Finishing steps

Made two beautiful prints of my thesis (and then a bad foto:D), doing some finishing touches on my work and final steps on the website (www.photonvideo.de)

I'm very proud...

... because I succesfully burned my first blu-ray disc today:)

the very last shots

finished with the video recordings, now animating the rest and after that I will be completing the sound recordings and sound editing

made the recordings

almost done with the recordings for my tv-spots

Mondriaan

Talked with Johan and Carsten about my project. Carsten was new to my project and so could bring some fresh wind into it. I still wasn't really clear about the third painter yet. I had been thinking about Mondriaan once in the past, but now that Carsten brought it up again I'll give it a try. I'm sitting now over the paintings, I'll stick to the more abstract and famous ones, but they'll need a bit more inspiration on my part then the others... we'll see.

The Mondriaan quote will be:
(Originally: "Art") "This car" is not made for anybody and is, at the same time, for everybody.

in words

back to da hopper!

As Johan and Frank suggeted from my first animations for magritte, I was now looking for an adequate quote from hopper to use as the pay-off at the end of the spot. It was actually easy to find one and I like: "If you could say it in words there would be no reason to drive" (that's "paint" of course in the original quote).

hopper in work

A bit small here, but all the tiny moving details are beautiful in high resolution...

preparing the animations

Macro Polo

I was playing with my photocamera and with a cheap little trick you can mount the lenses backward on the camera, which turns your lenses into superMacros or microscopic lenses. So I photographed this little insect sitting on my pullover. It's a bit problematic because the depth of field is extremly shallow and you have to get very close to the subject... but fun anyways.

cutting pictures

preparing stuff for after fx

Hip -, Dennis -, Edvard Hopper

The next painter in choice....

magritte

I was checking out different painters and finally got away from the more realistic stuff and turned back to good old Magritte. Working on his pictures now for the storyboard...

a riddle

Started working on the pictures. I'll let you have a guess who made this originally...

the beauty of Mercedes conveyed with classical paintings

Looking for the right pictures to place the mercedes in...

Getting to know the object...

... I was taking some photos at the Mercedes shop in Münster.

the next setup

About to finish off the scriptie and checking for webspace to present my final exam...

cha.. cha.. cha.. changes

Well, since I have already double the amount of words I would need for my thesis (scriptie) and I am still not even half way through with the film analysis, I decided with Joannne that I will stick to the film "Psycho" and the remake. So the finish line is in sight now...

Skriptie again...

Read - write - read - write - watch movie - analyse - write - read.... still busy with my thesis. Mmmh though it's interessting, I was somehow hoping to be quicker with this...
Watched 'Clockwork Orange' twice already and 'Lost Highway' once, both are considered for analysis...

writing scriptie...

the last time I was mainly busy researching and writing on my thesis. It became kind of fun, my topic is 'suspense in films', I knew a lot about it already but now that I dive into it everthing becomes much clearer to me. I had a talk with Joanne yesterday and she liked what I had written so far so I will continue like this...

setting the tone...

At my appointment with Frank and Johan we were talking about the tone of the social spots of SIRE (Stichting ideele Reclame), because I was disliking the negative touch of the spots. Johan came up with the spots of LOI, which are not really socially engaged, but indeed really funny. I think there should be a way to combine these things to make it a positive message...

scriptie...ing part 2

Well still sitting over my scriptie... Compilating storyboard pictures to give examples how to use suspense, I kind of felt a sense of summer coming up...

scriptie...ing

I'm busy with my scriptie. Reading books. I think I need to make some changes in the topic. Or better yet, define it better what it is. Also watched "Psycho" now, uhm, I think it was five times. Since this is one of the films I will discuss regarding the function of suspense in films.

the zivis again...

last week I had a workshop again. here is a small excerpt from the video my group made in three days time...

now the work starts...

presentation worked out fine, now I can start working out my plans. For those who missed it, here is the possibility for a review:

Showreel (takes a sec to start):

SHOWREEL


Videopresentation:

VIDEOPRESENTATION



soooo... back to my heineken

showreel

Making a showreel costed more time then I thought, maybe not perfect yet, but the first one I ever did. Nice to have an overview of all the things I did and a good start for the presentation...

De laatsten stukjes editen...

Nog een beetje finetuning, nog twee korte opnames, en en en... ook de kleinen dingen hebben tijd nodig. En daarna nog even overlegen wat ik naast de video nog voor de presentatie nodig heb...

almost there...

Did a lot of work and now it's almost done. Still doing some last preparations and research to make it all even better and talk with the teachers again on monday to get everything fixed...

The intro

Today I was working on my presentation. I wanted to do some recordings but instead I did the animation for the intro since that was the most difficult part, I wanted to have it out of the way. It's not the "latest invention" of motion graphics, but it will do the job and fit to what I will do in the presentation...
So tomorow is recording time.

Recording

Today I will make some recordings for my presentation, I'm excited if everything will work out the way I planed it...

Working

I'm working on my presentation. Getting everything in a good order to make it easily understandable. I have some ideas I'm excited about but I still have to check if it's working the way I hope it will.

Presentation

Met Johan had ik afgesproken dat ik misschien toch beter een best-of van de Twentse Welle laat zien voor mijn presentatie. Ik denk dat ik heel even de twee Invito dingen ga noemen, maar om te laten zien wat mijn mogelijkheden zijn is de TW toch het best. Hieronder dus een Edit, het is iets meer dan anderhalf minuten, een goede tijd denk ik.

Gespreken...

Gisteren gesprek met Frank en Johan gehad. Nieuwe input om nog wat dingen te verbeteren. Het beeld word langzam duidelijker. Johan had ook nog wat tips voor de presentatie die ik nog ga omzetten. Vandag met Joanne gesproken over mijn scriptie. Het was een goed begin. Ik heb nu ideen hoe ik verder ga en dat betekend vooral: schrijven. Heb al een hele boel dingen in mijn hoofd.

Vandag nog uurenlang een boel commercials uit de AKI Mediathek gekeken en gecopieerd. Nu vind ik ze natuurlijk ook op youTube. Maakt niet uit, ik heb ze ook copieerd om een antaal op mijn harddrive te hebben zodat ik ze makkelijk in mijn presentatie kan inbouwen als voorbeelden...

looking at commercials

Well, I'm kind of haunted by the idea of making a car commercial. I'm also pretty fixed on the idea of making one for Mercedes already, somehow I just like them.

Well, car-commercials seem to be like the most clichee stuff there is, BUT since I'm looking up commercials for Mercedes I think it pretty much changed over the last decade or so. A lot of them are not dealing with technical stuff at all, they're even funny most of the time, especially astonishing with a "noble" brand like Mercedes but they do use a lot of irony. There is often a kind of "upper class" environment, but for the rest its not always 'that' difficult, not all of the commercials are made of high-class beautiful-car shots. I mean the shots are beautiful, it's not the kind of quality you make just like that, but it's also not totally out of reach.

Most of the commercials seem to be 30 seconds long, a little less are 45 seconds, only a few are 1 minute long and so far I found only one that is 2 minutes. Maybe the longer ones are for special broadcasts.

What struk me most about the commercials is that they all have a different approach to convey the key-message. I will make some notes about some of them here...



Slogan: "Presafe - Insassenschutz"










Starts with the picture of two Guardian Angels, camera zooms in on them until we're with them on their cloud, they talk. One tells that his job is to guard a Mercedes Driver and the other responds "You're a lazy ass!".

The spot-idea for the slogan evolves from a change of perspective. How could you transport the "Presafe"-benefit from a different angle, from a person or thing involved with the customer of the product. It takes the "safety"-slogan literally and exagerates it into absurdity by using fairytale like setting.



Slogan: "Ein neues Bild vom Diesel"










A man wants to enter his Mercedes. His kid sees it and asks: "May I drive?" "No, your're too young". Ten years later the father again approaches his Mercedes, this time a newer model, and the boy, now a punkish teen, asks again. Another ten years later the father is once again approaching a new model and this one looks really hot. The boy, now a young man in a suit comes out of the house. The father asks: "May I drive?" The boy answers: "No, you're too old."

This idea evolves from making from the slogan an old-versus-new story represented in an everyday-life-situation. It's something we all know from ourselves or from our friends and that makes it easy to connect to the idea. It is a repeating situation with a 180° turn at the end. A common pattern for a micro-narrative: establish a situation to create an expectation and then give it a twist.



Slogan: "Die Welt des 200D"













This one I added just for fun. It's a very old one from around the sixties. But it has quiet common features already: detail shots, fast editing. It's mixed with an Off-narrator, plainly explainig the advantages and modern style of the car, which makes it like a news show. It's not the style you would use anymore, except maybe for a nice parody-type-spot, but still fun to watch.



Slogan: "bester deutscher Hersteller in 30 Jahren Pannenstatistik"










On the street a man is stopped and interviewed. You see he is wearing a workersuit. He is questioned: "What german cars do you know?". He is counting up several german car brands. Then he stops and looks as if he is thinking hard. The interviewer asks "And mercedes?" He answers: "Ah, mercedes. Yeah they're there too." Then he walks off to his car and you see its a yellow car with big letters "ADAC" which is a german ermergency support for cars. With that the viewer immediatly realizes why he forgot to count mercedes.

This one works with a comparison. But I think the starting point for the idea was a change of perspective: how do ohter people/things see the product/customer. Regarding the key-message of "a safe car" it's not too far to the spot idea. This setting brings up the possibility of direct comparison, but in a way that at first you don't realize whats the spot about. It's very nicely done because it hides the important "ADAC" fact at first and the message of the spot is twisted as soon as you see it.



Slogan: "Beauty is nothing without brains"













A beautiful blonde comes into a library and asks for burgers and fries. The woman behind the counter responds: "This is a library!" The blonde looks behind her, turns back to the desk and repeats her request but this time whispering.

This one is obiously not made for germany! It's simply a gag, but a nice one. How do you get there? I think the idea evolved from putting the key-message, which was probably that the new E-Class is an "intelligent car", in an aphorism. I don't know, but I guess the "beauty" in the slogan was not initially there but added for the slogan because i think it's a standart value for mercedes... but well, just a guess. Outgoing from the slogan it's not a very far step to blonde-gags. The gag itself works with absurdity. I'm wondering if maybe a gag like that was out there already before the spot was created...





Conclusion:

This is just a small exerpt of a load of Mercedes spots you can find on YouTube. But it shows already that there are a lot of spots that show the car only at the end or not at all like in the "guardian angels" and the "ADAC" spot. It also shows there are commercials with pretty complex shots, while others are not that difficult to shoot but have a nice or funny idea to it. Since I'm not able to spend loads of money, I will go for a nice idea, a "micro-narrative-story"-spot. Still have to think more about the approaches to making commercials from key-messages...