Sunday, December 14, 2014

Activity 2.6: Preproduction

Activity 2.6:  Preproduction

Time:  2 hours

Preproduction

Plan your work and your time.
1.    Create a schedule of the project. How will you ensure the work is completed on time?
2.    Write any scripts/copy for the campaign.
3.    Create sketches/storyboards/mock-ups for your planned work.

4.    Identify and assemble resources you will need for the work: people, graphics, objects, equipment.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆



COMMERCIAL 1: FOR THE YOUNG ADULTS

I was thinking about creating a more scientific-like approach for the commercial demonstrating how the young adults in their 20's can preserve their current appearance.

Demonstrations could be asking some people in our school to film themselves under the green screen explaining how they preserved their appearance by making the background a setting of our current time, and then replacing that background with some fake futuristic setting. 

COMMERCIAL 2: FOR THE ADULTS

Adults are a mix of the youth and the elderly, because they can either preserve their appearance or revert back to their 20's. So demonstrations include the one used for the young adults OR filming someone (green screen is optional) saying: "I was [insert MIDDLE AGE HERE] but now I'm [Insert YOUNG AGE HERE].

COMMERCIAL 3: FOR THE ELDERLY

Same technique is used from the adults,  saying: "I was [insert OLD AGE HERE] but now I'm [Insert YOUNG AGE HERE].

Activity 2.5: Proposal/Pitch

Activity 2.5: Proposal/Pitch

Describe your campaign. Create a component of your blog to track all of the project elements.

My campaign is to assist the client that I chose with promoting fundraising and awareness through media such as TV/Internet Ads.
  1. What medium will you be working with? Be specific.
    • The medium I will be working with is video related media such as TV advertisements, trailers, teasers, etc. 
  2. How would you get the message out to the identified demographic?

    • By advertising in schools and universities, and by contrast also in places like retirement homes
    • By publishing internet ads on websites that are in some way relevant to the identified demographic
    • By broadcasting a short video Ad on YouTube or on a TV station that are all both related in some way to the identified demographic (e.g. the YouTube video they are watching has something to do with the demographic and same goes with the TV stations
  1. How will you communicate the mission/mandate of the company through your campaign?
    • By showing off the features of the product that the company has brought to us in an intriguing fashion
    • By showing our true purpose of our product and company and explaining why our mission is important and beneficial to you
  2. What is the core message of your campaign? How will you convey that message?
    • The core message of my campaign is that people who are worrying about aging should worry no more, because our campaign is to tell people that our company has a product codenamed "Youthex" which is a pill that can stop the process of aging and will cut life short. 
    • My campaign asks for the cooperation of the people to contribute to our fundraiser so we can have enough money to manufacture Youthex to people in the identified demographic who are severely troubled with aging 
    • I will convey this message in a "new and revolutionary" manner, like how Apple makes their iPhone commercials. So basically the main message will be communicated as something very big and important in a serious way, something very big that can change the world.
  3. Why should your campaign be chosen? What will make your campaign most effective for the chosen demographic? (e.g. My campaign will appeal to Canadian teenagers because...)
    • My campaign will appeal to young adults, adults, the elderly, and the wealthy. This is because most young adults (such as people in university all the way to age 30) will prefer their rather "youthful"-like appearance and once they see this campaign, they will want to preserve this wonderful appearance they have now. Same goes for all adults but this time they have two options: they either can preserve their current "mature but not old" look, OR they can revert back to their youthful appearance as young adults with the desired age they want to revert back to. Elderly have only one option and that is to revert back to an age as early as 30 years old. Also the wealthy are most likely to be interested in this campaign because simply this is a thing where only rich people would care. Poor people are too busy doing the essential things in life that the wealthy have already completed, sure this campaign sounds essential but poor people are poor and would rather save the money to buy a house or a car and poor people would be more likely to reject the campaign as a fake, while the wealthy wouldn't care because if they wasted money on the campaign they're still rich than the poor! In general, young adults, adults, the elderly who are wealthy will be intrigued by this campaign simply because they want to look younger or look the same. This is what people have long been searching for and we have finally created such a thing, this will be revolutionary, and people will have no choice but to take a look at our campaign because it is just so mind-blowing! If you choose to help our campaign, you are basically helping millions of people who are struggling with aging or the fact that they don't want to age. Also for the people who are worrying that the pill will not work, there is a 100% change that that the pill will cut your life short to about an year or two, so you won't have to experience the suffering of aging.
  4. What measures of success would you utilize for your campaign?
    • The amount of people from each demographic that is interested in the campaign 
    • The success rate of the working pill
    • Good customer service
    • Positive feedback 
    • Good advertisements
    • A large profit increment
    • A friendly approach to people 

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Activity 2.4: Research

Visit the website of a similar type of company to your chosen company. Read through the mission statements, press releases and look at existing communication media produced. Include a bibliography in MLA style.


  • What does the company do (What is the mandate/mission)?
    • GNC provides products that provides people with health and nutrition products such as vitamins/supplements, protein, creatine, energy drinks, etc. and other stuff to contribute to health and nutrition.
  • How does the company operate? What methods does the company use 
    • Operates through company-owned retail stores, domestic and international franchise activities, third party contract manufacturing, e-commerce and corporate partnerships.
  • Where is the company primarily based?
    • GNC is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based American commercial enterprise
  • Where and on what scale do they operate? (Globally, North America etc...)
    • They are a franchise, so they operate on an international level with a total of 8,800 stores worldwide 
  •  What are the current fundraising and communications strategies?
    • There's no current insight on GNC having fundraisers, but GNC's communication strategies involve a wide range of social networks that they use to communicate to the public, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, RSS Feed, Instagram, and Pinterest.
  •  How effective is the company at disseminating its core message to the public?
    • The company is pretty effective at disseminating its core message to the public, their official slogan is "Live Well", which can be thought as a business that provides any kind of product that let's you live well, like Diet/Nutrition supplements, workout equipment, etc.

  • How could communication to the public be improved?
    • I think so far there is nothing to be improved, all communications with the public are all pretty good, they have fully available customer service and also a Live Chat with one of their own agents if there is any issues or questions. 
    • As said before, they use a wide range of social networks to communicate in every way possible, they post videos on YouTube, post Images on Instagram and Pinterest, or they can do all of that on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+
  • What demographic does the company target? What demographic will you target?
    • "GNC targets a lifestyle demographic of consumers who are athletic, aspire to live a healthier lifestyle and are goal-oriented. GNC consumers engage in fitness routines more than the average US supplement buyer and tend to use multiple products. The distribution is skewed toward a younger demographic, with 35% of customers under the age of 35 and 80% under the age of 50."
    • I would target a demographic of people that would either be young adults or the elderly. This is because my product is designed and is supposed to function differently for both the young and the elderly. I would also target this more to the wealthy people, as wealthy people are more subjectable to buying this as poor people tend to be less concerned about anti-aging and all those other fancy things. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  •  "GNC (store)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 14 Dec. 2014.
  • "GNC Holdings Inc." 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://uoinvestmentgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/GNC.pdf>.
  • "Shop - GNC." GNC. Web. 14 Dec. 2014. <http://www.gnc.com/>.

Activity 2.3: Challenge

Description
Choose a medium and a client. You will be creating a 3 part campaign for your chosen client to assist with fundraising and awareness. You will carry out research and propose your strategy prior to carrying out the full preproduction, production and post-production phases. Your finished project will be presented for critique. 

Video Examples
Find and describe 3 TV advertisements (preferably award winning) and create a set of 5 criteria that you believe makes for a good video. 

Create a high quality vector version of the company logo.

______________________________________________________________

Client: Pfazor – Youthex (pill for youthful appearance that cuts life short)

Video Examples:
  1. Apple - iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus - Seamless
  2. Canon "Bring It"

  • Apple - iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus - Seamless
    • Background music fits really well in the commercial, creates emotion
    • A huge high quality close up of only the iPhone 6 & 6+ makes the Ad look very inspiring and innovative
    • The only thing in the background is the white background, which makes the iPhones stand out in beauty as what Apple usually does.
    • The motions of the camera and the iPhone contribute a more interactive and a not-boring feeling
    • The parallax feature of the Iphone was included in the video, making the iPhones look very 3-D  
  • Canon "Bring It"
    • The things that they are trying to say in text are delivered in a fashion that's like Spritz (an app that streams text on your screen one word at a time), which allows you to comprehend it much more quickly and easily. This is an excellent way of sending out a long message in a short commercial that people can quickly understand
    • The transitions of everything like pictures and texts are quick, making it feel very adventurous 
    • Plus the addition of a fast, action paced music makes it seem more adventurous like in the wild
    • The media presented in the Ad is very fascinating 
    • Putting photos and videos of things with a small size or things with a large size shows that it can be capable of shooting objects or things at any range



High Quality Company Logo (Beta)


Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Activity 2.2: Glossary

Activity 2.2:  Glossary

Time:  1 hour

Glossary

Find definitions for the following terms:
Sound: 

  • Shotgun - a directional microphone with a narrow-angle range of sensitivity that can amplify sound.
  • Lavaliere - lavalier microphone is a small dynamic microphone used for television, theatre, and public speaking applications, in order to allow hands-free operation.
  • Mix -  audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, for instance 2-channel stereo.
  • Automation - Modern digital audio consoles or mixers use automation. Automation allows the console to remember the audio engineer's adjustment of faders during the post-production editing process. For example, a basic "whoosh" sound created by white noise involves an automation on the white noise's frequency filter knob.
  • Music - vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.
  • Sound Effects - a sound other than speech or music made artificially for use in a play, movie, or other broadcast production.
Story - a plot or story line of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment

Scene - A scene is generally thought of as the action in a single location and continuous time.

Actors - The one who represents a character in a dramatic production.

Lighting: 
  • Watts - the SI unit of power, equivalent to one joule per second
  • Barn door - A Barn Door is comprised of the two flat 'doors' attached to the front of a Fresnel stage lamp, and which can then narrow or shape the beam of light depending on how "open" or "closed" the angle of the doors over the lamp.
  • 3-point - 
  • Three point lighting is one of the oldest lighting techniques used in shooting video and essentially it consists three lights (wouldn't you know it) - a key light, fill light and back-light.
  • soft box - 
  • A Soft box is a type of photographic lighting device, one of a number of photographic soft light devices. All the various soft light types create even and diffusedlight by directing light through some diffusing material, or by "bouncing" light off a second surface to diffuse the light.
Lens: 
  • zoom -  zoom is a function of a digital camera used to make the image seem more close-up.
  • prime - a prime lens is either a photographic lens whose focal length is fixed, as opposed to a zoom lens, or it is the primary lens in a combination lens system. 
Focus - The distinctness or clarity of an image rendered by an optical camera.

Aperture - 

Basically, large aperture (f/2.0, f/2.8 etc.) lets in more light to the camera shutter for an exposure, while small aperture (f/11, f/16, f/22etc.) has a smaller opening in the lens diaphragm to let in LESS light for a given exposure.

Shutter - A shutter is a device that allows light to pass for a determined period of time, exposing photographic film or a light-sensitive electronic sensor to light in order to capture a permanent image of a scene.

White Balance: 
  • Kelvin - The Kelvin Color Temperature scale imagines a black body object--- (such as a lamp filament) being heated. At some point the object will get hot enough to begin to glow.
  • Tungsten - tungsten lights have a filament and the filament is inside a bulb; the light bulbs in your house are tungsten lights. When these bulbs were made specifically for still and movie use they were made to run at very high temperatures so there would be more blue in the light and so the light would be brighter.
  • Daylight - Light that comes more or less directly from sun: it varies very widely in brightness, colour and quality.
  • Halogen, 
  • Fluorescent, 
  • Custom
Tripod - A tripod is used to stabilize and elevate a camera, a flash unit, or other photographic equipment.

Jib - A small device that turns any basic tripod into a versatile camera movement system

Dolly - A  dolly is a specialized piece of film-making and television production equipment designed to create smooth camera movements

Matte box - A matte box is a device used on the end of a lens to block the sun or other light source in order to prevent glare and lens flare.

Follow Focus - A follow focus is a focus control mechanism used in filmmaking with film cameras and in television production with professional video cameras.

Dynamic Range - The dynamic range of a scene is the range from the brightest object to the dimmest object in that scene. 

Sensor: 
  • CMOS - A CMOS sensor is a type of image sensor inside a digital camera consisting of an integrated circuit that records an image.
  • CCD - A CCD is a light-sensitive integrated circuit that stores and displays the data for an image in such a way that each pixel (picture element) in the image is converted into an electical charge the intensity of which is related to a color in the color spectrum.
  • Full frame - Full-frame digital cameras use a sensor that’s equivalent in size to 35mm film (36 x 24mm), and is the largest you can buy without moving up to truly professional (and expensive) gear like medium format.
  • Micro 4/3 - Micro Four Thirds system is a standard created by Olympus and Panasonic, and announced on August 5, 2008, for mirrorless interchangeable lens digital cameras and camcorders design and development.
  • super 16 - Super 16 is a single-perforated, motion picture film that uses the maximum image area available on conventional 16 mm film. 
Storage Media: 
  • SD Card - An SD Card (Secure Digital Card) is an ultra small flash memory card designed to provide high-capacity memory in a small size.
  • SSD - Abbreviated SSD, a solid state disk is a high-performance plug-and-play storage device that contains no moving parts. 
  • RAID - RAID is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit for the purposes of data redundancy or performance improvement. 
Editing systems: 
  •  Linear - 
  •  Non-Linear
Timeline - A graphic representation of the passage of time as a line.

Edit: 
  • Sub-clip - The definition of a sub-clip is any clip that refers to less than the total length of a media file.
  • Cut - The splicing of 2 shots together. this cut is made by the film editor at the editing stage of a film.
  • Trim - Trimming is the act of removing frames from the beginning or ending of a video or audio clip during the editing process.
  • Extend - 
Effects: 
  • Speed/Duration - 
  • Chromakey - A technique by which a block of a particular color (often blue or green) in a video image can be replaced either by another color or image, enabling, for example, a weather forecaster to appear against a background of a computer-generated weather map.
  • Fade/Dissolve - 
Bin From BINary -- A name for directories that contain files stored in binary format -- computer-readable but not human-readable files.

Export - An option on all Digital Softwares to export the project

CODEC - A device or program that compresses data to enable faster transmission and decompresses received data.

Keyframe A key frame in animation and filmmaking is a drawing that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. The drawings are called "frames" because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film.

Layer layering is the organization of programming into separate functional components that interact in some sequential and hierarchical way, with each layer usually having an interface only to the layer above it and the layer below it.

Colour Grading Color grading is the process of altering and enhancing the color of a motion picture, video image, or still image either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Activity 2.1: Mentor


LIST OF MENTORS
Guy Maddin
Atom Egoyan
Sarah Polley
Michel Gondry
Wes Anderson
Spike Jonze
Rick Linklater
Jane Campion
David Fincher
Vince Gilligan
J.J. Abrams
Lena Dunham
Sally Potter
Kathryn Bigelow
Morgan Spurlock
Stanley Kubrick

Mentor: J.J. Abrams


J.J. Abrams is a fantastic director and producer of films and TV shows. He is very famous for producing and directing the TV series 'LOST', and recently he is the director of the upcoming newest star wars! He's also quite famous for directing the two modern versions of Star Trek. Some other films he also directed were Super 8 and the Mission: Impossible series. I've watched LOST and the Star Trek movies, and honestly I think Abrams did a very good job on them, especially LOST. 

The TV series LOST is a one of a kind, it's truthfully the only TV show series that I've ever finished watching it! I started watching it WAY back when my grade 6 teacher was crazy enough to let our class watch the entire season 1! Two years later in grade 8, I got netflix and I continued on from season 2 all the way to the end of season 6. Honestly LOST was the most confusing TV series I think that anybody has watched, even if I watched all the episodes 2-3 times, I still won't get it. This is one of Abrams' techniques, to create mysteries that can confuse the audience until they solve the mystery. Like in season 1, Abrams had basically put all the things that should be happening later in the season all the way to season 1, like the black smoke and the polar bear. People are now wondering "What is the black smoke?", "Why are there polar bears on a tropical island?", this is what Abrams want, a mystery for people to solve.

Mysteries aren't just J.J. Abrams only techniques, he makes an aesthetic and technical approach by implementing lens flares in his movies, this is more observed frequently in his new Star Trek movies, though it might be annoying to some people. Lens flares are the beams of light with the circles you see when you look into the sun. Abrams is sometimes known as a "lens flare addict" because of the very frequent use of it in the Star Trek movies, totaling up to 721 lens flares used in the first movie, and 82 used only in the trailer of the second one! Watch this if you don't believe it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYgG9MhV5Q0

Also, I have noticed some other minor aesthetic approaches that J.J. Abrams uses. Even though he didn't like Star Trek, he still did a great job on it because he respected it and planned to create even greater things with it than the original series but still keeping everything the same for the fans, and he really did do so. 

Another aesthetic approach I noticed is that his movies were mainly about science fiction, but it's not just science fiction where everything is about intelligence, it's science fiction with humanly feels attached inside of it, like love between two people or internal conflicts with a person's self. So when you watch a movie by J.J. Abrams, just keep in mind that it's going to be for science lovers and people who wants those 'feels'. And of course, the half of those humanly feels are from sex scenes where girls who kick ass strip down and make out with some guy. 

Since Abrams movies are mostly science fiction, he always approaches the movie with a scary creature that's lurking somewhere. 

Abrams also uses techniques where he always twists the plot, this usually happens in LOST, where the characters you think they are, actually aren't. 

The villains in J.J. Abrams movies are mostly just plain confusing to understand. It first looks like that the villain has some sort of deep dark secret or some really complicated plan, but in the end it's just plain confusing, This would be an example of Star Trek's villain "Nero". 


ANYWAYS enough blabbering, here is an infographic displaying on how to make a movie, J.J Abrams style :)




Unit 2: Independent Project 1: Evil Company

Unit Description
Using the design process (or the creative process), and choosing a medium in which to work, develop a campaign for an evil company.
Spaces for each medium are limited and are first come, first served.
     Video (groups of 2-3)
     Graphic Design (1)
     Animation (1-2)
     Sound (1-2)
     Interactive (1)
     Other

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

I MAKE DA BEEPS AND DA BOOPS (aka EDM)

Okay this might not be related to Com. Tech but I've recently been working on 3 EDM tracks simultaneously last weekend and sharing it to my blog seems like a good thing to do.

First of all, I get it that not that much people actually like EDM, some people probably don't even know what it is! I feel sorry for those people for they are missing a BIG part of music.

For all those ignorant people who think EDM and Electronic Music is sh!t, well YOU SIR are a huge idiot! EDM can be as emotional as beethoven, heck, his music isn't even emotional! My point is that EDM IS as good as what they call "real music", therefore EDM IS REAL MUSIC! AMEN!

Here is my Soundcloud where all my current music is at!: https://soundcloud.com/morality7