Shooting

Thursday I had class from 10 till 10. It was difficult to keep my eyes open in class, but nevertheless it was big fun. For writing for TV course we went to a shooting from agency Scholz & Friends. At a big soccer field they shot a commercial for a German milk brand. There were about a hundred people walking around; cameracrew, director, creatives, actors and extra's. Since we were there anyway, we were immediately chartered to be an extra. I had to play one of the members of the audience. Which means that pretty soon I can be in the background of a commercial. Well, I have to start my acting career somewhere ;-)

Today I'm in school to do Saturday shift and there's also a meeting in school. At four o'clock I'm done with my shift. Then I'm going home, get groceries, rest a little and in the evening I go out with Salvatore, who brought about half of his Italian village to Hamburg. With these group of guys it's always big fun, so I'm certainly going to enjoy myself tonight.

Double assignments

The month isn´t over yet, and I already worked the whole weekend in school. Saturday there was a meeting and at Sunday evening I worked at school to make sure I´m on track with all the work. I am on track now, so that gives me a lot of rest.

At Saturday Luise and Vita, two girls who were on the boat during my Croatia vacation, came to the Miami Ad School. I gave them a quick tour. They saw the school in the right weekend because they could see the school as it normally is: with a lot of students still in there.

We seem to get a lot of double assignments lately. One brief for a magazine, the other for a different magazine. One for a liquor, the other for a different liquor. And two chicken briefings: one pro-chickenmeat and one anti-chickenmeat (it kind of forces you to be a hypocrite if you want to make both assignments well ;-). To cope with these double briefings in a creative way, I use claims and scribbles for one assignment as inspiration for the other. Maybe if I'm doing well this week I can finally have this whole Sunday off. Hooray!

Melting brain

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The tables, painted by Julien and me

Last week I heard there was a heat wave in Holland(!). Well, it seems that the heat has flown to Germany now. We sit in class while the sweat is dripping from our forehead to our laptops. It's hard to work in these conditions, but it's also hard not to work here in school.

Even outside your brain is melting away after working outside for 10 minutes. Nevertheless, yesterday I was working outside with art-director and grafitty expert Julien to spray the benches of the Miami Ad School. I made some spraying templates with stupid looking animals, puppets and flamingo footprints. Julien made some cool looking logo's of the school. Above you can see the results.

They are actually not in use right now, because it's too warm. Ten seconds after taking the picture above, the students on the bench ran to the nearest shadow. I hope it's getting colder soon so I can enjoy my tables when I'm looking outside.

Big bang & reunion

Family reunion in Hamburg

In the beginning of the quarter I get what I call the ´big beginning of the quarter bang´. This is to describe the feeling that you get when you have so much work that you think you´ll never going to finish it. Every assignment feels like a big rock that's attached to your leg. And there's more and more rocks coming. I had it last quarter and I have it now. The difference now is that I was prepared for it. It still feels the same but now I know that everything will turn out to be allright. At a certain point I´ll get used to the workflow and I work on full speed again.

But weekend is weekend. I was in school on Saturday, but every week I always reserve the Saturday evening to go out. Which was good, because this weekend my family held a small reunion in Hamburg. They were on a camping outside Hamburg and in the evening they came to me. We had dinner in my favorite Italian restaurand and afterward I showed them the Reeperbahn. At 1:30 they left. I partied further and got back when the sun was up.

Writing, writing, writing

This quarter is all about writing. My fingers are non stop writing at the moment. We have long copy class, writing for TV and head and tags. In concept class, our teacher motivated us to start with an idea by putting it in one single line, which also means: writing. A lot. Last two quarters my dummy was full of pictures. Now it's full of one liners, texts, pay offs and headings.

Seems like a good thing for a copywriter, but I really have to get used to it a little. This week, an American guy doubted if I really enjoy writing when he red one of my texts. Well, he's right. I don't enjoy writing. I enjoy making advertising. If I make a text I do it to convince somebody. And fortunately, there's more ways to convince somebody than with pictures only. Forcing yourself to explain your idea in one single line is quite refreshing. Only you usually don't write just one line. Write a hundred single lines and there might be some good ideas in them. So I write my ass off this quarter.

And it pays off. Yesterday, I turned in about 15 TV scripts for television production class. This morning I found out that three of the four ideas nominated to be really made came from my group. At the end of the lesson, we heard that one of the ideas is really going to be executed by a production company called Markenfilm. It's been a year since I've made a TV-commercial, so I'm really excited about it. For the rest I'm very busy. Already there's not enough time for everything. I have to think of concepts, I have to scribble and above all I have to write, write, write.

THE FUDGE

Txt: like to push him around? Weetabix gives you power.

This must be the cheesiest picture in the history of our school

A while ago, I already explained that I won an award in school. Now I can finally show the work behind it. The cheesy photo below one of the ads is me and Dominic holding The Fudge, or the award for the best work of the exhibition. Above you can see the winning work. The assignment was to communicate that the breakfast of Weetabix gives you power.

By the way, it's great to be back again. Tuesday I saw a depressed Germany because they lost the football match. Luckily, I watched the match with some Italian friends, so for me it was a big party. And as soon as I can sleep through the bloody heat here in Hamburg I'll finally get some rest.

Blood donation campaign

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Yesterday I arrived in Hamburg again. I should have been here earlier, but because I lost my keys in Croatia, I couldn´t get into my house. I also didn´t take all the files with me, so it was difficult for me to show some work on my site.

The work above is for the class Outdoor Advertising. In this class me and my teampartner Dominik have most of the work hanging at the exhibition. Almost everything we showed at the face to face ended up at the exhibition. Including this one and that kind of surprised me. I mean, I really really like this campaign. This is the perfect example of the sense of humour that me and Dominik have in common (last quarter Dominik made a bloody campaign for animal rights organisation Noah. This campaign featured Pippi Langstrumpf who cutted up a horse with a chainsaw. It didn't make it to the exhibition). When we made this campaign we thought we didn't have a lot of hope for it because we thought we're probably the only two persons in the school who likes this campaign. But we decided to execute it anyway because we thought it was cool.

The teacher said this campaign probably won't work, but he liked the original way of thinking that's behind the work. I think in an agency they'll probably think twice before presenting this to a client, but in this school the only thing that counts is creativity. And we're glad someone in school thought is was creative enough to hang up at the exhibition.

Vacation in Holland

I just had a terrific two weeks in Holland. And it's great to be back in Alkmaar, the little town close to Amsterdam where I was born. The funny thing about Alkmaar is that it seems that time stood still. I've been in Germany for half a year and when I came back I've noticed only two changes: 1) The new stadium for the Alkmaarisch soccer team AZ is finished 2) A pub that was used to be a pub for old alcoholics has been transformed into a trendy looking lounge bar.

That's it! For the rest nothing has changed. Somehow I kind of like that about Alkmaar. Even my friends are still the same. The first five minutes when you meet your friends again are unique. People are happy to see you again, embrace you and ask questions. After that five minutes everything goes on as if you've never been away. I was warned beforehand that this would happen so it wasn't such a shock to me. On the contrary: I kind of liked it. In school everybody knows what you've been doing and what prizes you've won. But in Alkmaar they don't give a hoot about advertising and prizes. Here I'm just 'plain old Robin who happened to have been away for half a year to do some study'.

There have been some changes in the rest of Holland. In the two weeks that I've been here I saw the fall of the Dutch football team and the fall of the Dutch parliament. The first fall is the worst of course, because I wanted it to be a great party in Holland. Well, I'm afraid I'll have to cheer for the German team now.

Unexpectedly, I'm going home on monday. Yesterday I contacted my flatmate Emilia because I needed her keys. I thought she'd go back to school on tuesday, but she goes to Hamburg by car on monday already! So I can ride with her back to Hamburg. I think losing my keys wasn't such a bad incident after all. It gave me four extra days in Holland and it didn't cost me very much extra. And with these four days extra I also got two weekends extra to party. I'm glad to go back to Hamburg again, but I will certainly miss Holland. This has probably been the best vacation ever!