When looking back over the course of this project I found it to be quite challenging yet very valuable learning experience. When deciding on a brief I discovered that I was able to come up with engaging and interesting ideas that were all equally as profitable as I was keen on them all. I settled on The North Face project because I became quite passionate about the message I wanted to get across; allowing young women to feel comfortable within the outdoors and encouraging them to feel empowered by nature and exploration. So, for me to do this I thought it was best for me to look at different female explorers throughout the ages and highlight the ones that I thought to be the most courageous or just typically caught my eye. I researched about women that cycled around the world in 80 days, women that pretended to be men to sail the seas, the first black woman to reach the North pole and suffragettes that had mountains named after them. This was all super inspiring and helped to add some grit to my final piece.  

Before all this the first thing I did was conduct a lot of brand and marketing research. I learnt all about The North Face and how they came to be, along with what they stand for now. The North Face have a whole collection dedicated to celebrating women which was released for international women's day, the collection is still available, and I took a lot of inspiration from this campaign, even designing my website in a similar fashion. I also looked at how to market a campaign and represent a brand with good intent. To do this it's important to stick with the logistics like using their font and style, sounding like the brand (words they use etc) and looking like the brand by using their colours etc. After researching the company and becoming familiar with their ethos, I then looked at how other companies had promoted the same message about female empowerment. I took inspiration from the videos I watched, noting aspects of the videos that I found useful, liked and didn’t like.  

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I ended up focusing on one video, a collab by Gucci X North Face, that I believed to be quite appealing for two reasons: the technical skill was at a level I was comfortable with and the message that the video promoted was one of comfort and ease – although the target audience wasn’t just for women, I thought there were aspects of that video that I could potentially get inspiration from.  

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I had a few different ideas to begin with before settling on the final product; I wanted to create a first person POV video as I wanted my audience to feel as close and comfortable with nature as possible through this character. However, when looking at the techniques used, I discovered that it wouldn’t be as easy as I thought. This is because of equipment. I didn’t have a GoPro that I could put on my head to film at eye level. I looked at alternative methods such as placing a strap around my head with my iPhone attached but I quickly realised that I wouldn’t be able to capture the footage I wanted or needed for me get my desired outcome.  

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I went camping and did a test shoot as soon as possible, playing around with different compositions and exposures ensuring that I got used to the settings on my camera and figured out how everything worked so that I wouldn’t have to do this on the day of filming. 

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When filming I spent the day getting the shots I wrote down on my storyboard/ shot list and then experimented with shots I wanted to try, ensuring that I retook each shot to make sure that they were useable in post. By the end of the day, I had gathered a number of clips and pictures that I could experiment with when editing. If I was to do my storyboard again, I would experiment with using pictures of the actors in the actual frame. I would do this to show my ideas with clarity, meaning that anyone that looks at the storyboard would have a clear understanding of the shots, angles and composition of my video. Although I didn't take photos, I do believe that my storyboard was sufficient enough for the circumstances I worked in. This is because the i had text to outline the direction of the camera and used vertical and horizontal lines to demonstrate the different frames whilst using colour to highlight any important direction. However, using photographs would mean that I would have to go to the location and use actors. I chose to draw it as these factors would not effect my final product.

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The editing process was a long and tiresome one and I had to figure out multiple issues to do with storage and playback speed. This was because my laptop doesn’t have a high enough ram and CPU to run all the footage and the premier pro software at the same time. I ended up purchasing a hard drive and then eventually an SSD Drive in order for my laptop to keep up with my work. I couldn't complete the editing at college because they have an older version of the software at hand. I discovered this was the problem and the solution by asking those around and using the internet to answer any other queries I had. These problems did slow down my progress and put me a little behind my schedule, if I was to do a project like this again, I would ensure that I had all the equipment I needed.  

 

I struggled adding the context to my video because I wanted it to be informative but not an entire history lesson. Therefore, I decided to pick one famous female explorer with a strong quote. I was able to take this quote and animate using Aftereffects and eventually add audio and movement to the picture that went along with the text – the final thing I did was add film burn and chop it up on the timeline to give it a flashing effect of colour. I had never animated text on After effects before, therefore I had to research how to do this; I used code to get the lettering to move continuously and played around with the speed of the typing also using this code. I chose to add the quote right at the start rather than the middle or end because I felt it set the rest of the video up nicely and gave it context straight away, so my target audience was engaged from the beginning. 

Overall, I believe that my final piece turned out okay, it wasn’t what I initially planned it to be, but it is still close to my original idea. The video does have a strong narrative and that comes through via the footage, I know this because I have evidence to support it through detailed feedback. One of the things that I take away from this project is that extensive research and brainstorming is a necessity before producing a video, especially for a brand. I f I was to do this project again I would ensure that that my technical knowledge regarding the technology itself is secure and not just my level of skill and technique when editing a video.