Action

Target audience

Definition: The target audience for this group project is the rappers for whom we are creating the video. Since the video is meant to represent their music and artistic vision, it must align with their style and personal preferences.

Validation: To ensure that our products meet the target audience's needs, we asked for feedback.

Concept

The concept of the video/Unreal environment we have to make is the Roman Colosseum.

To reflect this concept, we all made posters individually.

I first made a Pinterest board to get some inspiration. I chose these pictures because they represented what we were going to make the most, a Colosseum with Roman elites on a balcony.

After making this board, I started creating the poster.

I first made a bunch of iterations for the poster until I was satisfied with one.

In the image above, you can see the version I created in Figma that I was satisfied with and the one I asked for feedback on.

The feedback above states that the design I made was nice and eye-catching, but I did get some suggestions to improve it even more.

In the image above, you can see the final poster I made with the feedback incorporated. Unfortunately, my poster was not chosen as the final poster.

Story boards

In the first image, you can see the storyboard I made. The feedback I received on this was that it was liked how consistent I kept the images.

In the last image, you can see the final version of the (combined) storyboard. We received feedback on this storyboard from our teacher and implemented that feedback where we thought necessary.

In this storyboard, I added more descriptive texts, and I also added the time each frame would take. During the actual test shooting, we found out that the storyboard was not fully usable because we found out that there were fewer rappers than we were initially told were going to be there. But we adapted and changed how the rappers were going to stand, with input from the rappers themselves.

Exploring technologies

Unreal Engine:

For this project, we used a new technology called Unreal Engine. This is a 3D environment creator. This technology was used to make the colosseum we use in the background of the music video. I did not contribute to making the actual environment, but I did participate in the discussions regarding how we might make things look, so the design thinking part.

I did try some things out using Unreal Engine. Like exploring the different premade environments and adding different objects and scaling them. The things I did were really surface-level, but they did help me understand what my group member was doing to create the colosseum. So, even though I did not do much in Unreal, I did learn some new things, which are useful as I have chosen game design for the next semester.

DaVinci Resolve:

Another software I explored during this project was DaVinci Resolve. This is an editing application that gives me the ability to color grade, cut, edit, and change sound. This was used to edit the rap cypher in post-production.

At first, I did not know anything about DaVinci, but after watching a few YouTube videos, I slightly got the hang of it.

In the first image above, you can see the raw RED footage, and in the second image, you can see the color-graded version. The color-grading was a very important part of post-production because it brought out the highlights and made the colors look more realistic. An example of this is the colors in the sky. In the first image, you cannot see any detail, but in the second image, you can see that the sky is actually blue and that there are clouds. The way I color graded the footage was by using nodes. This was a very helpful feature because this way, if I made a change, I could do it in a different node, and if I then did not like the change, I could easily remove it again.