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.