WORKING TO A BRIEF ASSIGNMENT 2

Working To A Brief -  MoFilm Quaker State

Task

We were put into groups and given the task to work towards making a film for the company, Quaker State, advertising their oil. We read the brief and took that we video should be aiming the video towards males who are proud of their car. We decided that we wanted to make the advert quite light hearted and funny for people to enjoy.

Idea

A dad and his son are fixing up their family car when a salesman comes along. The man talks as though he is in an old 50’s commercial, trying to sell them a brand new car which ironically he calls the car of the future. He uses all the classic car advert gimmicks.

But in the end the dad turns down the guy, saying he doesn’t need a new car all he needs is some “damn good oil”.

Research

As a team, we looked at old car and oil adverts from the 50's, because they would be most likely to display a stereotypical, corny representation of the product that we aim to show in a humorous way when we make our own video. Here are two of the videos which we watched and based the idea on.

Location

We will be using the photography studio in college, as it sets a nice and simple backdrop for the action within the commercial. The photography studio also allows us to control the lighting. We can also place props within the studio freely, which will give another object within the video. Also, the studio is a good place for audio recording, as there isn't much interference from anything or anyone else as the doors and walls are quite soundproof.

Equipment

Here's a list of equipment which we have booked out for the shoot.

• C100 Camera   
• Tripod
• Clip mic
• Zoom mic

Actors

We will be looking for a boy aged between 16-25, who will play the car sales man. His acting should feel genuine, but very over-the-top and animated in his body language to make the video seem more visually interesting to watch and enhance what he's saying. We will also need a voice actor to read some lines toward the end of the video.

Roles:

Here is a list of the roles within our production team, which we have decided upon with knowledge about everyone's strengths and weaknesses within filmmaking.

Director - Penny Eastbury

Editor/Camera Operator - Chris Healey

Sound Guy/ Colour Grade - Daniel Appleton

Storyboard

We created a rough storyboard, which would aid us in the creation of the video and as evidence for the planning of this video. Storyboards are a great way to communicate your ideas and get them onto a page for other people in your team, such as the camera operators to understand and interpret.

Script

Call Sheet

We created a call sheet for our actor, which would give him all the necessary information he needs for the shoot, such as locations, time, date and various other details which he will need to know, such as where to park his car when he arrives.

Project: Quaker State AD

Client: Quaker State

Call time: Crew	14.00	Assembly Point	Middlesbrough College 4thfloor Media Department
Wrap	17.00	Weather	--

Location List

No.	Location	Time in	Time out	Parking
1	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.	14.30	17.00	Middlesbrough college parking.

Cast List

No.	Name	Contact no.	Call time
1	Kane Smith		15.00

Kit Movement

Item	Person responsible
Pocket Black Magic camera	Daniel Appleton
Tripod	Daniel Appleton
Radio Mic	Daniel Appleton
H.4. Mic	Daniel Appleton

Shooting Schedule

Time in	Activity	Location
14.30-15.00	Collect Equipment and Key to studio.	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.
15.00-16.00	Be set up. Actor to arrive at this point. Talk through the script and plan with him.	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.
16.00-16.30	Begin filming ad	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.
16.30-17.00	Film.	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.
17.00-17.30	Finish filming, ingest footage and return equipment.	Middlesbrough College Photography studio.

Finished film:

Here is a link to our finished film, which we submitted to the MoFilm website by the deadline of the 2nd of May. 

Evaluation

When given this project our team discussed the skills we already have in order to distribute our roles. The group decided that I had more technical knowledge on cinematography, Penny had more experience directing and Dan had experience in editing and colour grading and these were all skills that we could incorporate into the production to create a well structured final product. We distributed the pre-production paper work equally and all contributed to the idea and developed it together. During filming all three of us consistently gave our input to make each shot better. Dan lit the scene, I focused on framing the shot and Penny directed the actor. We all then edited the film individually. I chose which clips to go into the final piece and cut them together. I then completed the edit with adding the sound, titles and graphics. 

I think we only hit parts of the brief. It does have more of a comedic vibe and its obvious that it isn't a real car that's being sold. To improve, we could have organised our time a lot better, got some more experienced actors and looked for more interesting locations. We were on such a tight schedule that we had to change various parts of the script and storyboard which was a compromise we decided to make and subsequently made the final product not as good as it could have been. Personally, I think we did a nice job of creating the film, however if we genuinely put a bit more hard work and improved on our time management skills, we could have made the video much better in the end.

Unfortunely, we later received this email from the client after submitting: