Viral Advert Evaluation

The company i decided to advertise for my Viral Advert was Hard Rock Cafe. the advert is about an asteroid that is flying through space and then crashes into the earth and reveals the Hard Rock Cafe logo.

to achieve this i used green screen footage of an asteroid flying through space, to get rid of the green i used the after effects plug-in Key-Light which allows you to use a pipet tool to click on the green which replaces it with the background alpha channel, to make sure the green was completely gone i switched to the screen matte view which shows the image in black and white, you can then use the screen matte clip white and black tool to increase the amount of white in the asteroid image until they are completely black and white. this then allowed me to place a JPEG image of space behind the asteroid after switching back to the final result in the view.

I repeated the steps for the next green screen where the asteroid crashes into the earth. I then added the Hard Rock Café logo and key-framed the opacity at the start of the image to midway through to create a fade in effect. after this I added the composition to the render queue and exported it.

Hard Rock Cafe - Viral Advert

Viral Advert Production Schedule

17th May- idea generation.

19th May- finalise idea

20th May- locate sources and begin to compose viral advert

24th May- 1st draft of composite

30th May - 2nd draft of composite

2nd June- polish off any hiccups in the composite

3rd June-submit viral advert

Script 2nd draft for my Viral advert

EXT. Space.

An asteroid from the distance begins to rotate and fly towards us.

EXT. Desert - Midday

the asteroid has now penetrated the earth and is falling from the sky. the asteroid crashes into the ground creating debris which flies everywhere.

EXT. Meteor - midday

a close up of the meteor reveals some words, reading "Hard Rock Cafe"

FMP - Flawless

this is the link to my FMP  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkcm1qH8eZc&feature=youtu.be 

Shot List for my Viral Ad

1st shot - static wide shot of space, keeping still whilst the asteroid flies past to the left.

2nd shot - static wide shot tilted up towards the sun.

final shot - static extreme close up of the asteroid revealing Hard Rock Cafe

Script 1st draft for my Viral Advert

EXT. Space.

An asteroid from the distance begins to rotate and fly towards us.

EXT. Desert - Midday

the asteroid has now penhich flies everywhere.

INT. Cafe
a man with his family eating lunch notice a loud roaring noise and quickly run out side to discover an asteroid crashing down

EXT. Desert - Midday

the asteroid has now penetrated the earth and is falling from the sky. the asteroid crashes into the ground creating debris which flies everywhere.

EXT. Meteor - midday

a close up of the meteor reveals some words, reading "Hard Rock Cafe"

Advertising Analysis Essay

the Advert i have chosen to analyse in depth is the new Haribo advert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9scm3NCIH_E, the advert genre is comedy as the basic concept for the advert is to attach children's voices to adults in some sort of business conference meeting, talking about the individual sweets, this is an obvious juxtaposition of kids voices in adults which could mean that the message is, Haribo is aimed at a wider audience compared to Haribo's earlier advertisements  where children are in charge of the business and has a much more "childish" feel to it. Haribo aims for a target audience ranging from 4 - 11 year olds, However they are open to a broader audience.

The video itself uses basic shots as the adverts intention is more comical than visual, so shots like over the shoulder, close-up and mid shots are frequent throughout the video. the advert does not use any visual effects compositions and consists only of visual elements shot from a camera, however at the end of the video the haribo bag is shown along with the famous haribo bear which do not function in any animation but are zoomed-in on. the target audience will also find the advert especially funny as they find adults speaking like a child strange as the adults are speaking like someone their age, but also adults will find it funny as people in a situation such as the people in the advert generally do not speak in that tone or way.

in older advertisements for a short time a theory was used called the hypodermic needle, which means that specific media information is "injected" into the brain via small frames shown in a second, this theory also meant that we are all the same in terms of response and consuming information. in the haribo advert they do not use the theory as it is illegal, however small persuasion techniques are used in the advert to get their target audience to tell their parents or whomever to buy the product like using close-ups of people eating the sweets or contrasting bright colours with the more dull looking colours, the sweets that they show are also the most popular sweets the audiences go for like the fried eggs, gummy bears and the rings.

My Viral Advert

this is my viral advert for Hard rock cafe its mostly green screen mixed with photoshop for the engraved looking text at the end.

Storyboard For My Viral Advert

this is the basic storyboard for my viral advert, the video is about a falling asteroid from space and landing on a field where it digs up some dirt and reveals the Hard Rock Cafe engraved in the mud.

to achieve this i will be using an animated asteroid on a green screen which will be rotating through a jpeg image of space, to get rid of the green screen i will use the key-light plug-in on after effects with the pipet tool to click on the green which will eliminate the green background and replace with the alpha channel which is transparent. then adding the space jpeg layer under the asteroid layer to finish.

Rationale for my Ident

The ident i have decided to create is the fourth and final idea of mine. the entirety of the ident is in time-lapse, the camera moves slowly to the right to reveal a wall which further shows the production name fading in which looks like its attached to the wall. I found this idea my best, purely because i think it will be easy to execute without it being to challenging. however i feel it won't undermine my knowledge in after effects but serve as a simple but professional ident. This ident will also hone my skills in the motion tracking and 3D elements side of after effects as this ident will rely heavily on 3D elements particularly with motion tracking the footage which would allow me to attach the text layer to a specific part of the footage, also up to this point I've worked mostly with 2D elements. This ident will also help me further my knowledge in the RGB and alpha channels when I colour grade the footage in colour fineness or speed grade.

Ident Ideas and Mind Map

This is the first idea for my ident. this idea would be difficult to execute as i would have to have  a close up shot of someone spinning a gun whilst catching it in almost the same place. the visual effects side would be relatively straight forward as i would have to colour grade the footage using the RGB channels, either through the Adobe After Effects plug-in Colour Finesse or Adobe Speed Grade. after 

this i would zoom in to the barrel of the gun and then add text onto the barrel the text will be a 3D element of the ident as it will wrap around the cylinder shape instead of being a flat 2D image.

this is my second idea which again would be difficult to execute as i would need real footage of someone mopping the floor. to achieve this ident i would film the footage, colour grade it and then in After Effects i would add the text to the water which will be a 2D element. however if i motion tracked the footage and attached the text to the water it would make the text look 3D. i would then add a slide fade to the text and keyframe it correctly to the timing of the mop, this would give the illusion that the mop is mopping over the text.

For this idea i wanted to create an animated ident. this would involve me retrieving a virtual 3D sculpted plane with a blank background around it, then adding a blue sky to the back ground, after this i would keyframe the position of the plane to make the plane look like its flying and then keyframe the anchor point of the plane to spin around. i would then zoom into the windows of the plane which would reveal the company name. 

this is the mind map for all of my ident ideas. in this mind map i briefly touch on various ideas and techniques for my ident, including genre, styles and visual effects. 

this is the final idea. this ident would be created over a time lapse of people in a busy spot. the camera would be moving slowly to the right revealing a blank wall, slowly showing the production name. this idea would be fairly difficult to design as i would need time-lapse footage with something to add the text layer to which would make the text 3D. 

Video Formats

Lossy: are file compression programs designed to eliminate certain files which ultimately reduce the size of the original file. this type of compression is commonly used to reduce the size of bitmap images. however when using this type of file compression you cannot get the file back to its original state. because of this you can't use this form of compression for anything that needs to be reproduced exactly, like software applications, databases and presidential.

Lossless: this form of file compression is almost entirely opposite to the lossy form. the lossless file compression basically rewrites the original data in a more efficient way. however in doing this you sacrifice no quality loss for having a larger file type. a file compressed with lossy could be one tenth of the original, while lossless is unlikely to produce a file  smaller than half of the original size.

Short Film: film trailers are now available via virgin movies, the promo trailer for the new Sin City 2 (http://www.virginmedia.com/movies/trailers-clips/sin-city-2-a-dame-to-kill-for-trailer/3321745689001/?filter=trailers#!/sin-city-2-a-dame-to-kill-for-trailer/3321745689001) is available to watch on the virgin movies website. however the video is a flash file therefore there is no way to change the resolution. The video is displayed in a lossless flash video format and is displayed the same way on mobile devices 640p - 480p.

Games: mainstream games are now available to purchase online through Steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/243470/. the trailer for the game Watch Dogs is in a Flash video format displayed in a 640p - 480p resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio this can be downscaled so it can be viewed on mobile devices. the game itself on pc is displayed in lossless MP4. format allowing the viewer to watch the video in high quality.

Promo: this is the Promo for the FreeFly cinema company http://www.freeflycinema.com/freeflyReel.html this promo clip is displayed in a 16:9, 640p - 480p lossless MP4. format but you cannot change the resolution however you can view this on vimeo which allows the capability to view the clip in Full HD


MOV - a MOV file is simply a movie file. this file type is commonly used on apple Macintosh devices however anyone can view this file type if they have the Quicktime program.

MPG - is another file type used for movies, but more commonly used for transferring movies over the internet. it is a lossless file compression type. the MPG format is also given to many of the VCR videos that are converted to downloadable movies, e.g. if you had a VCR and converted it into a downloadable video you could convert it into an MPG format.

MP4 - (aka MPEG-4) this file format is yet another file used for compressing video, audio, graphics and text. this format also allows for advanced content such as user interactivity and 3D graphics. this format is also a common file type which is shared across the internet. it is also compressed in lossless making it popular to share across the internet because it maintains its quality.

AVI - (Audio video interleave) is Microsoft's version of the MOV file used by Apple, this format of movie file is less common than apples mov format because it is unreliable in terms of copying specific files over like MP3 files and various other vbr data.

WMV- is a compressed video format designed originally for use on the internet streaming applications. this format also caters for various other specific formats like WMV Screen and WMV Image. a new version of WMV(WMV 9) has the capability to support formats such as HD DVD and Blue-ray Disc. WMV 9 can now also be played on numerous media players like VLC, KMPlayer, MPlayer and with Flip4mac software you are able to play WMV files on Quicktime.

FLV- is a flash video format designed for adobe systems. FLV is the standard video forma used by nearly every video on the internet including you-tube google video and various other websites. however other websites like Apple iTunes and vimeo do not support flash video as they prefer the MP4 format because of its high quality support, this  is the same for mobile devices as they do not support the adobe flash content.

SWF - (Small Web Format) is a file extension for a shockwave file format designed by macromedia and now owned by adobe. SWF can contain video, vector based animations, sound and are designed to be transferred across the internet. SWF can be viewed online using the flash player plug in.

3GP - is a file format which stores video streams as MPEG-4 files and also audio as AMR files. 3GP is a multimedia container format created by the third generation partnership project for 3G multi media services. it is used on 3G phones but can also be used on 2G and 4G phones.

ASF - is a file format designed for storing and playing video streams and transmitting the over the internet. this format supports scalable media such as video and audio. this format also allows you to stream multi channel audio or multiple bit rate video suitable for transferring over different bandwidths.

file sizes:

Resolution - is judged by pixels in an image, depending on how many pixels there are in an image you can have a blurry image or a crisp image by increasing or decreasing the amount of pixels in the image.

Data Rate - is the rate at which information is being transferred. it is expressed in the amount of information per unit of time e.g. a common form of data rate describing the speed of a hard drive is Megabytes/second. once you calculate the data rate at which your hard drive is transferring information you can the begin to work out how much space you will need for that file.

Frame Rate - the number of pictures taken per second by the camera determines the frame rate of the motion picture. Frame Rate describes both the speed of recording and the seed of playback eg. The more frames recorded per second, the more accurately motion is documented onto the recording medium.

Keyframe Rate - Keyframes are the markers in video production for animation which defines the start and finish point of the animation. in-between the start and finish of this you have all of the other keyframes which are virtual frames and are not recorded like a camera would do, so the computer makes them up from copying the frame rate at which your working at.

Aspect Ratio:

4:3 - was the common ratio used for TV, computer monitors and is still used by Apples iPad. aspect ratio is the term used for the hight and width of a screen in this case the screen would be 4 in hight and 3 in width making the screen a square shape. 

16:9 - is now used more commonly throughout household TVs as this ratio provides a more widescreen view. 

Netflix: Short films are accessible now through media such as Netflix, the trailer for the award winning show "Breaking Bad" available for free with Netflix's free one month trial, the trailer was also internationally broadcast on HBO. all of the TV shows and films on Netflix were originally streamed in WMV3 and WMA but now Netflix utilises Microsofts SilverLight technology and stream their movies and shows in Vc-1 advanced profile encoding with play ready DRM (Digital Rights Management). the movies and shows can be viewed in full HD 1920p -1080p however they can also be viewed in standard definition 640p-480p.

DVD: DVD's are a popular way to buy and watch films at home. the vast majority of DVD's use the VOB format and are viewed at 720p-480p

DIVX: is a company which helps their consumers convert any file format to any device or platform. Divx also create distribute and license digital video technologies for home and on the go entertainment  systems. with Divx Plus streaming, you can view videos at