Contents
Flow TV Project Report
1. Title Page 2. Contents 3. The Brief 4. What is Flow TV? 5. Target Audience 6. Programming 7. Schedule 8. Brand Positioning 9. Brand Values 10. Copywriting 11. Logo Inspiration 12. Logo Sketches 13. Logo in B&W 14. Colour Palette 15. Logo in Colour 16. Typography 17. Cinematography Moodboard
18. Ideas for Visuals 19. Shooting on Location 20. Grading 21. Motion Graphics Technique 22. Logo in Motion 23. Onscreen Navigation 24. Web Design 25. Viral Stings 26. Stickers 27. Launch Promo 28. Script 29. Storyboard 30. Narration 31. Sound Design 32. Summary
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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The Brief
A new channel for a new market
“The unit enables students to consolidate and integrate their skills and to apply them in a sustained fashion to a coherent Major Design Project. Identifying a problem or brief(s) that will demonstrate their abilities across information design, typography, branding and promotional strategy, and/or areas in relation to their subject specialism, students then develop a solution and represent it in an appropriate preparatory and finalised format.”
“This master brief is an outline for a comprehensive branding project that the student is expected to develop.” “The aim of this brief is encourage the student to take responsibility for their own direction of study, defining a project requiring a comprehensive design solution, undertaking independent project management and developing a substantial and complex body of independent work.”
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
I decided to brand and explain my idea for a new and innovative TV channel. My personal deliverables that I set were: Brand guidelines – explaining the channel navigation along with the on-screen and off-screen identity. This includes: logo, colour palette, tone of voice, on-screen schedules, idents, endboards, print, online and viral marketing samples.
Project report – detailing the growth of the idea from inspiration to execution. Either in the form of a pitch document or a portfolio presentation of my process. If you’re reading this now, this is the project report. Launch promo – fast cut, punchy video showing off the channels look and defining it’s unique market position in an exciting and encapsulating language.
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Flow TV
What is Flow TV?
Creativity, taste and beauty in one constant stream. Flow television is my idea for a new type of broadcast. It takes the music channel format and shakes it up displaying content not because of the music in the background, but purely because it is visually-pleasing. I have been inspired by brands like Vimeo and Motionographer who pride themselves on showcasing a higher quality of short-form film, animation and motion design.
This is a TV channel that is up-to-date with the way people consume content, it understands the competition from the Internet and sticks to what television does best — providing constant and respected editorial. Great television is effortless to watch. Sometimes people don’t want to have control of the content thrusted into their hands, audiences demand someone else to do the hard work, they want great editorial that they can trust and enjoy.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
Blogs and newspapers retain readers by upholding a constant quality, who return knowing they can trust the taste of the authors. That is what Flow would need to achieve so it will need a really strong brand and a team of researchers to keep the content top-notch and up-to-date. I would love to see Flow as a Freeview channel, but I think it would also thrive as a web-based channel connected to a site like Vimeo, streaming the best content non-stop.
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Target Audience Who’s watching?
Trendy Bars
Art Students
Design Agencies
Animation Buffs
Culture Vultures
Clubs, cafés and bars that are too cool to show sport but they’re full of screens that they never really utilise. This channel is cheaper than a VJ and always looks cool and beautiful.
Young creatives who always want to see the latest fashionable videos and cool ideas, they have the TV on whilst they work on their laptop and want to be distracted by something more arty than Deal Or No Deal and Jeremy Kyle.
Creative agencies and facilities houses who want something on in the background for random snippets of inspiration. This is a hell of a lot better than Sky News or MTV!
The film and animation buff who never has enough time in the day. They love to keep up-to-date with the latest techniques and cinematography but never have time to watch a feature film.
Age: 21-45
Age: 15-50
- Great visual taste - Relish daily inspiration - Celebrate originality - Enter work for awards
- Wide age range, animation is for everyone. - Attend premieres & short film festivals. - Enjoy critique and viewing for themselves. - Respect technical difficulty.
The culture vulture, always flicking through lifestyle magazines and “way ahead” of the music channels. They follow hundreds of blogs, visit museums and spend ages online trying to find the awesome stuff they can tweet about. This channel is their one-stop-shop for inspiration.
Five key viewer personalities I have identified five key viewer personalities to target the channel towards. These need to be beared in mind throughout the project to capture the right audience.
Age: 21-35 - Eye for design - Expensive taste - Love colour - City dwellers
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
Age: 14-25 - Liberal - Creative - Fun-loving - Connected
Age: 15-50 - Enjoy art & design. - Lounge is full of magazines. - Own a blog. - Want to see everything first.
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Programming Rules What’s in and what’s out?
Simple — short form content always under 15 minutes long + always visually pleasing. What Flow will never show is: No reality TV No trashy ‘entertainment’ No talking heads No ‘hip hop honeys’ People can talk about their work, but not over the top of it! We have a seperate place for interviews and ‘Making-ofs’ — on the blog!
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
Under 15 minutes long + always visually pleasing. Flow television is: like MTV but without the trash; like Vimeo but just the best bits non-stop; like Onedotzero but all year. Flow’s programming would be made by a team of researchers
working round the clock to find the freshest and most inspiring content in the world. Taste is subjective, so it would be very important to get it right for Flow from the outset..
There are four key things that the team would be looking for: Beauty. Creativity. Originality. Vision.
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Example 24 Hour Schedule What’s on?
01:00
20:00 NYC 09:00 TOK
02:00
21:00 NYC 10:00 TOK
07:00
02:00 NYC 15:00 TOK
08:00
13:00
08:00 NYC 21:00 TOK
19:00
14:00 NYC 03:00 TOK
Flow Shuffle - Randomly selected visual wonderment.
Talent Spotter - Fresh and upcoming designers, film-makers and animators get their work showcased to the world.
Short Film Hour - A number of short films picked for their supreme quality and strong visuals.
Music Videos - A selection of music videos picked for their visual style and not their popularity or cost.
Because the content is all so short, the schedule can be very fluid. Sometimes each hour can be themed and sometimes the programming can be completely random
03:00
22:00 NYC 11:00 TOK
03:00 NYC 16:00 TOK
09:00
14:00
09:00 NYC 22:00 TOK
20:00
15:00 NYC 04:00 TOK
Live VJing - We go live to a club and see some experimental visuals.
Award Nominees - A range of work that shares one thing in common, it is all up to win an award of some kind.
VFX - We see scenes from the world’s top visual effects companies, sometimes with breakdowns of the workflow.
Music Videos - A selection of music videos picked for their visual style and not their popularity or cost.
The schedule can repeat, re-order and update seamlessly, but the aim would be to keep the content as ever-changing as possible.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
04:00
23:00 NYC 12:00 TOK
04:00 NYC 17:00 TOK
10:00
15:00
10:00 NYC 23:00 TOK
21:00
16:00 NYC 05:00 TOK
Music Videos - A selection of music videos picked for their visual style and not their popularity or cost.
Top Showreels - 25 of the best motion design showreels in the industry.
Music Videos - A selection of music videos picked for their visual style and not their popularity or cost.
Short Film Hour - A number of short films picked for their supreme quality and strong visuals.
01:00 NYC 14:00 TOK
Stings and Snippets - Really really short form content for a whole hour. Everything is under 30 seconds, from idents to test animations.
06:00
Flow Shuffle - Randomly selected visual wonderment.
05:00 NYC 18:00 TOK
11:00
06:00 NYC 19:00 TOK
Old School Pioneers - We get to see a range of animations using techniques that were innovating for their time.
12:00
07:00 NYC 20:00 TOK
Flow Shuffle - Randomly selected visual wonderment.
16:00
11:00 NYC 00:00 TOK
17:00
12:00 NYC 01:00 TOK
Top Showreels - 25 of the best motion design showreels in the industry.
18:00
13:00 NYC 02:00 TOK
Top Adverts - Yeah, a whole hour of adverts! But only interesting or creative ones, definitely NOT Confused.com or WeBuyAnyCar.
22:00
17:00 NYC 06:00 TOK
23:00
18:00 NYC 07:00 TOK
00:00
19:00 NYC 08:00 TOK
Music Videos - A selection of music videos picked for their visual style and not their popularity or cost.
Top Adverts - Yeah, a whole hour of adverts! But only interesting or creative ones, definitely NOT Confused.com or WeBuyAnyCar.
Talent Spotter - Fresh and upcoming designers, film-makers and animators get their work showcased to the world.
Guest picks: - A blogger, creative agency, director, animator or brand gets to pick their top visuallypleasing content for an hour.
05:00
00:00 NYC 13:00 TOK
Guest picks: - A blogger, creative agency, director, animator or brand gets to pick their top visuallypleasing content for an hour.
Flow Shuffle - Randomly selected visual wonderment.
The channel’s programming is designed to fit with London, New York and Tokyo timezones. 7
Brand Positioning What makes Flow unique? MAIN-STREAM
Flow
YouTube
4Music
STYLISH Film Four D&AD
Motionographer
VIVA Channel 4
Vimeo
MTV HD
Onedotzero
Channel 4 Sky Arts BBC Four
FRIENDLY
MTV HD
SERIOUS
SHORT-FORM CONTENT Shorts
Vimeo
Sky Movies
Sky Arts BBC Four Onedotzero Shorts Channel U Motionographer
NICHE
But Vimeo is a website and the content is not non-stop. It is not an issue that brands like Vimeo and Motionographer are close to Flow, as they are a different format. Brands like this could even take charge of Flow for the ‘Guest Picks’ hours.
CurrentTV
D&AD
Flow
Through my research of other brands and their content, I found that Vimeo and MTV HD were the closest brands to Flow.
LONG-FORM CONTENT
VIVA
4Music Channel U YouTube
TRASHY
MTV HD just plays out music videos that are on it’s other channels, but in HD. The videos are not filtered or picked because they are particularly beautiful or interesting, they are all simply pop hits.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Brand Values
Flow’s underlying identity
Eclectic
Free
Non-stop
With all the random short=form content across the day, Flow will seem very eclectic. The styles on screen will be ever-changing and the brand should reflect this.
Flow should feel like it’s for everyone. Although it’s showing only the best visual content, it is not pretentious. The viewer should feel like they can be part of Flow with a bit of imagination and some creativity.
This is what sets Flow apart from it’s online counterparts and it’s energy needs to be clear in every area of the brand. After all, this channel is for motion and it runs 24/7.
These values will be hidden behind everything the channel does. NB: These brand values should not be confused with the values used for identifying possible content for the channel: beauty, creativity, originality and vision.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Copywriting
Examples of the tone of voice in action
Flow is inviting, friendly and inspiring in all of it’s communication. The copywriting needs to be descriptive, eloquent and colloquial. It can be fun and random, for example, The Mighty Boosh has a great innocent and quirky charm to it. The randomness gives the impression that top creativity and originality can come from anywhere and that anyone acan have a go
Eloquent and colloquial. A community of voices. Digital and beautiful.
The slogan is actually three slogans! This should give the impression that the channel is always on the move. You get the sense that the content is simultaneously refreshing and that the channel is on all-day.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
Non-stop creativity. Non-stop originality. Non-stop motion.
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Logo Inspiration My initial ideas for the logo I wanted a logo that would suggest motion and reference the name Flow but I didn’t want it to be contrived and obvious. I looked at organic and colourful starting points to create something natural and friendly.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
Flowing typography or liquid shapes?
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Logo Sketches
Roughs for the ever-changing logo I tried several versions of the logo trying to find something that I would be able to control and adapt in motion. My flowing typopgraphy sketches kept looking like ‘How’ or ‘Slow’ and I felt it was giving a vintage tone
that wasn’t right for such a modern channel. My favourite part of the first logo was the circle in the centre and I thought this could be used for the on-screen graphics
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
I tried experimenting with circles but they often looked too scientific and molecular. Referring back to the pictures of bubbles and lava lamps I tried to encompass the wonder of natural beauty in the logo.
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Final Logo Logo Variations
First I made sure the logo worked in black & white. The logo also needs to work both large and small. Inspired by bubbles and lava lamps, the idea of this logo is that it seems as though it is motion, even when it is static.
The letters were drawn bespoke for Flow, using fonts Casiopea Ultra and Bauhaus Bold as starting points. The curves across all four letters echo the circular outlines, with the diagonals creating a subtle irregularity amongst the circles.
Textures give the larger scale versions an natural feel, whilst small scale versions have a flat surface to help with legibility and detailing.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Colour Palette Inspired by nature I took the colours from looking at bubbles in the light and also when petrol mixes with water. They are natural liquid rainbows and so with that as a starting point I developed this palette to have a complimentary range.
Vivid, liquid beauty.
Magenta Flow CMYK: 18 RGB: 200
Lime Flow 87 69
3 153
0
CMYK: 54 RGB: 135
Blue Flow 3 190
88 61
0
CMYK: 81 RGB: 38
Orange Flow 40 129
7 189
0
CMYK: 1 RGB: 248
39 169
81 49
0
All the colours are designed to be used with textures I have collected as layers underneath. The textures should always be fully desaturated and the colour layer should be used at 80% transparency with the Photoshop effect ‘Linear Burn’. The textures should have minimum output level of 125 to ensure they are not too dark. Any texture can be used with any colour.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Logo in Colour Vivid, raw beauty
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Typography
Subtle curves and bold lettering I have chosen three main fonts for Flow’s onscreen brand. All three are strong and bold, with a consistant weight throughout the letterforms. This will help with legibility on screen and maintains a powerful impact.
Casiopea Custom ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPORSTUVWY abcdefghijklmno pqrstuvwyz Casiopea Custom is an edit of Casiopea Ultra, with the ‘O’, ‘Q’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘i’, ‘j’, ‘o’, ‘v’ and ‘w’ replaced by the respective letters from the more circular font Bauhaus Bold. This is to be used as a title font only. ©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
Patron Medium
Patron Medium Italic
ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWYZ
ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWYZ
abcdefghijklmno pqrstuvwyz
abcdefghijklmno pqrstuvwyz
Patron medium is the secondary font for Flow’s branding. It is digital yet friendly, with curved serifs that lean out of a few of the letters.
Patron Medium Italic is to be used in conjunction with it’s regular version, to distinguish things like dates, times and quotes.
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Cinematography Moodboard Inspiration for the on-screen personality I was inspired by the background footage in the VIVA Germany rebrand I decided I wanted to film imagery for Flow too. I liked the way their brand was divided up, with logo, graphical elements and visuals all seperate within their own right. I wanted the cinematography to feel slick and yet real at the same time. Lots of sun flares and reflections would give the footage a few subtle imperfections that are naturally beautiful. In many of the images I found, they had been given an old and weathered effect. I wanted to take that raw effect, but at the same time bring the colours to life, highighting the quirky. I was also particularly inspired by a music video for El Guincho called ‘Bombay’. The video is a montage of surreal scenes - a bombardment of ideas. It leaves you wondering how and why they came up with the ideas they did, but it looks fun to make. That’s the vibe I wanted Flow’s cinematography to have: a sense of raw creativity but also a sense that it is easy to have rndom ideas. Everyone has an imagination and I want this imagery to level the playing field. Despite the channel displaying only the best work, the imagery can feel like it it’s achievable, if you put your mind
to it. The brand needs to remain ‘the people’s channel’ and not pretentious. I looked at Tumblr as a modern way of viewing images and I liked the randomness. The beauty in Tumblr blogs is in the editorial, it is the decisions of why a good blogger chose a certain image to sit next to another. Individually every item is gone very quickly, but when you stumble across someone’s Tumblr archive it can make really interesting viewing.
El Guincho, Viva Germany, Tumblr, sun-bleached, lens flares etc.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Ideas for visuals
Brainstorming pure randomness
The basic premise for the visuals is just mucking about, seeing the beauty in being creative and original. It’s like a scrapbook of filming tests and experiments. There is no obvious theme or idea behind the shots, which makes them feel throw-away, yet collectively they are intriguing. Most TV channels have idents running along some kind of theme, but for Flow, a channel that plays out things like idents, it needs to comment on that.
Being completely loose and random is not something that comes naturally to me so actually ended up brainstorming weird and wonderful ideas that I could pull off. Most of them were based around props and locations I knew I could get. My aim was to shoot as much as possible, so that I could then pick and choose the best clips.
So rather than having a clear narrative or over-riding theme, Flow’s cinematography is looser and more bizarre. Almost anything goes, as long as the shot has some level of beauty or juxtaposition in it. The only rule, is it must be moving.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Shooting on Location
Filming quirkiness on the fringe of society I shot on location around Bristol and London in particularly disregarded spots. I was after the abandoned spaces where kids shouldn’t play but do, because curiosity gets the better of them. I concluded that society’s forgotten alleys are the playground for the imagination. Everything was filmed on 550D, which, quite fittingly, is the world’s first consumer price DSLR to shoot HD. It is one of the cameras that is often used in Vimeo’s top content. Whilst there are many better cameras out there, the 550D is at the affordable aim of decent quality and is a very popular amateur photographers who have seen inspiring work produced on it online before. With the camera and location, the simplicity and rawness of the quirky idents make the prospective high-end, beautiful content being broadcast on Flow seem achievable and effortless. You are left with the feeling that you could have stumbled across a bizarre tableaux. The shots say “creativity is out there, if you look hard enough”.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Cinematography & Grading Colour matching and super slow-mo For the final grade, I edited the footage in a range of ways. I edited colour balance, levels, saturation, brightness and contrast to liven up the colour in the shots. I really pushed the colours in the grading in a style I’m calling ‘hyper-real’. Many of the shots had lens flares, focus blurs and spots of over-exposure, but I also added more in post production to give it as raw a feel as possible. The sun-bleached look is quite trendy at the moment with things like Tumblr and Instagram. Many people add effects to their everyday photographs to make them feel arty and to hide the poor quality of their camera-phones. My footage needed to feel like anyone could have filmed it (or found it) so that’s why I opted for this style. I shot almost everything on 50fps so that I could slow it down. In some shots, I was able to slow the footage down to 1000fps using frame manipulation via the After Effects plug-in Twixtor. This gives it an almost magical feel and allows the footage to have dramatic pace changes without ever coming to a standstill.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Motion Graphics Techniques Using metaballs in Cinema4D There are many ways I could have made my final on-screen graphics but I decided to integrate Cinema4D with real footage. I wanted to keep the overall volume of the logo consistant, so rather than animating vectors I used the metaballs function to animate the liquid and then rendered out the shapes as alpha channels.
I decided to try a new technique using 3D renders and real footage.
I also filmed inks being dropped into a glass with swirling water, oil and water in a fish tank and lava lamps to get an organic, non-stop motion identity.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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On-screen Identity The Logo In Motion
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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On Screen Navigation The graphics in action
Coming soon
2011’s Most Creative Ads
www.flow.tv/ads
Fresh Talent All this week
15:00 LDN | 10:00 NYC | 23:00 TOK
www.flow.tv/shorts
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Web Design Flow TV Online Flow’s online base is key to the way the channel would run. The website is fully interactive and would need to be logistically prepared to pick up live viewers from all over the world. This screenshot is the homepage and landing page for www.flow.tv. From this page the four panel menu is clear: you can begin viewing live; check what’s on and what’s coming up; follow the blog with insight and interviews from a range of creative minds; and learn more about the way the channel is run. The four colours from the logo are used to divide up the navigation on the site, with a colour for each of the buttons in the menu panel. The main central image links to upcoming content and news, cropped as a super-wide rectangle to give an almost ‘cinematic’ emphasis. The colour caption animates across the image wiping and cycling through a range of updates.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Viral Stings
Frantic mini-promos I edited a range of short stings from the live action I filmed and cut them very tightly, to advertise the launch of Flow. Each sting is 7 seconds and contains at least nine shots tightly compacted into the first 5 seconds, with the final seconds being devoted to the logo. Together, the clips take on a collective value, bombarding the viewer with a visual spasm of creativity and quirkiness.
Visual spasms of creativity The audio is very important for the stings and I worked closely with a sound designer to get them right. The idea is that these stings would be uploaded to websites like Vimeo and Youtube, simply with a link to the Flow website. They could also be used as mysterious adverts on other channels and as stings and break bumpers on Flow itself.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Stickers
The essence of viral marketing
I wanted to design stickers for Flow as I thought it was the best way to advertise Flow both as a viral and tactile brand. The stickers make up the logo collectively, but individually it is unclear what they are for. These would be placed in stores, given away in magazines and handed out at events free of charge.
This is Flow’s way of connected the brand with spots of real-world creativity, putting the power in the hands of the audience for once rather than Flow’s researchers.
On the back of the stickers it could encourage the users to find hidden places of beauty and originality to stick them on.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Launch Promo
The aims of the launch promo
I wanted to edit a launch promo for Flow, after I watched inspiring films for the new brands of both Comedy Central and VIVA Germany. It seemed only right, for brand all about non-stop motion, that it should be presented in this format. Also, as the channel is an original idea and unknown, I needed to explain what the channel was about as well as showing how it looks and works. I concentrated on the target audience and decided key
emotions that I wanted the promo to conjure up. I also bullet-pointed key points that the video needed to get across, trying to distill the information to be as succinct and punchy as I could. - Flow is a new TV channel. - It shows only the most beautiful content. - It only shows things under 15 minutes. - It is associated with the best. - Flow is also online. - This is what Flow looks like. - You will love it.
Wrapping up the whole brand it a fast-cut punchy video
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Promo Script
Final script for the promo
Here is my final script for the launch promo: Without further ado, we present to you, Flow. A new TV channel that breaks the mould, Flow is a constant stream of fresh ideas and new visions.
Beauty. Creativity. Originality. Vision. That’s what we look for and that’s what we celebrate. We don’t have talking heads or trashy ‘entertainment’, we let the ideas and the pictures do the talking.
It is wallpaper paste with taste, effortlessly supplying your eyes with liquid wonderment from the sharp to the smooth.
Always beautiful and watchable we work with the world’s top creative minds to bring you true creativity in the rawest form.
Seriously though, what’s on Flow TV? Short-form content, under 15 minutes, and it has to be visuallypleasing.
Like the best bloggers, we’re first on the scene. Really, we just want to stand back and showcase brilliant stuff non-stop.
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
From the quirky to the award-winning. We are a web-based TV channel and because of our online roots, we can refresh live so the stream is always up-todate. So you can catch up with inspiration wherever you are. Flow television. Non-stop creativity Non-stop originality Non-stop motion
I wrote the script slightly longer than I would need, so I could edit it down retrospectively.
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Promo Storyboard What’s in the promo?
Countdown intro
Logo
Eclectic cinematography
Rules of the channel
Brand values
On-screen navigation
Associated brands
Website
Online detail
In-situe
Slogan
Logo finale
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Voiceover Artists A community of voices
I wanted to continue the brand values of the channel into every possible format, so I decided that the most eclectic, free and non-stop way of narrating the promo would be to have a montage of narrators all seamlessly taking over from each other. I booked the audio recording studio and recorded over 15 contrasting people reading my script.
It was great fun working with such a range of people, some with voiceover experience and some who just thought they’d have a go. Despite working in the recording studio for 9 hours straight, I tried to get the best of each person and keep the energy high. I worked with Jamie Frye, a sound designer, who made sure everything was running smoothly on the technical side, leaving me to concentrate on getting the best performances.
I didn’t have time to audition people, so I just booked in pretty much everyone who was interested. We recorded each person reading once the whole way through and then re-recorded sections that needed a second take or that worked particularly well.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Sound Design
Pushing the energy to the max I worked with Jamie, the sound designer, to edit all the voices together in post production. We picked the best lines from each voiceover artist and jumbled them together to get a collective narration. In the final edit, some of the script and some of the voices were cut, as we went in search of the best takes. It was a mammoth task, but thanks to the great range of takes it was possible to fine tune all the details. Along with the boldly edited narration we worked to create a soundtrack and soundscape to the promo to reflect the energy and provide extra impact where needed. We recorded a number of sound effects from scratch to emphasis any strong kinetic movements in the promo. We used samples, lasers, echoes, crackles and scratches to give the sound a really eclectic feel.
ŠReuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
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Summary
Looking back at Flow TV’s development
It’s been a long journey with this project, I first came up with the idea for Flow almost 12 months ago, but it was more of a dream back then. The idea brewed in my head for a long time before I even decided on the name Flow. I knew the branding would be crucial for an idea like this to work, so I put myself under a lot of pressure.
glad it has turned out like that. Previously I would say I have not experimented as much as I would have liked, as it is not really something that comes naturally to me - I’m quite logical with my approach. But this project gave me the excuse to challenge the normal ways of doing things and I have enjoyed every moment.
I’m happy with how it has turned out and the main thing is that I have learnt a lot from the project. I tried a lot of skills I had wanted to try for while and had never had the excuse: Cinema4D, recording in the audio studio, filming regular ‘sketchbook’ work for the idents, creative grading on Final Cut to mention but a few.
Working with others and seeking specialist advice has helped me a lot on this project. From sound design to slogan, and from art direction to logo, I really valued the opinions of others along the way. It’s easy to get wrapped up in a project and lose sight of the overall picture, but through regularly talking to other’s helped me find many weaknesses. Some people spurred me on, some people doubted it would work at all and
In many ways it is a very experimental brand and I am
©Reuben Durrant Armstrong 2011 - Ravensbourne BA(Hons) Motion Graphics
I would say that I have taken encouragement from both reactions.
successfully as well as a top team of researchers to fuel the content.
The final brand won’t be to everyone’s taste, but that was always going to be difficult. I wanted to break conventions and that is my excuse. I am proud of the unusual parts of this brand. Nothing is original, so ‘unusual’ is good enough for me!
Looking back I think my aspirations were extremely ambitious, as I always compare my work to professional work made by a team of people. But I have ultimately surprised myself, managing many roles throughout the project that would be usually taken on by specialists. I feel proud to say that it is all my work.
I think when I get chance to come back to this project with hindsight I will find a few things I want to change, but as it is I’m happy. I would really like to pitch the idea to companies like Vimeo, Motionographer or Onedotzero, as I would love to see it become a reality. The brand would need strong associations to launch
I hope to work on similar projects in the future and I feel I will be well equipped to hit the ground running having gained experience from branding Flow.
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