Creating the 'Cabbie' Logo & Brand
When the idea of our documentary about taxi drivers became a reality, we started brainstorming a few ideas as to what we should call it. The names started out quite long and cliche'd such as: Life of a Taxi Driver, Taxi: Day to Day, A Man and His Cab, Cabbie Stories. From the outset I wanted a title that was snappy and unique, something that is easy to remember and hard to forget. This eventually galvanised into just 'Cabbie' after talking about other ideas such as TAXI! Even though the word cabbie is an American word I still think its easily recognisable in the UK. Also, I feel, the connotations of American cab drivers gives a much stronger sense of what taxi drivers are really like, that more outspoken, outgoing character that has his own story to tell. Something that I feel is not quite as strong in the UK. It also anchors the visual iconography of a yellow NYC cab with that urban feel, another emotion we hope to incorporate into our film through music and visuals.
The image is currently in the progress of being finalised. The image shown above is just a prototype of what I want to achieve with the brand image. The image shows a short depth of field something that I envisage as being a signature staple during our film as we have the capability to do so because we are using the Canon 550D with various lenses.
 | The image was simply found using a Google Image search with the keyword 'Taxi'. I hope to at some point in the next month recreate the image for myself as to not infringe on any copyright. I then put the image into photoshop and used the brush tool to paint over the characters in yellow with black. I then created a new text layer over that and chose a font that I thought was most suitable to that of the original text to withhold the authenticity of the taxi light. I then made it yellow and gave it a subtle outer glow effect to make it stand out. |
The final image will used all over our posters to support the brand image for our film. I believe this is a fundamental aspect to the promotion of our film as people will come to recognise the brand and know what it is without hesitation.
Designing Emotion Through Music
The soundtrack to any film is a powerful tool and one that can easily dictate the emotion of a scene. Considering this I want to use music to poetically establish our where the audience is. Because we hope most of the film will be from within a taxi we want to create a bustling city and urban atmosphere for the audience to feel like they are a part while following our primaries.
Music such as this, I believe to be the perfect accompaniment to our film as it has a very urban and modern feel something that will compliment our visuals perfectly. I imagine this will be playing when we have a shot out of the windscreen of the car, ongoing car lights out of focus so they bloom slightly then gradually have our subject come in with a voice over, explaining his life up to this point etc.
Similarly to the other song, I imagine this will be playing as a filler to poetically make the audience feel what atmosphere we want. I have approached these two artists and currently in discussion to the usage of their music. I have also contacted James Blake, all this can be seen on the group research page here.
Other artists I think would suit the emotion of our film perfectly are I'm Not a Gun. The song below is an example of their music but not the track I was thinking of in particular. Their music tends to evoke the emotion of travel I always find, something that is obviously at the core of our documentary.
