The following piece of work has come from the animation unit where we had to create a stop-motion animation to be used as an ident for the TV channel E4. The following research task is all about E4. E4 is owned by Channel Four Television since its creation on 18 January 2001. Programmes shown regularly on E4 include; Hollyoaks, Gogglebox and Rude Tube. The primary audience according to wikipedia (link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E4_(TV_channel)) is 15-35 age range (teenagers - young adults). Its secondary audience isn't very clear however I suspect some programmes are suitable for under 15s and over 35s. Demographically it is suited towards both genders. Psychographically it is suited towards all social classes. Other channels owned by this broadcaster are...
Channel 4
Film4
More4
4Music
Heat
Kerrang!
Kiss TV
Magic
Smash Hits
The Box
4seven
E Stings is a competition managed by Channel 4 Television. The competition requires applicants to submit a no longer than 10 second channel ident for E4. The winner will receive £5000. The purpose of the competition is to give people a chance for their ident to be shown on their channel during commercial breaks. Here are 3 entries for the competition... Entry 1: Space Chimp by Shane Mellor
This video is very cartoon like and has been computer animated. It features a chimp picking up a can from a table, opening it and drinking it before closing his visor to his space suit. The E4 logo then appears on his visor and alternates between colours. The video has been shot as if from a home film camera with rec shown in the top left hand corner and other information around the frame. In terms of audience, this ident would be best suited for under 15s in my opinion due to the bright colours giving the whole advert a less mature look. The feature of a chimp or any sort of monkey really emphasizes a childlike theme because monkey's are seen as silly creatures to some. I liked this ident because of it's cartoon theme, I think it really suits the E4 logo because the logo is made up of 2 solid colours; white and purple. And the advert with the cartoon theme is made up of similar colours and really blends in well. Entry 2: Put a sock in it by Michael Sloan
I like the use of puppet animation in this ident because not many idents that have been entered into e-stings that are puppet animated and this makes their ident unique. In the ident the puppets are changing TV channels until they find E4. When they find E4 which appears as just their logo, the puppets cheer. In terms of audience children much younger than 9 might enjoy it because It looks very silly and childish. The fact that they're sock puppets adults right remember making them in primary school or nursery. Entry 3: Meteor by James Furr
I like this ident because it easily grabs out attention when we can't hear music or motion for the first few seconds but once the meteor comes in and the E4 logo is displayed I like how the logo has been recreated out of Plasticine. In the ident, the scene is set on a model hill with static people either side. Nothing happens until the meteor comes in. It fades to white and then emerges to a close up of the E4 meteor. Then another E4 logo comes in, this time it has been cut and printed on paper that is suspended by a pencil another sign suspended to a pencil shows the channel's website. In terms of audience, I believe this ident will mostly attract teenagers and above. It isn't particularly silly to be ideal for children but is more of action scene that would really be suitable even for young adults. Out of all of the idents that I have reviewd so far, this one fits in the best of E4s primary target audience.
Below, I have embeded my Thaumatrope, Praxinoscope and Zoetrope which were made for planning and preparation for this assignment. As it covered one key element; The Persistence of vision. This was the intention of each task. My Thaumatrope My Praxinoscope My Zoetrope
My Lego Animation
I set out to produce a smooth stop-motion animation. Which went pretty well in the end, had I had more time I could have made it a lot smoother by playing it back at 24fps (frames per second). What is shown in my animation is 12fps. Working with Lego and with any other object in general and trying to animate it is a fiddly thing as you have to ever so slightly move something per frame and being camera man and animator meant i kept switching to and from the camera to not only move something my scene but also go to the camera and take the picture. Lego is very easy to model with such as making strong structures such as buildings however there are some negatives to this. First off, it's Lego and it's copyrighted which means if it were to be used in a commercial production it would require permission to use which would usually involve a hefty fee to pay and second of all, character animations are hard to do because you cannot animate facial expressions or have any flexibility in the joints of both the arms and legs of the figure. Live Action Stop-Motion Animation (with Ruben and Toby) I didn't have any involvement with the idea because my original group who I was supposed to be with weren't here at the day of making so I joined with Ruben and Toby. My part of the production was to operate the camera capturing each frame of the animation. I was also involved with directing them into position and telling them things such as whether they were in frame or not. Ruben and Toby's idea was to make a stop-motion animation based of the game Mortal Kombat.where two opponents (Toby and Ruben) would fight each other. There was going to be a winner at the end of the stop-motion animation but the fight ends abruptly because we didn't have enough time to film the rest. We managed to get about 1/3 done. Our intention was to make our animation look like the game Mortal Kombat. The visuals looked good but what it was lacking is the infamous sounds that come from the game. We made a mistake in the editing process where we (or rather I) made the animation playback at 24fps which is not the standard frame rate stop-motion animation is played at. We should have set our fps to 12fps which would have been correct. Overall for our first go, I think we did alright! I am going to produce a object-based ESting because out of all the other types of e-sting I could make, an object based one gives me much more of a variety of objects I could use unlike Lego that is not only copyrighted but also limited in types of shape sizes and flexibility in animating arms and facial expressions on figures.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION At college, one of our assignments was to make a three minute long documentary for Channel 4's Three-Minute Wonder programme. We had the choice on what our documentary was about so the only limitation I had when making this was that it had to be 3 minutes long at max. What makes this assignment unique from the others was that it is the first assignment that was done individually so I was completely in control with what I wanted to make. I am specifically proud of this pre-production paperwork because it was all done myself unlike other assignments where I'm in a group as we split the paperwork up between us. To see my documentary and all my other work, click this link: http://robertlancasterportfolio.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/D.%20Practical%20Work Below is all of the pre-production work that was done before filming this production, please take a look... Recce - Oulton Broad, Lowestoft
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION In another assignment, we were given the task of creating an television advert for one of Unilever's products. We were placed in groups of 4 and part of the advert was to successfully re-target the brand's audience, We chose Ben & Jerry's ice cream. The advert had to be no more than 1 minute long and aside from that there was no more limitation. At college, one of our assignments was to make a three minute long documentary for Channel 4's Three-Minute Wonder programme. We had the choice on what our documentary was about so the only limitation I had when making this was that it had to be 3 minutes long at max. What makes this assignment unique from the others was that it is the first assignment that was done individually so I was completely in control with what I wanted to make. I am specifically proud of this pre-production paperwork because it was all done myself unlike other assignments where I'm in a group as we split the paperwork up between us. To see my advert and all my other video work, see this link: http://robertlancasterportfolio.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/D.%20Practical%20Work Below is all of the pre-production work that was done before filming this production, please take a look... Storyboard #1 - Completed by Robert Lancaster
Storyboard #2 - Completed by Leonie Westbrook Unfortunately, one of our storyboards went missing though we had it in our hands before we started shooting. It was lost after we had filmed and we couldn't find it to upload it to our blogs. Storyboard #3 - Completed by Reece Woodhouse
Shot List
Script
Location Recce - Priory Park
Location Recce - College West Block
Location Recce - Gorleston Beach
Location Release - College West Block
Minor Release - Connor
Minor Release - Leonie
Minor Release - Toby
Production Schedule
Budgeting Sheet
Please note: The receipt that was supposed to go on the sheet above wasn't going to fit as I thought you wouldn't be able to read it so I've uploaded it separately below... The items highlighted in the RED box are items used in our production.
Section 1: The brief a. What was the brief The brief was to rebrand a Unilever product to a new target audience. To do this, we were given a maximum of 90 seconds to create a TV advert targeting our new audience. b. What was your chosen product and how did you decide, as a group, to choose it? Our chosen product to rebrand was Ben & Jerry's. Two out of the three of us had already decided to rebrand Ben & Jerry's according to our Unilever presentations so we decided it was best to choose Ben & Jerry's as our product to rebrand. c. Who is the current target audience for the product and who did you decide to appeal to? Why? The current audience for Ben & Jerry's is children and teenagers with the exception of young adults as its secondary audience. We decided to target adults and above with our new advert, however there was a limitation with our actors as they didn't look that old so we decided that our advert should all be about couples and their relationships which current Ben & Jerry's adverts don't advertise. Section 2: The finished product and feedback a. How did you collect the feedback (comments from others) on your finished advert from your target audience? Provide a summary of the main points. Our main feedback came from the class. They watched our advert together and gave us feedback in person. Ellie also gave in feedback and that was really helpful because she had the experience to be able to professionally analyse our advert. We also collected feedback using an online survey site called SurveyMonkey. Unlike regular print based survey's, these are done electronically for three main reasons... The first being that since our advert was published online via the site YouTube it means that if the survey was print based you would require not only a computer to watch the advert but also the print based survey that you'll need a pen to fill out whereas if the survey was online both with the advert, it means that people filling out the survey would only require a computer to both watch the advert and fill out the survey making it more efficient to them. The second reason is that it is much easier to send out survey's via email to people you know instead of handing it to them in person when they are not always available. The third reason is that SurveyMonkey analyses and displays the results in a very pretty manner as you can see above, the fact that this does this for you automatically saves time compared to using PowerPoint and manually creating and inserting graphs and tables, this enables me to come to conclusions a lot quicker with my results. b. Appropriateness to audience: do you think you managed to get the main message to your target audience you specified in pre-production. Would the advert have an appropriate impact on them? Yes, the main message for our advert was that Ben & Jerry's brings people together and our plot complements this when we see a couple who had recently broken up come back together when presented with this ice cream. Our new flavours that we created were shown in our advert and was quickly picked up on by other people which was great. We chose new flavours to help the existing audience for Ben & Jerry's continue to buy their ice creams as well to attract new attention from new people. There is variation found in my survey when asked about who this advert targets. Here are just some of the results... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Quoted directly from Survey "20+ couples" "18+ students" "I think the advert targets couples between the ages of 20-30" -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- As mentioned in section 1 B, we initially targeted Ben & Jerry's for older couples but this changed when we realised that our actors don't look anything like them. c. Think about the technical and aesthetic qualities of your advertisement. Analyse your use of: mise-en-scene; camera; editing and sound. Mise-en-scene In the advert, Leonie and Connor are walking through a park holding hands showing signs that they are in a relationship. Leonie spots someone jogging past that takes her fancy. She says "wow!" in a sign that shows she is impressed. Without Leonie realising, Connor was hearing.Connor rather angrily confronts Leonie about what she says. Leonie tries to apologise but Connor won't accept it and walks away. The scene changes to a corridor, Leonie is sitting down on a bench on her phone texting Connor in a bid to meet up with him at the beach and to talk things through, Connor replies and agrees to meet up. Leonie smiles. The last scene is at a beach. Connor is sitting on a bench saddened by Leonie's betrayal. Leonie approaches Connor from the side, in her hands are tubs of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Leonie sits down on the other side of the bench. They turn to each other. Leonie apologises for the second time only this time she gives him a tub of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Connor smiles and forgives Leonie. The advert ends with a long shot of both of them sitting on a bench facing the sea. Graphics pop up along with the slogan, a narrator speaks. "Ben & Jerry's. For when sorry isn't good enough. Try our new flavours today!" Camera Work We used advanced techniques such as using the rule of thirds when filming some shots and a great way of showing this is from our close ups and over the shoulder shots...
I am unable to overlay a grid onto these images to prove they use the rule of thirds but hopefully you can visualise this using the grid below...
The content of our advert, incorporated a mixture of close ups, medium shots, long shots, over-the-shoulder shots and panning shots. We tried to make all the shots flow together but despite our best efforts, a couple of people commented on this as a negative thing... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Quoted directly from Survey "Flow of shots was disjointed at times" "Some of the shots were slightly disjointed" -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Editing Editing was a challenge and took longer than what I expected it to. I initially thought it would take a few days at the latest to finish editing our advert but I was wrong. We had to make a few changes prior to editing; when it came to filming the 'text messaging scene' I had planned to use over-the-shoulder shots but I then realised when framing the shot that you couldn't make out the text on the phone because it was too small so we had to do a bit of special effects to display. A lot of elements were involved when creating these text messages. We used Adobe After Effects CC to create the text messages. We tried to design the text messages so they look identical to the phones...
Editing the sound was one of the most annoying things to do. The reason behind this is that with each shot there was a different sound recorded with the clip whether in one you heard a passing truck and then it suddenly cuts off to another shot where you can hear nothing in the background, we tried to balance the sound out but in the end it didn't make as much of a difference as I'd hoped. We got comments on that... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Quoted directly from Survey "Audio in park could have been cleaner" "Audio quality couldda been a little better" -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Sound One of the most annoying things to edit in our advert was the sound. Our advert consists of both diegetic sounds (voices of characters) and non-diegetic sounds (background music). We also added in background sound when at the beach (seagulls). We made it so you won't be able to tell and no one picked it up in the survey so we did a very good job in hiding that up. However what was annoying about it you can see in the editing section above. d. Effectiveness of content: Do you think your finished advert effectively sells the product to the specified audience through its storyline/narrative? I do think that our finished advert effectively sells the product to the specified audience through its storyline/narrative. (you can see more information from Section 2: B)Our slogan at the end of our advert directly links with the narrative of the story told about separation and joining of a relationship. Most of the comments on my survey proved this, I have listed just some (you can see everyone's comment in the embedded Survey Results above).. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Quoted directly from Survey "A couple breaking up and getting back together because of Ben and Jerry's ice cream" "A couple break up, but are brought back together with the power of ice cream!" "Girlfriend is making up to boyfriend with ben and jerrys" -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- e. What was the effectiveness of the persuasion techniques you used to sell the product? We used AIDA as one of our persuasion techniques. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. Attention and Interest was used at the start of the advert where we had Leonie and Connor break up, we tried to have this relate to some people who have been broken from a relationship in the past or who are facing it right now. The music choice for this scene adds a bit of drama on top. Desire and Action happens when we first see Ben & Jerry's being presented to Connor who up until now hasn't accepted Leonie's apology, it is only when he see's Ben & Jerry's does he apologise because he loves it. f.Clarity of communication: what was the message you were trying to send to the target audience? What were the main techniques you used to send that message? e.g. I wanted to tell teen audiences that drinking Bovril is not just for older people so I used younger actors and hip/colloquial language to appeal to them in the hope that young audiences would identify with them. I wanted to tell the audience that Ben & Jerry's bring people together, the way I did this through my narrative. There's a seemly perfect relationship that falls apart in seconds. When the person causing the breakup (Leonie) tries to apologise, Connor doesn't accept it, it is only where Leonie apologises for a second time at the beach when presenting him with Ben & Jerry's does Connor finally accept her apology. So the slogan "When sorry isn't good enough" fits in perfectly with the narrative. See quotes listed in Section 2: D for more details. g. Overall, do you feel your advert is fit for purpose? i.e. does it look professional and does it comply with advertising regulations? You must extract information from the ASA/BCAP code here.
ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) are responsible for regulating what is allowed on TV. They regulate TV by using the UK Code of Broadcasting Advertising. BCAP (Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice) are the ones responsible for writing and maintaining the code. As quoted in my Prezi, I mentioned a couple of rules that have to comply to BCAP regulations. These are section 06 Privacy and 13 Food, food supplements and associated health and nutrition claims. 06 Privacy See more rules here: https://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Broadcast/CodeItem.aspx?cscid={32501c6e-37b7-48aa-976b-ae0f8ecba71f}#.VZuTWflVhBc
There are visibly no people in this advert apart from Leonie, Connor and Chris. I made sure to check that if there were anyone else seen in our advert we would either have to censor them out of shot or get permission from them to appear in our advert.
13 Food, food supplements and associated health or nutrition claims See more rules here: https://www.cap.org.uk/Advertising-Codes/Broadcast/CodeItem.aspx?cscid={933ab0c3-ed5b-4cb7-ba39-07e337bbc0f0}#.VZuRPflVhBc
As I am advertising food, these rules are especially important to this advert. There's only a small scene in the advert where they actually eat the ice cream. They did not eat multiple tubs of ice cream or eat a lot of ice cream from the tub so I am confident that our advert does not 'condone or encourage excessive consumption of any food' (13.3) I think our advert looks professional enough to any person viewing it. I spent time to frame the shots carefully and the visual quality itself of the advert would look good if played back on YouTube (as an example). Would I be bold enough to say it looked good enough to appear on television? No. One of the reasons include the sound quality; the audio quality is degraded slightly in some shots but another important reason is that the music used in the background with the advert is royalty free but to be broadcast on TV you are effectively earning money from that advert (in other words commercially) which is not what all royalty free music allows you to do and you will likely have to contact the owner and/or buy a licence in order to use that music which may involve paying the composer. Section 3: Personal reflection a. How does the final advertisement compare with your original intentions? Reflect on your documentation, e.g. your storyboards and other pre-production, final advertisement and audience / peer / tutor feedback. Our original idea was to use the pub instead of the park for our "break up" scene where Leonie and Connor both go their separate ways. However we failed to get permission so we had to alter our shot list, script and other paperwork. Fortunately at the time, we hadn't yet made a start on the storyboards so we didn't have to make many corrections. Our intentions were met as we wanted to advertise Ben & Jerry's to an older audience preferably adults and above but in the end we settled for couples. Despite the location change, the plot for our advert remained the same with the relationship which breaks up over a row but then comes back together when eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream. b.Self-evaluation: Reflect on how satisfied you are with your final advert. Would you do anything differently if you were to undertake the task again? Finally, evaluate your own involvement in the project. Overall, I was very happy in the way our advert looked. There were a few elbows that we could of ironed out. I wasn't so happy with the music choice specifically the choice of music that started and ended with the beach scene. I wouldn't be the only one to disagree as we've all said that the music just doesn't blend with what was previously played. It was all a bit too romantic and bit cheesy. The audio isn't as clean as I'd like as some sounds are cut off as the shots transition, it was all supposed to fade in to each other creating a smooth transition but the editing was a challenge and despite all the effort, we failed.
