Rationale

Videos

Our videos portray three different ways that the viewer could cut down on their water wastage in the home. We chose to look at showering, washing clothes and brushing teeth as we think that they are the areas in which you could save the most water if you made a small change to your habits.
Our narrative was influenced by opening credits to thriller/horror TV shows and movies such as Dexter and Seven which consist of close-up and extreme close-up shots which emphasise small details and build tension and intrigue as the full body of the subject is not revealed until the end.
We also added to this tension with our choices of soundtracks for each video. The music we used was sinister, sad, and kept the viewer engaged in the video, while at the same time making them feel uneasy. We tried to fit our clip transitions to the beat of the music to make the music feel like it was part of the narrative.
We also used the important sounds from our footage to create ambience of the activities that were being portrayed. These sounds also backed up what the viewer could see and read.
At the end of our videos we confronted the viewers with a sudden reveal of the person they had been looking at close-up, often intimate, details of. The person was now breaking the fourth wall and staring directly at the viewers to make them feel unsettled and guilty, like their actions were being judged. Directly after this the call to action is unveiled to encourage viewers to change in order to make those feelings go away. It is almost as if the person is telling you directly to make these changes - it makes it personal.
We chose to keep the same tone throughout the entire length of the videos as we feel that the topic we are depicting will not be resolved (and therefore be happy and fun) by the viewer just making these few small changes to their habits - although any effort to make these small changes will help.
We used infographics at the start of our videos to convey alarming facts about water scarcity and wastage which grab the viewers' attention. Then the infographics change and tell the viewer how they can do their small bit to help the situation. We chose to use infographics as we feel that people will be more likely to read them than plain text as they are more visually interesting. We especially feel that this style of conveying written information will appeal to our target audience of youths as they are more visually orientated.
We purposely made the lighting in our videos a grimy, dull grey-green/grey-yellow colour to convey the idea that everything is not perfect or pristine as the issue we are portraying is ominous and gloomy - something people would rather not think about.
We made all three of our videos in the same style to make them a cohesive collection.



Website

We decided to format our website as one long webpage that viewers can scroll down or use the navigation icons on the fixed header bar to jump to key points. We felt that the information that we wanted to convey would be too disjointed on different pages and our target audience would be less likely to click through a website in order to view it all. This is because, in general, youths tend to spend less time exploring a website that requires them to go to different pages than they would to scroll down one webpage. Another reason for this layout was that we also wanted the information to be viewed in a certain order and this allowed us to control the narrative throughout site.
Narrative = Alarming information at the start - Videos and tips showing you how you can make a difference to these facts in the middle - Call-to-action that makes you want to change you habits at the end
We coded interactive navigation icons that allow our viewers to choose to jump to a certain video if they would like to focus on how they can alter their water usage regarding that activity. These icons change when hovered over to make them more interesting and encourage the user to choose a topic they want to learn about/they could save water in. We also made the page header/title change on hover and clickable to take the user back to the top. We felt that it needed to change on hover in order to be recognised as a link.
We wanted to emulate the sombre colours in our videos, so used greens, black, grey, and white for our websites' colour palette. These colours are drab, scary, worn-down, grimy, and sad which fits our theme. We continued the use of white text to link to the text in our videos. We chose to use black for the header and footer to frame the information. We alternated between two greyish greens for our content sections so that they were visually separated and could be understood as separate points.
The looping video that is constantly wasting water confronts the user when they first enter the site and is visible in various small sections continuously playing in the background. This affects the viewer by reminding them about the constant wastage of water, subliminally reinforcing the key issue that we wish to change.
The first main content section tells the viewer about the issue; what is occurring now and what could occur in the future. We use infographics to link our webpage to our videos in order to make the information seamlessly integrate between the media platforms. They also break up the body copy and therefore make the important information that we want to convey easier to read at a glance. In this section we have included several links to other appropriate, reputable websites where the viewer can find more information about the issue. This helps to reinforce/back up our issue as a real problem that is being discussed globally.
Next we showed evidence of real life scenarios caused by the scary issue of growing water scarcity through images. These support our facts and make the issue real. They also make the viewer empathise with people that they could help by making a small change.
Before the video sections and after the sobering facts, there is a blurb about how the rest of the webpage will give the viewer tips on how they can do their bit to help the situation and make it less scary.
The next three sections were our tips on the big changes that ordinary people could make that would make a difference. These were in the form of videos. We didn't want to overwhelm the videos' importance by placing too much information on their sections, instead we wanted them to speak for themselves. Therefore the only piece of text supplied with them is a small call to action statement specific to that topic about what changes the viewer could make to their habits to make an impact. Each video has its' own section as we feel that they are three separate areas where viewers could make changes. The videos start on a black screen to encourage the user to click play as they are curious about it. The videos end with the final statement still showing, meaning that once the user has completed watching the video(s), this point remains visible as they scroll back through the website.
After the videos we gave eight more small tips of what the viewer could also consider doing in their household to further conserve water.
After the videos and further tips on how to cut down on household water wastage, there is an encouraging statement about what these changes would do if you partook in implementing them into your daily life. Once again, like the tone of the videos, this statement is not exciting and happy - merely serving as a small bit of hope that if you contribute it could make a big difference.
Our call to action is reinforced by the 'Change' animation at the end of our webpage, which leaves the viewer with a sense of purpose - there is something that they can do to help.
In the footer we attribute the music to its' author and source. This source is a link just in case viewers were interested in the origins of the music.



Target Audience

Our webpage and integrated videos are aimed mainly at a young adult audiences in flatting situations because we feel that this group are more likely to waste water showering and not running full loads in a washing machine as they might wash their clothes separately. Our final webpage and videos, however, do cater to all adults who might wish to view them/are interested in the issue. We think that the sinister/thriller-movie-like tone of our videos will appeal to a youth audience as these types of movies engage and interest younger adults.



Kaitiakitanga

Our project confronts the viewer on how they are using a valuable and vital resource. It makes them consider whether their habits need changing through making them feel unsettled and guilty about the moral consequences of their routines. It encourages the viewer to think about a resource that they take for granted. It aims to scare the viewer into considering the balance between the natural environment and people. It makes them think about the many small changes they could make in their daily lives that would collectively make a big difference and impact to the growing issue.



Programmes

We used five different programmes throughout the process of making our videos and website. These were:

- Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing, rendering, and exporting
- Adobe Illustrator for creating infographics
- Brackets for creating/coding our webpage
- Adobe After Effects to create our animation where the tap drips
- Adobe Photoshop for editing images



NB: Our videos only play in Safari, not Chrome, on our laptops as Chrome apparently doesn't support MP4's anymore on some computers - if the videos aren't playing for you please try the webpage in Safari!