LEARNING AGREEMENTFor this project I will be looking into the subject of censor-ship and how it is affecting media of any kind. This is a very big topic at the moment in current news with the Ameri-can congress trying to pass two laws called S.O.P.A (Stop Online Piracy Act) and P.I.P.A (Protect I.P. Act), which give more rights on the Internet to the entertainment industry. These laws trying to pass through American congress has had various websites and people protesting throughout the Internet. The famous website Wikipedia, which is very strongly against this change has protested by blacking out their website. There have also been various protests by people who use the Internet as a key part in their jobs.Looking into more copyright I seem to be focusing a lot on the current affairs of SOPA and PIPA. Looking around the web there are many different websites being taken down due to copyright issues towards the entertainment industry, recording and ripping media such as TV shows and mov-ies. Government forces to are taking down Websites such as Mega upload to fight this. People such as Kim Dotcom

(owner of mega upload) has been sentenced to 50 years in jail for these copyright infringing crimes. Copyright infringement is a big topic in the world as the internet is constantly growing and more and more copyright infring-ing images and footage is being uploaded to the internet every day. As this happens, many more websites are being taken down and/or sued by the government for these rea-sons. For my professional project I want to be informative into how copyright works and have an equal view on both sides of the argument. Having a plainly informative view on the subject will give me a more professional outcome to my project and not make any information I give my audi-ence seem incorrect or warped to fit my stance.In the way of having done initial research in the subject, I can almost see where I want to go with the subject area. For this project I can see myself producing a viral cam-paign to raise awareness towards copyright laws and how to avoid infringing them. I cant think of what I would like to produce for a final piece in the initial stages of this pro-ject however after researching various parts of censorship, I will gain a better direction in which direction I will want to go with the project in hand.

POSITIVE EFFECTS ON THE MUSIC INDUSTRYLooking into piracy, I wanted to bring up not just one side of the argument, however both sides to give me more knowl-edge behind the solutions and what other people have to say about music piracy, here are the facts:

• Because of the way contracts are constructed, artists don’t own their own music–record labels do. So when artists that change labels, their new label is not allowed to produce the albums the artist made on the old label, and if the old label decides not to print anymore albums or release the songs, the music is effectively dead. Music downloading is the only way for most people to access these “dead” songs

• Most music downloaders are teens that both have the time it takes to download mass amounts of music, and who also don’t have the money needed to buy albums. However, music downloading does create a love of music, that will carry over when teens become adults. And when that happens, they don’t have the time to download the same amount of music, as well as having the money to buy albums with, thereby increasing album sales in the long term.

• A lot of retailers have gone out of business, but not be-cause of internet downloading. Many retailers can’t com-pete with the discounted prices or special offers record companies give to large established companies such as Best Buy, Walmart, Tower, and Target

• Music downloading is great for lesser known artists to get the exposure they normally wouldn’t have. Most people won’t buy music they haven’t listened to. Music Piracy al-lows downloaders to experiment with unknown artists.

• Many artists, including well established artists from Ma-

donna, offer free streams and/or downloads of their new albums before they are released. These artists are the ones that realize the positive potential of free music.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON THE MUSIC INDUSTRY• Each year, the industry loses about $4.2 billion to piracy

worldwide.

• Music pirates are the first to lose because the recording industry and law enforcement officials are cracking down around the world. Do the crime and you will pay the fine or do the time.

• Consumers also lose because the shortcut savings en-joyed by downloding music drive up the costs of legiti-mate product for everyone

• Honest retailers (who back up the products they sell) lose because they can’t compete with the prices offered by illegal vendors, or free illegal downloads. Less business means fewer jobs, jobs often filled by young adults.

• Record companies lose. Eighty-five percent of recordings released don’t even generate enough revenue to cover their costs. Record companies depend heavily on the prof-itable fifteen percent of recordings to subsidize the less profitable types of music, to cover the costs of developing new artists, and to keep their businesses operational. The thieves and downloaders often don’t focus on the eighty-five percent; they go straight to the top and steal the gold.

• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the creative artists lose. Musicians, singers, songwriters and producers don’t get the royalties and fees they’ve earned. Virtually all art-ists (95%) depend on these fees to make a living. The art-ists also depend on their reputations, which are damaged by the inferior quality of pirated copies sold to the public (when transferring files from a CD to an MP3 or similar format, quality is lost).

WHAT BARRY SAYSLooking at this motion graphic, talking about political standing points in american culture really interested me. The one thing that made this movie really stand out is its consistant style throughout and the tone of voice that was held within the design of the motion graphics from the type to the imagery. The actual transitions and effects were at a very high standard which I wont be able to achieve in mine however the aspect of design that really made this for me is the theme and how the integrated it so well into the narrative.

PROTECT IP / SOPA BREAKS THE INTERNETHere is another motion graphic I found which related directly to my topic and it is caled ‘Protect IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet’. The motion graphic is explaining what the Protect IP act is and also what SOPA is. The infographic then goes onto explain how this will affect people in greater ways than just censoring the internet. The piece is very simple with infographics visualizing simply and effectively every point they explain. I really like the general style of the work, its not too complex and the colour scheme works really well. Another interesting thing the infographic contains is a narrative voiceover which explains each argu-ment for and against these bills passing. I really like how it just states the facts.

PENALTIES FOR PIRACYBelow, I also discovered the penalties for piracy whilst searching online from the Misic Industry Piracy Investiga-tions. Here are the facts taken from the MIPI website.

“The Copyright Act, Trade Marks Act and other legislation pro-vide severe penalties for dealing in pirate music that infringe the rights of artists, composers, record companies and music publishers.Penalties range from injunctions, damages and costs through to fines of up to $60,500 for individuals and up to $302,500 for corporations for each infringement and/or up to 5 years imprisonment. The police can also issue an on-the-spot fine of $1320 and seize pirate music and devices, including computers and servers used in the commission of the crime. Directors of corporations may also be subject to such penalties.Furthermore, pirate sound recordings and devices used in their creation (eg. computers, CD burners) can be subject to orders for destruction.”

These are figures that have really shocked me about piracy, being unaware of these laws and legislations have had a major effect of companies and individuals in the past.

TOPIC ADJUSTMENTFollowing my research, I have decided to adjust my topic slightly more towards the way the music in-dustry is affected by piracy, rather than more gener-ally towards things like SOPA / PIPA. The reason I am choosing to do this is because I have found alot more about how the music industry is affected in ways of piracy,. i think this is a better decision for me as it will simplify my project and give me something more focused to work on so that I can concentrate on excecuting a better final piece for this unit. What I want to do is take my facts about music piracy and make a series of short infographics that each display one statistic about how piracy af-fects the music industry. Many people aren’t aware of the affects of what their actions of piracy has on the industry and the very harmful causes it has to people working in the industry such as musicians and pro-ducers. My infographics will be simple and display the statistics in a simple and effective manner to let people know what the real affects are.

CHOSEN STATISTICSFrom my research, I have compiled a selection of statistics that I think might work with my project quite well and can pull good visual data from. Here are the following:

• According to the RIAA, an 8 gig ipod can hold around 2000 songs, if all these songs are illegally download-ed, the ipod is worth around $764,705,882 in govern-ment fines.

• In 2009 the global revenue of the music industry was $35.4bn (recorded music only) however due to piracy, the industry made an anual loss of $12.5bn.

• In 2009, there were more than 70,000 lost jobs and $2 billion in lost wages to American workers due to piracy.

• Since peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing site Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the U.S. have dropped 53 percent, from $14.6 billion to $7.0 billion in 2011.

• From 2004 through 2009 alone, approximately 30 billion songs were illegally downloaded on file-shar-ing networks.

• Digital storage locker downloads constitute 7 percent of all Internet traffic, while 91 percent of the links found on them were for copyrighted material, and 10 percent of those links were to music specifically, ac-cording to a 2011 Envisional study.

• In 2008, 3.7bn was made by the music industry, how-ever this is only 5% of the market as the other 95% of people pirated their music.

INITIAL DESIGNSAfter choosing my statistics I want to create into visual data, I now want to create some base ideas of what sort of imagery I can produce to come up with this. Below are the following.

INITIAL DESIGNS (SKETCHES)

INITIAL DESIGNS (SKETCHES)

JESS3 - STATE OF THE INTERNETLooking online, I found this motion graphic called ‘The State of the Internet’ by a design company called Jess3. The company specialises in data visu-alization which I found really interesting. The thing I really Like about the motion graphic is the simplicity of it however it really works well in the way of style. This is the sort of infographic quality I really want to achieve. The way the graphics move and the soundtrack that accompanies it is really interesting and makes a really well produced piece of work. Their colour combinations are simple and highlight the main parts of the text that are important throughout the motion graphic which keeps your eye focused on the important facts

PULP FICTION MOTION GRAPHICSThis motion graphic, I found from YouTube, really caught my attention and gave me some great ideas in ways just my typography could move and become its own. The motion graphic is all revolving around a monologue from the famous movie, Pulp Fiction. The way that the motion graphic’s type has been changed to seperate the different caracters speaking in the clip is very clever, using different typefaces for one another showing authority in one voice. The way it also expresses actions going on in the movie which we can’t see is very well done with different simple effects to let us know what is going on throughout the entire thing. All together I think this piece works very well showing a really good strong typographical style to it which is definitely noteworthy for my work

DIGITAL GRAPHICSSo after producing some initial sketches and researching my topic thoroughly, I have reached the stage where I can take my knowledge of mo-tion graphics design and make my chosen statis-tics into visual data rather than just words and numbers. The following is 3 of my statistics that I think can be visualized well in my motion graph-ics work and work very well on screen. Producing this work is only a starting point and will develop more and more to fit my final piece even better.

These first two pieces are my statistics on:

1) In 2009 the global revenue of the music industry was $35.4bn (recorded music only) however due to piracy, the industry made an anual loss of $12.5bn. 2) According to the RIAA, an 8 gig ipod can hold around 2000 songs, if all these songs are illegally down-loaded, the ipod is worth around $764,705,882 in government fines.

These are my first designs. I have made them simple, making it easy to distinguish what the objects are and making them a great element in my motion graphic to play with. I think this is a good starting point so far.

UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP

INDEPENDENT

LABELS

WARNER MUSIC

GROUP

EMI GROUP

SONY MUSIC

ENTERTAINMENT

Above, I have created a pie chart made out of sound waves, showing the four major companies the music industry is mostly owned by, I think it looks nice and links in with my selected subject area well however I am not too sure if I want to carry it onto my final pieces of work.

STORYBOARDStoryboarding is the basis of all motion graphic design. This is where you can plan and put together your narrative, how you want your graph-ics to look and how you want them to move on screen. The following is my initial motion

graphics storyboard to how I want my final pieces to look. Throughout the unit, hopefully my ideas for how they pre-sent themselves and interact with one another will develop and grow stronger to create a much more effective collection pieces. Below is my motion graphics for my first statistic

being about the profit damag-es to the industry. I wanted to make it simple and easily read to create a good starting point to my designs. The typography simply slides in from the side, crashing into the record, caus-ing it to break, revealing that it is actually a pie chart.

After looking at initial designs and sketches, I wanted to make my typography and style of the work stand out a bit more than it did, I found an excellent typeface that gives my graphics a great tone in the statistics I want to display and I think they work hand in hand with the imagery I hasve created. Some other changes I have made to the graphics is the colour, making it much darker however not too strong bring your eye in on what is needed to be focused on rather than the entire graphics just blending into the background. Another thing I have altered is the typographic wording, such as on the record disc in the example below, I have tried to strip it down to the bare facts, I think it makes it easier to read this way.

The following are screen shots taken from my infographics and made into a storyboard so you can clearly see how it is working. These are my first drafts and I can continue to grow on these through-out the unit. Using my ideas from my storyboard sketches, I have produced the same things however added small elements to improve it in some ways.

The following are screen shots taken from my infographics and made into a storyboard so you can clearly see how it is working. These are my first drafts and I can continue to grow on these through-out the unit. Using my ideas from my storyboard sketches, I have produced the same things however added small elements to improve it in some ways.

For my third and final motion graphic, I have chosen the statistic ‘In 2008, 3.7bn was made by the music industry, however this is only 5% of the market as the other 95% of people pirated their music.’ from my se-lected few. For this, I created 2 elements, a tablet representing one figure and a desktop computer rep-resenting the other. I have gone slightly more detailed in the way of imagery and typographic move-ment to make the typography seem more physical, compared to the other two I have done. However I really like the style I have constructed of block shades and very simple graphics as I think it makes my statistics and graphics come alive.

MID-PROJECT TUTORIALHaving a tutorial from my tutors was a great help into giv-ing me a good sense of which direction the brief can go in to produce the best possible outcome for my final pieces. The first thing they picked up on was that in my drafts, the motion graphics seemed to be very plain and simple without much excitement, I was suggested to make them move with the text and was given ideas in how I could do it, such as typography appearing within objects such as text appearing on the screen of the ipod, much like my 3rd motion graphic has done. Using effects in aftereffects, I can make it seem like it is actually loading on the screen of the ipod and make my graphics really come to life and it has given me some really good ideas on how I could excecute this. Another aspect of the motion graphics I discussed to my tutors was the sound I want to be playing along with this, I have had quite a tough time pinning down any sort of soundtrack I think would be good for my set and I was open to help or opinions on how I could do that. One of my tutors suggested trying to find something that would fit into my motion graphic and match the style of it ap-propriately, possibly something quite old fashioned to fit in with the greyscale theme of the motion graphics. Overall, I think the tutorial was very helpful and has really given me a good direction of where I want to point my project.

STORYBOARD 2After recieving feedback from my tutors, I have taken on their com-ments, and chosen to make my elements more interactive with eachother. Here, I have planned out my sketches and made them into a storyboard to try and visualize

how each element of the motion graphic will move. Making the typographic elements and imagery of the graphics work together more will make my work more interest-ing and fun and also bring out the message behind them even more.

After improving my motion graphics and coming up with ways to make my graphics and typography interact with eachother more, I’ve produced much more well thought out and interesting pieces, grow-ing on my first drafts of the pieces. I think I have produced some really nice pieces, tweaking bits of design to make it fit into the theme a bit better and also making parts of the pieces match with ea-chother such as the intro and outro to each one to make them seem like more of a series and compli-ment one another.

E V A L U A T I O NThe project brief I set myself was to look more into on-line censorship and piracy to gain a better understanding of what the real figures and facts are behind it all. Once I gained a good knowledge of how censorship and online piracy was seen in the public eye and online, I then pro-ceeded to narrow down my project’s subject to ‘How Piracy Affects The Music Industry’ which I had found out alot about through my research. Following this, I then chose to create a series of motion graphics to show the statistics. The idea of the motion graphics is to make people realise facts about music piracy they were completely unaware of. Making people aware of these facts may change their viewpoint and make fair judgements on music piracy rather than assuming it is not a serious issue. My target audience for this piece would be to a wide range of ages but mostly for people who are quite frequent visitors to sites such as pirate bay and other torrenting websites. Constructing my graphics for my pieces, I wanted them to be simple and to the point. I looked at the ways other designers constructed their graphics for similar statistics for ideas and inspiration of how I could construct mine. Creating the motion graph-ics, I wanted each one to be very similar in the way of style and presentation of the graphics, making it clear they are a series. Gaining feedback from tutors and piers, I managed to get a good idea of how people would be able to get the message that I was presenting, in a clearer way. This pro-ject has given me a good knowledge of Adobe After Effects to construct my pieces. Overall I am happy with my final pieces and think they have worked very well with one an-other. If I could continue this project, I would possibly grow my idea more, possibly making my project more into a campaign, creating posters and possibly a website to learn about music piracy in a more indepth manner.

BY JAMES STONEjamesstonee.tumblr.com