The Sunday Times – Style Magazine.
This brief was made in collaboration with Jocelyn Gleave.
The Research Process
The earliest part of the research process for this brief was undertaken by Joss, who began the brief whilst I was working on my Neg 1 module. She had looked at the demographic, and got a rough idea to use a birds-eye view of a desk, and did a motion test of the letters changing pattern with swatches taken from the style magazine itself. There was however so much more to do, and the project needed to be developed out, a narrative written, more ideas.
It was necessary to find out what could and couldn’t be done, and we got the idea first, and looked for ways to do it later. Of all the briefs I did this year, this one required the most technical skills. The mixing of media and techniques was worked to look easy, but the processes involved meant learning a lot of new things, and using utilizing previously learned skills at a much higher level. This included storyboarding, film-language, show-flow, planning, set-design, stop-motion animation, live action, after effects post-production and editing.
Visual Development
Joss and I developed the idea over 4 weeks prior to the shoot. Joss handled more things like set-design, and I thought about the logistics, storyboard, and the shoot. Storyboards were drawn, redrawn, scripts, set design pieces, motion tests, photography, logistics (please refer to workbook). Despite being a lot of work, it was the most enjoyable time I had ever had as a student ever. I think if I were to do it again, I’d have done much of this part the same, but maybe really worked on the set-design on a more anally-retentive level. I think at this stage, detail is everything!
Shooting:
We planned as much as possible prior to the shoot, and tested all the technical trickery we were going to do in advance of the live-action shoot. Simon Hall helped us quite a bit, showing us the techniques needed to do what we planned. There were many production decisions that needed to be done in advance, all new things to me. We had to get the camera directly over the set, to gain a birds-eye view.
When the time came to do the shoot, we got some help from Stewart to shoot, and it went quite well, however we made an error by leaving something on the desk on the set, which wasn’t supposed to appear until later in the shoot. This was later addressed in post-production. The shoot also happened very quickly. We planned for weeks, and shot in about 30 minutes, with no real chance to re-shoot anything. Most of the shots were ok, but some were out of focus. This was partly due to limited resources; it was all shot in the art-school with a DV camera, a step-latter and a tripod. The camera was balanced over the set, and held still. It wasn’t possible to use manual focus, as the camera was out of reach, tied to a long pole. This, combined with a limited time to shoot meant we had to use what we had and make the best of it.
Post-production:
Post-production for this brief involved a huge amount of work. We had tested many of the stop-motion pieces in advance, but needed to shoot the proper versions of these after to line up with the live-action shots. We also reviewed all the footage, and realised we would need to change a few shots, replacing the blurry footage with new shots, replacing some of the live action shots with more stop-motion.
I had to learn a lot of new techniques to fix all the mistakes, a kind of crash-course in visual effects (rather than motion-graphics), and we pieced the film together. It transpired that some of the shots we remade were wrong too. The camera wasn’t always set right (we hadn’t set the white balance, leaving this stuff to Simon Hall. We were a little naïve, and didn’t know how to do this!) – plus we didn’t get the focus right (again, using the autofocus). I would definitely not make this mistake again!
We were able to use all the shots, and pieced the whole film together with some music, for which I gained clearance permission. We got everything done and handed the brief on time. There were things I’d have done differently next time, but I only discovered what they might be through this process. The piece wasn’t perfect, and we would have liked to tie up a loose ends of we had more time.
Reworking.
In the final weeks of the BA course we made some time to address the niggly things about this project. I handled all these, as I did all the After Effects and compositing parts. We replaced the backgrounds to the face on shots of the radio and the wall in the room behind our star Catriona.
I was also unhappy with the end shots, the ident. The idea was good, but I had to cut corners to get it completed in time for the competition deadline. We reworked this part, Joss reshooting her stop-motion parts with a blank piece of paper, and I spent a few days learning techniques to animate the Sunday Times masthead. This new ending and the other revisions fixed almost every problem we had. There were still a couple of shots where the white balance wasn’t ideal, and were slightly blurry, but they do the job. Obviously we would try to avoid this in future.
Summary
This project was a joy to work on, and my personal highlight of the last 3 years. I would love to continue to work with Joss, as she has a lot of energy and positivity. I am very keen to develop this style further, and would like to do so on an MA if possible.
