Session 8 - Finishing Campaign Pre-Production And Pitching - 11/5/12

Introductions

We kicked the session off by being introduced to Lara, who is a creative copywriter and project manager. She will be working to help out with the OD or Knowledge campaign.

Next week, both the I Am and OD On Knowledge groups will be pitching their ideas. So in this session we focused on getting our ideas and presentations ready to impress the panel. We had to make some cut-throat decisions about how to execute the campaigns and decide how to communicate them to the panel in the best light. 

We split into our two different campaign groups to work on different elements of our campaign.

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I am ?

We divided up to work on the following areas of our campaign:
- Storyboarding (which will now be shot from 2nd person and not 1st person)
- Locations
- Props
- Script
- Powerpoint presentation for pitching

Storyboarding:
We decided in previous session that we wanted our 'Young Shockz' video to be shot in first person but now feel that it will be more effective if we shoot it in second person. This just means that the camera will be following Young Shockz rather than being him.

Locations:
We discussed the locations that we will need to use for shooting 'Young Shockz'. They are Nicole's House, Street and Peggy's House.

Props:
We discussed what props that we will need for 'Young Shockz'. They are; a football, a baggie (to look like the gang have handed Young Shockz something), posters, a tracksuit and a hat.

Actors/actresses:
We have agreed that we are going to audition for the role of Young Shocks in our school through the drama department.

We are also going to have to find somebody to play a mum and 4 gang members to be in the film, Young Shockz.

To finish up the session we went over any paperwork left unfinished.

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OD on Knowledge

Objectives:

>Pitch preparation: How do we present ourselves and our ideas effectively? What impression do we want to give the panel of our group and our concept?

>Storyboards: Need to be updated and in the best format for use at the pitch

>Pitch arrangements: Need to know where, when and to who
>Review changes to our ideas and agree on a final route.

Execution of our ideas: 

> Choose an animator to commission for our short film

> Create a tight brief to direct the animator with

> Review budget, allocate funds spent and set a budget for the animation

> Address changes in the idea from a practical perspective, such as the club night for promotion.

> Agree on the final film concept and key messages.

Outcomes:

Finalising our campaign concept and design:
 We combed through the whole user journey to make sure it was as engaging and effective as possible. From the moment they see people handing out wristbands, to watching our film and sharing it over social media. We reviewed each step from the perspective of our target market to check whether there were any weak links, boring bits, stuff that would put people off and places we might lose people. 

One issue we faced was the first point of contact - where our audience would receive our promotional wristbands - because the club night has been moved. We have the contact details for the organiser so need to find out where the new venue will be and make sure that we can promote our campaign there. 

The next issue we discussed was how to make sure our audience actually follow up on our promo activity and look the film up. We are using a competition as an incentive, but some people in the group pointed out that not everyone trusts this sort of promotion. So we agreed that there was a need for evidence. 

Sometimes people think competitions are rigged and there's no point in entering.

So we decided to include elements of proof in our flyers and communication such as:

- photos of the ticket prizes

- live streaming of the winners being chosen

- interviews or public appearance of the winners

- giving dates and directions for the above, so people know they can check the authenticity as soon as they hear about the competition. 

The next step was agreeing on our final concept. Over the last few weeks our idea has changed, and although we learnt a lot from the process and covered lots of interesting angles - we realised that we had to make some calls about exactly what route we were following. Otherwise we risked a confusing message, which would damage both our pitch and our final products.

We agreed that our key message wasn't to scare or threaten people, by forcing specific opinions about drugs being bad on them. We felt this would put people off and stop them listening to us. Instead, we wanted to point out the risks of Legal Highs - to encourage young people to be aware of them and make their own choices to stay safe.

We made a final decision about the film being animated, to make it fun and engaging and get our message across. But that it would morph in to live action at the very end, to show the serious message of the main character actually dying from a bad trip. Before the pitch next week, we need to pin down the different drug-making scenarios shown in the film. We need a balance of comedy and realism, so we do want them to reflect what might really happen and not be ridiculous.

Our storyboard is out of date now, so we need to update that and make it clear and professional for the pitch next week.

Pitching:

We will be pitching our concept to a professional film and animation agency, so we need to make sure we practise and have the right presentation materials to make an impact and be clear about our idea. As well as seem professional and well organised. We are going to use Prezi as a collaborative presentation tool, so we can all work on separate bits then review the complete presentation together. 

Choosing an animation style and forming our brief for the film:

Our next step was to finalise ideas around the film to form a brief. We reviewed a range of work by popular, current animators including:

- Jide Johnson

- Grant (EyeJack)

- John Davide 

- Hope (8 mins promo for the band, Kontakte)

- Mikey Please

This really helped us to make the following decisions about the OD on Knowledge film:

- Tone: The film should be fun and interesting, to educate people and not threaten or scare them. Our favourite example of this was Jide Johnson's explanations.

- Length: 30 seconds - 1 minute, to keep peoples' attention and be suitable for it to go viral. 

- Colourway: We liked black and white, with a flash of colour, like we saw in Grant/EyeJack's film.

- Atmosphere: Although we liked the dark, freaky, trippy vibe of some animators around - we didn't want this for our piece. This was because we felt it could be distracting and perhaps feel more like an opinion piece, either that drugs are bad or even that drugs are fun, if it had too much of this feeling.

- Pace: Our film should be fast, quick and busy to hold peoples' attention.

- Sound: We liked the sound effects of Jide's film and want some in ours, plus music.

- Narration: We thought the commentary in Jide's films made them clear and informative and held them together. So we want to do this with ours, too.

Jide Johnson felt like the best animator for our brief. We liked his kind of 'explanamation' films and think they fit our concept - as they get information across in a clear, fun, quick way. We will approach him and his company Aniboxx this week to find out whether he is available, within our budget and keen to work with us.

Budget:

Finally, we went over the budget and allocated money to each stage of our campaign. We signed off the budget for ticket prizes and animation and agreed that we'd do social media, website editing and the physical promotion ourselves to make sure we had enough money to commission a professional animator.

Session 7 - Finalising concepts and Pitching to opposite team - 4/5/12

The session started off with both campaigns together because some guests came in to pitch us some concepts for their new website.

Visiting Guests:

We were lucky enough to have been visited from organisation Get Connected. Get Connected are a helpline for young people under the age of 25. They are currently going through a re-branding of their website and are seeking opinions from young people. This was a great opportunity to pick up evaluated skills of whether a brand is connecting with it's target audience. We will be pitching to Get Connected at a later date to get their feedback about our campaigns.

Each campaign group then split into two rooms.
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I am ? campaign:

Update:

Femi, Devlin (music artist) and Shay (from Rebel Dining Society) are in our line-up for interviewing as high profile role models, which is really great news. We now have to wait for them to book in a date with us.

We are going to create a recruitment video using celebrities and other high profile role models to recruit the olders who will be going to speak to the youngers in schools.

Lift pitching:
We played spin the bottle to choose who was pitching to who in a lift scenario. One individual was the celebrity and the other pitches our idea to them.

We discussed the questions that we wanted to ask in the interviews with the high profile role models:
- What makes a role model?
- Do you think that you're a role model? and why?
- What made you choose the path that you did?
- Who is your role model? and why?
- What's been your journey?
- If you could be the priminister for the day, what three things would be your priorities?
- Are you your own boss?

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OD on Knowledge campaign:

Objectives:
- Understand the problems they faced with their project in the last session - Design a new message.
- Brainstorm and complete storyboard.

- Redefining Their Campaign

The participants have concentrated on campaigning about the dangers of Legal Drugs. 

Although not prohibited by drug laws, they can be eXtremely dangerous due to the lack of research and eXperience meaning users are more likely to overdose or not know what they are taking. This topic is very relevant and they are in a great place to talk to their contemporaries who are at most risk. 

Legal highs can be bought from rogue, faceless dealers online; websites are normally disguised as plant feeder sellers or other dubious occupations. The dangers lie in:

1. You do not know who made this.
2. It is too easy to buy online, without the nervousness of meeting someone face to face and being caught.
3. You do not know what is in it, or what it has been cut with. 
4. You do not know the full eXtent to the effects or long term effects 
5. If there are any medical emergencies, the doctors will not be able to test for anything or understand how to treat it. 

The participants want to:

1. Team up with larger drug campaigns such as "Talk to Frank" to provide some coherent, up to date knowledge uploaded by readers. 
2. Outline the risks with urgent news, interviews with police and doctors. 
3. Hold an online glossary of recent drug names and the dangers that come with them. 
4. Produce a humorous animation illustrating the dangers in an entertaining, but urgent way. 

Animation:

What makes a video viral popular? 

Sharability: Humor, shock value and short in length. 

Plan: Frantic animation telling the story of a bedroom teenager who thinks it is a good idea to buy dubious drugs online. The drugs arrive, the teenager gobbles the lot and passes out on on the floor. 

Whats the message? How has it changed? 

"It's too easy" "You don't know the risks" "People have died"

Both groups came back together in one room.

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Other short films and campaigns:

We watched some short films and other campaigns by other young people to help everyone realise how easy it is to get a project wrong, how easy it is to spend a lot of money and not even engage the people you want to and how important a key message is.

We discussed what we all thought the message was for each of the films and agreed that in most of them it wasn't clear, even though there were lots of hints in the film. We agreed it is very easy to get lost in an idea, but ultimately you have to ensure that your audience understand your message or you've lost the battle to have a brilliant campaign.

Pitching:

We finished the session with both groups pitching their campaign to each other to get feedback and see if there were any holes or weaknesses in their ideas. They were encouraged to ask challenging questions and to think about how to make their project as bouyant as possible.