Design for back of DVD cover

Design face for DVD

Friends Documentary

A.V. / EVALUATION OF DOCUMENTERY:

FRIENDS

The 4-minute documentary will feature the two friends Freya and Nettie 5 and 4 years of age. As they talk about there friendship and what it is for them, which makes each the other ‘best friends’. The documentary will be a mix of interviews with the two cuties and we also follow them as they run around and play, fall out and make up again.

DVD DESIGN

The DVD I will design will be the highest standard with laser printed front cover packed in see-through folder. It will feature the film with text and contain pictures. The front cover title will say Friends with some script.
The audience of all ages will enjoy this happy film about friendship.

During the Christmas Holiday I wanted to do my research on how to make templates for a DVD cover and disc.
I have never had any experience in this area before but I was willing to be creative and to come up with some ideas.
First of all I took plenty of photographs from my digital camera and chose the best quality images that would suit the documentary.
I opened up Photoshop and explored different styles and blending options in layers.
I experimented for a long time to make it look right.
I did have a problem with scaling the images to size to fit the DVD cover but with a lot of practice I eventually got the result I was hoping for.

PREPARATION FOR MAKING FRIENDS DOCUMENTARY

Because of the nature of the documentary it was a good idea to get to know the children and spend time to get to know them. This was probably the best idea we had for the whole project as it gave me the opportunity to get the feel of what is happening around me and to make them feel at ease.
I found it an invaluable experience and really helped to put my focus in the frame of mind as a part of the production team. I was in a real place of responsibility, as the children responded positively to me and enjoyed the fact of having me around.
My focus was in allowing the children to play naturally and have fun and for me to build enough rapport with them.
It gave me the chance to get to know them properly and make them feel comfortable, so that Iain Green could start filming.
This proved to be a good day for filming; everything went accordingly to plan.

This was important when it came to editing the content of our footage.
We were now able to capture everything we had to the editing booth. Then began the long process of sifting through the hours of footage in order to make the documentary the required length.
It was realty interesting to edit this film as the more we edited the more we learnt about our topic and ultimately the more we liked the idea and its results, there's something rewarding about making a film your not totally in control. We did encounter some group dynamic and hardware problems but when hurdles were over-come a good team effort was built and everyone still involved really worked well to bring it together.

DVD AUTHORING

Tuesday 16th January

I arrived at the editing booth ready to export the finished documentary. We had backed up the project on a USB hard drive.
I was feeling quite frustrated after learning that the presentation was for the following morning and not giving me adequate time schedule to finallise the complete finishing touches for the DVD Authoring.
I managed to take the footage of the documentary home with me so the group was totally relying on me for the finished product.
I found it very useful that I had previously gained some knowledge of authoring a DVD while I was up in London visiting my Sister. The workshop I did explained everything about DVD authoring so I was able to put that into practice.
I ultimately worked through until I could find a solution to put everything together.
I put DVD menu buttons along with extras and a slide show of high quality production, one for Movie, Slideshow and Extras.
The images I used for the slideshow were from my digital camera, I also used a transition on them for the introduction.
I did have a few technical problems along the way as I lost the work three times and had to repeat what I had already done until it was corrected.
It was time consuming because the next procedure I burned the DVD with all it's content.
It was now 3.30am and ready to put the final finishing touches on the designed DVD cover.
I completed all of this by 4am Wednesday 17th
I believe I worked very hard to have the DVD finished by the required deadline.

Wednesday 17th January

I arrived at 9am to present the finished DVD.
I was feeling quite nervous at this time because I did not want to let the group down but as a result it all went well.