THE PRESENTATION

The presentation went really well, we were able to answer all the questions quite confidently and I think we kept our audience quite entertained!

The only thing I would have like to do differently is perhaps add a bit more of the story along with the choices but perhaps that is because of my role as the writer, but I think it would have served our presentation well if we had shown an example of the interactive scenes and games we had produced as this was something the panel did pick up on. Also it felt like the presentation was a bit marketing heavy but I suppose it had to be as we were told to treat it as a professional pitch.

There was one small technical hiccup when the radio clip wouldn't play but it was resolved very quickly and wasn't because of my nervous clicking of the powerpoint!

Overall though, I'm really happy with how the presentation went and how most of the artefacts have turned out. I think if we had the money to really make Varytales I would like to include animation to a bit more fantastical and appealing for children of our target age group. 


It will be interesting to get the feedback for our group in order to understand in what ways we could have improved our product and presentation.

Preparing the Presentation

Today has been a rather long day, in a 9am and I've just got home at about 11pm. Unfortunately it took longer than we'd hoped to get the presentation and artefacts within the powerpoint to work properly, but I'm confident that all will go well after a couple of good presentation practices towards the end of the night.

Unfortunately we didn't manage to get the video artefacts in time for the rehearsal we had booked in the Wallace Lecture Theatre but it still provided us with a chance to get acquainted with the room and equipment. We also plan to get into the room early in the morning to have another quick run-through

Christopher, Sam and Glen will be presenting and I have been given the rather envious job of clicking through the powerpoint. I am a little worried my nervous fingers will click to eagerly and I'll ruin the whole presentation but I've practised it a few times now with script indicating all my cues and I think I should be fine!

At least we got the presentation sorted ready for tomorrow even if it does mean a bit of a late night!

Until tomorrow...

The Website

After emailing Matt on the 12th with the revised layout, extra artefacts and walk through of each of the pages and then emailing him again today to ask whether there was any progress, I received a reply.

Unfortunately it wasn't really the one I'd wanted. He said he'd been really busy and hadn't been able to much for any of the projects. He did provide me with a mock up of one of the pages I'd described and given my own example of, which wasn't vastly different. He said he could send the other pages he had mocked up too, but I wasn't really sure why he hadn't provided these anyway unless he hadn't actually done them. I forwarded the email to the rest of the group and we all decided that it would be good to see what he could provide and continue to develop our own website in case he didn't manage to get the stuff over to us in time.

So I emailed him back and asked him if we could have the other pages. I didn't receive a reply or any web pages. I later found out that Yunus had been to see Matt and trying to get him to do the website. I was a bit annoyed about this because I thought that this would perhaps confuse Matt and the group had all agreed that one person should discuss the website with him to avoid confusion. From what I gathered, Yunus discussed trying to get a website layout done in time for the handing in the artefacts on the following Monday, but I'm not sure whether this is a good idea or even whether it will come to fruition.

We have not received any other mock-ups and have decided to definitely go with our own mock-up website which is disappointing as none of us are very capable in this arena.

Lots of photoshop work and booking the lecture theatre for the dress rehearsal!.

I have been spending a lot of time on photoshop just recently doing a lot of design work that I hope will benefit the look and feel of the Varytales website. My most recent creations include; Pinocchio with varying nose lengths, The updated background with a border to distinguish the web pages from the normal presentation pages, certificate print-out awarded to the user for completing the Varytales adventure, colouring-in print out pages, writing page print-outs, signpost replicating the design of the 'r' in the logo for the website and stills for the Pinocchio story.

I also emailed room bookings at the university in order to book out the Wallace Lecture Theatre so we could run through the presentation and get familiar with the equipment. We have it tomorrow from 11-12. Let's hope we have everything ready by then.

Progress Meeting

Today we had a meeting to discuss what stages we are all at in regards to the production of the artefacts and presentation.

After a weekend spent filming, the directors and producers were preparing for their editing session with Roger Shufflebottom which would take place the following day.

We also booked one of the radio studio's to record some of the sound that would accompany some of the artefacts; Gepetto (Yunus) for the story stills and Rapunzel's (my) singing for the video artefacts.

Myself, Chris and Sam were continuing to work on the presentation, collecting any useful images or bits of research and writing the script for the presentation.

James and Glen will be working on the marketing aspect of the presentation and presentation script as they are most competent to deal with these issues.

James also asked to send over the stills for the Pinocchio segment of the story so I could photoshop my Pinocchio design and any other little effects into the images to make them more 'magical.'

The presentation and the artefacts do seem to be coming together quite nicely but I'm still a bit worried about the website aspect of the presentation as I've still not had word from Matt Northam. It's looking like we'll perhaps have to mock up our own example website. Without input from our interactivity specialist, I think our website will perhaps not look quite as advanced as other group, but I hope the idea behind these examples will be enough to make the presentation work.

Disagreements and a lack of focus in the group

I'm started to get a little bit frustrated with certain members of the group presenting artefacts that have no relevance or coherence to what we have discussed. I am sure I am not the only person in the group who feels this way. I, along with other members have tried to express this to the people in question and although they appear to understand, continue with the same disregard. This has been occurring all the way through the project and less than a week away from the presentation deadline and I'm quite stressed about this lack of focus and also worried by the fact that some members of the group are either trying to change the product from what the rest of the group have agreed or perhaps do not understand the basic premise of the task at hand. Either way, I am finding it difficult within the group at the moment.

Completed artefact: Little Red radio piece

Christopher sent me the completed Little Red radio piece we had recorded earlier in the week and I was extremely happy with the outcome. I think that it is a very entertaining piece that also encourages your imagination to run wild which I think is exactly what we were hoping for. I would be eager to see how children reacted to, to make sure that these assumptions are correct but am I confident it will fit into the product very well.