Kodak Awards- Time Shoot 1

The first shoot for the Time advert for Paperchase was at Preston Park, shooting the victorian segment. The day didn't start so great when Andrew drove his car across the grass and did around £200 worth of damage to their turf. However, John Beeley who I had contacted about filming in there decided to let us off as long as we had learnt a lesson, I for one did learn from this and must say it was very nice of him to let us off. On the morning we were supposed to pick up the actor who was going to play the Victorian man but after waiting a considerable amount of time without him showing up me and Brad agreed to leave and we would get Ryan (who was coming along to help out as part of the crew) to play the man, so he did, and when we got costume from Preston Park he certainly looked the part so this worked out nicely. We met the actress (Charlotte) there and she too borrowed a costume from Preston Park and with her hair tied up (like I had asked her to do the night before) she also looked to be Victorian so on this front the production values were excellent. The shoot itself went down without a hitch, there was a lot of moving the track and dolly around which was tiring but this is in no way a criticism, I know what film making requires, you cant be lazy and successful. I am almost certain the shot quality will be fantastic as we put in a lot of care and time to make sure everything was as Brad wanted it. All in all I can't say anything bad about this shoot apart from other people destroying the premises and the actor not turning up.

Kodak Awards- Packshots

Put basically a packshot is a shot of the product that you are advertising, these need to contain the product and the name of the product or the company who sells the item. The kay I think to a good pack shot is simplicity and/or making sure that the product is the centre of attention in the shot, so everything should draw attention to the product. I would now like to put some pack shots which I like on here and explain what is good about them and how I may mimic some of their styles.

I like this pack shot as it follows a very clear colour scheme that fits the product perfectly, the gun metal grey make the product masculine and 'hard' which is the look they wanted to achieve, I also like the simplicity and the fact that there are no unnecessary logos as the diesel logo is on the bottle so there is no need at all to show it anywhere else on the image, however, the product name is necessary as there are many different Diesel products so this is needed. I also like how the light in the background frames the bottle and draws the eye to it further.

This pack shot is different from the other as it has a more setting based background, by this I mean that we can just about tell that it is in somebodies kitchen, making it feel more personal as though the viewer could imagine the product in their kitchen. I also like this as the product is shown next to a related item (the mug) to show the product in use. We cant really show the product in use in our case but we could show similar products like a valentines themed teddy or something similar so this is something I would like to mimic. Again this shows the logo on the product but this time also separately which I am not sure I like but there is a lot about this pack shot I would like to mimic.

For my final packshot I thought it would be good to find one I don't like and highlight some things I would not want to do in mine. I don't like this packshot mainly because it is too cluttered, while the other two had one and two items respectively, this has about 16 different items in shot and it makes it hard to focus on the advertising of any particular one. For me the background is also too plain, although it has the shadow and two shades I think that if they wanted minimalism they should have used the effect of the first pack shot. In fairness to this I think the product is for companies and not for  an audience of regular people and as such it can afford to be a lot more basic and to the point.

in conclusion, for my pack shot I would like to have a simple background and nice lighting with some relating objects to go with the paper chase cards that we will have on show.

Kodak Awards- Time Shoot 3

The third and final shoot for the time advert was at Brad's house. Brad was waiting for us there while me and Liam got the equipment and picked up Tony to be the caveman again, meanwhile Ryan and Andrew were on their way to Preston Park to pick up Ryan's victorian costume, which they had no trouble getting.
The first issue we encountered was that the battery had not charged overnight so when we got to Brad's we immediately had to charge the battery for an hour, however, this was not an hour wasted because we used it to set up the tripod and slider, which took longer than an hour but we got the shot we wanted in the end so it was worth it. Another issue we had was that we were shooting indoors on Daylight stock so we required a lot of light which was hard to get but again, we managed to do this so it wasn't a huge issue. Brad also decided, on set that he wanted to include his dog in the shoot, this meant some takes were ruined by the dog moving, however this wasn't too often and as such again, wasn't a huge issue. The main issue we had was the amount of time it took to set up the camera and slider, although as we were inside in Brads house, the lighting didn't change an awful lot, certainly not enough to make a noticeable difference. As we were coming to the end of the shoot and filming the outside section with Tony and Ryan, we were at a point where we had to choose to be really conservative with out film or to cut out another scene we had pencilled in. Truth be told, me and Brad were already thinking about cutting the Roman scene out for running time sake on the advert so the lack of film on cemented the fact that we needed to do this, so having decided this, the pressure was off on nailing the final few shots and we decided to have some fun and do a few different takes with them and thus we got a great final shot, provided it comes back okay when developed.
So, to summarise, we had a few issues, battery, light and the fact that the small room made it hard and slow to set up the camera, but all of these were easily solved and we had another successful shoot.

Kodak Awards- Popcorn Shoot 2

The second shoot for Popcorn was a bit of an odd one, we didn't have much time and there were only three people and two actors so it was stressful as each of us had to work for two people in a sense. However, I felt that we worked very well, Ryan helped me set up while Janice got the camera ready and we took a few minutes to work out what we could shoot that would be productive but wouldn't lead to continuity errors. The answer to this was close ups and cutaways. We shot Allan adjusting the popcorn on his crotch. A close up of him being slapped and a side view close up of Susie slapping Allan. all of these, if good enough will be used in the final production and will add to the narrative so all in all we had a very successful and productive shoot, especially when we had minimal crew and no extras.