Advert One, Tropical Skittles

The final finishing touches . .

when showing mr michie our final adverts finished, he suggested that we made some final adjustments to all the adverts to make them slightly better. One of these changes that we made to all three adverts was to the music that we had placed in the background. we added 'audio effect' to the last few clips at the end of each advert so that the music faded out in time for the voice over to come in and talk about the skittles on the last clip. this made it clearer to hear the voice instead of the music overpowering it.

Avert three was the advert we made the most last minute changes to as it was too long as i final piece. because most of the clips were the same throughout the clips it made it very easy to chop them all down slightly to make the overall advert a lot shorter. using a slicing tool on premiere i cut of the beginnign ad ending of each clip and removed it. This also meant that i had to cut the musicdown which wasnt a porblem because them music is the same througout the advert so it didnt matter where i cut it to. from this advert we also remove the engine noises we had originally put in as the noise of the floats, we did this because we felt that it seemed odd to only have it on some of the floats ratehr than all of them but if we were to have it on all of them then it would over power the music and becom apart of it which we didnt want to happen. uing premiere again we also played around with the volume of eahc layer so that we could turn down the diegetic music and turn the diegetic music up slightly so the music wasnt powered out but the background noises such as the clapping and cheering.

Target Audience

We are aiming to create 3 adverts which would appeal to a target audience aged from 7-12 years, we put this target audience together with the results we got from our audience questionnaire. we also gathered information for the skittles website and found out the age group that they have aimed it at. We analyzed the colours and styles they used and the content in which the website contained to understand who they were aiming there product at. (see website and write about what we see from it) To get useful results from our questionnaire we got all ages to complete the questionnaire and we also made it simply and to the point so that the the answers we got were useful. once we identified our target audience we created a new questionnaire which was used to find out what appeals to our audience, what they respond better to and what they would except top see in an advert like ours.

Results from our first questionnaire.
- We found that 75% of people that often purchase sweetie products were aged 7-12 years old.
- We found that over 50% said that a good advert had a positive affect on there feelings towards the product.
- 100% said that they had bought a packet of original skittles before. (this told us that we didn't need to introduce the skittles as a product, but as the new flavors)
- the majority answered yes when asked if it was important or not to have music which corresponded to what is being watched on screen.

Results from our second questionnaire.
- 90% preferred cartoon styles adverts to real life adverts.
-100% of our audience that completed the questionnaire said that happy music in adverts eft them feeling happy.
-When asked to name 3 different types of sweets, skittles appeared within these 3 70% of the time and 40% of this put them first.

Advert 2

Three days before the deadline advert 2 was still not started. As I have all frees on a wednesday I spent the day dedicated to completeing advert 2. Ten hours later and I had pretty much completed it all that was missing was the finishing scene. When i put all the clips onto premier to edit i found that it was alot easirt than i had first expected. I managed to slow down all the clips so that the movement wasnt to fast and that there was enough time to read the writing on the screen. What I have found is that with the clips slowed down the movement is slightly too slow but because I didnt do enough shoots using Frame By Frame there was nothing I could do about it now. Overall I am happy with the out come of advert 2 and with one last clip to go we are not far from meeting our deadline well apart from advert 3 but like advert 2 as long as we can deadicate some time to it I dont think it will take as long or be as complcated as advert 1.

What progress have I made since the start of our coursework?

I have made great process since the start of my coursework. When my partner and I first began we have never used frame by frame before. Frame by frame is the programme we are using to create our adverts, with help form Mr. Michie and constant practice we leant the skills needed to create what we wanted for our advert. When it came to editing on flash I spent some time developing my skills to allow me to be able to import our frame by frame clips and add animations to them. We spent a lot of time mastering the techniques such as using layers to add moving arms and legs throughout the clip and adding key frames when needed to produce the animation. We also learnt from our mistakes throughout the process of our coursework, for example, after spending a lot of time editing our first clips we didn’t realize until we exported them, that the clip didn’t fit into the screen. We realized that we needed to change the size of our imported clip on flash to fit the editing box before editing so that the whole clip could be exported instead of lost. The process of advert one took a lot longer than we had first anticipated when it came to the second and third advert we realized we needed to be more organized to be able to meet deadlines.

Catching up

Whilst exams have been on it has been difficult to focus on this coursework. however now that they are over I will need to be catching up on the work which may have been forgotten about. there are still quite a few shoots that need to be filmed and refilmed again. and i also need to get on top with the editing.

Making the Packets

Today i created the three skittle packets that will be used at the end of each advert and at the beginning. All of them were made on white paper, using a black pen. I drew them on white paper because the writing needs to be in white, however this is going to make a problem because the background of each packet needs to be in colour, using a colouring pencil or pen may make the packets have a different style to the rest of the props used in filming.therefore a better idea may be to cut out the lettering instead and add them to the coloured paper rather that use my ones i just made :s i will have to test them both, to see which looks the best.

Shooting Schedule - January

Equipment

With the deadline aproaching, everyone is constantly taking out equipment and not returning it, instead they are holding onto it so that they have it when the will next use it. This is becoming a slight problem as to when it will be available for me to use. Lauren and i have decided that the best way to reach the deadlines is to both work on different adverts, while she is still editing the final bits of advert 1 and is making changes where necessary. I have started filming advert 2, however it has been hard keeping up with my shooting schedule because of getting hold on the macs.

Troubles over the Christmas Holiday

There was a limit to the amount of work I could do over the christmas holiday, this is was because i was unable to book out a mac as there were all gone. This meant I was unable to do any filming or editting so the only other thing I could do was plan the next advert. I have made all the props we will need for the advert and have plan what shoots we will film and when. The props we need included card cut outs of a bike, ring of fire, rope, jetski, ramp, sea, cliffs, etc.

1st Deadline

We have just had our first deadline to meet and we didnt quite reach it. we were ment to have our completed advert one to show Mr. Michie but ours isnt quite there. I think that even thouhg we havent quite met it we are still on target becuase advert 1 will take us the longest to complete because the process included us having to learn what we have to do as well as doing it. when it comes to advert 2 and 3 they will be completed alot quicker. We have also started thinking about and producing props for advert 2 so we will be able to start that as soon as we have completed our first advert.

Premiere

Premiere is the programme we have decided to use to put together out our adverts. We are nowcurrently in the process of learnign how to use it, this is time consuming but needs to be done because it is the best programme to use t get the finished product we want. iMovies only allows up to three layers to be used on our advert where as for our advert we will need around 4, one for our animated clips, one for out background music, one for voice overs and one for sound effects .

Off Screen Animation

This is what happened when it we didnt resize the screen when animating.

To use our time wisely me and lauren decided to use differnet macs so that we can work at the same time. we both animated different clips and came together to put them into premier where will have decided to produce our final product. when we compared our clips it seems that we have animated them differently, they didnt match together. We had differnet thicknesses in arms and legs and and had chosen to animated the faces differently. This is mainly because we didnt really discuss what we wanted them to look like before we started animating. We now have to animate some of the clips differently which means having to find the time to animate 2 clips at once to keep up.

Advancing our Advert 1

Lauren and I began aminating our clips yesterday and found it rather uplifting, completeing a clip each completely finished gave us both more confidence in our project, knowing now that we are capable of completion. I animated the scene in which one of the original skittles meets one of the tropical skittles they are made to look as though they are shaking hands. Lauren animated the clip where three skittles are in a boat moving across the sea, adding in arms. Both of the clips look really good just as we had imagined. One of the problems we did however come across on our first attempt to animate was after we though we had completed it we the exported it and found that half of the shot was missing, this was because we hadnt resized it to fit into the square provided my flash. Realising what went wrong and starting again was a bit of a hassle but we managed to do it and complete them rather quickly so we werent to bothered. On of the things we have to remeber is to export the movie in the format of QuickTime otherwise we are unable to upload them onto iMovies.

Having some completed clips, we have started to put them together on iMovies, me and lauren have and a few disagrrements about this as i think it is a better idea to use the old version as we have more experience with it, however, it is on another mac so we will have to transfer all our shots. Lauren thinks the newer iMovies would be better because it is more advanced than the old one and it is also on the mac we have all our clips on. This is problably the better option as we will have a better finish to our adverts but it will mean having to spend some time learning to use it.

Sizes

When me a lauren first thought about props and began making them we imagined them to be a lot bigger and the surface we would film to also be larger. when it came to us actually filming we found that the props (the card cuttings) work much better when they are much smaller. With them being smaller the camera was able to use closer and distance shots easier as the didnt have to move from its stand.

More problems

Another problem we have come across after a few clips is that the colouring is different even though the same card has been used. Filming on different days with different cameras just makes the shots look different. This was a major problem with a few of our island scenes, on one of them the yellow was extremely bright and another wasnt that bright at all. I re-filmed both the shots on the same day with all the same equipment in the same place. This made them look alot better and it now shows that they are on the same island.

We also had problems with the camera staying still. when filming the skittles moving passed some palm trees right at the end of each shot the camera slighty wobbles. this kept happening. im not sure if it was me or if there was a problem with the camera so to overcome this I made the shot longer so that the last bit can now be cut away as it will be to long. Therefore the part that wobbles will not be seen.

Editing

I have tryed to upload the first clip i have edited on however it has not worked so i am just going to write about it for now. Since editing this clip we have reshot it so we wont be usiing the edited version anymore. One of the problems i faced during editing was working with Flash, using it for the fisrt time made it extremely difficult, so i needed help from Mr Michie. I learnt how to add key frames and how to change the movements which each section of the clip. what i was attempins to produce was movement with each skittle to bring them alive, this meant giving each of them arms which moved from time to time. each skittles arms had to be produced on a differnet layer and changes each frame. I think that editing will be the most time consuming for me and lauren and therefore we will need to improve our skills on it.

Shooting Schedule

Here is our shooting schedule from october to november.

More Problems

Another problem that has occured with our clips is that when watching them back we have found that the lighting is really bad, its too dark and a bit shadowy. this mean that we have to re shoot the 3 clips that we filmed on wednesday. To provent this from happening again we are going to use a strong light which will shine over the whole scene so that there will be no shadow or dark patches.