Working with Partners instead of Clients

Working with a partner for this project, namely Simon Bates, has been a much better experience than working for people, say on the Commission Project. Working for the band to create their music video was alright, but despite them asking us to do it, we had to do things how they wanted it, when they wanted it and whatever else they happened to want. We wanted narrative, they said no. We suggested locations, they said no. There was very little compromise with the commission as it is what they wanted us to make. The only time we could argue was when i refused to film them playing with no clothes on because i'd rather get a different commission.

Working with Simon, however, we got an equal say in what the video came out like. We made some suggestions, he said what he thought would work better and we talked about the pros and cons of each different idea. If we thought something would look better one way and he wanted it done another, we could talk about it and discuss reasons. It was good to have this sort of communication with the person we were working with, as it allowed us to ensure we stayed on track of what he wanted. We may not have been working for Simon, but ultimately, he wants the video, so there would be no point making something completely the opposite of what he wants.

With the Capture project, we were working with Five Leaves Publishing to create book trailers for their Crime Express book series. This project, however, we had no contact with the company. They didn't tell us what they wanted, they didn't tell us what they though and we got no feedback on the finished pieces. This was useless, because we all set about creating book trailers, having no idea if they would be any good or any use to the company and they just seemed totally uniterested. It was good, as it allowed us to use our creativity to create what we thought would be an appropriate trailer for a book on our own instead of relying on people telling us what they want, but i prefer having contact with thepeople i am working for/with.

Final Video

Promotional Trailer Final - Matt, Tara & Tim from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

This is the final version of our fiver promo. I liked our rough cut, but after the feedback i much prefer this one. I think it holds together much better as a video, and generally makes more sense. We also cut it a bit more so it is slightly shorter and i think that makes it easier to maintain viewer concentration throughout the whole thing, as it got a bit boring after 2 minutes anyway.

I think moving the interviews to further towards the end was a good idea, and i think putting a bit of extra text in was a smart move too. While simply having text saying "Get £2 for each ticket you sell" may make sense to us, we have it in context and know roughly how the fiver works. If you saw this either online or at the event, you probably wouldn't realise that you were given x amount of tickets to sell to make some money. I think putting that in as text was a good idea as it just makes it that but clearer to potential applicants.

I also think putting in that you need 'minor gig experience' was good because it doesn't say that if you've never really played to a large crowd you can't apply, but it also stops people who have never played in front of any people before applying and wasting time.

I think using much more live footage, cut quicker and using the lights and colours as much as physical movement to build up tension was a really good idea. Cutting the interviews was a good move because they really slowed down the video and many of them didn't really add anything to it. Removing the 'cut-to-blacks' at the beginning made the video better because it looked alright but if there's nothing happening for even a split second it slows down the pace of the video.

I think the video is much stronger after considering the feedback and changing it. I really liked it before, but it is a better made video now. I think getting the feedeback from the UNiversity students was a great idea because it showed us a different way of looking at things. It was good for some people to be told it was shit and they should do something else, but it was also great for our group to be told it wasn't terrible, especially for the time we made it in. This made me feel good, because someone who has been working on things similar to us but at a much higher level seemed almost impressed with our work, which is great, but he also didn't hesitate to say 'whoever put that in, remove it. It sucks', which i think was good as Pete and Nick are a lot more careful with what they say to us.

The Junction Young Ambassadors

Another group of people that have been working with the Junction are the Junction Young Ambassadors.

The Junction Young Ambassadors are a group of people from Cambridge who help the Junction to make the venue a more youth-friendly environment. They have been running since March 2009 and worked with Architecture graduates to design a new front Foyer for the Junction building. They also ran a ‘Youth Summit’ which invited teenagers to the Junction to participate ideas to the ‘Summer Intensive programme’. Their most recent project with the Junction is to hold a ‘Takeover’ event on the 8th May 2010 for the youth of Cambridge. Their research consisted of Facebook and talking to friends, and they managed to establish a basic layout for the day. This day would include several workshops in various areas of the Junction building including, sound and lighting, djing, spoken word, dance, beatboxxing, digital imagery and more. The evening will stage the most exciting aspect to our event, and what the youth of Cambridge have requested, a headlining dubstep DJ to do their thing and… Well, DJ..

Simon's feedback

Simon came in and gave us some feedback about our finished videos. My group got the most positive result out of the whole class. We scored overall marks of 34/40 which was the highest marks overall, and this shows that we worked well as a team. Win. He liked that i had stuck as close as possible to the brief and used it as the basis of our product. Our video showed both the financial and personal benefits of performing at the Fiver, in a hope that it would continue to attract an audience and encourage people to play it instead of having the same bands going on over and over again.

What i have learnt

Through the course of this project i have learnt many different things and skills. Some of these will come in useful for the future, many probably won't. For example when we went to Bournemouth, the Student talking to us was using these crazy shortcuts on Final Cut that we'd never found, so when we got back we sat there pressing buttons until we found them. This will come in useful as is makes editing slightly easier as i now know how to watch through footage easier instead of having to scroll through it al i can press a button and rewind to the bit i was looking for.

I learnt the different job roles available at the Junction. These go from technicians to ticket selling people to generally organising. This probably won't be greatly useful in the future, but i assume most places will have similar set-ups if i find myself looking for a job somewhere like it.

Clients and Credits

This is the logo for the Junction. We inverted this logo so the text was white to put in the corner of our video. This had to get at the end of the video to emphasise that it was the Junction that had produced the promo and the event had been held there.





This ugly little thing is the logo for the Creative and Media course. This was put at the end mostly because we made the promo and it wouldn't be fair if we didn't get credited for it. It is also to show the partnership between the Junction and Long Road. Also, probably partly just to advertise the course.











Skillset is the industry body which supports skills and training for people and businesses to ensure the UK creative media industries maintain their world class position.




I don't know why CRC were credited, but we were told to put it on, so we did.








LOtC were crredited because they believe that every young person should experience the world beyond the classroom as an essential part of learning and personal development, whatever their age, ability or circumstances. I guess they helped out in some way.






Long Road was credited to show the connection between the Junction and Long Road. It also shows potential students the kind of work they can expect to be doing on our course at Long Road, instead of sitting in classrooms doing maths and stuff.







The Arts Council are the Junctions primary funders, and it is because of these guys the Junction have the choice to rent out room to the community.







We were asked to put a load of logo's at the end of our video to show exactly who the project was for and who helped or whatever.

Simon Feedback on Changes

We showed simon a version of our video after we had started to edit it. It wasn't complete, but it gace a good feel of what we were aiming for with our video. I guess unfortunately, Simon really liked our original video and didn't tell us to change much, so there was a big chance that he would prefer our original video. Luckily, he seemed to like the changes we made, too so we seem to be doing pretty good by his book.

He said he liked that our group had tried to stick to the brief, but any feedback he had was very basic, which was good because it allowed us to keep working how we wanted to do it, knowing that he liked what we had made. He also said we should pay attention to the Bournemouth students for any technical advice about the video.

I think this was fair feedback, if again not greatly useful. He didn't really tell us any ways we could improve, but i suppose that's a good thing as it means he's happy with it. I'm glad he said we should listen to the advice from the Bournemouth students for technical things, because he said himself he doesn't really know how it all works, he just knows what he wants it to show. It would have been good for him to say he wanted more shots like this or that, but without watching every bit of footage it would be hard for him to do that.

O2 Priority Pass Analysis

Right from the start of the advert, you can tell this advert is taking a view of the O2 experience from a completely different view to the other one. The first one started with a really light shot showing people being happy, this one starts with a much darker feel, the only light being that from floodlights mounted the the walls.




The next shot shows the mad rush of people running to the front of the stage to be as close as possible to whoever is on stage. This is a feeling everyone who goes to gigs will know. This advert is clearly targeting an audience of people that go to gigs regularly and is saying how much better the experience is here.



This shows the crowd going nuts, as the band or event has either just started or is just about to. Despite the trailer being in slow motion, there is significantly more energy to this trailer than the other one. This is to keep people interested as it is aimed at teenagers who typically don't have a great attention span.




I like this as an end shot, partly because i just love shots of crowds. If you are going to do a video with an audience, you need to show the crowd going nuts and enjoying themselves or people will think the venue is awful.

O2 Priority Pass

This video is much different to the other O2 one, this one is much more intense and crazy, despite all being in slow motion. It gives much more of a feel of being at the venue than the other one, which was clearly focusing more on the events that could be taking place rather than the experience of actually being at one of them

Analysis of O2 video

The first shot of the trailer shows some people walking into the arena smiling, having a great time. You see them walking past as Bill Bailey walks past on some massive stilts. This shot shows a nice, relaxed atmosphere in the venue which is nothing like how it actually is.



The camera then pans moves around backstage showing many numbers of events that are held at the O2 arena. This shot i liked because it shows the sheer difference in events. There's something about horses, and what i assume to be wrestling? Slightly before this shot you are also shown a band rehearsing in a corner before they go on stage.



This shot could either be another event group rehearsing for whatever the hell you need a group of angels for, or alternatively it's more of a stairway to heaven kinda thing. It shows you going up a stairway surrounded by angels, and in many cultures this is suggestive of heaven. The advert could be suggested going to a show there is so great it's almost as good as actually being in heaven.

O2 Promotional Video

I like this promotional video for O2 because it is interesting. It is all one long fluid camera movement with everything falling into place as the camera moves around backstage. The use of celebrities and events on the walk from the entrance to the seat, i assume the camera is meant to represent someone in the audience, in reality the O2 arena is nothing like that, but the use of celebrities keeps the viewer interested as it not only shows the type of people and events that feature at the O2 arena, it also makes it feel more intimate by walking around backstage and the celebrities just going about doing whatever.

The advert is quite relaxed, which makes the venue appear nicer to the viewer. They do this by using a single long shot with lots of motion, showing that everything at the O2 works nicely and in conjunction with everything else. If they had tried to edit this advert using lots of quick cuts and intense music, it would have given a totally different feel to the venue and advert.

Feedback from Bournemouth

Before we went to Bournemouth, our videos were shown to a group of MA students who would give us feedback when we went there. We had a crazy Scottish guy. He was nice. Here is his feedback:

At the opening, you can hear the crowd over the music without ever being shown a crowd. Why? Drop the audio of the crowd.

At 7 seconds, the shot cuts before you are shown the bands on the door. Why did you do this? Is the shot too long?

The crowd footage at the beginning is far too dark, almost silhouetted. Do you have anything better? - Try showing and empty room, fade out. Fade in to a room filling up, fade out. Fade in to a room full of people.

15 - 26 seconds, like cutting to the beat, does it need to cut to black? Slows down the pace and excitement, still cut to beat, but w/o black.

After showing the singer walking offstage, you don't need to cut back to him onstage. Keep cutting to backstage area.

When first singer comes off the stage, you don't need the bit about the heat. Just cut to the audio of him saying "Quality. One of the best nights i've ever had"

You also don't need the shot of the bassist - who cares, and he doesn't say anything great.

Get rid of boiling point. Might not be nice but it's a cut throat world. MURDER YOUR BABIES!

Guitar shot at 1m 41 is far too long with nothing happening. Work in frames, not seconds. Nothing should lag or become static.

Last section is far too slow. Promos should always be fast because you want the audience to feel something towards it. The shots chosen are all wrong.

The whole thing lacks structure. Why start with the bands coming offstage?

£2 per ticket text isn't held long enough.

Some shots are far too long. People should be having fits at the end of it.

I think this feedback is fair, it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been, and was all very constructive. I agree with basically everything he said, but we are not entirely removing Boiling Point as including them was one of the things Simon liked about the video as it included a whole new audience showing the younger band. Some of the things he suggested we do we can't as he was using Final Cut Pro and we use Express, but most of it was fine.

Action Plans

So we got our feedback from Bournemouth and while we agree with most of the things that was said there are one or two small things that we aren't going to do.

The main areas to change are the music, keeping it all on one song instead of swapping between them, as we are advertising the events, not necessarily the bands and some of them were just awful. We weren't going to do this as it seemed unfair to only use one bands music, but i think it will work out better.

We are going to move the interviews to nearer the end, as starting with the bands walking off stage doesn't work. We are also going to cut the interviews shorter. For example we are going to cut anyone who comes off and says it was 'alright', and the guy from After 4 who says "Hot! Real f***ing hot!" as that doesn't really advertise the venue.

We are going to speed up the cuts at the end, as that is when it should be building up more so it can sort of go duu-duu-duu-du-du-dududududadada-BANG as the footage cuts quicker and quicker and it would really build up the tension.

We also need to get the logos and put them on the end of the video

Rough Cut 2

After the feedback given to us from the MA students at Bournemouth, we decided to make several changes to our video. The main changes we've made is to keep the starting song going throughout the whole video instead of swapping between bands when they come onscreen. We figured as it is an entire song and is quite punchy and easy to edit around we would just use that. The advantage with a promo is that we don't need everything to sync up properly, we just need it to keep your attention and give the information we need it to.

We also edited the start, so the footage didn't cut to black. Even though it was only for a split second, it apparently slowed the feel of the footage down so we removed it so it seemed faster. The other major change was putting the interviews towards the end instead of at the beginning. This was because it didn't make much sense showing the bands on stage, then showing them walking off stage, then showing them back on stage. We agreed with the bournemough guy that it would look better having them walking off and talking about it towards the end of the video so it looked more like an ending. This would also give our video some structure.

Video Promo Comparison

I decided i would compare our promotional video with other ones. The one i have used in this comparison is advertising the media school at Bournemouth University. I know they are advertising very different things, but i noticed a few thing about each trailer that interested me. They are both created to advertise, so they should have a reasonable comparison.


I was very interested when i saw this image, because it shows one of the students using a sound desk. This shot is almost identical to one we used in our promotional video. This works because it shows that Bournemouth University has professional level equipment to be working with, and the Junction uses it too.





This shot of some guy from UKTV is good, because it shows him in his normal working environment surrounded by monitors and junk. This is similar to the shots we used in our video showing the bands coming off the stage when we talked to them.

This shot shows the editing suite for the TV studio. This is a good shot because it shows the equipment the students are given. This would make the viewer interested because it shows they will be working with top level equipment instead f what many of them have used previously.








Both these promotional videos target their audience very well and i believe show exactly what needs to be shown to hit the purpose of said video. They both use very different styles but they are both well made and show the necessary bits of footage to get the audience interested and wanting to know more about the product being advertised.

Simon's feedback from rough cut

Fiver Matt/Tara/Tim
Live footage of The Fiver Very good, great intro, like the build up of band/tech/crowds
What the requirements are for getting in Doesn't make clear that you need some footage or experience first
What you get if your band is accepted Clearly sets out both financial offer and opportunities to work with pro sound and lighting people
How to apply Provides info
It must look contemporary Looks modern
Fast Retains excitement
Appealing to the 14 – 17 age group Good interview with younger band
Supply all the relevant information Yes
General comments If young band could be brightened up that would be good.
Really clear, good pace, like (love!) the intro
Sticks clearly to brief, well done

General Feedback
Don't use the junction/fiver.myspace address, it is no longer live!
All promos need to use our logo and NOT stetch it in any way.
Please use Helvetica as the font with no additional formating (ie bold, shadow etc)
The following logos MUST appear in the promo: The Junctions, The Arts Council, CRaM, Long Road, CRC, Parkside Federation, QB Learning Outside the Classroom, Skillset
All promos should include some advice on getting noticed, for example 'good photos' of them gigging, consider testomonials, 'action' photos

I think this feedback is alright, because it says what he does and doesn't like about our video. Unfortunately, he didn't really tell us to make any massive changes and appears to quite like it how it is. This is good because it means we have made a product that he is happy with, but it also means he hasn't given us anywhere he particularly wants us to improve. We are going to have to rely on the feedback from the Bournemouth people to give us areas to improve.

Useful Shots

In Monday's lesson we looked through the assorted footage for anything that stood out particularly or we thought would look really good in the video. I think this was a good idea, because it meant when we got round to editing we already had a good idea of what shots we could use in the video. Tara decided to make a note of the shots on her phone, some of them with comments next to them like "Good response" or "great crowd footage". The shots she noted down were: C47, C75, C83, C1, C15, C21, C23, C25, C28, C3, C38, C40, C43, C44, C62, C63, C64, C66, C69, C70, C67, C72, C73, C74, 83, C9, C49, D10, D18, A1, A10, A90, A9, A21, A24, A25, A3, A34, A38, A48, A49, A50, A51, A56, A58, A66, A73, A74, A75, A84, B71, B76, B23,
B51, B83, B75, B48, B19, B67, B70, B64, B72, B56, 45, B62, B84, B47, B57, B38, B52, B34, B86.

Feedback

Today we were told to give feedback to each other about our videos. The people making documentaries were meant to give the promo group feedback, and vice versa. This is the feedback we received from Philippa. I agree with most of it, and alongside the feedback we will get back from Bournemouth will help us create a good video.






Philippa's feedback is simply:

-Beginning cuts really good, quick cuts are really effective.

- Too much footage, not enough text or voice over - needed more text or a voiceover to make it interesting.

-Too many slow cuts towards the end - needs consistent cutting throughout.

I think this is fair enough, at the beginning we were trying to cut fast and to the music, but that took a long time, and we couldn't keep it up for the whole video. When we started to put interviews in and play the footage before them, we realised that we would have to slow down the cuts or nothing would make any sense, so it gradually slows down towards the end.

When we go to Bournemouth, we will be able to edit it a bit more and work with the feedback we have been given to create something good. I think we might have to just speed some bits up and add some more general information about getting in touch and stuff. One of the bands names doesn't come up, and some of the information needs to hold for a bit longer. When we have feedback from our teacher, and some students at University level, we should be able to create something very good.

Rough Cut

Junction Fiver Promotional Video Rough Cut - Matt, Tara & Tim from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

This is the rough cut of our promotional video for the fiver. We want to lighten a few bits of it, and some of the information needs to stay up for longer, but i think it is quite good for a rough cut.

When we were creating this, it was very hard to keep on track making a promo and not end up creating a music video. This was basically because to keep music going through the whole thing was the only way we could see it staying interesting, however it was much easier to edit footage around a single song and make a music video than to try and create a video promoting the fiver in general. To get around this, we found some footage the included a whole song, and used that for the beginning of the video and used the footage to show the atmosphere of the fiver. It was also good to show the band when the singing started so people knew who it was and what was going on.

We then cut to the beat of the song showing all the other bands performing quickly so it showed the different bands. We also found interviews with most of the bands when they were coming off stage, so we could get their instant responses. However we decided it would be better to show a short clip of them performing before the interview so people would understand who each band was instead of it just looking like we were talking to random people. We couldn't find interviews with all the bands, and Tara didn't want to use the footage of Boiling Point because she thought they were truly awful. I thought, however, it was good to show that much younger bands could go up and play, because the others all looked much older. I though showing the younger band playing and their response might attract a much larger audience of people who would otherwise think playing a gig that size was out of their reach.

I like this shot, because it shows the band, it shows a nice big crowd, and it shows the professional lighting that the Junction offers. If a band was looking to find somewhere to play, i think this type of shot shows them that the Junction is exactly what they need.

This is a shot of one of the bands during an interview. You can clearly see the name of the band, so you know who they are. Previously in the video, you are shown a clip of their music, so you can decide what kind of music they are and find them online. We kept the same font throughout the video, and used it for basically anything text based as it was as close as we could find the the logo used in the top corner.

I like this shot for much of the same reason i like the first, but it also has the text informing you about the professional lighting technicians. on the previous shot, you are shown a guy with the sound desk, and it says about the sound, which is why this starts with "and lighting". I like this shot because it is lit quite well, so you can see everything that is going on, which is rare at gigs as they are usually pretty dark. This shows the competence of their staff, thus proving the statement about them lighting staff being good true.


I like this shot because it's a bit different, it is focusing on the technical side of the experience of playing the Junction instead of the live footage. It is again about the lighting, but it shows you the type of lights, so you know they look professional and not some cheap-ass lights used by normal people.

Interaction

Here is the screengrabs we took while editing our rough cut for the junction fiver promo video. Here is my personal reflection on how we did.

During editing our rough cut of our junction promo video, we took a few screen grabs for visual evidence and to show the process we went through. We decided instead of just putting the Junction logo at the beginning and end of the video, we should keep the logo on throughout the whole video so people are constantly reminded it is the Junction's video. Similar things are done on channels such as E4, where they have a small logo in the corner of the screen. We created it in photoshop, using a logo we took from the Junctions website.

We read through the booklet we were given, and created a Pages document containing all the information we needed to put in the video. We wanted to have this information available through a video interview, but we didn't have the footage. We decided to put the different information on screen near relevant footage, such as putting "Play to over 600 people" over some crowd footage.

This is our video rendering. You can see the different cuts of video and sound that we have used to create the video

Here yet again is a picture showing our process of Final Cut process, showing the text we used and the video and sound we were editing.

I think we did quite well to create a rough cut in the 9 hours we were given. When we first got the footage, we decided to look through it all and find good pieces of footage to use before we started to edit, which i think worked quite well. I think when we go to Bournemouth and get the feedback from them, we can quite quite a good video that hopefully meets Simon's aims..

Budgeting

Here is what the budget Simon was given has been spent on to produce this project:

£1000 - Coach Hire
£400 -Food
£500 - Student Mentors
£260 - Samba Tuition
£400 - Overnight Accommodation

Total - £2590

Given that we didn't stay overnight in Bournemouth, we can scrap £400 from the budget.
We also only paid £675 for the coach instead of £1000, so another £325 can be taken.

I make our total £1925 or something

Ideas for video

When thinking of ideas about how we could so our project, Matt and Tara quite liked the idea of a first preson viewpoint, similar to that used in Peep Show.
Not necessarily for the whole video, but at the beginning we thought it would be quite good to see the person buying a ticket from their perspective, so you see the ticket person, camera looks down hands over the money, camera comes up again. Unfortunately, as we don't have the budget for helmet cams it would be a real pain the try and film that angle with the camera we are using.

My idea was a lot simpler, and was basically to smash together live footage. I think if you are trying to give a video the feel of a live event, you should stay away from lots of moving footage, or, as they have a tendancy to do in live DVD's, have massive cranes moving aroud to get more footage from the air. When Foo Fighters made their 'Live at Wembley' DVD, it consisted of hundreds of close ups and high angle swooping shots, because theatrically, they look good but it doesn't live the feel of the gig at all.
Live videos are supposed to be almost as good as if you were actually there, but the footage you are given from live videos just looks fake. There is no atmosphere, it looks nice and shiny but it doesn't look live. You can get as much footage from above the crowd as you want, but if it's all clean cut it doesn't work.

That's why i like the Beastie Boys 'Awesome i F***ing Shot That' video. It was live DVD where they gave 50 members of the audience who were all in completely different areas of the venue, video cameras and told them to keep it running all night. At the end of the show, they collected the cameras back, edited all the footage together and produced the DVD. As almost all of the footage was shot from within the crowd it looks and feels more like a ilve event. It still cuts a lot so clearly you aren't actually there, butthe cameras are getting bumped around by people in different songs, they are turning when the filmer looks around, the view is obstructed by the one guy in the venue that is taller than you and decides to stand at the front.

Most aspects of going to a show are incorporated as well as possible for a DVD and i tink it really works. That's why for our Fiver promo, i think we should try to use lots of live footage that shows the crowd, but also some just showing the stage and stuff. If we try and concentrate on getting all fancy and technical, i think we will lose the edge that this video needs to maintain interest.

Health and Safety

As with any type of filming, there are many health and safety risks to take into consideration. Obviously, we need to be careful that we don't drop any of the equipment because that could damage us, people around us or break the equipment.

We asked if we could use the cherry picker to get some high angle footage but we weren't allowed incase it moved and lamped someone.

We were at a gig, which inevitably gets very hot and very busy so we need to make sure we have plenty of drink available so you don't dehydrate. This is especially important for people that don't go to many gigs. I would probably be fine, but for someone who hasn't been to as many gigs or isn't used to the atmosphere it could be quite dangerous to go in without any water or anything.

We need to make sure that we don't trip over any cables while wondering around backstage, and make sure that we don't leave any cables laying around for people to trip over.

The floor has a tendancy to get slippery, as people get drinks, don't want them and drop them on the floor. This is a potential hazard if you are walking around as you could slip and hurt yourself.

Filming in the dark could potentially be dangerous as many people aren't used to walking around in the darkness.

Gigs are pretty damn loud, and if you aren't used to it it could be somewhat of a shock. Similarly if you are used to it, continuous exposure to such sound levels could be damaging to your hearing.

Things could fall down, on us such as pylons, lights etc.

When we got to editing, we had to be careful not to spend too long staring at a screen as it is apparently bad for you. Though given how long people our age spend staring at monitors and stuff we're basically immune. Still, we will make sure to take regular breaks so we don't do any damage.

General Notes for promo

The logos for the bands, music companies, and funders should be shown and appropriately credited at the end of the video.

I fyou wan tto make a Fiver logo, go ahead, providing the Junction brand isn't in any way diluted through use of the new logo.

When we go to film to Fiver, we will have to opportunity to interview Gary and Simon while we are there.

It's not Simon's product, we are working with Simon not for him. He will give us his advice on what he thinks should go where, but we can argue out points back at him about why we think our ideas would work better than his.

Ideas

My idea for the Fiver promo was to just slam together a load of live footage and out the information at the end. Obviously there would be a bit more planning to it than that as we would need to consider music and the appropriateness of the footage i would be using. Matt also came up with the idea of just having someone sitting in a room looking around for 10 seconds or so, then looking straight at the camera and simply saying "what?". Then the information about the fiver comes up on the screen. I absolutely adored this idea, as it was stupid enough to appeal to the majority of the target audience, quick enough to keep their attention and bizarre enough to make them question it. If they question it, they will be talking about it, and then they will want to watch it again.

Unfortauntely, we were bought back to Earth when we realised it had absolutely nothing to do with the Fiver, so we sort of used my idea with more thought. Tara came up with the idea of using intereviews with the band, so you could get their reactions from playing the Fiver, as you are more likely to believe someone you have just seen doing something than someone you've never seen before and may well just be being paid to read lines.

The bands are usually found via MySpace. They either e-mail their contact details or some of their music to Gary Brown, who's in charge and he will listen to it and decide who he wants to play each time it's on.

The general playlist for the Fiver is as follows:
The first band will be new, young and could be the first gig they've played, especially to such a large crowd. The reason for this is that many young bands don't really believethey are going to get anywhere without their 'bug break' the Junction believe that if they can give the band a break, it may help them a bit and keep them playing music for longer as most of them aren't going to make it.

The second band will probably be somewhat similar to the first.

The third band on stage would be more popular, maybe having played a few gigs at assorted pubs or clubs, to a much smaller crowd, but have had some sort of experience playing live.

The 4th band on is usually pretty popular online, have a small following and have more experience playing live events to a slightly larger crowd.

If they can get it, the 5th band tends to be a band just balancing on the brink of mainstream. Some of them are signed to a label and have gotten a small bit of airplay on the radio.

Simon Bates

Simon came down from the Junction to talk to us about creating a promotional video for the Fiver. Despite what i think, he says they have plenty of advertising for their events, but they want more people to know about the Fiver as it is one of their favourite things, and they are one of very few places that do anything like it. We were also asked to produce a documentary explaining how the Junction has worked alongside our course and helped us out through bits of it. This includes letting us use Junction 4 for our music videos and the L2 group are doing a Samba workshop at the Junction.

Simon wanted the Fiver promo video to be between 3 and 4 minutes long. I think this is a good length, because if it was any longer people would lose interest, but if it was much shorter i don't think you could show enough to give a really good idea of what the Fiver is like. The documentary, he wanted to be between 5 and 10 minutes in length. As we have the same amount of time to produce the work, i think that will be arguably harder. Certainly, it will be harder to maintain a good level of interest for 10 minutes, especially if the video is just interviews and people talking. At least with the Fiver it is of a live event, so you can keep it interesting by cutting quickly and using music.

There is no archive footage available, so we will have to collect all the footage for the Fiver ourselves, so one day we will have to go down and film the event. Unfortunately, due to health and safety regulations, we cannot use the cherry picker to get a decent shot from above the stage, in case it moves and clouts someone in the head.

The Junction

I decided to use the Junction for several reasons. Firstly, i like the Junction and feel that it would benefit more than any of the other companies from anything we produce. It is also easy to get to, and i have been there and used it's facilities many times before so i already have some prior knowledge about the place before i even go. I have been so several Fiver events, i have seen many bands playing live there (Reel Big Fish pictured) and i have been to some stand up comedy shows. I really think the Junction is a great venue, but doesn't get the attention it deserves.

The Junction also serves as a good example of a local community service because they have been in and around Cambridge for the past 20 years. The key difference between The Junction and other venues in Cambridge such as The Corn Exchange, is that the basis of their funding from the Arts Council allows them to provide a community hire space for the local community. This means people can rent out one of the Junction rooms for drama, society theatre, educational workshops and events such as the Fiver.

The Fiver event is created to help involve the young people in the community into playing shows to a live audience. This event not only gives local bands the chance to play to a larger crowd than they would get anywhere else, but also gives rowdy kids a place to hang out on a Friday night, knowing they are basically safe, but can still have a good time. It stops them going out on the own and causing trouble.

Their decision to allow people aged 16-21 to go see theatre for free means many people will go to events that they would otherwise not go to and find new experiences they would otherwise not get.

Background Information on Fiver

The Junction Fiver is a successful established brand that is gaining credibility as one of the best youth events in Cambridge
Five local young bands at varying stages of development perform in Junction 1 (850 capacity live music venue), tickets cost a Fiver!
The Bands are given a set amount of tickets to sell from which they take £1 per ticket, the more they sell the better they do financially and the more audience there is in the venue
The Fiver aims to encourage and nurture emerging acts and provides a platform for young musicians to work with professional technicians, a top class PA system and exposes them to an audience five times their normal size
The Junction needs to continue to attract new bands in order to keep this brand going and must increase the presence of the event on its own website and amongst social networking sites and forums

Possible Comissions

For this project, we had to research different businesses or companies that might let us to do some work for them. There were several possibilities in or around Cambridge, but many of them wouldn't have worked out half as well as the Junction one did.

Addenbrookes Hospital once asked us to create some posters for them advertising their apprenticeships, however as they asked us to do that and i don't think anyone in the class actually did it, they may be a bit hesitant to rely on us for anything in the future. We didn't exactly show enthusiasm or try particularly hard last time they asked us to do something, why would they give us a second chance? We could produce a video promoting all the new equipment and things they have. Many people don't know how Addenbrookes actually works or how many facilities are actually available inside, there's a lot more than just a hospital. We could create a video showing the different aspects of the building, not necessarily to get more customers, but to show them that if you need to go/take someone to hospital, Addenbrookes is a good choice. I'm not convinced it would work, as i don't think we would be able to keep it interesting and on topic, and the idea is pretty vague.

Shakin' Moos was another possibility, partly because it's new and might give us free milkshakes, but also because they haven't been advertised very well. They have some dude in a milkshake costume wandering around occasionally, handing out flyers and the like, but nothing massive. Their website is alright, but might benefit from some promotional videos or something. Ultimately, it's a small business and there's only so much you can say about it. As it is mainly teenagers that go there, we would need something fast-paced and tense, to keep their attention. Unfortunately, as the place makes milkshakes, there's only so much you can do. Once you've shown the ingredients and a guy walking round in a milkshake costume, you sort of run out of material.

The Cambridge Film Festival could be another possibility, but it's over and not back for another year, even if they did want us to work with them again, we don't have time to wait around for it to start again. The Film Festival is one of the biggest in the UK, so isn't there just to benefit the local community. It's also just not very popular to people our age. I've lived in Cambridgeshire for several years and never even heard about it more than the name. It wasn't until i went to help out that i realized it was actually pretty good. I think they could benefit from a promotional video aimed more at a teen audience, as most of our age group associate the Picturehouse with dodgy low-budget films that aren't as interesting as the blockbusters we're used to.

The Junction would be alright because it is a much better venue than, i think, most people give it credit for. Most people assume as it doesn't hold as many people as say, the Corn Exchange, it isn't as good, which is unfair. I think they could benefit from a video showing just how good events held at the Junction are. We could make a video for the Fiver, showing how you get involved, what you have to do and how it all works. I have no idea how the Fiver gets organised, and i think many bands would like to play it, but just don't know how or what the restrictions are. I think if we made a video for them, we could get the event to be more popular and that could give the Junction that bit more popularity than the Corn Exchange, who don't really do anything like it.



We could make a video for the Corn Exchange, but i don't think they would benefit from it particularly. The Corn Exchange is the live events venue in Cambridge, and people know that. I don't think they really need us to promote them further. People around Cambridge have probably been to at least one event in the Corn Exchange. They know how it works and they know the variety of performances it shows as it has a much bigger budget for advertising and promotion. I think our video would be quite good, as we could feature a popular band or something, but then we'd have to go through masses of red-tape, and ultimately i don't think it would be worth it.

Target Audience

Our target audience for the promo is going to be primarily teenagers. The Fiver is an event aimed at teenagers in bands hoping to get them to try and play some bigger shows to a live audience before they go off to Uni and never speak again. Gender wise, Simon said the event is split about 50/50, so we shouldn't try and appeal to a single gender. If, however, we can attract girls to the event, chances are guys will follow. A fact that doesn't necessarily work the other way round.

It would appear that the majority of people that use the Junction or go to the Fiver and realtively middle class, so we don't need to aim the trailer towards posh people. It would also appear that the majority of people attending the Fiver are white. This means it will probably be easier to promote and held an "Indie Guitar fest" night than a hip-hop evening. I'm not saying that white people won't go to hip hop nights or black people won't go to anything else, but stereotypically that's how it plays out. There are more black rappers than white, and more white Indie guitar people than black ones. Hell, sometimes they mix and match together.

Interaction.

While Interaction may seem very similar to the Commission project, however they key difference is that the Interaction project is more about showing how we can work with different organisations and people, whereas if you are Commissioned to do a piece of work, you are usually given quite a specific job to do, and you do it with no thought of your own.

If the Junction had asked us to make a Promo advertising the fiver, that would have been a commission, however as they only agreed to let us for an educational purpose, it counts as Interaction. Commissioned work is usually for a commercial or advertising purpose, whereas our Interaction project is showing how we can work with other people and progress from College through to Uni and Finally into work.

We have to get all the material ourselves, and work with numerous groups of people. We have to work with the bands, the technicians, the Junction, the people at Bournemouth and obviously the people in our class. We have to interact with all of these people to complete the project.