Night Out

FINAL PIECE

So after ENDLESS hours of work here we have the final piece as it is. Audio and lots of animation into one. Im quiet pleased with the end result and the all-nighters have paid off. If my work brings a smile on people that watch it I will now I’ve accomplished my goals set at the beggining.

Enjoy!

JP

 

IDEAS:

To start with a question: what defines your night? People often do different things on their night outs. Some go to the movies, others go out for dinner, others go out clubbing. There are endless combinations to a night out. So there are endless combinations to approach this brief.

When I first received the brief I wanted to focus on a “going out to party” night out, but more specifically on a section of the night that I was introduced to last year when I first came to the United Kingdom. I saw that going out had a whole previous “ritual” to it.  I had never experienced the Pre-Drinks section of the night and I have to say. Things get messy there.

Some people consider Pre-Drinks the heart of the night, so I wanted to focus on this section of the night.

The first idea that came to mind was to film a Pre-Drinks session and mess around with it, but after a few try shots I came to realize that filming people to act normal and casual in one night out wouldn’t work. People get camera shy and start giggling when you point at them. Theres the occasionally stare directly into the camera until they realize its awkward. Secondly when the session was coming to an end people were already a bit hammered and I didn’t want to show any embarrassing behavior involving my friends. Here is a clip taken with a go-pro during a night of drinking and clowning around at a couple of friends house.

This pre-drinks session is less crowded than an average one, but it is similar to an extend. Drinking going on, random dancing going on, weird behaviour. Also have someone POV on it. 

The second idea is doing a type in motion of a session. What I like about type in motion is that there is always a flow to it. Type in motion is always dynamic and there’s so many ways to explore and come with a final product. I’ve always enjoyed watching type in motion so here are a few examples of it:

 

This first video is a normal type in motion video, like the other 90% you see out there. It is fast paced fun to watch due to it transitions. He uses some parts of the type twice like when he uses the 2 (for the word second) and the using the same number transitions to 1/2 (to express half). This technique adds a great touch to the clip. The choice of font is good as well since its clean and very easy to read what makes following the video easy.

This other video its thinking outside the box and it’s quiet interesting. Using a scene from Pulp Fiction the person then laid type and animated it to the script. It is quiet interesting to see how the type reacts to the environment set the ‘movie set’. Sometimes is not 100% easy to read but is amazing to watch. The use of type to arrange like a fire weapon is clever and gives that intensity of the scene.

Back to my idea. The first idea in type in motion was to record and then move the type according to the recording of the night (not actually a video footage, but an audio track), but I faced some troubles doing so. I couldn’t record with a fancy Microphone because I would end up in the same category as the film idea were people would act consciously and not naturally and would feel very forced. So forgetting about the fancy Mic. I turned to my mobile phone to record without noone seeing, but again I faces some more problems. I had to  First the sound levels were peaking and there was a lot of confusion at the background including music, some talking and a lot of screaming, which was very difficult to lay type on top of Half of the time you couldn’t distinguish what was being said.

Recorded this without anyone knowing so this is like natural habitat. But theres too much noise and confusion as you can see.

I was confident I could pull off the type in motion idea so I kept thinking of different ways of moving around it and keep the idea of the Pre-Drinks session. That’s when I came with the idea of a fast paced mock to “a guide for pre-drinks”. Doing a narrator style I will separate the clip in a step by step to pulling off a great start to a night out focusing on the key points/elements that occur during the night.

After brainstorming what to include in the video I came with some basic topics to include and make the most out of this short clip, while keeping it entertaining and fast paced. The areas to include in the clip will be: Drinking Games, Booking a Ride, Tactical Chunder, and a section about Challenges.

Why this 4 categories? To start of a good pre-drinks session most of the time ,not to say always includes some drinking games. There are endless number of drinking games. My original idea was to include Ring of Fire (from personal experience is the most commonly used) and International Drinking Rules (its a through all the night game), but I chose to explain Ring of Fire only because it fit the fast paced idea better. Explaining International Drinking Rules took forever.

The booking a ride section came from seeing that each night disaster struck by when the time to book taxis came. You start with a general idea of how many people you’re going out with. But when its time to count the number of people to book the ride it’s all down hill from there. People are missing, people not going out anymore, more people have joined your night, people are in the toilet etc etc. I’ve faced events where 2 extra taxis arrive at your doorstep, or where people are left behind because there’s not enough taxis. People don’t usually notice this because they’re hyped, yelling around, and they come to realize at the club’s doorstep.

The Tactical Chunder came more of a joke section, but you wouldn’t believe how many people do it before they leave the house, even while walking they take a break behind a trash bin and refresh themselves.

Challenge section is more of a “while drunk” thing were everyone consider themselves to be daredevils and do silly things thats why setting up challenges no matter how ridiculous they are people will do them for the laugh.

Also Decided to finish with the line “getting back home is your own problem” because in more cases that is what happens. People are too busy being drunk that they dont realize when the so unified starting group starts splitting up. And it’s kind of ironic that you start the night in such a massive group and t the end of the night you’re just one drunk individual wandering back home.

With the idea in mind now the challenge will be coming up with a script for the narrator to read.

SCRIPT

To start the script off, I had to ask for some people’s advice: Last year when I was living at Halls Residence @ AUCB I met, Andrew Layton, Jess Ellison and Peter Shimmin and since day one they seemed to be the ones that organized the pre-drinks: Drinking games, rules, etc etc. It was chaos. So no better place, than to ask for their help. After they pointed me in the right direction and gave some bits of information I started writing the script.

The Final outcome of the first script was this wall of text that if I read it at a fast speed it took like 3 minutes to the end. There was no way I was going to animate that much text with a positive outcome. So had to trim the script a bit thinking what could be taken off and keeping the essential info.

This was the final Script:

Wanna have an epic night out?

Step One: Getting Drunk

Place a Jug on the table and a deck of cards around it.

Ace – set the pace. Two – you. Three – me. Four – flour. Five – guys. Six – chicks. Seven – Heaven. Eight – mate. Nine – rhyme. Ten – question master. Jack – make a rule. Queen – Lick and Stick. King – Put in or Drink.

Downing the king cup will give you a hero status for the rest of the night.

 

Step Two: Booking a Ride

What a disaster is to count while drinking.

Are you sure about the number? Remember you’re tipsy by now! C’MON do it again! And once again Mary just came out of the bathroom.

 

Step Three: Tactical Chunder

Feeling you won’t last long? 

Do it! Doesn’t matter where. In the toilet, in the bushes, on your neighbors doorstep, out the taxi’s window.

It will see you right for the rest of the night.

 

Step Four: Challenge Accepted.

I say: go into the opposite sex’s toilet. Yes yes, or. Plank on the dance floor.

I dont know, use your imagination, but see them done.

Follow this step by step and you will not regret your night. Well sort of. 

 

And remember, t the end of the night don’t be a fool wrap your tool. Or, wrap his. Whaaaaat. Just sayin.

PS: getting back home is your own problem.

After I was done with the script the next task was to find the good voice. Walter Mirkss – Acting student @ AUCB helped me with the voice. As an acting student he knew how to react while reading the script, which was great for the pace and the tone of the video.

STORYBOARD & GRAPHICS

I’m not that much of a storyboard enthusiast. I find storyboarding for this kind of material hard since it’s a lot of trial and error to see what works best. And to see the movement, the rotation, and size on a piece of paper rather that actually be messing around with it is quite difficult. I don’t know if it’s just me, but that’s the way I see it. At the end of the day I did changed a lot of the layout over and over again sometimes spending 30+ minutes animating 5 seconds of text to make it look right and smooth. Other than that here are the graphics I build in illustrator for the purpose of this project. I made the vast majority of them with the exception of 2.

Why use graphics along with the type in motion project?

Graphics add a nice touch to the idea and give a certain flow to it. Yes I could have done it all on plain text. I could have written all the cards without the actual card on it, but it would’ve been boring. Instead, adding the card gives a sense of a ‘flipping card’ game and a flow to it. The extra graphics are to explain a bit mor in detail the rules of the game the hands pointing to a certain location or the underwear to replace obvious words and give it a mocking touch. The shot glasses to represent the rule or drinking number / speed. The condom in one of the closing sentences to make the already obvious more obvious. Used some graphics to complet certain environments or actions the toilet back, the car door/window moving at the same speed as the text to give the sensation the words ar coming out the taxis window. The half circles to complete and together with three words make a bush. Or the moon to replace the word ‘Night’ and with it complete a needle that will come to interaction with a state meter to convey the general idea of “If you chunder your will feel good for the rest of the night” a balance between left and right being left the worst.

Graphics are not the only thing positioned a certain way or animated the a certain way some of the words also try emphasize something. Words trying to build a shape of a Jug, or words placed together that with the addition of a graphic they look like something (its the example of the state meter, or the toilet on the tactical chunder step). Some words are animated to leave the sight with a tweak to represent something a flush of a toilet, liquid falling. Others to give mening to the word like opposite flipping to give the sensation, or disaster spelled completely wrong.

RECORDING AUDIO

So after I had the script ready it was time to record it. So I armed my self with a Foster Audio Recorder and ME66 Mic Kit. I opened the box and i found my self with this box looking thing with A LOT of buttons. I freaked out, but luckily all I needed was maximum 3 of those buttons, so I was good to go. Using the kit wasn’t hard at all, it took a couple of minutes to set the device to avoid peak levels. And we were rolling. I had to record a couple of times since de EM66 is quite the Mic that it recorded some random voices and footsteps from outside the room, but that was no problem at all.

Final Audio clips:

LAST MINUTE DISASTERS 

Oh yeah it happens to everyone, and the funny thing is it happens at the last minute. Couple of hours prior to the deadline. AND it happened to me the night i was doing my final renders. I divided this project into 4 small projects so I wouldn’t have to deal with an endless number of layers in one file. It was a perfect idea but the last day, with a tired brain, I saved over one of my projects and all the informations was gone. Lots of hours of work. Gone! Gladly I had rendered before it happened and I have the final copy with me, but it is a bummer that I dont have the file for future editing if needed.

EXTRA BIT OF INFO (a gift):

I know that for a person that hasn’t played Ring of fire before its hard to understand all the rules so im gonna explain them more in detail on this section now that I had to remove some explaining in the video.

You have the Jug on the table and the deck of cards around it facing down. Everyone sits around the Jug as a centerpiece. Taking turns each person will take a card and flip it.

A – Waterfall: this person starts drinking and then starting to the left (or right) everyone starts drinking according to the pace set. Once it goes around the group and back to the starting person he/she is allowed to stop and so one everyone starts putting down their drink.

2 – That person chooses who drinks.

3 – That persons drinks.

4 – Once this card comes out everyone has to touch the floor, last to do it drinks.

5 – All guys.

6 – All Girls.

7 – Once this card comes out everyone must point to the heaven, last to do it drinks.

8 – If you get this card you choose a mate for the entirety of the game. Whenever you drink. He drinks.

9 – You say a word and taking turns people have to rhyme it if someone fails. That person drinks

10 – That person is the Question master. If he asks a question no one can answer if they do they drink.

J – Make a rule. Example: can’t touch your drink with your hands.

Q – Lick the Queen and stick it in your forehead. When it falls, drink.

K – There are 4 Kings. If you get a King you pour a portion of your drink into the King Cup (jug in the middle of the group). The person that gets the last King has to down the whole Jug.