UNTITLED

WEEK 1

So today we met Will Hudson founder of ‘It’s Nice That’ and ‘Lecture in Progress’ and he talked to us all about his company and he ran a mini sort of workshop where we would choose either to stand left or right depending on what the options on the screen were etc. Left side of tape is carrying on to do a masters and right side of the tape is to start working after our degree. This really got me thinking about my future with in the next 2 years and I also signed up to lecture in progress on their website.

We got our brief for this terms project and after reading it through today it looks really up my street regarding the whole campaign aspect and creating a video. So for this project I will be working collaboratively with Tom, Ryah, Iman and Nico.

WEEK 2

So we have been brain storming ideas as a group for our actual concept and insight as well as names for the conference. We've been trying to piece together some key words that come to mind when thinking of a conference, creativity, industry etc. Our name idea for the conference was ‘Omni’ we thought it was quite a strong bold name that stood out. Omni as in “all” as in we are covering all bases including and saying all people are eligible to be what they want be in this industry

Above is our first initial idea. The name for the conference has been picked and finalised and is called ‘Untitled’. Straight from this I started to dig a little bit deeper around the actual word meaning, connotations etc. as well as the conference itself. Words such as nameless, anonymous,, unknown, unidentified, undistinguished, unacknowledged are all synonyms for untitled.

WEEK 3

We have been brain storming and coming up with ideas and from the press release and brief we have really gaged and researched into understanding of our target audience. Being the target audience ourselves we knew that we felt that we didn’t exactly know where we fit in the industry exactly so we decided to create a survey that would be distributed the target audience ages 16-24 who are wanting to enter the creative industry. 87% of the students felt confused and unsure of their paths ahead. So from this we knew this would be our insight. ‘Young people have a distorted view on their future in the creative industry.’ We researched a lot into Black Mirror and their art direction and took inspiration for their opening credits. Pictures below

Now we have finalised our idea we are getting ready for the pitches at Its nice that on Thursday. I have taken photos for our poster with a friend and they came out pretty good. I wanted to use real life photography in the poster instead of digital design because I felt like it was more real and relatable to the target audience. I really liked the lighting at the location and I'm now on to editing the photo and adding in all of the text etc.

WEEK 4

Lecture in Progress pitches -

Today was our pitch at Its nice that with Derek and Will. They really liked our insight and idea and they like the poster and imagery however they did say that they thought the two posters were of different art direction. Once that was said and I took a step back to look at them I also realised that too. One was glitchy and one was more pixelated both connotating different things. So we decided to go with the image of the right. The more glitchy one which we though was the most effective and aesthetically pleasing as well as fitted our insight and brand more.

They also thought that some of the other visual components made e.g. the programme and the email was not all consistent which i agreed with. So with that feedback we all worked on our designs to have a more pulled together well rounded brand.

GROUP DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

The first four images are initial designs by Tom and Nico for the poster and the email invite. We decided to go with the photography based poster for a more real and relatable look and I felt like it tied in with the branding more. Also Tom tweaked his email invite so that it was more fitting with the brand.

WEEK 5

This week we have been thinking more in depth about the video and knowing next week we are speaking to Alec next week who is coming in to give us some guidance. We have put to together the story boards and I have created some mood boards which we are planning on showing Alec.

My story boards for video 1.

Here are Ryahs story boards for video 2.

WEEK 6

Today we showed our work to Alec all of our story boards and mood boards etc. and he really liked them he said he could see the distinct difference between them both whilst still carrying the same insight. This gave us confidence going to shoot the next day as we knew we were on the right track.

Shooting

We agreed with Derek that we would both use the same

insight however just have different art directions for both videos. So with an idea already in place and after speaking to Alec we knew what we wanted and I could visualise how the shots and the edit would look. I got in contact with a friend and organised a day to shoot in Shoreditch for the video. Prior to this I went to Shoreditch to

find some brightly colour back drops for the video as I didn’t want to be doing this on the day and wasting anybodies time and so that when shoot day came we were ready to shoot. Shoot day went really well and we got all of the shots we needed thankfully the weather and lighting was perfect which is something I really wanted for it to look more natural.

Preperation for the Confrence

Each group is having their poster being displayed on a large scale at the event. So because of this last minute touch ups were required on my poster and some re placing text etc. I worked on this throughout the day with Tom.

The confrence

Insights this project has given me about the industry is that you do not need to know exactly what you want to do right now. A few of the speakers mentioned how they have done multiple different jobs in the industry before getting to where they are now. It was super inspirational to hear all of their stories and knowing that they are young gives me confidence that I will get to where I want to be. Ive also learnt that alot of industry professionals/ companies actually want you to do well more than I think. I think its quite daunting sometimes to be an under grad looking for experience etc but really employers actually really want you and for the next generation of creative to do really well and strive for big goals.

It has also made me think about my future in the industry and where I fit in with all of this and I think with my love of photography and videography I want to go down more that route over design. A big turning point for me was listening to Ronan Mckenzies' talk I was in awe of her and her work and it really made realise actually I could be successful like herself. Her story was really inspiring how she spoke about uni and work experience etc. I got her email details and also followed her on social media and from there I also found some other great photographers whos work inspire me too e.g. Dean Martindale who i discovered through Ronans social media has great photos and are also a style of photo i love.

I know from this that a new ambition of mine is that I 100% want to get into shooting in film and I want to learn all about it and just keep shooting like I do with digital. I have always enjoyed the art of film photography but have just never had the chance to start so that is going to be my next side project. I want to create some sort of photo series and perhaps incorporate photography into my final major project.

The edit

I have been working hard at the edit for the video ready for submission and am the sole editor for the project. A problem that occured was that I feel like we didn't shoot enough footage for a longer length video something that next time I will take in to consideration massively. Just some extra back up shots would of been really beneficial at the time of shooting it did feel like we had more than enough however when coming back to edit it showed that we didn't however this has definitely been a learning curve and next time I will make sure to get more footage than needed.

How and why I made my creative decisions

So after really digging deep into the the word ’Untitled’ itself it was easy to see the clear link and relevance between Untitled and my idea of distortion both for the art direction as well as the insight. We looked at synonyms for the word Untitled all of which we thought was relevant to our insight which was ‘ Young people have a distorted view on their future in the creative industry’. Words such as nameless, anonymous,, unknown, unidentified, undistinguished, unacknowledged are all words which many young people feel about their own career path in the industry and with the conference all about emerging landscapes, helping young people make the right career choices as well as having speakers in to help motivate and inspire young people we felt that it was very fitting to use those words in our campaign.

From those synonyms of untitled we developed it further and looked at how those words could be visualised. I thought of the idea of having things/ people / typography glitched and distorted giving off a clear anonymous, un known vibe.

In the poster that I designed you will see how there is just one person in the image, I did this on purpose in order for the whole campaign to feel personal. A person standing alone is something that young people would relate to, perhaps feeling alone in the industry. With the face being covered this also connotes the untitled, unknown and un named words that all tie in together.

In the video the idea was to have it so it would appeal to our target audience of young people ages 16-24 so I made sure the video was fast paced, bright, main use of typography and a singular person so that again it was more relatable to the viewer. I gave the person a name and a short back ground on them at the beginning of the video so you could really grasp who this person was and why he was relevant. The song choice has words such as ‘drunk’ ‘wavy’ all of which are stereotypically what people think students are constantly up to and with that being said also having a distorted view of their future and not knowing where they fit in. We then wanted to turn that around by showing what the conference was and who was going to be there in order for ‘James’ to realise this is what he needed to attend to have some clarity on his career path and choices.

Difficulties and Problems

Our group consisted of myself, Tom, Ryah, Iman and Nico. A few weeks on from the initial briefing we were not able to be a group of 5 and was told we would have to split up the group to make it so that everybody had a fair contribution to the work. So we decided it would be best to split it so that myself, Tom and Ryah were one group and Iman and Nico were the other. We agreed with Derek that we would both use the same insight however just have different art directions for both videos. So with an idea already in place and after speaking to Alec we knew what we wanted and I could visualise how the shots and the edit would look. Although we were creating two videos we were still going to work together as a team for both. Unfortunately I feel like not everybody shared the same passion for the project as others and this led to the group being a bit of a mess in terms of who was doing what. Communication was definitely something that was lacking. The issue was resolved by Iman joining our group.

With a main editor then not being in our group anymore and Iman joining our group meant that there was no video 2 which I felt really let us down. We had spent time creating story boards, mood boards etc. for the 2nd video for it not to actually take place was disappointing especially as we were having two art directions for the videos and the main branding for the insight really linked with video 2 well.