Chosen minute

After reading over the speech I have decided I would like to end my video with the most famous quote "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". The brief stated that my video has to be between 55-65 seconds long, so what I did was start from the ask not quote and work backwards for one minute, at 58 seconds back, JFK starts a new paragraph of his speech so I decided that would be my starting point. The minute of speech I will be using is:


"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility-I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it-and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country."

Below you can see this part of the speech with the words that I thought were the most important highlighted.

JFK

I have decided to use the JFK speech for this project as I feel although it is less emotive than the speech by Earl Spencer, it is a lot more powerful and could make for a stronger film. Although I have listened to the speech and have gone through each word I feel there is a lot of background information I am missing, because of this I have decided to look further into the meaning of the speech and what else happened in 1961.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States and in 1961 he delivered his Inaugural Address to America. His words were strong and to this day are still well known, his speech was all about keeping America strong, not giving into fear and above all else keeping the country united and peaceful. He wanted to remind people that the country should work together and not be at war with itself or at war at all.

He wanted his speech to asure America that they had made the right choice, he promised so much but his speech successfully reassured the country that he would do his best to achieve everything he had previously said. He was also making sure that America saw him as a bold and strong leader, using lines such as "I do not shrink from this responsibility, I welcome it" built the confidence of his followers and gained him credit from the whole country. Kennedy made his speech personal to the listeners and by addressing them and saying they have the power to change things. Kennedy's speech gave the common citizen a right and a role and at the start of the speech he addresses them putting them on the same level as the government. Overall the speech was hugely successful with a combination of strength, determination and respect for the everyday person, Kennedy definitely gained confidence from his country.


1961

The main news in 1961 (http://www.downthelane.net/growing-up-50s-60s/1961-news-entertainment.php)

• Sunday Telegraph first published 
• John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President of the United States. 
• The Beatles perform at the Cavern Club in Liverpool for the first time. 
• The first U.S. Polaris submarines arrive at Holy Loch. 
• Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space 
• The government unveils new "panda" crossings with push button controls for pedestrians 
• Michael Ramsey enthroned as the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury 
• Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev requests asylum in France while in Paris 
• Tottenham Hotspur become the first English football team this century to win both the League title and FA Cup. 
• Construction of the Berlin Wall begins 
• Betting shops are legalised. 
• George Blake is sentenced to 42 years imprisonment for spying 
• Police arrest over 1,300 protesters in Trafalgar Square during a CND rally 
• The Vietnam War officially begins, as the first American helicopters arrive in Saigon 

Here is an image I found on the internet summing up what happened in 1961, it includes prices, events, music, movies and people that were born in 1961.

The speeches

After having listened to the speeches I have decided that the two I like the best are John F Kennedy: Ask not what your country can do for you and Earl Spencer: The most hunted person of the modern age. I feel that Earl Spencer's speech is very emotive and powerful however the pace of the speech is a little slow so may be hard to keep it interesting. 
The JFK speech is very strong and powerful and the pace is a lot faster which will be easier to edit to, however, I am less familiar with what the speech is about so will need to do more research into it before I can fully decide.


The first thing I did to get a better look at the speeches was to highlight the words in the speeches that I thought were the most important. This helped me to understand the speech and see the order of which it is spoken. Below you can see JFK's speech with the highlighted words.

JFK: Ask not what your country can do for you

After this I then entered the speeches into www.wordle.com which is a site that takes to words and makes them into a cloud, in this the words that are used most frequently appear bigger than the words that are only used once or twice. 
This is a great way to see what the most important words are and can give you a really good idea of what the speech is about an who it is aimed at. Below you can see these clouds for both of the speeches.

JFK: Ask not what your country can do for you

Earl Spencer: The most hunted person of the modern age

Brief

For this project we have been asked to create a TV trailer for a series of radio programmes on Radio 4 called ‘Speeches’. 
The speeches we have been given are:

• Franklin D Roosevelt:  The only thing we have to fear is fear itself
• Winston Churchill:  We shall fight them on the beaches
• Harold Macmillan: The wind of change
• Nelson Mandela: An ideal for which I’m prepared to die
• Jawahharal Nahru: A tryst with destiny
• John F Kennedy: Ask not what your country can do for you
• Martin Luther King: I have a dream
• Margaret Thatcher: The lady’s not for turning
• Earl Spencer: The most hunted person of the modern age

The brief states that "The TV trailers will act as ‘teasers’ about the speeches by creating short films which use a combination of an excerpt of the speech accompanied by atmospheric, original footage and text graphics.  These films need to be 1 minute long (with a 5 second leeway in each direction)."
So I will need to concentrate on timing so that I don't go over or under the 55-65 second barrier. 


The brief also states that "You are not searching for original footage of the speech being delivered, and nor are you trying to film literal interpretations of what is being said, but rather you will devise, shoot edit and post produce a sequence of shots which add visual accompaniment to the words being spoken. This film will also feature text elements which are used to highlight words being spoken in the speech.  You can also use music and/or sound effects in your film."
This is where I feel I am going to struggle with this project as I have not yet had to make something without a general theme or concept and coming up with one that can not be literal is going to be a challenge. However, I am looking forward to trying this and seeing where this extremely open brief takes me. 

Evaluation

Looking back over this project I feel I have made some very good decisions, when I pitched my first set of ideas to the class there wasn't a huge amount of excitement around the ideas I had come up with, I am very glad that I didn't just do them anyway because the ideas I came up with after those were much much stronger and I received much better feedback from them. 

I am very happy that I came across Martin O'neill in this project, he has been a huge influence in my work and will continue to be my inspiration for other projects to come.   

Looking at how my work has come out the I am over the moon, I am so pleased with the look of my work and could happily put this down to being one of my most successful projects to date.

If I were to do this project I wouldn't change a thing, however I possibly would have left myself more time for printing as it would have been nice to have my prints at A2 instead of A3 and there was a problem when printing one of my pieces, when I exported it from Photoshop it put a white line over my black logo, I then gave the print shop the Photoshop version of the image but for some reason the lines have come out pixelated, if I had given myself more time I would have tried again to get perfect quality. 

The images themselves I am extremely happy with and I even impressed myself with how well I got on with In Design. 

Here you can see all of my final images including a few pictures of them in situ, in bus stations and on the underground advertising space.

Final images and printing

Now that I have made all of my changes I am ready to print my images, below are all of my finished posters and the inside and outside of my leaflet. 

My posters will be printed to A3 size and my leaflet will be printed onto an A4 sheet to be the right size, all of this will be done in The Print Room, Lewes. 

Changes made

After my crit there were a few things I could look at changing. The first being the explaining line of text on my posters. After coming up with some ideas and asking the class which were the best I have decided on 


eat @ london road brighton
drink @ london road brighton
shop @ london road brighton


These very quick easy slogans will just confirm what the poster is about and make the reader want to find out more.


On my eat poster I have made the knife and fork smaller and thinner and got rid of the spoon making the poster look much better below you can see a before and after.

For my drink poster I have tried to make the logo black however after doing so and showing it to the class they agreed that my original idea looks better so I have stuck with that, here you can see what the change looked like followed by what I am going to stick with.

The changes I have made to my leaflet are that I have added my own content, made the words bigger and made the graphics slightly larger although I found that after having made the text bigger the graphics didn't need to be much larger. Here you can see a before and after of my leaflet.