Advertising: HIV Awareness

____Another little project I just uncovered was a self-directed brief from my first year of uni. Quite similar to my 'toast' brief, I made up one that would aim to raise awareness of HIV.

The originals I did at University follow, but I wanted to show the more recent remakes of this project first.



Given more time I would redo the photographs, incorperating the red ribbon into the actual photos themselves which would make them easier to Photoshop the colour. This would also give me the opportunity to experiment with where to put the ribbon, for example, tying the two holding hands together.



These are the originals I came up with in June 2008.

Again, much like picture-taking time in the Gamecity project, my friends were not amused!







(excuse my dreadful Photoshopping skills from previous, I am a little more refined these days I hope..)

I originally did the snake/poisonous textures to link to the disease being deadly, and I wanted something visual to show despite the fact saying people were unaware they had it..

*uses brain*

I recently found time to edit these posters. I loved the copyline and the fact that went with it, the imagery and the colour scheme too.. so that just left the Photoshopped imagery. I suddenly remembered how based on a striking but a simple colour palette this is, and then recalled that the HIV ribbon is red..









.. and that it can be the visual that is everyone is "unaware" of.

I admit I got influence from my own work back at college when I did the 'debt' posters in black and white, with the offending item in red!

But never the less, I feel it's a big improvement, and the snake thing probably would have offended people. Why's it on a toilet door? I figured people might need something to read..

If I had thought of this idea originally when taking the photos, I would have tied real ribbons around my photo-victims and then left them red. However, since after graduation everyone has been scattered to the edges of the Earth, I am forced to improvise with Photoshop!

College Work

A blast from the past, a couple of pieces of work that I'm still fond of from college (2005-2007).

One piece of college work I rescued before it disappeared into my wardrobe forever was this..



A simple poster for the Leeds Royal Armouries (doy) but I wanted to remember it as I really like the textured and imperfect paint effect gained from silk-screen printing. I also like the use of a limited colour pallette: less is more.


The below illustration was something I did in a sort of side "art history" / "experimentation" class, if I recall correctly. In this piece I wanted to capture still as well as movement, so drew in detail what remained still, and clearly (or not), the motion objects such as vehicles and people, became mere shapes and blurs.

Older Motion Pieces

____Just a couple of stop-frame pieces from earlier years of University.
The first was done in my first year in a group of 6 people, with 4 days to come up with the idea, film it, and edit it! We had to choose a topic to advertise out of a list of about 10 options. We chose shoes/trainers.




____The second was shot in my second year of uni with just one other person, a genius named Gemma Hurst.. We had to create a motion piece for a radio station, hence, Heart FM. Whiteboard animation.
The music may be blocked in this video as Lovely Day by Bill Withers is apparantly too lovely to share with the world.

Brighton Film Workshop

____This was a piece I storyboarded and directed whilst at a day film workshop in Brighton. We were given a couple of hours theory in the morning, then over our lunchhour, had to storyboard out the camera angles, etc, from a script from a film (we had 3 script scenes to choose from, I chose a scene from American Beauty). I had seen it, but only once, and years ago, so I had well and truly forgotten what the scene really looked like. I then had an hour to direct the camera, lighting, movement, and the actors.

Below is the edited footage of what I shot in my hour of directing.
I wanted one more shot of the very last section, from an angle over her shoulder looking at him, but due to timing, this is what I got done. I also got to use the boom when I wasn't directing, and to be the camera(wo)man in someone else's piece.



I was very pleased with the outcome for a first piece of filming I'd ever done/directed! They edited the footage together and posted it to me on a disc at a later date. Somehow, they edited it exactly how I wanted it, despite never seeing my storyboard. Dead chuffed.

Would definitely recommend Brighton Film Workshops to anyone else. I can't wait to save up and return to do another workshop with them.

Gamecity

____The final project of my university course: Gamecity. My concept was to encourage people to feel 'involved' in the annual Nottingham festival, and by doing so I wanted to literally put human beings into classic games. I liked the authentic feel of those original games, that were slightly pixellated, and not-too-polished unlike today's games. At the same time though, I had a wide age-range to cover but wanted to make pieces of work for everyone: humour. By using humour, I felt that this would involve everyone, catch everyone's eye and hopefully keep everyone's attention as well as be a memorable piece of film.

Below are my 2 final pieces!



I am really pleased with how the game overlaying graphics turned out as they came out pretty precise to the original game. My roommate and coursemate (aka the characters of the game) hate me just a little bit now!
I'm also very happy with how the stop-frame animation worked out with the rest of the idea. The choppiness of the movements coincide with the 'retro' game concept and give it a lot more character than if it were just straight filmed, in my opinion.




I wish for this I had stuck closer to a racing game in particular. One that was later suggested to me was comparing it to Mario Kart! Wish I'd done more specific research on racing games at the start. It was also quite hard to judge the time it would take the "racing cars" (plastic chairs) to cover a certain distance across Market Square, and there is a big gap inbetween the female knocking the male's car(chair) over.
____Looking back I wish I'd gotten her to do a trick/wheelie on her chair/car to add something else into the mix where there's a break. Never the less, I am happy with how it turned out, I must just remember in future to do more specific research e.g how the graphics were that precise in the Pokémon game, do the same for this one, based on a certain racing game rather than taking features of different ones.

We also got lots of funny looks.

Many thanks to Nottinghamshire County Council for allowing me to film both these loony happenings in the Nottingham Market Square.


____Going back to the beginning of this project, I created some animatics for each idea, shown below, including a third one of a 'Tekken' (fighting game) spoof which never made it to filming due to lack of time and people being busy with exams, but the brief stated we only needed 2 final motion pieces anyway. I still would of loved to have filmed that stop-motion piece anyway.







____The Tekken spoof would of using the same concept as the other ideas: human-beings in games, filmed in the Market Square environment (because that is where the Gamecity festival is held and also because it's a nice effect to see the public popping in and out of the shot!), with the Tekken gameplay-graphics overlayed on the stop-frame animation. In this one, it would of had fantastic exaggeration of moves (just like in Tekken, but perhaps even more so) such as when someone is punched, they go absolutely flying, and even in this animatic (slight mockery) one player blows at the other, and the other one is knocked over.


____Finally, a development piece for the Racing Game animation: basically the bit before I added in a bunch more sound effects, some graphics etc. This was what I had done at the point where the friends that wanted to see what they looked like flying about on plastic chairs in the middle of the Market Square said "let's see it already!"