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8 D E G R E E SE M M A R I D G WAY

PROPOSALTIMETABLECONCEPTRESEARCHSCRIPT AND STRUCTUREFLOOR PLANSLOGO DESIGNFILM TESTSCHARACTER PROFILESFILMINGEDITINGFINAL PIECEEVALUATIONBIBLIOGRAPHY

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CONTENTS

Aims, Objectives and Target Audience:

For my Final Major Project I would like to create a documentary/reality show based around modern student life. The film will be approximately 15-20minutes in total and will be filmed on a set location following a group of university students over the course of 1 week. It will be aimed at people who are also students, and people of the same age category (18-25) which will allow the target audience to relate to the characters. The target audience would include be parents whose children are students, as the show would hope to change perspective and connotations of ‘typical student lifestyle’.

The idea of the show is to allow the audience to see inside the lives of a modern student house, and all of the decision making, routine and lifestyle that come with it. It will give the audience an insight into the characters’ everyday lives and will hopefully change the generic representations of how students are seen in modern society. The common view is that the majority of students are loud and lazy. This project will hopefully give an honest depiction of the characters, and in doing so, change the representations of modern student lifestyle.

The show will be a documentary, though the majority of the scenes will have some form of structure in order to capture the salient moments. This form of directing makes the show similar to that of reality television programmes although the scenes won’t all necessarily be scripted in the way that shows such as ‘Made In Chelsea’ are.

Resources and Research:

I will be filming the show myself but I will also be in a few scenes due to the fact that the show is based within my own home. The structure and narrative will be fully decided by February 25th in order to allow time to prepare for filming, which will take place in March. I will also do a series of film previews in order to test the sound and lighting for the production. My plans also include a photoshoot within the house and a logo for the show which will be incorporated into my Final Major Project. In addition there will also be a 30 second to 1 minute preview trailer.

For research purposes, I have decided to look at a mixture of documentaries and reality shows in order to understand their narrative and structure. This includes top documentarist Nick Broomfield and shows such as Made In Chelsea. As I am looking into the notion of reality versus scripted, I have also taken note of films such as The Truman Show. Other research has focused on the variety of ways in which characters are introduced within shows and films with particular reference to the HBO show ‘Girls’.

I am expecting this to lead to a strong narrative which will result in a positive filming session. I want to film several hours worth of footage so that I have as many options as possible for the final edit. My experience of student life has been a combination of hard work and enjoyment, the house itself has a sense of community which i want to convey within the video.

PROPOSAL

Resources and Research:

I will be filming the show myself but I will also be in a few scenes due to the fact that the show is based within my own home. The structure and narrative will be fully decided by February 25th in order to allow time to prepare for filming, which will take place in March. I will also do a series of film previews in order to test the sound and lighting for the production. My plans also include a photoshoot within the house and a logo for the show which will be incorporated into my Final Major Project. In addition there will also be a 30 second to 1 minute preview trailer.

For research purposes, I have decided to look at a mixture of documentaries and reality shows in order to understand their narrative and structure. This includes top documentarist Nick Broomfield and shows such as Made In Chelsea. As I am looking into the notion of reality versus scripted, I have also taken note of films such as The Truman Show. Other research has focused on the variety of ways in which characters are introduced within shows and films with particular reference to the HBO show ‘Girls’.

I am expecting this to lead to a strong narrative which will result in a positive filming session. I want to film several hours worth of footage so that I have as many options as possible for the final edit. My experience of student life has been a combination of hard work and enjoyment, the house itself has a sense of community which i want to convey within the video.

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TIMETABLE

I originally created a timetable at the beginning of the semester. The original timetable allowed me to plan when I could film, and for how long. Almost immediately the timetable began to change due to changing circumstances. It can be a problem when you have to direct 8 different people (including yourself) and make sure they’re around when you need them. The first of these problems when one of my housemates fell ill, the second when mother’s day came around and most of the house went home for an extended weekend. This had an impact on my original timetable which I then had to amend to the constant-changing circumstances.

Fortunately after a lot of reorganising and rearranging I managed to begin filming earlier than I had originally planned, which mean I could focus on other aspects of my final outcome once I had the filming out of the way.

Overall some factors had an impact on the planning and preperation for my project, though I managed to recover from this by rearranging when I would complete certain tasks. The majority of the tasks were completed on time and to the standard I wanted them.

FEBRUARY

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Structure and concept planning

FiniSh planning and Script FirSt draFt

Floor planS photography oF houSemateS/roomS

FEBRUARY

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TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAYMONDAY

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teSt ShotS with video and mic

plan portFolioFilming BeginS FirSt Stage oF editting

Formative Foliologo deSign

Formative viva

home For eaSter editting editting editting editting

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TIMETABLE

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TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAYMONDAY

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continue portFolio

Folio and preSentation prep

and planning

porFolio porFolio porFolio porFolio porFolio Back to london

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preSentation

APRIL

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C O N C E P T

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C O N C E P T

My original concept which I wanted to do for my Final Project came from the idea of wanting to tell a story. I was drawn to the idea of showing interesting characters who, in my opinion, had a story to tell.

This led me to the concept of creating a children’s story book. Here I could create a story based roughly on the people I live with and illustrate it into a children’s story book.

The original concept grew a number of proplems from the early stages, again varying from the difficulty of directing a large group of people, to miscommunication and eventually, lack of time in order to complete the amount of up-to-stand-ard illustrations needed for the hand in. In the end I decided to alter my final major project concept to something that suited my skills a bit better.

ORIGINAL CONCEPT

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NEW CONCEPT

I decided to change my concept in order to make it more realistic. Instead of making a fictional children’s book I decided I would make a Documented Drama show which would have ties of reality television shows as well as documenataries. I chose this as I could portray my characters (my housemates) in an honest light, and give the audience an insight into our everyday lives. The final decision for this came from my strengths in editting films. I am very confident in my editting skills and feel that I could create a show which is interesting and captivating. I wanted to show why we are different from normal ‘students’ and document why I feel we are special and stand out.

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R E S E A R C H

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R E S E A R C H

RESEARCHIn order to make sure my new concept would be successful, I needed a lot of research. I wanted the show to be a combination of typical TV genres, almost as if I would be creating a new genre. The genre would be a documented drama. The idea behind this came from looking at shows such as Made In Chelsea, which is a typical ‘reality’ TV show. The problem with this genre, though it runs in a similar way to how I wanted my show to be, the majority of it is scripted and unreal, contradicting the reality of it.

I decided to look at Made In Chesea for the first part of my research. I found that the scripting aspect has its positives and negatives. Positives including the fact that planning what the characters might say can in fact be entertaining and make the topic and the show more interesting. The planned events create a certaing narrative for each episode, a narrative that usually arcs and concludes at the end of each episode. The structure of the show was also interesting to me. There are a number of cut scenes and ‘fillers’ in between scenes which helped to set the locations and display the areas in which it was taken, something which I would incorporate into my own show.

Though interesting, I felt that the scripting of the show lessened the drama of it, due to the fact that the audience knew the majority of it was planned and staged. This leads me to the conclusion that I will plan the structure of the show, similar to that of MiC, but the dialogue will not be scripted.

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As my show is based on a large number of characters, I had to look at the ways in which they could be introduced. A film that does this well is The Truman Show, the film has a strong narrative and a large number of characters. I found the script for the film which I looked into for both scripting and character research. It was also a good example of showing the ways in which characters can develop throughout a script as well as that being translated on screen.

Though I am not creating a fictional film I wanted to look at The Truman show purely for it’s characters. I can incorporate this into the script which I will create for the structure of my show.

As I am doing a documented show I also had to look at documentaries. For this I decided to look at reknowned documatarist Nick Broomfield. In particular, his most recent film ‘Sarah Palin: You Betcha!’ in which he follows former American Governor on her campaign for vice presidency. The show is unauthorised. The way in which Broomfield works is of particular interest to me. I am fascianted by the hand held approach, which is very loose and authentic. To me it is much more effective than the high quality film of Made In Chelsea which makes it look more unrealistic.

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Finally I looked at a television show which I thoroughly enjoy watching, due to the fact that it is very realistic despite the fact that it is fictional. The characters are very honest in which allows the audience to relate to them and to connect to them. This is something which I would hope to achieve from my show also.

One part in particular that captivates me about this show is the way in which it is structured. The narratives are never complete by the end of each episode (which are only half an hour long) leaving the intriguing prospect of the audience immediately wanting to know what happens next. Each episode ends very abruptly in a almost unfinished way, though at the same time, the audience feels this is a fitting end to each episode. I believe this structure and way of planning is very effective and would be something I would highly consider when editting my show.

From looking at my research I can see that I am drawn to interesting characters and their narratives, though in my opinion, the structure of the show is more effective than what the characters are actually talking about. Therefore it is important for me to create a structure and narrative that coincide with one another.

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S C R I P T I N GA N D

S T R U C T U R E

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S C R I P T I N GA N D

S T R U C T U R E

SCRIPTING AND STRUCURE

I made the decision that my show would not be traditionally scripted. Instead of writing exactly what the characters would say, with some improvising (as seen in Made in Chelsea) I decided to write a structure for the show. This structure would be part of my pre-production and allow me to plan the scenes accordingly. Making the script was one of the first things I did in preparation for my filming, therefore by the time I actually came round to filming the show, several things had been changed. I took these changes into account and adapted to the circumstances which included characters having to leave suddenly, or falling ill.

Though my filming did not follow the script I originally made, I did manage to create and film scenes which were relevant to my cause and film them successfully by the deadline I had originally set myself (see timetable for more details).

The images here show my original script, the full document can be seen at:

eridgway.gdnm.org/ files/2013/03/SCRIPT-1st-Draft.pdf

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F L O O R P L A N S

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F L O O R P L A N S

4.35m

Camera 1

Camera 2

FLOOR PLANS: LIVING ROOMThese floor plans are drawn accurately and to-scale of the Living Room within our house. As this would be one of the main filming areas I decided to make a floor plan to show where exactly the cameras and microphones would be placed.

4.35m

Camera 1

Camera 2

Mic 2

Mic 1

These floor plans are drawn accurately and to-scale of the Living Room within our house. As this would be one of the main filming areas I decided to make a floor plan to show where exactly the cameras and microphones would be placed.

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KITCHENAs some scenes were to be filmed within my kitchen, I made a floor plan to know once again where the cameras and microphone would be placed. This would also allow me to plan scenes accordingly.

Mic 1

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4.95m

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Camera 1

As some scenes were to be filmed within my kitchen, I made a floor plan to know once again where the cameras and microphone would be placed. This would also allow me to plan scenes accordingly.

Mic 1

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4.95m

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2.15m

Camera 1

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BEDROOM For my final room plan I made my own room. I felt that I didnt need to do every bedroom in the house for two reasons; one rea-son being that most of the rooms are the same size and layout, the second being that not a lot of the film would be shot within peo-ple’s rooms. I wanted to keep as much of the film within the social areas of the house in order to capture as many people as possible.

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Camera 1

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L O G O D E S I G N

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LOGO DESIGNI chose the name ‘8 Degrees’ for my show. The name came from looking at the number of people within the house, and the fact that we are all students. It is also a play on words relating to the math-matical term. The logos here show the development as well as the final design which I chose to make in the form of a graduation cap.This logo will also be incorporated into my final produce in form of a title sequence.

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C H A R A C T E R S + F I L M T E S T S

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C H A R A C T E R S + F I L M T E S T S

CHARACTERSI photographed the characters as a way of profiling each of them, I also wanted to photograph them in their own space and environ-ment as a way of reflecting their personalities.

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FILM TESTSIn order to make sure the camera I was using was good enough, I made several film tests. Within these I tested the lighting and the sound in order to check the quality for both of them. The screen shots below show the different tests that I made. The result of making these helped me to make sure the filming for my video was as good as I could make it.

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F I L M I N G

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F I L M I N G

FILMING: DAY 1I shot Day 1 about a week after I had originally planned, though Day 1 was probably the most successful of the 4 days I filmed over. I shot about 4 hours worth of footage on this evening, which allowed me to cut this down into a couple of scenes for my film.

I was happy with the filming I did for day 1, although I had a couple of microphone issues which I later resolved when editing together. The purpose and aim for filming this night focused around trying to introduce the characters and set the scene and location. Therefore I let the characters act natural as though the camera was not present.

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FILMING: DAY 2Filming Day 2 actually happened about 2 days after I had filmed Day 1. There were a number of issues on this day in regards to the camera. Despite previous promises, there was miscommunication with the media store who refused me my regular camera, and substituted it with a different one. This resulted in low quality filming in which the majority of it was edited out due to it not being good enough. This meant that sadly not much footage from Day 2 was then edited into my final video. A failure of a day, sadly. But thankfully the days around this were much better.

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FILMING: DAY 3After the failures of the previous day, Day 3 focused on the main event of the episode; a birthday. For this I attempted to use the substitute camera as little as possible, and instead use camera 1 (a Canon 60D SLR) as the only camera for the night, this did result in one-angle scenes, again, something I wanted to avoid, so I made sure my editing skills could fix this as much as possible. I managed to get a lot of filming done this day (approximately 5 hours worth of footage). This made up the majority of my final video in the form of several different scenes.

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FILMING: DAY 4Day 4 was shot about 2 days after Day 3. This focused on an alter-native gathering in which only a couple of the characters are pre-sent. This day was intended to close the show, as a way of winding down from the previous scenes. This again was a successful day of filming, though again I only used one camera.

Overall my filming was both successful and unsuccessful. I man-aged to get the shots that I wanted, but it was difficult for a num-ber of reasons. Though I was pleased with the amount of footage I managed to get. Overall I had over 10 hours, which I needed to edit down to about 15 minutes.

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E D I T I N G

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E D I T I N G

EDITINGEditing was by far the most difficfult and time consuming part of my final major project, but it was without a doubt the part I was most looking forward to. I will admit I am not a camera man, my filming is amatuer, but this was to be expected with a student film, my skills have always lied in directing and editing. So I made sure to give myself plenty of time to go through all the footage and chose the right scenes to edit into my video. The timeline below shows my entire video.

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I started editing the film imediately af-ter the first day of filming, this meant I didn’t forget what I had just filmed. I did this after each day, meaning I could go through what I had shot and chose the best scenes from that particular day.

Once I had chosen the best scenes from each day I began to edit them together. As I had an external microphone I had to syncronise the sound with the videos for nearly every scene. There were a few minor incidents where the microphone had failed and I had to use the sound that was recorded with the camera itself, but this only happened for about 20 seconds out of the entire video. The video itself ended up being 16 minutes and 36 seconds long. I had planned to make a film of 15-20 minutes so this was ideal and a success. I could have possibly made it longer, though I felt that the narrative portrayed within this film was good enough by itself and any additions would simply be dragging it out for no reasons, I felt that any extra scenes didnt neccesarily add to it. The main scenes were edited together first, with the title sequence and end credits made at the end due to the fact that most of them were made with the addition of Adobe After Effects. The screen here shows my film being edited in Adobe Premier Pro.

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In addition to editing the film in Premiere Pro I also used After effects for a number of different things. One being the title se-quence. This was all done once I had finished the main part of my editing as well as introducing the music within the scenes them-selves. The screen shots below show the ways in which I was using After Effects to accompany my video.

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Editing the video took approximately 4 weeks in total. I finished the filming on schedule despite originally changing my plans, mean-ing I could then start my editing on time. I believe that my planning and organisation helped me to finish the video on time, otherwise I would have severely struggled. The video took longer to edit than originally anticipated so I made sure I had planned time at the end to finish anything that needed doing so. I originally uploaded the video to vimeo, though the file never converted in time, therefore I made a last minute decision to try YouTube.

eridgway.gdnm.org

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F I N A L

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F I N A L

FINAL After attempting to upload the video to Vimeo, I left it converting overnight. The forums told me this delay meant that my upload had failed. There seemed to be numerous issues with Vimeo (typical for a deadline day) so I compressed the file size and quality in order to upload it to YouTube. The links below show my back up upload on YouTube, also the original uploads to Vimeo which havent converted as of yet.

Original Upload (HD)https://vimeo.com/64240301

2nd Upload (Low Quality)https://vimeo.com/64298825

3rd Upload (Low Quality)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTXimCQUQ4k&feature=player_embedded

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As my housemates were the cast for the video, I decided to show them first. I staged a preview in living room and showed the video and then asked for feedback. The reviews were all positive. They found the show very funny and well put together, which I am happy about.

Overall I am pleased with my video, it is funnier than I originally planned, though I remember wanting to create a story about interesting people, something which I think I have achieved through this video.

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For my Final Major Project I wanted to make a story, a film about a group of people I am very close to, a group who I feel are very interesting, funny and likeable. From the start I knew it would be a difficult task; having to film the entire thing alone, from different angles, as well as directing 8+ people (sometimes all at once), but I was determined. I planned everything for pre-production making sure I left time at the end in case I needed to reshoot or if anything ran overtime. Once I had planned everything I got round to shooting the film.

From the start of filming I had issues, camera replacements were frustrating and meant I had lost a number of scenes due to the camera failing or the quality of the video being too poor, this was by far the most difficult part of my project. In the end I got as much film out of the other days as I could. Other issues

EVALUATION

included my attempt to upload the video to Vimeo, who just so happened to be having issues on the day I needed it most. I uploaded the video for 7 hours, left to convert overnight only for it to fail. In the end I had to compress the file and upload to YouTube. The quality of the Youtube Video is not as good as I had hoped, my intentions were to have a HD video on Vimeo, though I have also included those links, the chances of them working are slim. Nonetheless I will continue to try and make them work so that I have a HQ video uploaded and then post them on my blog.

Even though I chose to make a film/documentary, I am not a cameraman. I made sure to test the cameras and microphones before I used them, but my skills lie within editing and directing. I am happy with my film, I didnt use industry professional cameras

because I wanted it to look like an honest student film, for that reason, I am happy with the outcome of what I filmed.

If I had the chance to go back and change things I would of course make sure that the quality of every scene I filmed was good. I believe I got the best out of the camera that I was using, though I have possibly used an even better camera in hindsight.

There were issues when it came down to renting the cameras as there were a number of occasions where I was overlooked in regards to the priority of who could obtain a camera, but this was something I had to work around. There are errors within my project, but I am thrilled with the outcome. I believe it fulfills its purpose in portraying student lifestyle honestly, and shows that we are

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because I wanted it to look like an honest student film, for that reason, I am happy with the outcome of what I filmed.

If I had the chance to go back and change things I would of course make sure that the quality of every scene I filmed was good. I believe I got the best out of the camera that I was using, though I have possibly used an even better camera in hindsight.

There were issues when it came down to renting the cameras as there were a number of occasions where I was overlooked in regards to the priority of who could obtain a camera, but this was something I had to work around. There are errors within my project, but I am thrilled with the outcome. I believe it fulfills its purpose in portraying student lifestyle honestly, and shows that we are

interesting people. It has also given me the opportunity to use my editing skills to full advantage.

One of the few things that changed from my original plans for the film was the genre. From looking at my original research I decided on a documented drama which had the structure of a reality tv show. Now that I have finished I can say that the show reflects that of a documented comedy. I would still portray this as a first episode to a possible short series, though the episode also has the ability to stand alone.

Overall, apart from the last minute upload quality would say that I am extremely pleased with the work I have produced for my Final Major Project.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q74l7yfsJ1Y&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYBD3p6tVgo&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BiunLu6Xf4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRKANrtrRvk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6wgwZR0KFs&feature=player_embedded

http://www.hbo.com/girls/index.html

http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/shows/girls/

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/the-truman-show_shooting.html

http://www.nickbroomfield.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8971075/Nick-Broomfield-I-didnt-realise-how-horrible-Sarah-Palin-really-could-be.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2011/sep/12/nick-broomfield-sarah-palin-you-betcha-video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RwWXs2NvII

http://www.imdb.co.uk/title/tt1965264/

‘Dos Logos’ Robert Klanton, Nicolas BourqinGestalten, 2009

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