Wow! The time is officially here. My final semester in the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design's BFA design program has come to an end. The past few years taught me incredible discipline, patience, and humility, and I'm proud to be alumni of such a great program. I definitely have seen tremendous growth in my design skills, and I owe it all to the awesome professors at the school who mentored me in the arts.
So, below is a recap of the work completed in Stan's class.
Final crit in college. Needed an image for my post thumbnail.
Upon doing more research about what makes a successful awareness campaign, I've decided to trim a bunch of fat off of my script for the Break The Cycle campaign. After watching a few videos on Youtube that address similar subject matters, I've decided my commercial should run 30-seconds for maximum impact and should be a one-shot shoot to increase dramatic effect. Generally, I lost interest in videos that took too long to develop concepts and ran a minute or longer. I also concluded early on in the concept development that I did not want to show faces or have my subjects speak in the script, and I wanted the general focus of the camera to live around a medium shot of torsos or worms eye view of feet/legs.
With that said, my new script idea is:
- Camera peeks through a crack in the door, subject sitting on bathroom floor is out of focus.
- Subject's body language is overwhelmed, limp, and tired.
- Camera stays focused for awhile and continues to peek.
- Legs enter the scene from the left and slowly walk towards the cracked door.
- The door opens, revealing the bathroom and more of the figure, still out of focus.
- The legs frame the subject on bathroom floor, then legs crosses the threshold and enters bathroom.
- Door slowly begins to close on the scene, and screen goes black.
- Text overlays screen; "Schoolyard bullies are four times more likely to abuse intimate partners than those who never bullied."
- Text fades out, and the "Break The Cycle" logo and website appears; remains on screen.
The door symbolizes both the physical and metaphorical barriers dating abuse causes between intimate partners, as well as the barriers created between the victim and the victim's loved ones; frequently, the bully partner seperates the victim partner from people who care for them. The door also illustrates the concept of "the things that go on behind closed doors", which are typically not discussed in society, which perpetuates bullying and abuse by pretending it does not exist. By having the door shut at the end of the spot, it conveys to the audience that just because you cannot see the abuse, does not mean that it isn't there.
The legs are also symbolic in the script because the role of the legs is not specifically defined; the legs may be an abusive partner, or the legs may be a loved one coming to help the victim cope with the abuse. The ambiguity of the concept of "friend or foe" allows for the idea of intervention to enter the spot, so as to subtly say "you can make a difference".
Below are links to reference my statistics and the song I'm considering for the spot.
Before one can shoot a 30 second spot for television, one must find a great location to shoot at! On January 15, 2013 at 1PM (time of day is important because lighting and traffic may vary hour to hour), I went location scouting for the block bordered by Auburn Avenue, Irwin Street, Krog Street, Edgewood Avenue, and Randolph Street in downtown Atlanta. My 30 second one shot spot will be for the Apple iPhone, and I scouted this location specifically because I wanted to bring the counter-culture artist attitude to the Apple brand that their loyal consumers embody and embrace.
