#birminghampost | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mhargreaves98-blog · 6 years

Text

Digital Billboard Evaluation

For this part of my blog I shall be evaluating my process of designing a Digital Billboard. My initial ideas were to design a billboard on a passion of mine which is the Famous British Spitfire. I also have a massive passion for cars and the car industry and thought about combing these two ideas to produce a digital billboard advertisement, which advertises cars but also the history of the Spitfire.

I brain stormed some ideas to start with and had to take multiple things into consideration. I firstly proposed that I use Jaguar Land Rover for my car manufacture because in the Second World War Spitfires were made in the Castle Bromwich Factory, not far away from me, but now they produce the new top of the range luxury cars. I thought about combing those two factors and having an advert which showcases both.

First idea that I had is the one above, not exactly that one but that is the best way of showing my idea as it has never been done before. My idea was to have half of the billboard with this archive image of the spitfires being made back in 1940, and then one the adjacent side having a picture of the same place today with the jaguars lined up, to show that the world has evolved from making the best planes in the world to making what some may say the best cars in the world. I also had the same idea but this time instead of in the factory it would be outside of the factory shown underneath. Also underneath is my final idea and that was too take the front side of a Spitfire and the rear end of an iconic Jaguar such as the new F-type and the famous E-type, this was the only idea I had which would not need to be done in the Castle Bromwich factory, however would still be a difficult task under the circumstances that I had to acquire footage of both and the time frame I had to it in.

To do what I wanted to be as authentic as possible. I wanted the real Castle Bromwich factory where those spitfires were being made. I used multiple factual websites to give me information on the Castle Bromwich factories such as [1]‘The Spitfire site’ and the [2]‘BirminghamPost’ With this I have the massive issue of actually being able to film there, I thought this was highly unlikely but decided to get in contact with jaguar Land Rovers Media Enquires team. I sent them this email, however the never got back to me unfortunately.

“I am contacting you regarding a certain project I have on my University Course which I’m studying at Solihull Colleges University centre. I have had to design a Digital billboard for my project and need to generate a short form of advertisement which I want to intertwine my love of cars and Spitfires. Due to my passion for cars and spitfires I feel that Jaguar Land Rover would be the ideal place for me to conduct my project. My Initial idea was that because the Spitfires were made in the Castle Bromwich Factory and that factory is still being used to this day producing the brand new Jaguars that I could incorporate both of those ideas together and have a product where half of the screen is an archive picture of the factory line with the spitfires down the one side for as far as the eye could see, and on the adjacent side a line of the new Jaguar cars being built showing that over nearly 80 years have passed and that the factory and innovation of new technology is still transforming ”.

I waited two and half weeks for them to get back to me in regards to me email but I received nothing unfortunately, which I was very much disappointment about as my idea was my passion and I couldn’t fulfil it, I did however think that It was a massive task that I had given myself, I took from it ideas and inspiration and a thought that in the future I may get another chance. I decided to have to rapidly brainstorm an idea. I wanted to stick with my idea of a Jaguar and thought of an advertisement for one of their cars which a close friend’s father owned. I prepared myself on what I was doing felt confident in this, however agreeing on a time of meet at the location of his own home did not live up to expectation. He unfortunately cancelled on me due to miss calculating dates and meetings so I was then back to square one with time slowly running out and my deadline approaching. I was to stick with the same idea I had planned but with a different car, sadly not a jaguar but still a vehicle.

What I have learned from the first stage and the later stage of planning is that preparation is key, and when I have a project like this in the future I will plan even more ahead of time and I will have already produced a backup product if the first one doesn’t come through, as what has happened with my first project. However, I did predict that it would happen and did begin to brainstorm other ideas while waiting for Jaguar to contact me back, and then once I had not heard back from them I commenced with my back up. In the prospect of undertaking another project much like this one, I will have a backup in place from the beginning, definitely if I feel something like this could happen again. Because I had to change ideas, even from the manufacture of car, I had to change the Mise en Scene. Because I was using a luxury car such as a Jaguar I wanted the background of the video to fit the same criteria with a historic and impressive feel to match the history of Jaguar. Jaguar use large space and have a targeted audience at more upper class and an age range from 30 plus. I had to change from that idea to a car with a more urban feel. I needed to construct a background that matched the car; the lighting and colour scheme also had to match so I chose the urban environment of Birmingham.

My plan was too use a series of photos in a clockwise motion going around the vehicle to seemingly look as if it a video, and give them affect to how the lighting and weather was on that specific day. I had chosen a black fiat 500 and thought because of the urban nature of the car a multi-story car park would be perfect. I thought a skyline background would also contrast well with the car. I found a car park that would do this well and did a risk assessment on site to deem it was safe to film. I firstly positioned the car where I thought looked well and took the photos; I used a variety of low angle shots, medium shots and one or two long shots. I used the low angle shots to give the car a powerful presence, I then used the medium shot to have the main focus being the car, but with the background clearly visible to give a contrasting effect and to set the scene, which brings me onto the long shot which is too show the setting but also the main source from a distance. I was pleased with of my images that I had taken, I feel however with more time, because of the pushed deadline I felt I was rushed on what I wanted to do, but in the final product I was more than pleased with the outcome. On the way to the shoot I had found a landscape billboard that I thought this advertisement

Because I had used a mobile device for the images I decided to stay with the device for editing and choose to use an app called ‘Inshot video editor music, cut’. I found this application easy to use and professional in the outcome. It had everything I needed to produce my Digital Billboard and had everything I was familiar with on editing software which are usually considerable amounts of money but this being free easy to get your hands onto but also professional in the tools it offered me. It was easier to get to grips too than Premier Pro and the top selling editing software’s. The obvious downsides being that it would more complicated if you was filming on a DLSR and you wanted to edit on there, there would be ways but not as easy as filming on the mobile device and editing on it as well. Phones are becoming cameras and computers combined, with superb megapixel cameras and fast editing applications, it is what I thought to be an ideal tool for a project which was behind d on time and brought me up to speed.

When I was brainstorming ideas for the Fiat Billboard advertisement I looked into advertisements they have previously done. I found that Fiat in there advertisements for Fiat 500s use a variety of bright and attractive colours to draw the audience in such as reds and yellows.

I compared this to Jaguar advertisements and the colours were a lot less vibrant, the colours of the cars were darker shades such as different shades of grey, darker shades of white and black. However they did contrast this with the Union Jack which made the Union Jack stand out. Jaguar uses the heritage of the name and brands it in that way, with examples being the poster advertisements, but also television adverts with iconic British actors. [3]They did this to entice followers of these actors to interact more with the advert which advertised the UK for its famous actors but also there automobiles.

Fiat on the other hand tries to connect more with the younger audience, which is Fiats main target audience in the 21st Century. In their advertisements the actors they use are in the age range from around 17 -30, all aimed at the target audience. In my billboard I didn’t want an actor and want it to be focusing on the car for a short advertisement and the background and lighting.

In the editing part because It was a free application I did not have a massive amount of options, however the options I had I thought were the main factors of editing. I placed all the shots together that I had taken which then added up to 25 seconds of footage in a video; however I want it to be much shorter. I wanted it to have a large number of shots together showing the car in a montage effect so made the shots all 0.5 seconds long. Once I had done this, I dimed the lighting on all of them and gave them a grey look to emphasise the Urbaneness of the car and surroundings. The main edit is the ‘glitch’ used which I wanted to add to draw the audience in as it is an unusual edit to have in a advert and emphases the urban meaning of the advert and the car. Once I felt my billboard advert looked complete I then exported it and saved it onto my computer.

Overall I felt I had achieved a professional Digital billboard that I was proud of. I did have a large amount of problems in the time I was planning and creating my billboard, but I overcame them all and made sure at all times my billboard looked professional and I met deadlines. I will ensure on further projects my planning is made weeks in advance and that I have ideas that I can see becoming a reality.

[2] Post, B. (2017). A 70-year history of the Castle Bromwich assembly plant. [online] BirminghamPost. Available at: http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/business/manufacturing/70-year-history-castle-bromwich-assembly-3940359 [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].

[3] British Villains - 2015 One Show Automobile Advertising of the Year Finalist. (2014). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7gR7EYjcP8 [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].

youtube

0 notes