DVD Cover Design

I have created a design for my DVD cover based on the design of the animated menus. This provides me with an existing framework but also consistency between what's on the outside and what's on the inside.










I believe this be sufficient for submission but I am unsure as to certain aspects such as logos, so I have left them off.

Film List

I made a list of all the films and the categories they are contained in.

General Message:
1. Small Things by Guy
2. If by Roarke
3. CO2 Addict by Alister
4. CO2 Timeline by Matt
5. Your Country Needs You by Toby
6. The Attack of Carbonzilla by Christian

Food:
1. Bin Liners by Alister
2. Shop Local by Jack Layfield
3. Dig for Victory by Toby
4. Waste Not Want Not by Jack Wells

Transport:
1.Car Crash Bang Wallop by Matt
2.The Return of Carbonzilla by Christian

Lifestyle:
1. Recycle by Guy
2. New Outfit? by Jack Wells
3. Not a Superhero by Steven

DVD Design Ideas

In preparation for the DVD design pitch I have come up with some ideas for possible designs. The first idea I came up with was very simple, but I have rejected this pretty early on because I recognise my idea from somewhere else and I don't intend to press forward with a design that is already out there.











My second idea is to use textures and slightly abstract imagery. An image of a planet sitting at the top of the screen, paint then sprays out the sides and drips down the paper background. The camera then turns sideways and the paint stops, then the menu items appear.











I am not sure about the relevance of my menus, but I also don't know how relevant they have to be. Here is a video preview:

Submission for Client Approval - Monday 22nd February

Today, Monday 22nd February, I submitted my completed videos to the client Nick Adlam by presenting them on the projector in class. He seemed pleased overall. While his general lack of feedback on the videos left me feeling like he wasn't that interested he accepted them both and seemed happy with the overall message and the presentation.

For my Food base idea Nick, along with Andrew, had no requests or ideas for improvements and that video was accepted as it was which left me surprised but pleased. The CO2 addict video was probbably different from what he was expecting and he was more vocal about this one. Nick and Andrew both provided some suggestions. The only real problem Nick had with it was that he said that he felt the ending just cuts off like we are missing something, and I would agree. I couldn't quite work out how to end it correctly. The 2 suggestions I was givn for how to end it was a comical sign off, showing how he's changed or a small fade/cut with some appropriate text. To make room for this I was advised to cut down one of the sequences earlier in the video to 2 shots instead of 4.

I will need to make these improvements by Thursday 25th February to submit to the server.

Post Production Effects

The look of the raw video is not very good. It has very little contrast, harsh saturation and looks quite grainy. To make my footage look better I have used After Effects to apply several filters/effects to achieve something that looks better. The top is the raw image and the bottom is the edited version.













I have used colour correction, adjusted the levels to give it more contrast, lowered the saturation to create a bleached effect and created a simple 2D depth of field effect using a gradient ramp.

In Production: Bin Liners

Here is some image preview on me putting together some of my props. I had over estimated how much I could fit in to the pan, so I had to do a lot of trimming to find something that would fit and hold together without gluing or sticking it inside.


























I wil require much more black bag to coat the inside of the oven.

CO2 Shoot Roundup

Having finally shot my CO2 video I can begin editing. There were many problems shooting this. I had to change some things on the fly, I had to change my ideas for camera positioning and angles. The actor I used did some variations on the lines I wrote which added something to them. I had the idea of recording a short and a characterised version of each line, but unfortunately some of the takes were ruined by an external noise or mistake that I didn't notice at the time.

Overall I learnt a lot about directing an actor and compromises I might have to make while filming if I make mistakes in my planning.

CO2 Addict Script

Here is a basic draft of the script for my CO2 addict film:



Tom: “Hi... my name’s Tom... and I’m a CO2 addict.”

*cutaway* Turning light switch on and off

Tom: “I’ve been addicted for 6 years now... and I’ve done stupid things to feed my addiction.”

*cutaway* Going to suck on car exhaust

Tom: “It’s easy to just keep using more and more and not seeing the effect it has.”

*cutaway* Sitting in living room surrounded by electronics

Tom: “But... yah know, my family have been very supportive and I’ve been clean for 6 months...
I don’t need it any more.

*cutaway* Turning off switches

Tom: “I can walk to town. I don’t have to take the car... right?”

*cutaway* Holding car keys, shaking

CO2 Addict

Due to the challenges presented by filming this idea I have had to adapt it to my skill and what resources I have available. I severely underestimated the planning, and with delays from the people I was counting on to 'act' for me I have had to postpone filming for much longer than I had intended and therefore had to scale back slightly and rethink my ideas based on some of my additional research.

I have changed my idea from a help/support group to an addict interview, as I saw in my social media addicts research proving it to be an acceptable format for my original concept. I will shoot the interview portion in a room, perhaps an office setting with neutral walls and objects. I will have some cutaways as originally planned, but might change and develop them to be more interesting.

Logistics and Planning

Now that I have 3 ideas that the client would like to see produced, I must work out exactly what I need to produce them, and the feasibility of my ideas.

1. General: Addicted to CO2

Setting:
Neutral, bland room. Clean, mostly empty. Small - medium square room.

Location:
Community centre room, or one of the smaller teaching rooms.

Characters:
One adult male, 18 - 30 as the main character. Other people in the room any gender or race, between 18 - 80. A variety would be good.

Props:
Chairs (to sit in).
Plastic/Ceramic Cups (to make it look like they have refreshments)
Car

Equipment:
Camera
Tripod
External Mic (Boom)




2. Food: Bin Bags

Setting:
Kitchen. Medium size. Clean, light. Standard layout, well furnished.

Location:
Flat or house kitchen.

Characters:
One adult, 18 - 30 as the main character.

Props:
Pots
Pans
Hob
Microwave
Bin Liners
Wooden Spoon
Carrot
Potato
Chicken


Equipment:
Camera
Tripod
External Mic (Boom)



3. Consumption: Child in a Box

Setting:
Several locations, inside and outdoors.

Location:
Shop
House
Bedroom
Kitchen
Lounge
Street

Characters:
One male (adult, young adult or teenager).
One child.

Props:
Bin

Equipment:
Camera
Tripod
External Mic (Boom)

Thumbnail Storyboards

I prepared some thumbnail storyboards for the presentation. I had so many ideas that I didn't draw them up in to full, big storyboards because I wasn't sure which ideas the client would like to use, although it still would have been good to have as much detail as possible. They show my 5 ideas as well as commentary on what will be going on and timings.
























































I will draw up some of these in to full storyboards.

Pitch Feedback

I gained a lot of useful feedback from the pitch, from the client as well as the lecturers and classmates. First of all, of the 5 ideas I pitched the 3 favourites were:

• General: Addicted to CO2
• Food: Bin Liners
• Consumption/Lifestyle: Child in a Box.

The motion graphics facts one was considered overdone and I was told not to make this one, much to my disappointment. I wanted to do a motion graphics video, but I know I should do what is best for the brief. Also, my 'Evolution of Walking' video was not very well received. I am not sure if it was considered 'bad' or just not as good as the 3 other ideas that were picked out. Ironically these ideas are the 2 that I developed the most and are my favourites but

Of all of them the Child in a box idea seemed the most popular, and most of the feedback was focused on that.

• The child should remind people of that unpleasantness of children/being a child
• Could be an older person pretending to be a child
• Could be a woman with a child (but might mistake it for a mother relationship)
• Walk past a shop window with better, smarter, cleaner children
• Could be an adult man who buys it
• Make the child a purchase rather than a gift
• Could be a brother and sister looking relationship, so someone else young

Another important issue raised is that I need to get written clearances from my 'actors' including the children (parents) otherwise the council can't use them. I will do some research in to the clearances and make it as professional as possible so when I hand them to the client it will be clear what they are.

The following lesson Andrew provided some additional feedback through the notes he wrote down during the pitch, which he has now distributed to us. Here are the notes:

Ali
PowerPoint - [presentation]
- good graphics
- Reading and a lot of text.

Adicted to CO2
- humourous
- video examples

Information overload
- Dynamic text
- Simple visual style
- Text moving with right angles.

Video 2: Food
- The wasting of food

Video 3 Transport
- using fun with walking styles
- Funny walks with captions

Video 4 Consumption and lifestyle
- child representing a piece of technology
- The boy is the phone and is put in the rubbish.
- do two or three inc the phone one and the addicted
- Amusing and quirky voices
- what about the boy being an adult that is green screened overlaid etc via After Effects.
- Different characters can relate to different technological devices and one can feel envious of another or overtaken by another but they both share the same fate and are both discarded.
- Can have other discarded children/ characters to create metonym of a world full of thoughtless throw away actions.
- Changing emotions of the phone/boy/ character, smug, working, concerned by rival, forlorn and rejected

It seems like I have a lot of work to do. Idea development, design decisions based on the feedback, serious planning and of course production and post production.

Client Pitch Part 2

This concludes my presentation.

Client Pitch Part 1

I prepared a slideshow presentation for my pitch to the client. Here are the slides from that presentation. I used some artwork I made at the start of the project to make the title screen more interesting.




















































































This is the first half of the presentation.

Climate Change: Food

Here is some research on the food topic in this project.



Here is a good video of a Peter Griffith, an agriculturalist from Shropshire talking about the carbon footprint on food production. Carbon footprint in food production is about "taking more than you need". Food is 13-14% of the average UK residents carbon footprint including production, processing, distribution, packaging and the fuel it takes you to get to the shop to buy it.

Agriculture is 44% of food production emissions. The reason for this is a lot of methane and nitros oxide is released, 21x and 10x more potent respectively. It's a system which produces these which add to the carbon footprint by releasing even worse greenhouse gases than CO2.

Transport of food is about 16%, half of which is heavy goods vehicles. The food miles aren't much of a big issue, since the agricultural side is so much worse. Reducing food miles will have an impact but not as much as changing your diet. By being vegetarian you eliminate the methane and CO2 generated by cows and turning them in to beef.

Research: Social Media Addict

The videos are a series of virals for a Sony laptop.




The video series are mock interviews and some of them are mock meetings for people addicted to social media. Some are very brief, but some are several minutes long. They feature very little other than a person looking towards the camera explaining their addiction. The age ranges of the people are varied, it doesn't seem important who is speaking so long as they look like the average person or someone relate-able. The dialogue is very upbeat and cheeky.

One of the interesting things about the pacing is that the short videos don't give time for introductions, it just dives straight in there. This time constraint creates a mystery to the piece because at first you aren't sure what the relevance is if you know the topic, or if you don't know then you aren't sure what the topic is. As in this example, where he is talking about World of Warcraft but you aren't sure why:




This next one is more direct, whereas the others were comedic. It's an actor claiming to be the organizer explaining the issue.

Research: Body Shaped Insulation

This animated short is a comical stab at our society with a green message. It shows an alien/monster suggesting a great idea to cut down on our heating - body shaped insulation. It soon becomes apparent that this idea is just clothes, different clothes that people can wear to cover themselves and use the heat stored in their body rather than turning some on.

I could use this idea of mocking a solution to climate change by introducing a very familiar concept, and this might open people's eyes to what they can do. Simple, but effective.

Research: Gusty and Ford

This is a very interesting and funny video. It uses a narrator to tell a grand tale, except all he is describing are road signals and signs and interpreting them in to a novel style story. It's genius lies in the interpretation of every day signs, that we don't see anything in but through this persons mind they represent something much more elaborate. The advert is to encourage people to walk instead of drive with the angle that walking can be more interesting.

Research: The Fun Theory

As a piece of viral marketing by Volkswagen is part of a project called 'The Fun Theory', asking can we get more people to take the stairs (instead of an escalator) by making it fun to do. This is an interesting theory, and the overall question is whether you can change behaviour by making an activity fun. In the piano video there are obviously health benefits from taking the stairs because you are using more muscles than simply standing and being lifted and moved across. The idea of making it fun makes it easier for people to choose between something that is beneficial for them over convenience, something that could ring true for my global warming message.

Using the idea of making beneficial things fun is a good one, but I wonder if they 'own' this idea, so anything I do in the same vein would be a complete rip off. If I even mention the idea of fun literally or through the video it will be in the shadow of this. Still, putting the 'good' thing in light of a positive thing like fun, it can enhance your message.



Here is another video in the series, they attempted to make putting rubbish in the bin more fun ad they found that more people would put rubbish in the bin than in a regular bin. This kind of idea is more workable. I could make an aspect of action against climate change, or recyling, seem fun or enjoyable.




This video is even more related to what I am doing. They applied their theory to a bottle bank, making recycling fun. They made a game out of it, in the style of a traditional arcade game with points. People putting their bottles in according to the lights and trying to get a high score. The bottle bank was used by over 100 people, and a nearby regular bottle bank was used by just 2 in the day. I could portray the act of recycling in a fun way by making it in to a game, or making a game out of carbon dieting or energy saving.

Research: Clean Coal Clean

This video parodies the coal industries attempts to make coal clean, even though it is a fossil fuel and still a problem for climate change. In the video they say that they add the word clean to make you think it's clean. It uses cheesy actors to add to the comedy of the parody. I could use this sense of parody to convey my message, by showing the opposite of what you should do in a laughably bad way.