Unit 33: Stop Motion Animation: COS

COS - (change Of Seasons)

Before we started i researched definitions for words that would make our project a success.

Present Day Animators

Music Video:

Music and Stop Motion dont really work well together, most people have tried and failed because they all try the same technique. Miming the lyrics will never work in stop motion, however this video is amazing its hard to believe this is only a tribute. The frame rate is spot on its extremely surreal. The only thing that could be improved with this animation was the lighting as it changes dramatically through some of the footage.

T-Shirt War - Advertising

After researching different animation videos, I stumbled across T-shirt wars I was amazed at how clever and realistic it was. Pixilation is the type of animation for T-shirt wars; after being inspired by this video I have persuaded my group that we use the pixilation technique. T-shirt wars is not just inspiring on the quality of the video they have made adverts for 2 of the biggest companies in the world; McDonalds and Coca-Cola. This advert is quite random so the target audience is quite hard to find. If I had to choose a target audience it would be the young as it’s very simple with the things they do i.e. blowing up a balloon. The team used 222 shirts and it took 2 days to film. This short film has definitely influenced me.

Cinema

After researching different animation cinema videos i came across chicken run. Chicken run was made in aardman studios which is currently the leading studio for animation. The target audience for chicken run would be under 13's as its a very simple storyline. Most stop motion in cinema is in fact claymation chicken run had around 20 fps which isn't a lot for cinema. However they were trying to save time and money.

Like music videos stop motion doesn't really work in games. However the retro Nokia snake game does work and is literally the only game that does. Snake has become popular like it did back in the 70's with the revolution of smartphones people now want to remember their childhood. When the original snake was bought out it was aimed at adults because kids didn't have phones back then. Now the target audience would be young kids as parents show them what games they used to play.

Production Diary

15 October - We began to plan our animation we thought it would be productive to look at any videos with stop motion in (to influence us). This is where we found the t-shirt wars idea. When we had a rough idea on what our animation was on, we decided to share out roles and responsibilities I feel they were fair but also very testing. I feel another mature thing was we exchanged emails numbers and facebook's meaning we could contact each other around the clock if we had any new ideas. I feel if we could improve this section of the task we could haven been quicker deciding on our idea.

22 October - We recorded our pitch for Rachael, myself and adam was extremely nervous as this was the first piece of work we would be marked on. Also i created the powerpoint meaning if something went wrong it was entirely my fault. I feel the pitch went well considering we had limited time to practise. I feel if we was to improve in this section we could have practised a lot more resulting in the presentation would have flowed better.

5 November - We decided to practise camera techniques before going to the set. Meaning we knew exactly what we were doing; i feel this was a great idea and saved us great time as we both knew what are jobs were and how we could complete them to i feel a distinction level. We then brainstormed where our location/set would be. We came up with numerous locations but we agreed Bushy Park was practical as it was close and beautiful. I needed to walk down the same 100 yard path 4 times with each different time wearing different seasonal clothes.

8 November - We began filming our advert. We met at college to collect equipment, Adam and myself were very excited as the weather was perfect as it wasn't dark and raining meaning for winter we could easily add these effects in. However we couldn't make it look like summer if it was raining. We had a short train journey and then a short walk to the set. Filming was good it went very smoothly and lasted for around 2 hours. If we was to improve in this section i feel we could have filmed earlier in the month meaning more time to edit.

9 November - The day after we came into college to upload all of our footage. I was concerned as adam nor myself was confident at all on final cut pro however the media technician showed us many shortcuts and tips that helped us out a lot. Although Adam was in charge of editing i always gave him opinions and even sometimes helped in when he got into a spot of bother. We changed each frame to 0.3 we both felt we had created the illusion of movement well. If we was to improve in this section of the task i feel we could have researched tutorials for homework meaning we would have a rough idea.

12 - 4 December - This section of the project was very boring as we work working solely on the editing. We struggled on final cut pro as we felt it was just too technical for us. I feel if we could have improved in this section of the task we could have finished editing quicker.

4th - 17th - We had finished all the main editing we had some small touches to complete. We wanted to make sure our pre production and our blogs were to a distinction standard.

2A Research

COS is short for ‘change of seasons’, COS is a drinks company. The advert will try to appeal to people to boost revenue for the company as we are advertising a product/service we will unable to put the BBC in our target channel (as they do not show any advertising adverts). Our target audience is the young market;after researching I found out most youths watch channels like MTV,VIVA,CHANNEL 4.

After being paired into our groups we decided that we wanted an advert not an
ident. We discussed all kinds of genres from sports to news to food to toys. I said some of the best adverts were drinks thinking of 'holidays are coming from coca cola'. We agreed a drink we wasn't sure if it was to be a made up brand or a real brand. We then needed to choose what animation technique we would use. After watching t-shirt wars i convinced my group this was definitely the way forward. We then decided to make our own drinks company as we would base that around our advert. We also feel the target audience would be 15 - 28 year olds.

We decided it would be cool to have an advert showing the 'change of seasons'. Resulting in calling our brand "C.O.S" - Change Of Seasons. I feel the change of seasons drinks products would be relevant all year round as product sales I would hope would stay the same unlike 'Pimms' where its only popular for a couple of months of the season. The purpose of the 'COS' advert is to make it clear the drink can be drunk on the coldest day of the year or the hottest day of the year.

I have looked into many drinks adverts, some famous, some not so famous but all of them have something in common; they always show the product at least once. Also most of the professional adverts show the drink being drunk.

Conclusion:

After speaking with my team mates we decided to make a drinks advert for a company called "COS". We will use pixilation animation and some film to create the advert. The filming location will be in bushy park, there will be 4 main parts of the advert: Summer,spring, autumn and winter. A major factor of the advert will be the music in the background as this will give off hints relating to the video. After telling my media teacher about the idea she showed us a video from 'notting hill' its exactly what we will be aiming for. The slightest detail went into the making of that scene; the woman at the start was pregnant and by the end of the seasons she has her new born baby. Hugh grant went through all 4 seasons however he was wearing the same clothes in my video i will be wearing clothes that go with the season.

Pixilation Animation

After researching deeper into the pixilation world, I discovered a video called Pixilation Animation. I feel the adverts a great Idea but there is know where near enough frames per second; unlike t – shirt wars the video is very bumpy and doesn’t flow . This is a big risk on my group using pixilation as the human changes where as Claymation or computer animation wouldn’t. The advert is for a mobile phone company although it’s not English it seems the advert brings them closer together because of the phone looking at how old the characters are I would think the target audience is aimed at; 14-20 year olds. As the characters are within that age gap they use public transport which is also considered with that age bracket.