Emma Taylor – Creative Advice Network

Emma Taylor – Creative Advice Network

Emma Taylor is founder & director of the Creative Advice Network. Taylor offers support to both creative individuals and companies within the photography, advertising, and design sectors. She visions herself as the Creative Mary Poppins. On the left is what Taylor offers advice on

 

One very interesting aspect that she has helped creatives with before with personal projects. We know that the application of a personal project is incredibly important to help stand out, it shows how our brains work on their own. Taylor has sat down with photographers before and helped them identify gaps in the market they could fill. Age Of Us on the right is an example of a personal project that Taylor helped in discovering. Not only did she identify something that wasn’t being done, but she also found a way to link the work back to Dylan Collard the photographer this is how it can be cemented as his project. She recommended that we shoot what we love first, then try to find a home for it.

She also offers a service to students which in the past has led to many going on to get very beneficial work experience.

She ended her talk with a quote from Ken Robinson

“You will be in bliss when your passion meets your ability, stick to what you are”

Nick Hale – Locate Productions

Nick Hale – Locate Productions

Locate Productions is a London location library. It is a company that agencies or photographers will go to when they are hunting for a location for their latest production. Doesn’t matter if you need a swimming pool, football pitch, aircraft, hangers, bendy roads, long straights, back-to-back in East London or a mansion in the countryside, Locate Productions has everything covered. We had a talk from one of their location scouts Nick Hale.

Nick first said that briefs tend to be attached to a location. Clients tend to instantly know what they want.

Nick made us aware of the scouting process. Firstly they get the brief, then there is a budget, then there is location research, this tends to be done through imagery. Then there is scouting of selected locations. This can be done on Google Earth with street view. After the scouting the client will pick a location then it is time for the red tape getting permission to shoot, then when it’s signed off the shoot can begin.

Nick told us about one project where an airline needed to shoot a campaign for their lounges. When it was shot it looked genuine but it was shot at Wembley Stadium. It was cheaper to use that location than using an actual airline lounge. If they did use a real lounge at Heathrow or Gatwick they would have to close the lounge and that would lead to lost revenue.

Nick recommended that we always make a note of interesting places we go to. You don’t want to have an idea and have that perfect location in your head that you went to but forgot to note it down or at least take a picture of it. Of course, the great thing with today’s phones is GPS. You can take an image of a location you like but you might not of got the name, well the GPS on your phone should note where you were when you took the image.

Nick also said there are other things we need to consider when choosing a location, is it safe, can you park, is there adequate power, everyone available to get there, noise are you in a flight path, motorway, building site, farm animals etc. You need to really think about the direction of the sun as well

Nick also told us that permission wise. You only need permission for buildings your shooting in, not buildings you’re including in your image. The only building with IP rites in the Gherkin.

Jay Phillips – AMV BBDO

 

Jay Phillips – AMV BBDO

Jay Phillips is a creative director at the UK’s most creative agency AMV BBDO. He has spent 5 years there and has been a part of some massive projects.

He mentioned to us that art directors always work in a pair. They always pair up with a copyrighter. Jay’s one couldn’t attend today’s talk. Jay said this add to the collaborative spirit that you get by working in the creative industry.

“We have an instinct for collaboration to come up with a solution“

One project where he worked on was for Heinz beans. We know the thinking behind the packaging for Heinz. It is blue because that is the complementary colour of orange which is the colour of beans, so the focus of the beans is even more prominent. So when Heinz went to AMV BBDO, the client wanted an orange background However this goes againsts what there packaging does.

Look on the left, the outer square is the background, the inner square is the packaging and the circle is the bean. Orange background and orange bean means that the focus of the image is the packaging. Whereas blue background and blue packaging makes the orange bean the focus of the image.

Another production that Jay worked on was with Lexus in 2012 for their latest executive car in the GS range. This ad campaign was all based around the fact the millon miles worth of testing that Lexus engineers do to ‘create amazing’ cars. Jay said that they have to literally show the car driving over a million miles. So they decided to shot a POV of the car bumper driving for many miles. When watching this ad I thought this was all CGI. However, there actually isn’t that much CGI. The majority of this campaign was stills photography. A hyper-lapse. This was achieved by mounting a camera on the front of a Range Rover and it was driven down a road at 3 miles per hour and every time the tyre did a 360 turn, an image was taken. When played back at 25 fps, this is why we have the illusion of moving at speed. Jay said they went to 18 different locations to assemble this advert. Jay also said that the clients did have a big doubt that this idea wouldn’t work. There was footage which couldn’t be used cause the continuity was ruined by something as small as a pothole. However, Thursday was the first time I saw this advert and it was absolutely beautiful.

Chris Frazer-Smith

The final project that Jay discussed was one I was really looking forward to hearing about. There’s no denying the fact that I’ve learnt a lot from Chris Frazer-Smith and I’m a big admirer of his work. I’ve always been blown away by the composite he created for Samsung. When I think of Chris this is the piece of work which always springs to mind. Jay was the art director for this so he had been on the project since the concept. Back then this was only a tv advert that was gonna cost around £600,000. Then Samsung said how about we do a poster campaign as well. So in around a week Chris was contacted, briefed and flown out to New Zealand to shoot this absolute masterpiece. Apparently, after taking into account image usages & rites, this project cost had risen to £5.2 million.

 

I wasn’t aware of the tv advert of this project but it was fantastic to watch once again. The print campaign has been used worldwide for airport to airport, city to city. It makes me wonder if I’ve ever seen this advert before.

Chris Frazer-Smith

Chris also managed to assemble a small personal project of the subjects. During the recording Chris was there to document the recording, so subjects running etc. He decided that whilst everyone was breaking for lunch, he would shoot some quick informal portraits of them against a black background with natural light. It’s nice that said “The results are surreal, to say the least; the absurdity of the pairings requires serious suspension of disbelief, which, plus the momentary self doubt”

Chris loves to take portraits from his commissioned work and try to create personal projects or let them stand alone as just portraits. I learned this from the Sharron Daly talk where I saw some images in ad campaigns which I also saw on his Instagram.

Jay ended the talk by giving some general advice for us going forward. As regards to portfolio, he recommends a healthy balance of both commissioned & personal work. This way clients see not only how a photographer can respond to a brief but also how their creativity can thrive on their own.

Jay ended his talk by stating he feels photographers need moving image skills because it makes ourselves future proof. He says this because he believes that the Nike London advert was done in such a way from a cinematography angle so that everytime you freeze the frame, it looks like a poster. With the way cameras are going, you’re going to be able to take a sharp high-quality screengrab from a video. So photography is possible very slowly becoming redundant.

Sharron Daly Productions

Sharron Daly Productions

Sharron Daly is a very experienced advertising stylist with over 20 years of work under her belt. She has a very extensive client list of mainstream organisations:

• HSBC
• Co-op
• Ikea
• Amazon
• Ford
• Kidzania
• Costa
• Tesco
• RBS
• Waitrose
• Nationwide

To name a few

Here is are some projects that she worked on which stood out to me:

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RBS. Dean Northcott

One of my favourite projects that she worked on was RBS with their rugby campaign. Obviously I really liked this project because of my love for rugby, I also feel that the team has captured the rugby spirit very well in these images. The emotion in the players face. The wardrobe, the styling of the mid on the clothes. It looks like an action shot, to be the point where we forget it is staged. Sharon mentioned that for this project she didn’t use models, she actually went to two local teams and picked out players. This links back to the emotion in his face. That couldn’t have been achieved with a model. This has been achieved because they used a player who takes part in the sport week in week out. So he didn’t really need to act.

Sharon also mentioned on some of the bad experiences of doing a street casting. Street casting is exactly what the name says it is. A client will go out on the street and ask random people if they’d like to take part in a project. Sharon had one project where she asked someone on the street, he said yes. They got to the studio, shot one image and then thought that was it he was done. He didn’t realise he had to be there half the day.

Chris followed on with an experience of his own. He was shooting a project for HSBC in Beijing. Where he did a street casting. That same person turned up the next day for the shoot with a black eye cause he got into a fight. But Chris said he has one good eye, he can just copy and paste it and flip it in post.

HSBC. Chris Frazer-Smith

Another piece of work I really liked was a collab between Chris & Sharron. It was for HSBC once again. Not only do I love the angle that Chris shot, I like everything about this shot. I love the wardrobe, I love the choice of model. It was a great image in its own right. I was also very intrigued in a story that Sharron told us. She had to go to many places to find the medals. After loads of research and discussions, she had medals & ribbons that matched. Then at the 11th hour HSBC said they don’t want any war medals. Essentially they didn’t want medals that related to a specific act of war. So there were no campaign medals like battle of Atlantic, D-Day etc. Instead they had to be medals for bravery or courage.