Task 6b) Write a series of reports – each of your will take a section each to deliver
Explain what you have tried to
accomplish through the suite of idents (Rosie)
Through the suite of idents our team has accomplished using new skills such as stop motion and animation which at time we found difficult and time consuming. Our target audience which we had to base our ideas on were 15-19 year olds. This means that our suite of idents has to be suitable to these ages and engaging for them to watch. This could be shown through the visuals in the ident for instance a group of students competing in a fashion show. I feel that our team made our suite of idents based on the theme of community which is encouraging for young people and gives a good identity of the college of being filled with different groups of people from different backgrounds showing that they accept everyone. During our first meeting with our client will negotiated some changes such as the duration of the idents which were first decided to be 30 seconds but we thought this was too long for an ident and negotiated with the client to be 10-15 seconds. We were given a deadline which we made a schedule around where we made an ident per day we also gave ourselves a week to ident all four and animate which we met for the deadline.
Here is a screen shot from one of our idents showing how we animated the video using the colour purple. We believe this was an ideal choice of colour cos it collaborated well with the college logo which is the colour purple.
How have you worked to try to
achieve what you set out to do - explain decisions made with detailed
examples from own work (Lawrence)
We made the decision as a team to use stop-motion for our suite of idents. In order to master this technique and produce creative and high quality idents, we had to practice stop-motion. I also had to practice animating over stop motion because I was the team's animator and it was a time consuming process since for example all the logos and text that are included in all my idents were drawn over again and again through a process called onion skinning which allows me to draw over what I have previously drawn over but positioned differently so that the text looks as if it was alive and moving. I liked the onion skinning process because it allowed me to maintain the shape and quality of the idents. The logo was circular but it wasn't exactly drawn accurately but I had the option of tracing the logo but it would look boring, so I chose to hand-draw the logo because it would seem better and it would be more creative and youthful. I was comfortable with the decision I made after drawing.
All of our idents had the text of the channel moving after it was sketched in and though it was a time consuming process it did convey the brand identity of our ident as well given the erratic movement of the animation which connotes enthusiasm, youth, and joy. I think I did well in showing this in our suite of idents. I decided to do this because I wanted the pace of the letters to match the pace of the stop-motion making it look more dynamic especially in the fashion show since it had the most movement the visuals of the fashion show ident was terrible and unprofessional because it was out of focus but unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to re-shoot the ident. In addition, the original location for the production of the fashion show ident was the hall but it was occupied unfortunately so we decided to use the green room because it was the only room that was available to us.
In order to tackle this issue of transforming the ball in the football ident, I decided to draw over the ball so that in each frame within one second had an animation of the ball morphing into the logo as per the storyboard because I think it would look better if I had drawn over the ball. When I attempted this, I was amazed at myself because it worked and people could also see the logo so it was recognizable as an ident. It was much easier and I didn't know or have Adobe after effects at home to further polish the idents but I made the decision of carrying on with drawing in the logo because it would be faster and everything has already been shot and it was bad enough that I had to animate every frame of all four idents.
We wanted our idents to be entertaining. We made the decision that the logo was going to be sketched in all four idents and the logo was going to hold in place for three seconds. We thought it would be better to reveal the logo and then disappear but the fast paced edit would make the logo appear quickly and then disappear instantly so we decided not to do that because according to the client's feedback in one of our idents he stated that the logo was unclear since it was there for literally a split second and he suggested that the logo has to be on screen and hold for at least three seconds in order for the audience to recognise the ident as an ident otherwise the created product would be deemed as unfit for purpose.
Evaluate how you conducted your roles (Daniel S-Individual)
As a producer within the Group for the production team I-Watch, I do feel that I have done decent enough job for the team by making sure the paperwork was done before we went into production of making the suite of idents which the theme was based around community so the idents needed to be mostly the same across all four which does include that it has the conventions, an tone and brand identify as well. I would say that the strengths of handing the team was that I made sure that the team knew of what they were doing in terms of what needed to be done because the client had set an deadline and not only that, I made sure that I booked the equipment and location whenever we were going to film the idents. Although overall, I do feel that I could have done better by making sure like for example: I should have booked the locations on time before we could actually go and make the idents so in a way as a team, we should not be wasting the time of asking the staff to see if we could use the room to film our suite of idents. Also when we were going to be filming the football ident, I was meant to book out the kit to use for the ident but I had not done this before the lesson so during the lesson, I had to ask the PE staff to borrow it.
Evaluate the success of the process
or responding to the brief and the effectiveness of your group
organisation - informed by the feedback of others (James)
I would say in conclusion that as a team, everyone felt that we did okay as we knew of what needed to be done for the written work while making the suite of idents for the client who had set it with the deadline which was one of the strong point of our management as we had the producer checking on us to see if the others did the work or not. One of weaknesses was our group's Organization where even though it was okay at times, there was issues that had surfaced during the making of the idents like for example: Daniel S who was the producer had lost the SD card where it had the footage of the rough cut version of the hands ident that we did outside of the lesson and we had to do it all over again which did set it back a little bit, however, although this set us a little behind, we regrouped excellently and then managed to finish off the other idents that had to be shot within the planned suite, we did this well and were soon back on schedule. Once the suite had been fully shot, it was time to start the post production stage, this took a large amount of time as we animated the idents individually after editing them on final cut pro turning them in to stop motion, this took time, however, we understood that it would take time as it is a slow process, we finished doing the editing stage and the animating stage within a fortnight.
Explain the changes made to the ident resulting from various constraints and unforeseen challenges. (Daniel Storey)
When it does to making the idents for the client, there are going to be various constraints and challenges that will come up so as a group, we need to solve them as quickly as possible since there is a deadline that needs to meet. The first constraint that we were faced with not getting any actors who have different backgrounds since the theme of suite of idents is based around community so if we had to put the idents onto the CTK YouTube channel, then it is completely possible that we could face some backlash from the the intended target audience for not being diverse at all so this falls under an ethical
constraint. Also, Diversity is needed as in this college we need different cultures as well since in the idents it is not going to represent everyone so within the making of the ident, we needed to use ourselves to represent the college.
Second issue that we did faced was the use of green screen room as even though we had scouted the location to use to film the idents: hands, photography and fashion show, there was other group of students that wanted to film there as well so in a way we had to share the room with them but when we needed the lighting for the set-up, some of it was getting used so we had to work around it to prevent this from happening.
Third issue that was resulting within making the suite of idents was the soundtrack as we needed to make sure it was same one throughout as if we had to change it within the idents, then you will break the continuity so it does fall under copyright since we would need to get permission from the owner to use it but at this point we would need to pay for it.
Finally, the final thing that I had deal with is the location to film the fashion show ident to complete the filming of the suite because I went to the reception to see if I can book it out but I couldn't do this since there was going to be exams taking place within the room so we chose to film it in the green room instead.
