Convergent Media

The hybrid nature of our piece, i.e, combining video, animation and already existing footage to create this new piece of media, makes our project convergent in a sense of Lev Manovich's definition of Hybrid Media.

Our remediated soundtrack also adheres to his ideas of remixing and remediation, and the fact that we have also used these ideas in the way we have edited the adverts we used, and they way we have deconstructed the interviews and reconstructed answers and phrases people have said for our own devices, suggests our project is convergent in this way too.

Progression

We want to make an experimental video animation about power and control.

We are going to make an experimental, hybrid video-animation about the power of advertising.

 We are going to include a remediated soundtrack and public opinion to enhance its convergence.

We are going to focus on the power and control of advertising.

We are going to focus the idea of the power and control of advertising by making the whole experimental video into a subtle advert.

 We are going to make it into an advert/infomercial about smartphones.

The outcome – it is an attempt at a hybrid video-animation that makes suggestions about the power of smartphones and the control theyhave over our lives.

Soundtrack Research

Repetition as a literary device:

Repetition is a literary device often used for effect by politicians in speeches, in poems for emphasis, in posters and advertisements as a tool of persuasion and most often it is used to express ideas more powerfully.

Repeating words lends them more emphasis. We wanted to do this, and enhance this by taking them out of their original context. We took well known phrases from adverts - slogans from technical products, smartphones, well known brands etc - made them monotone and all in the same voice (using a text to speech generator) so that their context would be totally removed. We also repeat these phrases and slogans to highlight how often we here them, and how well known they are. This suggests that they are used a lot in advertising as a tool of persuasion and power to make us buy things. A recognisable phrase serves to make the product that is being advertised more memorable.

By taking these phrases and slogans out of context and repeating them, we wanted to highlight the prominence they have in advertising, and they power they have in being so memorable, and making the products they advertise more prominent.


This is similar to the effect that company logos have: the more memorable and recognisable they are the more the consumer is likely to be able to recognise them and associate the product when it is out of context. The smartphone app/game LogoQuiz emphasises this, in that the aim is to guess the company from an incomplete picture or silhouette of the logo.

 

Power and Control - final analysis

While we set out to make a video that stressed the power of advertising, and the control it can have over our lives - we are active consumers of advertising, and it is undeniably powerful in making us want or buy products (if it didn't work, why would there be so much of it?!) - we have ended up making a video that stresses how much control smartphones seem to have over our lives, and how much we rely on them.

This is an interesting development because when we decided to make our piece a subtle advertisement we chose to try advertise smartphones because we thought it was something we could subtly slip in to video and it was specific to a single brand.

I quite like the outcome however, because I didn't realise quite how much a part of our lives our phones are. In the interviews people were being critical about the phones being advertised as cameras, and judging and discussing all their other features, but not the fact that they are, in essence, a communication device and this is probably how we use them the most.

I think the video gives a unique insight to how important smartphones are to some people, and actually how irrelevant the advertising for them is: people are going to buy them either way. Apple don't sell the iPhone on its features, they sell it on unique things that make it different to the older versions of the phone because "everyone knows how good iPhones are already". (Direct quote from one of our interviewees). Other companies, such as Samsung, market their phones against the iPhone, and suggest it is better. It's not about what the phone itself can do, it's about the competition and how it will sell.

So doing this project has definitely taught me something about advertising I had not noticed before. I also feel like the progression that we have gone through, in the past few weeks has been immense. Our ideas have really evolved and taken paths of their own but to an outcome we are happy with. So overall, I think that it has been a really worthwhile experience.

Problemsss...

This has not been all plain sailing however. We have definitely had some technical issues with Final Cut Pro media going offline, not being able to capture the footage in one take, not being able to log into the editing suite computers (the library guy reckons they don't like it if your password is too long. How ridiculous is that!?) and so on and so forth.

However, we have been able to overcome these problems because we work really well as a team. We have also both done pretty much the same amount of work. I don't feel at all like one of us has worked harder than the other. We did all the editing together - that was completely collaborative - and we split work that we both didn't need to be there for between days when each of us was free. For example, I did most of the cutting out on photoshop, and making the photographs into animation sequences, but Maks made all of the backgrounds for these animations so it worked out fairly.

It has been a really positive experience working with someone I get on with so well but also works as hard as I do, and puts so much effort into the project. Happy happy happy :)

Some hilarious stills from the animation - pre backgrounds.

  

The Final Week.

It's been a hectic one, but we've set ourselves deadlines and kept to them, which I'm really proud of and has worked really well.

The previous post was a document we had to complete about presenting our work. We are going to be presenting it in the Dubbing Theatre, which is like a mini cinema. The final edit is a 3min 30 (ish) short infomercial type video so in this context it works well, because it is almost like an advert you would see at the cinema, except it advertising a product and not a film.

Ideally we would want the presentation to really enhance the video. So for example, if we could show it on a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop and project it onto a screen, and synch them so they all play at the same time, that would be really selling the product. However, I don't think this is possible. Synching all these products would be difficult, if not impossible, and would perhaps lend more focus to the idea of the power of technology, rather than just smartphones.

If we had unlimited money it would be pretty cool to have several smartphones and put them in a grid and play the video off all of them. But again, we are not that rich, haha!

So yeah: after that tutorial we both felt really positive. Raine and Chris seemed positive too which made us feel better, and Raine commented on how much our worked had progressed in such a short amount of tie which was really encouraging.

Our to do list after that day looked a litte like this:

- Finish the animations and add backgrounds

- Finish the soundtrack

- Capture, separate and edit the interview footage

- Download and edit the adverts we showed in the interviews into shorter versions of themselves

- Edit them all together into the final piece!

Which, actually was quite a lot, but we knew we could do it!

Maks spent tuesday making the backgrounds for the animations.

On wednesday I captured and separated the interview footage, and edited the adverts.

Maks finished the soundtrack.

On thursday we met at 10am and stayed in the library until 6pm.

Maks added backgrounds to the animations and put them in FCP.

I edited all the interviews to get the best answers.

We started to put clips together and got about 1minute 30 seconds worth of footage that we really liked.

On Friday, I struggled into uni and we managed to finish the edit, add the soundtrack and juggle it around to fit around the sounds we wanted from some of the footage. So we did it! Maks took the final edit home to burn it to a disc and do some finishing touches to the lighting in some of the shots.

So hopefully I will be well enough to make it in to the crit on Monday but we shall see.

Presentation Requirements

First order of the day:

ANIMATION PHOTOGRAPHS

So today was really productive too. We planned out what we wanted in our animation and took the photographs for it.

We took photographs so we can make the animation like stop motion, but we have to edit them by cutting the figures and phones out of the background on photoshop, and adding in stylised backgrounds which Maks is going to make in Illustrator.

We are also going to add speech bubbles and drawings into some of the shots when we animate it.

Only thing to do now is get editing the photographs and then the soundtrack, then the interviews, then edit all together.

Phew.

Some stills from today, and some notes we made on (very) possible soundtrack/voice over work.

We looked at several adverts to get ideas of slogans they use, and phrases that we, as consumers, are very familiar with, such as "terms and conditions apply" or slogans such as "I'm loving it".

We intend to repeat these phrases to change their meaning, and taking them out of context/possibly re-recording them to make them more monotone to enhance their out-of-context-ness should help us do this.

We also looked at smart phone adverts and demonstrations to aid us in the things we should include in our animations.

Our animations are almost an advert of their own, showing the features of smartphones, but almost parodying how advanced smartphones appear to perceive themselves as. We used different smartphones but showed all the features they all can do, suggesting they are not as unique as they each seem to think they are.

We particularly want to remix the sound from this advert ^

FILMING DAY!

Okay so today we got the interviews filmed.

We set up around 11am and filmed from about 3pm. We got about 10 people to watch adverts of smartphones (one of the following) and answer some questions, on camera, about the advert they watched.

We then asked the following questions:

Also whether they would buy the product or not.

We are yet to review the results but we plan to do some animation on wednesday and start editing at the weekend or next week.

Tutorial notes ^