Rationale

For our small impact, big change brief, we decided to look at the large problem surrounding the waste of plastic water bottles. We called this, 'The Plastic Project'. We were looking to target an audience between the ages of 15 and 35, as this is the age in which most people will be secondary or tertiary students, or in full-time employment. It's these people who are most likely to be on-the-go, and likely to purchase a plastic water bottle for convenience, rather than take a refillable bottle with them. Our aim, was to create an awareness of the damage this has on our environment, and how one simple, cost-effective change can actually have a significantly large impact on sustaining a healthy environment.

For our website, we decided to use a clean, crisp aesthetic, utilizing a few shades of blue, and white. These colours were used to act as symbols for water and the plastic, while the clean appearance helps to create a nice, tidy aesthetic, a symbol for the potential cleanliness of our environment. At the top of the page, we have a navigation bar, in order to assist with user interaction, and make it easier to navigate their way between each section of our website. The 'About' section, aims to give a general idea of what 'The Plastic Project' is all about, and is our website's introductory page. As the user scrolls down the page, there are a few other sections that they will come across, 'Video', 'Statistics', 'Visuals', and 'Join Us'. The 'Video' section has our video embedded, with a crisp design in the background, with white water droplets reversed out of a blue shade. The 'Statistics' section consists of 6 statistics aiming to awaken the user to the size of the environmental damage, and show why buying a refillable bottle is the best option. The 'Visuals' section has some info-graphics, running hand in hand with the statistics above, again trying to show the extent of the environmental impact. The 'Join Us' section down the very bottom gives a brief description about us, the two co-creators of 'The Plastic Project', and has some links to social media pages. The footer has again utilized the blue and white colour scheme which is apparent across our whole site.

The video, embedded near the top of our website, just below the 'About' section, has been used as our main 'call to action'. By having it near the top of the page, we are aiming to get the viewer to watch the video and become interested in the project, and then continue to scroll down the page and find out more information. In terms of the video editing, we have two contrasting parts to our video. Our establishing shots, which have some shots of nature, has a Maori voice-over, which helps to set the scene, and highlight that it is set in New Zealand. The Maori voice over translates to "Welcome one, welcome all, it's time to make a change". For the majority of the video, there is a voice-over talking about the problems at hand, and speaking about some of the negative statistics regarding the number plastic bottles being wasted. During this 'negative' section, all of the shots have been saturated, giving an almost dystopian feel to the video. The background also consists of some dramatic sounds, which slowly build up as the video goes on, during the rising action creating tension. The climax of our video, is when it comes to our call of action, where we instruct the audience to buy a refillable bottle. At this moment, the music changes to a much brighter, up-beat song, and the shots are no longer desaturated, and there is no more dialogue. Throughout the video, we have carefully considered the composition of each shot, and taken footage from various angles at all times (using a camera, phones, and a GoPro), so that we can get some interesting cuts within our video. We made sure that we used an iPhone to record sound at all times for increased clarity.

Overall, we are pleased with the outcome of both the website and the video. We feel that they both link together well, and effectively communicate our call to action, the issue at hand, and the small change required to result in the big impact. We had no troubles cooperating and collaborating as a group, and managed to find lots of time to work on this project together rather than individually. If we were to repeat this process we would consider topic more carefully as we wasted a lot of time trying to gain access to the land fill and dump, for no outcome.