Movie Season brief.

We've been given a new brief to look at over Christmas in terms of research and getting ideas together. I have chosen the Movie Season brief, I have to create 5 10 second idents promoting a season of movies romf any given genre, i.e. Horror, 80's Teen Movies etc. I initially thought about doing 80's teen movies because I find the characters and dialogue from that genre quite fascinating and an attractive prospect to play with. However, I think I might turn this into 80's cult classics so I can include movies such as Ghostbusters, Gremlins and the Goonies.... The material is so vast, I need to look at what imagery and quotations I'd be most interested in playing with.

Here's some, but I'm not sure I agree with all of the ones on this video. Films I think of when I think of the 80's and cult films:
Ghostbusters
Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Fast Times at Richmond High
The Goonies
Breakfast Club
Gremlins
The Karate Kid
Stand By Me
Weird Science
Spinal Tap
Sixteen Candles
Porky's
The Princess Bride etc.



However, the more I think about it, the films in this list that I am most attracted to are the John Hughes movies: 16 Candles, Breakfast Club etc. which I guess brings me back to 80's teen movies, however, given that John Hughes has recently dies, I think it would be quite current to do a series of Idents for a John Hughes movie season. Here's some movie quotes form his movies that I can utilize:

Pretty in Pink Quotes

Andie: You know your talking like that just because I'm going out with Blane
Duckie: His name is Blane? Oh! That's a major appliance, that's not a name!

Weird Science Quotes

"Well, Dino, I guess she just likes malaccas."

"He pukes, you die."

"How 'bout a nice greasy pork sandwich served in a dirty ashtray?"

Breakfast Club Quotes

Andrew: Why do you have to insult everybody?
Bender: I'm being honest, asshole. I would expect you to know the difference.


Allison: Your middle name is Ralph, as in puke, your birth date's March 12th, you're 5'9 and a half, you weigh 130 pounds and your social security number is 049380913.
Andrew Clark: Wow. Are you psychic?
Allison Reynolds: No.
Brian Johnson: Well, would you mind telling me how you know all this about me?
Allison Reynolds: I stole your wallet.

Sixteen Candles Quotes

Grandma Helen: Oh Sam, let me take a look at you. Fred, she's gotten her boobies.
Grandpa Fred: I better get my magnifying glass. Ha Ha Ha.
Grandma Helen: Oh, and they are so PERKY.
[reaches to cup them]
Grandma Helen: [cut to:]
Samantha: I can't believe my grandmother actually felt me up.

The Geek: Can I borrow your underpants for 10 minutes?

The Geek: Relax, would you? We have seventy dollars and a pair of girls underpants. We're safe as kittens.

Planes Train & Automobiles Quotes

"Those aren't pillows!"

Ferris Bueller Quotes

Economics Teacher: Bueller?... Bueller?... Bueller?

Grace: Oh, he's very popular Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.

Cameron: Okay Ferris, can we just let it go, please?
Sloane: Ferris, please. You've gone to far. We're going to get busted.

Ferris: A: You can never go too far. B: If I'm gonna get busted, it is *not* gonna be by a guy like *that*.

Cameron: The 1961 Ferrari 250GT California. Less than a hundred were made. My father spent three years restoring this car. It is his love, it is his passion.

Ferris: It is his fault he didn't lock the garage.

Ferris: That's right, I'm Abe Froman." "The Sausage King of Chicago?"

"Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Over the next few days I'll look a imagery I can utilize.

Some dvd menu sequences

I just thought I'd have a quick look at other places animation can be employed. DVD menus allow little touches and flourishes to be added to the introduction of a movie, with little quirky animations that can really improve the customer's interaction and connection with a film, a lot of the time they use after effects or software similar to after effects.
Now I really enjoyed this one, aesthetically the style is appealing, the movement of the thing is nice and professional looking too. The transitions are well done and it avoids ever getting clunky or employing unnatural/jerky motion.

Now this one, I thought was awful. The way it moved was too fast for such a lot of information to be taken in, there was really no time to take in anything before being assaulted by another motion. I fear that the deisgner of this has overcoked his animation. The presentation of the flat images against a 3D setting was also quite jarring.

This is a highly professional looking one, the motion in it as well as the visual aesthetic is well employed. The timing of the animation and the movement it emplys is also nicely executed.

Storyboarding

Here there are some storyboards to demonstrate the way they normally work. They tend to show key frames or frames where sometihng changes i.e. a new shot of something or an event in the timeline, for example in the second storyboard down, the western one, when the Cowboy is thrown out of the saloon, arrows suggest camera motion and there is a keyframe for every shot, i.e. a frame ot show the saloon door before anything happens, a frame to show the cowboy is thrown out of it and a frame to demonstrate a shot change to looking from behind the cowboy outward. It is important when I make my own storyboards to remember that I need only highlight these key changes rather than creating a ridiculously painstaking storyboard that highlights every little movement. This would defeat the point of a storyboard as Fred suggests, and I would be closer to making a stop frame than I would a story board sequence.











Often like in a few of the examples here, the storyboard is annotated, this can be with the motion the camera takes, for example if it pans out, without polluting the effect of the image with ridicuously elaborate drawings over the storyboard frame to elaborate on the way the camera works. Other elements such as relevant dialogue can be added underneath to give a greater idea of where the image comes in the sequence.

Some more animation work....

Heres some aniamtion that I thin is particularly beautiful. I don't know for sure if it uses after effects but it seems like it does, I can see similarities in the way the animation pans and the objects move, to the way kinetic type works in after effects.

Digital Media.

Here are some kinetic type examples, they're extremely useful because currently we're doing typography based animation. Ultimately it'sa project where we learn the ropes of after effects, a complicated and powerful software. All the examples below use after effects to create the animations and it gives me an idea of where I could be with it in a few weeks/months time if I knuckle down. Some of them will be impossible for a good while, but nevermind.

I hate the film, however I think the transitions and timings in this one are excellent.

I think in time this speech and Ledger's performance will become Iconic. I really like the typographical choices in this one, however it does bug me that it adds the word 'son' on the end of 'why so serious?' when it's just him pronouncing serious oddly.

I think this one is particularly slick, it just looks of a qauilty that I'd like to achieve, the way it flows is really interesting too, and it does unexpected twists and turns that retain my interest in it.

WHO IS THIS FOR? ammended!

Ok so during the difficult time of making my paper fortune teller that completely fell through... I decided that targeting American 18-24 yeard olds rather than British ones was much easier because they'd have a bit more insight as far as my research has gone and are more likely to engage with my product that I'm packaging. With this in mind, I've tried to find organisations that are appropriate and I came across Rock The Vote.
who don't just deal in getting people to vote but they go round campus' and such promoting political awareness in general. I think it'd be nice to work on their behalf, given that I wanted these packages to be distributed around colleges and universities anyway. Their logo is a bit swish for the hand rendered look I'm going for, but I can try and work with it in a hand drawn way!

nice little bit of design!

Jake Lefebure. I thought this piece of design was really applicable given it's political content and the really nice hand drawn qaulity it has (even though it's vector art). Just thought I'd share because I love it.

So alot has happened.

Ok so I've abandoned the paper fortune teller idea because it was getting me too hung up on details, so I've looked at the spinner idea more closely. I'm going to make it part of the front cover. I will show you templates and stuff on practice blog when i can be bothered to upload them! Anyway here is a little bit of what I've been looking at in terms of visual style:


As you can see, I want to take an illustrative approach, firstly because that's the kind of thing I can really get stuck into, secondly because I think it's the reverse of the usual visuals you find with politics (very smooth, very swish, very old graphics. see last post.) And therefore may be more engagin to students at universities and colleges who are sick of the same old thing. I like the fine detail in the hair above, I kind of want to apply that nice line work to my Obama illustration.


I picked this image and the one below because of the hand drawn type which I want to make part of my work. I really want to sell the hand crafted element, I think it will help make an engagement with my target audience who are generally apathetic to politics. The image below is amazing, it's actually cut out rather than drawn, wonderful.





Again this is a choice made because of the hand drawn element and the vivid colours that I intend to employ. I've started looking at using specific colours to represent different symbolic views of Obama, i.e. Red for communism. So this Image has kind of helped me a little bit in making colour choices.


Finally, this is a piece from a former third year who just graduated. Vicky Smith. I love her work and this kind of illustration is amazing. I don't intend to plagiarise her style, however I do feel that this piece does give alot of insight into the styles I'm thinking of working with.

Traditional American Politic graphics

Here are some examples of traditional political design, as you can see they're highly uninspiring. I really don't enjoy the smooth simple graphics that much. I want to put my own stamp on it. More information on this later!

WHO IS THIS FOR?

So given that my basic principle appears to be Obama is good because everyone has an opinion on him, meaning that he's a good litmus test to get people talking about politics, I figured my target audience would have to be the demographic that seems the least politically aware. The only thing I can register this by and looking at some of the websites I've viewed, anyone can judge this by is who turns out to vote and who doesn't.

To that end, here are a few links to websites that go into why young people don't vote, I'm tempted to ask people to fill out a questionnaire. From this research I hope to get a greater understanding of why the 18-24 demographic is really not politically aware or interested. I hope this can impact on the way I design my work significantly.

A few statistics on 18-24 year-olds votes here
Some more alarming statistics on this demographic and political apathy here

Here's a university organisation called catch 21 that are trying to raise political awareness in their university through TV productions etc. I think that this might be a good organisation to create this kind of little political awareness promotions kit centered around Barrack Obama that they can hand out at universities. They don't really have much of a corporate identity, so it gives me plenty of room to pay with visuals.

Another possibility is to do a promotional pack on behalf of the Young Citizenship Commission who are looking at ways to tackle declining political activity in young people. Again I could manufacture this package to be handed out free in order to sort of promote political awareness and get people talking about politics. Perhaps referring them to a website for further information.

The politic-o-meter

This is another idea I had for interactive paper design, if we had a meter that sort of registered these different stereotypes of Obama according to where they sat on the scale of right to left wing with a moveable arrow, creating a politcal meter designed according to your views on Obama. Here are some (badly designed) versions of what I mean.

Making/Using a paper fortune teller.

Whilst I think it's a good idea that has a great deal of room to work with, there's two things I don't know/can't remember: 1.How to make the thing. 2.How to use it once it's made.
This video solves the first problem


And thank wikipedia for the second answer:
"A cootie catcher or a fortune teller (sometimes called a scrunchie and a chatterbox in Australia), is an origami device used in fortune-telling games by children. A player asks a question, and the holder of the device answers using a regular algorithm like the examples below. Usually the questions, answers, colors and/or numbers (depending upon the playing method) are added to the device by or to suit the user.

There are several different methods by which the device can be used, most of which use the following pattern of steps:

The player first asks a question to the person holding the fortune teller. This question will be answered by the device. The holder then asks for a number and/or color. Once the number and/or color has been chosen, the holder uses his/her fingers to switch between the two groups of colors/numbers that occupy the inside area of the device. The holder switches these positions a specific number of times, which can be given by the amount of letters in the color selected, the number originally chosen, or the sum of both. Once the holder has finished switching the positions of the fortune teller, the player chooses one of the flaps that has been revealed. These flaps often have colors and/or numbers on them, and the chosen flap often is the same as the color/number originally chosen. The holder then lifts the flap and reads the fortune that is underneath. Any one of these steps may be repeated to suit the user.

These devices can be "rigged" by the placement of only even numbers on one "position" and only odd numbers on the other, resulting in forced placement to an even position. In this rigged version, bad fortunes are placed under all the even flaps and good fortunes under all the odd ones, so that when an unwitting player complains that they always get bad fortunes, the fortune teller can expose all the fortunes and claim that the high repeat rate is the fault of the player and not the device."

how can this be applied to what I'm doing? Well the opening question could be "Where do my politics lie?" the numbers/colours could then be replaced by different archetypes/stereotypes of the Obama persona, each one based on an opinion from somewhere on the scale from the far right-wing to the far left-wing. The flap underneath would then reveal their political inclination. This is just an initial theory of how it could work, I think through on-going design I will reach a conclusion as to how it could work.

Packaging Research.

Now I've nailed my concept, which will be on my design practice blog shortly, I decided to put together some ideas for packaging and what my product could be. I had a crit with Justin today, I basically outlined the idea that Obama is good because people can attach their own symbol to him, be it change (good or bad), hope, marxism, defeat, hype etc. and how I want to package Obama in these different ways. Justin suggested that what I was packaging and indeed the packaging it's self should be incredibly interactive to represent changeability of both what he can represent and indeed his own mantra of change. I agreed strongly with this, and he suggested what I've now found is called a paper "fortune teller" that children played with when they were little. I loved this, it was just the inspiration I needed. Below are fortune tellers or cootie "catchers" as those damn yanks call them. Also some wonderful interactive packaging and just some I like.




Cool, no? going to make some mock ups soon. Here's some cool packaging, all of which has something I want to implement.


This is by Sara Strand, They're all full colour and I imagine Litho-printed. I chose it for two reasons,
1. I like it when you print on card and earthy coloured paper stocks with a real grain to them.

2. The use of different colours to represent things seems like it could be very appropriate to my research. Overall the graphics are a bit cutesie for me, but still, nicely printed and again, different colours is something worth exploring.

I chose this Chew'd gum packaging design because I like the very illustratibe style, and illustration is something that I want to keep at the core of my practice. Also it colour codes like the one previously, which again seemed appropriate. Also it uses CMYK to do it, I'm a big fan of those core colours and how they work together.

These next 3 are by Burgopak, who I think just do really inventive packaging that always

seems to have a level of interactivity that goes above just opening a box etc. The one above has a two-way slide mechanism that I thought worked quite effectively. I also like the way the colours work together.

I thought that this was so cool, even though I hate smoking, though I have given it to Craig Laing for his Smoking is good project. I just love the sliding mechanism, I thought it was really

clever, and really thought about the proccess of getting a cigerette out of the packet.

Again, thought this one for the Baftas was just a really nicely packaged thing. I think the word BAFTA is embossed and maybe spot varnished? i don't know, I'll ask about that.

This design by Chris Chapman is a lovely and quirky way to package meet. I like how it uses the same format and varies the graphics to suit the object it contains, it's something to consider for packaging Obama in different ways. Again, I'd say this was Litho and it's full colour because it has photographic shots of meat. There we are.

Summer Powerpoint Presentation.

Here's all the artists I found and some links to very useful pages concerning environmental print practices.

This is from a company called Composite Projects, their work focuses mainly on environmental ethics and health issues. Their piece to the left, The Environment, Who Cares? focuses on the environmental issues designers come across, the resolution it's self handles this using only water based inks and 100% post consumer content paper, that is also process chlorine free.

thomas.matthews handles his design for print in a similar manner, making sure that his work is printed on only 100% recycled paper and that the inks that the printers use are soy based. On a side note, apparently finding an environmentally friendly printer is quite easy, most newer printers have started this way, seeing the environmentally friendly element as a viable selling point in this modern climate. Though for older printers it's expensive to convert and there is no legislation asking them to change.

I chose to look at this company (IDress Myself) because their quite small but very successful. All their products are hand screen-printed, not just t-shirts, but posters and other products too. This means that they can chose their inks and avoid wasting left over inks, where a printer may have to throw away a one off "spot colour" after it's used because it takes up unnecessary space and may not be cost effective to store for the amount of time it's used. On top of this, they happen to be great designers. :).

Here's some links to good websites.

www.loveleyasatree.com

www.composite-projects.com

www.thomasmatthews.com

www.idressmyself.co.uk