I wanted my poster to be horizontal because it will look elongated just like a road which is perfect for my subject content. I also used two of my favourite car designs, and a neutral background so that they stand out.
Stills:
These are my four stills that I chose. I tried to think about showcasing composition (thirds) as well as the versatility in my adverts. I picked one from each animation of my favourite scenes and then one extra that had really great lighting.
Trailer:
For my trailer, I looked at a lot of the animations from MAF, for some idea of how to put one together. Obviously mine wouldn't be too similar because they are three adverts, not a short film. However, I tried to do my best with what I could achieve. I integrated some facts to split the scenes up and I think it makes sense.
Synopsis:
Bio:
Overall, I think my Press Pack is quite strong and I think it would deserve a second glance if I submitted it to competitions.
In every crit, I am advised to send my adverts to companies who are known to have road safety campaigns. Since I have now finished my animations, I so far, have sent my work to two well known companies, 'Think! Road Safety' and 'ROSPA'.
I chose 'Think! Road Safety' first, because I used them in my dissertation as one of my case studies and feel like they are a really great company to contact. I also found on their website that they are actively looking for people to get involved with, so I immediately sent them an email and attached all three of my animations.
Hopefully I will hear back from them.
The next company I contacted was 'ROSPA', another very well established company, but one that was advised to me by Mike. Again, they are also looking for partners, so I sent them an email too and I wonder if they will get back to me.
Even if they don't, it was a great chance for me to try and get my animations out there. I have already shown them to my target audience so I do feel fulfilled as it is, but if I hear back from these companies too, then I will be even more pleased! I will keep looking for companies who offer road safety campaigns to see if maybe they would be interested too!
UPDATE:
Saoirce from 'Think!' got back to me saying that she couldn't share my videos because they are in their 'pre-election period' which I completely forgot about! But since her response was positive and she did say 'at the moment'... I will definitely be following this up in a few months so I am still hopeful!
Since my Extended Project is a series of adverts, I thought it would be a great idea to create mock ups of potential online material that would help market and advertise the series. I touched upon this in Responsive last year, so I actually really enjoyed putting this together. My tagline for the adverts is #BeSeenBeHeardBeSafe.
During the crit, I was advised to maybe try and animate the text at the end of each advert so that it wasn't so static. Ollie very kindly recommended 'Mister Horse' to me, which is an animation composer. It includes various transitions and effects that you can apply to text and 2D layers to make them more appealing.
The animation composer is a plug in which you can very easily download and import into After Effects. This took me about two minutes and I found it very easy to navigate.
One thing I did find challenging however, was finding the right balance between the transitions. Some of them were really exciting and lively, but for my subject content and aesthetic, they didn't really compliment each other. Therefore I had to experiment A LOT, in order to find one that worked well with my animations. I also wanted to keep them consistent throughout the three adverts.
This is the first one I was actually happy with, as it is simple, isn't too distracting from the actual facts, and is lively enough without sound, but I felt like it would be a bit too much after a while and applying it to all three animations.
Therefore, I opted to go with this one. This one has more easing in, but still feels quite serious and to the point. It isn't too flashy, so again, allows for the audience to read the information without anything else going on. I think I could use this transition several times and not get tired of it, therefore I used this one. I also added in the 'Think! Road Safety' logo in as was recommended to me in the crit. I chose this company because they are well known and I fell a bit more attached to them after researching them a lot for my dissertation!
I then also changed this scene where the car previously reversed to off screen. Annabeth mentioned that it appeared very off so I decided to alter it. I animated the car driving forward instead this time, and included the lamp as positioned in the previous scene. This allows for more continuity and fits in well with the scenery.
This is the improved Drink Driving advert, with the new credits at the end. I have applied the same transitions to the other two as well.
Today we had our final crit where we showed hopefully our final projects to get some last minute feedback for the deadline next week. This was a bit scary because it was my last final crit ever, but I got some good advice and tips for the next few days. Here is the feedback:
Fix the 'reverse' scene in the Drink Driving animation. Something looks a little bit off here, as if it should be going forward. I could change this by changing the background, moving the car forward, or putting a car in front of it, to make the reverse scene make more sense.
Would you animate the text? I didn't think about this other than maybe transitioning the text from one line to the next, but I could play around with it to make it more interesting instead of just ten seconds of plain text.
What about a tagline? And using the Think! Road Safety logo? Peers mentioned that it would be fine to use their logo, but good to contact them anyway as I have the animations made and all they can really say is no. As for a tagline, I will think about this as the adverts are different topics so will need to be relevant to all three of them, but it is definitely a good idea, so I will get thinking.
I noticed myself that there were a few jump cuts here and there, therefore I will edit them down so that it isn't as choppy.
Also look at how other people have advertised/campaigned their animations. Maybe make some social media content to advertise it.
Overall, these are reasonable things to think about and change so I am more than happy to do them over the course of this week. I still need to do the press pack and evaluation, but it is definitely do-able!
