Evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
Through this module I have developed lighting skills by using the lighting studio extensively and feel that the raw pictures we took were lit very well, it conveyed a white background with a dominant green feel which the brief asked for. I have also learnt how to chromakey (Blue/Green screen). From lighting the set properly to using both after effects and final cut, and feel that we accomplished this very well in the production of our ident. Also just from the general use of after effects and final cut I believe that my skills are improving, especially the speed of editing.
Finally I have developed the skills & patience that stop motion requires, in the past stop motion has infuriated me but I now feel accomplished in that aspect of animation and would not be fazed by the prospect of doing it again on that scale if not bigger.
2. What approaches to methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your design development process?
The main research aspect of this project was getting as informed as possible about itv2, their current and past idents and also other idents used on other channels. We did this by internet research, watching the channel, and reviewing their broadcast schedule. The brief was very specific about audience and mood but not content, leaving it open as “a moment in the life of a typical 24 year old” so we felt it best to analyse this aspect to its fullest by researching what “moments” were achievable to us whilst keeping within the briefs parameters. This process then decided the direction our ident was to follow.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
I think my major strength for this module was determination to achieve a high standard of finished piece. Comprehensively planning the production process and then going through with it, and spending 13hours a day in the studio shooting. I intend to plan every production process of moving image as fully as this one from now on.
I am very happy with the achievement of doing this stop motion as I always see stop motion as a difficult feat even if I don’t feel the end product does my motivation justice.
Finally I have also realised that though it may be a small thing there is endless value in simpky showing up, being on time and organised, something witch I have done consistently through this brief, not wanting to let my collaborative partner down. The same cannot be said for him.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these more fully?
I am un happy with the colour and sound of our ident, the colour looks very bleached and too highly contrast, I believe it does have a “Glossy” aesthetic which the brief asked for but it was much more visually appealing when in the original form of the raw files. Unfortunately I discovered this when it was too late to change.
The sound is a massive weakness because we asked a student at Leeds MET to produce it but because of his workload at the time he was unsure weather he could until the last minute meaning there was no time for reviewing or corresponding with him. We used it because it worked better than using a music track and also that way we avoid all copyright issues, but it defiantly doesn’t convey the mood that I wanted.

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?
If doing stop motion I would shoot in 16:9 aspect ratio in order to keep it widescreen from the start thus not having to change compositions later in the editing which proved difficult, this was something which we did think of but couldn’t find the means before we had to start shooting.
I would correspond more with our sound technician so that it was clear what mood I wanted to convey.
I would also take full control of the editing process so that I would be happy with the final piece, or if not then there was only me to blame.
I would fully document each stage of the editing process to avoid any struggles/challenges being overlooked.
And finally I would attempt to employ help when shooting in order to speed up the process and thus possibly be able to shoot more.

Ident in Context

ITV2 controller Zai Bennett talks to Broadcast about the new look for the channel

ITV2 Ident submited edit

itv2 ident from Jack Cook on Vimeo.

Background music

These were the tracks which we chose from for the background music on our ident, they were made by a student at leeds met studying sound engineering (James Mazur) he created these tracks from watching our ident and coresponding with us for the feel and mood which we wanted to create.







Final

Final Lamp

This is the completed lamp scene, reversed out and colour changed. later the blue poster will be keyed out and the animated sheep will take its place.

Final suitcase edit

Here is the final suitcase edit, complete with colour change. we ended up using stills from both takes of this scene and hashing them together, along with Photoshoped frames

Colour change

Here we have changed the colour of our set inorder to bleach out the background and give it a "Glossy" feel which the itv2 brief states, personally i prefer the shots before this colour change.

i have just uploaded the establishing shot as an example.

The Making

This is a short video which shows the making of our itv2 ident, its simply a time laps video which depicts "Life on Set". when shooting we spent 4 days in the studio from 8am till 9pm and captured 7hours of that on film. this is the result:


the making from Jack Cook on Vimeo.

This will be submitted on the final DVD with the completed ident along with development and back up work.

Sheep

This is the 1st attempt at animating the sheep which will be jumping through the picture above the bed in our animated scene.

Shoot 3

Shoot 3 on set we filmed the final sequence which was the most challenging of all, having to animate the most objects at one time in the shot whilst also moving the camera proved very difficult but i am happy with what we achieved:

Scene 6 (final)

once again this clip is completely unedited.

after this we attempted to re-shoot the suitcase scene but have decided that a better solution could be made in the editing stage in order to get a more fluid movement from the explosion




then it was time to tare that once loved but now loathed set down to the ground.

Shoot 2

At 4:00pm today we were able to revisit our studio and had to reassemble the set, this was annoyingly time consuming but as we had set up before it didn't take nearly as long as the 1st time. by 9:00pm we had shot the following sequences, none of which have been edited.

Scene 3 (Book & Lamp)

We still have to decide on which book take off 2 use.

Scene 4 (Lamp)

This sequence will be reversed in the final edit.

Scene 5 (Book fly by)

This scene was not story boarded or planned but we decided to shoot it anyway incase we wanted to use it in the final edit.

YCN Submission Boards

We designed these 2 boards to accompany our dvd animation but the crit revealed to us that we would probably only need one impact board in order to explain the DVD menu and show the final sequence in stills. the revision of these designs will be posted at a later date.

Shoot 1

This is the result of our 1st day shooting on set. these clips are unedited as of yet and just show the movements and composition. These sequences were actually made on the second day of having the studio booked out as constructing the set, testing lighting and camera angels etc used up our 1st day.
Unfortunately after shooting these sequences we had to deconstruct our set as we did not have access to the studio the following morning. meaning we had to take everything down and then re build the next day at 4:00pm when the studio next became available to us.

Establishing Shot


Scene 1 (Sheets)


Scene 2 (Suitcase)

If we have time we intend to re-shoot this scene

The Competition

Purple and brown

i saw this purple and brown animation which aardman produced as a set of idents for nickelodeon and thought it was a hilarious example of stop motion animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULjSjJHnXKE

itv 2 logo

all of the current itv2 idents have the logo animated right at the start. starting as "itv" and sliding out 2 reveal "itv 2". i have downloaded the logo from the ycn websites project pack and animated it in after effects with the same stile, this will enable us to layer the logo onto our own ident.

On The Set

a small overview of on set life:

storyboard and floor plan wall
set up sceneconstructing teddy's skeleton
walking tallsetting up camera mapping shotsbondinglight set upthe setphotographingreviewing

Floor Plans

We Planned the lighting and positioning of our scene after visiting and pre-booking the lighting studio. the movement of the objects was decided in the earlier story boarding process but at this stage we planned the paths of these objects. We planned the timing of these movements by measuring them against each other deciding on speeds well before the shooting process. we also took this opertunity to make some initial ideas of how we would light the set after looking at our lighting research.
these were the result: a series of birds eye view floor plans separated into scenes 1-6.

Final Storyboards

We narrowed down the story because we felt the scenes previously planned would be over complicated when filming and would also be too busy for itv 2's simplicity. the inclusion of previous objects would also have given our ident a more youthful/random feel which we wanted to avoid keeping in mind ITV2's target audience of 16-35.
this was the final sequence we decided on.

Lighting

This book Light science and magic drastically helped the lighting process when it came to lighting our set, as there was so many objects and the majority of which are moving it was very hard to keep a white background.
Below are a few examples of what was most useful when it came to trying to produce a seamless background.

Chroma Key

We have researched chroma keying because we are thinking of digitally imposing an animated poster on the wall above our bed. The actual process of chroma key seems to be quite easily achievable but I am saying this currently with no experience so we will see how the final result turns out.

Initial Story Boards