Category: 437

If you would’ve asked at the beginning of this semester how confident I felt about producing two multimedia projects this term, I would’ve said ‘not confident at all.’ The task not only scared me but was the embodiment of pushing myself, but when I look at what I was able to complete this semester I am extremely proud. 

For my group multimedia project, working with the Paladin Football team as my client, my partner and I experience many setbacks. Throughout my previous blogs, I discuss these hardships and experiences that ultimately led our project into what it finalized as today. I am extremely proud of the work my partner Caroline and I put into achieving the goal our client wanted, creating hype around the new tailgating experience. Our landing page is primarily what I focused on, and the detailed yet simplified page is something I am proud to have my name on. 

As for the individual project, this is also something the turned out to be completely different than I had originally thought. Writing a compelling profile turned out to be much harder than I had expected, leaving me to rely heavily on the teachings of outside sources such as ‘Design is Storytelling’ and ‘How to write a profile.’ Once I had a better grasp on the narrative portion of my story, it really helped all the other components fall into place. I especially loved how the photographs integrated with the video aspects of my long-form narrative! 

In hindsight, I wish I had gone into these projects with a little more confidence in myself and my abilities in storytelling, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow as a creator regardless.

Finishing up the production phase of a project can bring on a mix of emotions. For me, this is when my perfectionism kicks in and I start picking everything apart. On the other hand, the excitement of an almost finished product begins to set in. How do you find the balance between perfectionism and creating a great attainable finished product?

At this point in the production of my group multimedia project for the Furman Paladins, my partner and I have already produced a rough cut of the ‘hype’ video and a landing page with all the essential information and links for our target audience. Both my partner and I know we still have edits to make, for example, editing the music track and adding in a few more after-effects to enhance the overall feel of our video. For the landing page, we noticed a few user experience changes we could make that would drastically improve our UX. Through my communications class, we discussed the difference and importance of UI vs UX when it comes to a website.

“UX design is a human-first approach to web design. Because of this, UX designers depend heavily on research and testing in order to find out what their audience needs, what they value and what pains them — and then to design an ideal solution around it. “

“UI design is the visual side of web design. It’s the UI designer’s job to perfect the tiniest of details on a website: color palettes, font pairings, images, forms, menus, hover-triggered animations, buttons, and more. “

Having this understanding from the article, “UX vs. UI Design: What’s the Difference?”, my partner and I were able to look back at our project and edit our video and website to incorporate both a UI and UX experience.

UI: function links that allow quick access to ticket purchasing or to our video and a simplified layout of the rules and regulations for quicker reading.

UX: slow-motion video to draw our audience into our page, bold fonts, and color choices that parallel with the Furman style guide.

Being able to achieve both of these concepts is the way I think we can take our project from a good one to a great one.

Source: https://elementor.com/blog/ux-vs-ui/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=10759652828&utm_term=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtrSLBhCLARIsACh6RmiYwSaK4U5Wk08v1Im4V1_6Bnu_Nrh4i4-B3CGLGj5lOSUYITExXuMaAgb6EALw_wcB

When starting a project it is easy to get ahead of yourself. You have a million ideas rushing through your head and the phrase “Go big or go home” is your motto; this is exactly how i felt I had when I set out to begin my multimedia project on Lily on Film. 

My excitement led me to come up with an idea a little too large for my reach at this point of my experience level. This excitement also led me to stray from the logistics of working on a timeline and access to my subject. 

This thought process quickly led to many problems once the pre production phase began. The first problem I ran into was crafting the long-form narrative that would be the centerpiece of my project. Crafting this into a well-rounded and impactful profile on Lily was a hard task. I had so many exciting things I wanted to mention but my execution left my narrative confusing and disinteresting. To help organize my ideas better, I drew ideas about writing a compelling profile. “A traditional profile blends facts, biographical information, quotes, and visuals. Then it’s all arranged in a narrative that has a clear beginning, middle, and conclusion,” this advice from the profile is something I plan to incorporate in the editing of my narrative. So now back to the drawing board….

Currently, I am in the process of fixing this problem. I am working on refining and narrowing my scope to better create a profile on Lily Cruse. I was to create a dynamic story that embodies the unique aesthetic that Lily’s brand exudes. 

The second problem I faced was the fact that my subject, Lily, lives roughly nine hours from me. The problem really came to light when I realized that I would only have one true visit to Tampa to gather all the visual content I needed. This resulted in an immense amount of stress and pressure to ensure I got what I needed on that visit. To counteract this problem I have come up with alternative routes to my original plans of a documentary video and instead, narrowing it to shorter, more interview-style videos throughout my landing page.

The final problem faced was technical difficulties, of course, these happened while I was on site filming. My camera began to fail, crashing and canceling the recording, and was having a really hard time with white balance. In ‘Design is Storytelling’ the author discusses camera equipment and techniques to improve your knowledge of your camera. Having this reading helped me to troubleshoot and refocus my white balance to solve my problems.

All in all, the lesson I have learned in production is that sometimes going big might not be your best route. Sometimes it is more important to refine your skills and look at your projects with a more realistic perspective.

The New Paladin Way

INNOVATE. REFINE. PRODUCE.

The Furman University Football team is a small Division 1 team striving to make a name for themselves, not only in the SoCon division, but in the midst of two big time multi national title champions, Clemson and University of South Carolina. The Paladin Marketing Department has struggled to gain fan attendance at the Furman Football games. The Furman student body and the local Greenville area are more consumed in the high energy and well known teams that surround us that they aren’t as willing to go to a small school and low energy football game.

The New Fan Experience

Jason Donnelly, the Athletic Director at Furman, is eager to change the stigma and attitude people have had towards Furman’s football games. He created the “New Fan Experience,” that includes live music, food trucks, games, children activities, a student tailgate inside the stadium, and beer and wine concessions, in order to increase attendance rates at the Furman football games.

The goal of this multimedia project is to capture the New Fan Experience and advertise the new Furman Way of tailgating in order to change the atmosphere of a Saturday game day at Furman and increase the Furman Fan Zone!

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Beginning Approach

I began to approach this topic by figuring out how to display the new Furman Tailgate to the community, and the best way I could think of was to create a new hype fan experience that is engaging to all audiences including all the different elements of the first tailgate on September 4th, 2021.

Our client for this project is Ty Osbourne, the Assistant Athletics Director/Marketing & Fan Experience, he thought it would be a good idea to include not only a hype video to increase attendance but to include a portion of a video where we would highlight 3 players unique stories to invest the fans in the lives of the players. However, with the information that Ty gave Rosemary and I we didn’t think the two different emotions of a hype video and pulling on the heart strings would be good in one video. Through this experience of organizing and agreeing on what would be best for the project with the client I have learned that we are all amateurs in what we do and we learn from other amateurs in order to become successful and learn what works and doesn’t work.

Refined Approach

In order to portray a hype fan experience we need would need to create multimedia that would help the narrative. We need to evoke a happy and spirited video in order to give off the mood of the fun and spirited New Fan Experience!!

After brainstorming and working with Ty’s idea, we came to the conclusion that the best way to create a multimedia element that would not only solve the problem of low attendance rates, having a more spirited fan base, not a having a lot of spirit around football games, as well as including content that would line up the narrative we decided to just make a hype Fan Experience video. The video would not only include the tailgate content of the students section but of the all the pregame activities with the children and families! Not only the client is happy with where we are going with the multimedia story but Rosemary and I are also very excited to see what our innovate brains put together for the Furman community!

Takeaways

I think the first thing that this project has taught me, is the importance of flexibility. Now yes, getting that perfect angle on a shot might require some flexibility, but the kind I’m talking about comes on the drawboard.  

When Caroline and I first started our group project we had a completely different idea as to how the storyline would turn out. We had planned to go the more dramatic route for our story. We would highlight three unique players on the Paladin Football team through three short interview style videos and a long form narrative discussing their lives and how Furman has affected them. We were also going to create a larger video that discussed and highlighted the new tailgate protocols and fan experience. The more we worked the more things seemed to fall apart…. and this exact experience taught me that sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board. Both of us have the skillset to produce what we had originally planned but, content will never work when you try to do too much at once. Show Your Work touches a lot on this concept of ‘less is more’ and reading this is class helped both of us realized it was time to reign things in and regroup.

Back to the Drawing Board

With a fresh and more concise perspective, Caroline and I were able to create a new and improved story arc for our project. Our project will on one main “Hype” video. This video will highlight the new fan zone experience and show just how fun a Furman tailgate can be. We will also create a landing page for this video that will include a few graphics, the football schedule, ways to get involved, the new tailgate protocols and how to purchase tickets. We will make the landing page with only the most important things, as well as quick and easy to navigate.

Get Our Heads In the Game

So now that we have a solid plan and a story arc that we are proud of, what’s left? Well, to put it in football terms… it’s time to GET OUR HEADS IN THE GAME! Caroline and I already filmed at the first home game so we are set to start editing and creating our content. So I guess all i really have left to say is, be flexible with your content creation and ROLL DINS!