A trunk of 16mm: Scratching the surface
A creative side project
This is my second monthly post from the One Side Project challenge — A trunk of 16mm. You can find part one here.
Um…Where did February go?
Wow, here we are at the 17th of March already. Time seems to really fly by these days. I often wonder, is it a getting old thing, or is just that I have more spinning plates in the air compared to when I was in my 20’s.
Whatever it is, I am enjoying the pressure that the commitment to the One Side Project challenge requires as it makes you take stock of the month just gone and how well you used this rapidly diminishing time.
Though I didn’t get to achieve all my tasks I set out for February, the momentum, enthusiasm and ideas didn’t wane and if anything increased.
Finally a name
A Trunk of 16mm was always just a working title for this project, something I jotted down when writing my first article for the One Side Project Challenge. I spent some time this month exploring some other titles, titles that name checked my Grandfather, some based on his production company and others to do with the father and son aspect of the project. I always kept coming back to Trunk of 16mm, Trunk of 16 or Films of Victor (i liked the double meaning here).
So I conducted a some user testing of sorts and surveyed the opinions from a range of people. I reached out to my various Slack channel teams for feedback, I cornered work colleagues and posted to Independent filmmaking forums to see what film enthusiasts thought of the idea.
I found this to be a really worthwhile exercise and I valued everyone who contributed’s feedback. Each title received a range of opinions and it was great to hear what each title evoked in people’s minds. One in particular stuck with me
I like Trunkof16mm. It has a life beyond just what is in the Trunk — it could have all sorts of stories that come out of it. The “mm” indicates that it is motion picture film, it adds to the uniqueness of it. — Jared
So I ended up going full circle and landing on the original title of Trunk of 16mm, but I am happy how I got here.
With a title locked down, I did the next logical thing and bought the domain trunkof16mm.com, threw up a splash page and opened an instagram account to visually document this journey.
I blame you Muzli
With a title for the project, my next focus was to get stuck into some inspiration research and wire framing. And that’s when I stumbled upon Muzli and added them as an extension to my Chrome browser.
Now looking at my bookmarks and email Inbox, I know where this month has gone. It was taken up reading, signing up and trialling a whole range of different UX resources and tools. Each discovered every time I opened a new browser tab at work. Damn you Muzli!
I found some really great articles that covered common UX traps and the golden rules of user interface design. I also discovered great resources, like the UX project checklist, various prototyping tools and I am newly subscribed to the weekly UI and UX e-courses from InVision.
Now I am not saying that every article and tool was perfect for me, or was not covering ground I may already now. However, it has been a really great experience to spend the time to research and find what resonates with me and what can help inform my project. As a digital producer, a lot of my time is taken up in the detail of delivery, planning and stakeholder management with little time to really knuckle down and research a project. So though I might not of gotten to any real wire framing deliverables yet, I feel as I have made some great progress this month.
Next Month:
- Document inspiration via a Mood board
- Wire framing
- Explore the Trunk of 16mm with my Dad
- Less Muzli articles, more doing.
Feel free to give this article a recommend 💚 if you like it and follow my story on the One Side Project Challenge publication. I will be giving project updates on the 17th of each month.
