Stop Motion...

I want to create a short series of films using stop motion. I will be filming and friends and hopefully maybe some bands...

I want to look at different types of stop motion and what it has been used for...

Below is my friends band, they created this stop motion music video, I think it works really well and I like its quirkiness.

I love this stop motion video by deadline:

I'm thinking of using some kind of idea like this one in my films, obviously a lot shorter than this.

Although very simple, the video below could look really well with things going on the background too?

Another stop motion music video - Ok Go

And another...

MEADOWLANDS FESTIVAL.

We have been asked to create promo films for Meadowlands festival in Lewes. A minimum of one and pretty much whatever we want to do within reason. They are also looking for other ideas of how to promote the festival...

'How can we make people more aware/excited about Meadowlands festival?'

Some promotion ideas:

• Flyers
• Posters
• YouTube videos
• Bus Stop posters
• Sticker Campaigns
• Badges
• Lollypops
• Headbands
• Bottle Jacket
• Local Media
• Clothing Merch
• Virals - Funny, shocking, rude, quirky
• Mapping
• Blogs
• Competitions
• Music Video competition
• Meadowlands game
• YouTube channel - Meadowlands

Evaluation...

I have created;

3 short films

7 Floor vinyl graphics

1 entry to YCN PDF

I am pleased with my overall work. I have created 3 films which I believe encourage the public to travel by Thames Clippers. I particularly like my floor decals, I think they are simple and punchy showing complete opposites, I know I would prefer to travel by river than by underground or driving!

After completing my PDF I really like the word association design on those 2 pages. They are very bold and I think a nice poster design, I wish I had time to submit those as posters with some editing but I do not!

YCN Entry PDF

To go with my entry to the YCN competition I need to create a PDF that explains what my design is about and why I have done it. I used InDesign to create this. I wanted to use the colours of the Thames Clippers logo, so I have set a grey background to each page with the Thames Clippers logo top right. I will use orange, white and black for text. I made swatches of the exact colours from the logo.

I want to include the following pages:
1. Title page
2.Summary of the brief and my proposal
3.Film stills and brief explanation
4.Floor stickers and word association for Thames Clippers
5. Floor stickers and word association for other transport
6.Where my designs will be showcased and how they can be developed.

I want to keep the PDF as brief and short as possible, no one is going to want to trail through loads of pages of text!

Title page:
Proposal:

Film still page:

I took screenshots of some scenes from the films and used to grids to place them cleanly on the page.

Thames Clippers word association and floor stickers:
I want my word association to look punchy and eye catching, I used the Thames Clippers colours and various text sizes.



Next to the word association I will have some images of the floor stickers
Other transport word association and floor stickers:

I wanted to make a difference between this page and the last and thought it would be a good idea to use some striking red in the word association.





After printing my PDF out I went through and did some changes to make it look better, I made various images bigger, text smaller, and changed some spacing. Below is my final PDF..

I am pleased with my final PDF. Its very short and sweet and I think thats what it needs to be.

Floor stickers

Instead of creating normal wall posters I want to make circular floor stickers. The designs can be printed onto vinyl and stuck directly onto the ground! I took photographs of landmarks around London on a sunny day and photos of crowds, escalators, feet etc to get the opposite feel. I want to use the phrase 'What did you see on your way in?' So the viewer looks and thinks, I saw a queue at the station when I could have got a seat on the river on a sunny day! I edited the photos in Photoshop to be really sharp, bright and inviting... I then edited my photos in Photoshop to circles. I added the text 'What did you see on your way in?' centered in the middle of each one. I wanted to use the font Gill Sans as this is used throughout my campaign and is easy to read. I used various colours, only originally going to use black and white depending on the picture but ended up going for postbox red too as this really stands out. I created 7 floor stickers, 3 of which I had printed and I am really pleased with them. I recommend to print to a diameter of 500mm for maximum impact. The final 7 stickers are shown below. These can be developed a lot further and my idea is for eventually the public uploading their own images of 'What they saw on their way in'

Editing...

I then had to start cutting my footage down, I had hours of footage I didn't need. I want my film to be around 30 seconds long, Not 5 hours!

I picked my clips that I thought would work and cut them down roughly first in Quicktime. I then had to convert my movs to pro res in Compressor. I had a problem with this as when I went to submit them in Compressor the button was greyed out and wouldn't let me, I think I had a dodgy copy or something. I had to borrow a friends laptop saying it'll only take 10 minutes, it ended up taking over 4 hours... Woops.

I converted them to Apple Pro Res 720, this means I can now edit freely using Final Cut Pro.

I uploaded all the clips I was thinking of putting in my film to Final Cut Pro (About 50ish)

I then started playing around with the clips in the timeline, putting them in the order I wanted. I only imported the clips for the hectic part of the film, the river footage will be done later. It took a really long time getting the clips in order, I had to think about time aswell, even though I will obviously be cutting down a lot, there was a large number of clips!

When I thought I had the clips in the right order I slowly started cutting down my clips, this took hours!

I can always swap them around a bit if need be after anyway...

I used the change of speed function a lot, actually on most clips I pretty much doubled the speed. This helped create the 'hectic' atmosphere, After being brutal with the cutting down, I had got to about 3 minutes.... Not brutal enough obviously. I wanted to get to 30/40 seconds. I went through the timeline a further 3 times and eventually got it down, change of speed helped a lot!


Rendering the film took ages, I had to do this everytime I wanted to view my work in process, I often just used the render selection function...



I used a microphone to record sounds that I wanted to use in my films such as car horns, footsteps etc

I recorded various sounds but decided in the end to keep the original audio with the filming, apart from one car horn on the no parking sign.

I finally finished the main part of the film. I wanted to include various landmarks and thought it would be better suited to add various endings rather than one long one, it would keep it short and sweet with a clear and effective ending.

I chose to have endings that feature:
1. The London Eye
2. The Tate Modern
3. Tower Bridge
I filmed the river on a beautiful sunny day so these work really well. I removed the sound from the moment walking on the boat to the very end, this works well with the chaos and sound of the first half of them film.

I added the phrase 'What did you see on your way in?' to the ending of each film, I used Gill Sans as I think this is always an elegant choice, its clear and precise, it also always reminds me of railway posters which I thought was a good way to go.


I then wanted to add the Thames Clippers logo, I had trouble with this, I wanted to add the one with the transparent background but after saving in it various formats such as .png and .gif's it just wouldn't work. Eventually saving it just as a .psd worked fine!


I did the same to all of the endings, with exactly the same timing.

Below are my finished films:

Ending 1:

Ending 2:



Ending 3:

Filming...

I want to create my film in a point of view style, so film everything that a commuter would actually see with their own eyes. I thought at first that I could wear my camera round my neck, but trying this I realised that the camera would be tilted and would shoot to high up! I wasted quite a lot of time doing this! I then tried in my hat and that also didn't work!

I was a bit wary of just holding a camera up at people on the tube, but in the end just got on with it, no one really said anything, apart from a few dirty looks! I filmed A LOT, on all tube journeys, walking on the street where I could capture no parking signs etc and traveling on buses...

I want my film to be very jumpy and hectic so I was very rough with my filming, obviously showing a fast paced walk/run around London. I captured A LOT of video, this is obviously going to be edited down, I have hours of footage and want my films to be around 30 seconds each. I want to create 3 films overall, BUT they will all start the same and just have different endings, so one ending may be going past the London Eye and the next past Big Ben or whatever... I want the majority of footage I use in the film to include:

Crowds

Running on the street

Up and down bus stairs

Closed bus stops

No parking signs

Escalators

Large overground stations (Victoria)

Opening/closing of doors

Trains departing

People standing on tube

I finished filming everything I needed for the hectic part of the film but I still needed the boat!

I waited and waited for a sunny day and eventually one came along. Bright Blue sky. I filmed pretty much the whole boat journey, I went from Embankment to Canary Wharf and was actually very impressed with the journey, its the way to travel if you can... The only footage I plan to use from the boat though is close ups of the landmarks and the bright blue sky...

I now have all my footage, now for the editing!