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First thoughts

I was given Radio 2 as a source to find a 10-20 second audio clip which I could combine with a visual aspect to aid in its message. This being Kinetic Typography. Just typography. No Imagery.

I had a look at Radio 2’s existing website, in particular their use of font and colour. They use Gill Sans as a font and I have included their colour pallet below. This was a good starting point as they have already considered their target audience while choosing these for themselves. On the other hand they host quite a broad show. The audience would change depending on the time of time of day, the dj/host and the content. I had to weigh

all of these into perspective before I could start thinking about design. This led me to take a very different approach to them.

To look at the target audience of BBC Radio 2 I decided to look at a Trust review of the station. The full review can be found here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2010/february/radio2_6music.shtml

Here are the key points I extracted: “The Trust’s review found that Radio 2 was popular with listeners, who believed the station was distinctive – eight out of ten

felt that Radio 2 offered something that could not be easily found elsewhere. This finding was supported by analysis of Radio 2’s output which found that, in a typical week, most tracks played were unique to the station. The Trust’s review welcomed the lack of music overlap between Radio 2, Radio 1, 6 Music, and comparable commercial radio stations. It concluded, however, that the station should become more distinctive by adopting a more ambitious approach to non-music content in peak time.”

“Radio 2’s remit is to appeal to all ages over 35. Its under 35 audience has grown significantly over the last 10 years, albeit

from a low base, but since 2004 this growth has stabilised. Today some 82 per cent of Radio 2’s listeners are over 35, and the average audience age is 50. The review concluded that Radio 2 should maintain this stability but also protect the interests of its older audiences – specifically doing more to target those over 65 years of age.”

“Radio 2’s listeners are loyal to the station, with nearly five million listening to no other BBC radio, and around two million listening to no other radio at all. The review concluded that Radio 2 should use this scale and popularity to make a greater contribution to the BBC’s public purposes.”

From this I knew my target audience for my kinetic typography piece is 35 and over but concentrating mostly upon those around the age of 50.

Gill Sans

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Choosing a radio clip

In order to gain a better understanding of the radio station and its listeners, I decided to have a listen for myself and see what it had to offer. Radio 2 lets you catch up with the days radio from their website.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/programmes/schedules

I decided to listen to any particular slots that covered interesting subjects. It helped me get an idea of the types of music they played as well as the topics they talked about. It helped me picture the potential audience as well as giving me possible clips to work with in my animation. I came across a couple which grabbed my ear and I recorded them. However I decided to keep looking as I wanted to find something

with a stronger image for me to animate.

I began looking in other areas to find more interesting clips from Radio 2. I went on youtube next. At first I didn’t think it was going to work out as the majority of the clips were live performances or other quite random pieces. However after a couple of pages I came across a clip named “Howard Jacobson, Author’s top writing tips – BBC Radio 2 Chris Evans Breakfast Show”

The clip shows the author sharing his personal tips for writing. This is part of a successful series covering different acknowledged authors giving writing tips to listeners .The whole piece is 5.53 minutes long so I knew I would have to cut it down and select a piece of up to

20 seconds. I decided I liked 2.32 – 2.52 ish. The author talks about the writing process and the concept of letting the words lead you. The idea is that once you start writing, sentences will form before you can think of them. I think this idea fits very well with kinetic typography and the two will complement each other nicely. Words, type and animation to be used as a metaphor for words, thought and literature.

To follow is the piece of text I have chosen to animate:“First and foremost, it’s about words, and words have their own life, and if you let the words take you where the words want to go, though sometimes you got to stop them, its always about balance, let the

words lead you but don’t let them lead you too far but if you let them lead you a little bit they will take you to places you never knew you were going to go to”

As he is an author and this speech is coming from that perspective I decided that from the start my artefact should reflects this. This would mean to using a font commonly found in books/literature. I decided to use a background to suggests its been written on book/notepad paper/parchment. Anything textured/crinkled/smudged/used/interesting. Had to give off the idea of idea generation, thought, the freeness of the mind and where your brain can take you when you drift off into deep thought. I had similar ideas for my animations, suggesting things like

writing, scribbling out, page turning or impulsiveness. He says the word, “words” alot, this could be shown through a burst of similar words in a brain storm. It was at this point that I also had the idea that at the end of the animation it could finish with a written piece. Completed work.

First and foremost it’s about words

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Research

Kinetic typography research spam. I found the a vimeo kinetic typography forum on which anyone can post video relating to the subject. Anyone can submit work so long as its worth submitting. I’ve looked through many of the videos, some are good some are bad but there’s a lot of cool techniques going on and it as great inspiration for animation/ movement techniques. There are some really great ideas. I went through a lot of the videos on here, many of them not be exactly along the same lines as my video but it showed me a lot of different typography animations and movement. Here is a small selection of the videos I watched.

http://vimeo.com/channels/kinetictypography/page:1

1. Jess 3 “The State of the Internet” (2010)2. Greatmindsdesign.com (2010)3. 5Nations Squash Championships “Fubah” (2010)4. Danny Yount “Design and LiveAction Reel” (2010)5. F5 “F5 ethos” (2011)6. Adam Gault “Gettysburg Address (2010)7. Jacob Gilbreath “Kinetic Typography” (2011)8. ROLLER MONKEY “playground sessions 3” (2009)9. Matthew Divito “Komaza” (2009)10. MK12 “Brazil Inspired MachoBox” (2009)

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Further research

MK12 “Stranger than fiction” (2010)

This is one of my favourite opening scenes to a movie. The film pictures a very organised and routine man who leads a very boring and calculated life. Everyday, everything he does the same, he even brushes his teeth a specific amount of times. For this reason I think the use of kinetic topography in this movie is very well placed. Use of facts, figures, technical diagrams and animations are really well placed and really build on this character qualities. The figures have also been motion tracked to his movements making them very personal to him. An example of this is when he is brushing his teeth a particular amount of times and then number count is moving with his brushing hand.

Bruno Ferreira “Typewear Reel” (2010)

This reel is dedicated to type projects and he created some pretty good ones. There’s quite a few nice uses of font, colour and movement in there. In particular the falling words animation in the composition above gave me inspiration to create a similar animation for myself. I recognised that it could work well at the start of my video to bring about the first word.

Mediamold “aviaT” (2010)

The video below has the sort of outcome I am trying to avoid. It has some smoke nice animation, typography and colour BUT they are all standard movements which have been seen over and over again. Animations like stacking the words in different sizes and rotating/zooming the camera around them. I would like to use more subtle movements with my piece which reflect writing and thought.

Simon Ellis “Telling Lies” (2001)

I thought this was quite clever as all standard kinetic typography just presents the dialogue artistically as words. This however uses the words to convey what the characters are really feeling. At the end of the day kinetic typography is really just fancy subtitles but this manges to make it meaningful and worth more than imagery.

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Development

From there I started looking at fonts. I knew I would need to use a Serif font as it would suggest being from a book. I did a quick test to see what fonts would work best. This was done by writing out the text I was going to use, duplicating it and applying different fonts. I experimented with Georgia, Minion Pro and Garamond Pro. In the end I decided to use Georgia and I think it worked the best for readability and looks like a typical book literacy font.

From here It was time to start creating

the animations to help explain the words of the authors voice. I wanted to create meaningful animations without adding pointless spammy stacking words and rotating/zooming camera movements. The context is that of a writing a book so they would be off-brief anyway.

1. It starts of scrolling through text made up of Lorum Ipsom. I decided to use this as its used a filler text in design to arrange elements on a page. I decided not to use actual words as it would draw the attention of the reader unnecessarily and

would be out of context.

2. From there words fall down to leave the solitary word “First” in the centre that starts the animation. I decided to do this as it suggests that before you start writing the words you must listen/watch this animation. The words “and Foremost it’s about” appear shortly after.

3. From there it zooms in past that shot so that the original scene is no longer visible. Motion blur and depth of field applied. While zooming you travel through several

copies of the next word “words” they are all at different depths so as you travel they go in and out of focus. This is supposed to signify a series of thoughts in the brain. While writing the brain constantly thinks of words to describe what to write. This simulates that.

4. From here the camera pans right to another blank piece and the next part appears, “and words have their own life”. “and” is already visible, “words have their own” appears as he says it, rotating into view. The “life” fades into view. The fade suggests the birth of words. The rotation of the words beforehand suggests playfulness.

Having done sufficient research into BBC Radio 2, the audience, my clip and kinetic typography I decided it was time to begin making my artefact. I first looked for a background image/texture. This would be important as it would give an overall feel for the whole of the and add a uniformity to it as this would be the only static part of the video. I looked at notepad paper and a textured parchment type paper. The latter looked and worked way better. I decided to desaturate it a bit, made it look a little newer. Gives it the effect of looking like book paper. EXCELLENT!

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Continued development

5. The camera again pans right to another blank piece. “and if you let the words take you where they want to go”. These words are big and appear as he says them. I’ve stacked them on top of each other in groups of 2′s and the camera pans down each time a new stack appears. This gives a feel of typed words as well as the words dragging the camera down with them. They are taking you.

6. The next part of the animation happens fast, “though sometimes you’ve gotta stop them.” ending abruptly with “stop them” for effect. Suggests that suddenly the streams of words has gone into overdrive while writing but its got to the point where its going slightly off-topic and the author has to stop them in their tracks and look

back over what he has written.

7. “It’s always” appears underneath, then the words fall down, the camera follows. They fall on the word “balance”, become unbalanced and tip towards the words “let the” which appear as he says them.

8. Following that another word cloud of the word “words” appears again zooming in towards the camera along the z-axis. Once they get to full size on the screen the camera travels with the word cloud as they take you with them. This gives meaning to the rest of the sentence, “lead you but don’t let them lead you too far”. As the camera zooms I arranged the words of that sentence along the z-axis so the camera passes them and they become legible. This

is show that the words are leading you and they are travelling at speed.

9. The camera zoom stops once you hit the word “far” and the word cloud of “words” travels past the camera. “but if you let them lead you a little bit”. This sentence appears at a 45degree angle to far lead off into the distance. Each word appears as the author says them. The camera gradually begins to follow the sentence into the slight distance. Gives the impression that the words are still leading the audience but this time alot more slowly. It’s much more manageable.

10. The camera pans down and the last sentence to appear is “they will take you to places you never knew you were going to

go to…”. These move from the top of the screen as the author says them, they are rotated to appear they are falling onto a surface.

11. Once they have all appeared the camera zooms out and a paragraph of lorum ipsom appears. The last sentence is part of this paragraph. This gives the appearance of a finished outcome. A written piece of text in a published book. I used quite heavy depth of field and it gives the effect that the book is quite expansive and you are looking at only a small part of it. It also links with the start of the animation nicely.

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Evaluation

I was pleased with the final outcome of my work. As this brief as more focused it gave me a chance to concentrate more on design. Usually the briefs we are set are a lot more open. This leads to me to thinking more about ideas and it can take me a while to decide what sort of path to take. This brief on the other hand was a lot more directed and it meant I could concentrate more on the design aspect including type, colour and animation.

I think the brief worked alot more like an actually client brief. This enabled me to put more detail into thinking exactly what the hypothetical client would want from the work. Each piece of the animation I have been able to justify and provide a reason for why I did it in that particular way rather than just because it looked cool. As a result I think my artefact has been alot more accurate to the brief than usual with my projects.

Through this brief my work pattern was alot more spread out than usual. My time

management is usually not the best, I spend half my time trying to think about my possible outcome and what would work well. With this project however the tighter brief meant I could jump straight into research and I roughly already knew roughly what the outcome would entail. For the first project in a while I am truly quite happy with the outcome and even with more time I don’t think I would change much.

While researching I found a lot of the kinetic typography out there is very similar. People concentrate just on the animation. The typical stacked words which appear one by one and the camera moves wildly to keep up. With my project I wanted to try and make this a little more subtle and try and link them alot more with the meaning of the piece as well as the particular words being said.

In future I would like to start looking alot more into design fundamentals. Its only just in the last 6 months that I’ve

started properly considering typography for example. I have also found I usually stick to work that is mostly monochrome, this is generally because I’m not great with colour. In future I would like to start considering this more in my work. I have reasonable skill with programs but in particular I think this will lead to work that looks alot better.

During this project I got to grips alot more with after effects. I used alot more camera movements with this piece than I have done previously including motion blur, depth of field/blur levels and general movements through 3D space. This was beneficial as now I’m much more confident using these methods and understand what sort of outcome they produce. In future I would like to experiment with bringing in 3D models into after effects and using its cameras to create video opposed to using the cameras in 3D Max. This would allow for alot more compositing and effects.

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