Progress with 'The Door'

Although I am constantly working on the project now, progress seems to me to be slow in comparison to time allocated!  I've hit a few problems (as you do), one of them being with the static tv movie that I have embedded into the link screen from the intro.  The static sound level is way too high - so I took the sound from the movie clip with an online file converter so that I can take the sound levels down, and then re-embedded the movie into Flash and deselected the audio, which would usually be enough to take the sound away, but it didn't take it off.... I then took it into Premiere and deselected the sound track completely and then exported it without sound again and couldn't quite believe that when I put it into Flash, the loud static sound was still on there!!  Really bizarre.  I have re-saved it each time as an FLV, so I can only think it has something to do with that, so the last thing I can do is try is to export it as a QuickTime movie from Premiere and convert it back to an FLV within Adobe's Media Encoder and hope that will strip it out once and for all.

I made some adjustments to the link pages from the intro.  Originally I was going straight from the window shot at the end of the intro to the poem page - but somehow it looked disjointed, so on reflection I did a close up shot of the ipod with the static movie playing on the screen and zoomed right in and then zoomed out from that into the poem page with the static movie playing within that.  This seemed to work more effectively.   I have got some feedback from some users within my target audience age range and it was well received, particularly with the 20 - 30 age range.  There was mixed feelings regarding the issue of whether to tell the story, or just hint at it with the intro.  One user (22), said that they were intrigued enough by the intro to want to venture further, but that they did not understand the story from it.  I have currently deliberately not told the story (even though there is a background story and character profiling), this is to make it a little more mysterious; but I would need to get more feedback in order to know if this is the right way forward.

the link shot

I completed the next section that is really an interface to link to the main menu, but which includes a visual and auditory rendition of the poem. Below are some of the images that I worked on that are used within the poem animation.

colouring some of the 'magic city' elements

Close up of one of the trees within the
'magic city' aspect of the poem animation

Screenshot of of a scene from the poem animation

I wanted to make the visual aspect of the poem quite vibrant as the poem is about encouraging someone to open the door - and all the wonderful things that could be behind the door.  It lists the things that the person could see, if only they would open the door.... this is linked to the solitary soul of Kara, who cannot open the door as she is trapped in a monotonous world within a time warp.  She looks out onto a gloomy world that cannot see her.  I hope the user will want to go on this visual journey in order to set her free and open the door so that she can enter the real world once again.

Next step is back to the interactivity - so much to do, must crack on!