Sehsucht Studio Visit

When we went to Berlin this November we went to a Studio called Sehsucht Located to the north of the city. They are the newest Sehsucht office as they have a larger office in Hamburg.

The company was very welcoming but that was probably amplified because of how cold we were when we got there. We were greeted by the managing director of Sehsucht who had previously work at Psyop (a company we visited and I personally loved in New York). The studio space was very similar to that of Psyop and that is probably one of the reasons I liked it so much.

This is the piece the studio had recently finished. While we have had street view on google for some time, out there they have not so this is a campaign to advertise what it is. We had all seen this before we headed out there but when we arrived the managing director had a breakdown of how they put it together (which is underneath). He walked us step by step through the process of making before we were shown the studio where they had filmed it. All the props were still out from filing and we were very impressed with the results they managed to get in such a small space.

Google Street View Ad

Making of Google Street View Ad

After our meeting we were aloud to walk around the very friendly working studio speaking with the designers and I managed to show one of them my showreel which he seemed impressed with. This was great but I was more taken aback by the stuff they were doing. They were showing us the work they were currently working on and how it was separated into sections between them. It was impressive to see the results they were getting and they all knew what everyone else in the team were doing and the stage they were at.

This was a great studio and I would love to work somewhere like this in the future. The small team meant you could work on a piece from start to finish. The team was separated in 2 though and I can imagine that there could be some rivalry. Im not sure if it could be healthy rivalry or not but that could be a concern. Other studios have everyone together which personally I think is better even if your working on different projects as you can bounce ideas and techniques off each other. After seeing this studio as well as the others I have visited I'm definitely sure I want to work in an advertising studio doing a wide variety of jobs.

Morning sequences

After looking at the Dexter sequence I looked further into morning sequences and wanted to look at how a small change to your morning routine could change the rest of your day. One thing I need to ensure is that the change be an obvious one so that the rest of the animation makes sense. I have only got 49 seconds so it need to be clear with my idea and communicate it well.

Dexter Opening Titles

This is the opening title sequence to the american series Dexter. As I highlighted in my sketchbook I want my piece to be an everyday sequence which is being deferred from. I started watching this series not so long back and found that this is one of the most memorable title sequences around at the moment. It focuses on the idea of relating everyday tasks or activities to one that a serial killer would perform. This is a very clever technique to use as it shows the normal front the character portrays and his hidden motive as well as setting up the audience for the drama they are about to witness in a non graphic manner.

Because of this sequence I had decided I want to use a typical day scene where a change is made and then everything thereafter changes as a result. The whole point in my piece is to encourage people to make a change, no matter how small, to create change in there lives. It may even leave to something good. For now I am going to focus on the morning sequence and getting ready from work.

Fisheye Test Berlin

When in Berlin on our final morning me and  group of friends decided to setup some photographs and play around with composition. These are some of the examples of the shots I managed to get.

Finally I had the idea to try filming in the fisheyes as when looking on the viewfinder while walking created great results. Because of the curvature of the piece of footage it makes it look as if I am walking on a sphere or globe of some kind. I really like how this looks and I would like to use this technique in a future project.

Harold and Kumar, Lift Scene

Watch 5:15 to 7:15

When thinking of decisions that could be made the idea of taking the lift or the stairs, or in fact the time you take it all stemmed from this scene I saw a long time back in "Harold & Kumar Get The Munchies".

The only difference is that in this scene Harold is daydreaming rather than it being on 2 separate occasions. I like this idea that the fact you say some thing when you usually wouldn't could not only affect your life but also the person you were speaking to which could have a knock on effect creating a huge chain of events. This could be the one change that has made the change in the sequence. From here I need to look into other possible changes that could be made to see if there is a better one I could use that would be more obvious for the audience to work out in the time scale.

Cold Water, Frances

This is the music video for Cold Water by the band Frances. They have used multiple screens throughout the video filming the same shots in separate locations. Afterwords these were edited together to create one composition. It works better because of the fact that the colour palettes of each shot/location are contrast. I like the fact similar framings were used to connect the shots together to create a seamless sequence. This is a technique I could use for my final outcome to link my 3 sequences together. This may be harder to do with 3 separate sequences but I think it is a technique I want to try.

Lie To Me: Faces Promo

This "Lie To Me" promo uses multiple screens in a different way to other examples I have been looking at. I reminds me of the children's books you used to get where you would try and match up all the segments of a persons picture. I especially like the way the screens flip to change what appears in each section. I also like the way the light and focus creates darker footage towards the corners of each section. This creates a lot of focus and depth to the faces and would be ideal in my small compositions.

Even though my ideas have moved on I would like to still include some text in the piece and after seeing this I have had the idea of the screens flipping and the letters of the word being on the rear of each section. Where the spaces are between words some of the screens could stay still playing their loops therefore tying the whole piece together. Some test need to be done as I only have limited time to fill.