Refreshing Change production diary

26th February 2013

Today I generated ideas and created a mindmap with my team, we came up with nine ideas and then chose the two that we were most confident with and developed them with further detail and started the treatment and the shooting script.

I researched into our chosen company, Volvic, to find out information about the product and the actual company. Myself and another team member contacted the company and were given an address in order  to send a letter. I wrote the letter for the company asking for information about the target audience and how they appeal to their audience, I also asked if it would be possible for them to send us a vector graphic of their logo and an example of their bottles that we could use in our production. I looked at other adverts for bottled water to see what has been done before and to look at the kind of style that was achieved, also so that my team can try to make something that hasn't been done before.

I also started part of the asset list and researched the kind of music that we want.

1st March 2013

Amber and myself filmed our test footage for our first idea. We reaslised that there were no trees that were suitable for our idea so we had to come up with a new idea but we tried to keep it similar to the original. After brainstorming and coming up with a new idea we tried some test shots with Amber acting and myself managing the filming with the camera.

5th March 2013

Laura, Amber and myself practiced some camera techniques around the college in areas that are similar to the place that we will be filming. Amber and myself wanted to blur the bottle in front of the camera and have the background in focus and then reverse this so that the bottle was in focus and the background was blurred. We tried this numerous times to perfect it but we couldn't get it the way that we wanted because of the camera's iris. We decided to just blur the entire shot and then bring the bottle into focus and this worked quite well to give the effect that we wanted. Amber and myself also tried some test shots of other ideas just to see how well they would work.

9th March 2013

Amber, myself and our actor went to Chorley, Astley Park to film out first advert. I did the majority of the camera work; framing the shots and actually filming the action under some direction from Amber.

12th March 2013

Today I did most of my individual edit for the first water advert, I spent quite a lot of time colour correcting the shots to make them look brighter since the day we filmed was quite grey. I went out with Amber to capture some sound effects for the edit. We also went to the sound booth to record a voice over for it. I helped to set up the equipment and recorded the voice over. I spent some time editing the voice over to the sequence.

Did we end up with our original idea?

Our first idea, I think, was a good one and it could have worked well; we wanted to make it look like the bottles of water were growing from a tree. The only problem was the weather and also the fact that we needed a tree with leaves. Since we did not have those because it was winter, we couldn't accomplish what we had set out to do. So, though disappointed, we changed our idea into something that would work, and we even managed to find an evergreen bush so that we could actually make our new idea work. Although it is different in concept and style, the purpose it still the same. Our final idea, the one that we ended up completing, was about the talking bush that gives a passer by a bottle of water, claiming that it is refreshing. This was easier than the original idea, even though it meant that one of us had to somehow climb inside the bush to make it move. I think overall it worked well, but the weather made it hard and the look of it wasn't as 'bright' as we wanted.

Unit 7 - Media Sectors

Private ownership: this is not owned by the government but can still be influenced by it.
Can be owned by a person or a small group of people.
A board of directors have to agree for a decision to be made. They all influence the company.
Broadcasting companies make their money by selling advertising space.
Virgin media and Sky.

Public ownership: the public can invest an buy shares.
Channel M and Preston FM are publicly owned companies. People can buy the advertising space to broadcast their services.
There are also individual investors; Sky could give Preston FM money if they think it is worth investing.
Preston FM sells commercial space and they have public investors.
Advertises local news, events and interests.
Public companies are very specialised to their area.

Public service broadcasting: Funded by the TV license. This influences what they can achieve; how much money they can spend on productions, the quality of what they create. It gives them money so that they can buy programs.
BBC.
Everyone that has a TV license can influence what the BBC produce. The BBC have to ensure that they produce programs that are suited to everyone. The types of programs change at different times during the day because of the different audiences.
If the public didn't buy a TV license for a year, the BBC wouldn't be able to afford anything.
To keep the public buying the license, the BBC have to produce 'quality' programs that the public will want to watch (that appeal to its investors). We (the general public) are the people that influence what the BBC produce.
Public Service Broadcasting cannot legally be biased. It has to present media without opinions.

Multinationals: SONY, Pictures, Music, Radio, Internet. Owns Tristar pictures and Columbia Pictures and Universal.
Not really broadcasters.
Funded by creating media text (film, magazines, TV shows) they sell them off to broadcasters around the world.
SONY owns a lot of different outlet companies. Buying dvd's pays SONY money, as does buying broadband.

Independents: not public, government or corporate owned. An individual can own this. Can be a commercial company.
Asda FM, Mcdonalds FM, they play their own radio station. They are both commercial companies.
A privately owned company can literally be named after the creator.
Independent broadcast media is popular in America.
Content can be a very big issue (with all broadcasters).

Conglomerate media ownership: lots of little companies combine to make one big company.
Disney - Apple
Time Warner
CBS
ITV is a conglomerate company that is made up of at least 30 different smaller companies.

Illustrator Logo Designs

To create the teacup, I used the pen tool and made a triangle with three anchor points, I then used the convert anchor point tool to make the point of the triangle into a curve, thus creating the cup shape. To make the top of the cup curved, I added an anchor point to the edge and dragged it to make a curve. To make the inside curve of the cup, I used the pen tool to create a straight line and then I used the convert anchor point tool to curve it. I did the same thing to make the cup handle and once I had drawn the outside part of the handle, I made a copy and scaled the size down to fit inside the original one.

To make the tea bag logo I drew a line for the string with the brush tool. I used the rounded rectangle tool to make the tag and then scaled it down to an appropriate size. To make the camera logo inside I used the rectangle tool to make the shape and then I used to pen tool to make the lens shape, with anchor points to make the corners different. I used the ellipse tool to draw the two circles for the film and then used the brush tool to draw the inside. After placing them all, I grouped them all together by selecting them all and pressing the command and G keys.

To make the teacup, I used the ellipse tool to create an oval shape and then scaled it to the right size.

For the text, I chose the font that I wanted and then typed out the production name. I had to scale down the size to make it fit, then I used the selection tool and placed it on the teacup logo.


When I came back to the designs, I decided that I didn't want to use 'Lights, Camera, Tea' as my production name. Instead I came up with another name 'Neptune's Tea' and have created some other designs for this name. My new design is a tea cup with the planet Neptune outside it.

To create the teacup, I used the same method as I did when creating the teacup for the 'Lights, Camera, Tea' logo. I did create the basic triangle differently; I used the star tool and created a shape, but I used the up and down tools to make a triangle instead of a star, this reduces the points that are in the shape. I used the convert anchor point tool to make the edges curved and I used an ellipse for the top of the teacup. I used an ellipse to create the handle, I copied and pasted the same ellipse and then resized to create the inside of the handle. I copied and pasted the gradient from the Neptune shape behind and onto the ellipse that is the inside of the handle so that it makes the inside of the handle look like it's transparent.

To create Neptune, I used the ellipse tool and made a large circle shape. I used the gradient tool to add the colour and I adjusted the settings accordingly.

To create the tag, I used the paintbrush tool and drew the line, then I created a box using the rectangle tool. I used the text tool to put the text inside the box and then rescaled it to the size that I wanted it.

To create the tea inside the cup I drew a wavy line with the paintbrush tool and then made copies of it. I used the draw inside tool and moved it to look like it is inside the cup. I changed the colour also.

For the text I made a copy of the Neptune circle and used the type on a path tool to create to curve for 'Neptune's Tea' and for 'Productions' I used the same tool but changed it to the inside of the circle.