the day of submission, then Richard and Ric made a bit of an effort, then on the day James comes through as probably the most useful team member. Crazy right? I guess that's why they call him the Hustler. Or maybe that's because it's his surname.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Part 2
Initial signs were good, just over a week after the presentation I started to get messages from people who said they were eager to work.
"James Hustler 08 June at 16:10
Hi guys hope you're good. I know I've done like nothing, but I'm literally happy to do anything whatsoever, I'll basically just do any role or say anything that needs to be said at all. What have you lads done so far? cheers"
"Richard Eglinton 09 June at 17:40
Yo, how its going?
I've been looking into having an example to show at the presentation. i was thinking like you said with the developer diaries to have the links embedded into an advert. Does this sound like a good idea? If not what do you suggest? im happy to do whatever is needed.
also when do i need to have it done by?"
So I thought, this is good. I can give the others an opportunity to do some work. I decided to detail exactly what was needed, let them do whatever they could from it and then I'd finish up whatever still needed doing before the summative submission.
"Matthew Alford 09 June at 19:16
OK, so I'm starting a new thread here so Kieron can get in on this. I believe we have to have the presentation submitted by Tuesday. Here's what we need:
The main thing is an example for my point about developer diaries. There's a really text heavy slide in the presentation where I go through how branient could be used for improving developer diaries, but we could just show that. So take one of these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcZXMuY5kqk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ5vmiR7a4I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCUO8yiMu3k
or any other developer diary you want, and take no more than say 40 seconds of dialogue where they introduce a character or creature, then find some concept work for that character and use branient to integrate it without interrupting the video or getting too much in the way.
and the second thing is to think about how to snazz it up visually. If I provide you guys with a summary of each of the slides, then you can look for pictures that you think would work on them. Try and find fairly funny ones, as it's a pretty informal presentation.
Slide 1 is an introduction
Slide 2 introduces what Branient does
Slide 3 says we're pitching to a video games company
Slide 4 is about marketing. It talks about innovative marketing campaigns like the bear one she showed us and also unobtrusive advertising
Slide 5 is the slide about the developer diary business, so no worries about pictures here. Don't want to clutter things.
Slide 6 is about how Branient could be used to help staff make good showreels quickly and easily
Slide 7 is just the last slide.
If I don't get anything from you guys by Monday I'll do it myself, but obviously I wanna give you guys the opportunity to get grades etc.
So in summary, a branient video (you should be able to get a URL that we can open on the day) and pictures/whatever you think would enhance the presentation. Send these things to my email which is m.alford@rave.ac.uk."
so basically there are two key tasks here, creating a brainient video to provide an example of what we're pitching, as per the formative advice, and get some pictures to replace the walls of text.
James Hustler, who I hadn't me up to this point asked for a copy of the presentation, which I duly sent to him.
I then got nothing until the day the submission was due. I got two brainient videos at about 2 in the morning. Credit to Ric and Richard for trying here, they'd obviously had a little trouble with this and that. However, neither film was quite right. Richards was a little limited, and because the text he created were links to other pages which stopped the video it contradicted what I say in the pitch. Also of his two links only the first one worked. Ric's was good in that it didn't stop the video, but it didn't give you the choice to show or hide the pictures which goes against the interactivity. The developers could just put more pictures in the actual diary if they'd wanted to. Also, it was about 3 minutes long, which meant it would take up pretty much all our presenting time, and there were only 3 pictures in the first minute and a half.
So I did a video at the last minute. Contrary to the reports I'd got from Richard and Ric it was actually pretty easy to use for the basic level of functionality I wanted it for. I'd like to see some object partnership in future versions, which would make things like what I did a little easier. So for that you'd want to be able to upload pictures, which appear as text until you click on them, as opposed to having to create the text object and the picture object and then create seperate controls to have clicking one show the other and visa versa. If that even makes any sense. Apart from that though, I had the video I wanted in about half an hour, including download, edit and BrainStudio time.
A few days before the presentation I started to get a lot more messages asking to meet up before the presentation. I was going to be in before hand anyway doing other work, so it was no problem for me. I figured that they had one last chance to redeem themselves after helping very very little.
"James Hustler 08 June at 16:10
Hi guys hope you're good. I know I've done like nothing, but I'm literally happy to do anything whatsoever, I'll basically just do any role or say anything that needs to be said at all. What have you lads done so far? cheers"
"Richard Eglinton 09 June at 17:40
Yo, how its going?
I've been looking into having an example to show at the presentation. i was thinking like you said with the developer diaries to have the links embedded into an advert. Does this sound like a good idea? If not what do you suggest? im happy to do whatever is needed.
also when do i need to have it done by?"
So I thought, this is good. I can give the others an opportunity to do some work. I decided to detail exactly what was needed, let them do whatever they could from it and then I'd finish up whatever still needed doing before the summative submission.
"Matthew Alford 09 June at 19:16
OK, so I'm starting a new thread here so Kieron can get in on this. I believe we have to have the presentation submitted by Tuesday. Here's what we need:
The main thing is an example for my point about developer diaries. There's a really text heavy slide in the presentation where I go through how branient could be used for improving developer diaries, but we could just show that. So take one of these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcZXMuY5kqk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ5vmiR7a4I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCUO8yiMu3k
or any other developer diary you want, and take no more than say 40 seconds of dialogue where they introduce a character or creature, then find some concept work for that character and use branient to integrate it without interrupting the video or getting too much in the way.
and the second thing is to think about how to snazz it up visually. If I provide you guys with a summary of each of the slides, then you can look for pictures that you think would work on them. Try and find fairly funny ones, as it's a pretty informal presentation.
Slide 1 is an introduction
Slide 2 introduces what Branient does
Slide 3 says we're pitching to a video games company
Slide 4 is about marketing. It talks about innovative marketing campaigns like the bear one she showed us and also unobtrusive advertising
Slide 5 is the slide about the developer diary business, so no worries about pictures here. Don't want to clutter things.
Slide 6 is about how Branient could be used to help staff make good showreels quickly and easily
Slide 7 is just the last slide.
If I don't get anything from you guys by Monday I'll do it myself, but obviously I wanna give you guys the opportunity to get grades etc.
So in summary, a branient video (you should be able to get a URL that we can open on the day) and pictures/whatever you think would enhance the presentation. Send these things to my email which is m.alford@rave.ac.uk."
so basically there are two key tasks here, creating a brainient video to provide an example of what we're pitching, as per the formative advice, and get some pictures to replace the walls of text.
James Hustler, who I hadn't me up to this point asked for a copy of the presentation, which I duly sent to him.
I then got nothing until the day the submission was due. I got two brainient videos at about 2 in the morning. Credit to Ric and Richard for trying here, they'd obviously had a little trouble with this and that. However, neither film was quite right. Richards was a little limited, and because the text he created were links to other pages which stopped the video it contradicted what I say in the pitch. Also of his two links only the first one worked. Ric's was good in that it didn't stop the video, but it didn't give you the choice to show or hide the pictures which goes against the interactivity. The developers could just put more pictures in the actual diary if they'd wanted to. Also, it was about 3 minutes long, which meant it would take up pretty much all our presenting time, and there were only 3 pictures in the first minute and a half.
So I did a video at the last minute. Contrary to the reports I'd got from Richard and Ric it was actually pretty easy to use for the basic level of functionality I wanted it for. I'd like to see some object partnership in future versions, which would make things like what I did a little easier. So for that you'd want to be able to upload pictures, which appear as text until you click on them, as opposed to having to create the text object and the picture object and then create seperate controls to have clicking one show the other and visa versa. If that even makes any sense. Apart from that though, I had the video I wanted in about half an hour, including download, edit and BrainStudio time.
A few days before the presentation I started to get a lot more messages asking to meet up before the presentation. I was going to be in before hand anyway doing other work, so it was no problem for me. I figured that they had one last chance to redeem themselves after helping very very little.
Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Blog Intro
So I was assigned a team for Enterprise & Entrepreneurship. Only one of them turned up for the first lesson, but that's fine. I'll be fine. We had a talk from Emi about Brainient, and it seemed like a fairly useful piece of software. There was a bit of confusion concerning what the actual aim of the unit was, whether we were creating a film with Brainient, examining what Braininet does or what. Turns out we were going to present a marketing pitch for the software. On my way home on this day I ran into Emi on the tube and I asked him a few questions about how the pricing systems work which helped form my aims for my pitch.
Over the next few weeks I thought a little about the applications of Brainient for things like showreels. I had a look at the various applications shown on the demo reels on the website and was actually a little shocked at the limited applications of the systems. It was all about direct advertising, which seemed a little closed minded to me. I booted up the software to see if it was due to limitations with the programme only to find that it was really quite easy to add simple layers of interactivity very quickly. Which surely would be the main strength of the software?
I tried to get in contact with my group when starting to write the presentation. I will transcribe how the conversation went in the days leading up to the day after the formative presentation was due to be uploaded.
"Matthew Alford 25 May at 08:50
Oh yeah, if we want to use pictures in our presentation, the formative one is like a week away, we need to submit them tomorrow. Gotta think of the kinds of things we're going to want.
I figure the points we're going to make in our pitch are
1. useful promotional tool for your company
> can be used for innovative marketing campaigns
> can be used for unobtrusive marketing
> can be used to involve users more in your product (so like on a developer diary for a game/film a little box would come up which, when clicked, will bring up concept art etc)
2. useful tool for the self promotion of staff
> quick and easy way to update showreels and make them more interactive
And that's all I got
I'm literally just typing this out over breakfast so any input would be lovely. Any suggestions for improvements? Anything I've missed? Any ideas for images that would convey these points? "
"Matthew Alford 27 May at 16:49
Thanks for the input guys"
"Matthew Alford 27 May at 16:53
Don't worry though, I got it sorted. We've got the best presentation ever."
So the first presentation submission had no input whatsoever from the group. They made no effort to contact me and ignored my efforts to contact them. I was determined not to let this bring my grade down so I constructed the presentation entirely by myself.
My pitch was based around my experience of the way video games companies work and present themselves, coupled with my observations about the limited use of Brainient so far. Video game marketing is as much about connecting with fans as it is about promoting features and brand awareness. Most, if not all, developers will release periodic studio updates and developer diaries. My main idea was to use Brainient to enhance these with levels of interactivity and connectivity, so they can easily find out more about what they are interested in without having to go anywhere. So with that as the focus I backed this up with more traditional advertising methods, talking about how these methods could be enhanced with Brainient to make them less obtrusive. Less obtrusive is good because a lot of people don't like being advertised to, so having something that makes ordering your product easier if you want to without interrupting your viewing is good. The other possibility is the ability to be more creative with ads, as I discussed with Emi on the day I met him. Interactive advertising is a great way to advertise a product in a way that feels positive to the viewer, which enhances the positive image of the product. I also wanted to talk about the first idea I had for brainient, to use it for showreels. I would briefly mention that it could be used quickly and easily for creating depth to a showreel without making it too long, so it would almost be like having a long version and a short version of your reel at once, with the longer parts only there for those who want to take the extra interest.
So with these uses I had to think about the financial incentives. One of the key advantages for Brainient, I think, is that while you pay a monthly fee, it gives you access to the tools to create content through all stages of development, so from teaser content to periodical updates to direct advertising, and much of this is possible to create without the use of a marketing expert when you use the tool. So money would be saved by cutting out the middle man, using creatives who are already in employment to quickly improve content.
The day of the presentation and unfortunately due to having to do it all myself I hadn't managed to get the powerpoint file submitted on time. I'd sent it in an email the day after submission, instead of uploading to Moodle, so when the time came Linnéa didn't have our file. Luckily I had it on memory stick and she let us present anyway. It was me, Richard and Ric. The others didn't make it. I went for a pretty informal writing style on the slides, but my actual presentation was pretty straight faced. I figure that approach means I can get the information across in as dynamic a way as possible, with all the important content coming from me, and the slides reinforcing the information in a way that holds the audiences attention and hopefully ingratiates them to me.
It went pretty well, the main feedback was that it was a little text heavy. I only had one picture for the whole presentation. Linnéa cautioned me to be careful with my informal style, but I think she liked it overall. Richard and Ric were a bit shocked, I'm not going to lie. They were not expecting that presentation. Someone asked what they'd done to contribute. They didn't have an answer. I hoped, at this point, that this would be enough to stun them into doing some work.
Over the next few weeks I thought a little about the applications of Brainient for things like showreels. I had a look at the various applications shown on the demo reels on the website and was actually a little shocked at the limited applications of the systems. It was all about direct advertising, which seemed a little closed minded to me. I booted up the software to see if it was due to limitations with the programme only to find that it was really quite easy to add simple layers of interactivity very quickly. Which surely would be the main strength of the software?
I tried to get in contact with my group when starting to write the presentation. I will transcribe how the conversation went in the days leading up to the day after the formative presentation was due to be uploaded.
"Matthew Alford 25 May at 08:50
Oh yeah, if we want to use pictures in our presentation, the formative one is like a week away, we need to submit them tomorrow. Gotta think of the kinds of things we're going to want.
I figure the points we're going to make in our pitch are
1. useful promotional tool for your company
> can be used for innovative marketing campaigns
> can be used for unobtrusive marketing
> can be used to involve users more in your product (so like on a developer diary for a game/film a little box would come up which, when clicked, will bring up concept art etc)
2. useful tool for the self promotion of staff
> quick and easy way to update showreels and make them more interactive
And that's all I got
I'm literally just typing this out over breakfast so any input would be lovely. Any suggestions for improvements? Anything I've missed? Any ideas for images that would convey these points? "
"Matthew Alford 27 May at 16:49
Thanks for the input guys"
"Matthew Alford 27 May at 16:53
Don't worry though, I got it sorted. We've got the best presentation ever."
So the first presentation submission had no input whatsoever from the group. They made no effort to contact me and ignored my efforts to contact them. I was determined not to let this bring my grade down so I constructed the presentation entirely by myself.
My pitch was based around my experience of the way video games companies work and present themselves, coupled with my observations about the limited use of Brainient so far. Video game marketing is as much about connecting with fans as it is about promoting features and brand awareness. Most, if not all, developers will release periodic studio updates and developer diaries. My main idea was to use Brainient to enhance these with levels of interactivity and connectivity, so they can easily find out more about what they are interested in without having to go anywhere. So with that as the focus I backed this up with more traditional advertising methods, talking about how these methods could be enhanced with Brainient to make them less obtrusive. Less obtrusive is good because a lot of people don't like being advertised to, so having something that makes ordering your product easier if you want to without interrupting your viewing is good. The other possibility is the ability to be more creative with ads, as I discussed with Emi on the day I met him. Interactive advertising is a great way to advertise a product in a way that feels positive to the viewer, which enhances the positive image of the product. I also wanted to talk about the first idea I had for brainient, to use it for showreels. I would briefly mention that it could be used quickly and easily for creating depth to a showreel without making it too long, so it would almost be like having a long version and a short version of your reel at once, with the longer parts only there for those who want to take the extra interest.
So with these uses I had to think about the financial incentives. One of the key advantages for Brainient, I think, is that while you pay a monthly fee, it gives you access to the tools to create content through all stages of development, so from teaser content to periodical updates to direct advertising, and much of this is possible to create without the use of a marketing expert when you use the tool. So money would be saved by cutting out the middle man, using creatives who are already in employment to quickly improve content.
The day of the presentation and unfortunately due to having to do it all myself I hadn't managed to get the powerpoint file submitted on time. I'd sent it in an email the day after submission, instead of uploading to Moodle, so when the time came Linnéa didn't have our file. Luckily I had it on memory stick and she let us present anyway. It was me, Richard and Ric. The others didn't make it. I went for a pretty informal writing style on the slides, but my actual presentation was pretty straight faced. I figure that approach means I can get the information across in as dynamic a way as possible, with all the important content coming from me, and the slides reinforcing the information in a way that holds the audiences attention and hopefully ingratiates them to me.
It went pretty well, the main feedback was that it was a little text heavy. I only had one picture for the whole presentation. Linnéa cautioned me to be careful with my informal style, but I think she liked it overall. Richard and Ric were a bit shocked, I'm not going to lie. They were not expecting that presentation. Someone asked what they'd done to contribute. They didn't have an answer. I hoped, at this point, that this would be enough to stun them into doing some work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)