Evaluation

All in all, I think that my ident project has gone well. I have successfully produced a minute long ident for the horror channel with, surprisingly, few troubles. In this final part of my blog, I'll be talking about the production of my ident and the feedback from my peers.

My style was the most essential part of this project. Because the genres I focused on were horror and surrealism, I needed to put a lot of time and effort to make it look good - crossing over two genres is a hard thing to do well. I did indeed put the required work into making it look good, and so my finished piece was just as I imagined and well produced. 

I originally wanted to do a surrealist only advert, as surrealism is definitely my strong point. Inspired by David Lynch and Jan Svankmejer, I wanted it to be food related with a dark, sinister twist. I thought that this would be the simplest and most effective thing for me to do. I was, however, wrong - the genre would not be appropriate. I realised that I would need to combine another genre with surrealism for maximum effect. I eventually went with horror, due to the similarities of the two genres and the potential of it turning out incredibly well. The audience was another reason I chose it; there are a huge number of horror fans, a large number of which can be refined into a category consisting of surrealist appreciators. This would mean that, by incorporating a more mainstream genre, I could gain a huge audience for a ident which is mainly a lower-key genre.

The principles of motion that I used in my ident were actually fewer than I had originally anticipated. I expected a large number of key animation techniques to make my ident look good, but it turned out better than expected when I reviewed my dope sheet before filming. I really only needed to incorporate anticipated movement and recoil of action in my ident - everything was, physically, pretty minimal. This meant that the more advanced principles were not used, like appeal. I used principles effectively - surrealism, ironically, doesn't need huge amounts of detailed stop motion techniques, so I was in the clear. The principles I did use, however, were done well - with anticipation, I made sure that a frame of physical preparation was put before the movement itself. This made sure that every single piece of action looked realistic.

I used the feedback I gained appropriately. Through a survey I conducted in Wimbledon, I gained the opinions of the public, and got realistic feedback from them. It was apparent that I'd got most of it on point, but I could also improve on some areas. An area highlighted a few times was my soundtrack. Although I had made it myself at home by combining four different horror songs, people thought that it was too ambient and did not differ too much. They said that I should add some sort of sound effect to the key points in the animation, such as when the lids were being lifted. On reviewal, I thought that this was a good suggestion, so I added in some online SFX noises; when the horror prop was revealed to the camera, I added a generic loud noise in the background, used in Coki's song 'All Of A Sudden'. I felt that this was an appropriate use of the noise, and added to the effect and overall of the ident. 

I had a few strengths and weaknesses throughout this project, some a lot greater or worse than others. An example of strength in my ident was definitely background information; I already had an extensive knowledge of both expressive surrealism and classical horror, giving me better ways of showing my ideas on paper and making my ident a lot easier to produce. Another strength that I had was the fact that I was working by myself - I could film whenever I wanted, for as long as I wanted and wherever I wanted. This meant that it was a whole lot more personal to me and I therefore feel that it's more representative of my view on the piece, and not a collaboration of thoughts and ideas from others. A weakness came with this though; the phrase 'too many cooks spoil the broth' was overcome by the phrase 'many hands make light work' on several occasions. Because it was only me working on the ident, I needed to prepare everything myself. All of the pre-production folder needed to be done single-handed by me, which took a lot of effort and time. It worked out in the end though - everything was done in time, and all of my Blogger was up-to-date by the deadline.

As mentioned before, the pre-production stage was one of the more lengthy areas of this project. I was the only person in my group, meaning that I needed to do it all myself. I worked hard, however, and got it all done. The most difficult piece of written work in this stage was probably the 'Principle of motion' essay - most of the techniques that I needed to describe were pretty hard to research and took a while to phrase when written down. I eventually tracked each one down, however, and completed the section without any major issues. The part of it I found the most fun was probably the dope sheet - I felt that I could really express my ideas well with it when used to explain my story. I could also pinpoint frame by frame action, giving me really specific reference points and allowing me to do into detail on anywhere I wanted. This meant that I could describe my surreal ident easily and with little trouble, making my ideas easier to explain and get across to the examiner.

Overall, I think that my individual project was definitely a success. It allowed me to show my knowledge of surrealism in film whilst also completing the task in hand - the horror channel ident. I feel like I can now shoot a short animation easily, due to the workshops in camera angles and movement. Researching things like perception of motion and previous animators allowed me to make my ident effective and on a professional level. I can use these skills comfortably in later productions in media and later on in life. This was definitely a step forward to producing animation on a larger scale.