Going Viral - Case Study

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


2D Elements - in almost every advert ever made there are 2D elements which can be used to animate certain points in adverts. the advert i chose to illustrate my point is the 2014 Comedy Central advert   (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acvqcjf_EWc ). At the very start of this advert there are three 2D elements the Background, Roast chicken and a little square, at first the little box is placed next to the chicken, the 2D box then is personified and jumps into the air and takes a "bite" out of the chicken this is simply done by using the position and rotation keyframes two animate both 2D elements. The chicken is also probably a PSD file which would allow the visual effects artist to rub out or cut a bite shape out of  the chicken and then send back to After effects to finish the Bite effect by cutting the full chicken and replacing it with the bitten chicken. the rest of the advert is cutting an adding different layers and a montage of the Anger Management show, and at the end before the slow-mo explosion there is a mini animation which makes the whole advert feel like a continuous animation, at the end of the montage a little box which is really a mask of a huge box is positioned key-framed onto the screen and then is stretched within a rough five Keyframe space by pulling the top of the mask to the top of the screen which makes the viewer think that  the little box is dragging the background layer down onto the screen.

3D - Elements - 3D elements are becoming more popular in modern adverts for instance in the promo video for HTC's One Max (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ULZ0Ar64tw) the majority of the video uses 3D Elements. at the start of the video there are many shots of the Phone rotating and the camera following a curve on the phone, this is done by compositing many different layers created in Photoshop and then sent to after effects, put together and rotated using position and rotation  Keyframes, the visual  effects artist would have also created a virtual 3D camera which would analyse and scan the image so the camera would be able to pan around the image and use all of the other functions that a real camera would have.

Mattes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaVFCdwT0hk  this is the 2004 iPod advert, the advert is internationally popular as the video is silhouettes of people dancing. however this effect was not achieved on set, this effect was achieved in the post-production stages. they would have filmed normally on a green screen with track points positioned in specific places so that the visual effects artists   would know exactly where the actor is moving so when they add a background the actor will not blend or move behind it, in after effects there is a technique called masking, this is where you cut out a back ground or a thing from the image and you can either substitute it for another image or you can leave it with it just being the background colour which is what apple did for the iPod advert.

Alpha Channels - RGB(Red, Green, Blue) channels are used in every piece of visual media as these are the basic principals of colour in making films. however sometimes certain projects use RGBA which is the Red, Green, Blue and Alpha, Alpha is the fourth Channel of the RGBA and is primarily used to communicate the transparency information through to the image. for instance usually in videos black backgrounds or logos etc are the transparency channel conveyed by the background colour open in the project at the time as there isn't a layer to fill that blank space.

Key-Frames - key-frames are the barebones of any type of animation being that an effect, animated characters etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2nBBMbjS8w  this is the 2012 advert for Coca-Cola which is completely animated. to achieve this animated advert the animators would have used hundreds of keyframes which will be attached to various functions which again are attached to different body parts, facial muscles and multiple other moving bits. commonly the keyframes are linked to functions like position, scale, anchor point, rotation, opacity etc.

Layers: - In any form of media there are layers, layers are the elements which combine and create the finished product. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsJiGF_Groo  in this advert there are many layers that are merged together from the actual footage, visual effects, colour grading. On any editing software for any project there will be a tab which will have multiple layers consisting of various file types, generally each layer will be visually significant and should be able to be toggled on and off which allows you to see the product without that specific layer allowing you to correct, change or add to the project.

Corporate Promo Video

This is the finished edit of our promotional video. Edited by me, filmed by me and Dillon

Market / Traget Audience

For my research into the target audience we decided to use their Facebook page to depict their target audience, as many people these days are familiar and use on a daily basis social media most of the people visiting their Facebook page were around the age of 18-25 years old. the vast majority of the audience are also into other dance, club, drinking pages.

Current Client Brief

After the business went under new management we decided to go back and create a new brief, we brought the other brief with us to let the new manager check the already arranged details of the video, our client then agreed to all of the details on the previous brief.

Genderist? - Film Theory

From the origin of film making women have been conveyed as being stupid, always 2nd, eye candy etc. in todays session we were taught the feminist or genderist film theory.

Laura Mulvey:

Laura Mulvey is a film theorist who is well known for her Essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (also known as Visual and other pleasures) written in 1973, in the essay she expresses her thoughts and research of the Male Gaze  which in her words means "bearer of the look".

Naomi Wolf :

Naomi Wolf is an American author who is best known for her book "The Beauty Myth" written in 1991, Wolf gained popularity as spokesperson of third wave feminism. in the book Wolf argues that beauty as a normative value is entirely socially constructed.

After Effects and Photoshop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpd_gq1vQQo&feature=youtu.be

This is the link to the clip i produced on Adobe After Effects.

to create this clip i worked in the motion tracking workspace which allowed me to first motion track the foreground and the background, by selecting the rotation button in the motion tracking tab i was able to use to points to help track the shot. in the process of this clip we tracked the raw clip twice, i was able to do this by creating a Null object which allows the data captured from the track to be stored in the Null object, this further allows you to create another two point track in which i tracked the background.

once i tracked the raw footage i opened Adobe Photoshop to duplicate the image three times and arrange them into different sizes, after this i used the clone stamp tool to add more grass around the castle, i then feathered the grass around the castle which is using a rubber at a big size and very low opacity so you blend the grass into the scene. i then used the RGB and curves colour tools to further help blend the image together. i then sent the image back to after effects and put the image i had just worked on over the top of the footage to make it look like the guy who is walking up the hill has discovered three old castles.

Corporate Promo Summary

The first task on the corporate assignment brief is called Research and planning, the brief asks us to research what we are doing before planning so this means researching the different codes and conventions of adverts/ promotional videos similar to the video our client wants us to make, we also have to research the legal issues of making a promotional video like rights to certain songs that the client wants, if there's certain brands of other companies etc.. we have to research other briefs which are in the film/TV industry, looking at aspect of the negotiation process, opportunities and the structure of the briefs.

The other part to this task is playing the video ,the task asks us to go out and find real clients to work for.
The planning part should also consist of meetings with or with out the client although making sure we still stay in contact with the client, and adding to our blog with pre-production.

The next part of the task asks us to physically shoot the planned footage for the video with our shooting schedule, shot list, script (if needed),

And finally we should evaluate all aspects of the assignment critically analysing the steps that we have been through and show we can elucidate what a corporate promo video is.