Mr_Listers scrawlings

Lego

For this project I chose to do the Lego brief together with Andrew to make forty to forty five seconds long advertisement for Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. We began with research which was a hands on, primary research of the products itself, basically playing with the Lego we were able to see for ourselves what features of the kit were worth mentioning in an advert to make it look appealing. We also had a look at quite a few videos on the internet of previous Lego commercials and some home made videos of people showing off what they could do with the Mindstorms Lego. This gave us an idea of audience but more importantly showed us what styles and themes were used in previous adverts and what was possible with the Lego and that the creativity it could facilitate could be a major asset to push in our advert. Although I feel that we did good research that helped to focus us and shape our final product it was actually very poorly documented and I don’t think any of it made to our DVD, so I regret that there is next to no evidence of this work that we did and if I had an opportunity to re do the project this would be something I’d correct in order that this stage of the work was evident.
I think that as a team Andrew and I created a number of strong ideas and as a result it felt that we made a good pitch at the interim crit. Unfortunately a lot of our ideas were very sketchy in appearance and needed me or Andrew to be present and explain them which means that only two of our story boards made it to the DVD because we didn’t have the time or time management skills to neaten the others up and make them presentable or readable but I’m still fairly pleased with the two on the disk, I think they communicate well and gave us a good sense of direction to work with when we started the filming process. I think the story boards were much more useful to us than the animatics we produced, we only really made the animatics to give us a sense of timing and sequence so we would be sure that the advert would be approximately the right length which I suppose they were pretty successful in that light because even though we changed a lot of was going to be in the video during filming we did stick with a lot of the timing and sequencing from the animatics. This part of the work is on the DVD which is pleasing because I found the time restrictions on this project to be pretty harsh considering the level of professionalism expected of us and I think it was the same for Andrew. Story-boarding was something that I found to be very enjoyable as I usually illustrate my work quite heavily in both college briefs and personal work. The story-boards that I tested on outside sources seemed to work very well as I got good feedback and there was a general understanding of the communication, so maybe this is an aspect that I will chose to further develop in the future.
After pitching our ideas it was time to start filming as there was only a short amount of time left on the brief. I think that the process of borrowing equipment, finding a space and props, getting an actor, building a set that was believable and creating a good standard of lighting, and editing was pretty tough due to the nature of the resources available and how the device loan system in college works, there was not always enough equipment to work with, spaces are not always available and people can not always make it in time to help you out with your work but I think in spite of these issues Andrew and I learned a lot about being able to deal with problems as they presented themselves and were pretty well organized during the production of our video as we planned time for booking out equipment, working and editing well. This isn’t documented well on our DVD because we were not entirely sure of how to make a ‘making of’ feature or what details were necessary or a waste of time which I suppose is largely our own faults because we pushed the ‘making of’ to one side to get on with the main bulk of the filming for the advert itself and it is a big shame because I feel that during the filming and production of the actual video is when we did our best work. So a lot of our process is a mystery to anyone watching even the making of feature on the DVD we made. But on a second note in the film industry a whole different team would be allocated the task of creating a ‘making of’ section so that they would capture the production team in the midst of their work, of course with only two people working on a project this would have meant stopping and starting the production work to capture key moments for the ‘making of’ footage which was really tough to work with and extended the production time greatly. When finding an actor for the scenes that required one we tried to get in contact with Royds School drama department but they didn’t get back to us in time so we had to quickly find some one who would be available on much shorter notice, I imagine that for any professional / industry filming that requires an actor there would be weeks or months put aside for auditions and sourcing them so it was tough really to have any level of professionalism in that department. Fortunately for our advert the actor was required to do very little so the fact we didn’t outsource a drama or acting student didn’t damage the video at all.
The first cut of our video (named Lego Turd) was very unsuccessful due to a number of issues surrounding lighting and location that were brought up at our final crit, one week before the hand in deadline. People were exceptionally helpful and we collected a lot of notes and advice from the crit to use as guide lines for a new shoot along with our first cut video as a sort of replacement animatic to help us out. We dropped all the footage from our original shoot and completely re filmed the entire video with new lighting and set solutions inside of three days in order to leave us enough time to edit it together before the deadline. Again I’m very pleased with the organization we demonstrated during the filming process, however tough restriction were on filming previously, they were ten times that when trying to film in just three days. We made a time table to plan out the execution of lighting, set building and filming and stuck firmly to it. I feel that in these three days we pulled together a great deal as a team and really focused on the production of our final piece, choosing to completely remake the video was the most professional solution as the first video wasn’t up to scratch on terms of quality and it would have been more work to fix it rather than simply making a better one.
Over all I’m very pleased with the advertisement video we produced, I think it communicates well and fulfills the briefs requirements while displaying the Lego Mindstorms kit in an appealing and memorable fashion. It starts of a little slow and explodes into a bombardment of noise movement and cuts. Our process on the other hand, although well executed in my opinion was horribly documented much to the detriment of the DVD extras, of which there are very few and those which are there offer little to no insight into the how we did things or how much work we did. If I could repeat the project from beginning to end I would work and film and create exactly the same way as we did, I would simply film me doing so as evidence it happened for the ‘making of’ features.

I wish I’d filmed this evaluation and not written it.

i got that mangaka book that i mentioned in a previous post and its really good, as well as showcasing the illustrations of various american 'manga' artists they ask them about how they got to where they are today and give tutorials and advice for aspiring illustartors such as myself.

one interesting thing is that the book raises a debate between the artists over whether american manga style comics should be considered manga. some of the illustarators copied the style of manga to produce their works and consider them to be manga, otheres don't and they consider there works as comics. the japanese appaerently call american mang 'nissei comi' meaning something like fake or inferior... i think, but basically negative.

Mr_Listers scrawlings

Thursday, 3 January 2008

lego evaluation.

Wednesday, 2 January 2008

things to discover

manga.

requests

3d

3D in after effects

replies from the industry

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