Filmmaking- Kodak Commercial Awards (Briefs)

This year for part of our filmmaking assignment, my class will be entering the Kodak Commercial Awards. This is a 16mm film competition where a number of students from the UK compete to create the most creative and professional commercial following a brief. This year there a three different briefs from three different companies to create commercials for, at the minimum we need to do at least two commercials or we could even do all three, depending on time and quality.

The three briefs came in recently and each client is hugely different from the last. The first client is Scunci UK, they have a product called the Scunci InstaTwist that is an electronic hair tool that helps create braid effects. They are looking for a 30 second TVC that communicates the fun, cool nature of the brand and is aimed towards their audience of girls who are teenagers to early 20's. Upon first glance I was initially put of by this brief, but after been given time to think, this brief offers room for a lot of creativity and gives experience at working to a brief where I'm not the client and not making something for myself.

The second client is Go Outdoors, the UK's largest outdoor retailer for equipment used in camping, walking, cycling and climbing etc. They're looking for a commercial that is aimed towards anyone who enjoys The Great Outdoors and anyone who could or should as well. They want to communicate how fun and rewarding all these activities can be and that Go Outdoors is the place to get your professional equipment at great prices. It should be a confident, encouraging and fun commercial that shows all the important activities that Go Outdoors caters for. The first impression for this brief is that this will be a fun, outdoors shoot that will look great on camera, but looking further into it, many of the ideas for this are just so grand and epic and without any of the important equipment from Go Outdoors, it might just be too big for us to take on at the moment. I think weather or not Go Outdoors can supply us with equipment may make or break this commercial.

The third and final client for the commercial briefs is Think! the road safety campaign. Due to an article from The Daily Mail claiming pedestrian mobile phone injuries have doubled in the past five years, Think! want to make a film to make people stop and think about their behaviour when walking along streets looking at their phones. The audience for this is huge because everyone is guilty of doing this and although Think! want to get across the seriousness and the danger of this situation, they are also allowing room for comedy with how irritating this can be to over pavement users. The key is to show how dangerous this is or how much their missing out on by been sucked into their phones. The idea for this commercial is very open and allows for a lot of creativity, I'm drawn to the more comedy aspect of commercials and films so this helps me play to my strengths in many ways if I can find the right idea.

All three briefs offer the opportunity to make a creative and professional commercial and I'm so happy were been given the chance to maybe work on all of them. It very much comes down to which commercials can we make the best and execute with the highest quality. After we pitch ideas, this will become more clearer.