Video Report

1. The challenges and tribulations of being a group assignment
   In the group assignment we have faced many challenges and tribulations such as, communication, work to meet deadline, organizing group meetings and allocating task to members and decision making. Decision making has always been the greatest challenge for our group, as each member will often have their own opinion and preferred way to process a task. Tribulation occurred when writing the storyboard for the video. At the start, we came up with two different scenarios for the video, after we have chosen a scenario, we each have a different preferred ending for the story, high tension and conflict often occurs during these processes. Fortunately, our group includes four members, most of these challenges faced during decision making were able to overcome by voting.
   Another great challenge was faced during the process of filming the video, we originally wanted to film a scene where two characters was talking to each other, however, we were unable to organise a time to film the scene together, therefore, we have changed the scene into a telephone conversion, which allows us to film both character separately. An outdoor scene was required for the introduction of the video, the bad weather on the filming day have made it more difficult for us to film the scene.
2. The process of creating the video

In order to being the process of creating the video, we had to decide what our video was going to be on. We first discussed some ideas for what we wanted our video to be about on. Our first ideas were not great or would not be feasible within the limited time amount so we looked to Youtube for some inspiration for our own video. After going through numerous car videos, we decide that we would go with one of our own ideas which was to film the type of the cars that university students drive to university.

With our concept done, we now had to figure out how to film the video. One of the members had a 5.0MB pixel camera phone so we decided to use this device as it would be sufficient for the filming our video.

We would then meet on a Tuesday as all the group members were at university on that day and all members could participate in the making of the video. We decide to go to the university carparks as it would be the easiest way to film the type of cars students drive to university. During our filming process, we looked for and filmed different types of cars and to make it more entertaining, we each made satirical comments about the cars. Overall, we filmed 6 cars which were a Toyota Camry, Honda Integra, Audi A6, Toyota Prius, BMW 3 Series and an ancient car.

From there we got the clips from the phone and put them together and this became our video

3. How does the video relate to your blog?

Our blog, “The Stig’s Guide to Cars” is a blog centered on cars. We talk about old vehicles, new vehicles and also some of the most popular cars through time. We give insight and reviews on these vehicles and also like to put a comedic twist to our entries e.g. the piano falling on the Morris Marina.

With this in mind, the video we have created is also centered on cars, namely the cars found in Macquarie University. The group walked around the car park inspecting the vehicles, we then decided on a particular few vehicles which we would record and provided narration to go alongside the video. Again we tried to put a comedic twist on the narration in the video and anything said was purely for comedic purposes and was not meant to cause offence to anyone.

Throughout our blog we have covered many vehicles, ranging from the affordable to the incredibly expensive, we kept this same theme in our video as well and selected vehicles with a wide range of price tags, makes and models.

With all these aspects taken into consideration we have come up with a video which we believe compliments our blog.

Assignment 3

Report

Report part 1 JT

The topic for our blog is cars, which was decided and completely agreed upon by all four group members because we all had some interests on that topic. Our interest of cars was brought up by discussing some of the interests we had and eventually cars was brought through our common interest of watching the BBC car show ‘TopGear’. The show was also our inspiration for our title and profile with one of the ‘presenters’ of the show known as ‘The Stig’ whose real identity is a well kept secret used for our title. The topic of cars is also widely available with plenty of new as well as interesting news and information from all different sources and this would certainly make things easier for us to find things to blog about. Cars also feature in the majority of people’s lives whether it’s used drive from point A to B or carpooling to university so you don’t have to waste 3 hours a day on a train. Because of this, we believed that our blog topic would be able to engage a wide range of audiences.

Report part 2

The largest challenge with a team assignment is the communications. Sometimes the team members were not turning up to class or meeting. Therefore we had to communicate with each other online. Four team members could not be online at the same time; some important messages had to pass around in the team. As a team, there is little discussion between the team members; therefore we did not have too many suggestions in the team. There are some challenges in the team assignment as well. Some team members did not finish jobs on time, there would be a delay on the team assignment. Culture difference is the challenge as well. Team member sometimes would have different idea for the team assignment which we had to discuss and make a decision.

Report Part 3 J.W

For the final design, we had tried different style of the blog and viewed some design of other blogs. It is not easy to establish a blog that everyone would like it. Actually, black and other dark color were removed, because, we thought, that can not stimulate people’s desire. Also, we do not like too colourful style for the car topic. We believed that the light colour are preferred for most of people. In order to avoid the blog looks too bored, we had posted at least one picture or video to the blog to motivate people’s interest. Furthermore, we had set up different colour and fonts for the words. Titles are more brilliant than content. Hence, audiences could easier to focus the titles and read it.

Report Part 4 A.S.

A blog which hosts similar content to ours is “The Car Blog” which can be found at http://www.thecarblog.com/. The car blog was designed by some of today’s top web designers and was created as a place they could talk about cars, trucks, motorcycles etc.
The design team is from Automotive.com and the blog contains posts dating back to October of 2004. The main blog articles are updated 2-3 times a week and the shortlinks section is updated all of the time, this is also where you can subscribe to the rss feed for regular updates.
The Car Blog also supports comments and believes this is a big part of the blog as it allows users to offer their own opinions on the articles posted and makes reading the blog a more interactive experience. The blog is also categorised so it makes it easier for someone visiting the blog to find articles on particular topics e.g. Asian imports, Domestics, Euro cars. It also has a search bar if the user is looking for anything specific.
Our blog however is a much more basic version of what ‘The Car Blog’ has to offer, our posts date back to April 2010 and was created for the purposes of an assignment for university. When it comes to design elements, none of our group members are professional web/graphic designers so the look of the blog is very basic when compared to ‘The Car Blog’. Our content is also centred around cars whereas ‘The Car Blog’, contrary to its name, also talks about trucks and motorcycles.
‘The Car Blog’ has been updated regularly since October 2004 and looks like it will continue to be regularly updated within the foreseeable future, for us however, there is no real intention to continue with updating the blog after the duration of the assignment.
A similarity between our blogs however is the comments section, we too believed that comments were an important factor in the blog and would allow users to voice their opinions about it, this would lead to an overall greater blogging experience and would also provide us with user feedback.

Showdown of the Century

Okay guys this is the big one, the one we’ve all been waiting for, the showdown of the century, the Bugatti Veyron vs. The McLaren F1 in a 1 mile drag race in Abu Dhabi. This is going to be an epic competition between the two fastest road cars in the world, who’s gonna take the prize? The only way to find out is to watch and see.

Volkswagon Golf GTI MK VI

Here is a car that does it all, and does it all better than anything else does it all, or even just does bits of it. ‘It', or in this case ‘it all', is performance, practicality, tractability, affordability, credibility, reliability, safety, quality, subtlety. And there are bound to be loads more ‘ities' that it does better than everyone else. The Mark VI Golf GTI is what happens when, ideologically speaking, that Porsche and that Polo are subject to some sort of stem cell research to find a cure for the fact that nobody can afford fast cars any more. It's the hybrid love child of extravagance and conservatism. And in this respect it is, essentially, perfect.

In what is now the GTI's 33rd year, the changes made do make for a better car, but without taking away from what also made its immediate predecessor a great one. The engine is now more compact and 3kg lighter. But for that it is also greener, more fuel efficient, more powerful and able to deliver its peak torque 100 rpm faster. Small things, but all of which add to up a more impressive whole. So total power output is now 155kW, taking the GTI to 100km/h in 7.2 seconds, figures that are almost identical to the old car.

Perhaps the most significant changes to the new car are aesthetic ones. Where the Mk V was a very deliberate homage to the Mk 1, borrowing and embellishing upon various instantly familiar styling cues, the Mk 6 moves on from this, taking the nostalgia and morphing it into something more modern. The headlight lenses are more geometric, while the grille is a simpler, narrow parallel slit, albeit one still trimmed in that now trademark red. The front fogs have been pushed as far as possible into the corners of the bumper to give the car a greater sense of width, and with it more aggression and menace.

So this really is Porsche meets Polo, the performance car for our times. Every bit as quick and capable as you will ever need on a British, or European, road, and genuinely easy to live with. And, relatively speaking, to buy too.

Review from:
http://www.topgear.com/au/volkswagen/golf-gti/road-test/mk-6