Capturing Radio Advert dialogue

We used today’s lesson to start on the production of the radio advert. Kim and Amber ensured we had the location and equipment in order to make the capturing successful. We hired a room in a quite area of the college and got a boom mic and camcorder in order to store the sound. We used a hard drive camcorder for simplicity later on and used a script displayed on one of my previous blogs to read from. We printed this for myself as I was chosen to do the dialogue for the advert. Previously to doing this task I did some further research on the voices used in radio adverts and found they were very distinctive. I listened to a range of commercial radio web players so I had to opportunity to hear radio adverts.This included, Heart Radio, Capital Radio and Ten17, my local radio station. This gave me the chance to underline the various attributes present in the presenters voice. The presenter had a level of ‘flamboyancy’ which I would have to adapt. I stumbled upon another tip which was to act out what your saying, at first I did not take this on board however has time become tight I tried it and it become an effective way of improving quality of my voice.

At 2pm, we were able to make our way over to the booked room to start recording. I connected in-ear earphones for a better consistency of judgment. Amber wore these for the majority of the time how these become more unnecessary when we established the distance I must stand from the microphone for the best possible sound. The boom mic already has a layer of protective fabric on it to ensure sharp sounds are canceled out at the first stage. This will reduce the need for smothering our dialogue in a range of effects later on during post production. We was a huge benefit that we had the opportunity to use this valuable equipment.

Our first issue after arrival was myself. I was unable to get my voice correct for what Amber and Kim were looking for. They insisted that i attempted to get a connection with the listener which i slowly found more helpful and I started to relax. There were a range of typos’ on the script which I found very distracting but after seeking help, another media teacher assured us we should record the dialogue in small parts to reduce the need to keep restarting the entire script at minor mistakes such as syllable mess ups and paper Brussels.

After a range of different takes in various ways, using different techniques, we felt confident to go back to the Mac room and complete the post-production process after reviewing today’s captured footage. I’m confident that only a limited amount of editing will be required in the post-production process however separating good quality clips from poor quality will be a long process.

Radio Advert Research

As the editing of the video is coming to an end. I feel it is appropriate to start research into our radio task. I thought a large attribute to the radio production was Software and hardware in which we will use.

Software & Hardware

A large part of creating a radio advert is post-production. A majority of this will be done with software. Chosen software will have a huge impact on the overall quality of the radio advert. Possible software includes:

• SoundBooth
• Final Cut Pro
• Sound Forge™ Pro 10

Soundbooth: A software package designed specifically for sound editing. In many cases music developers use it to make music. Yet it has a range of features i could use to edit our radio recording. The software does not however, offer more than 4 tracks of sound. This could become a problem, basically, this means I can only have 4 audio tracks in one point at once. A large drawback to our abilities to add multiple sound effects.

Final Cut Pro: A piece of software I am very familiar with is Final Cut Pro, I understand many of the features and would be comfortable with editing audio with the software. It has endless audio tracks which would mean we can insert as many audio tracks as we require. It has a range of features as well as this, comparable to Soundbooth. It also, although being a video editing software, has the ability to render and save as an audio file.

Soundforge Pro: This software is very complex and I feel it offers features in too much detail and understanding the program to use it to its full potential would take too long. Also, unlike the other software, I do not have the software at hand. I would have to find somebody who has the software to borrow it or I would have to download and purchase the software.

Christina, Kim and Amber have come up with a script which will be read out by an actor with a suitable voice for the advert:

“Back ground noise: Hustle and Bustle of being on the streets in London, also noise of cars and horns going off will be good to create the right ambiance.

A person saying the words of the script and low music in the back ground will also be needed in order to create the right atmosphere.

Would you like to win a weekend stay in London for you and one of your friends in a top hotel, with £1000, spending money?

Well you can, with Lost and Found the new fragrance by Patteli, all you need to do is answer this question:

‘Which famous London monument has just celebrated its tenth birthday?’

A) Big Ben

B) The London Eye

C)Canary Wharf

(Repeat this section again)

If you think you know the answer call this number on 0208 554 877, thats, 0208 554 877.

Calls will be charger at standard network rates, calls from mobiles mary vary, please ask the bill payers permission before calling,callers must be 18 years and over. Standard terms and conditions apply.

For more information visit our website www.cakeradio.com all entrances must be made before midnight on the 7th march 2010.”

Research into a web pop ups – Other web pop ups

Now I have basically finished editing the previous advert I feel with the given time constraints I should begin researching into web pop ups. We have only done limited research as a group so far. I thought a good place to start would be into appropriate software to use.

Software:
As I’m an ICT student I have a broad range of the facilities and features within Microsoft Frontpage. Yet from this I understand your creativity is limited with the software. I believe as a group we would be able to complete what we require within the basic program. For example, although the formatting options are limited within Frontpage, I would be able to format images and text in an outside program such as Photoshop and implement them into Frontpage as an image (JPEG).  From this comes another thing to consider. As I have still not met with group members, I’m unsure of the groups expectations of a web pop up.

Analysis of other pop ups:
I thought it would be suitable to look at some other pop ups to gain an insight into what it required in a  pop up. From this we might be able to brainstorm some ideas for our own pop up. I was unable to gain just perfume pop ups as they seem rather rare within the fragrance market. subsequently, i feel it is very important to link the web pop up to the previously made adverts to ensure the consumer (our target market) understands the advert due to a basic image or font. As we all know, we very rarely take the time to read a pop up.

The pop up shown to the left is very basic. The basic colours use are very unappealing and simplistic. This could be both a benefit and drawback, from this i’m more obliged to read the textual information on the advert. Formatting is very basic and the only link to a brand is shown rather discreetly at the bottom. The font is sans serif and possibily Arial. I achknowledge the fact the pop up is not specific to a perfume but was one of few closely related on the internet.

This advert is closely related to the TV advert. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRirGFJ_Xyk. This links to what I have previously mentioned in this post. In relation to the pop up, the advert is very simple yet affective. The use of the font and colour allows the target market to automatically relate the advert to what they have seen on TV. Something we should incorporate into our pop up.

Here is another advert, much like the one above. There is a model in the advert with only a limited amount of text. The text seems to once again be quite bold however i can understand this as the adverts seem quite basic as a whole.

Continued…

Above, I have annotated a common looking pop up. I understand the pop up is not related to frangrance in any way however the format and aim of the pop up remains the same.

What attributes our pop up would have:
We have a choice of attritubes I can apply to the pop up according to what we want. I can acheive a range of behaviours through the use of JavaScript. This can reflect;

• the way in which the pop up appears;
• the length of time in which it appears;
• whether the user has the abilty to close the pop up immidiately;
• how often the pop up appears.

With perfume, it is essential it carrys the sofisitcated theme that the advert carries. Internet users hate pop up and install as much software as possible in order to prevent them. With this in mind, I feel our best approach to pop up behaviours are to be as tasteful as possible. By this, I mean a smaller pop up with attributes which would not annoy the internet user. This could result in them resenting the brand.

Editing Bisous

Due to attending exams I have been rather distant from Media Studies recently. Without exams to concern me I’m able to focus on the jobs in hand and continue with my usual media cycle. One of my priorities is to start the edit on Bisous, as I was in an exam I asked my group to organise the clips in which they captured to make my job easier when i’m able to start the edit. Christina, Kim and Amber have done this and i’m now able to refer to named references to the footage to make my job more time efficient as I also have to start on a web pop up with Amber.

Although I asked them to start the basic edit, now I have looked at it its difficult to continue the edit from other peoples work. Subsequently I’m going to start my edit again completely whilst incorporating as much of my previous work as possible to reduce time.

After doing a fair amount of editing, I lost all of my work as my mac locked up. From this I will be a lot more critical of saving my work to ensure this does not happen again. To continue, I rectified any progress that I had lost after the computer locked up. I am now at the point where I have the basic footage required for the advert.

Before going home, I extracted some of the work from before. The selected scenes used consisted of Sam applying various make up products to her face and product to her hair. My group members also added a variation on the speed used for one of the clips. I thought the advert was to quick to Sam and should have an ‘intro’. We had a clip of a window and Sam sitting down which was very well positioned yet it was ruined by the bright light and contrast between the window and room darkness. I still liked the concept of the shot and started to play around with some visual effects.
One effect I thought positively of was a effect that adds a faded zoom effect with various custom colours. In this case I chose darker colours to go with the theme of the advert. As i stayed after college hours, I was unable to share my work with anybody to get further feedback. As the footage is at the start of the advert it would be easy to remove if it proved my group disliked the idea. Established from the window shot I wanted to keep the ‘confusion’ ‘bitty’ theme. I thought use of editing techniques could highlight the love theme further.
I will update the next blog highlight peer feedback when I’ll be able to edit further.

Peer Feedback

In order to progress I wanted to gain some feedback from my group and others. To do this I got together a few of my class mates and asked for their opinion on the advert so far. Christina did not enjoy the French Maisonette JPEG that I added to the start of the “I did not think it related to the product we were trying to sell”. I agreed with this after she brought this up. From this I was curious to how I could start the advert. Starting with the back of the head shot was inadequate. From this I added a solid black colour and a fade. As the shot of Sam sitting down was so dark, I had to apply an effect that would fit the accidental contrast issue. The slow fade from black means you can get a glimpse of Sam sitting down without revealing the contrast issue.

I was planning on finishing the edit today however Kim did not have the Perfume bottle on her so we could take photos. The photos are required so i can insert them into photoshop and make a suitable caption screen. Something else I could do was gather audio from Kim’s camera to go over the caption screen.

Rendering and uploading the advert

Today, myself and Kim had the opportunity to complete the advert as our tutor was teaching the students whom were retaking their exam. I went over our edited footage with Kim to highlight any small changes that might have to be changed. This only included a small pitch change on the voice over on the caption screen. This was to add greater emphasis on the perfume name. After we did this, I was able to render the video and upload it to the social networking site, Facebook in order to gather comments on editing used so I could apply thoughts on our second video production which I am yet to start editing. I will also add the video to YouTube at a later date.

10 December 2009 – Post-production – Editing Lost & Found

Today I continued to edit Lost and Found. Many of the main elements of the advert were put together. I have previously left out music until finishing editing because I feel it can sometimes make the advert look better than what it is. I learned this from last year. I continued using Final Cut Pro and by this point was very familiar with the program. I was using a complex mix of editing techniques including brightness touching and am looking into applying ‘Smooth Cam’ feature to the rendered advert. Basically this will reduce the appearance of a unsteady camera which is necessary providing we were unable to use a tripod when capturing the footage.

I used my time today to try and experiment with the basic advert elements. For instance, we had a shot of Lauren which entailed her moving her head to look at the camera. This was a very good shot composed by Amber and our peers, group and tutor encouraged us to use the particular shot. This was a problem which I had to overcome. Amber was keen to place the shot in a ‘random’ place within the advert as she had seen this technique used in other researched adverts, yet our advert did not follow this base theme and would be difficult to incorporate this late in the production stage. I tried to add the piece of footage in at various points throughout the advert but this was difficult. I completed a little research online to the basic features of Final Cut Pro and found an easy tutorial to use the transparency feature. This would mean loading various frames upon video and adding about 13% transparency overall creating an easy yet effective way of introducing this shot to the advert. After applying this and showing it to the group, they approved a lot. This has now become one of the main assets to the advert.

Sources: http://www.lafcpug.org/tutorials/basic_mattes_masks.html

After this, I moved onto small touch ups to the advert, we had very little glitches within the footage which disturbed the overall quality. These glitches would be a frame which would turn bright green randomly. Consequently, I spoke to my tutor, he explained how this occurs when leaving the cursor over the footage when rendering. Subsequently, I went back through the footage in order to  rectify any distortions.

Leading on from this, I took time to examine each piece of footage in order to ensure continuity and a ‘flow’ was upheld throughout. I achieved this by ensuring the music was in sync with the moving images.

Shooting – Lost & Found – 26th November

Finally, we were able to go out and capture raw content for our film. Our producer, Kim, ensured everything was in order and checked over. An email had been sent to confirm that we will be filming on this date and equipment was collected. We had a Sony DigiCam which recorders direct to hard drive which will be extremely beneficial to me, as editor. Previously, as done last year we recordered on a MiniDV tape which caused various problems. Applying this necessary knowledge from last year we did ensure we recorded on a more time-effective, efficient format. In contrast to last years project, we also did not require any additional sound equipment as previously agreed, we would not be using sound in our final copy.

The image below shows the locations we filmed.

Red: We filmed a shot of both of the characters feet in order to later apply as a connecting shot.
Yellow: Final shot.
Orange: Step shot.
White: Playing in trees’.

Kim and Christina had previously planned where we will be visiting throughout the day. Having this structure through the day made it much easier to handle and weather conditions were poor.

Although it was not my designated role and not my place to to involve myself, I helped throughout the day with minor technical difficulties Amber experienced. I also ensured the filming was tailered to my abilities within Final Cut Pro.

19 November 2009 incomplete

Today we set a date for recording Lost & Found, after contacting our chosen actors and actresses Kim found that our desired actors could not meet at the required date. Which we decided would be 26 November, (next week). Instead of this we conducted an internal audition within our Media class. We found Ben Slater and Feliz Hassan, they were well suited for what we needed in our production. We got both of them to sign a contract to ensure they have full commitment throughout our production.

I managed to finish the budget proposal http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t7b_QmRPG9JWBkkJuxJyjZA&output=html it is suited to our film project as I have considered an equal financial commitment. I used various formula in order to do this automatically. Alongside my group I highlighted the main financial areas of spending.

Another area of interest today was the changing of the branding for the bottles. Kim and Christina felt the font was too masculine. To resolve this issue I decided to research further into fonts on the internet. In addition to this, Kim has found another perfume bottle over lunch time. It is circular with a spray top. One of the problems with this is the shape of the bottle limits us in what we can do with a label. From this, Kim recommended that we scrap the idea to use a square label previously made. This was fairly in convienient based on the time and research that has gone into branding of the perfume.

Costume:

I haven’t previously mentioned costumes. This was mainly dealt with direct with actors on the basis of the clothing they personally owned. This was due to our low budget, we was all unable to purchase new clothing. This didn’t prove any problem though. We found our actors and actress’s from Lost & Found had a suitable range of clothing to choose from. We asked that Ben wore black and white, in co-ordination with our black and white film. Especially with the fact I would be adding a tint effect at post production. After shot research I was advised that it was best the acting crew wore basic black and white clothing.  A basic outline of our requirements can be view below:

(Lauren) (Ben)

These are only the preferable clothing required. Although in this case, the suit looks to formal on the male. And in addition to the photos, the suit for the male would in fact be black.

Auditions

Today, we’re holding auditions in a college office room we have rearranged to suit audition purposes. As we got off to a slow start, so Kim decided to go into the food court and gather some potential actors/actress’. We were particularly interested in males as we already have potential females for our production. We’re looking for females with a ‘clean’ and ‘fresh’ look who have enough time to commit to our production.
To ensure they have suitable free-time I have made a form to record these which can be viewed on this blog (below).

A collection of our photos taken can be viewed below.

We took the required details of our auditions’ so we could contact them them following the decision. Shortly after we had finished I took their numbers and placed them into a group within my phone for easy contact. I sent a simple confirmation text to acknowledge ‘Thank you for your time. We’re now looking at the photos in order to reach a decision to who is best suited to our advert production. You will receive another text in the near future stating our conclusion. Thanks again, Perfume advert crew. Please feel free to text back any questions or give us a call on this number.’

Below are the first batch of auditions. We have logged their details on my created record sheet for further reference.
We all viewed and analysed the images taken after the auditions and made comments and filtered people according to what advert they are most suited to. After this we looked cross referenced the times the auditionees’ are available. This become a problem and this project would take a lot of commitment from all parts. This is something we need to consider sometime very soon.

10 November 2009

Today, Amber emailed the authorities using the contacts I gathered from the previous Media session. As our conversation with the police officer at Buckingham Palace was relatively informal we decided to email the authorities prior to visiting the place in which hands out permits.

Whilst Amber was inquiring about a permit I had the chance to organise the auditions. As our earlier set date failed to come together I had to edit the posters again in Photoshop and change the date. Another concern over the audtion posters was the use of the text ‘beautiful people’. I was concern this use of language could be interpreted as discriminative, furthermore I changed this to ‘physically ideal’. After required changes were made I then printed them in colour and myself and Kim distributed the posters around the college campus.

Auditions:

With auditions approaching I have created some publicity posters in order to guide possible auditionees to the correct location. I have used initiative as last year auditions turned out very negative, we only had a limited amount of people come to audition. A preview of the simple posters made can be seen below.