Response to Recycling Brief

The brief for the recycling campaign was a formal brief to encourage young adults to recycle more and understand what is acceptable to recycle. The task was to create a short film (no more than 60 seconds) to change the opinion of young people’s views towards recycling.

As a group our initial ideas were to film young adults placing different recyclable materials (plastic/glass bottles, cardboard etc.) in the correct bins. However this idea seemed to plain and would be hard to make interesting and appealing to young people. Another idea was to show young people littering bits of rubbish, then other members of the young public picking it up and appropriately putting it in the recycling bins. This idea almost went ahead until we agreed on the unrealistic aspect of the idea. We believed it to be unrealistic and not very encouraging. However, the idea of people littering and other members of public helping to ‘clean up the planet’ seemed to be the roots of a good idea. So instead of having a group of youths dropping litter, we had one young adult leaving an empty bottle of water on the wall, then a by passer picks it up and suitably disposes it in a recycling bin.

When the basic idea was formed we then got to work on planning how it would be filmed. Our first few story boards seemed to complex and probably wouldn’t have matched expectations that we had. So we decided to simplify it and make it as rudimentary as possible. We used a static camera for the whole film by placing the camera on a wall. The brief does say that the clip must upbeat but doesn’t say it has to have a certain amount of camera angles or shots; however the music that accompanies the clip creates an upbeat sense. The clip begins with a young adult walking past and leaving his water bottle on the wall (just in front of the camera), then see him walking off down the path. As he turn the corner another person comes around and picks it up. The clip the fades out and shows the necessary tag line ‘Wipe out Waste’.   

The brief made it very clear that the music for the film had to be completely copyright free. So to avoid any copyright issues we made our own music on ‘GarageBand’. Being familiar with this program it wasn’t hard to come with a suitable tune for this particular campaign. And as the clip only had to be 60 seconds long the track didn’t take long to create. Just by using a simple drum beat and a catchy acoustic guitar riff (and other instruments such as shakers and percussion in various parts of the track), we constructed a great theme for the film.

Not much changed in our final production from what we had already decided in the planning stages. We kept one single camera shot/angle throughout the 60 seconds, and kept the recycling fact that opens the video. The only minor change we made was how the clips joined together with different transactions. To create a more flowing effect we used a 'fade to' effect between the shot. This produced the professional standard we were trying to achieve. As far as editing decisions are concerned, are video didn't require any clip cutting or sound dubbing. We did, however, intensify some of the coulors in the video. Using a saturation effect, it made the bottle stand out in front of everything else, drawing the audiences attention to main part of the video.

I am happy with the outcome of the video, the quality and professionalism that we managed to achieve. However, there are some changes I would make if given the task again. For example, other than the fact and the logo at the ed of our video, it may be unclear to some people as to what we're trying to accomplish.