Professional Multimedia Content Creation

The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication

This portfolio page for COM 561 Professional Multimedia Content Creation course taken during Fall 2017 Semester. The main goal of this page is to introduce four design projects, completed during the course. These projects demonstrate Mikhail’s overall design practices and project management skills as a part of the Strategic Communications Curriculum.

Course learning objectives:

• Effective Multimedia Communication – graphic design, vector illustration, audio and video story telling.
• Information Literacy – copyright, ethical use of multimedia tools
• Diversity – online identity, user-centric content production, appeal to the wide audience.

Throughout the course I reviewed text, graphics, video and audio production principles and asset distribution basics.

Below is the list of the content I produced throughout the semester. For the full posts, please visit Multimedia Content Creation blog category of posts on this website.

List of the projects produced in the class:

• WordPress Blog Creation (WordPress)
• Graphic Design Project (Photoshop)
• Vector Graphic Design (Illustrator)
• Audio Story Telling (Audition)
• Digital Video Story Telling (Premiere)

WordPress Blog Creation (WordPress)

Using WordPress platform, I developed this website for the purpose of displaying my online portfolio of work completed throughout the course of the Masters of Strategic Communications Program. The minimal requirements were to create the About page, write first introductory blog post describing my topic and setup a section of the website for posting assignments and creating a few portfolio showcasing pages.

For my topic I chose “Know your audience.” As a Strategic Communications major, I wanted to convey that the effective communicator is the one who clearly understands his/her target audience and is able to establish effective ways of communicating the message to that audience.

Graphic Design Project (Photoshop)

In this assignment I was supposed to create a visual composition containing at least 3 images, combined with the message that reflects my topic, while utilizing Photoshop as my main application for producing this asset.  I chose to make an infographic for my activist Facebook page “Animal Rights PNW” that can also be used as a printed material (i.e. post card). The reason I chose to have the animal rights defense topic is passion.  Without passion, the message appeal would be harder to achieve, no matter how good (or bad) the design may be.

I utilized visual design principles, discussed in the class: unity, proximity, continuation and similarity.

Image Sources:

• Kitten with the flower image >>
• Tail Docking Image >>
• Fur Dye Image >>
• Surgically Removed Claw Image >>

Vector Graphic Design (Illustrator)

In this assignment I considered continuing my topic of passion for animal rights and decided to produce a scalable vector graphic logo that is effectively representing of my topic of discussion. As in relation to my topic “Know Your Audience” I researched organizations in the area that were best matching to my activist Facebook page “Animal Rights PNW.”

View original posts: Logo Design Draft, Logo Design Final

Audio Story Telling (Audition)

For this assignment I chose to create a public service announcement piece that introduces Animal Rights PNW’s goals, and proposed solutions to prevent animal cruelty. I first researched the issue, then wrote a script and captured it in a static free environment. I selected couple music tracks and edited the piece together in Adobe Audition. The deliverable for this assignment was a 1 to 3 minute audio story that is reflective of my course topic.

Audio Draft:

Audio Final:

Digital Video Story Telling (Premiere)

As my final assignment for the course, I decided to continue to work with Animal Rights PNW theme and create a video public service announcement but in this instance the call to action was to raise awareness for animal rights by choosing to consume responsibly and humanely harvested products.

As a part of my “Know Your Audience” theme for this course, I used persuasive language and video to support and tell the story that would appeal to the audience.  My target audience consisting of holiday shoppers, moms and dads, general public, who care about consuming healthy products that are harvested responsibly and humanely.

I began my video production process with the brainstorming session that helped me arrive to the message I was trying to relay to my audience. I wrote the script using generic storyboard template, recorded it using my iPhone, collected B-roll and other footage and edited the video in Adobe Premiere.

In an attempt to appeal to the audience I established the time and place followed by a transition to the segment of the family shopping for groceries.  To create an arch, I created a parallel between the shopping for groceries and the role of animals in our lives.  The conflict was to make the audience realize what the animals get in return, how they are treated, and what can we do to change that.

Storyboard:

Video story Draft:

Video Story Final:

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