When
creating a script, many writers have to have it commissioned in order to have
it created as a film in the end. There are many stages to commissioning, and
many people involved in the process. One of the most important people is the
producer, who has to decide on the script used for a movie, meaning they get a
very vital say in the script.
A
commissioning editor and an agent will typically get involved for contacting
the different parties and making arrangements between writers and producers,
and they will address issues with deals, scripts or plans that need to be
changed for a final draft of the script. Many producers will be involved, and
all of them will typically have a team involved helping in choosing the script,
and they will also be tasked with choosing directors to help create the final
product, and will assist in choosing the cast and crew involved. They will
often work close with each other to help rewrite anything or make any necessary
changes in the script, to ensure it is completed to perfection.
Often,
organisations or corporations may get involved with hiring and firing people,
making decisions on what happens to the script and the product and deciding
many things in the process. If they are not involved with a company, then the
producer or director may be independent; independent films may be a lower
budget, but they may not be a lower quality if there is a good writer, director
and/or producer involved in the production.
Script
editors may also be used, but, unlike the name suggests, do not do writing, and
provide guidance and help to the writers and producers on what changes may be
good to make to give an explanation to things in the script. If more than one
writer provides a script for a certain project, there will often be competition
involved to try and have a better script than one another in order to have
their script chosen over the other ones, and it can make it hard for a company
to have to try and choose one over the other, which may make them look in-depth
and consider what works.
Copyright
material or plagiarism may or may not be involved in the script, and it will
require discussions with agents to contact companies on the availability of the
content to help decide which script will be best, as well as deciding on
necessary edits of material that may not be usable due to being owned by other
people or organisations.
There are
many stages to getting a script commissioned, such as planning before the
production, or may even be editing the script slightly while it’s being shot,
as even the most perfect script will need changes to it to make it viable to
fit the director’s vision. The script will have page lock-downs put in place so
that any further changes can be tracked, and allowing only the revised pages to
be created fully and published in the final script.
Below is the final edit for my college assignment to create a Christmas Advert.
The theme for this project was to create a Christmas advert. This particular advert was themed after a local milkshake and ice-cream shop, Quakes for Shakes (as seen in the advert itself), which we were granted permission to create an advert for. This is not the advert they will be using due to the copyrighted music used for the assignment, but we intend to create a non-copyright version for them to advertise their business on social media, which may get linked here. The idea was to create a child-friendly advert in the theme of other children's adverts to keep the intended audience attentive, interested and enthusiastic for the product.
We started off with the idea of creating our advert for a big toy brand, until a member of our group suggested we create the advert for a smaller, more local place to save on time and costs, as a toy advert would require the purchasing of toys, which would be difficult for college students to acquire (for American comparison, 16-18 year olds). When we realised there was a local ice-cream/milkshake brand available to use, we offered to create their adverts provided we could create our own edits for college, and we began creating ideas.
Based on the research of other children's adverts (such as the Lelli Kelly advert featured in the previous post on this blog) we determined that a non-realistic, fast paced advert was the best way to advertise for children. The shop advertised informed us that they had a polar bear suit available, which helped with both the non-realistic theme, and fitting in with being a Christmas advert, as Arctic and Antarctic animals are seen as 'Christmassy' animals. Thanks to this, we were able to create sequences of short shots involving a friend in the bear costume and the children of a very kind woman who offered to help us, to keep it relatable, interesting and surreal enough to keep the attention of children who would be interested in the product. We shot it in the ice-cream shop, which gave it more of a grounded in reality feel, but was helpful in providing advertising the shop as the product, and was a necessary sacrifice from the full Lelli Kelly research experience.
As the original idea was to create an advert for a toy brand, we looked at some adverts for brands like Smyths and Toys R Us, which gave a decent idea of how to advertise a variety of products, by keeping them as the main focus, or by showing a large range of products for brief periods at a time, which allowed us to determine that a range of products would be ideal to advertise the brand as opposed to the milkshake shown, giving us further inspiration for the advert as a whole.
As can be seen in the advert, certain techniques were used to enhance the advert. For example, the use of cuts to keep the advert fast paced and (relatively) in time with the music was done to keep the advert short and show the necessary information to try and sell the product. It also featured a few fades to give the feeling of something magical in a similar method to the animation of the Lelli Kelly advert in the research as well as fading into the name of the shop, to make it seem like a more natural and subtle cut where the music begins to fade out. There was also a variety of camera angles, such as a long shot where the girl is seen entering the shop, and a variety of close-ups and side shots, as well as several mid-shots to make the overall advert seem more varied. Some other shots not used included shots from the outside window, which weren't used due to the camera shaking, but can still be mentioned as evidence of creative techniques and styles. Stylistically, we did our best to replicate a child-oriented advert that relies on showing a series of products to advertise the brand and create an overall happy and fun advert.
During this project, I feel that I have become better at the editing software. Due to a technical difficulty, I was unable to work on it for approximately 5 days (which is why this is a little bit later than it ideally would be), and in trying to fix the issue, I grew very accustomed to the software, checking every single option to try and find what had broken, and even using other software by Adobe to try and locate the problem (which, by the way, ended up being an arbitrary, unnecessary picture file that had a long name, which ended up breaking Adobe entirely. Unrelated to the assignment, but I need to vent the frustration, and it makes this long post look even longer, which is helpful for my assignment in a way.) The shoot was very smooth, the child and person in the bear costume were very friendly and co-operative, and the shop was relatively empty throughout most of it, allowing us to record freely as much as we needed to for the advert. Unfortunately, one team member decided not to join us, and I showed up late due to the bus being slow, but overall, it worked according to plan and we were able to finish very quickly.
Despite how well things went, in a way, I wish we had explored Christmas adverts specifically a bit further, to get a feel of what else could have been done to show the shop. However, we are aware that the local weather would not have complied to make an advert that looked perfect for Christmas, making it feel somewhat unnecessary to research. Despite this, in a way, it feels it may have helped to research a little bit before going in, to make it look a little more professional, but it worked out well, and shows that the study of Christmas adverts may not have been necessary.
We showed a slightly unfinished version of the advert to a group of other college students, as well, to get their feedback. Upon review of the feedback, the biggest issue was the lack of music, which, thankfully, was just due to the technical difficulties we had been having, and has been fixed for the final version, and, thankfully, was able to fit with the edit fairly well. The only other negative feedback received was the lack of a story compared to other groups projects, but, due to this being a more kid-friendly advert, we deemed as unnecessary and didn't change, to keep things simpler.
In the edit, a more interesting decision was fading into a title card at the end, which we feared may feel too forced and sudden product placement, but overall appears to have worked fairly successfully. My edit also featured fading to white in a way of entering a fantasy, non-realistic setting at the very beginning, which also appears to have been somewhat successful in the way it transitions in time with the song to pick up the pace, and show the shop as somewhere fantastic, which, in my humble opinion, appears to have successfully worked.
Thankfully, our simple advert idea did not need to convey any messages or meanings overall, and was simply trying to show a product, which made for a task that relied more on forcing a product down the audiences throat than trying to say how magical Christmas is with family.
My final piece feels like it fits all the criteria desired, and is something I can be happy and proud of, and I particularly like the way the music works with selling the product and picking up the pace as the advert does, and I am proud of my title card at the end to finish the advert, which I made in the advanced programme of Microsoft Paint, which looks oddly professional and well-made for a small business, which I am somewhat proud to say. I am also somewhat fond of the camera angles, but the majority of camera angles were not done by me, making them more of a preference as opposed to a thing of pride (like my MS Paint title card).
If I had to change anything, I would change the issue I had with the editing software, so that the project could be finished sooner, and with more time sunk into the edit, which at points feels like it is not in-time with the music. Overall, I feel it worked out well, and with a little bit of extra time would have been perfect, but, with the circumstances given, this is as close to perfect I will get, and it's not too far off in my standards, which suits me very well.
Thank you for reading this incredibly long post, it took me a very long time.
The Christmas advert we created was advertising an Ice Cream and Milkshake store. We decided the target audience for this was likely going to be children and, potentially, parents.We decided to analyse a very popular children's advert to see if it could be used as inspiration or understanding of advertising for a younger audience.
For my analysis, I viewed the above advert, showing Lelli Kelly shoes. The advert is targetted at kids, as it is advertising a product deemed desirable by children (in particular, little girls), which we feel would be a similar audience to what would appeal to our advert. In the advert, we can see there is no narrative or story present, it has no real plot, and instead just relies on the music and forcing the product into your face, with a brief description of what the product is. The children in the advert are seen in a non-realistic place throughout, where the walls and clothes are all very pink and, in a way, difficult to look at. Because of this, it can be assumed that the narrative is an "anti-realist" narrative, not taking place in a realistic situation, and likely being imagined to help push the product towards the market, which would suggest incorporation of little to no-narrative and a make believe situation within adverts targetted at children. The style is is somewhat surreal in a way, giving off this fake and cheap look, almost as if the whole world this advert inhabits revolves around make-up and clothes, which, other than maybe Hollywood, is not reflective of reality, and suggests it is stylised in this way to look fantasy to inspire the imagination of the children, to make them see the advert and think that Lelli Kelly will make the whole world pink and/or Hollywood, perhaps showing that an advert designed for kids molds well with a less realistic setting, to try and push the product to them and make them desire the supposed effects it can bring.
On the topic of effects, the camera moves around a lot, very rarely staying in one place for too long. This is possibly to show more product in more time, but more likely to compensate for attention spans. Without being too offensive, it is generally noteworthy that the attention span of a 5 year old is far less than that of a 25 year old, and thus they need vivid visuals and movement in order to keep them interested, suggesting the camera cutting away from things to show as much as possible in order to keep them looking at the screen, and potentially also suggesting further reasoning for the bright colours, like pink. A lot of the shots used are straight looking into the faces of the kids (including the one on the thumbnail) that are either close-ups or, arguably, extreme close-ups. The editing is very basic, consisting of cutting between the shots in a standard way, and one occassion in which there is a split in the screen and you can see two different scenes on-screen at once (very advanced technique for Lelli Kelly standards), and the special effects are similar, with what appear to be basic images and small 'animations' literally layered on top of the screen at the beginning and later on when you see the fake plastic phone, which are likely done in a way to make kids see it and feel like it's unique and incredible that png flower pictures are floating out of their hands, or that the people who made it are geniuses and/or magicians, which probably appeal to kids, suggesting at why they've chosen to use these effects in this way. The flowers and sparkles used are done so in a way to use 'iconography', in that these things are typically associated with little girls and being within the interest of young children (the target audience), making them choose these images to appeal to children.
As for the music... The song is very irritating and sticks in your head, and is done so in a way so that kids remember it and will sing it everyday, driving their parents into wanting to buy it in hopes it will satisfy them...
As you can tell, the whole advert is targetted at kids primarily, with wanting to make them see the advert and tell their parents about how incredible what they saw was, as it is all designed to look good to kids (specifically, to little girls) and make them want to own the advertised product. The advert is very clever in making itself kid-friendly, which is good advice for anyone who wants to create an advert for a product designed for kids, to make it appeal to the audience, with fast editing, child-friendly and centred imagery, and imagination, to make it look surreal and something kids aspire to have, which works well with our advert of an ice-cream and milkshake shop.
The advert doesn't have any noticable hidden messages, although it's possible the song backwards becomes some form of cultist chant, it is likely that the overall advert is as innocent as it seems, and that there are no hidden and elitist techniques used to corrupt minds and change the world.
The advert is regulated by bodies such the ASA or Ofcom (in Britain). The ASA (Advertising Standards Association) review adverts to see what they believe is appropriate to advertise a product based on the product, content of the advert and target audience. If the Lelli Kelly advert was to contain inappropriate messages halfway through, then it would likely be deemed as inappropriate for the product, whereas Ofcom would determine how often adverts can be shown and on what channels to ensure people are not overloaded with adverts, and these companies are used to determine who or what is advertised at certain times or how much of an advert can be shown.
The determination of the audience for an advert is based on certain things, such as psycographics (a classification of people based on personality and thoughts, or geodemographics (classification based on class and location), or things like age and gender. Typically with a children's advert is would focus more on the last two, focusing on the age and gender (as seen, in the clear targetting of small girls in the advert), as opposed to what job the 7 year old children work in.
This added information reinforces the idea that this advert is created for children, and will help in the creation of our advert targetted to children (that has already been made by finishing this post, and will hopefully be up on Monday if the computer's are nice to me, considering the only reason it's not up now is because the computer's weren't nice to me.) This information is very important to consider in advert creation to specify target audience and their wants/needs, and how to cater to them, and helps greatly in the creation of a kids advert.
For college, we did an assignment that involved creating a Christmas advert. We chose to record our advert for a local business, and visited their shop to help record the advert for them.
Day 1: (14th December 2015)
This day was largely spent looking for ideas, after we realised our initial idea for a toy store wouldn't work, we settled on the local business that sells ice-cream upon recommendation of a group member. This group member was the same one who had caused issues during the music video recording reported on this blog prior, which will become relevant later.
Day 2: (16th December 2015)
This was the original day we had intended to record the advert, we had a group member ask a family friend to have their daughter come down to be the child for the advert, but it turned out the owner of the business had to go to a dental appointment. Unfortunately, a certain group member (there were three people in the group) had not arrived, who is the one who knew the owner of the business, causing us to have to simply record some Christmas lights outside and have the actor be recorded walking down the street. Not the original plan, but it was somewhat our fault for not asking whether she would be available due to focusing on the writing assessment too much.
Day 3: (21st December 2015)
After a long weekend away, I made my way on the bus down to the shoot, where we were able to record everything for the advert smoothly, without issue, and we got paid in free ice creams and milkshakes, which made it even nicer. A member of another group was able to join us, due to the absence of a certain group member (the same one as before), and helped us by being both an actor and helping decide on some shots. I had, unfortunately, shown up late due to the bus, but I was able to partake and join in the shoot, allowing for it to be finished on time, with plenty of time left over for what we had for the day, and allowing the advert to get finished.
Day 4: (18th January 2016)
Not technically a part of the shooting, but relevant to the creation of the advert, as this was the day we had a small focus group of friends and other groups in the course watch the adverts and give their opinions. Unfortunately, everyone in my group was off today, except for me, so I tagged on to the end of another group's work. Another unfortunate thing, is that our audio had failed on us, and we had no music at all for the group, but, in a good way, that was the biggest complaint we received from the focus group, meaning that, once that is fixed, we should have pretty perfect adverts in their eyes. However, the issue came about due to Adobe Premiere Pro (our editing software) not working properly.
The Rites of Passage - A person knows they have reached a new stage in life and seeks to find what must be done to complete the transition. They pretend that they already know, then meet a challenge that shows they do not, yet also provides the route by which they achieve the full transition.
The Wanderer - A person arrives somewhere new and finds a problem there. In facing the problem they show why they left the last place. They then seek to move on, repeating the pattern.
These are the two story types that most work with the story I have written of Wally's Peaks. The story features Wally (from Where's Wally fame) going on a journey to try and find himself, in which he travels to a mountain, ends up in prison and fights a crime syndicate. As you might expect, it's a comedic drama story makes jokes throughout, as opposed to being serious, and this is fairly unusual for these story types. A lot of them in these types are serious, with "The Wanderer" consisting primarily of serious drama stories, including films such as 'The Book of Eli', for example, which is about [spoilers] a blind man who wanders from place to place trying to deliver a brail bible to the start of a new civilisation in a post-apocalyptic world [end spoilers]. This is a serious film and is very different to what my idea consists of, while "The Rites of Passage" may contain stories such as 'Stand By Me' which, while more light-hearted than my previous example, is definitely not a comedy film, which makes Wally's Peaks more unique and interesting amongst other stories. This is not to say it hasn't been done, however, I feel that it is a very uncommon way of telling a story to have a comedic story fit either one of these story types, and to have Wally's Peaks fit in these stories like that, it makes for a more unusual kind of story.
So I know I posted something here like literally half a millisecond ago, but we're going again, because it turns out we're finally halfway to letting me die a peaceful death at the hands of Cthulu.
Halfway to the goal, lads and ladies.
Anyway, that's all I want to say. Next post will probably be in like, 2018 at the rate I'm pumping these out.
Oh man. Happy Holiday Season and New Year and all the stuff I missed, but I have been enjoying my time of which to do nothing by doing nothing, which included completely ignoring the fact that I made this thing once. I still have loads of college stuff to come on here and absolutely nothing exciting, but I mean, I figured it was worth putting something to say I haven't forgotten about you. We didn't get our 4 like things last time, so I guess nobody reading this has red blood cells (except 1 person who was possibly me, I can't figure out if it was or not), so I'm sorry for being offensive to your bodily functions and stuff, and I don't think that name I said is going to stick. But it's a new year now, which means I can try and force more trends into this crazy thing. How do you guys feel about getting a hashtag?
