Ferran Lopez

Speaker: Ferran Lopez
Role: Creative director
Key note: ALWAYS START FROM ‘WHY’, NOT ‘WHAT’. DO THIS WITH EVERYTHING IN LIFE. FIND YOUR WHY.

Ferran introduced himself in a very creative way, talked about his hometown and his childhood with impressions and a lot of visual examples. I really appreciate that Ferran was saying about difficulties he had to sort out during his career way. It was very honest speech and I was impressed by his achievements and looking forward to seeing his successful works again. As always, key notes below.

• It’s not cheating if they deserve it;
• Bear in mind every technology you use today is already outdated;
• If you feel you’re about to fail, better fail big. And learn a lesson;
• Life is just a story you tell yourself. You can’t change the writer but you can change the genre;
• Before you go to your parents, make sure you have a solid break out plan;
• You won’t need much savings to dedicate a year to yourself;
• Success is inversely proportional to the amount of hair you keep;
• The only constant is change;
• Simply learn to flow.

@ferranator

Self Initiated Project – Progression

That’s been a week since we firstly posted smth. We discuss all details before we make a new post in social media. While I try to work with Instagram and Youtube, Jess keep working with Facebook. Twitter is a bit step back. Let’s see the progression:

• We keep posting clips and images every day;
• We’re checking all grammar and spelling mistakes;
• We keep trying to find more followers;
• We keep asking people around of their feelings to our content. We keep looking at people’s emotions.

There are our progressions so far:

We don’t really have many likes and reposts, but still have motivation to have a good feedback.

Oh yeah! By the way, we’ve done a new video as well. Check our updates and you will find out soon;)

Keep going!

Campaign Development – Logo. Stage 3

Oh my God.

I’ve never ever can think of these difficulties that I’ve met with this logo. That was so hard for me to focus and make things right because I just didn’t know how to do it.

Before everything, at the formative session Ben said to me that this is not what he was expected to see. He said that I had the idea which was much better than that thing I’ve brought to him at that day. He said that I can do it better and I should do it better. What’s happened after? I knew I’m gonna try and make it. I was spending days and days to make this shape perfect but it didn’t seem even as an approximate result. So, I was kind of running away from Illustrator. Also, we had a shooting and editing days for the self initiated project so I was busy. One day I looked at the calendar and at the projects other guys doing and suddenly realised how far away I am. I’ve started again. Xavier set next to me one day and we just tried to make things right together. I felt so ashamed that I have to sit as a child and make my tutor help me. Basically, I’ve done things I was doing for weeks in a few clicks. But the point is that I got how to make it. Finally, after a few more advice from my tutors I’ve finished this logo and for now this is a really final version. Completely final.

My key idea that everyone can rotate 1961 and see the same logo from every angle.That’s why I made it with diagonal perspective and cut background. As for colours, I’ve picked one really bright fresh yellow colour. And another one is grey which seems very contrasted. The connection with these two colours makes logo seems interesting, nice and attractive. After that, I’ve cut some spaces from the numeral shape (that was a first my idea). I’m going to use metallic colours for the background so it should looks nice.

I really like this version. And I’m glad that I’ve finally done it. Let’s keep going, there is a lot of work still. As always, see attachments below.

Final logo

Diagonal view

Speaker: Matt Heiman
Role: Founder + CEO Diagonal View
Key note: COLLECT AND ANALYSE MATERIAL YOU FOUND IN INTERNET.

Last week we also had a lecture with founder and CEO of Diagonal View company. He was talking to us about his job and things they do. He showed us some examples of videos they do and categories they have. It was interesting to see how creative people can categorize a huge amount of different material, make unique and grab attention from the audience. One of the useful things I’ve heard were statistics Matt gave us:

• 4.3m+ loyal fanbase who’ve subscribed to the channel and love to comment
• 7% click through rate on our last branded campaign. Our fans listen to what dave and john say
• 1.3b+ lifetime video views and constantly rising

Smth new. Smth useful.

Website

BBC Radio 1

Speaker: Andy Taylor
Role: Head of Movies and Gaming
Key note: DEMONSTRATE: INSTEAD OF DISCUSSING YOUR IDEA SHOW IT.

This time, we had Andy Taylor from BBC Radio 1. He was talking very confidently and I saw that he is a quite experienced person. He showed us many examples of interviews and other things. He shared the way we can become good professionals. I like that lecture and had a big pleasure to listen Andy. He gave us very useful staff and understanding of the area he works in. As always, important notes I leave below.

Good:

• Creative everyday – daily radio show;
• Make good things, not make money;
• Talented people- DJs, actors, production;
• Unique opportunities – R1 resources drive;
• Incredible places, events, moments;
• Increased ability to “Do it right”;
• Make new things- Gaming on R1.

Bad:

• Celebrities- don’t do steps;
• Publicities – hard to deal with;
• When it’s brilliant it’s the presenter, when it;s bad it’s the producer;
• Politics- in company, in industry;
• Doing smth different- films/games;
• Content change.

The Ugly:

• Unresponsive or untalented “talents”;
• Bad management;
• Challenges to the BBC – public service broadcasting under threat;
• Compliance – can all go wrong very quickly;
• Unsociable hours;
• Limited opportunities to progress.

Working in the media:

• Creatives – problems comes when managers create and creatives manage, but we are all both;
• Talent – find common ground and a common goal;
• The BBC – hard to break into, hard to progress, totally unique.

Andy’s advice to us:

• Not what you know, or what you know… it’s what you do. Don’t talk about it. Do it.
• Work at the highest level possible, then build.
• Be prepared to be flexible and for your goals to change.
• Find how you can network – it’s important.
• Working in media is about people and content.
• Put yourself in a pressure to be creative.

Evolve:

• Look for niches;
• Welcome new technologies;
• Demonstrate;
• Give yourself permission;
• Communicate, self PR.

Survive:

• Indispensable
• Nice on the way up;
• Give them what they want;
• Crowded ladder;
• Smile;
• Don’t be in awe of anyone (esp yourself).

Self Initiated Project – First uploads

On Friday, we had a session with Ben. We showed him all clips I’ve edited and he was very glad about our progression. He was smiling and laughing a few times. As for me, this is a very good result and I very value it. We were discussing the way we can make CRC better. As a result, we decided to not use karaoke idea because this is a very inside joke that doesn’t relate to our stereotype concept at all. Looking at the rest of our work, we just keep carrying on.

So, this is a bit scary and exciting moment for us! Today we’ve uploaded our first clip into social media. I’m glad to share our social page with you (PLEASE FOLLOW US IF YOU READ IT!):

• Facebook – CRC trio
• YouTube – CRC trio
• Instagram – CRCtrio
• Twitter – CRCtrio

Now it’s time to post our visuals regularly and see the feedback. Crossing fingers!

The Mills

Key note: MAKE PEOPLE FEEL YOUR IDEA, NOT JUST SEE IT.

Last Friday there was no lecture but we went to visit “The Mill” advertising agency. Our group took a journey to the lounge area where people from that company showed some very cool things.

First of all, that was very interesting to see insides of quite famous and successful agency. The atmosphere and people inspired me to work hard.

Secondly, I’ve noticed to myself that the quality of their projects is amazing. They showed us a clip as an overview of their work. The way it was edited, the colours and sound made me feel great. There are a huge teamwork and tonnes of creativity.

Finally, the goal of our journey was to demonstrate their latest project which is called “The Guardian:6×9 virtual experience of solitary confinement”. I’ve never tried this thing before and that was such a scary experience! I’ve actually felt like I’m inside that prison and it was very uncomfortable. The way you can feel sound effect and all graphics around is crazy. I can’t even imagine how people can spend years and years in that place. That’s why that’s a good experience for people to feel the way prisoners live. We also watched a video of the creation process for this particular project. They’ve done a really huge piece of work and it seems very successful.

In conclusion, I say that it’s always important to catch audience attention and keep it for a long time. You don’t have to invent smth completely new but the way you present it can decide how hard and successful you work.

Official website
6×9: a virtual experience of solitary confinement

Self Initiated Project – Editing

After a sooting process, we came back to edit clips. While Jessicah was making illustrations, Kayshan registered CRC in social media platforms. As for me, I was doing editing for the rest of the day. Kayshan gave me advice with sound effects, duration of videos, etc.

As a person who was doing all editing, I would like to write more information about my experience and feelings. Before everything, I used to work in Adobe Premier program before and I kind of knew basic elements. There are a few notes I was thinking of during the editing process.

• Sound effects: I found and download all music. I’ve tried to find all music without any singing as a sort of karaoke versions. The reason I’ve done it is obvious – it’s not gonna distract a viewer from a clip. I was looking for energetic music to show people CRC mood and style. Also, I was working with sound level very carefully as well.
• Logo: I put our logo at every single clip we have. The reason is copywriting and recognising us. I was trying so many options with transitions but chose a simple one at the end. To show you what I mean, I put this logo option at the end for our introduction video
• Slow/fast motion: Some of our clips needed these motions for sure. Sometimes it’s too long, sometimes it’s too short. A few clips has to have a few videos at one so each of them use to be like a second or two seconds duration. Well, this special effect make clips funny.

I always keep in my mind: make it simple, don’t make it too complicated. Think of the reason why follower will watching this clip instead of skipping it.

To not make our project too predictable, I will post all my work (clips) straight to social media. So, let’s see how it’s gonna be!

Self Initiated Project – More, more images!

After a formative session, we’ve picked another day for shooting and making more images. That day was today. Before CRC girls met, they had a task to think of the way to improve all pictures and videos to make it more funny.

During the day, we’ve done a few more images which were karate girl,  restaurant food, fashion Russian, Caribbean cola, etc. Jess done some more illustrations and I’m gonna put it below. She also made some changes in our main illustrations and now we have a final version for project.

 

Self Initiated Project – Formative

Today we had a formative. In my view, at this stage, we have enough material to show but probably it has not that high quality that we expected. Before the presentation, we had a look at our clips and understood that we can get the meaning of our jokes as a project group but there is no confidence that all other people will catch it. So, we have to make these visuals stronger. In my point of you, this is a good experience to look at your images and see what improvements you actually can make. Anyways, our presentation was fine and we saw a smile on people’s faces. But we want more, we want people to laugh.

One more important moment was when Ben said that we should keep and post material we have done. But we should take all suggestions and put it to our next steps. I completely agree with our tutor and think that it’s a good thing to analyse all mistakes and make your project better at the next stage. So, let’s keep going. There is not that much time left.
Here I attach our CRC formative presentation.