Storylines and storyboards

I want both of my main adverts to be showing the audience how many of the everyday tasks we perform can easily collect germs and just generally get our hands quite dirty. I want to present this in a fun way that gives the viewer more of a connection. So for my first advert, I have storyboarded my idea

In the first frame we see the hand is walking over to the bed, at this point I am going to have an over voicing of "Oh what a day" which is my connection that will make the viewer feel empathy to what they subconsciously do with their hands

My second advert in the real world would be aired after the first at such a time that people would understand my advert. I am going to take advantage of this by showing more of hands getting dirty.

Style Models

I have considered the adverts from my research and have decided I am going to use the adverts for The User Friendly Phone Book as a style model, in conjunction with another advert I have found.

These are the two adverts which have very clear continuity in the voices that are used and the overall style of the advert so that before the product is shown the audience might already know that the adverts are together.

As I want to do an advert for handsoap I also looked at adverts for general body cleansing. My second style model is going to be the Listerine, Mouth vs Life advertisement

As this advert is shot from front and focuses on just his mouth in every single scene I want to do the same by focusing all my clips on just the hands and using my first style model to give my advert a story line.

 

Advert research

I started my research of hand soap by looking at adverts all about the use of hands.
I came across a few adverts which I will use for inspiration and style models.

The first advert I saw was the very creative advert for Guinness

I loved the simplicity and usualness of this advert. The music fits with the oddness and is very catchy. This advert follows the conventions by having the product placement at the very end of the advert.


Secondly I looked at the adverts for the HTC

The painted hands in this advert was great as it gave the fingers more of a human personality and emotion, albeit very strange. At the end, we see the product placement and understand the use of the hands, which is enforced with "Let your hands do the talking" slogan.


Lastly I looked at the advert for The User-Friendly Phone Book

This is another example of an advert which gives the hands/fingers a personality and human form, however we understand this advert through speech rather than the painting in the other advert. This advert is also enforced with a slogan, "Fingers do less walking".

Chosen product

Due to my time scale I have decided to go with my second idea to create an advert about hand soap.

Draft Filming

Despite being very pleased with how the beginning of this had worked out, as it went on it got less and less smooth which is problem as I was going for an elegant approach.

Also as suspected the time scale for just this section of my storyboard took an entire day to draw and photograph which is problematic should I need to make any changes after I have presented it to an audience to gain feedback.

Handdrawn storyboards

 

Here is my first draft of a story board with the general idea of how I want my advert to go. Essentially the idea will be that the bottle is sprayed and all the beautiful things associated with perfume will be shown and end up back inside the bottle using a circular narrative.

Plans for this week

Currently I have a strong idea for the perfume and will pursue this with some draft filming and decide how well stop motion is going work. I am concerned about the time scale of my project and think that I may have to create a mixture of stop motion and filming to complete my advert.

Mood boards

As I am still undecided about which product I want to base my advert on, I have created mood boards to represent both products. 

For the perfume advert I was looking at images which symbolised what I wanted my perfume to represent. These were elegance of the vintage frames, which gave a wonderland/fantasy feel. The fruit was to represent to smell and freshness of the perfume, and lastly was the hearts and roses because perfume is connected with romance and worn for special occasions such as that.

For my hand soap idea I have created different mood boards

Conventions of a TV advertisement

Having looked at many of British advert on the TV currently I have looked at the conventions of a TV advertisement.


A Mascot - Most of the advert I looked at tend to have continuity with the mascots or symbols they want to have associated with their product or brand. ie Compare the Market use a Meerkat. Dairymilk use the Monkey. Argos have their blue aliens.

Length of time - typically all the adverts last for the same amount of time, about 20-30 seconds. However there are a few feature adverts which last just shy of 1 minute.


References - Despite there being references to the product throughout the advert it's usually not until the end of the advert where the product is revealed.


Music - This is a hugely important part of an advert as the song makes for more of an easier, engaging watch, but also the song sticks in peoples mind and therefore so does the product.

Number of clips/shots - The shorter 20-30 second adverts tend to have about 5 to 7 different scenes, whereas the longer adverts have more clips.

Slogan - One of the most important ways to keep your product in the consumers mind is to have a slogan that's memorable. 


Product Placement - At the end of the advert there is always a shot of the product itself

Whiteboard animation

Having conducted some research into stop frame animation I came across whiteboard animation. In particular this animation created by Johnny Lawrence. This interested me to try out using a white board to create animations as well.

Here is a quick animation I did to try out this technique, despite the problems I had trying to create it. 

The first problem was light in the background reflecting on the white board. When trying to block it out, it made it much darker and still had reflections. So instead, I am going to have to lean the whiteboard up right and take the pictures from the side rather than from above.


The selected pictures are the ones I had taken as I erased the drawn heart. This meant that the images order had to be reversed so that the animation can work how I wanted it too.

More Stop Motion

Here I was attempting to make the car appear to be moving along, without moving from the centre of the screen. I did this by moving the trees around the car and adjusting the car slightly, however I think I have moved the car to much and it wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped. The lighting on this example worked a lot better than the first though.

Stop Motion Practise

Here is my first attempt at the use of Stop Motion. I took 82 pictures to create this almost 8 seconds of footage, which worked smoothly and I am very pleased with. My main concern with the way this plays is the changing of light constantly. I will have to fix this problem by having a better light piece of paper.

Target Market

I have narrowed down my product choice to two products I would like to advertise. These are both within the Beauty and Cosmetic section of the market. I will conduct analysis on Perfume and on Hand Soap.

I have created two Target Market research tables for each product

Time Management

Monday 12th November                 
Tuesday 13th November                Target Market Research
Wednesday 14th November          Product and Consumer Analysis

Monday 19th November                 
Tuesday 20th November                 Spend week experimenting with stop-motion
Wednesday 21st November         

Monday 26th November                
Tuesday 27th November               Continue work with stop-motion
Wednesday 28th November          

Monday 3rd December                 Create mood boards for adverts
Tuesday 4th December                 Draft ideas
Wednesday 5th December           Make a storyboard

Monday 10th December                
Tuesday 11th December               Draft Filming
Wednesday 12th December         Draft Filming

Monday 17th December 
Tuesday 18th December               
Wednesday 19th December         Audience feedback

Over Christmas Holidays               Finalise ideas and using feedback ready to film final version
                                                          in January

Stop motion Xbox advert

Despite the fact that using this advert as a style model would be inappropriate considering it took three and half years to create and I do not have that time to create my advert, having watched the Making Of for the advert, some of the techniques will come in very useful when it comes to making my stop motion advert.

• For example, for the web was held up with rigs that where positioned  just out of the shot, giving the illusion that he was holding it up just by his hands.
• The other technique that will I hope to make use of, is shooting in reverse. This means the final product can be exactly how I want it to be, and then deconstructed, which then played in reverse, then looks as if it is being built.

TV Advertisement Research

After watching various adverts for all different services and products this is the advert I chose to start my research because I was interested in looking at stop motion. What I liked most about this advert is the interaction between the paper and the people and the objects. For example, the way the tennis ball emerges out of the paper and is the picked up by the girls hands on the screen.

 Even throughout the advert it does not state that the advert is for eBay, but looking at the colours on her fingernails, most people will know that it is to advertise eBay. Similarly when they are doing the thumb war and the bangels are also matching colours.

Change of Brief

Throughout my research online of film trailers, I came across a lot of TV advertisements that I really enjoyed. After the draft filming I had done for my film trailer, I decided that comedy was a difficult genre to get across and that I would much prefer to do a TV advertisement instead.

And so, the brief I am going to be focusing on now is:

An Advertising package for a new product or service, to include two TV advertisements together with two of the following three options:

A radio advert
A TV programme sponsorship sequence
A web pop-up

Stoner Film Stlye Model

Company logo opens the trailer

Voiceover for the flashes of establishing shots of characters

Slapstick comedy shots that are overlaid with music from the band, Tenacious D as nothing in the clip needs to be heard because it's visually amusing

"Follow me, we are the shadow" as he whispers this there are then a few follow up scenes of lots of shouting and car crashes which is the exact opposite of 'being the shadow'
The music then cuts of so we can hear some of the dialogue when Jack Black falls on to a branch shouting "Oh sweet baby!"
The sound is also stopped when the comedy is slower to build up and becomes funnier because of the seriousness of the moment.
The title of the film, is then on the screen read by the voiceover
A longer comedy scene, without music
Coming soon!

Following conventions of a Stoner Film

Male Protagonists
A big quest which when completed will make their lives easier
Trying to evade the police and other people of authority

Scene 3 Draft and Storyboard

Scene Three - Meeting the Godfather
(Slapstick comedy moment)

Shot 1: mid shot Sophie in kitchen making tea, leaning against the counter waiting for the kettle. (there will be a voice over of her thinking about her day) 

The kettle suddenly boils and shocks her. She sighs and as she leans down to floor the camera moves to a full shot as she pulls up her sleeping bag and shuffles to the kettle.

-Company logos go here- 

Shot 2: As she lying on the sofa watching TV she hears a noise and climbs up on to the armrest to see through the door way.

-Another logo or text-

Shot 3: She looks back to see The Godfather sitting on a chair in the living room. Then in an attempt to flea, forgetting about her the sleeping bag, she falls of the sofa.

Godfather: (flicking his lighter) Mind if I light up in here?

Scene 2 Draft and storyboard

Scene Two - Class Introduction

Shot 1: Full person panning shot around classroom, establishing location and characters. Ends on Sophie


Teacher: This is our new student, Sophie, everyone. (pause) Well, our Head boy, Mikey will be happy to show you around

Shot 2: Sophie walks over awkwardly as Mikey turns around to greet her

Mikey: Hey, nice to meet you, wow I'm impressed you even made it in.


Shot 3: Changes to an over the shoulder shot directed at Sophie

Sophie: (puzzlingly) Sorry?
Mikey: I get allergies this time of year too, my face went all red as well and I didn't come in at all. And to be honest, I wasn't even as bad (laughs innocently)

All through this speech there will be close ups of Sophie attempting to intervene and tell him that she has no allergies and unfortunately just looks like that.

Scene 1 Draft and Storyboard

Scene one - Welcoming to the Sixth Form


Voice over to open: "I've never had much luck getting first impressions right"

Shot 1: Starts as a medium close up as the head of sixth form welcomes her, then a tracking shot of them walking.

Teacher: Hi, welcome to Oldershaw sixth form, you must be Sophie

Shot 2: Head shot of Sophie, establishing her character

Sophie: (Shyly) Sophie Lindon, yes.

Shot 3: Over the shoulder shot, directed at Sophie, as the teacher hands her some papers.

Shot 4: Switches to teacher as she starts to talk

Teacher: It's nice to meet you, my name is Miss Leading by the way

Shot 5: Over the shoulder at Sophie

Sophie: (Puzzled expression) Oh...right, in what way?

Shot 6: Over the shoulder shot as the teacher turns back around from walking into her office. She is unamused and blankly stares at her.

Shot 7: Close up of papers reading "Head of Sixth from - Miss Leading"

Draft Plot Line Development

Typical nerdy girl, first day of sixth form. Everything goes wrong as per usual. When she gets home she wishes she could be something more, to be prettier.
This is when her fairy Godfather appears and grants her of her wish by making her beautiful. However, there is more to her new looks than she realises and to have one good thing she more accept the consequences that go with it.
She returns home from sixth form, to her empty house as her Dad is always back and forth from working abroad. When she arrives home she finds her fairy Godfather still sitting around in house. While he tries to explain why he's still here there's a knock on the door, two young lads are wanting to buy their marijuana.
She is completely confused and while they're smoking in the living room, the Godfather explains to her in the kitchen that she's the local drug dealer and helping him out.
As she is seriously unimpressed and he refuses to change her back, they end up going on a quest to help out the Godfather so that'll change her back. 

Choosing a second genre

I have decided that I want to challenge the conventions of a Romantic Comedy trailer and after some thought have decided that by including another genre into my trailer I can mix the two and challenge the conventions.

Conventions of other genres (cont)

Conventions of a thriller film:

Daniel Craig portraying the main male protagonist in Casino Royale

Good vs Bad

Always a male protagonists who is brave and manly

Themes are able to be related too, real world problems, terrorism/cyber sercurity

These storylines strike fear and build anticipation

Conventions of a Fantasy film:

Fantasy creatures from Lord of The Rings

The main plot is based around something supernatural or magical

In the real world where ordinary people are unaware of their identity or powers

Secretive, held back trailer

Dramatic and unnerving music

Conventions of other genres

I decided to do research into the conventions of other genres of films before I made my decision about which one would work best with a Romantic Comedy basis.

Conventions of an Action Film:

Explosion scene from The Dark Knight

Good vs. Bad

Lots of fighting, destruction of cities and explosions

Use of weaponry and fancy vehicles

Usually modern and set in big cities

There is always a mission for all the characters

However, the main character has a personal motivation

Conventions of a Post-Modern film:

A scene from extras of a show within a show starring Orlando Bloom

No longer trying to fake reality

Talk directly to the camera or have views of the camera

Generally the main characters feel uncomfortable in the environment

Circular narratives

Sometimes there's a "what if" reference

Conventions of a Stoner Film:

Main characters in possession of marijuana in, Ted

Possession of marijuana or attempting to gain possession

Trying to avoid people of higher authority Police/Parents/Bosses

Desire for an easier life of leisure

Slapstick comedy

Male Protagonists

Background Music

Original scene from Inception

Music effects the mood and pace of a scene, like in Inception the music used is very subtle. This makes the destruction feel almost subtle, as this is a dream world, blowing it to pieces isn't a big deal as it's not real. The pace is unaffected because of this, and finshes as steady as it started.

Example of first music change

However when we change the music, the feel of scene is completely different. Here I used Summer Overture, composed by Clint Mansell for the film, Requiem For A Dream. As it is slow paced and gentle at the beginning of the music, it creates suspense and lengths the build up. Therefore when the music becomes more exciting, so does the destruction and feels more racy without actually making the motion faster.

Example of second music change

This example is far more extreme, as the video's motion was sped up to match the pace of the music. However, the music starts gently just as the others do, but has far more impact when the music kicks in. The motion is faster, but there is more adrenaline in the scene because of the strong powerful music, which is This Is The End by Machine Head.

Conventions of a Teaser Trailer

After looking at some of the biggest teaser trailers for recent and upcoming films, the conventions for how they are put together are evident. The purpose of a teaser trailer over a theatrical trailer is that they are much shorter, usually lasting 30-60 seconds. This leaves the audience wanting to see more.

The Dark Knight Teaser Trailer


Just like most trailers they open with the production and distribution companies involved in making the film.

 The trailer is mostly sound clips from the film giving the viewer and an idea of what the film is. 

 As the words get increasingly faster paced and the tension builds, more of the iconic symbol for the film appears

 This continues until the point where we can see the whole of the Batarang

When we hear Alfred say, "Some men just want to watch the world burn" The Batarang is then being blown to pieces

This is when the Joker starts to add to the tension with his famous words

As it's a teaser trailer, not too much is to be given away and it is simply "The Dark Knight, Summer 2008"

Teaser trailers like to hide as much as possible and that's why most of this trailer focuses on the dialect of the film rather than the visual. 

Draft Plot Lines

Following the conventions I have found in my research, I have created two draft storyline in the Romantic Comedy style. I will continue to develop these story lines as I introduce another genre into the film.


Draft Plot Line 1

A couple break up (shortened version of the break up shown in trailer) and he is left incredibly broken hearted, and wishes he could change things. Through something magical his life does change and he is himself, in a different body, leading a different life. After realising he is now a new student at the school at which his ex-girlfriend attends he makes it his mission to win her over. 
They do become a couple, but how long will it take her to figure it out?

Draft Plot Line 2

An ugly nerdy girl has been moved from school to school because of various reason and in each has never been accepted. One night she gets a visit from her Fairy Godfather who makes her beautiful. She willingly accepts his help, despite being warned that her beauty will come with consequences.
At school on her first day she is instantly accepted by the most popular people in the sixth form. Only now, she a step up from them all as she has beauty but brains as well. She is fancied by the most popular boy in the year and a shy nerdy boy, however she rejects him to keep her reputation.
Because of the consequences, she ends up changing back to her original self in front of the shy nerdy boy, but will he tell?

Friends with Benefits - Research

I also looked at a more recent film, Friends With Benefits. It still retains conventions of a romantic comedy film even though the story line is completely different to The Princess Diaries.

The Conventions in the film trailer

Both of the central characters are seen to be broken up with for what we imagine as an audience isn't the first time. Thus following the convention of being unlucky in love.

The two characters meet and decide that their relationship is "just friends"

Inevitably, they fall out even though they just wanted to be friends. However, everybody around them can see that they are clearly in love