Tuesday 14 May 2013

Markus Lupher Advert

Markus Lupfer is a London based clothing brand. Dannie Bennett is a 3rd year fashion student who wanted to to collaborate on a live project she got from Markus Lupfer. The brand is quite quirky and each video is very stylized  as can be seen from the videos on their website.


Here is a copy of her brief, showing how the collaborative video fits in to the project:

The final major project will conclude in three separate final outcomes. All three of these outcomes will be produced in collaboration with London fashion brand, Markus Lupfer. Through liaison with the Markus Lupfer brand I have defined a brief requiring me to produce an initial outcome in trend predication,  a second outcome in print design and illustration and a final outcome in marketing and branding. Through the trend prediction outcome I will liaise with the brand in order to understand and assist in the development of their conceptual trend basis for Spring/Summer 2014. Through this I will then develop my own further 4 conceptual trend ideas, which I will finalize in a trend prediction book. Further to think I will develop a range of conceptual print ideas based on Markus Lupfer’s key trend for Spring/Summer 2014. This outcome will require me to produce a fully illustrated capsule collection and a range of professional print and fabric samples in order to present to womenswear design department at Markus Lupfer. The final marketing and branding outcome will be the key focus of the final outcomes within the final major project. Through my brand research I have identified Markus Lupfer’s failure to actively market their brand. This has lead to a poor consumer brand image and also a poor level of brand awareness within consumers. Through this research I have identified three key areas to develop. The first area within the marketing and branding final outcome will be to produce a commercially relevant lookbook for the brand’s spring/summer 2013 collection. Further to this I will seek to produce a commercially relevant video advertorial campaign for the brand’spring/summer 2014 collection. The final branding and marketing outome will be to redevelop the brand’s packaging and labeling in order to be more in level with the brand’s premium price point and identity."


I split this collaboration with Brian, another animator on my course.The director wanted to project interesting imagery onto the models. Before the shoot, I took a few of the videos she liked and used the tools on AE to make them weird and wonderful. I also gave a few of the videos to Brian to edit and Suraj (a 2nd year), so that we had a variety of videos to project over the models on the day. Here are my edits:


On the day of the shoot I was in charge of lighting and staging the models. The original look that Dannie wanted to achieve was similar to  these images:




This created an unusual lighting set up for me because the projector created an unusually large shadow behind the model and Dannie wanted to be able to control that. Also with the models  being shot from the front they looked really flat. After a while of experimenting, I took the projector away and decided to light the models correctly and overlay the images on top in post. This way we would have even more control over  the video shot. I put a strong light infront so the models still had that shadow behind them and the final piece would look as though it was projected onto them. Here is a making of video showing what happened in the 2 day shoot:


While the shoot was taking place I was taking the footage and creating daily edits. These may not be in the final video but they would give the director a good idea of how the final will look. It gave me an idea of the footage fit in with the music. Fashion is not my forte so i used this time to really get into the directors vision and give her something that she would like. The music is not my taste either but it was appealing to Brian and Dannie, so this was a good chance for me to get to know their style. The daily edit turned looks really good and influenced the way the final piece was edited:


The final piece was edited by Brian. I took the footage and perfected it that little bit more by removing any cracks and pieces of tape from the stage where the models stood. Its not a very noticeable part of the video but because this was going to be projected on a large screen I wanted to make sure there were no imperfections any where. 

Sugar Water Music Video Directed by Michel Gondry 1996


This music video by Michel Gondry is very inspirational to me, It has taken me several viewings to figure out how he has created the effect. but every time i watch it, it seems as though I have missed something. I believe that the video is played normally on the left and in reverse on the right  but also flipped over. then half way through, both videos are played in the opposite direction but also flipped over. there is definitely some sort of weird transaction when the camera zooms into that message reading ' you killed me' in the middle of the video. and because our eyes are naturally used to reading writing on the screen forgetting that its a split screen, we miss the change over. I may be wrong. 

This video reminds me that special effects don't always have to be complicated to be amazing. Some times keeping it simple creates more of an impact.