Week 11.2

Interim Presentation #2

Website feedback

- payment page

- plays trailer (link to animation)

- fixed menu on booking page

Poster Feedback

- apply brighter colours to Lauren's poster

- could mention Warren Maxwell on posters

- less text, just the website link on Ellie poster particularly, but is relevant to both

Animation Feedback

- clean up movements to make smoother

- could have a go at making bat flap it's wings

- change the website so it has no www

- fix the date, it should say 2021 not 2020

Website

Writing body copy

Nature of Man

The last play of the season ramps up the passion with a brilliant, yet jarring performance by emerging Wellington actor Jason Te Kare. Te Kare plays the role of a power hungry world leader who will stop at nothing to gain wealth, importance and the position of Global Leader. 

Continuing with the themes from the first two plays, Nature of Man speaks about the ego of humans and the danger of us this on people and the precious Earth we all live on. We have a tendency to be greedy and selfish when we are desperate to gain something, and often it is the environment that pays the price for this.

This play will leave you with a fiery determination which we encourage you to take on board and think about how you, individually, can make a change to help the environment in a time where nature has never needed us so badly.

Preservation of Memory

This play is based on the song 'Little Things' by Warren Maxwell. From this we have chosen to focus on noticing the world around us, appreciating these small things and preserving the beauty of Aotearoa for further generations to enjoy. Taking the time to notice, respect and preserve the nature around us preserves the memory of the world that we have grown up in and enjoyed for our children, nieces and nephews to enjoy as well.

The tangibility of our flora and fauna is deteriorating and we need to take action to ensure that our home is saved. This play aims to get you to recognised the simple beauty of Aotearoa and fight to preserve it so others after us can enjoy the memories that as have.

The cast for this play is not to be missed, as their performance and hard work makes this show all that more impactful. When we recognise the effort each of the talented actors, choreographers backstage members and directors have put into each of these plays we really notice and appreciate the little things.

The Protector

This play tells the the history of peaceful protest by Māori during the New Zealand land wars that began in 1845 and still has impacts today. The Protector refers to the events at the settlement of Parihaka in Taranaki 1881 and the work of the great Te Whiti o Rongomai  and Tohu Kākahi. These two members of Parihaka established it's name as a peaceful settlement, a safe haven for those displaced by the land wars. 

Te Whiti and Tohu  preached for peaceful protest during the invasion of Parihaka by the Crown. The people of Parihaka taking out land survey pegs placed by Crown representatives on their land in the middle of the night. Despite this, the settlement was still invaded and Parihaka's women raped and killed and it's men taken as criminals to build prisons down the South Island.

It is important we honour the invasion of Parihaka and Te Whiti and Tohu's peaceful resistance in the face of unjust conflict. Te Whiti's headdress often featured a white feather, a symbol of peace. This became an icon of his work and the events of Parihaka in 1881.

Blurb about entire season of regrowth

Regrowth is about how we as humans have a commitment to the environment to preserve and look after it for future generations to enjoy. This is especially topical at the moment as we are faced with life changing climate change decisions. Regrowth is also about fighting for the environment in a passive, non-violent way. This aspect was inspired by the song by Warren Maxwell called 'Peaceful Man' which speaks about chief Te Whiti o Rongomai who lead the peaceful protests in Parihaka. We all have a duty to protect the Earth we live on, and we can learn from Parihaka and follow in their footsteps to stand up for what is right.

Where to now

Lauren is continuing to smooth out the animation, while Ellie is doing the same for the website. Lauren is also revamping the poster, with input from Ellie, and Ellie is drafting the rationale.

We are feeling like we are in a pretty good place right now. Everything is technically done, it just needs a bit more of a detailed approach now which won't take too long since all the bulky work has been finished. We are aiming to have the poster done by Monday for hand in to the Toystore, and the website and animation done by Wednesday.

Animation

I smoothed out a couple of things, like having the fish swimming slower to the surface, and also having the bat open it's wings faster. I was going to animate the tails of the fish, as well as the wings of the bat and the seaweed moving but I'm actually pretty happy with how all those things are. I think that having the seaweed move is just too much seeing as the whole video is pretty short and it already feels a little much with all the plants and type and clouds moving. I also think the same for the movements of the animals.

One thing that I just can't seem to get right is the bushes when the fish jumps. They are all moving around like crazy when I need them to be still because they aren't supposed to move. This is really frustrating as no matter how hard I try, I just can't get them to be still. I think I'm going to have to ask for help on Monday.

Poster

Changing the positioning of the type, as well as the colours of the leaves.

Website

It was a lot easier than I expected to change the play names on the play pages, didn't take too much rearanging of the overlays to ensure that they still lined up.

I added in more of the mandatory copy for the ticketing information by creating a ticketing info, and FAQ page with overlay information pop-ups. I also created a more detailed payment confirmation set of pages.

My next task was to try and get our animation onto the site. I first used a plugin called Video Capture because Figma itself doesn't support video embeds. This sadly only placed a cover image of the video on the page which was stupid.

I then tried out Anima, a video placement plugin which seems to be pretty widely used. It took a while to upload and in the end didn't work. Although it put our video in the home page, it ruined a lot of our type and formatting. As well as preventing a lot of the prototype animations like menu mouse hovers from working.

My next try was using a plugin called Pitchdeck, this looked the most promising as it allowed me to keep any animations I had. I installed it and linked up our video - sweet. Then I exported the pitchdeck files and it ended up just giving me slideshow style pages, not interactive just pdfs. It also messed around with a bit of my colouring on the Maxwell Page >:(

In the end I gave up and put in a gif version of our animation on the site. This actually turned out better than I had thought because I could make the GIF the same length as the animation - so there weren't any lost frames. Naturally it was a little more jumpy and lower quality. One downside was that we don't have the audio! So for now I have placed a link to the Vimeo file below the GIF that can be clicked.

The animation/gif background pink is different to that of the homepage because on the homepage the pink looked too grey in combination with all of the bright oranges and yellows. So this is why I have been working with a more coral pink.