Unit 62 – ProposalI am a student at Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College to produce a digital video to be used on an interactive media product to promote A Level ICT. The video must be engaging for the audience in order to keep them interested and persuade them to take up ICT as a subject in college. As if the video promoting the course is quite boring then it will automatically make the audience think the course is boring as well, therefore I need to create an exciting video. The video will be presented on the college website, given out on a CD ROM, also on social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, etc.

Promotional videos are used very frequently when advertising anything from products, courses, holidays, etc. All of them carry out different techniques to stand out from others and to make them remembered by the audience so that when they need something in that category they will immediately remember the company from the advertisement. Many promotion videos use catchy slogans or repetitive songs which may come across as annoying for the audience; however the message does get out to them and makes the video memorable. However we aren’t promoting a product, we’re promoting a course therefore we need to make the video come across as exciting using fat cut scenes and bright colours in order to create a positive atmosphere, also a song might be a good idea to calm the audience whilst watching and then they will think of the course every time they hear the song. I am going to look at some existing promotional videos from local colleges.

Promotional Content:

5 reason why to pick Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College:There is a video on the CAMSFC website which promotes why students continuing their education at college should pick them. This is quite a straight forward way to persuade the audience as it isn’t like trying to advertise, it is literally telling the audience why they should pick Cheadle and Marple and the different points which makes them a successful college. Another way in which they comfort the audience is by using a nice bright colour scheme which would create a positive atmosphere for the audience, they also make the message clear to the audience

by using a voice over with an animation of subtitles but executing it decoratively instead of just having bold text on the page they have different fonts, sizes, colours and transitions to create a nice flowing animation.

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What the students think of CAMSFC:Another video which is found on the Cheadle and Marple website is a promotional video which shows various different cut scenes of students expressing their opinions on the college and specific courses, this is a good idea to comfort future students as they get to hear the real truth from current students, as it may be a good college but it’s always ensuring to hear it from someone at a similar age. They also quote various different

opinions which the student says in bold writing to highlight the good points about the college and so that they are clearly expressed to the audience so that they don’t miss the good opinions.

Short Films:The idea of creating a short film instead of a promotional video could be quite successful. We could create a short film which would maybe be around 10-15 minutes long, based in the life of a student and a break up of their college day to show students exactly what it’s like to study A Level ICT and to be a student at Cheadle and Marple. During the film I would show the college in a positive light using humorous storylines. There are various arguments and articles online discussing whether they think short films are the future of advertising. There is an article online on Screen Rant showing some examples of short films ’ Short film advertising is fast becoming an art, and one that stirs conversation when the film is over and the product logo mysteriously appears.’ http://screenrant.com/shapeshifter-audi-commercial-advertising-short-films-mikee-95628/

Viral Marketing: Viral Marketing is a technique which an idea spreads, and whilst it spreads it helps market a business or a cause. There are two kinds of viral marketing, one of them is the original idea is the fact that the product markets itself. The idea is that the more people use them, the more people know about them and use them as well. However the product must be something which improves once more people start to use it. Examples of this technique are, Hotmail, Facebook, YouTube, etc. As a lot of people use them which then results in more people finding out about them.

The second kind of viral marketing has developed over the last few years which a marketing campaign spreads by itself, instead of the actual product spreading. This technique could be done by

businesses and audiences by simply spreading it and sharing it through communication services such as Email, Social networking sites, Blogs, etc. This technique is more common as the product needs to be out there before it can market itself. An example of this type of

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marketing would be Kony 2012, where people spread the word of a situation over a number of social networking sites in order to inform everyone and to get the word out there so that something could be done to resolve the problem. The poster the organisation created was virally spread everywhere which soon had more and more people talking about it, which then spreads the word even faster and faster on a massive spread.

This could be a good idea of marketing the college video, as we could request all student’s email addresses on their application to the college or at open days, then send out a viral email containing the attached video or a link to it to every possible student of the college. Doing this is a much cheaper way to market as we don’t need to pay for advertising, also we wouldn’t need to carry out other techniques such as burning them to DVD and handing them out. Doing this would result in more people seeing the video.

Platforms:There are various ways in which the video can be displayed to the audience, one of them which are obvious would be for it to be burnt to a DVD and given to possible students who are considering taking A Level ICT. This is a good way to show the video as it will be shown at top quality and will play smoothly for the audience which results in no waiting for it to buffer, it just plays for them straight away regardless of their internet speed. However the only downfall is that this is a much more expensive method compared to showing the video on the internet or as a presentation, as not every student we give the DVDs to will actually pick the subject therefore a lot of money is actually wasted.

Another way in which we can present the video would be on the worldwide web on various sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, CAMSFC website, etc. This method is much easier as all we need to do is upload the video to these sites and express it to the audience through viral marketing; we do this by sending a chain email to all students containing the link to the video. The negative to this method is that some of the audience may have slow running computers therefore they will have to wait for the video to buffer before watching, also the video may have to be compressed before uploading it to the web in case the size is too large. Another negative is that some students might not have a computer or access to the internet at all; therefore they have no way of accessing the video.

One more method which we can use to show the video is on a presentation which may take place during an open day where a tutor would show it in front of an audience of possible students, then answer any questions they might have. This idea is probably the easiest way to present it, also if the students have any questions regarding the video or the course they have a tutor there to assist them and give them answers, whilst if they were at home watching the DVD they have no one to answer the questions. The negative points to this video is that the students view the presentation once during an open day then they might forget everything they found out by the time they get home, whilst if they had the DVD or access to the video online they can watch it as many times as they want. Another negative is that we would need to pay a tutor to come in, in order to present the video which would be more money going out for their wages.

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Technology:

Compression:Fortunately files can be compressed to lower the storage size of it, however the higher the quality of the file the larger the file size is, so you could imagine that if I compress a file then I am going to lose some of the quality. Lossy compression is a data encoding method that compresses files by lowering the quality. A smaller file size is easier to handle with storage, sending, or even sharing over the internet. Some slower computers will take longer to display a file online if it has a large file size. There is a percentage as to what you compress the file down to, for example, if I didn’t want to lose too much of the quality but I wanted to shed a little bit of the file size I would only compress it by about 10%. It is up to the user as to how much the file is compressed.

Lossy compression is most commonly used to compress multimedia data (Audi, video and images), especially for displaying techniques such as streaming media and internet display. Lossless compression is data compression technique that allows the original data to be reconstructed from the compressed data. Lossless compression is used in many applications; one way in which it is used is in a ZIP file. For my digital video it is important to keep quality high as students won’t enjoy a video which is pixelated, therefore I may not even have to compress the video for when I am burning it to a CD as it will be able to store the original file size on it. However when it comes to uploading the video to the college website, YouTube, etc. I will need to use compression in order for the video to load fast for users, also if it was running on an application it will need to be compressed otherwise the file size of the whole application will be way too large to send around via email or uploading to the Web.

Low compression (84% less informationThan uncompressed PNG, 9.37 KB)

High compression (98% less information than uncompressed PNG, 1.14 KB)

File Format:The file format of my digital video is a really important factor to look at as if the video isn’t compatible with the majority of software then some of the audience won’t be able to view it. The majority of people use Windows format which the best video format to use would be Windows Media Player; however some people do use Apple Mac products which aren’t compatible with WMP. Audio Video Interleaved (AVI) is the best format for me to use as it is compatible with both Windows and Mac which would ensure that all audiences can access and display the video successfully.

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Streaming Methods:Streaming media is multimedia file that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a supplier. A media player can begin playing the data (Movie) before the entire file has been transmitted or downloaded to the system. Video and sound formats aren’t the only ones that can actually be streamed, other forms of media such as stock tickers, real-time text, etc. which these are considered text streaming. The benefit of streaming my video is that the user can view it whilst it downloads instead of waiting until the whole file is stored on the system. However the downfall to this technique is that some slower computers may transmit the media at a slow speed which means the video will have to buffer before playing anyway, this also means that the video will keep stopping when reading the end of what has been downloaded. Overall I believe downloading the media is the most successful as this means that users with slower connection don’t have to have the stress of restarting the video because it is transmitting slowly. Examples of streaming websites are YouTube, Vimeo, NetFlix, etc.

Data Transfer Rate:Data transfer rate is the speed with which data can be transmitted from one device to another. Data rates are usually measured in megabits (million bits) or megabytes (million bytes) per second, however these measures are mostly abbreviated as Mbps. This is done in order to calculate an approximation of the time in which the download should be completed.

File Size:File size is a measurement of the size of a computer file; typically it is measured in bytes. Obviously this means that the bigger the file size means the more disk space it consumes and there is a limit to how much can be stored on a disk all-depending on the size it supports. File sizes can be expressed in bytes, kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). A byte basically represents a single character; digit or symbol of data and each byte is built up of 8 bits. There are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte and 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte. Digital videos are mostly large sized files due to the amount of data that they require to be played; the file size can obviously vary due to the quality and length of the video.

Media Players:

Windows Media Player:

Windows Media Player is the default media player software for Windows that is made by Microsoft. It plays a variety of different media such as audio, video and supports streaming formats including MP£, WMA, CD audio and MIDI. The first ever version was made in 1999 that was Version 6.2. The only downside to WMP is that it doesn’t support .AVI formats.

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Shockwave:

Shockwave was Macromedia’s first and most successful multimedia player before Flash. Shockwave was used to create online movie and animations however it is mostly used in the game development industry. Shockwave has a much faster rendering engine compared to Flash, which is what makes it ideal for game development. The only downfall for Shockwave is that it isn’t compatible with Linux and Solaris, although it can be installed if you install a program that allows Windows based applications to run.

Real Player:

Real Player is a cross-platform media player created by RealNetworks. It supports a number of multimedia format including MP£, MPEG-4, Quicktime and Windows Media files.

QuickTime:

QuickTime is software developed by Apple Inc, it can play various formats including digital video, media clips, animation, text, music, etc. A positive about QuickTime is that it is available for Mac and Windows operating systems. The downfall for QuickTime is that it doesn’t support ‘.AVI’ (audio video interleave) which is the format for a lot of movie clips.

Digital Rights Management:Digital Rights Management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intention to limit the use of digital content after being sold. This is done so that the digital content or device isn’t used for something that the creator did not intend it to. Various large companies such as Amazon, AOL, Apple Inc., BBC, etc. use digital Rights Management in order to protect their digital products.

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