CDM 322
Advertising
My Mock advert:
This mock export advertises PROPERCORN, which is a popcorn product widely known. Edited using Premiere Pro.
Advertisements Analysis:
To get to know about adverts and how to make them better than others, we needed to research how people develop an ad and how they convey a unique selling point, so that they are different from any other advert. So, whilst researching ads, I discovered that many adverts like to show an odd aspect. For example, the Doritos ad that I showcased, I talked about how they make their advert really weird and odd, as they have a pregnant woman and the Dad communicates with the baby, with a Dorito, as the Baby moves to where the Dorito goes. So, this could mean that many adverts perform better, when they showcase a weird aspect to them.
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To view the full analysis document, click the button down below:
Write-Up for Mock Advert:
After finishing the mock advert, we needed to publish a write-up for how we went on to filming it and what went wrong whilst filming and/or editing.
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To view the full write-up document, click the button down below:
Pre-Production for Advertisement:
Mood board:
For the mood board and colour palette, I needed a warm vibe to match the coffee place, since the lighting at our location is very warm. Additionally, the warmth is associated with coffee itself as people enjoy drinking coffee and vibe with it. For designing the mood board, I thought of including pics from the "Mana House" website, so our mood board included relevant images associated with the things that our client provides, for a community experience.
Preview(Click view more):
Shot List:
So that we could execute our film as quickly as possible without much thought process, our group decided to make a shot list, so that we can refer to something that would help us shoot with the favoured shot types. In addition to this, a shot list helps us make a storyboard, so our scenes would match everyone's expectations and viewpoints.
Recce Doc:
A recce document shows all of the permissions we have access to, set dressing and props, as well as the noise and sound quality that the location has:
Both Versions and Write-Up
My Write-Up:
The Brief:
Our brief was to contact a client for an advertisement that would be separated into two exports: a 30 second version and a 5-10 second instagram version. My group had a few options for clients. For example, we had a sock company, which sounded really unique as you would never really see an advert for a sock company on TV. The sock company also had a few cons such as the fact that it is just one type of sock and it is not located at a specific location. Another option was to film an advertisement for Radical Roasters, which is a specialised coffee shop which is widely diverse. Radical Roasters has good lighting and it is a big minorities community, so it would work well for filming without worrying too much about lighting and it has a unique selling point, which aims for the brief's expectations. After looking over these options, we finally went with The "Mana House" which is a bar/community place, where you can eat/drink and play several table-top games with possible new faces. This importantly adds to the unique selling point aspect, as it sells a customer's experience of having fun playing a few games and meeting new people and even visiting the bar section for a quick bite or drink.
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These multiple pros had us sold to film at The "Mana House", so Hannah got in contact with the manager of the place, and he got back in touch quickly, where he accepted permission to film there for a day or 2 if we needed to for extra shots or a B-roll. To double check confirmation to film there, Hannah phoned the manager up and we were definitely able to go there and film. This meant that we could go forward and start with the pre-production section of the advertisement brief, which we had to: list our desired shot types, write up a recce document, write up a risk assessment document, write up an advertisement analysis, contact information with our client on a document, mood boards/storyboards, a kit list and a daily shooting schedule. Some of these tasks were completed in our group and then added to google drive, in the "My Work" folder. For the shot list we came up with many ideas, such as: Extreme close-up whip pan, wide-shot of the D&D players, B-roll of people playing, bird's eye view of people playing D&D, which could be sped up in to a time lapse.
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After all of the pre-production was completed, we were all ready to film at The "Mana House" on Tuesday the 3rd of October. Once we got there, we set up the lighting and the camera to the correct settings.However, it took quite a long time to focus the camera on manual mode for our first set of whip pan shots, so we had to play around for a while to get the camera to focus even when panning back to the subject. When the camera worked for us, we started shooting more extreme close-ups and then some shots of us playing D&D, using wide shots and bird's eye view shots. For the bird's eye view, we brought a metal pole with us which allowed the camera to be secured at a height and without any stabilisation errors. Harry Wilton even brought a gimbal which is a technical device for really good stabilisation, whilst moving your camera around free hand. This allowed us to film shots that required us to move the camera backwards whilst a dice is rolling towards it and a few shots of the scenery.
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Whilst filming at The Mana House we encountered a few more problems, such as the natural lighting, since it was messing up certain shots, where the camera is pointing in the direction of the exterior of The Mana House. We could have solved this, but there was a missing curtain to block the sunlight. In addition, near the beginning of filming, we didn't have a chef ready, but we were fortunate that the shot with the chef wasn't until later. What eventually resolved this issue, was that the manager of The Mana House decided to be chef. Jordan also took some behind the scenes shots, which you can view near the end of this website.
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Once we had filmed everything at "The Mana House", we got all of the SD cards together and started sorting through all of the footage. Fortunately, macbooks have a file feature, where you can either tag a file as red/amber or green. Subsequently, I labelled all of the footage that I thought worked best for an advert as "green" and shots that I thought could work but maybe I wouldn't use, as "Amber". "Red" would have of-course gone towards shots that wouldn't work at all, but I will still keep them just in case I needed them in the future.
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Export of the Instagram Version:
For the instagram format, I had to change the resolution on my timeline, so that when watching the advert on a phone, it would fit the whole screen on the phone, not just taking up a little space. So, I changed the resolution to 1080 by 1920. However, this meant that I had to change the scale of each shot and the positioning, so that you could see the main subject. Fortunately, my graphic for when the logo moves to the corner of the screen wasn't affected, so when changing the scale of the shot, the logo still moved to its location.
30 Second Ad:
For the 30 second Advert, I chose quite a few shots from the filming that I thought suited best for including the unique selling point. For example I wanted to show that The "Mana House" offers an experience of table-top gaming and a bar to have a snack/drink whilst you enjoy a game with people you maybe just met. So, I gathered some footage of the several games that they offer, such as Monopoly and Chess. To show off as many games as possible, I used a match cut off of each game within the same frame of the camera, whilst adding text on top of each shot, so when you play the footage, the text will pop up for each game, when each game is on frame. I have also done a similar thing when it came to showcasing each scenery of the different tables at The "Mana House". To do this, we placed a 20 sided dice on each table, with the number 20 facing the camera, for continuity. Then, we changed the camera's settings, so that there would be a shallow depth of field to have the viewer only focus on the dice and also take in a bit of the scenery. With the dice shots, I went to put the clips next to each other(they were shortened) and when played, the dice shots would play one after the other. To get the shallow depth of field that we achieved, we modified the camera's f-stop to a low number, so that it would let a lot of light into the lens.
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When adding the text for the match cut shots, I centred the text, then went into effect controls, where I changed the blend mode to either screen or overlay. This made the text show a little bit of the scenery of the shot on to the text which allowed for a unique aesthetic of each shot. For shots where the camera pans to the subject, I applied default transitions to the pan, so when the camera comes back, a different subject would be facing the camera. Without intention, for one of the whip pan shots, the default transitions added a ghosting effect, where two subjects align on to the frame, until they meet.
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Additionally, when adding the logo of The "Mana House", I wanted the logo (transparent) to move until it reached the dice that the camera was pointing at. What is good about this idea was that the logo fortunately matched the sides of the dice, so it would perfect the merging of them. I initially went with a logo that wasn't transparent, but this didn't look that good because it would obstruct the dice and wouldn't match at all.
5-10 second Ad:
Since we have already got all of the shots, we could just move on to the Instagram version, but this time restricting how much footage we use, as we don't want to have lots of shots, that would go over the time limit. So, I picked out all of the shots that i thought expressed the unique selling point of The "Mana House" the most. These shots were the pouring of the drink and the collection of table-top games.
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In addition, since this version of the ad is only 10 seconds max, I decided t include lots of effects to add more to the advertisement, without increasing the video length. Scroll up through my website to see more on how i used effects and what effects I used. To reduce the length of each shot, I either would cut to the most relevant part or speed up the clip, but sometimes I unlinked a shot and its audio and grabbed that audio to put it under another shot, so that I could link two shots together that would match each other.
Youtube Short of Instagram Advert:
My instagram short version was my 6th version export from Premiere Pro as this edit was reviewed and modified quite a few times.
Effects:
Since the Instagram version is only 10 seconds, I wanted to add quite a few effects, so that each shot would look even better in a short amount of time. For example, I have included "Posterize time" on a copied shot above and this basically allows for a ghosting of the subject for when you lower the frame rate on it to "3" for example. I even used "Replicate", which creates multiple windows of the subject, which makes the shot look as though it has been taken on a broken lens. This works well with the tension that the board games at The "Mana House" has to offer.
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In addition to these effects, I also added the "Eyedropper Fill", which essentially picks out different colours from a chosen shot and simultaneously goes through each colour, whilst it is blended on top of the clip. I merged this effect with the "Checkerboard" effect, so that it makes the shot look comic-like, with the added colour from the "Eyedropper".
The 30 second Ad:
The Advertisement for The "Mana House" is now on YouTube.
My favourite shots from the 30 secs Ad:
1.) This shot is my number one favourite, since it is so stabilised with a nice shallow depth of field. When filming this shot, we slowly moved the camera backwards, as the dice was being rolled onto the scenery. Additionally, this shot works well for my advert as it shows off the attention to detail that the "Mana House' has to offer as they have made their own custom tables for people to walk by and admire.
2.) For my second favourite shot, I went with the extreme close-up of Hannah's eyes as it has a nice shallow depth of field and worked well when having a combination of extreme close-ups. For some reason this shot took a long time, but was worth it as the lighting is very warm to correlate to the warm vibe that the "Mana House" has to offer.
3.) My third favourite is from my match cut, where we filmed multiple games that are within the same frame and when editing, I placed each game side by side, so when watching the match cut, each game is presented. Match cuts are useful when showing off what the "Mana House" has to offer when it comes to the community experience, which is what we are trying to sell.
4.) My fourth favourite shot is the final shot from my Advert and I particularly like it due to how the camera comes up next to the dice which is in line with the game of DND where we were all sat down ready to eat some food. This shot has the "Mana House" logo as well in which it moves frame by frame by using the positioning key, until it reached the dice to match the frame of it.
5.) For my final favourite shot, I went with Harper's face being ghosted on the whip pan edit. This wasn't intended when editing, but it worked really well, as when panning back to Harper's face, Hannah's face was also in frame, which had a really cool effect, where both Hannah and Harper are in the shot. This was actually possible by using default transitions to where it fades in onto the first clip of Hannah, but then fades out to Harper's face.
My favourite effects and shots from the Instagram version:
This shot is favoured as I have used the checkerboard effect to match the unique selling point of "The Mana House" and I had managed to spin the text all the way round to have it go with the funky background music. The reason for adding all of this was to bring more entertainment, since the Instagram version can only be 5-10 seconds.
For my second favoured shot, I went with the rolling the dice shot, where I have included multiple effects to bring on a couple more windows of the subject and then make it overlay onto the original clip, for a tense atmosphere to go with the D&D game. There is text as well, as I say "Roll to hit" in the audio, but I wanted to present it on screen as well, so a quick "ROLL TO HIT" appears, one word after the other.
For our match cut, my favourite shot of all of the board games was this scrabble shot, as the letters on the board make "The Mana House", so it is kind off like a direct target to the viewers, as the shot is basically saying that if you want to go somewhere exclusive to play table-top games and have a drink or a bite, "The Mana House" is the place to go.
Adding lightning to this shot and including VR glow helped make it look epic with the drink being poured. Yet again, I had added these effects, so the footage would look more entertaining in just a few seconds. The glow as you can see goes around certain things and the way I added this was to use the marker tool, which allowed me t shape around the glass and this matches with the lightning as well.
Screen Recording: How I edited "The Mana House":
In this video, I briefly went over how I edited "The Mana House", which took a long time as I had a few people from my group and other groups review my timeline and from their viewpoints, I made many modifications, such as changing the framing of a shot to match others, by changing the rotation. Throughout this video I go over my effects used and how I moved logos on a clip using the key tool.
Behind The Scenes:
1.) These behind the scenes shots were kindly taken by Jordan and they show the difficulties when filming and the setting up of the camera, which took some getting used to. This shot shows the part, where we wanted to get the camera to pan across from one of the cast and then pan back, but when editing, the pan back will go to another subject. The problem we had with this, was the fact that when panning back, the subject would go blurry. So, the only way to really fix this issue, was to just keep trying, until we got a few good shots of the panning.
2.) For this shot, we wanted a nice bird's eye view for the match cut shots and when setting this shot up, it didn't actually take that long as Hannah was quick to set it up as she knew how to operate it. This subsequently meant that we could be quick to also set up the board games, such as: Doctor Who, Scrabble, Chess etc. As you can see from the camera's settings, we used the standard shutter speed of 1/50, an F-stop of 4.5 and an ISO of 500, for a warm vibe to the picture.
3.) This third shot shows the aesthetics of "The Mana House" as they offer an experience to character models, which were designed and hand crafted to a level of detail. These models were used when we were playing D&D and when showing them off with the camera, which allowed us to convey the unique selling point, so we could portray "The Mana House" as a unique place to go to meet new people and eat/drink at the bar section.
4.) When taking these behind the scenes shots, we could also show the scenery of "The Mana House", in which they show off multiple cards, figures and table sceneries that they offer for an experience. Additionally, at "The Mana House" the lighting was warm, but still not that good enough to go fully off of it, so we opted to also use our key light when needed.
To view more of the behind the scenes shots click the button:
Evaluation:
After reviewing my adverts, I conclude that there were many strengths and weaknesses to my project. In terms of the weaknesses, I feel that for one reason, I struggle with a camera's auto/manual focus, as when I want to film shots that involve a-lot of movements, I can't seem to figure out how the camera suddenly goes blurry after a continuous amount of time trying to work on how to solve this issue. My goal for this issue would to be able to operate a camera's settings for manual/auto focus, especially when the camera is moving a-lot. The steps that I could take involve me watching a tutorial on YouTube for how to use these settings on a camera or practising very other day. I would know that I have improved on this issue, because my footage would look in focus and it would also be in focus when the camera is moving a-lot of the time. A prime example of this was when we were actually filming at "The Mana House", as when doing the whip-pan shots, panning back to the subject would result in blurry footage. So, this took a few attempts, which made our shoot take longer.
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In addition to my weaknesses, I also have difficulty managing certain tripods, as when setting up at "The Mana House" I couldn't figure out how to take the slider off to attach onto the camera, but if this was the tripod from college, then it would have been fine. So, when taking steps to solve this, I will hopefully be able to work with multiple tripods and I will know that I have improved as I can be able to set up a few tripod that are different from one another.
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Additionally, I do not understand fully how to correctly change the camera's settings when the lighting is different. For example, when we might change the lighting to a more warm atmosphere, I would have to change the ISO on the camera, so it wouldn't be too over exposed, but i find that I can't find which settings sometimes work best. To improve on this, I will experiment with different lighting circumstances and figure out which ISO works best and record these results, so that I will be quicker each time. I will know that I have improved, when I can efficiently work with different camera settings, for different lighting each time.
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Overall, my editing skills shown great since I managed to pull off quite a few effects which added to the detail of the advert. For example I used effects, such as lightning and checker board. This was mainly because I am an experienced Premiere Pro person, having experience from my secondary school, as I used the editing software after filming many projects for Creative Media. I have had experience with using cameras as well, but the cameras we use at college are a little different from the ones I used to use as I used to not know about ISO,F-stop or shutter speed, but these settings are prominent in the cameras we use at college and rather than having the camera automatically configure these settings for filming, I have to get used to changing these settings manually for different circumstances. Although I have mentioned a few mistakes, I think I can easily learn from them and having a look at my final export of both versions, I think that I have done a good job at using all of our footage and executing it in a well developed way with the help of effects, text on screen with an overlay and background music, which matches D&D.
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For next time we film, which is going to be the recreating scenes, I would like to have mastered a tripod, have gotten used to multiple camera settings and I would like to film some tricky shots, where there is a lot of movement. As for the editing section of our next unit, I would prefer to have watched even more Premiere Pro videos of effects and good use of footage, so I can improve even more. If I have improved on any of these, I would eventually know after completing the filming process and the editing side.
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Pre-Production was a big strength of this unit, as I managed to fill out all of the documents and I even created many extra google slides, which we didn't even have to do, but it will help exponentially for the final grade.
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In conclusion to my evaluation, I hope to have achieved what I have stated in this evaluation for our next unit, but I would also like to continuously achieve more every unit, so for the final few units, I will have shown that each film is better each time.