Monday 15 April 2013

In what ways does our media product use, develop or challenge forms and convention of real media products?

The genre we have used across both products and ancillary texts is comedy. Unlike other genres, where it follows strict conventions such as dark lighting in horror, comedy is something that is often present across many media products as oppose to a distinct genre.

This is useful in some ways as it has allowed us to have more flexibility when creating our products. Despite this, we did follow some of the typical conventions and when took elements from existing media products for inspiration.


We focused on the Specsavers advert and used this as a guideline for how our advert would be formulated. Something used across all of their adverts was the use of dramatic irony for comedic affect. Timing is an essential component of comedy as the audience as the audience gain pleasure from watching the character experience humiliation.


We have ensured that we don't reveal the punchline until the end in both adverts. In comedy, the character that is often humiliated is represented as powerful, accident prone, socially awkward or a fairly regular character that has accidents occur around them.


Todorov's narrative theory: EQUILIBRIUM . DISEQUILIBRIUM . RESOLUTION 

The effect of this is to leave the audience satisfied knowing the final outcome for the character. Comedy is often present during the state of disequilibrium as humour is created from their being a disruption in the narrative where problems happen. In both our main task and sponsorship, we have left an unresolved, open ending. Therefore this allows the audience to imagine what will go on to happen...

Toothpaste advert:

In our toothpaste advert, the girl (played by Kate) is represented as quite a gentle character as she is seen painting and through her image, we tried to indicate that she is a teacher - not a typically powerful character. Rather than removing the power from an individual, she fits into the 'regular character that has accidents occur around them' category. We have chosen to instead build up her character through mis-en-scene and finish with her walking away into the distance leaving an open ending allowing the audience to think up possible funny scenarios.

How we have portrayed her as regular character: 

Costume:
-doesn't indicate a particular career e.g police officer
-colours used are relatively ordinary, not particularly glamorous or implying power.
Mis-en-scene:
-setting: house isn't particularly grand
-we show her carrying out ordinary tasks such as painting, clearing away
1. State of equilibrium- Kate is painting

2. Disequilibrium: paint on teeth. Dramatic irony as Kate unaware


3. Disequilibrium continued: neighbour's reaction4. Situation left unresolved - open ending

We have left the narrative unresolved - comedy tends to finish with a new resolution.  As the focal point of our media product is to advertise our product, we have used the '20/20 vision' to imply a resolution to this narrative. The message given to consumers is that complex narrative issues are resolved through buying our product.

'This Morning' sponsorship:


 1. State of equilibrium - audience are not yet aware of mistake





3. Situation left unresolved, but 20/20 appears on the screen to suggest a possible resolution...





 Life drawing sponsorship:

 A typical convention in the media is the stereotype of females being portrayed as sensitive. We have conformed to this by using only females in our advert and showing them crying. In this was we have not challenged conventions as if we were to have a man crying, it would be more noticeable and thus detract away from the punchline.
1.                                                                                                              3.



2.

This advert has a slightly different pattern however it follows roughly the same guidelines. The 1st screenshot is at a state of equilibrium. The 2nd and 3rd however are both states of disequilibrium as  in the second screenshot, the people look upset and almost disgusted, implying that normality has been disrupted however it is not yet revealed to the audience what that is. The joke is revealed in the last screenshot along with the 20/20 vision logo to imply a resolution.


Dramatic irony used in toothpaste advert as we don't reveal the punchline until the end, and also in the life drawing advert as the door sign 'bereavement support meeting' isn't displayed until the last shot and in the


Web pop-up:
 The rule of thirds is often used to make the photo more interesting and dynamic which is essential in our media product as we are aiming to catch the audience’s attention. 



I have divided our web pop-up into thirds to see if we have used the rule of thirds. We have aligned our subject near the vertical line on the left hand side of the picture and the written information is near the vertical line on the right hand side. An improvement could have been that the banana be more central to the left vertical line as this is essentially, the punchline. The right vertical line runs approximately in the middle of all three written texts.

Another way we conformed to conventions is with our use of 'click here' on the bottom right of the picture which is often where advertisers place the piece of text that they want the audience to read last.


Technical codes: mid shot, straight on to emphasise the banana and make it appear bigger. We have challenged conventions as typically a low angle would be used to make the subject look more powerful. We decided that as it was an advert with a joke pun, we didn't want the subject to look too threatening as it would be too great a contrast. A neutral shot, which we have used, has no psychological affect on the viewer which was our intention.

Symbolic codes: Dark clothing, balaclava to indicate that he is a robber.

Our adverts have an element of the sub genre satire. Satire often involves irony, it also uses wit to expose human foolishness. Although in our adverts we have replaced foolishness with bad sight, it follows the same guidelines.


Other conventions we have followed:

- Slogan comes at the end of all 3 products. This is usually where adverts put their slogan.
- We have kept the length of our products similar to existing ones. 30 seconds, 48 seconds and slightly shorter for our sponsorship (23 seconds)
-Technical codes in comedy:
Iconography: lighting used in comedy is often bright and shot in daylight. We have conformed to this convention in all of our products.

In general, we have conformed to conventions of existing products and haven't challenged conventions. This was mainly because as we are producing adverts, we need to ensure that we have kept to our brief by using strong marketing techniques. The audience are more likely to remember something that conforms witht their schema, including stereotypes.

How effective is the combination of our media product and ancillary texts?

I think the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are very good and effective because our adverts and ancillary texts are linked very well together.

The first thing that we did to make the connection between all our two Adverts, Sponsorship Advert and the Web Pop-up was using our 20/20 Vision logo at the end of each advert and on the right hand side of the Pop-up. By doing this it creates brand recognition and shows that all those adverts are promoting the same product/brand.

Logo

Advert 1 Toothpaste 
 

Advert 2 Life drawing 

Sponsorship advert


We have also used the same characters in the Adverts (the Web Pop-up has the characters face covered). This also gets the audience to recognise the character and associate that person with our brand. In the first advert (paint as toothpaste) we use one character as the main person and in the second (life drawing) and third Sponsorship advert (dog food cereal) we use a different person, although in the first advert the main character in adverts two and three is also in this advert playing the neighbour. Additionally, even though she is not the main character her face may still be recognised and this will give the audience the connection from seeing her face to our brand.


We have kept within the same genre for all our Adverts and also the Web Pop-up, which is comedy. We have been able to do this by putting the characters in funny yet embarassing situations, including the Web Pop-up. All our adverts start as a normal situation, and we always reveal the punchline at the end, this leaves the audience laughing and remembering our brand. We have also made the Web Pop-up have a sense of humour to it by replacing the real gun with a banana, basically making fun of people who need glasses which is something we tend to portray in our adverts as well.
In terms of narrative, you could say that our adverts fit in with his theory of:

Equilibruim --> Disequilibrium --> New equilibruim.

For our first advert (toothpaste) you can say the start is calm and normal, this would be the equilibrium, then you see her brushing her teeth with paint and embaressing herself by talking to the neighbour and walking our of her house like this and this would be the disequilibrium. As that is the end of the advert, there is no new equlibrium (or solution) within the advert, although the last thing you see on the advert is our logo for20/20 Vision and this implies that coming to us to buy glasses is the solution.This also implies for our dog food advert, she is pouring cereal (equilibrium), then you see it is actually dog food and she eats it (disequlibrium) and then you see our logo (new equilibrium) and this is the same for our life drawing advert too.As well as using the same logo, we have also got a slogan (Shouldv'e gone to 20/20) which we place at the end of our adverts underneath the logo, and also which is said as a voice-over in our Sponsorship Advert, this is also placed on our Web Pop-up. Having a slogan is another way to create brand recognition and link all the Adverts together.

What have we learned from our audience feedback?

To answer this question i will film a variety of people- male/female/different ages, some relevant questions in order to gain some feedback which i will then evaluate.

The questions i will ask regarding the two TV adverts are:
-Did you understand the narrative?
- What genre is this advert and how can you tell?
-Would this advert appeal to you, if no would do you think it would appeal to?
- How do you think we could improve it?
- What was your favourite advert and why?

The questions i will ask regarding the sponsorship advert are:
- As sponsorship adverts are very short do you think we were able to create humour in this time?
- Did we use the correct conventions for a sponsorship advert?
- Did we use the correct mis en scene
- Does this appeal to you?
-How do you think we could improve it?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmuEisRXf00         

This above is the link to the interview, two of the candidates spoke about both adverts at the same time and weren't interviewed regarding the sponsorship, whilst the other two girls did 3 separate interviews so i will able to gain feedback from the two adverts and sponsorship.

From gathering this feedback from a variety of audience members i have leaned that their are strong and weak parts to our project. Many of the answers given were similar, however i got some useful feedback in terms of improvements.


Although our target audience was mainstreamers, after interviewing people it is apparent that our toothpaste advert is more appealing to female young adults, and this was conveyed by the clothes that Kate is wearing at the end which present her as neither a teenager or a middle aged woman but a woman in early twenties. However, we interviewed one male and he focused more on the toothpaste and the fact that he wears glasses to connect to the advert, the fact that we used a female didn't phase him. Another candidate did mention how at the start of this advert Kate looks very young, she could pass for a teenager, which then changes  at the end when she looks much older, again the clothes that she is wearing create the change in her age. I agree with this comment slightly, she does look younger at the start but that's because at the end she has done her hair and makeup as you would if you were going to work. The clothes she wears at the start contribute to the mis en scene and is all part of creating her character, whilst at the end she is dressed more smartly to go to work, the outfit isn't too formal as we imagined her occupation to be a primary school teacher.



Start of the advert













End of the advert





All our candidates shared the same view that the narrative for this advert was very easy to follow, the storyline was basic and due to this they found it more funny, obviously if they didn't understand or couldn't follow what was happening they wouldn't find it as funny. It was clear to them all that the genre we used was comedy, leaving the house with toothpaste on your teeth and getting naked in front of people grieving is all unrealistic, but the embarassment for that individual is what causes the humour, also someone said how the reaction of the grieving people made them laugh.

Improvements:

One of the comments was that the end shot could have been a little bit closer when showing her teeth, i think we used a relativley close shot of the punchline, and we film this for a couple of seconds so the audience don't miss it. We wanted to still have her whole head in frame which you can see from the picture above her hat is right at the top, so going any closer i think could make it look unprofessional.
Another comment was that we could have used a backing song, however i disagree with this as i think not only does it create realism using only digetic sound but creates more humour as all the focus is on the main character and her actions, we did use the bird song to indicate it is the morning and as a group we thought this was all the non digetic sound we would need. Also we used Specsaver adverts as our template and conducted research into them, they also only use digetic sound and i think this is more effective when working with comedy.

Life drawing:

The answers from the last question clearly state that the toothpaste advert was more popular. I think this is because it more straight forward, and easier to watch whereas the life drawing was slightly long winded (having the receptionist) however despite this the receptionist was a compulsory part of the narrative, as previously explained it was unclear what Kona was doing without filming the receptionist  A comment from someone that we didnt film said that something didnt seem right when the receptionist was talking to the model, it had something to do with their positioning. After watching it back more carefully we realised that we had crossed the 180 degree rule, this was a huge help in terms of feedback as this is such as important technique that we leant about last year and is the difference between unprofessional and professional work. Luckily through iMovie we were easily able to flip the shot, we thought we would have to film again but through the use of the technology this wasnt nesissary.

Sponsorship advert:
The sponsorship advert has proven to be the weakest out of the three adverts, although slightly comedic, it was said to be slightly boring and not fast and snappy as a sponsorship should be.
The main element that let us down was that there was already milk in the bowl when we show Kona pouring the milk.




We realised when we were editing that we didnt have a shot where the bowl had just the cereal (dog food) in and no milk, due to previously filming her pouring the milk in. We thought it didnt look that obvious but because the camera angle forces the audience to look directly at the bowl you can clearly see that we have made an error.



Another comment that was made regarding the sponsorship advert was that it lacks humour due to the fact you know straight away what the punchline is. This is at the start of the advert and you can clearly see that it is dog food and not cereal, the punchline for the other two adverts was delayed and revealed at the end which created the humour. I agree with this comment, it would have been more effective if the dog food sign wasnt in focus, if it had been a bit blurry or further away, but the fact that you see it straight away ruins the advert slightly, Konas reaction adds to the comedy at the end however.

We used the correct conventions for a sponsorship, the voice over and the titles that come at the end created the realism and make it obvious that it wasnt the same as our other two adverts. One of the comments was that it should have been short sharp and snappy and we didnt do this. I agree with this slightly as its a bit basic, the camera angles and the movement are all very simple, its not fast paste, i dont think it would catch the audiences eye if they were flicking through channels. We also could of had some pictures hanging in the background to make it look more homely, this also would have created some character which is what we did in the toothpaste advert (the establishing shot at the start).

Web pop-up:

We put our web pop-up on Facebook so that our friends could comment and give us feedback on it.
The questions we asked were:
1. Rate it from 1-5 on realism
2.What attracts your attention the most?
3.Did we create humour?
4.Who do you think this would appeal to? (age, gender ect)
5. How could we improve it?
















This is a screenshot of the comments from Facebook


From the feedback i have learned that  we maybe should have thought about a different background colour, we thought having a plain background would mean more focus on the main points (the banana and offer) but then the comments show that it would have been more eye catching to have a bold colour.
The wittiness of the words with the picture had a positive impact and created humour which is what we intended, as it goes with the theme of all our adverts.

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Sponsorship final

Because of the problems with the previously shoot we had another shoot in which we aimed to break the original first shot into two shots. We had to film this at a different location for practical reasons. The lighting is more effective and realistic because we filmed by a window in which natural light is coming through creating the impression of morning. All of the shots are in focus this time and the logo and sponsorship slogan are composed more successfully and the fonts look more professional. The non-diegetic sound does't sound very professional but I think that is down to our limited recording technology (we used iMovie recorder). Another criticism is that the advert is still quite boring. This is the nature of the plot (it lacks action and features a mundane daily task), and I don't think we could have avoided this.

Monday 4 March 2013

Sponsorship draft

We had huge difficulty organising a time when both of our actors could get to the location and because of the fast approaching deadline we agreed that we wouldn't be able to do the intimate meal of dog food idea. Therefore we reduced it down to a simpler version. A bonus of this was that it was easier to fit into the time of a sponsorship advert. Because of narrative problems (unclarity of the situation) our initial idea had become more complex and longer than we had intended. This idea has the simplicity we needed for a sponsorship advert.
This is a quick storyboard explaining our new idea.
The video above is our new sponsorship idea in shoot. The idea is that the audience don't know her mistake until the end, when the dog food is shown along with the solution to her problems- the product. As a result of insufficient planning we only ended up with only two successful angles of the action after this shoot. The camera is also too far away and an unnecessary amount of space surrounds her and makes the action less obvious. This means the whole advert is incredibly boring and it won't grab the audiences attention and sell the product. We plan to re-shoot this within the next week.


Tuesday 26 February 2013

Life drawing final

This is our final second advert, after we filmed the draft we realised we had a few corrections that needed to be made which we feel we have met.

At the start we use an establishing shot with Kona walking into the building and asking the receptionist for directions, this immediately gives the audience some narrative which is something we realised we were lacking in our draft. The receptionist also tells her where to get changed which makes it clear why Kona comes out wearing a robe.

We wrote signs on each door and when Kona walks past she acknowledges the signs, which suggests she went into the wrong room due to her sight not because she was in a rush and was being careless.
The issue we had with the door we still slightly have but its now not so obvious, when Kona walks into the room she positions herself to the left which could be seen as her blocking the view of the window
however, if you are aware of this you will clearly see there is no window there at all.

Another criticism is that the sign on the door when Kona walks into the room is handwritten and then at the end of the advert it is printed.
When Kona walks into the bereavement group she is actually walking into a toilet and when she comes out we forgot to turn the light on which could be confusing, as she is meant to be coming from the corridor which would obviously have a light on, however i don't think its  obviously nor will it question
the narrative.

We were able to get more actors which creates realism as before there was only 3 people in the group and we wanted it to look as if there was a circle of people, when Kona runs in you first see the two women who look as if they have been crying- we smudged makeup around their eyes to create this. We placed the camera outside of the circle, which made it look as if there was a lot more people in the circle, you could see the side of Kates head, the shot after this then shows Kate and i looking very shocked and again we used makeup to create the impression that we had been crying before.

My favourite shot is the end shot, i think the use of the window creates professionalism, and is a great way to reveal the misunderstanding to the audience with them still being able to view the action.