Urban Screens

Concept / Strategy
November 3, 2011 Phase 1: BriljantNet / Urban Screens

Bjoern Hofmans

Bisschop Zwijsenstraat 129, 5021 KB, Tilburg, T 06 249 981 80 info@bjoernhofmans.nl www.bjoernhofmans.nl

Urban Screens

BriljantNet / Urban Screens

Goals
For the rst period Briljantnet challenged us to create animations and concepts to be used on their narrowcasting network. From the beginning it was clear to me that I had to come up with a concept that suited me. I wasnt familiar with the medium yet. I wanted to create a theme that reected on my point of view on the medium of urban screens, BriljantNet and my own specic sense of humor. I also wanted the freedom to experiment with different kind of techniques of animation. The narrowcasting locations of BriljantNet are mostly at schools and train stations within the province of Noord-Brabant. So the main focus of this project was to give an unique view on Brabant and the main cities. For me, this was no problem at all because Ive lived in Brabant almost my whole life. I also wanted to question the medium itself. Because I didnt want to conform to one specic idea, I started to play with the idea of misinformation and disguised jokes. Instead of researching just one subject, I started doing my research on broader themes like propaganda and mass media. If youre interested in this part of my research, its described in the research report I made for Sarah. The last thing that was important for me was that the goals I had set for myself were realistic. If I wanted this idea to work, I would have to make many different movies in all kind of different techniques. So Id have to come up with smart ways of animation. And I also chose to integrate the use existing materials you could nd and use from the internet, this even improved my experimenting and free approach.

Concept
I started developing the concept of misinformation and the chameleon like Jokes. This was so much fun. From this moment I really started to get into this project. I came up wit plenty ideas for a whole series of movies. At the end I nished 10 movies in total. Most of them are about 30 seconds. First Ill Talk about my starting points for the project. The rst idea I came up with was about an airport luggage scan. I dropped this idea because it wasnt suitable for this project. It was about an airport x-ray which showed all kind of strange objects passing by. It played with the fear for terrorism and fear, but in my eyes it was too much for this project. The BriljantNet network also isnt on an airport, so that also made no sense. One of the rst I came up with was about a train information board. From the beginning the concept of this movie was really clear to me. Later on I added the idea of Noord-Brabant being cut of from the rest of the world. I used the NS style for the map and information chart and Id really like to see the reaction of the travelers passing by. Another clear concept from the beginning on was the Buienradar idea. This one is about Noord-Brabant being hit by really bad weather while in the rest of the Netherlands the weather is shiny and bright. The trick for this one was to keep the animation as simple as possible, the frame rate is about one image a second.

Urban Screens - Concept / Strategy

Urban Screens

The Brabant Burger started as an concept on how far I could go with exhilaration. What happens if you advertise for a ridiculous product. Is it too obvious or is it subtle enough to get an innocent by-passer fooled? The movie is about an enormous burger advertisement. The style could both be Burger ing or Mc Donalds, its orange /yellow. At rst this movie was about a computer crashing while somebody was doing his average job on it. Possible anBriljantNet employee who forgot to switch the settings so his movements were shown on the screen. The end result is much more disturbing. I wanted to use license free animal footage and I found some of a goose. The rst idea was to make it look like an animal show, but i only added the glitch an blue screen. It still really freaks me out. At the end of this project I still didnt use any stop motion or pixilation techniques. The Kofe tafel concept came just in time. Its a typical Noord-Brabants thing. I wanted to make it look cheap, but also warm and cosy. It ended up looking like an 70s German erotic movie. And I could nally make the funeral rauwkost joke, great! The taxi cab movie idea came up really fast. It is build around a punch line. In Dutch it has a double meaning, well rip you off is one, well bring you to your destination the other. I kept it black an white on purpose, it gets very graphical this way. But its also an convincing advertisement on its own. In case you havent noticed, its a time of crisis. For this movie I wanted to do something with the dialect of Noord-Brabant. It shows a picture of money, a falling diagram and a let bar displaying a dialect text about the nancial crisis. This is when things get really ridiculous. This movie shows a smoking cigarette symbol illustrated with the text: Smoking Allowed. I really want to nd out if this one is getting me into trouble. This project is also in a way an opportunity for me to test the boarders of the medium of Urban Screens. I wanted to make one movie disguised like a gif webpage. I wanted a resemblance with early 90s websites. I wanted to design something without the use of my own design skills. Maybe I got a little bit too exited and took it a bit too far. I really enjoyed working on this one. The last movie I made came from the urge of working with materials outside the computer. Its a combination of different techniques. Its a 30 second karaoke version of a typical Dutch song by Guus Meeuwis called Brabant. Its poorly performed and looks awkward without the sound of the song. Its disturbing in a way.

Conclusion
This project allowed me to experiment and at the same time reect on my former work. I used this project to get int the right workow and mindset for the next part of the animation master. Perhaps I didnt experiment as much with different kind of techniques like I intended to do. But Im still very happy with the end result. The main concept trough all of the movies is clear, although the techniques and subjects are different. I think my concept is strong in the way how it questions the medium. In this way I could overcome my sarcasm and suspicion towards the narrowcasting medium and at the end Ive turned it into something that really tted me.

Urban Screens - Concept / Strategy