MDA 1400 Final film, Instagram Advertisement

So, here's our final project of the year.
After the stress, the tears, the laughter, the anger! The bloodshed!
We have finally come out with this comercial, i'm pretty proud to say the least, its one of my favourite pieces of work that I have finished this year. Thats not to say that this was easy to make.
I took the role of Producer which was extremely challenging but also very fun (loved bossing people around).
Layla was Director, working with Layla was enjoyable at first but in time it became clear that we were on different wave lengths, it was neither of our faults but at times it became very stressful as Producer when arguments started.
I arrange for Mayang to be on Camera, as she had a wonderful Canon Camera 500D, we originally wanted Thor to do be cinematographer however the day before he dropped out as he had to film his own project, but lucky we had Mayang as back up.
I had Adam edit the project which was amazing, not sure what we would have done without him, his ideas matched mine perfectly and I absolutely love the outcome. Adam cut up and spliced the song really well so that it matched the style of our ad. It was also his idea to have the the kind of 'mash up' that goes with the music.
I'v learnt a lot about myself as a Producer throughout this project including the fact that I literally just need to chill out sometimes. I get very stressed and angry, which does get things done quite well but does not earn me many friends.

The Art Of The Image

This lesson we looked at how shots we're composed, the effect that the composition may have on the audience.
We looked at the rule of thirds, showing us 'points of interest' here's an example I found.

 "Rear Window"

Here you can see that Grace Kelly is taller and bigger than James Stuart, emasculating him in his wheel chair. 

There is a lot of empty space in the shot but it is countered by the actors as they are lit and much brighter than the empty space. 

Generally viewers read the shot from left to right 

so Grace Kelly is appropriately placed onto the left line. 

You can see that Lisa is exactly on the line as is Jeff following the guide of the rule of thirds. 

Had one or the other been in the exact centre maybe our focus would have been more on Jeff than on Lisa. But as it is like this Lisa has more attention because we can see her face, her emotions, creating dramatic tension, whereas Jeff's face is covered by the binoculars. 

The Composition of shots are important as they

• Direct the viewers attention within the frame e.g when a character looks at something
• Creates Atmosphere/mood e.g in Rear Window Lisa and Jeff are looking and something, and the audience want to know what
• Generates dramatic Tension and meaning. 
• Help to create a unified style for the scene.

We looked at how Horizons are filmed and how some directors such as Andrey Tarkovskiy who would have the earth covering most of the screen with the sky left smaller, having the earth dominate the sky. Other directors such as Sergio Leone who would have the sky dominate the earth. But neither would have the horizon and earth meet in the middle as it looks slightly awkward and wouldn't normally be done unless to say something different or out of the ordinary. 

Brief 4, Storyboards and Treatments!

Storyboard for advert

View more PowerPoint from Lizzy Morey

As you can see, I'm not the worlds best artist.
So I tried to make a collage out of photos. Not sure the idea worked but it will still be useful for us (myself and Leyla) to have the storyboard with us on the day of the shoot.

And here is a photo of our Instagram Mood Board, which was to show our target audience in our presentation on Friday.
It was great making the Mood Board, we got a little carried away, but I think that it shows are target audience, how divers Instagram can be and a little bit about what its functions are.

Review of ads in chosen area

There are over 30 Photography apps for the iphone, Similar to the Instagram is Camera +, Procamera, Hipstamatic and Magic Shutter, they all promote the same things, photo filters to make your photos look more professional. The Recurring visual themes of these ipod apps are; Colorful, they show a lot of photos that were taken with the app and show the features. They also show the price of the app. The Key messages from the adverts were that the aps are easy to use and fun, anybody can use the aps, and quite a large target audience appears to be family’s who share their photos with each other. Some of the language used is quite forceful, “You must buy this app” quite aggressive. Instagram is used not only to take photos but to share them with the Instagram community, most other ads are only on the apple app store, our advert will be a film, 30 seconds long. Instagram is Social networking with Pictures all integrated in one app. That’s what makes our brand unique.

1.	Our Advert: We want people to download the app from the apple app store and tell them that it is completely free.
2.	Our Target Audience: People who own Iphones/Ipod touch’s, who love photography and to share photos with friends and family and the world.
3.	What insight or truth that drives this brief: We want to show our audience what the apps does, its features and how it works.
4.	Why we are advertising: There are 146,000,000 people with Iphones globally and we want to get as many people using the Instagram app as possible.
5.	What media channels? Where will the advertisement be shown? : The Advert will be shown on the web, on side bars of social networks and before youtube videos.
6.	What do you want consumers to do and think in response to the ad: Download the app from the apple store and then use it, meet new people and share their photos.
7.	The single most important point to communicate: That you should download Instagram onto your Ipod Because there are over 15,000,000 users to share photos with.
8.	The style and tone of voice of our ad: Globally used in a fast fun advert that easily communicates with people of all ages.
9.	Brand name: Instagram

Depression Campaign

This project had been my favourite so far, I loved working with Nicole, who directed this project as she was extremely passionate and knew what she was talking about.

We choose to do a Campaign for depressed people so that they know where to find help and to make sure they know they are not alone. 

As you can see the video still needs some work, Their are shamefully a couple of spelling mistakes as well as the timing with the voice over being a little off.
However I am still extremely proud and learnt a lot about photography and how time consuming stop motion is. We took over 1,200 photographs over two days of 8 hours shooting.
I'v learnt that it would be best to have a professional photographer with us and also somebody separate as a hand model so that we wouldn't have to duplicate rolls.
Despite this I think the message of our film pulled through and the response from our class mates were extremely positive.

Depression Campaign, The shoot

Some photos for our shoot;

As you can see we used two pampa snaps for the lighting and it took us a while to set up the lights.
We had problems with the glare and light reflection on the white board we used and so it took our a couple of hours to get the lights perfect.
The Camera we used was a X-S1 Fuji film, we tried several cameras but in the end the Fuji film gave us the best picture as the background came out whiter which was the look we were going for.

This is the Storyboard Nicole spent hours on, we had a couple of different story ideas, but in the end we split our idea in two and decided to make the campaign shorter as we thought it would be more effective. 

We also decided that our main message for the film would be to "seek help".

We changed a couple of shots around as you will see in the final film, but apart from that we stuck to the storyboard. 

Scream

Scream is a prime example of postmodernism, it has intertextuality it has homage, it refers to itself and no matter how corny you think it is its still pretty brilliant postmodern wise.
The horror movie 'rules' are particularly amusing postmodernism wise,
Randy: There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex. 
[crowd boos] 
Randy: BIG NO NO! BIG NO NO! Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs. 
[crowd cheers and raises their bottles] 
Randy: The sin factor! It's a sin. It's an extension of number one. And number three: never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, "I'll be right back." Because you won't be back. 
Stu: I'm gettin' another beer, you want one? 
Randy: Yeah, sure. 
Stu: I'll be right back. 
[crowd cheers] 
Randy: See, you push the laws and you end up dead. Okay, I'll see you in the kitchen with a knife. 


This script refers directly to the audience, Scream is telling us that it knows that it is a horror movie, but that it can still be scary with a "LOOK BEHIND YOU" audience participation. 


And then we have Scary Movie... a film making fun of a film thats making fun of film? 

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is awesome, but extremely hard for me to define, mainly because the more you think about postmodernism the more postmodern everything seems to become.
Its easier to break down postmodernism into elements;

• Bricolage
• Parody
• Pastiche
• Homage
• Semiotic
• Intertextuality
• Realism
• Identity
• Economics

And many more words can be used to describe postmodernism.
Its easy to find Postmodernism in film (not just because our teachers choose Scream for us to watch on Monday) but also because quite often in postmodern films there are so many references and chances for the audience to pick up on postmodernism, such as most of Quentin Tarantino's films. You can tell by his movies that he was heavenly influenced by Italian director Sergio Leone, the music Tarantino uses and even the shot types, his long takes and wide shots, but why is this postmodern? When I watch Tarantino's films I think of Leone, I'm reminded that the film is a film and a homage at that.
In our lecture we looked at a scene from Pulp Fiction, the famous dance scene, where Travolta and Thurman dance. It was interesting to see that even though unintentionally Tarantino hadn't cast Travolta thinking that people would reference him back to one of his most recognisable character from Saturday night fever. Even though Tarantino had not put the message there the audience were still making what they will of it. What I think is even more postmodern is that now a days people dress up as Mia and Vincent so much that when I got around to watching the film (it came out when I was two) I thought that the characters in the film were dressed up in fancy dress, like in other films I had seen, taking an entirely different meaning from the scene.
Another way we could reference the scene was from Godard's 'Bande a parte' which is probably the most likely reference from Tarantino, especially as the name of his production company is called A Band Apart.
I was going to link the dance on here however every version I find on youtube has had music added to it, it seems like the dance scene has become a meme in the internet world.

We looked a little at Roland Barthes in class and his book "Death of the Author" and his theory that the meaning and messages are all picked up by an audience and that nothing is controlled by the author.

I'll leave you with "copy shop" as I can't get the "Bande a Parte" dance!