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.

http://markuslupfer.com/video/

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.

'Imagine Cup' Game assets

I was asked to create backgrounds and characters for a game that students were going to make for a competition. The game story was of an astronaut who crash lands on an alien planet, level one he is on the planet surface  Level two is an underground city on the planet where he has to find the parts to fix his ship. He ends up leaving on an alien ship in level three. 

 I took this opportunity to organised a few of my piers together and be the art director for the game. I created level one above and then asked my piers to create the other levels, sticking to my art style and after a few mock ups, these were the final level previews.

Stigmata

This project was originally my tutors idea and after talking to him about it we decided to collaborate on it. The original idea was to have a group of people around a table and a camera continuously filming. As the camera goes round once, an effects artist goes in and makes marks  on the actors faces. The whole thing is done live. This was influenced by The Perfect Human:

This project then developed into two people, a couple who would be seated a meter away from each other and be staring at each other with no expression what so ever, but the effects artist working  on the live in shot would be show the emotional abuse going on between them. The violence they inflict on each other would show up as bruises on their face and torso.  This idea used less people and the message was less subtle. I started a story board for it:

The idea I had here was to make the actor preform really slowly, if they were to move in the shot at all. so the effects artist can come in and create their art. I made a test for this:

The Feedback from this test was that the FX artists would be in shot and would therefore be under pressure to finish a wound on time. This may effect how believable of the wound is. I did not want to carry this risk so I decided to have a rethink about the whole story. By this time I knew it would be difficult to work with two actors in this story, if it would have to be re thought. So I cut it to one actor and decided the conflict would be self inflicted. Here is the first story board i came up with:

I really felt like I was on to something with this new story but it was a bit borderline. I definitely knew that I wanted to play with the MILO camera rig for this project and create a singe world through a mirror for this young lady who is trapped in an abusive relationship and looking for a way out. I was told to mix the story up a bit more and really put in some physically horrible deformations as the video played on. I wrote these down as a bullet points and then made a story board out of them:

By this time I had found an actress for my effects artist. I had gone through the makeup routine with  my actress who is a burlesque dancer and had a scar  painted across my cheek to see how the effects artist works:

Now that I had a good idea how the effects art was done I could go about perfecting my story and then planning the shots in the three days I had to film. I asked a friend to be the actress so I could take actual shots of the story board and put them together  in the way i see the final film:

This gave me a good idea of the bits I wanted to change. It was not big changes, but subtle ones to make the final film look better. first of all, the camera would not need to pan  180 around the table because she will well in shot with a smaller pan. Secondly, the prop table needed to have the bottom drawer removed so she could sit in front of it comfortably. Also I realized that after i had all the footage i would be able to pick and drop the best footage to  create the best edit for the film. It may not resemble the original story board. But to have this opportunity i would first need to go through the story board and create a shot list so i knew what to film.

through out this process i had kept my actress and FX artist informed about what was going on, so on the day of the shoot i had a good connection with them. I was able to tap into different emotions with my actress and make her cry and smile  when  it was time to film a particular shot. I made a quick test edit from the first day:

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I sent this to my piers and it received some positive and constructive crit. I knew that i was  on the right track. Using a piece of unidentifiable music I edited the rest of the video and i am very happy with the out come. it means different things to different people who watch it but definitely connects with them. The thought of no background, the only item in the scene  is the table draws alot of attention to it and i think that creates a dream like state in the viewer and then thy openly accept the weird and frightening things that happen to the actress as her own thoughts and imagination playing tricks on her or memories from the past coming to haunt her. Here is my final piece:

'Our Natural World' Opener

A 3rd year media student asked me to help her on a group project. They were making a webisode mockumentary series which looks at humans in the same way as safari documentaries look at animals. I was asked to animate a camera in space zooming into the earth, through the clouds and into a building where we come close to a dish with germs in it which form to create the title. I used the opening of The Big Bang Theory as my inspiration for this piece.

I started this process by putting all the main parts of the animation in the right place. I then sent it to my piers for their opinion and was told that it looked really fake when the camera came in through the ceiling. I fixed this before adding some extra bits to jazz it up like a beam of light around the earths circumference and colour correction. unfortunately I was not able to supply sound for this project but all was well because they did not ask for it.