Live Briefs - Advertising and Brand Design
The third live brief which was set this summer term was an in house brief. We got a surprise the day of the briefing. Xavi announced that the client is already in the building. Little did we know the client was actually our course leader Derek.
The briefing was done by Xavi himself. Which felt odd as normally for the live briefs we would wait for the ‘client’ to come in! He ran us through what the brief was asking. Recently Ravensbourne got the go ahead to become their own college/university. Which means a full rebrand of the uni as well as courses being rewritten/re named. Our course is going to be called Advertising and Brand Design in the future. The whole briefing was asking us to come up with a promotional video to promote our course essentially. The video would be featured on the courses page on Ravensbournes website. They were after a video which was not a showreel, not a series of boring interviews or anything corporate. They wanted something to really represent what our course and culture was about. To offer future students a real taste of what it is like to be a A&BD student.
We came away from the briefing at first with reactions like “uhhh another promotional video/strategy”. This soon changed after we brainstormed ideas/insights/tones of voices etc.
As I have mentioned before like with any brief, we always begin with initial thoughts, then we move to gathering insights. This was not a problem as much as other briefs as essentially we are the closest people to the course, we all were in the same position a few years ago when we were deciding on choosing the course. We came up with a list of insights which we felt related to our course very closely.
Insights
The course has a blurred definition of what exactly it is
People don’t know enough about advertising
People’s perception of a creative is blurred
There are many careers in the advertising industry
It's not just an average course
More than just a course
Normal is boring
Being average is boring
Following on from this stage of the project. We had gained a vague idea of where we wanted to head with this now. Referencing and researching what has been done already was the next process. We got inspired off a series of videos we found such as the Guardians Space video and THE PROCESS VIDEO by SALMAN SAJUN STUDIO. The use of stop motion and real time objects really caught our attention to be different and not your average video. From our research and insight list we ran an ideas list alongside which looked a bit like this.
Ideas
Montage mash up of media footage w/ empowering copy/script/voiceover (Guardian Style)
Contrast between a doer and a thinking (apple style)
Metaphor driven copy lead
What Is normal (break the routine)
Making people go WOW
So at this stage it was now two days post briefing and with a solid bank of insights/ideas we had our ideas pitch in front of Xavi and Brian, basically running them each through and pitching our shortlisted three ideas. We wrote a short bit of copy about each idea and a visual concept which is below. The result of the pitch was to go forward with the second idea which was collectively our favourite idea. The stop motion piece. It was the most ambitious and out there idea but amongst all four of us, we had it in us to execute it well.
So we had the idea. The execution was the next stage, but it meant doing all of the boring bits before the shoot day. We spent the rest of that day after pitching our ideas getting the script nailed down. With the script we wanted a tone of voice that was playful but at the same time informative and powerful. The bit we had to be careful with was taking the piss to much and sounding arrogant. Something Brian said we needed to be careful with massively and with us as a group we are quite sarcastic…. Anyhow, the script was completed fully by the weekend. The next step was to outsource a voice over artist which sounded professionally. We found a very strong voice online, we sent off our script to him and within 24 hours he had recorded it and sent it back, with it sounding extremely clear and professional. We figured by outsourcing the voice over and actually investing our own money into this project we would gain a much more professional outcome. Something that would be upload ready if picked.
Over the weekend was the semi fun part. Gathering props for our shoot. We all went home and tried finding any weird and wonderful objects which we could link to our witty script. I hit the jackpot by going into my local town back in Sussex and finding some very useful bits in the charity and toy shops. Other objects such as chattering teeth, a game boy and a squeaky chicken were a few amongst many. Another part of the execution of this project was the lighting. Lighting was a huge part of out shoot. As thats what makes our colours and props pop so well, so we had to message a few people we knew outside of Ravensbourne, go and collect the lights, pay for them with our own money and return them on the same day of the shoot. It was certainly going the extra mile but we kept saying it is going to be worth it definitely.
So shoot day came round faster than ever on the following Tuesday. We scheduled in a 10am set up time for a 11am start. The shoot went really well considering one of the two camera batteries decided to die on us thoughout the shoot. So that caused a lot of extra stress and worry. We managed to shoot near enough everything we needed for our script in the space of 5-6 hours. With about 1-2 hours of that waiting for the only battery to recharge over and over again.
The last leg of the execution was the editing part. We estimated a few hours for the edit so we all left it until about 4pm the day before the pitch. As editing goes, it always will take three times as long as normal, That of which is certainly did. We finished 90% of the edit finally at 11pm. With a few tweaks to be done the following morning. There were a few elements of the editing process which certainly changed the video for the good, which was deciding to go for a series of free sound effects as opposed to a sound track The sound effects certainly offered more of an intimate feel to the video whilst bringing the props to life as such.
The final output is shown below. We all were extrememly happy with how it turned out. It was a very ambitous idea, something we would not have normally done in such a short space of time, but it goes to show what can be done if everyone sees the same end goal and works together as a team.