Pop-up mise en scene

Costume Ideas:

When deciding the costume ideas for our actors in the web pop up we decided to correspond to audiences stereotype by using outfits they would expect a robber to be wearing. This is because we don’t want to detract attention away from the banana in the shot as this is the focal point. With something that the audience wouldn’t expect to see, e.g bright clothing,  the audience would be aware of the costume and perhaps even question it. We presented our target audience with two images of the robbers in two different costumes and asked them to state the one in which they noticed the banana sooner. The costumes were: 

1. Dark clothing- black baggy jumper and dark jeans.
2. Horizontal black and white striped jumper and jeans

We found that the majority of our target audience noticed the banana in the robbers hand earlier in costume idea 1. With this piece of information, we will use dark clothing. Additionally the stripy clothes may detract from the banana.

Setting Ideas:

Similarly to the costume idea, there are certain objects that people expect to see when imagining a bank robbery. If there are objects that correspond to their schemata, they are more likely to remember it which is vital for our advert as we want it to stick with the audience. We have looked at studies carried out by researchers such as Loftus and Palmer to find out what people expect to see in a bank robbery. These included:
1. A man wearing a balaclava

2. A getaway car3. A woman screaming
4. Robber carrying a gun
5. Robber carrying a black bag full of cash 

We would like to include some of these in our web pop up to increase realism. As it is highly unlikely that we will be able to take the photograph in an actual bank, we have to consider locations that are possible. Other possible locations include our school and parents work place however we are looking into this further and will take practice shots at different locations to compare.

Advert sound

We have discussed the use of diegetic/non-diegetic sound in our advert. Is music really relevant? Usually music is used to provoke a certain emotion/feeling, and as our advert's main concern in creating humour it seems unnecessary.

 I have included this advert in my research and in this Specsavers advert it is the diegetic sound which is important in emphasising what actually happens and what is funny. You can tell the vulnerability of these two people by their conversation and hearing the birds in the background makes it a more reaslistic situation, not to mention the screams of the other passengers on the rollercoaster having a good time compared to this elderly couple who are obviously clueless without glasses.

Whereas in this Specsavers advert the music is important in creating a specific genre and building up the shepherd's strong wise character which only makes his oblivion to sheering his dogs funnier. This is not the comedic angle we wish to take in our advert so for now we plan not to use music. It'd be easy for us to add music after if we feel it is needed; for example to hide bad diegetic-sound.
One type of diegetic sound that we will definitely use will be the birdsong and alarm ringing to inform the audience of the arrival of morning!

Updated advert storyboard

This is our up to date storyboard. I think the close-up of her leaving the paint on the side is important. It subtly suggests what is about to happen. This creates humour. Her looking tired is also important as it creates realism; the audience will be less likely to say "wouldn't she taste the paint!". The last shot highlights her humiliation and plays a role in persuading the audience to not let this happen to them. It is important that the audience understand she is an artist, for the situation to be accepted, and so her costume in the first shot may be her in a shirt with paint on it. She will then wear a dressing gown while brushing her teeth to further imply that it's morning. Last of all at the end, when she leaves the house, she will be wearing smart outdoor clothes to show that she is walking to work. We chose work because it is the place that would be most embarrassing; because of the need for professionalism there.

Advert costume ideas

When deciding the costumes that our charcters will be wearing we have to take into condieration their age and who the audience is meant to appeal to. Our main character is going to be a woman who is in a rush to leave the house, most probably late for work, therefore we have to think of ways to make the outfit seem as though she has been in a rush but still dressing up for work while also trying to make it seem realistic and relate her to the audience. 
We think her job could involve her having to dress quite smart, trying to look more professional and this creates more of a contrast between the way she is dressed and that fact that she has got black teeth. Having her dressed smart also shows that even people who are in professional jobs, who other people would assume to have everything together, can aslo be vulnerable and buying glasses eliminates that.
Having the woman dressed like this for work is appealing to our target audience of The Mainstreamer because they can realte to this situation. 

Here is one example of what we think the woman could be wearing:


She could either be wearing a smart/casual suit to go to work or something like a dress which is a bit more feminine but still smart. This creates comedy in the advert because the audience will laugh at the fact she is a professional woman but still made the mistake of brushing her teeth with paint and not noticing.
Here is another exmaple:

Advert location

Out of all our bathrooms this one is the most appropriate. It is relatively spacious allowing room for shooting and the simple black, white and cream theme will not detract from the point of the advert. Our target audience is mainstream so it's important for as many aspects of our advert to be not too particular. When shooting we will obviously tidy it up( bottles on window sill) and remove the blue basket which is rather distracting.

Sponsorship ideas

We have been thinking of possible ideas of the kind of programme that we could sponsor. We have already come up with an idea of sponsoring something like 'Come Dine With Me'.

While researching sponsorship adverts, we came across one for 'Come Dine With Me' and their concept was similar to what we intend to do: they acted as if they were in the show and inviting guests over for dinner. They did not use humour in their advert because it was for a wine, they just showed a few guests coming over and giving the wine as a present and the host being extremely pleased. We think that including humour in our advert would attract the audience more and leave a more memorable impression in their minds.

We thought the advert could be of a woman/man preparing a meal for their guests. The person could be making the meal and because of lack of sight, accidentally use something like dog food in the cooking instead of the proper ingredients. We would then see the reaction of the guests eating the food and perhaps a shot of the empty dog food tin in the kitchen for example. Although this would have ruined the meal, we will see them all laughing about it because we do not want to end the advert on a bad impression and everyone being upset because this will not be appealing to the audience. This advert will relate well to the programme it is sponsoring because that is exactly what the programme is about, it also contains humour which we intend to use in our other advert we are making.

Looking at the results to our questionnaire, we can see that our target audience, The Mainstreamer, like to keep up to date with the latest fashion but still consider the price and comfort of the glasses they are buying. From this information, we know that having an advert which includes humour rather than focusing on what brand the glasses are and how great they look will appeal more to our target audience. In an advert focusing on designer glasses, they tend not to mention the price but concentrate more on telling the audience how great they look, but looking at our questionnaire we know that our audience want something that is good quality and good price, therefore we will most likely not sponsor a programme like 'Project Runway' or 'Next Top Model' because these programmes are all about how you look and not about comfort or prices etc. It is important to sponsor a programme that our target audience will also be likely to watch and frequent and entertaining programmes which include slight comedy such as 'Come Dine With Me' and 'Dinner Date' are examples of the type of programme which we would like our advert to sponsor.

Pop-up sketch

This is a sketch of our pop-up idea of a robber, having not gone to Specsavers, not noticing the fact that he's using a banana instead of a gun. I think it'd be important for us to include a background of a bank to confirm to the audience the fact that he is robbing it. Without the background the balaclava is the only indication. This also includes humour and this is something that we want to use in all of our work on the Adverts and Pop-ups. We also need to have something to click on to attract customers, something like 'Click here to find out what happens next' or 'Click here for 2 for 1 glasses', or anything that will get the customers interacting and interested. A Web Pop-up is used to tell the audience what they could get, but they need an annotation to click on to find out how they can get this. We are aware that we will need to include more information on our Pop-up but we are still discussing what we should have. We want something that will attract the audiences attention and make them want to click on an annotation, this way we can explain in more detail about what we are offering, but the only way to do this is by grabbing their attention in the first place with this Pop-up. We also need to make the writing much bigger, making it more clear the brand of the product. One idea we've had is to have a link saying "See what happens next by clicking here". Implying the link would result in a video or some other type of media which explains the end of the narrative. This would be because our pop-up focuses/relies on comedy and entertainment to attract our audience and not information; e.g. good deals, like most pop-ups. 

When we make our real Web Pop-up we are going to use a real person and not a drawing, this way it is more realistic and believable, also making it funnier because it creates a sense of realism. We are still thinking of the background that we could use, although we don't think that it will be easy to walk into a bank with someone wearing a balaclava and take pictures of them! We are considering using a background of somewhere around school, this would be practical, and the reception, for instance, has a desk and sliding doors similar to those in a bank. We are also considering using a Green screen and putting a picture of the inside of a bank behind the person, although making this look real would would be difficult, especially in terms of difference in lighting. 

In terms of design of our web pop-up we understand the importance of synergy. The decided font and colours of our branding will be consistent throughout the tv advert, the tv sponsorship advert and the web pop-up. The thought we have put to this has established the appropriateness of a relatively neutral colour and font; where some campaigns use bright colours and fonts to catch the audience's eye, ours is using humour. A neutral colour and font offers a more serious side; the audience need to take our product seriously because sight is very important to people.



Advert storyboard 1

This is our original storyboard for our tv advertisement. As you can see it is incomplete. After drawing frame 3 and 4 we realised that in the short space of time that is our advert we don't have time for shots which only concern match on action and continuity. We won't include unnecessary bits like her getting out of bed and getting to the bathroom. Instead we will use birdsong (and maybe an alarm ringing) to inform the audience that it is morning and she is waking up. These sounds can easily be retrieved from Youtube or iMovie. We are currently drawing up our new storyboard.



Media theory

Here, we brainstormed the theorists that can be applied to our media product! 

Overview of ideas

Main task

Creating a glasses advert (still to come up with the brand name) suitable for a mainstream audience.
Location of film: In a house and outside as actress walks out of front door.

Scene 1: Girl washes up paint pallets in bathroom and leaves a tube of brown (or some unsavoury colour) paint in what looks very similar to a toothpaste tube. 
Scene 2: Sound of birds to indicate its morning.
Scene 3: Girl goes to the bathroom to clean teeth, accidentally picking up the tube of paint to clean her teeth with (she will appear tired and groggy so this seems more possible).
Scene 4: Girl walks out of the door, smiling (and maybe saying 'good morning' to the neighbour.) At this point it is revealed to the audience that she has paint on her teeth. 
Scene 5: The girl walks off oblivious of the paint before her neighbour can tell her.
Scene 6: The slogan similar to ' Should've gone to Specsavers appears' 
We will create a storyboard which will display this idea in more detail, including the camera shot and angels we will be using.

Web pop-up

For our web pop up we are again using the comedic theme, this will make the web popup more engaging. Rather than people just closing it without looking at it, using this theme should hopefully make it memorable and more interesting unlike usual popups.
Our plan is draw a picture of a man who is robbing a bank, he is carrying a sack and is wearing a balaclava, instead of holding out a gun he has mistaken this for a banana. The slogan is placed at the bottom of the popup; the last place the viewer will look.
We will draw a sketch of what this will look like.

Sponsorship advert

We are still thinking of possible ideas for this, so far we have come up with sponsoring a show similar to 'come dine with me', in this advert the host would give her guests cat food and the cat the dinner she had cooked. We are unsure of this idea, however we may choose to expand on it if we fail to think of anything else.
As a result of the nature of our product, and most products, we can consider the above ideas in terms of Levi-Strauss' narrative theory. This theory is based on the idea of binary opposites (good vs bad). Our product, glasses or lenses, are the good fighting the evil that is impared sight!

Audience questionnaire results

These are the results of our audience questionnaire which establishes the preferences of the majority of mainstream people. We need to know what the majority of people want from a spectacle brand because our target audience is mainstream. As you can see more than half of the people completing our questionnaire classed themselves as mainstream. Our sample originally consisted of 31 people but we thought it necessary to focus on those who classed themselves as mainstreamers, as this is our target audience. There were 17 of these whose age ranged from 12-80. The majorities' preferences established from this research follows:

Non-designer

Glasses

Glasses price of £31-£40

An offer of 2 glasses for the price of 1
Therefore we will apply these to our product and take them into consideration when producing our adverts. For instance the characters will not be normal, middle class people. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Sponsorship advert analysis

Our next task to to think about creating a sponsorship advert, i have conducted some research into some relevant adverts to get an idea of how they are put together. The conventions we find will hopefully trigger a starting point for our planning. 

In this sponsorship advert for 'Come Dine With Me', you can see how they have made the advert relevant to the TV programme. In the advert it appears a woman is hosting a dinner party for her friends much like the concept of the programme. A close up angle is used to show the wine bottle 'Echo Falls' to establish the product concerned. The women are then shown clinking their glasses and laughing with the wine in their glasses. This suggests to the audience the association of Echo Falls wine and having a lovely time. Montage editing is used to show snippets of their evening. The food they have is casual and indulgent, for example the chocolate fingers with whipped cream. This looks very appealing and so encourages the audience to indulge and buying the product by doing so. Before the title comes up it is already clear what is being advertised, but it is the title which confirms this. Sponsorship is key to powerful marketing, its repetitive nature means the audience find it hard to forget. Furthermore the audience's attachment to the particular programme is most probably transferred to the sponsorship advert. This is particularly true when considering daily dramas, which are, of course, viewed on a daily basis.  

The link to a very good example of this follows. The advert I refer to begins at 0:15

http://www.harveysfurniture.co.uk/coronationstreet/SponsorshipAds.aspx

Coronation Street is a daily drama and the audience is likely to feel attached to the featured characters. By following their daily life and the events and emotions that unfold they may even feel as if they are a part of this life. I think the Harvey's sponsorship advert's exploitation of this is very effective. It features two ordinary characters middle aged characters; this abides by the soap operas' target audience. One of them is seen lying to her husband about digging up weeds while lounging on a reclining sofa. Lying to husbands is something that the target audience, or the representation of them, could probably relate to and they will therefore laugh in agreement. While appealing to the target audiences' sense of humour the advert doesn't fail to promote their product. In this case the sofa, which appears lazy and comfy, is the focus of Harveys' promotion.

To remain consistent in the comedic theme of our advertising campaign of an opticians we plan to create a humourous sponsorship advert with the help from the research we have done above.