Final Animation and Evaluation

                                 FINAL ANIMATION

                                                                    Evaluation

This is our final stop motion animation advert advertising smarties. I think the finished film is good because it is very smooth and the story is clear for the target audience to understand as we learnt in our focus group. I think we did well with the lighting on the Smartie animation because it stays the same throughout the section, due to the big studio lights we used. We learnt early on that the lighting is extremely important because if there was one change in lighting it could have messed up the whole advert. We therefore controlled the lighting by covering all the windows in the room with black paper and we made sure there were no shadows over the animation. I think the editing is good because all the transitions are fluent abd there are no sudden breaks in the advert, the transitions worked well within the story, for example the use of the ripple effect to show he was having a dream. We used a range of camera shots because we felt it added variety into our film and it showed the story from a number of different view points.

Medium Shot

Long Shot

Close Up

 I think that the film is suitable for our target audience because we have taken on board what the focus group said at the beginning of our film. I think we could definatley make changes to the advert because when we spoke to the focus group after the film haad been made they said they would change a few things, such as some of the sound effects. We included a catchy sound track that is quite repetitive because the target audience said they liked adverts with music that gets stuck in their head. I think we could improve our stop motion animation by making it less childish. I think a few of the sounds were slightly childish and would not be aimed at our audience however I think the overall footage of the film is suitable for our target audience. Most of the focus group agreed with this and said it could have been slightly toned down. Also some of the lighting could have been improved in order to make the film look smoother and more proffesional however it was hard to control the lighting outside because we were using natural lighting instead of artificial. I have learnt a lot from creating this stop motion animation becasue it has showed me that you need to control lighting, keep the same positioning on each shot, have enough frames to make it smooth and work altogether in a group with different roles to make the film work.

What would I do differently if we were to complete the advert again?

If I was going to complete the task again I would film the beginning scene again because there are a few lighting changes, when Jack is sitting on the bench and there is a close up of his face, the lighting becomes noticeably lighter. I think it would look much better if the lighting was the same throughout because it would look more professional and appeal more to our target audience. To overcome this I would take the shot more than one time so we could have more than one option to choose from and because the lighting may be better in one of the shots. Also at the end there is rubbish on the floor underneath the bench and I would remove the rubbish to make it again more professional and the shot would be cleaner. Although it is a small thing I think it would have looked better without it there. I don't think I would change anything about the Smartie animation because it is very smooth and the lighting stays the same throughout. The only thing that I would do next time would be to animate the Smarties faster because they began to melt or I would turn the lights of after each scene so the room could cool off. Another thing I would do is add a slogan at the end because although I came up with a range of slogans that could have been used we forgot to add one in. I think a slogan is important in an advert because it can support the message you are trying to get across to your target audience and it can be catchy, grabbing the viewers attention. This is very common in adverts, so the use of a slogan would have again made it more proffesional. I would make the narrative a bit stronger because some of our focus group mentioned that they were unable to follow the story. Also the creative director of adverts for 118 118, Tic Tac's and Holland and Barrett, called Stephen Little emailed me back after I asked him to watch our advert. He said there could have been a few changes to the storyline and some of our focus group agreed with this.

Changes made throughout the animation:



Throughout the production of our animation our ideas changed and we had more ideas that we wanted to add in, we felt the ideas either improved the structure of the advert or improved the imagination gone into the story. The storyboard changed quite a lot however we followed the same plot as we originally aimed to complete. The location changed for the first and the last scene when Jack eats the Smarties and wakes up from the dream because I thought it would look better outside of a classroom. We changed the location to a strip of small shops and a bench in a natural setting because we felt it would appeal more to our audience. We were originally going to film Jack coming in and out of the shop Martins however we were unable to because of company policy. Instead we filmed outside the other corner shop down the road were we were allowed to film. This taught us that you must always be aware of where you have permission to film before filming. Also the actual Smartie animation ideas were changed however we still used the opening firework, the rain and the flower growing. We decided to add different ideas into the animation because we felt we could improve upon it and so it would look more visually interesting. We also added in one of Jack's ideas at the end when the smarties are popping up on the bench because we thought we needed to end the animation on the Smarties, so the product would stay in the audience's mind. I think that it's good our animation changed as it went along because we were just improving and expanding on the original idea. One of the main problems we first encountered was the lighting, we used a small lamp ideal for animating however each time we took a picture the lighting would completely change. We therefore had to change the lighting used for this part of the advert and instead we used big studio lights. They were good because the lighting didn't change at all even when the animator stood in different places. These are things we changed throughout the production process. 

Did we manage to reach our initial aims:

I think our advert has achieved what we initially wanted to do because our focus group thought the Smarties were well advertised and they stood out in the advert. I think we have reached our target audience with the actual animation however although some of our focus group liked the soundtrack others found it a little bit childish and they thought it would reach a larger range of people if it was toned down. One idea that I agreed with was to take the small yay out at the end because it sounds slightly too childish however it worked well within the adverts atmosphere. Also one of our main aims was to be imaginative with the story and what was actually included in the animation, I think we achieved this objective because the target audience gave mostly good opinions about the advert and they found it creative. I think the strongest point within the animation was the Smarties forming different shapes becuase our target audience enjoyed this section the most. I think the advert reaches the target audience and makes them have a positive response by making them feel that they can still enjoy Smarties even though the brands target audience may be younger. We wanted to explore an older target audience because we felt we knew the audience we chose better. We wanted to use a range of different camera angles in our piece however I think we could have used more, for example an establishing shot of the corner shop where Jack brought the Smarties. This would have set the scene for our advert. We wanted it to be colourful and imaginative, I think we achieved this because our focus group said the Smarties stood out.



I also think our advert would appeal to the channel E4 because this channel has a similar target audience and I think it would incoorporate into the style of the channel. Mostly all of the target audience said they could see the advert being screened on TV with some improvements therefore I think we achieved this objective. 

Strengths and weaknesses of planning process:

I think our planning process worked well becasue we all worked together to collate all the information needed in order to begin filming our animation. In our production folder is what each of us did. I created the storyboard, character drawings, production schedule, mood board and the written treatment during the planning process and carried out other appropriate research for my blog such as target audience. I think our planning was good because we worked well together to complete it and put neccessary research on our blogs which prepared us for the week of filming. We kept in contact with eachother outside of college in order to organise meetings and other buissness we had to sort out. We communicated by using facebook, here is a conversation we had over Facebook-

Charlotte: Hey guys, Racheal said that we should change the location for the first part so I had an idea, there is corner shop on the    little road where dominos pizza is, so mabey we could film Jack coming out of

the shop with a packet of smarties in his hand and then film him eating them on a that little bench next to the pond thing in Esher. Do you want me to go in early tomorrow and I can set up our lighting and stuff and then start our animation with the smarties if the mac lab is free because I have 4 free periods tomorrow?
what do you think ?

Abi: I'm sure theres a bench in Thames ditton..... (just a suggestion) and don't wory, we'll start officially first thing on Thursday, as soon as we're done with the first scene then we can all go set up properly in the mac suite most likely by second period and then we've got at least 2 hours on that day and thats more than enough time to make a decent start on our project, okay?

We felt Facebook was the best way to communicate because it's easily accecable, we all had an account and it was fast.

This was a strength in our planning, however I think we could have done more target audience research and thought more about what they would like included in the advert because we only had the few people in the focus group to rely upon.  Having more people would have been better because we would have got a wider range of opinions, we could have possibly set up a questionarre with closed questions so we could create our own collated data. Also I think we could have reheased our pitch before presenting, although we all knew what we were doing individually we had not yet had a rehearsal in a group. I think if we were to improve our planning even furthur we would have looked at adverts as a group and discussed what we liked about each, instead of doing it individually and we could have possibly had more discussions. I think overall the planning process went well because we all did thorough research on he topic and did each of the individual tasks as well as the ones we would do together. Looking back at my ideas and influences for the planning stage I think I came up with a range of ideas however I think I could have explored different narratives as well as coming up with the content of the Smartie animation. I think we worked well in the pre-production stage because we gave each other equal roles that worked to our strengths.

Comparing it to professional adverts:

Tic Tac advert

This advert is professionally made to advertise Tic Tacs, I think it looks really clear and it flows well because there is a large frame rate number. I think the idea of the advert is also good because it is imaginative and original, I think our advert uses a similar original idea because we have added in our own ideas. The lighting stays the same throughout the Tic Tac animation and the lighting in the Smartie animation is constant also. There are a few lighting changes in the first scene which could be improved upon to reach the professional standard this advert has reached. There are sound effects included that show fireworks exploding to give the audience something to hear whilst watching the visuals. We have also done this in our animation by adding in appropraite sound effects, for example when the Smarties are being shaken there is a sound effect to show this. One thing the Tic Tac advert doesn't use is a backing track which we use in our advert however I think it suits our advert because our focus group said they would like a catchy backing track. I think this advert looks more proffesional than ours because it is cleaner and much more clear. I think the product is very well advertised because the product is used the whole way throught the animation, we included our product throughout most of our animation and the final focus group all said they thought the Smarites were well advertised which was one of our names. This advert uses a similar technique to ours where the camera stays in the same position and doesn't move through the middle section of our animation. The technique used in this animation is like ours in the middle section of the advert with the Smarites, it is a commonly used techique with products such as this.

Exsisting Smarties Advert
This is a real Smarties advert that was advertising the return of the blue smartie. I think this advert uses comedy as its main genre which is something we could have possibly thought about more because some of our focus group said they would have liked to see comedy. The advert is very colourful similar to ours however uses a completly different style to us. I think it would be good for the Smarties brand to have a stop motion animation advert becasue it is different. Not much sound is used in this advert apart form the speech used by the actors, our advert is similar to this at the begining and end because there is no soundtrack used however we wanted to give our advert a memorable song. The smarties are advertised in a unique way in this advert and I feel our advert shows the Smarties in a unique way, we could have possibly thought of a more original ways of representing the Smarties however we felt our advert would suit our target audience best. 

Comparison to a proffesional animators work/techniques:

This short animation was created by Sumo Science and Aardman Animations. Similar to our animation they have kept the camera in the same spot to animate likewise to the Smarties. Also it isn't as fluid as some of the other animations I have watched which is similar to ours however I think it can make it look more effective. This proffesionally made advert uses lighting very effectively which I think we could have improved on and also many more elements have been animated such as the sand fish and the waves. I think this looks much more proffesional than our advert because it was made by more experienced people however some of the techniques have been used in our animation. The technique used in this animation is pixilation because the person inside the boat is a man, this is similar to ours because we used a form of pixilation as one of our techniques. This is the biggest stop motion in the world and the use of pixilation makes it stand out. Persistance of vision is a technique used throughout the all stop motion animations, also a large amount of frame rates would have been used in the animation because it is extremely smooth, it creates the illusion of movement. 

 Focus Group Feedback

We showed our advert to a group of people and we gathered feedback about our film. Me and Jack came up with some questions we could ask our focus group in order to find out what they thought of the animation and the advert as a whole. These are the questons we asked them-

What are your thoughts on the animation?

From the advert which elements stand out the most?

Which part did you enjoy the most?

What are your thoughts on the soundtrack/sound effects in terms of our target audience of 16-34 year olds?

Do you think the soundtrack is easy to remember?

Do you feel the Smarties are well advertised?

Can you comment on the overall structure of the advert?

Could you spot any areas of weakness, or suggest any improvements?

What are your thoughts on the idea/story of the advert?

Do you have any comments on the camera work?

Could you see the advert being shown on the TV, and why?

Conclusion

The focus group helped us learn more about our advert and helped us to see if it had reached our target audience. The overall reception of the focus group was that the advert was too childish and some of the sound effects were too young for the target audience. The good points that they picked up on were that they said the Smarties stood out throughout the duration of the advert and they were well advertised, the overall edit was good apart from a few things, the different camera shots used were good and the, the soundtrack was easy to remember. We aimed for the soundtrack to be easy to remember because our focus group right at the begining of our research said they enjoyed a catchy soundtrack.  All of them apart from one said that they could see it on the TV because it looked professional and it was a good idea. I think we could make the improvements by loosing a few of the sound effects such as the "yay" because it sounds a bit childish however apart from that I think the sound effects suit the audience. The reason we added the yay was because Smarties as a brand are quite childish and we were trying to highlight how you can be of an older age but still be childish by eating Smarties. I think this concept worked well with some of the people we asked but it didn't work with all of them so we may need to make a few changes to our edit. The questions we asked were intended to convey our strengths and weaknesses of every part of the animation. I think mostly all of the focus group like the camera work and the techniques we used however some of them thought the story coul dhave been improved upon. Overall the focus group found our work to be appealing to them although it could use a bit more work just to get it up to a proffesional TV standard. I think the feedback we got back from the focus group proved that we worked hard in the production stage because the overall reception of the advert was that they enjoyed it. The focus group definitely helped us because it showed us if we had achieved our aims and objectives.  

I have emailed some proffesional advertisement agencies in order to get thier opinion on it and to learn about the different strenghts and weaknesses. To see this please go onto the company contacts page.....