Mifa
Context
Mifa is an International Animation Film Market since 1956. It happens during the summer in Annecy (France).
Challenge
There were nothing special or new in the brief about the KV creation. It was the same brief like the ones that had been sent the previous years. Over and over. So, same brief, same result and kind of KVs years after years. So the challenge was having… no challenge.
However, in this digital age, we all are addicted to our screen. The computer is part of the process. So for that particular project, I have decided to challenge myself by creating a KV, without the help of a computer (“Constraint is not the boundaries of the creativity. It’s its foundation”).
Read (people’s mind)
Because the brief was still the same, like in the Matrix movie (Lol), going beyond what is written was needed. I had to read what is not written in the brief. So I have put myself in the client’s shoes. What could be written in the client’s mind? What would they wish? I imagined they would expect something different this year, something new. In advertising, timing is key. So I thought it was the right time to propose some a disruptive stuff.
Genesis (where the idea comes from)
So we worked on a “safe option” (the kind of visual it used to be done previously) and I tried a different approach. But it’s easier said than done. Some directions saw the light of the day but honestly, nothing I could talk about, because there was nothing special. Time flies and I had nothing fun or cool to propose to my teammates and to the client. Tired, I decided to go home. So I drove through the night and it’s usually when the magic happens. For some people, ideas come when they take a shower. To me, the idea also appears when I drive, because during the ride, I focus on the road, so I don’t think. The conscious mind starts to “converse” with the subconscious one. Idea doesn’t come up from nowhere. It’s usually the result of a conversation.
On the highway, sometimes you see the other cars in front of you slowing down, so the red lights behind the car switch on. It reminded me, those photos on stock photography websites with a kind of “light lines” moving through a city at night. So I though “what if, instead of a simple “light lines” we could draw something with the light?”. At that time, I didn’t know the technic’s name was called “light painting”.
But wait… How it’s related to the light painting and the brief about a festival of animation?
Back to the origin, animation was made of many pictures, horizontally displayed in a roll of film. And if you unroll the roll very quickly, it creates an illusion, an animation. In this case, speed is key.
So, let’s transpose that concept to a photo camera. If you take a photo of something that moves, if you open the diaphragm of a camera let say… 5 seconds, it superposes each one of the taken photos. In this case, duration is key. The roll, is replaced by time (as a medium). So like in the original technic above, the visual is made of many displayed pictures. So it’s still about animation, the only difference lies in the approach.
So that approach allows:
- to take advantage of the light painting technic, allowing to draw an elephant (the theme that year was “India”)
- to bring meaning about why the KV is made the way it is.
The Festival
Behind the scene
Testing some art lines, like when you try a new pen or a new marker in a shop.
Testing about what happens when you draw with the light and hide it within your hands.
Painting with light (actually when you do it, you see anything, you have no idea about how the final result might look like).
Tentative of drawing a lotus
This is how looked like the first drawing of the elephant (yes… it’s supposed to be an elephant :-D). It didn’t look good at all because I have placed behind the camera, a picture of an elephant, so I can follow the lines of the animal. It just doesn't work that way.
Base on the catastrophic look and feel of the previous tentative, I realized that I had to find other approaches. So:
1. Simply throw away the printing on a A3 paper of an elephant. But instead of using a paper model as a reference, base on how an elephant looks like in your mind.
2. Don’t draw like it can be done with a pen, paint it as a calligraphy.
3. Because I wanted the variations of line in art, I have to take advantage by not being limited by a 2D surface of paper. I have to paint in the 3D space (so lines can appear and disappears, making the paint more eyes catching)
It worked just fine.
Merchandising & billboard
T-Shirt
Bag
Candle
Billboard
Lesson learned
from that experience
Ideas rarely come during a brainstorming session. Actually, it comes after the brainstorming itself, when the meeting is over, when you go home or take a shower. But please, don’t get me wrong, it’s not the action of taking a shower that helps to generate ideas. Actually it’s a reaction. Taking a shower relaxes your body and then your mind (so it stops you from thinking analytically, in another words: you let it go). And it’s usually when your subconscious mind comes up with ideas. It’s interesting to notice how a physiological change (due of a shower) can influence the brain, allowing it to be in the right mode for generating ideas.
Credits
Agency: felix-creation.fr
Account & Strategic Planner: Laurent
Art Director: mynkao
Advertiser’s website:
www.annecy.org/mifa/presentation
