Supervisor Meeting 1

Thursday 7th November - Had a meeting with the supervisor for our group, Sharon Campbell. Group members are Kirti Goenka, Sheng Li, Giorgos Ontherox and myself.
We talked over the initial brainstorming of ideas our group has been discussing so far, which have all been based around Kirti's research project involving a story with a message delivered in both a 'gain-framed' and a 'loss-framed' mode.

Some notes from the meeting:
- What audience is the film aimed at?
- Careful not to make the film patronizing if wishing to get a message across, like a public information film
- If going for an environmental theme/message, go to a local organization, eg, green peace, get feedback from the organization, what do the public already know/not know about.

One example Sharon showed us of a short animated film which has a strong message in it, but it is more abstract. 'Badgered', by Sharon Colman, looks at themes of war and nature. The message is clear, but abstract, you might not know the characters very well, but it is suggesting something to the audience:

We also discussed that every element in a film can be manipulated to put across a message, such as colour, composition, sound etc. It is how people respond to different design methods.
If we were to go with the split screen idea, for the research, put across the same message on both sides, but just change one element, eg, colour, to make the experiment more controlled by just changing one variable.
The audience would automatically sense which is right and wrong. Therefore making it more abstract and controlled will benefit the project.
I raised the concern over finishing the film for May/June, earlier to allow time for testing the film on an audience for research. Instead of doing this, Sharon suggested what Kirti could use for testing on an audience for the research project - the animatic. The animatic could explore both versions of the story/film, then we would use the one that received the strongest response for the final film, due for completion in August. If we didn't use an animatic, we could film a live action version which could be used as live action reference for the animation. One of the key challenges/issues here would be that an animatic is not always very clear to fresh eyes, as the audience would be viewing what is essentially a very rough draft of the final film.

The next step for our group is to sit down and lay all of our cards on the table, discussing exactly what we want to get out of this project, this will hopefully make developing an idea for our film easier.

Group Meeting - Split Screen idea...

Tuesday 5th November - Had a group meeting to discuss story ideas.
For creating two stories with different tones, I suggested to the group the idea of splitting the screen in half with the 2 stories on either side. If we were to show the audience one before the other separately, they would have already been influenced by the first first which may affect their viewing of the 2nd. Therefore putting them side-by-side eliminates this problem and actually creates a nice visual contrast between the two.

My references/inspiration for this were:

Coca Cola's advert 'Grandpa' - showing the differences in lifestyle of a man and his grandpa when he was his age, this advert helped to make people aware of healthy living: a balanced diet and of being active:

500 Days of Summer 'Reality versus Expectations' scene - Everyone can relate to this type of experience where we imagine how a situation will play out, but it ends up being completely opposite and not how we originally imagined it:

Other notes from meeting:
- Rough version for June for research, Polished version for hand-in in August?
- Would need to be same style/tone
- For the research do different voices for the narration to change the tones of the films
- Slight differences at beginning, then, gradually differences get bigger and bigger until very different at the end
- Look at people's habits

Life Drawing in Week 9

Finally found a free slot during the week to attend a life drawing class, and it was a nice break away from the computer! Dusted off my charcoal pencils for this afternoon's class, the poses ranged from 10-15 mins: