It's been a while since my last post. There is an explanation though. I really had a lot to do. So this blogpost is about what I did (naturally not everything, because I don't think you're interested in what I cooked and how I did cook it....I come to think that I could post some recipes, but than this blog won't be more than a virtual recipe collection, which was not my initial intention....well, where was I?), mainly about a very fascinating class which I had last week. Additionally there will be a new blogpost tomorrow about the actual topic of this Blog, my future (it still feels weird to write that).
But first things first. As the regular reader (and I'm pretty sure there are heaps of them out there) might already have recognized this blog is now in English. Why did i change the Language? Well many people might think this is a revolution (I know a bit of a big word for this small small Blog), but I see it more like a good old evolution based on evaluation. I have some readers which don't speak german, and I want this blog to be readable for these people, which are mostly friends I met in NZ. So from now on, only in english!!! (most of the German (pronunciation"tshoermen") readers understand english anyway, so no worries).
(a pretty log into, i should stop writing so much in brackets...i'll look into that some day..)
So here my real Blog post starts (YEAH!!!)
Last week i really had one of the best course I ever had at University. The title might not sound very attracting: "Artistic Practices: From Vision to Visualization" but it really rocked. The main idea behind that class was to produce user generated ads (this whole ugc things is really creating a Buzz right no when it comes to Marketing) and while doing that, learn how to approach a vision and realize it. If you just want to see the clips and don't read my lame report, just scroll down, there is a link and an example. The Blogpost will give a "brief" summary of the week so if you're interested how we produced the clips, just stay with me.
Summary of the week
Day 1
The week started on monday with a brief intoduction of our 2 lectures, one of whom is a german producer, named Jörg Schulze. He's really a nice fellow and quite a contrast compared to most of the very (how do i put this...)"formal" professors which I'm used to here in Sankt Gallen. At the End of the day our main goal was to create a pitch of our idea for the advert, which was supposed to solicit "MLP Komfortkonto", a bank account which is free for students. Not very sexy ay?! The idea was that we'll have 11 pitched the next morning and elect the 4 best, which then will be realized during the week.
Day 2
Long story short, mine was picked up (WOHOOOO!!!!). The idea was, that the main character finds heaps of bills from the bank in his mailbox. Immediately a football hits him in the groin and the message "Painless Banking with the MLP KomfortKonto" is faded in. Everyone will see later, that the story was changed during the week, but that was the basis for the clip. The rest of day 2 was to specify the story, which was quite some work, because the lecturers did, what they had to do and picked our ideas apart. But at the end of day 2 we had our story (more or less). Which was now that Kai, as we called our character from now on, came home from his long journey from Vietnam and finds heaps of bills of his bank. He then will get a football in his groin, or (as our lecturers suggested) 2 slaps in his face.
Day 3
Day three was kind-of frustrating, because we didn't really get on with the clip, only had to perpare for the shooting day (day 4), which included getting prop, but mainly to specify even more and create shotlists (basically a rundown of the shots we want to shoot (import is the point of view and the camera movement), visualized with some self made paintings) which we would use as our guideline the for the next day. This was very exhausting but our producers/lecturers told us this would be important to realize the clip and not have a chaotic day of shooting. Here the idea with the slaps became more and more attrrative because we could have a shot on Kai's face while he show emotions which is appealing to transport the emotions better towards the viewer.
Day 4
This was the big day. The shooting day. Which was actually not too bad. we had everything planned out pretty good, and at the end of the day, we had all shots we needed. We shot 2 Scenes for the end, the football version and the one with the slaps. Throwing the football into someone's groin (he had a jockstrap, but it hurt) and slap him in his face. Thanks to Tobi (our actor) again, he did a great job.
Day 5
This was the longest day. Basically just editing and cutting, but that's quite some work and we had our hands full. In the end we just cut the version with the slaps, because it better carried the idea. The football in the groin will just be in the outtakes. Although it might not seem as much work when you see the final clip, we had to do heaps of stuff including re-recording the audio and the voice-over, finding music and color-editing the clip so it has a better quality (you might not see it, but the footage was way to dark and the final version is ok now).
Day 6
This day was just the feedback and presentation day. I think all 5 clips are great, but convince yourself, after millions of unimportant words and a pretty boring post (thanks for sticking with me), here is the result of my group:
The rest can be found here. As I said all of us did a great job, and it would be really nice if some of my fellow readers leave some encouraging comments.
So what else to say?! As I already announced, tomorrow will be another post about the actual topic of this blog, so stay tuned,
Cheers
Chris
