Production

In this we're to describe the full production and editing process it took to create both the moving advert and the posters including problems we faced when creating them, how we solved said problems, and how we worked as a crew together. Of course I shall do this with each product individually starting with the posters.

This, the first poster I made, didn't take all too much to make. Like the other two posters I had decided to use online graphics and images to create it partly for simplicity and ease and partly because we had not shot the video advert at the time so I couldn't take images from that to use.

In terms of how I made it, I'll start from the beginning.
Firstly I added the autumn background to the image, adjusting the scale to fill the frame.
Once I had done that I added the wheel using the brush select tool and copying to just add the wheel and frame and leave out the spokes. Once I added it as another layer and changed the position and scale so it was where I wanted it I went to effects, looking to soften the edges and change the shadowing and colour so it looked like it fit in with the current scene more. After a lot of changes with the effects I managed to get rid of the jagged edges left by the brush select and somewhat alter the colour with the help of Tony. The two of us had differing opinions on how much the wheel should have changed, with me wanting to give it a more orange and sunset colouration with the indication of a higher light source while he wanted less change and a lower artificial light source so the wheel stood out from the background more. In the end I went with his judgement.
Next I added the 4 scenes inside the wheel. These where a little complicated to do but once I had worked it out it was the same for each. They each where on their own layer and where all behind the wheel. This was important as it let me keep the crisp edge of the wheel as I did this. I then one by one added a mask that made everything other than the shown part of the image transparent. At first I had problems getting consistent parallel straight lines, but I worked out that if I used a rectangular select tool I could choose to mask only what was in the selected area, in effect giving myself a ruler. Other than the straight lines inside the wheel I also had to mask the corners, but that didn't prove to be too difficult either and I simply did that freehand.
After making the masking process I made the semi-transparent border, taking inspiration from the posters I had seen before but adding a small twist of my own. To create this border it took three major steps. First I used an elliptical select tool to select the circle I didn't want selected, not even a quarter of which was actually in frame. Then I promptly used options to select the inverse, giving the borders of my frame. Then finally I went to the gradient tool and began tweaking the settings until I had a gradient that would fade out outwards (radial gradient) and changed how quickly it would fade so I would keep the line in place at the edge of my select. Once that was done and I had blue and transparent selected as the colours I chose the point of origin to be roughly where the centre of the original circle was, and set the edge to be around the bottom left corner of the frame. Thus the blue border was created in a new frame.
Finally, the text and logo was created as a copied image for the logo and two text layers for the "ride free" and "ride giant" parts. I used character editing to change how bold the text was along with the spacing between lines and individual letters.

Next I made this poster, again using images and graphics to make it. This one took a lot less to make but I still believe it has an impact.

First we started with the background mountains, which we added in a manor similar to the first poster, simply taking the mountain image we found and enlarging it to the desired size.
After that we added the floor you see. This was done with a brush select as there was a large amount of unwanted shrubbery included. We selected it, copied it, and resized it to fit with the mountains.
Then we added the bike which in this case we took extensive care around the spokes and other small details to properly include them in the brush select. After a few adjustments and the occasional use of the magic rubber tool we got a suprisingly detailed image of the wheel which we added as standard.
As for the border, it was created in a similar way to the first, albeit simpler. First we used a rectangular select to select the location of the border. Then we used the linear gradient tool to create the fade. Then we duplicated the layer to make it stand out more as I felt it had too soft of a fade and too much transparency to it. After adjusting some of the opacity options directly I got it to the perfect level I wanted it.
The logo was added as a standard image once again, and the text this time took more work as we had curved it. By curving it to fit the tire we had to be a bit more precise in the spacings to make sure it fit well.

This was the final poster I made and was probably one of the easiest to make, requiring only one image while the rest was graphics.

So of course we started with the background which was simply another radial gradient, this time simply using a lighter and darker blue to get the effect.
On top of that I added the wheel cut similarly to the wheel in the second poster using another brush select.
Next we added text and used the character editing panel to do some serious work on the spacing. Unfortunately I had to edit the space between each letter individually which resulted in it taking a much longer time than I thought it would. Aside from that we once again edited the boldness of the font and other aspects of it to make it fit and pop easily.
This entire poster was based more on simplicity, drawing inspiration from the second video ad we reviewed and slight points from the second poster we reviewed.

And now we move onto the video advert, which we shall look at in three steps: how it was made and developed in filming, how well the crew worked together, and how it was made in editing.

Starting with the shooting, we had decided using a greenscreen would be the best way to create this. We booked out the studio and took the bike into the room, and one problem was immediately apparent, we didn't have much room to begin with. We had to clear out and move all of one side of the room so we could ride the bike in front of the whole greenscreen, and then quickly moved the camera back as far as we could while still having the greenscreen in frame. Next we had to implement lighting. We used the built in studio lights to mainly light up the greenscreen, but noticed there were still some shadows so we promptly set up two lights to light up the back, hoping the two would minimise the shadows created. Unfortunately due to our setup we couldn't fit in any kind of backing light for the subject, resulting in a few issues when keying for the greenscreen in editing later on. We didn't realize this mistake at the time, but even if we had we couldn't have done much to help it as the subject was already having to be mere inches from the greenscreen.
Continuing on, we filmed several takes of a scene where I cycled from one side of the greenscreen to the other. This didn't take too much work, with the hardest part being to stop late enough to be out of shot yet early enough to not hit the wall. After that we did a scene where I faced the camera and pretended to cycle forward. This was simply a matter of attempting to be convincing and beyond that there was no problems. It was around this time that some major changes to the original concept where made due to time constraints and the other actor's request. Rather than him coughing and being in pain, we decided the non-cyclist would instead simply spot the bike go past him and then proceed to be inspired to cycle himself. Thus the next two shots where of Jack standing before the greenscreen and watching me go past, and then of him cycling past himself. Several difficulties arose from this. Firstly the camera had moved down without us realizing and how had a small portion of the black floor also in shot. Now, this would have been fine except Jack had decided that wearing very dark clothes would be fine. Normally it would, but it did mean that I couldn't easily key out the black later. Of course we didn't realize this at the time so it was never fixed. Other than that there was another problem with one of Jack's parts, being that he was not able to cycle straight particularly well. It took several attempts and me standing at the end so he didn't hit the wall for him to get a few decent, albeit slower takes. Luckily we got there eventually and got the last few shots in before watching them over and stopping due to time.

Next is how well we worked as a crew. Personally I think we're rather light hearted but still got the job done. Jack was the most hardworking of us three, making sure to keep us on track, but wasn't adverse to having a laugh and playing into our groups general banter. He played his role excellently despite the previously mentioned issues, and while his ego did prove to be slightly trying when trying to get him to do more than he already was doing. When not doing his roll he was often bossy and played director, but light-heartedly so, and said bossiness did prove helpful when critically evaluating my own performance, resulting in several extra takes my end. I of course took it in stride, knowing full well he didn't mean it to be bossy past the comedic value. I'll admit I often tease him, although he knew it was me teasing. I don't feel like my teasing and occasional random extra bits between shots simply for the sake of outcuts got in the way particularly, although if I asked the other two I might hear otherwise. Luckily Jack was there to keep me somewhat focused. Alfie was quiet, but still joined in the jokes and banter. He stayed at the camera operating it and didn't move too much from his post, but I don't see that as a bad thing. While he wasn't as involved as me or Jack he still did his job to the letter and never once complained. He made sure we weren't in shot before we began recording and kept an eye on the focus. It wasn't like he was shy or couldn't talk, but more that he had no reason to past jokes or telling us to move in some way. All in all I feel like we worked well as a group, and while we might not be the most efficient, we still manage to get the job done and can easily make calls and choices should the need arise, and while we do joke we still know when we need to be serious.

Finally we'll look at the editing process. This I'll do chronologically, going from one scene to the next and going into how it was made and the challenges of each.

Starting with the first scene, we immediately had a number of problems. Firstly we had to get the bike to stay still in the centre of the frame, which required me to get it to move backwards the same speed it was moving forwards by animating the position effect. After some tweaking and adjusting we managed to get it working with the bike staying roughly in the centre. Once we did that there was several things we needed to do that Tony and I tried to work out how to accomplish and after creating several problems ourselves we worked out that the still bike needed to be it's own file with the counter movements already in place.

After importing the new file we keyed out the green using an ultrakey effect.

Using the ultrakey and adjusting some of the more technical settings of said ultrakey we were able to get rid of the green and minimise the problems caused by an absence of a backlight. Unfortunately a new problem then reared its head. Because we had turned the shot into its own file, the edges where the ends of the greenscreen come into shot now show black rather than transparent. After attempting and failing to key it out we settled on using opacity masks to hide it.

By adding a mask to any effect you can create an area in which the effect will only happen inside of or outside of, depending on how you've set it up. In our case we've made it so anything inside the box is transparent. Our original plan was to have one for each side as both had area's that became black, but for some reason Premier Pro refused to let us use multiple unless every one after the first was to not work on anything. Thus our solution was to simply stretch the one mask up and over the subject in a blocky arch. After this it was only the somewhat simple yet tedious matter of assembling them. We had decided to have the scene be the subject traveling through multiple different locations which we chose.

This decision was made due to the variety of landscapes shown in our reasearch, particularly the first poster. Once we had picked out which ones to use we had to sync up all the transitions which was both long and tedious as all of their times had to be changed and they all had to be inverted as I had picked wipes to match up with the direction the bike was going (which wasn't their default direction.)

Once that had been added along with the text which also where separate files which need their own wipes I had finished the first scene and moved onto the next.

Also, one final thing on this scene, people said it went by far too quickly to be properly registered, so to resolve that I selected the entire section and set it to run at 50% speed, doubling it's duration. This did mean I needed to rearrange some things, but I personally think it's better for it.

The next scene was one utilising the the forwards facing angle showing us traveling through the forest on the bike. This needed more keying once again along with the backgrounds scale and position to be animated so it looked like I was traveling. Aside from that there weren't all that many technical aspects aside from how I used different transitions this time. The shot of me cycling is all one shot, but the three locations I used have dip-to-black transitions while the text changes using cube-spin transitions to add more intrigue. 

People did end up saying that the movement was too drastic to be realistic, and so I reduced it down so it looked like I wasn't going as far as I was before while cycling towards the camera.

Next was of course the scene where I cycle past Jack. Now this actually had a couple of problems, the main ones being that I needed to sync the cycling to the movement of Jack's head and I needed to sync the reveal of the words to the bike. Making me follow Jacks face was largely based on making small adjustments to the animated position until it was close enough. Luckily it makes me go past so fast that small inconsistencies don't even matter. Now, with the text it was actually a rather simple solution. What I did was I found the moment I came into frame and used the razor tool and select tool to cut out and remove the bit of text that existed before that. Then I found the exact moment I left the frame and added a wipe to the text that ended at that moment. Thus the wipe accurately followed the bike. 

The final scene has a lot going on. Starting simple, the border is simply a stacked premade semi-transparent image made exactly the same way I made the borders in the posters. The text and logo flying out of the sun is just animated scale and position effects. They all start at scale 0 in the position where they'll be over the sun. They then expand and move each when another has finished moving until they're all in position. Finally, the flying bike is a multitude of effects. Firstly it has some animated opacity at the start during the transition into that scene as otherwise it stands out too much. Then the movement is an animated position effect being used with an animated rotation effect. The change in shadow is an animated tint effect so it gets darker the closer to the sunset it is. 

This admittedly started off as a joke, but then I realized it fit well with the slogan I had created, and thus I kept it and improved upon it. Also as a comedic moment it adds humour and memorablility to the advert which is one of the best parts of Pathos advertising, a form of advertising that I know from my reaserch works well with bikes.

The final section I'm talking about which I'm talking about all at once is the audio. There's no audio except for music, and aside from repeating the first part of the first song in time with my first scene I've not done much with the music. Between those cuts and the switch in song at the end all have the constant-power transition to reduce how obvious and jerky it would normally feel. 

I picked these songs firstly because they fit the advert well but secondly because it continues the humourous theme I created at the end throughout the advert, meaning the ending scene isn't as sudden as it could have been, and I've already explained how humour is a good way to sell through Pathos.