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Local Offer Hertfordshire County Council

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This is an animated Ident I created with my partner Ash at college. It is promoting a real charity Called the 'Essex Local Offer' which helps those with leaning difficulties and disability find support. It's a great cause, so please spread the word and share this video to let people know about it.

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Last Tuesday Abi and I began work on our animated ident in the studio. Before we started we had already contributed to the making of the ident by creating some of the sets and characters. Abi created many of the interior maze sets, the signpost and the character for our ident while I created the overhead maze set which would be used in the rostrum work.

On Tuesday 10th our work focused mainly on the front-on shots for our animated ident. The scenes we managed to record were the character entering the maze, the character wandering around the maze, arriving at the Local Offer archway and seeing the spinning signpost. Because we were using the front-on camera, it was important for us to get close-up reactions of the character as he encounters new parts of the maze, and the signpost spinning around. However, we encountered a few issues in terms of lighting as some of the colouring on the shots appeared very bright and unnatural. It was important for us to keep the lighting consistent in our animation as it would change too drastically in the final version of it. We managed to fix this by adjusting the lighting positions and we were also told that we could change the lighting in post-production as well.

On Wednesday 11th our work focused on the rostrum shots of the maze overhead. However, before we started, we cut out strips of binary to stick onto the maze set as these helped create the 'virtual' look for our ident. Once we had completed these, we could then begin filming the overhead shots on the rostrum. These were especially tricky as the table supporting the maze kept wobbling so we thought we would place cardboard underneath the legs to keep it stable. We then realised it was a problem with the lighting soft boxes we used so adjusted those which improved the overall effect of the dent's look. Once we completed these scenes, we worked on the animation for the logo section at the end. We had a problem with this scene as well as I thought I had accidentally overwritten the logo segments we had recorded. We devised a plan to record this segment again at a later date. Thankfully, though, we discovered the footage was still available so did not need to re-record any of this stuff.

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Sound Recording and Sourcing:

We have decided to create our own sound effects and narration for our ident. We need:

- Sound of character 'popping' up in the maze at the start. (I will provide this sound effect)

- Voice over narration (at the end of the ident) to be recorded by Abi. We want a female narrator, because the character in the ident is male, and we didn't want to appea biased to a particular gender (recorded by Abi)

- Swishing signpost sound effect (recorded by me)

- Signpost stopping sound effect (record, using a ruler rebutting against a desk)

- Wind (light breeze)

- Footsteps of character (optional, if we have time, or could be sourced royalty free from the internet)

- Could also source 'happy' background music (to add to the tone of the ident)

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On 23/10 me and Abi worked on handing out some more questionnaires to people around college. Although these people weren't specifically part of our target audience, it was still important to get a good set of feedback, just to see what people are interested in getting from our ideas for ident.

Also, we went into the animation room in order to experiment with the equipment we would be using for when we are producing our ident. We used a rostrum camera which was pointed at an overhead drawing of a maze and a tiny piece of clay. The tiny piece of clay was used to portray how our character would appear in an overhead shot of the maze.

Finally, at this point, Abi had completed work on the storyboards for our ident. Storyboards are important in any production as it gives an idea of how each shot will be framed and laid out when it comes to shooting them during production. Storyboards were used for the making of a claymation Nytol advert.

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Today me and Abi worked on preparing our powerpoint for our pitch on 6/11/15. We discussed the individual headings for the powerpoint and then decided who would talk about what.

We also worked on finalising the production schedule for our work today. A production schedule is an important resource for a production team to use because it maps out the entire pre-production, production and post-production process for the team so that they understand their job roles and have a clear understanding of what they are doing.

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Today I worked on summarising my results from our target audience questionnaires. This is important as we have a rough idea of what our target audience wants to see, which is vital due to the fact they are representative of the overall audience, and a good factor of how an audience may respond to the finished ident.

I also worked on the suite of idents, in order to create a variety of different scenarios for the idea for our ident. This showed the range of areas the Local Offer provides to its target audience.

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Abi was absent in the afternoon so I worked on the budget. A budget is important for animators to use as it gives them a rough idea of how much the equipment they need will cost. It is also important to use as the client is not funding us so will reflect on the fact that animation production teams will need to get funding for their necessary equipment and members in advance, in order to work well in their constraints.

I also managed to print off the target audience questionnaires and was able to give them to a group to answer. This was important for our team as the group we used was representative of our target audience so they gave us a good idea of what people will want to see. I then gathered together some data of the Essex Local Offer to include in my mood board of our target audience. These will prove useful for possible changes and developments we may make to our ident as we'll know exactly what is provided for our target audience.

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Abi was not in today so I got on with a few tasks that I could complete. First I worked on the production schedule as that still had to be completed. This is important as it gives us a list of tasks to work from and update as we go along.

I then worked on the script and the storyline for our ident, which laid out the main narrative of our ident. A script is the most important part of any production as it lays out the entire narrative of the production.

I then moved on to working on to working on the risk assessment. A risk assessment is essential for an animation production team as it lays out the potential risks and hazards that could be a threat to our health, how to avoid them, and what to do if this happens. Finally, I worked on the questionnaires for our target audience in order to find out what they thought of our ident.

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Me and Abi have both experienced a delay as we were both absent on separate days to develop our ideas further. In order to make sure that we were still ahead, we have arranged to come in on Monday to catch up with the work and make sure we have a clear idea of what we will be doing.

On Monday, me and Abi came in and worked on developing our idea. We discussed our own individual mind maps together in order to form a developed idea. We then worked on a team mind map for our idea, before finally moving onto working on a mood board for what has influenced our idea.

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Over the last few weeks I have researched ideas for my animated ident. I have done this by looking at existing television idents and seeing how they are presented and how this could help me. I have also researched different styles of animation, and the pioneers who developed them, in order to know how each technique works and how it could influence me and my ideas. Finally, I have done a few animation experiments using iStopmotion in order to strengthen my skills towards animation. This is good practice as it allows me to get to grips with these methods early and to identify what I'm good at and what I may need to improve on.

Our task is to create an animated ident for Essex Local Offer, which helps children and young people with learning difficulties or disabilities. Therefore we have to take in a few considerations when it comes to what our ident will look like. For example, there must be no flashing images or bright lights in the ident as this would not be suitable to view for people with epilepsy. §§