Smashing Mag Article [Contino]

Smashing Magazine came out with an article entitled "10 Steps to Make the Perfect Portfolio Website". This article has some useful tips on making your portfolio website. I have read it and have used some of the suggestions they have made. For instance, I used the suggestion of typing up the way to how pronounce my name under my profile picture on my website. I just figured that since the majority of the class is making portfolio websites, that this article could be very useful.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/02/26/10-steps-to-the-perfect-portfolio-website/

~Nicholas J. Contino

Google.com/addurl [Contino]

For those who are buying a URL and making a website, there is a way to get your website visited. If you go to google.com/addurl/, you can let Google know of your site so it will pop-up in a web search. To improve your chances of being found, go to google.com/, to find Google's Webmaster Guidelines. I found all of this using Lynda.com, which I'll again suggest you should use.

~Nicholas J. Contino

Zack Silver: favorite web site

Since this is a webart class, I felt I should not focus all of my blog entries on movies, but maybe talk a little about my favorite website- it just happens to be a movie blog site. Joblo.com is where I go to get all my up to date movie info, with the latest news, trailers, and pictures being updated daily. I check this site at least 3 times a day. I love hearing the latest news in some of my most anticipated films, even ones that don’t come out for a few years. They almost always have accurate information, as they get them from real sources in the industry.

I also love the layout of this site. On the left are all the headlines for movie news, with each story on it’s own page in a very similar layout. There are tabs up top for the different categories on the site, including news, trailers, reviews etc. In my opinion this is a very top notch blog. Very easy to navigate and use, and has great information. I definitely recommend it to all hardcore movie fans.

Zack Silver: Trekkies research assignment

This semester I am taking a Youth Cultures class, where our final “research project” requires us to research a certain subculture and do a presentation on it. After having a list of around 30 subcultures, I choose Trekkies, the hardcore fans of the Star Trek series. One of the reasons being I was a HUGE fan of the last film that came out last year, as it instantly became one of my favorite films. I also have seen numerous of the older movies and TV shows, as I used to watch them with my dad. I was a moderate fan of this series, but wanted to dive deeper into how other people feel about it.

I choose to composite a video documentary of my findings. I composited multiple clips from the various shows, movies, and spoofs, as well as some from local Star Trek conventions. Then I interviewed multiple subjects. My grandparents were huge fans of the series from the start, and loved the new film. At my movie theater at home in Baltimore, one of my managers named John was a huge fan of the new movie, as he is a die-hard fan of the director J. J. Abrams and his previous work. I also interviewed and recorded one of my good friends, who never liked the series and didn’t bother to see the new movie. We sat down and watched the new film, and I got his reactions before and after: he liked it.

I am in the process now of editing all of this together. So far it has been going pretty well, but I am having some trouble trying to give it focus. I choose to use a narration to give the film a voice, as it was hard to tie some of the segments together. Overall I feel by putting the clips of the shows and movies, and the reactions I received in the interviews, I am able to capture the essence of this series, and what drove the fans to call themselves Trekkies. I hope to have this done and up on the web soon, and will put the link to it here.

Zack Silver: Remix assignment

For my remix assignment, I choose to focus on one of my hobbies: collecting movie posters. I love movie posters mainly with the idea that they are an image, either simple or very detailed, that can sum up a 90-minute movie. Some can be the simplest still from the film, or others can be an extensive 27 by 40 inch picture of all the characters, action scenes and special effects in a film. Ever since I started working at a movie theater over 2 years ago, I have collected real size movie posters for films that have recently come up. Most of the blockbusters, Oscar contenders and more I have in a big box in my basement at home. Not sure what I will do with all them one day, but I right now love the idea of having over 200 posters in my possession.

For my assignment, I choose to “remix” the movie poster for the film Up. The original poster is a simple image of a balloon floating in the sky, but symbolizes many themes in the film. I composited 2 remixes of this poster. One turns the balloons upside down, going against the film title Up. When initially looking at this image, you get a negative feeling, thinking the balloon is going to crash. You might think this was a negative film, while in fact it is a very positive one. For the second remix poster I copied the balloon image, and pasted it on a completely different picture of a volcano with lava I got from creative commons. This also is a very negative image, not the happy Disney film one things they are seeing. It also lies as that scenery is never actually in the film. Both of these posters create a sense of “false advertising”, if Disney were to publish them and put them in the movie theaters. I wanted to express in this project how changing a few little things on a poster, can in turn completely change the meaning of the film and what you want the viewer to think before they see it.

Zack Silver: Toy Story 3 promotion

This spring my internship did a big promotion with the upcoming Toy Story 3 at major colleges throughout the country. The idea behind it was that students in college now were big fans of the Toy Story films when they were younger, and have strong interest in seeing the new film. Last year’s Up was a big hit in general, but also with the college audience. Disney wanted to do a screening of Toy Story 3 with college students across the country, with the hopes that they would spring the word to those who haven’t seen it on how great it was.

We had to hang flyers across the campus advertising “characters” in the film. One of them was about the toy dinosaur, and advertised an archeology club that would discuss him. Students could pull of a tag at the bottom of the flyer, and go onto a website to get a free ticket for the screening. I attached the pictures of the flyers for you to see. While this was a good idea, and it did get a lot of attention, there was one big problem with the promotion.

The screening was only going to be the first 65 minutes of the movie, a movie that would in total only be 90 minutes. They main reason being the film wasn’t done yet, and they wanted to get this screening out before college kids went home for the summer. However most people, myself included, didn’t want to see only 65 minutes of a movie. So interest dramatically dropped, all across the country. The screenings for these “cliffhanger screenings” (the 65 minutes ended with a cliffhanger), did very poorly in almost every college across the country. Temple only had 75 students out of a 250 seat theater, a number very low in industry standards. All the reps that worked on this promotion sited the reason as no one wanted to see only part of the movie. If it was the whole film, this screening would have sold out quicker than anything. However Disney decided to not rush the film, and showed only what they had done. They consider this promotion a failure, and hope change the strategy if they every do this again. I for one believe that it would have completely sold out if it was the full movie, and hope they can have it done in time for college students if they plan on doing this again.

Zack Silver: Kick-Ass promotion

This semester I am interning at a marketing firm named Allied, that does local screenings and promotions for movies from most of the big movie studios (everything except Warner Bros. and Paramount). So for the past 2 months, I have been in charge of the promotion for the film Kick-Ass. It’s a super hero movie, based off a graphic novel about people who are trying to become superheroes without any real powers. I chose to do my Locative Media project on this promotion, highlighting the different events and locations where we have held.

Now that the film is released, most of my work promoting the film is over. It has been a great experience and I’m a little saddened that my work is finished. Because of this promotion I was able to see the film over a month and a half before it came out, and I loved it. It was so much fun to watch, with a great story, tons of action and humor, and some great cinematography. This made promoting the film even more fun. Knowing how “awesome” the movie was, I was able to spread the word, and actually mean what I said. Getting people pumped about the movie, only made me more pumped to see it. I have seen it 3 times and counting, and plan on going again next week.

A movie like is one of the reasons I want to get into the industry. Not only is it an awesome movie, but the way it was produced inspired me. The author of the graphic novel, as well as the director, pitched it to multiple studios to get funding. They all suggested editing the graphic content in the comic, in order for the studio to back it. The producers and director decided to break free from studio involvement, and produce it themselves. I thought this was a great idea, as they were now allowed to truly be faithful to the comic, and create it in the best way. They eventually got a distribution deal through Lionsgate, which was a great move on their part. The film opened in #1 last weekend, and I only hope their success continues, as it’s a film that truly deserves it. GO SEE IT!

John Curall-Putting More Than One Video Player On A Page

Hello All, For those of you using the JW Player Lisa demoed for video on your web page, I came across and adjustment that needs to be made if you plan on using more than one video on a page. I thought it might be helpful to some of you. I tried to just repeat the steps Lisa showed us for each new video I was putting on the page. However, all it did was play the third video in the first videos place and display "this text will be replaced" in the other two slots. I did some research and I found out that if you don't give them each a different placeholder on the page it will just lay one on top of the other. The placeholder in the code that Lisa gave us was the name given to the div id. This can be changed to whatever you want as long as you also change it at the end of the code in the so.write section. I just changed the names to player 1, player 2, and player 3 respectively. For each video, I just replaced the two incidents of the name (I think Lisa's was"mediasource"? I don't have that page anymore) with "player1", "player2" and "player3" respectively. That worked like a charm and I was able to have 3 videos on one page. Here is the link to the page where I found this information so that you can see it for yourself: http://www.longtailvideo.com/support/forums/jw-player/setup-issues-and-embedding/7989/how-to-put-more-than-one-video-on-single-page. I tried to paste my code into this post to show you what I did, but blogger saw it as actual html code and not text that I was trying to publish.

Good Luck!

-John

Another flash website that lets your create cool media galleries

Here is a link to the website I'm using for my final website. Since I deal with a lot of media, this is an easy way to spice it up.

Click HERE

Flash Componets

Here is a great reference if your trying to do Flash integrated websites. Its a real good way to make your website look fancy.

HERE