Concept Pitch/Proposal

Our  group (Robert Welland and Oscar Artini) decided to create our presentation on Microsoft PowerPoint. (Note the language shown on the presentation is not all that was told, Que cards were integrated highly within this pitch)

Pitch Feedback and Justification of Ideas

Pitch feedback and Justification of chosen idea

The following images show the feedback sheets given back to me and group member from the audience analysing this pitch. We have looked through them and analysed how we could possibly improve on our presentational skills .



















Justification of chosen idea


As aforementioned within our presentation we just conducted, our group had decided to follow though with idea #3 (shown below) this was due to it having the largest potential on helping us achieve our main goals for this project. Which was creating an animation for Crisis that stresses their main target as an organisation, as well as making it appealing to teenagers.

From the storyboard below it shows our idea, the main levels of material will be Lego for this idea. This will be extremely helpful to our group as they are already freestanding characters and so it will be much easier to create stop motion with them, this will be much less time-consuming than our other chosen material Clay. There may be a negative side with using Lego in terms of generating a serious matter that is important. However our group made absolutely sure that we could create a very realistic 'street environment' set which helped gain back the importance element of the charity. For example the brick wall with the Crisis logo spray painted onto it or the general public walking by and taking no notice of the homeless character. These small elements help maintain the charity's importance to many people across the United Kingdom. Our group feel that these points justify why we have chosen this idea and also think this idea shall look professional.

Storyboard

Shooting Script

Consideration of camera

Consideration of camera 

As you may be aware if you have looked at previous blog posts, our group had already posted an animation however, we immediately decided to re-film it due to the poor camera work. The reason for this was due to the tripod not reaching sufficient heights at our chosen location of where we filmed. So we decided to do it without a tripod and use it freehand as we thought we could get a larger number of different angles filmed during the animation to set the scene much more, however this didn't work at all and just made the camera extremely shaky and so the animation was filmed again. The two images on the right and below show the large change in camera movement, you can see only the black tarmac looking road and then a few shots later you see the camera jolt and then you can see the white lines in 
the middle of the road.


The second time round that we filmed our animation we made sure that we used a sturdy tripod in order to have the camera completely still on each shot that was taken so that when the viewer was watching this animation they weren't focusing on the camera moving (like the last animation) and this time only focusing on how to characters themselves move. The only angle that we decided to use for this second filming session was one that was straight level with the set, this was level around a tables height due to the set being placed on a table in the media department. Right in front of it, similarly to the other photos above

and on the left of this text. As our group decided these experimental shots from the last session used to 'set the scene' were far too risky and difficult to not get the wood holding the set together in the shot. So this is why we stuck with this one angle, however we felt it showed everything we pictured before filming it. The images below show the re-filmed animation in the angle that we chose to use throughout. However when the animation reaches the human hand section, as we weren't taking photos behind a large brick wall similar to the one in the set, we could have the camera raised up much higher and had a much wider field to shoot in.

After the human hands section of the animation occurs it then goes back to the same brick wall with the lego characters having a conversation, the cameras position is also in the same exact place as it was before, at the table height where the set was placed. The animation the moves onto the 'cleaned up homeless man' in a safe room (which Crisis has provided for him) to get his life started again in the right direction. The camera once again is in the same position, in line with the set with the main character (homeless man) in the centre of the shot. This gives off a 'center of attention' look to it which makes the audience study the lego character emotion which is happiness. This camera angle almost makes the audience feel as if they were to help they could make somebody happy just like this by donating to Crisis.

Character Sketches

Budget List for animation

Copyright Research

What is Copyright?

Copyright is a form of protection for the authors and originators of their physical expressions of ideas, be it companies, groups or a single person... anyone.  As soon as the originator's idea is given physical form, e.g. a written article, photography, music, film, art, or a web page; it is protected by rights which is copyright protection. If you are a creator of a original piece of documentation, copyright is very useful because it is like insurance against pirates. If you have created a original product/service/idea ect... it would be a very good idea to get a patent on that so you have got a solid legislated document that protects your idea/creation, and if anyone did try and replicate your idea/creation it would be very easy to take legal action and claim the money your are owned.   


Why Is Copyright so Important?

Copyright protection is extremely important because there is just over 7 billion people in the world and any of them can potentially copy an idea and depending on how big it is, they have the potential to make a large sum of money out of it. It is important for the originator and the person who wishes to use the piece of music, art, film etc. The main reason why it is important for the originator is because it will stop people from stealing their ideas and making money off of them. It is also very important for the person wanting to copy the idea, this is because they could in fact be taken into court, charged a large sum of money and sometimes given a prison sentence. 

Regarding Copyright within our animation project

Our group must ensure that we do not breach any copyright laws especially with the music section of our animation. The reason for this is because we could find ourselves having a banned video on our blogs which would actually be our final project for school. If we wish to use a song found off of YouTube we must make sure we contact the channel director and ask if we can use a particular song for our project. However, our group may decide to create our own music off of a program called garage band found on the school computers. 

Example of Copyright Fraud

I had a few Loleatta Holloway cuts posted but was forced to remove them all. The folks who control the licensing for the Salsoul catalog, Verse Music Group have made it a point to file claims and have YT issue strikes anytime they find instances of copyright infringement. They already cost me my first channel, so now I steer clear of any content under their "control". Sadly, that means no Skyy, Salsoul Orch., Bataan, Silvetti, Loleatta Holloway, First Choice, Double Exposure, etc.

Within my animation for the Charity Crisis, I paid very close attention to the copyright laws not only because I didn't want to do something illegal, but also because I was representing a brand and I do not what to put any thing bad/illegal against there name. With the soundtrack I have used I know a producer of 'ambient & relaxing' styles of backing tracks, and I asked them if I could use one of theirs and they confirmed there consent in me using it within the animation.

Lighting Task: Animation

What is an animation lighting rig?

In many animation films such as Wallace and Gromit a special lighting rig is usually put in lace in order to get the correct lighting. This rig would be placed over the animation set with different lights displayed on it. Possibly ones for darker light and harsh light, for our own animation project we may have decided to use an animation lighting rig in order to grasp the perfect lighting on all sides of our animation set. However we did a lot of test sequences (shown below) in order to see which worked best for our group, natural light or an artificial lighting rig.


What decision our group has made

Our group (Robert Welland and Oscar Artini) has made the decision not to use an animation lighting rig. During our test shot sequences that we conducted recently, we found that the lighting rig gave off a very artificial lighting sense that had a very dark orange glow which we didn't think looked very realistic. Making our charity advert realistic was one of our main aims as a group, due to us using lego we still wanted a sense of realism within it in order for everyone to take it seriously. We felt the dark orange lighting didn't suit this very well at all, the test shot on the right shows this light.

After that, we then tested how natural light would look on our set and how it would look on camera. Immediately after this test shot below was taken, our group made the decision to stick with this light. Our reasons for this are because it looks perfect, it is not too dark and it is also not too light. It is the closest representation we could get of what it would look like outside. This gave us our realism feel to the animation testing. The other aspect we really liked about this light was that this lighting didn't give off a dark sombre feeling to it, we didn't want to upset the audience viewing it, we want to enlighten them on a serious matter that needs to be looked into as it affects many people.


When it actually comes to creating the animation for the final time we will use this natural light from the same exact position the test shots were taken. These were taken within the RavensWood School media department in a classroom. One last aspect we a extremely happy to see is how well the lighting will now link with the human hands section of the animation. As we are going to shoot this section outside in natural light, the Lego character section will also have a similar light to the 'hands' section. We shall conduct this final shooting of the animation in around two weeks time due to gathering more props for the set in order to make it seem much more realistic.

 

Focus Group

Our focus group was held with a different group (Perry's Group)

Idea one

WWW: 

The other group member enjoyed our idea's concept. The main reason for this is because he thought that it linked in very well with the charity. A good evidential piece that led him to think of this was that it shows how the charity itself helps the homeless change themselves.

EBI: 

There was one main concern for the other group member about this particular idea. he suggested that another format of animation should most likely have to be used in rider to generate this idea, his reason for this is because he thinks that this would be extremely hard to create on paper.

















Idea two

WWW:

Moving onto this idea, Perry thought that this idea had a brilliant use of Lego yo portray the seriousness of homelessness whilst relating well to the youth audience. He thought that the best way to understand what he meant was the use of the first person of the homeless person, he thought that this would help dress the horrid conditions for a homeless person.

EBI: 

However there was problem that he thought would occur with this idea in a very similar way to our first  idea. That the idea would be extremely hard to create in certain parts of it, his main point towards this was the first person idea may be good in order to stress the point however it would be rather hard to create in a professional standard.

Idea three

WWW:

This idea seemed to impress the other group member the most out of the three we had generated. His reasons for this was because he that that the use of every format of animation was a good choice, such as intertwining the hands with the lego, clay etc. Another aspect that he enjoyed about this idea would be the 'voice of god' section of the piece where a voice from above shall say "turn around" He also thought that this animation was very well put together whilst still stressing the serious matter of homelessness, and what the charity can do.


EBI:

The other group member did not find anything significant to point out to us for improvement. We are very happy with this result because we thought that this idea would actually work best.

Animation Survey Research Graphs

The first 4 questions that were put into the questionnaire were simply to gain a small knowledge of the receiver. For example their age and occupation, these two our group feel are great ways of gaining knowledge of what kind of receiver is answering your questions and possibly they may even relate to the target audience that you want to appeal to. In our case this has worked very well within the questionnaire as all of the receivers who answered were between the age of 10-19 and the occupations of these people were all students. To our group, this is great news as this makes the following answers on each question what a young person really feels should be placed within this Crisis animation (The main aim for this is to make it appeal to teenagers)

After these questions we then moved onto what we thought were the things most important to ask for this animation Piece for the Crisis charity. 'What soundtrack would you expect to hear within a charity advert' and 'What animation format would you prefer?' The first question we gained an extremely one sided opinion towards the music, which our group in fact agree with. The answer given was that the music shall be slow and tragic. We still have yet to find a suitable way of either making a soundtrack like this or gaining permission to use a certain song by an artist, this shall be done in due course.

The final question had the most mixed opinions of what shall be used in terms of format. One of our initial ideas actually agrees with using all of the materials/formats. We planned to use lego, clay, people and objects. The questionnaire results support this use of all the formats, our main aim is to please our target audience whilst stressing a serious matter through animation. So our group have agreed to use all of the chosen formats by the audience from this questionnaire in order to please the audience.

Soundtrack Mindmap

Character Design

Set Design

Prop Design

Target Audience Research and Analysis

Analysis of the data

 

This questionnaire that was created was sent to teenagers, it may be short, however we feel that our group has generated a very good idea in terms of making this ident apppealing to teenagers whilst stressing a serious matter. These questions will help us develop on who we should be aiming this towards and what the audience may like to see within the piece.

 

From the first set of questions we gained a very simple response, all of which were asked to do this questionnaire we're students. Which will later help us gain more knowledge of how to make this appealing to the teenage audience. Moving onto the next set of questions the gender of all who answered this questionnaire were male, this is definitely helpful in terms of gaining knowledge on what the male teenage audience would like to see, however some late research may need to be done in order to find out what the female teenage audience would like to see within this stop motion piece for Crisis that would be appealing to teenagers.

 

Moving through to the net few questions we then see the soundtrack side of the stop motion. The was a 100% response onto the slow/tragic option. Which our group feel that would suit this ident extremely well, as we would like to stick to traditional methods of charity adverts. We don't want to break this traditional element to it by using happy music on such a serious matter. We are glad that the teenage audience feel this way too. Finally the last question was what the ident shall contain in terms of materials/objects. Of all the options that we gave for the teenagers to choose from, all of the options were chosen nearly even to each other. One of our original ideas that our group generated was to actually use all of these materials to make our piece with, we felt that this would be good to appeal to the target audience (teenagers) We are going to develop our original idea with these materials and this ident shall most likely come out appealing to the target audience whilst stressing the main idea of how homelss charity's like Crisis need help and support.

Ideas Mindmap

Development of ideas

Development of ideas

First Idea -

Using a white board to visually write down and illustrate a tragic story of a homeless person. We will be able to get a true story from crisis, the charity we are doing the animation for.

Developed -

We are going to still use the same idea of using a white board to illustrate a story about the homeless, also as its a white board it makes it easy to write words on it, I will do this because it will make it a lot easier for the audience to understand.





Developing on my clay and paper idea -

To develop on this idea I'm going to try and make it appeal more to teenagers, and the only way of doing this I feel is to show them that its not 'fun' to live on the street and just be honest with them and show them to truths about what homeless people go through on a day-to-day basis. It is an advantage that we are filming with clay to animate because in my opinion it gives a complete different look being more friendly etc... to the advertisement, if we filmed this with real life footage it would give a disturbing out look to the audience.

Developing on my Lego idea -

This idea uses just Lego as I feel Lego is a good material to use as it doesn't create to much of a mess. This idea starts with a couple of shots of a homeless person, laying in the middle of pavement sleeping rough with empty bottles and lose clothes scattered around him. The next shot is where a pedestrian is walking down the street and just steps over him to get off to work, not caring that someone is sleeping in the middle of the pavement. After this the next shot is of a person in a red Crisis shirt walking up to the homeless person on the street and puts a blanket over his shoulders and comforts him and starts walking him down the Crisis help centre.

Developing on my Clay, Lego, Hands and Objects idea -

This idea includes a range of materials instead of using just one material as I like different materials for different purposes. The first shot will be of a homeless person on the street laying up against a wall with the Crisis logo graffiti-ed on it  without him even knowing that Crisis is a charity designed to for helping people in his situation. Whilst hes laying up against the wall he is looking sorry for himself and unhappy, but a passer by comes up to him and throws change in his pot and says, 'turn around they will help you', and it goes to a shot of where hes getting cared for and is happy. This last shot will show that Crisis is a charity for helping care for homeless people, and trying to get them off the streets and getting there life back on track.