Reflection: Lack of communication with Bishop Nick

I have not managed to get any contact with the proposed client "Bishop Nick" for the past 4 weeks. I have sent emails and left phone messages but to no avail. Today I have sent a final email requesting for them to contact me ASAP to get together and discuss the plans.

As a result of this in the background I am starting to develop a plan B for the project which may have to be taken up if there is no communication soon. This will be to focus more on the website, promotions and marketing of my own production company Brain Tree Films. This was always linked to creating the video content to promote my own company. It is simply a case of putting the cart before the horse and developing this before I have the content. but hopefully "if i build it, they will come!".

Bishop Nick: Primary Client Research

As both myself and the brewery owners are busy during the week arranging a meet up has been put temporarily on the back burner. However not wanting to let the grass grow under my feet I want to keep what little momentum has been built up going and to start doing some primary research into their brand. In order to do this and to help me flesh out a better picture of their aims and objectives even further and insight into their brand I have emailed them a few questions to respond to. This will help direct me in devising concepts and ideas to be discussed when we finally get a date in our diaries.

• 20 words that you feel describe the Bishop Nick brand.
• What are the typical demographics Bishop Nick audience and consumers? Are you looking to extend this into other demographics.
• Have you seen any promotional moving image work or styles that you have liked you can point me to.
• Exactly what 2 pieces of video or moving image (animation etc) content do you feel would best help to promote your brand.
• How much access and time will Nelion be able to realistically give me for the project.
• How much access will I be able to get to the brewery and bottling plant? Dates and hours etc.
• As far as timescales go will the end of August for delivery work for you.
• Can I get access to and use the branding (style guide, graphics and illustrations) for the company.
• Is there a Ridleys archive I may be able to use for images for an "About Us" video.
• Realistically is there a little money for expenses for the work to not leave me out of pocket.
• Where are you looking to use the videos?
• What are you looking to use the videos for?

Meantime Brewery: Video Content Analysis

Meantime Brewery based in Grenwich, London is a growing medium sized brewery specialising in the craft beer market. They are very proud of the London heritage of being the brewery capital of the world at one stage as well as using the best ingredients, brewing real beer and the time and love to make their beers. As with the other examples of brewery video and moving image content I have looked at I am analysing it in terms of being indirect competition and to see what other breweries are doing. I am aiming for inspiration but also to see how I can create a more creative and interesting approach for Bishop Nick.

The first video is an introduction to the brewers at meantime Brewery. It is just under 2 mins and highlights the brewers and their philosophies on brewing great beer.

The promo is a visual mix of graphical typography, imagery, lower thirds introductions and stills of the brewers they are talking about. The images are frantic and kinetic themselves constantly on the move, jumping, zooming, jump cutting to reveal variations on shots and type. It is the types of techniques pioneered by for the Se7en film opening sequence making it look like bumped film in shutters and gates, hairs on film and over exposure. This is done as white on black and distorted colour layers as flash-frame edit transitions too. The music is uptempo and with a heavy guitar riff and drum beats to appeal to a younger target audience.

Before we meet each of the brewers their surname appears on the screen in capitals on a black background. Then accompanying the photos of the brewers at work we have first a lower third type introduction of them all for instance "Jenn Merrick" and where they were born, then where they live now followed by their philosophy such as "never accept pasteurised beer ever" and "remember tradition, accept technology.

It is a really interesting piece and dissimilar to their other video content being upbeat and a little in your face using very contemporary image and editing techniques. It does work fairly well but does somewhat rescind from their time, time, time philosophy and give a very modern approach to a brewery that does not feel like it wants to be over modern. the trading in tradition, London and the first large brewery for over 80 years does not sit really easily with the promo. It is well put together though and does catch the attention and highlight the passion of their brewers and there differing nationalities and skill-sets.

This second video links the brewery to it's proud heritage and tradition of brewing in London. It explores the links of the capital city with the brewery trade and how they are re-igniting this.




The last video is a really interesting piece of kinetic typography playing with the concept of time and the breweries philosophy of it taking time up to 6 weeks to brew a decent beer. This promo lasts one minute 55 seconds.




The time concept is played around and a demonstration of life is so busy and full on BUT that you need to take time. A play on the fact that the brewery is called Meantime and is based in Grenwich the home of the international dateline is hard to miss. The promo relates to the company philosophy to try, practice, fail, wait, perfect and reflect etc. The voice over is of a very London Ray Winstone type extolling the virtues of not rushing and taking time. The visuals are kinetic typography throughout but angrier and faster plays on time with the letters TIME in black on  ares background and pacify edited. The VO is urgent and angry and stressed and a drone peaking at a screeching in the background that drops out entirely when a different type of time starts being discussed. the work time moves in slowly from off screen and moves into the middle of the frame during this and then settles.

Next the background sound cuts out to leave just the voice now slower and calmer and more laid back. The visuals are all based around the word TIME in big red letters on a black background with words in white from the VO emphasised over the top each one incorporating one letter from the work time which is the constant on screen. The T of time is used by the letters HINK to the right of it smaller and in white to spell out THINK for instance. This does not change until near the end when the work MEAN comes in to meet TIME thus spelling out the name of the company. The animation ends with the Meantime Brewery logo.

The piece is very effective and whilst not being explicit gets its message across well and really plays on the company idea that it takes 6 weeks to make a good beer. It aligns itself with the craft beer movement, non-multi-national conglomerates and great ingredients that it hope drinkers will buy into. The interesting thing is that beer is never shown adding to the mystery of the brewery and its beers.

Crate Brewery Camden: Video Promos

Crate Brewery in Hackney Wick, London is a growing small brewery specialising in craft beers. their web-site contained a few bits of video content. Following on from analysing some of the Brew Dog moving image content I wanted to look at a few other breweries to see what they were doing and how I could learn from these in terms of style and content. Being indirect competition I want to use the successes on their work and try to bring my own innovation to the Bishop Nick brand.

The first video I looked at was a prmo for the brewery itself as this is something that I am proposing to do for Bishop Nick.

In this promo it puts the man who founded the brewery in 2012 front and centre of the film as his own personal mission, desire, enthusiasm and strength one of the USP's of the Crate brand. On top of his obvious love of the business and craft beer he also talks about the location, desire to be open for the 2012 Olympics nearby and the fact that the brewery has to "draw people in" as it is not in a huge thoroughfare.

The style is very traditional of talking heads in a MCU shot next to the canal where the brewery is showing the natural and urban aspects of his company graffiti on the walls emphasising the urban. The shots for this are very obvious and white flashes often join his sound bites and interview together which looks a little sloppy. There are also very conventional general views (GV's) of a lot of the aspects he is talking about to cut away to. The brewery, ingredients, staff, bottling, bars and shots of some of the processes but it is all very safe and obvious.

He also talks through the 6 beers that Crate make from IPA to stout and the company focus on these being the absolute best of each type of classic beer/drink. He talks about all of the excellent ingredients, inspirations and where his ideas come from and constantly striving for the best at times in the face of cost, time and common sense. As well as promoting his own beers he also discusses the craft beer movement and the great beers available and pride in being part of it and the competition in the marketplace driving him on. He ends by saying "I got into this business to make the best beer possible, and to see someone at the end of a bar with a beer and their face lighting up".

The second video I looked at was a "Day in the Life" of the brewery. Again my clients at Bishop Nick were interested in doing one of these from hops to bottling so I hoped to find some ideas and inspiration here.

Brain Tree Films: Developed Initial Logo Ideas

From developing some initial concepts on pencil and paper I then took a few of these further into photoshop and had a play at developing them further and mocking them up in there. Whilst the initial ideas worked on paper and pencil to see colour and get a more professional and slick interpretation of how the logo may look. I did these in photoshop which I am competent at best at due to it being a better tool for developing these ideas further.

IDEA 1

These are couple of rough variations of combining a film frame, brain and tree. They are OK and work but are a little unimaginative, boring, obvious and stark. They are also devoid of colour which I feel may be needed to inject some mood and emotion. The image is all a little cluttered and the brain shape is a little too abstract possibly. However I like the lack of cartoon style images for this. A font with the company name next to the logo would make it clearer though. The square shape suggests balance, professionalism and security which are good but they do not scream creativity.

IDEA 2

These are again variations of a theme but this time combining the brain to be the foliage of the tree. This could be used with or without the film frame but this does provide a film link. Again colour could be injected to inject more mood and emotion. The image to me is on the very cusp of being too cartoonesque but I do like the way I have combined the brain and tree. It is all a little too obvious again but is a much more memorable logo. I am not completely won over though although it is heading along the right lines. As above the square shape has connotations of balance, professionalism and security which are good but again they do not scream creativity.

IDEA 3

A lightly different approach but it is obvious to see what a shot of colour does to the logo. I chose the green as it not only reflects the natural colour of the tree foliage but based on some colour psychology theory. Green is a colour that represents life and renewal and is a restful and soothing colour with obvious eco friendly undertones too. The colour is also associated with freshness, environment, new, money, fertility, healing and health, crisp, renewable and tranquility. the logo is closest so far to what I am after. The circular shape is less formal and more dynamic than the rectangular ideas above. Circular shapes suggest community, unity and completeness and alongside this they also mimics the shape of the brain, tree foliage and spool of film.

Brain Tree Films: Logo Research & Revelopment

After researching the fundamentals of log design I started playing around with developing my own. As mentioned previously my other logo was cobbled together quickly due to necessity but has never been used much so  re-design will not conflict with any current company or brand identity. The design currently I very basic making use of a camera image and a bold font. the image is very traditional and a little flat which worked well with the documentary film website it was used on specially as the film was about a cinema projectionist. However I wish to try and look a little more cutting edge and contemporary as well as demonstrating a friendlier face and use more of the imagery associated with the brand. I am also aiming that the company will branch out from just documentary film into corporate, animation, music video, conference, art and also educational work. A logo that reflects all of these would be much stronger.

Due to the name and very visual nature of the company I started off with the obvious imagery to go with this. Film objects, cameras, spools, film frames, count-downs, projectors etc brains of various guises and obviously trees of various shapes and sizes. I started off by researching a great variety of these images on line and collecting a variety of these to look at and draw inspiration from to help me consider a variety of possible options try and decide the way forward.

Following on from this I started to develop my own initial ideas for logos. this was a stage where anything went and a chance to try out combinations of those images to make a logo. I did this with pencil and paper to work pretty fast. I wanted to not dive straight into photoshop but to play around with shapes and pictorial elements to see what might develop from these.

I used a combination of the images to see what worked. I started by using a frame of film to create a rectangle to house the images of combinations of brans and trees and then hybrids of these to create a Brain-Tree. I quite like these but they were very formal and static and not all that organic. Developing this idea further and using the shapes of the brain, spools and foliage on a tree. I was inspired by the more circular flow of the film countdown and used this alongside the more round shapes of the tree foliage, brain and a spool of film and sliced this up into quarters inspired by the film countdown. These are the ideas that I will take forward into photoshop to experiment with more. Presently I have not focussed on font and colour and will trial, test and develop these more in photoshop too.

Brain Tree Films: Using Fonts

As well as designing the icon for the logo I will also need to choose an appropriate font. There are literally thousands out there but I need to choose one that will properly represent my company. To this end I did some research into fonts and the psychology of them to hopefully illuminate my decision. I also wanted to research fonts more generally for use on my website and find the basic do's and don'ts. From the research I did the following were all areas that cropped up again and again from designers and theorists about typefaces that I would need to consider for my own choice.

• Know the fonts personality and match it to your target audience. Bold is masculine and strong. Serif is classy and high end. Slab is classic, vintage and structured. Sans serif is modern, elite and structured. Script is feminine, soft and classic.
• Avoid the default fonts. Ariel, times etc.
• Avoid cliche and cheesy. Comic sans, papyrus etc too childlike and no class.
• Using two fonts can be good. One may work best with logos but fonts can compliment each other too.
• Contrast two fonts if using do not make them too similar.
• Pay attention to size. Readable but not overpowering.
• Do not use all capitals we read by shapes and this makes it harder to read.
• Reverse font (white on coloured background) good for headings but watch for colour clashes.
• Watch line length, not too long shorter better than long.
• Consider line spacing or "leading" this is the space between the lines. Ease of read.
• Check for readability. Not overcomplicated, fonts, consider kerning and sans/serifs carefully.
• Watch the legibility. Similar to above but especially for logos etc make sure crystal clear.
• Correctly use small caps for chapters, company initials etc.
• Get rid of line breaks. Try not to use at all.
• Do not leave orphans a word hanging onto bottom of passage.
• Know when to highlight and when not to. Useful tool but never more than 10% of page.
• Can make good use of old style figures numbers etc.
• Check spelling, grammar and punctuation. No excuse for getting it wrong.

From all of this I did some initial research and experimentation with a variety of fonts for the logo and these are below. I thought that the ones that were working best were the sans serif typefaces as they had that modern and professional feel I was looking for. I did also really like the Menlo slab style too though which had a similar feel to the sans serif but a little bit of a serif on a few letters bringing a little class to the font. I will continue to experiment with these for the logo but feel I have made real in-roads.

Brain Tree Films: Logo Design Research

In the past I studied graphic design at art school and have always taken an interest in graphic design in all its guises. However this knowing what I like and an appreciation for art and design does not mean I fully understand or have the skill level to create professional work of my own. To this end I feel that I need two things before I embark on my own logo design.
1: A deeper contextual and theoretical understanding of logo design.
2: A greater appreciation of Adobe photoshop and illustrator so I can create my own logo professionally OR someone to do it with me if i can do the groundwork.

I started by doing some research into the do's and don'ts of logo design. There is a lot of thinking and advice and theories around graphic design and logos in particular. I looked at the thoughts and ideas of lots of professionals in the field to really explore how important the colour, style design and psychology of creating good logos is. From this I gleaned the following points that will all act as guidance whilst developing my own logo idea. I will use these as a check-list for checking against my logo designs.

DON'T
Add too much detail
Strong logos aren't complicated; they focus on one key feature. The more you add onto the design of your logo, the higher the chance is that it will be confusing for your audience.

Follow trends
If you want to create a logo that blends in with everyone else's and will become outdated in a year or so, follow the trends.

Switch it up every other year
Weak brands aren't consistent in their logos. They flip flop from one logo design to the next and don't allow time to create recognition with their audience. However if they do change and update they do so using similar themes, colours nd style..

Imitate
This plagiarism and can be detrimental to a brand and my logo must be unique. the whole point of branding is the ability to set myself and my business, or blog apart from everything else that's already out there. By imitating someone else's logo, I would be stealing their creativity and robbing myself of mine.

Be too literal
An original, creative logo isn't necessarily the one that's the most expected. For example, it isn't necessary to use imagery of a place setting if you're a restaurant or a football if you're a football team.

Go crazy with the number of fonts
A good rule of thumb is to keep the fonts to two. The use of several fonts has the potential to result in a logo that isn't cohesive.

DO

Define and research your audience
The purpose of a logo (and therefore a brand) is to attract my ideal audience; the logo should be appealing to them. I might love certain colors and fonts, but if they don't catch the attention of my potential customers, clients, or readers, I've missed the boat. I will need to spend some time defining my audience and do some research into their interests and tastes to create a logo that will appeal to them. I need to strive for something different as I have a great opportunity to set my business and brand apart by creating a one-of-a-kind logo. It would be easy to be inspired by what's already been done before, but I need to strive for a logo that's different and distinct.

Sketch
The exploration phase is an important part of any creative process. Remove any hesitations and don't worry about finding the perfect solution right out of the gate; just sketch. I need to experiment with different ideas and have fun with it. I will develop plenty of ideas however off the wall and just be creative combining themes, images and versions. You never know what will work of what may inspire a different direction or what I may end up coming back to.

KISS (Keep it simple stupid!)
Efforts to create something original and creative can often result in making things more complicated than they need to be. The best logos are simple. This doesn't mean that the designers behind them sacrificed creativity, but they didn't go over the top either. Less is more and a strong central theme and image is the way to go. A good design rule of thumb seems to be to highlight one feature in a logo. Just one. My logo should be timeless. Remember KISS!

Pay attention to spacing, composition, and negative space
Most of the best logos out there just seem to "fit" because the designer has paid attention to the entire space, not just the images and text. Consider ways to use spacing, composition, and negative space to your advantage. Using a grid helps to make sure that the spacing is consistent and subject matter is proportional.

Be mindful of size and legibility
Logo's should be legible and decipherable at all sizes wherever it may be used. It should maintain detail whether it's large or small. If my logo isn't easily recognized or legible at small sizes, you may need to come up with a different solution.

Choose and use fonts wisely
Each font has a distinct character and almost a mood, feeling or emotion that it conjures up. Some are strong, bold, and solid while others are whimsical and imperfect. The fonts I choose for my logo can play a large part in how my brand is received by my audience as first impressions are crucial.

Adapt a typeface
There's a difference in a font and a logo. Instead of using a generic font for my logo that anyone could recreate, I may alter and adapt the typeface in some way as it will give it some character.

Study colour psychology
Just like each font has a distinct character, different colours evoke different emotions, feelings, and memories in people. I need to tap into that when I am choosing colours for my logo project and colour psychology is something that interests me so this should be fun. I will need to spend some time studying colour associations as I consider which colours I will use in my logo.

Create variations and alternate logos
I will need to consider variety and versatility when  creating a logo for my business. The logo will most likely be used in a number of different places, whether it's in the header of a website or the back of a business card. I aim to create a couple of compositional variations of your logo and will need to consider what my logo will look like on coloured backgrounds, or on top of photos, and account for that by creating different colour variations. within this though I must make sure I maintain the same consistency and proportions throughout all my variations.

Get feedback from others
It can be easy to get tunnel vision when pouring time and effort into a logo concept. I must make sure I take a step back and ask for feedback from friends, family and hopefully the graphic designers (Nigel and Sara) on my MA for their opinions. They may see something in the logos font, negative space or colours that I hadn't picked up on before, or they may see a word within my logo that I hadn't noticed.

SOURCES USED

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/12-essential-rules-to-follow-when-designing-a-logo/

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/08/the-psychology-of-logo-design/

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/06/effective-logo-design-symbols-metaphors-intuition/

http://www.thelogofactory.com/7-golden-rules-of-logos/

http://inkbotdesign.com/logo-design-psychology/

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247783

Brain Tree Films: Company Logo Idea

As well as hopefully creating video content for a client to use as promotion for my own production company I am also looking to re-brand my own company and re-vamp my web-site and domain name.

One of the elements I want to address is my current company logo. I developed it in a rush to use when I created a website to help promote a documentary I had that was getting a few film festival screenings. I wanted to take the company name and give it the full treatment to represent the professional, intelligent, established quality brand I wanted to market and promote.

The company name I had registered and had used for a few projects was Brain Tree Films. This was both directly related to Braintree where I grew up and now live as well as splitting it to create two separate words Brain and Tree. Applying semiotics to the word tree you get positive representations and notions of growth, established, regeneration, history, strength, children climbing, nature and the great outdoors. Semiotics of brains usually garner positive representations such as knowledge, intelligence, clever, being "brainy" and the part that controls all humans. Combining these two highly established words into a company name created possible interpretations of all that these objects stand for whilst also providing links to my home town.

Analysis of Brew Dog Videos

Brew Dog is a craft beer company operating out of Aberdeenshire in Scotland. They were one of the first small british craft breweries to start out in 2006 and have ridden the crest of the wave ever since and have gone from being a tiny brewery in a rented garage to one of the market leaders in the field in the Uk even moving into opening their own small chain of pubs.

Brew dog pride themselves on their "punk" aesthetic and quirkiness. James Watt CEO and co-founder calling their ethos “an audacious blend of eccentricity, artistry and rebellion” adding they were all about “disrupting conventions and breaking taboos". 

There are some similarities with the Bishop Nick brand the packaging, the humble beginnings and even slight common themes between the packaging and branding. Bishop Nick is however a little tamer, less in your face and more steeped in history and associations of the brewing family behind them. However it provides a good starting point for what can possibly be done (and not done) with the brand and will be good to show to my clients to incite discussion about their aims and objectives with the video content I will be creating for them.

The first film I looked at was a short 40 second promo advertising and acting as an intro into Brew dog for the uninitiated.

The titles are a solid and masculine with a weathered look to the white font contrasting hugely with the back background they appear on. Underneath this the music builds slowly from a drum roll, then a solo guitar in the background becoming more rocky as the promo goes on.The voice overs by the two founding members of the company are delivered in a matter of fact statement like style of the companies manifesto "We are Brew Dog and our simple mission is to make other people as passionate about great craft beer as we are". We do see one of the Brew Dog founders delivering some of this line and he is holding a beer and shot from a low angle making him look powerful with a neon sign in the background saying love hops and... The anarchy continues visually over the above the images represent he two founding members larking about and piggy backing and one giving the rock sign of horns hand gesture. Editing wise jump cuts are used to add an edge and also super8 film style light flare filters in-between the shots as well as other lens flare techniques and a shot of glasses of beer with the words water, malt, hops and yeast a motion typography on the screen. To end this opening sequence we have an overhead shot of a beer craning out to reveal a table of beer and people bringing glasses to their lips.

The different music kicks in which is uptempo and in your face, with a rock guitar "punk" edge obviously aimed at a youngish 18-35 audience. We then get a sped up shots vastly cut jump cut shots of the impressive brewery plant and time lapsed shots of one of brew dogs busy bars. Both suggest scale, pace, fun and business. Then we see the other founder member of brew dog stating "We are determined to change the world of beer, and we want YOU to change it with us." with old weathered barrels in the background. The images to accompany this start of with the Brew Dog member on screen followed by  one of their team members playing 10 pin bowling shot hand held for edge. He has a bowling ball and 10 bottle of Stella Artois (the competition) are lined up as the skittles. These are obliterated in an unsubtle metaphor for the Brew Dog philosophy and give a real anti-corporation/multi-national spin against the big mainstream breweries. This little sequence ends with some split screen shots of the brewing of the beer gorgeously shot and graded to remind us of the craftsmanlike brewing process of Brew dog.

We than have another talking head mission statement from one of the founders stating "We brew beer for punks, bold, irreverent and uncompromising". At then end of the statement the images change to a presentation given by Brew Bog to an audience of many 100's almost preaching to them. As the voice ends the images change to very much Americana and a US classic Dodge looking car with the plates BR3WDOGS and plenty of checked shirts, stars and stripes (shirts and flags) as well as Scottish flags. This is a bit of tub thumping to respect the US who started the craft brewing phenomena and also to the expansion of Brew Dog to US markets and a larger appeal. Selling craft beer from Scotland back to the country who invented it.

The promo them jump sits and sound bridges from crashing dustbin lids to an explosion for real from a Brew Dog mad inventor saluting the audience. Another reminder of the basic ingredients that make up Brew Dog beers are then again flashed across the screen in typography and visuals again heavily graded good looking visuals of water, malt, hops and yeast. The promo ends with the two founder members walking in slo-mo purposefully to the camera

The second clip was a 2 minute overview of the Brew Dog brewing process.

The promo starts with an official sounding voice over talking about the brewing process and how does creating a beer get from the twisted heads of the company owners into a bottle or glass near you. The visuals are a bottles of beer being held out in a pub with a really shallow depth of field focus on the bottle with lots of motion graphics words and images (light bulb) over the top which is in a computer, Terminator style reiterating what is said by the voice over "Bold, irreverent and uncompromising". The sounds a drone but with computer sound Fx too of crackles, whooshes and radioactive crackles as the type and graphics appear on screen. We then have a crane shot worn to the companies owners standing "Bouncer like" at a bar. They then sown the image of a rabbit coming out of a hat and insinuate that they brew great beer my magic, then show an image of a bull and say obviously "thats bullshit" with an only joking caption on Screen.

Dance music with a punchy bass and thrum beat then kicks in under an crafted, bronze looking image of the Brew dog logo and lots of creative cinematography of gorgeous amber coloured well lit beers in glasses pacify cut together to the music. The VO then introduces the "state of the art, eco brewery" in Northern Scotland saying that it is "The worlds first crowd funded brewery, brought to life by thousands of equity punks like you." The statements are very leading and want the viewer to feel included and part of the gang. The images over this complement the statement, brewery exteriors, a map graphic showing the brewery location overlay and images of stakeholders. They also add at the end the "insanity" needed to work there and show people in costumes to add the wacky and "punk" nature of their ethos.

They emphasise that everything in the brewery is there for only one purpose and that is for making top quality beers and a mix of cinematic general views and graphics emphasises this. The promo then introduces the USP's of the product and elaborates on the care and though and "top shelf" ingredients that go into their beers. The VO states proudly "more than twice the amount of malted barley than a typical industrial larger" and "40 times the hops" images of these ingredients shot from interesting angles and over screen graphics hammer home these points. The company philosophy is again mentioned being "innovation and pushing boundaries, both in recipes and in the brewery itself" saying how their huge brew-house runs 24-7. They also show their gimmicks such as the "hop cannon" which blasts hops into their brews and does a demo blasting hops at the camera stating "you swear you'll feel like you just got kicked in the teeth when you taste them". The language for all of this section is provocative as they continue the process saying that in their fermentation tanks the beers plot "world domination" and before being "unleashed on the public" as if it was some sinister, powerful wild animal. Then their centrifuge to avoid harsh filtration make sure "all the flavour stays in the beer". All of this VO is accompanied by images of the brewery tech at work once more beautifully shot with overlay computer graphics and typography. Finally they say about bottling, putting it in kegs or the "occasional deer head" and it and shipping it to a bar or bottle shop near you with a graphic of the world pointing out the market reach. The deer hear is a play on a publicity stunt where they brewed what was then the worlds most alcoholic beer 55% that was a limited run of 11 bottles that were supplied in stuffed animals.

The promo then says how it is a far cry from their humble beginnings "2 humans, one dog and a tiny home brew system, but the goal remains the same, to keep converting new soldiers to the craft beer revolution one awesome beer at a time". The images reflect this an old animated photo of the two founder members and their first home brew kit, then rapid fire shots from the video and brewing process. We end on the two founders walking away from the camera in their brewery in slo-mo into the lights outside a fade to black and the Brew Dog url..

Extending the Brief

As well as creating some video work to demonstrate my skills and create a showreel I am also aiming to raise my profile and start to create a business to grow. For this reason as well as creating the video content I will create a brand identity to market myself and my company. As the Bishop Nick project is moving very slowly I think developing this in the background will be not only a great plan B but part of the promoting my fledgeling video production company as a whole.

From a previous documentary project I decided to start up a company and have a name Brain Tree Films. The name developed directly from irony at my home town Braintree and the combination of brain for intelligence and tree for strength and reliability. I already have a domain and a url  for the company (braintreefilms.com) as well as a skeletal website for that production. I aim to overhaul the website and to develop the marketing and brand alongside the video project. This will be a new logo (the first I am unhappy with see below top left) as well as SMO and social media, business cards and publicity.

braintreefilms.com

Ideas for "Our Story" Video Content.

In the "Our Story" section on the website currently just gives a skinny on the company to date. It starts with Bishop Nick the brewer to royalty who was beheaded by Mary Queen of Scots and then the brewing tradition over 5 generations of the Ridley family brewery in Essex. Then it mentions its closure and the section ends with Nelion Ridley from the Ridley dynasty and the founder of Bishop Nick and the building of the business from a humble start. Whilst the information is interesting it is very flat and could easily be better communicated with some video to tell the story and bring it to life.

I see the mood and tome being fun but not too OTT like some of the Brew Dog examples I have seen. In my opinion the brand is a little quirky and one of its USPs and ESPs is the connection to Bishop Nick and the families long association with brewing. However a sense of humour runs throughout the brand and I want to capture a little of this to make sure the content informs, educates and entertains. Horrible Histories the kids TV show manages all of this as do some other texts so these will help inform my idea development. I aim to work with Nelion and his wife on the script.

Idea 1
A quirky and rough and ready cut out montage animation created in After Effects. this will combine historical images with creative backgrounds and images from the Ridley archives to re-tell the story.
Examples and inspirations of the style I hope to create can be found here. This is likely to use a funny voice over to bring it to life.

http://designtaxi.com/news/366553/Award-Winning-GIF-Collages-Blend-Familiar-Classic-And-Pop-Culture-Images/

Idea 2
The story re-told by Nelion in a slick corporate video style using and interview with images overlaid to illustrate the areas he is mentioning.

Idea 3
A slick animation of the family tree brought to life covering all of the key areas and timescales of the Ridleys associations with brewing.

Client Timescales

Following up on my earlier correspondence I wanted to confirm the work and collaboration with the Bishop Nick brewery. This was to work out some timescales for getting the ball rolling and completion dates as well as a more definite idea of exactly what they wanted. I wanted to arrange a "face to face" definitely the best way to establish a client relationship. Also to get a look around the brewery and do a recce and do a primary interview and speak to the owner and his wife.

Reflection: Tutorial with Matt 2

A positive tutorial and ran the Bishop Nick idea past Matt and he thought it had real promise. He suggested looking bigger picture too and the craft Ale movement and organisations such as CAMRA and how the stereotypical "real ale drinker" is changing. Also the often anti-corporate and anti-multi national feel of these smaller companies. He liked the notion of mining the religious and historical connections of the brand too and Tudors, religion, folklore, paganism, witchcraft and the strong family connection. he said to make sure I keep all correspondence, planning and communication too and was happy for the work to go onto a blog and said this was progressing well.