Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Communication artifact: Swig website


I created the website revamp for Swig, a local beverage company. Our website redesign can be found here: http://sprex2.wix.com/swig. I used many of the axioms of web design to create the website. The previous website, https://www.swignsweets.com/, needed a lot of help to make it more visually appealling to our audience. Here is a screenshot of the original website:


The original website had bright colors that do not translate well to a website. Elements of the website look pasted on sloppily; even the logo is cut off. The colors and design on the original website look like they were designed by an elementary school student. In my website redesign, I wanted to maintain the colorfulness of the original, without the "cheeseness" while keeping it intuitive for first time users. Our logo was designed to look like a drink from Swig getting mixed. The background of the first panel on the website incorporates movement and subtle swirling colors to have an effect of mixing. Most of my inspiration for the website was from our revamped mantra: "Mix it up." 

One of the first axioms of web design is a strong grid system. I incorporated a vertical grid system that works well with scrolling on both computers and cell phones.



The original website did not make me think of Swig drinks or trying one of their cookies. On their home page, there was no images of their drinks. The image of the cookies on their front page looked like cardboard rather than the delicious cookies they are in real life. In my website, I incorporated images of Swig drinks in the sun and also a more appealing picture of their cookies that Swig had buried on their original website. 




I also incorporated subtle movement on my page so it looks like a drink with bubbles from Swig. My objective was for the homepage to drive potential customers to Swig. So I made the entire homepage look "appealing" and ready to drink. Using other axioms of web design, I alternated sides that the pictures and text was on to drive eye movement down the page in angles. The design is aesthetically pleasing and is easy to use. I used contrast in colors and fonts to drive eye movement. The entire reason the website needed a revamp was to make it look more modern for our objective customers. 

All of the colors are consistent across the revamped design of the cup and new logo as well. 






Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Mis-en-scene: Director of Photography for "Now You See Me" (2013)



Now You See Me (4/11) Movie CLIP - Robbing the Bank (2013) HD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx9EOI4RyBs

In this scene of the film "Now You See Me," there is a bunch of different ways the Director of Photography uses different camera angles and lighting to create the best possible scene of the bank robbery. In this scene, the Four Horsemen magicians "rob a bank" for a magic show. The scene is set up to look like a real magic trick. 


Right off the bat, Fong uses a number of lens flares and manipulates lighting to show authenticity in the camera design, as shown below. The lighting in this scene makes it feel like you are actually watching a show in Las Vegas.  


An establishing shot of Paris without the Eiffel tower shows his creativity in setting the scene.


More lens flares:

Later in the scene, Fong uses creative camera movements to follow the subject of the scene, making it feel like the audience member is actually following her.



The focal point of the scene (money flying around) is achieved with a little bit of CGI, but the camera remains focused on the man and his emotions, rather than the money flying around. This makes the CGI additive seem subtle and unnoticeable because all the focus is on the character. 


During the entire scene, camera movement never stops. It alternates between wide shots and close shots of the performers on the stage. He captures this motion with a high speed cameras that couls move 35 mph-- most commonly used in football games.

The Director of Photography had to create the scene to look like a cross between a heist scene and a magic trick. 
First of all, according to the job description, the Director of Photography "is the chief over the camera crews working on a film, television production or other live action piece and is responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image."
The Director of Photography for "Now You See Me" is Larry Fong, whose other film credits include "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," "300," and "Watchmen." These films boast big budgets and elaborate sets with lots of action. Fong used his experience working with big films like this to make the action in this scene from "Now You See Me" pop.