Procrastination Studios

Here are some more resources for Photoshop. There are some great step by step lessons for more advanced techniques.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3 

I have posted a news report of viral marketing gone awry. The objects placed around the city to promote a movie were mistaken for possible explosive devices and raised a scare around the city. Although the city of Boston was unhappy by the disturbance the event caused, the movie actually received national news coverage as a result. I think we need to keep this example in mind when we are considering how to promote our festival. We do not want to have a negative impact on student learning at school in the process.

I found this definition from Wikipedia very interesting, viral marketing uses “use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness”. What preexisting social networks can we tap into at school to make people more aware of the film festival?

Posters for your Genre project will adhere to the following guidelines:

• Posters must be created using Photoshop
• File size should be A4 Preset Size
• Files are saved and submitted as JPEGS
• Apply one of the tips from the Photoshop resources posted here

Here is the trailer from a project by some 12 year olds to shoot Raiders of the Lost Ark in its entirety. Shooting will start on our scenes next class, don’t forget to start designing your poster to promote the scene.

Click on the image above to check out the video we saw in class. There are several more examples of creative work using Adobe programs at the Adobe Design Achievement Award winners.

Some of you have been using Adobe Photoshop to design your logos and posters. A couple groups have even tried using Adobe Illustrator to animate some of their work. I have located so great resources for these programs and used them to create a retro version of the Bearcat logo.

Here are the links to the tips and tutorials.

Photoshop Actions – Actions in photoshops can be used to complete a complex series of tasks with one click. You will have to download the shortcut to a folder in your Program folders. I used an Action to create the box above in one click.

Texture to Images – I used this tutorial to give my image a grainy look. Adding a textured layer with varying levels of opacity can do some interesting things to your image. You can also edit

Illustrator Tips – There are some great samples of the many things that you can do with Adobe Illustrator at this link. This includes making customized backgrounds and drawings, this could be very useful for designing your movie posters.

Remember that each group should be writing a post each day to update their progress or share creative ideas.  Each individual will be responsible to post at least 1 comment before the next class.

Music Videos will be ready for Friday’s class. The videos can be in quicktime or wmv format but try to keep the file size reasonable. You can post the Video poster on the blog and we will be printing them out for the bulletin board.

Soundsnap has a large selection of sound effects conveniently organized by categories. You can download the sounds in wav or mp3 format. Check it out!

Here are two great links to have a look at. Please share your thoughts after you watch them.

J.J. Abrams on TED Talks

Abrams is a director of film and tv. His resume includes Lost, Alias and Mission Impossible 3 to name a few. In this entertaining presentation he discusses the source of his creativity and points out some great examples of mystery in other films.

Life After People

The teaser trailer for this show includes an explanation of the planning and storyboarding. Interesting to see how they came up with the ideas and the visuals for this show.