Reflective Journal
Week 7
Monday 02-11-2020 to Sunday 08-11-2020
Introduction to Promotional Video
One of the pieces of work that Attila introduced us to this week is a “Promotional Video” which is part of Unit 11. He said that we can propose any idea that we would like to film that fits with Unit 11 to the tutors for our promotional video and they will give us feedback on the idea. But he also said to consider that Nick has a suggestion prepared for us too, which Nick will explain to us. Attila explained that an important part of a promo video is that you really mustn’t let it get boring, since you are wanting to keep the audience’s attention to persuade them to buy what you are selling or do what the promo is suggesting.
That made sense to me. I’ve seen some promo videos for tourism. They are not selling a particular product. Instead, they are trying to persuade you to visit their area for a holiday which will benefit many businesses in their area. They want to tempt you to go their area by showing you lots of places and persuade you that you want to go there. If they make a boring promo video, then you will turn off and not watch all the images, so you will not know how nice it is and not be persuaded to go there. I can see that this principle is the same as for fiction films/TV shows, which are what I would eventually like to direct. Except that I can also see that in a promo video the audience gives you less time to get your message across before switching to watch something else than they would do for a fiction film/TV show. So, literally, every second counts. We will need to be aware of the effect of every second of the promo video, to draw the viewer in and make them want to watch the whole video.
I think a good way to do this is with humour. You tend to hear people sharing humorous adverts/promo videos that they have watched, but not so much serious ones. They will often keep watching a bit longer too, to see what the “punchline” is. So, I think that humour will be a good starting point.
Attila also talked to us about how some people in the Film Industry look down on commercials, but that actually they are a great way to learn the skills you need for other forms of production including for the fiction Film Industry. You still have to tell a story, think about all the framing, locations, in fact about all the same things as for a fiction Feature Film. And often the budgets are very large too.
I remember being surprised previously when I found out that Director Ridley Scott (e.g. Alien (1979) and Gladiator (2000)) has directed many commercials, including the famous Hovis “Boy on a bike” advert. He said in an interview on YouTube that commercial advertising was his film school, because it “teaches you about everything”.
Research Paper
Part of Unit 11 is to write a Research Paper that allows us to research something that is relevant to our future career. My eventual career aim is to ultimately become a Fiction Film/TV Director. I briefly considered researching different routes to work towards this role, but I already know a number of possibilities, and I prefer to do things with a bit of a twist. E.g. in my first College film, “Poker Hand“, I added in the twist of UNO cards for a comedic touch, and my advert for toast was Spy themed.
Pretty quickly a question has come to me which is something that I have genuinely been curious about. I have played Dungeons & Dragon (D&D) for several years now, and I have felt for some time that although D&D is widely regarded as a game just played by a bunch of nerds sitting around a table in someone’s dining room (or basement if you live in America), it actually teaches you lots of skills that are useful in the real world, like teamwork, problem solving, creativity, improvisation to name a few.
I am also a Dungeon Master (DM), that’s the person who creates the world that the players explore. As DM I also have to create the story, explain to the players what their characters are seeing, improvise and act out all the Non-Player-Characters (NPCs) who interact with the players’ characters. I have to ensure continuity of the story and the world. Since games are usually set in Fantasy type realms, easiest described as sort of medieval, I can’t let a player suddenly have their character pull out a mobile phone to use. Except that, actually, I can let them do that if I want, since I’m the one who created the world, so in one way I can do what I want. But my players will soon get unhappy with me if I am too inconsistent. Or if I suddenly have one of the monsters, that the players are fighting, have a weapon that it didn’t have at the start of the fight. So, consistency and continuity matter.
It has been occurring to me for some time that a lot of what I do as DM has echoes to me of what I see Fiction Film/TV Directors talking about doing when I watch behind the scenes videos. In which case, could the skills that I am developing as a DM be helpful to me as a Fiction Film/TV Director? We have been looking at Soft Skills such as Teamwork, Leadership etc in CCP so I know that generally all those kinds of skills are useful in our careers. But would my DM skills be of specific use to me as a Fiction Film/TV Director? I decided that I would like to know if my hunches are correct. Which is how I came up with the idea for this Research Paper.
Feedback from tutor for my Research Paper Idea
In Nick’s lesson I ran my idea for my Research paper past him. Nick liked my idea a lot, he said “That’s really good, I think that’s really strong, that is fantastic!” which was really encouraging. We discussed the relationship of fantasy to mythology, which is really interesting, and the strong sense of narrative that both mythology and D&D create, so it shouldn’t really be surprising that many people who enjoy D&D go into the Creative/Film Industry. I explained that I want to go even deeper than the fantasy element, to look at skills that are transferable to all genres across Fiction Film making.
Nick warned me to ensure that I should keep the focus on D&D, saying that if I haven’t written “D&D” every three sentences or so then I’m off course. But, as I was already thinking, that I need to make sure that I keep coming back to relating being a DM to being a Fiction Film/TV Director as an anchor.
Nick also told me about some work that he had done for the T20 Summit in Saudi Arabia. From this work he said that he had learnt that technology is expanding dramatically for example Bangalore in India created around 1.5 million new IT jobs in the space of a year. He had found this out partly due to research involving looking at the end credits for special effects for the film 1917 and finding that most of the special effects were done in Bangalore by many, many, extremely talented special effects people. He explained that this points to the fact that we are getting to the stage where the crossover between gaming, in a very broad sense, and more traditional filmic narrative is beginning to get really blurred because the technology is becoming available for the immersive storytelling that comes from gaming, and thus even more so from D&D. He said that this overlap is the start of something that is really going to explode and so having Fiction Film/TV Directors who understand really immersive storytelling will become even more important in the future.
He repeated that he liked my idea, saying, “I think that’s brilliant, Gareth, I think that’s a great idea!”.