Jemina & Lydia

I tried to edit a few different versions of the ad and this is the one I like most. I just added some sound effects and fixed the editing a bit.  I tried to mix Lydia's version with my first one by adding the speeded up clip, but I think it is kind of out of place. I also added some background sounds to make it more lively.

I spoke to Jemina about this ad and she said she really liked it, and that we should use it as one of our final two adverts. She suggested adding more of a fade into the music so I've added that, as well as adding more clips so that theres an even wider variety of mood swings going on, just to reiterate the point better. Aware this looks like a cop out blog post but I wanted to show the slight changes as I think this will be our final advert.

I thought it'd be a cool idea to edit one person into an advert in different situations, and found myself thinking that an ad using Hermione Granger from Harry Potter would be pretty cool as a period advert. All girls know that mood swings are a massive pain in the arse, and so I decided to edit loads of footage of Hermione in different situations to show how much girls change their mood and mind whilst on their periods. I used the copy 'lets make mood swings your only worry this time of the month', to suggest that Always products have got you covered protection wise on your period. The ad is meant to be lighthearted and slightly funny as all women can relate to the stupid things they do on their period. I couldn't think of what music to put with the advert, but eventually decided on Avril Lavigne's Complicated, as the song literally says 'you're acting like your somebody else' which relates to the clips of Hermione acting weirdly and changing her mood...

Both me and Jemina decided we really loved the LOTR Uber advert, but felt like it was missing something. I decided to add some special effects for the explosion, and the clip with Gandalf driving too. I feel as though the SFX have really added a lot to the advert and it seems to work a bit better now. I think this could definitely be one of our finals as people have found it funny to watch and the brand and clips work really well together to create a funny story.

I decided to re-jig Jemina's Spiderman Spotify advert a bit by changing up the order of copy and adding in the Bee Gees Stayin Alive as the song to make it more funky. The advert works quite well but it's too simple to be our final as it doesn't involve much editing. I like the ad but it just needs to be a bit more complex and funny to be a final advert.

I have been following a subreddit r/combinedGIFs on Reddit for a while and found the material there to be really helpful when thinking about different ways to combine material from two different things in a logical way. The way they use a common factor in the material to sometimes surprisingly seamlessly mix it together is impressive. Here is a link to the subreddit Obviously, the gifs don't have sound in them, but when searching for combined gifs on youtube I found some edits that had sound. Some of the examples are just hilarious and I kind of wanna keep trying to come up with edits even after the brief is over.

I always loved the Grinch movie so I wanted to do something with it. The getting ready scene was perfect for a montage styled scene with him getting ready. This could work with almost any clothing company. I tried two different songs as background music but I feel it is still lacking something.

This scene from spiderman without the music was just so horribly awkward that I had to use it. I tried to do a Spotify ad before but matching the dancers to the music was really difficult. Here it's a little easier because it's just for the end and doesn't have to match perfectly.

I saw this scene from modern family and really wanted to do an insurance or a cleaning service ad for it. The music created a lot of drama with the slow-motion destruction so I went with the copy "for life's little dramas" which I think workes with the video.

I had an idea to create an advert for an all female dating app, using clips of famous men who have cheated in their lives. The idea started off when I found a clip of Lance Armstrong saying that he'd cheat again, and then I thought about finding clips of other people such as Bill Clinton, Hugh Grant and Chris Brown. By using famous scummy men, the ad is recognisable as being a bit anti - men. I've used the famous 'Becky with the good hair' lyric from Beyonce's 'Sorry', as the line is about Jay Z cheating on her. I also thought it was pretty good for a lesbian dating site because it's literally saying that you should call a girl instead. The copy reads 'More fun than becoming a nun', because typically a lot of girls say that they're going to join a convent when men piss them off. I don't love the advert, because I think it could be seen as pretty offensive and a bit rude towards the LGBT community, but I figured I'd add it on here an...

Jemina had a really cool idea to do a Lord Of The Rings Uber advert, with copy saying 'No need for a trilogy' which is an idea that she tried out in our premier workshop. I really loved the idea but felt that if we used slightly different clips, we could make it even funnier. So I made my own version of the idea to push it slightly further, and to hopefully make it more amusing.

I decided to start finding really short clips that I find funny and thinking of copy / brands that could work well with the video, in hopes that I can find some ideas for the final adverts. This super short video of Ed Milliband being a bit of a prat could work really well for a fact checking site such as Snopes.com, with copy like 'don't be an idiot, know the facts' This video of Lance Armstrong saying he'd cheat again would work really well with a compilation of other famous lies told by men (e.g. Bill Clinton) for a dating site advert. The copy could read 'good men are hard to come by these days, but we've got your back'.

Pixar movies do a good job at breaking my heart again and again. The best example is the opening scene of Up. The scene is less then 5 minutes long but it really hits the spot without any dialogue or anything. It could easily be a stand alone short animation because it tells the whole story of their love and their lives, though it would be pretty depressing to just leave it there when Ellie dies. After todays lesson about sound in films, I looked at the scene differently and tried to understand what makes it so heart wrenching. In the background of the montage we hear a really simple piano song that will be used as the Ellie song during the film. In the montage we associate that music with the love they shared and most importantly the inspiring effect Ellie had on Carl. So even though the scene is sad and Carl is left to continue without Ellie, during the film they use the song in sad scenes, but in a way that shows Ellie still having a strong positive impact in Carls life. S...

Today we had Tom Attah talking to us how music has meaning and how to interpret it. We did some listening exercises that helped us identify how the music gives out different feelings and works as an icon for things. Music is a sign system that conveys meaning that is defined by culture and society. In a way music is it's own language. The meanings can be really different in different countries but some sounds are universal. Usually sounds that rely on our evolutionary instincts are universal, for example a baby's cry has the same effect everywhere. We listened to two different songs that were an inspiration behind the iconic Imperial March from Star Wars. It was interesting to see how it mixes an epic war song and a funeral march to make the feeling of Darth Vader approaching. The song is really iconic and you only need to hear the few notes from the beginning to know who the music is about. This video is a bit long but interesting. They experiment with the way music e...

In today's session we had a talk from Tom Attah, the Popular Music course leader where we learned about how music can be used to create meaning. In our current project it is vital that we get the music right, so as to change the meaning of the footage we find. Tom taught us about Anaphones (definition: a particular sign as represented in music; a sound or melody that represents something, such as motion or romance) and how to spot them within music, such as the telephone signs in Lady Gaga's 'Telephone'. He also showed us how Mars by Holst and Chopin's Funeral March were used as inspiration for composer John Williams' Imperial March for Star Wars. He showed us that Mars uses sounds, instruments, textures, dynamics and rhythm to portray war, battle and loss. The piece is highly dramatic, and uses a full orchestra to create a highly textured song that sounds very intense. Whereas Chopin's Funeral March is set in a minor key and is slow in tempo, with solemn an...

In our Futurerising talk on Wednesday 7th March, we heard from 3 guest speakers from different areas and backgrounds within advertising. I found the talk really helpful as we found out about different ways of getting into the industry, and got some really great advice from industry professionals. One person who really inspired me from the talks was Hash Milhan, a Digital Creative at Adam + Eve DDB, who spoke to us about how he got into advertising at home in Sri Lanka and took his passion further to start a career as a digital artist in the UK. His biggest piece of advice was simple to contact people as much as you can, to find people within the industry whose work inspires us and to contact them to let them know, and to ask for placements. He pushed the importance of creating an online portfolio, so that when people search our names they find a professional site full of our best work. I really love Adam + Eve DDB as an agency, and aspire to create work for some of their big c...

In a previous blog post, I wrote about transport adverts e.g. Uber. In our workshop on Friday, I decided to use the Mr Bean clip from the blog post, to create a short rough advert for Tesla. I wanted to practice editing footage and adding graphics / text to create a 30 second ad in prep for the final adverts. I really don't like the music for the advert but there wasn't much to work with initially in the workshop files, but I think it's an okay start considering I've never used premier pro software before. In the workshop, we learned about how effects and transitions can be used to change the tone of the footage, and I played around with editing Love Actually footage so that the film had a different plot all together. We looked at a couple of examples of genre bending, such as Mrs Doubtfire turned into a horror movie. I found the workshop super helpful, as I've never used video editing software before, and I found it really easy to pick up the skill and create s...

Lord of The Rings - Uber I have done a premiere pro course back in my home university so I just focused on trying out some ideas during the workshop. Here is an ad I did for Uber. I couldn't find the music I wanted but I think it worked out alright. I was lucky and found some clips with a car edited into the Mordor scenes and ended up using them.

Uber is an obvious choice as a client, as it's easy to find famous car / taxi / travel related clips on the internet. Though John advised us to look at interesting clips first, then choose the client, I thought it'd be good to show how a range of clips across genres can all work well for one brand. For example, this clip of Mr Bean would work brilliantly with copy like 'Or you could just order an Uber.', but would also work really well as a Tesla advert, showcasing their 'driverless' feature. Taking clips from the Baby Driver opening scene would work well with copy like 'Driving so good, it should be criminal', with an energetic heavy rock song to make a fast paced and interesting advert.

FutureRising event was on the 7th of March and we had 3 speakers with different backgrounds in the field of advertisement. I found the event really interesting and inspiring, especially Hash Milhan from Adam&Eve. He had a lot of experience in different agencies and never stopped pursuing his goals even when it could have been the easier choice. He talked about starting off with graphic design, which ended up with him making a lot of banners all the time and getting a bit bored of it. I really respected him for not stopping there but pursuing a career in the creative side and making it happen. When I did my placement in an agency I felt like I was doing a lot of grunt work in graphics, which is fine for now because I need to get the experience, but the idea of ending up doing that for a long time isn't what I want. So when I asked advice on how to get my foot in the door to move from graphics to the creative sound he encouraged to just be straightforward and ask. Simple but go...

I like to keep up with good recent ads through AdWeek and other channels and try to backtrack the logic behind the ideas. Here are some of my favorites I really like this one because it's a weird connection between an ostrich and Samsung. Also the use of a popular song that really fits the consept is brilliant.  This ad really stopped me because it suprised me so much. The consept itself could be applied in many different ways. The idea of the viewer seeing something totally different before you show them what was behind that could also work with short animations or even print if done well. I though it was an incredibly cool ad that really got people to thing about the signs we are missing.  OK Go does a lot of really cool stuff in their videos and most rely on a new way of using technology. I find it really cool because some of them are actually pretty simple, like syncronizing printers to work together and tell a story, and then they just figure ou...

I know this ad won't work well for people who don't understand finnish, but it being one of my favorites I wanted to share it here.  This christmas ad for HOK-elanto is one of my favorites from Finland. It was a comment about uniting together as the diverse multi-cultural community we are during the refugee crisis. They took a stand for solidarity and said that everyone in Finland is a part of this country what ever their background is. The video is simple and really well made in my opinion. It kind of feels like a music video and is easy to watch.  The thing that was powerful here was the choice of music. They did a cover of a finnish rock classic called "Land of Mournful Songs" (translated to english) which is an old song that every finnish person knows. The song has ironic lyrics about the way finnish people only seem to make songs about depressioner and generally are really negative. Like they were being about the refugees. Here is the link to the t...

I wanted to find some examples where the main connecting thing is editing, because when using footage from different sources it can bring it all together. I remembers a video I saw a couple years back where this cinematographer made travel videos and the editing was just brilliant. Apparently he travelled for 23 days and took videos on his travels. When you look at the separate shots they are obviously great quality and great shots, but they wouldn't have the same effect without the brilliant editing. The way he uses transitions between clips makes the video a flowing experience. He used sone in-camera effects and "animates" to use as transition cuts: people who pass in front of a shop, a pan or stilt shot behind fences, a woman who covers the shot with her hand etc. This makes the story continue and connect in a way normal transitions don't succeed at. On top of the editing on the video he did an amazing job with the sounds mixing ambients from the footage an...

Today John showed us an example ad where they used CCTV footage oh parents losing their children for a moment in public to promote reuniting families divided by natural disasters and conflict. I thought it was brilliant and probably really hit the spot for parents who can imagine the emotion of terror and grief of losing a child. It reminded me of a few other examples of ads using real life footage in a brilliant way. Allegedly the footage here is real security camera footage of a man breaking in to their taco shop. Some one in their marketing team grabbed this opportunity and made it a really low budget ad. It doesn't look like much but I think it's hilarious. For a small taco company they got a lot of media attention on basically no budget and turned a bad situation into a profitable one. This is another brilliant use of an actual 911 call recording to raise awareness on domestic violence. It wasn't originally in english and only aired on radio but they recre...

In our briefing presentation, Nick showed us how someone had bended the genre of The Shining to look like a happy family friendly movie. I wanted to look more into the idea of genre bending, and look at some of the techniques used to take footage out of it's original context to subvert the meaning of the end product. I found this really great clip that someone made to make Elf, the family Christmas film, look like a psychological thriller. The trailer uses an eery suspense track to instantly make the footage seem like a suspense film. As well as this, it uses faded transitions to add extra drama, and to make the taken footage seem more fitting to the genre. When we come to create our own advert, we need to make sure we choose a good tone for the video so that we can decide on music to fit the genre, and a clear editing style to follow to make the message behind it clear.

I started looking for inspiration from iconic movie scenes. I tried to come up with ad ideas for each of them to get a flow going. I came up with a few good ideas for a few of them and a lot of bad ones which helped me get the brainstorming going. Some brainstorming ideas: The scene from Dark Knight where the Joker blows up the hospital. I thought about editing it so when he struggles with the detonation the hospital never blows up. Then have an ad for an electrician/technical support with a copy of something like "Thank god he didn't use our services" I thought about a online dating ad that took an iconic romantic moment from a movie and edited it to be a bit creepy. After that promising that online dating gets better results.  It could also be a twist on the tragic endings of stories like Romeo and Julia, so you could actually find your love and live.  The Lion King scene where Simba is born could be used as an event planning ad. "When you need some...