D&AD – Prudential
At the art school, we had several group brainstorm sessions, which were a brilliant way to spark ideas. They also meant they everyone felt a little like they owned the idea. I think we had a great mixture of people, and credit has to go to Tim Harris for initial brainstorming. Tim would suggest great images, and get everyone involved.
One of these was the prudential brief. I had spent the bulk of my time working on the Sunday Times brief, but D&AD extended the deadlines on several briefs. This meant a group of us, Sam Burgon, Joss Gleave and myself could have a go creating a piece from scratch in around 72 hours.
Sam had an existing idea about a guy ‘being a dog’, and burying a bone in the garden, whilst Joss and I had an idea based around a guy eating a meal and putting his favourite bits to the side of the plate until later. Both ideas had potential, and we set about developing the script and storyboards. Joss and I liked both ideas, but Sam felt very strongly that we go with the Dog idea. This was all on the 1st day.
The development process had similarities with the Sunday Times thing, except this was based entirely on live action. We also had to develop everything extremely quickly; this meant planning, taking reference shots and shooting on the second day. We brought in 2nd year Film student Alison Mclean to help us shoot the piece, and Alison really helped, making the shoot work as well as possible. The location wasn’t ideal, but we didn’t have time to perfect it, and had to use somewhere where we could dig up the garden.
I then had to import all the footage, put it all together and edit it (I had very little experience using Final Cut pro until this brief, but picked it up very quickly here). The brief was completed on the 4th day, and delivered on time.
Summary
If I were to do this again, and had more time, we would plan a better location and cast better actors. The idea was meant to be absurd, and I think we did achieve that, but it would work better in a better surrounding. Despite that, as an idea, or a pitch, I think it is good. I am happy to get any opportunity to work on storyboards and shot-flow, and really enjoy editing. The whole area fascinates me, the production process, the planning (I think storyboarding is film-directing on paper), film-language and the rhythm of the edit.
