In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I and my team mate chose the task of creating 2 adverts, a radio advert and a sponsorship sequence. To start with we looked at different existing adverts and gained inspiration from these so that I was able to understand what the key aspects included were and how we could go about using these for the best possible result. We took interest in advertising energy drinks. This entrigued us because we found that the existing adverts that promote energy drinks are aimed at male teenagers. This was adequate for us as we are able to use people of this age and gender easier than using older people for the acting. Furthermore, using this age can promote youth and health in which we devloped later on. Even though we wanted to use this age and gender as our target audience, we also wanted to entice a wider range of people by using a female in one of the adverts, this is to break boundaries and to avoid sexism. Not only by using a female character but by using an Asian character in one of the adverts to target not only white British people. Having decided to create an advert on an energy drink I carried out more research into what makes a good advert and how to make it relate to the target audience. In my findings I descovered that the drink was associated with parties and gigs and active events such as these. We took interest in keeping the 'upbeat' feel to the advert but wanted to change the use of the product. We did this by using and developing a sporting theme. We decided to show a positive relation to the drink into being healthy minded. To promote the product we wanted to demonstrate that the drink was able to improve performance and help succession within the activity of the drinker.
Not only did I research into what aspects help the promotion of the product but what aspects the advert itself had to unclude such as the length and pace of the advert. I discovered that they ranged from around 30 seconds to 55 seconds. Within this time a fast pace was delivered created by lots of quick shots that used straight edits. My adverts were around 30 seconds long. I wanted to demonstrate the transition of being slow before drinking the energy drink and having a faster pace afterwards to promote the improved performance created by the drink. I did this by using cross disloves, longer paced shots and a slow, focused heart beat before the drink was consumed. After the consumption, the pace of the shots were shorter, using the idea of the quick transitions by using straight edits and the sound track sped up.
Not only did I research into what aspects help the promotion of the product but what aspects the advert itself had to unclude such as the length and pace of the advert. I discovered that they ranged from around 30 seconds to 55 seconds. Within this time a fast pace was delivered created by lots of quick shots that used straight edits. My adverts were around 30 seconds long. I wanted to demonstrate the transition of being slow before drinking the energy drink and having a faster pace afterwards to promote the improved performance created by the drink. I did this by using cross disloves, longer paced shots and a slow, focused heart beat before the drink was consumed. After the consumption, the pace of the shots were shorter, using the idea of the quick transitions by using straight edits and the sound track sped up.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
When creating my adverts audience feedback was essential to my development. It was key to create an advert that my target audience would be interested in. For my first advert I asked for initial peer feedback. This was useful as I gained ideas that I may not have thought of otherwise.
" I would try and show the brand earlier on to make the audience realise what the advert is actually for"
This was a key point in the first advert that I needed to concider and changed the shots in this to make it clear as to what I was trying to advertise. I had not thought about adding a shot of the drink before hand. I did this by empasisig the slogan and making the energy drink can visible to onlookers. Using this shot gave the advert subtlety and a subconcious ecpectation as to what is being advertised by the target audience.
Another comment made was how the running shots were not postioned well as some characters were not as visible as others. Also a thought was raised to rearrange the order of shots when lining up to race in the first advert to get the a lasting tesion which had a better build up as a result to this. The climax was a lot better, and one final thing put forward by peer sudents said was the background noise distracted and clashed with the different shots. To amend this I could either refilm these shots or 'duck' the soundtrack which enabled the volume of the background noise to change. I tried out this option and it worked well so distactions from the product were removed. This allowed viewers to only hear the music wanted. With this feedback I feel it helped the advert greatly and would not be the piece now if it was not for the criticism.
" I would try and show the brand earlier on to make the audience realise what the advert is actually for"
This was a key point in the first advert that I needed to concider and changed the shots in this to make it clear as to what I was trying to advertise. I had not thought about adding a shot of the drink before hand. I did this by empasisig the slogan and making the energy drink can visible to onlookers. Using this shot gave the advert subtlety and a subconcious ecpectation as to what is being advertised by the target audience.
Another comment made was how the running shots were not postioned well as some characters were not as visible as others. Also a thought was raised to rearrange the order of shots when lining up to race in the first advert to get the a lasting tesion which had a better build up as a result to this. The climax was a lot better, and one final thing put forward by peer sudents said was the background noise distracted and clashed with the different shots. To amend this I could either refilm these shots or 'duck' the soundtrack which enabled the volume of the background noise to change. I tried out this option and it worked well so distactions from the product were removed. This allowed viewers to only hear the music wanted. With this feedback I feel it helped the advert greatly and would not be the piece now if it was not for the criticism.
With my second advert the feedback was more in depth. The feedback gained is able to be viewed on my previous posts. To amend the criticisms formed from this I realised that the clips were slightly too long and slowed the pace down due to this. I ameded this which benefited the clip well.
Another comment made was that the music was slightly off time, people wanted to see that when the character kicks the ball, the soundtrack should change with this, however it did not before hand and found it difficult to amend. This took time but was managed and made a big difference to the outcome. This made me realise that the timing of the clips was highly important to get the best out of the material and so I had to be more precise with how I edited each aspect of this.
Another point put across was there was not a shot of the character placing the ball on the ground and my peers felt it lost a bit of fluidity with it. I filmed the shots asked for, and with it, the flow did change due to the feedback.
My radio advert was very much up to criticism at first and my target audience liked how my ideas were forming in the process of this. When my first draft was created, a lot of changes from sound levels to jumpy edits were pointed out. I went through my feedback and one comment that stood out to me as a vital point was the emphasis and clarity of the speech used. The first draft had "great intense dialogue" but some of the words slurred with pronunciation being a downfall. With re-recording this and making sure the dialogue was crystal clear, the advert sounds a lot better and promotes the product well.
The sponsorship sequence was hard to gather feedback on as it is so short, however one piece of feedback that changed the way I edited the piece was, 'Each individual shot seems to be too long, which Imakes the advert seem longer than it is.' Due to this I the shots so every time he kicks the ball it cross dissolves to another edit, this improved the viewing greatly.
Peer feedback was useful but I realise that some bias opinions may be put forth. With this in mind I asked strangers in my school from my target audience to view and comment with what they like and dislike.
Another comment made was that the music was slightly off time, people wanted to see that when the character kicks the ball, the soundtrack should change with this, however it did not before hand and found it difficult to amend. This took time but was managed and made a big difference to the outcome. This made me realise that the timing of the clips was highly important to get the best out of the material and so I had to be more precise with how I edited each aspect of this.
Another point put across was there was not a shot of the character placing the ball on the ground and my peers felt it lost a bit of fluidity with it. I filmed the shots asked for, and with it, the flow did change due to the feedback.
My radio advert was very much up to criticism at first and my target audience liked how my ideas were forming in the process of this. When my first draft was created, a lot of changes from sound levels to jumpy edits were pointed out. I went through my feedback and one comment that stood out to me as a vital point was the emphasis and clarity of the speech used. The first draft had "great intense dialogue" but some of the words slurred with pronunciation being a downfall. With re-recording this and making sure the dialogue was crystal clear, the advert sounds a lot better and promotes the product well.
The sponsorship sequence was hard to gather feedback on as it is so short, however one piece of feedback that changed the way I edited the piece was, 'Each individual shot seems to be too long, which Imakes the advert seem longer than it is.' Due to this I the shots so every time he kicks the ball it cross dissolves to another edit, this improved the viewing greatly.
Peer feedback was useful but I realise that some bias opinions may be put forth. With this in mind I asked strangers in my school from my target audience to view and comment with what they like and dislike.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
When starting my project I had to research different energy drink adverts to gain a better understanding of what makes the product interest and grab the attention of the target audience. I decided to use a website called YouTube where there was an archive of different energy drinks adverts to choose from, with using this it made my research a lot easier;being able to research different styles in advertising energy drinks with ease.
Using an Apple Mac a piece of software I used for editing was iMovie. This enabled me to edit my products in detail. Having used this software I found it quite easy with knowledge from AS still in my mind, however there were some technical hitches for example, when trying to put my sound across it would automatically insert the whole clip when I only needed it on just one scene. I soon realised that I had to move the sound into the correct place to allow it to work in the way I wanted it to.
A piece of software that I used for the radio advert was Garageband. I had little experience with this software only briefly using it in AS. When creating my radio advert I found it was difficult to get the levels correct with each individual layer of music on top of each other. However, once using it for a week or two, it had became a lot easier to know where to navigate buttons and understand the software which helped with the speed of making. Another hitch I had when using Garageband was finding how to get downloaded items onto the software. I had help from friends who demonstrated what needed to be done to achieve what I needed to do which was a simple drag and drop into the software once the download was on my area.
Blogger was my choice of keeping progress, it is a website that allowed me to put pictures on and create posts on what I had done. Having had a lot of experience with it in AS it was quite easy for me to update my progression.
I used iDVD which is software that I am completely new to and I found it difficult trying to work with. I needed to use this software to burn the adverts I created onto a disc. However a glitch I encountered was not being able to burn the disc because the discs given were not formatted so I had to use a normal PC instead of the Apple Mac I was using to change this so I could burn the content on the disc.
Another piece of technology I used throughout was a digital camera. Having difficulty with aspects such as downloading the files onto the computer in my AS I had a basic understanding of how I could go about these areas of dount. A problem occured while trying to upload files was difficult to transfer them onto the software 'iMovie'. This was frustrating as it was not only guess work but it was time consuming with the different attempts in getting the files where I wanted them to be. With help I managed to get the files on after changing the format of the clips and I now feel confident that I could do it on my own.
I used iDVD which is software that I am completely new to and I found it difficult trying to work with. I needed to use this software to burn the adverts I created onto a disc. However a glitch I encountered was not being able to burn the disc because the discs given were not formatted so I had to use a normal PC instead of the Apple Mac I was using to change this so I could burn the content on the disc.
Another piece of technology I used throughout was a digital camera. Having difficulty with aspects such as downloading the files onto the computer in my AS I had a basic understanding of how I could go about these areas of dount. A problem occured while trying to upload files was difficult to transfer them onto the software 'iMovie'. This was frustrating as it was not only guess work but it was time consuming with the different attempts in getting the files where I wanted them to be. With help I managed to get the files on after changing the format of the clips and I now feel confident that I could do it on my own.
Having researched into energy drinks I wanted to keep this the focus. I designed and created my own energy drink can called 'Primal'. I used this made up brand and slogan 'The Strength Within' throughout each advert I created. By linking each advert together with the sporting theme, I was able to make a good repor with the audience as they would expect a sporting themed advert after seeing one of the adverts.
While creating the pieces I did not want to only link the adverts with just the brand, I wanted to make the edits fast within each piece to build a style so that it is recognisable to the audience. I used short, straight edits in the main adverts and the sponsorship sequence with a fast sound track to create this affect. For the radio advert this was more difficult as the emphasis had to be put across by using only sound. I also included intense music to keep the interest of listeners.
While creating the pieces I did not want to only link the adverts with just the brand, I wanted to make the edits fast within each piece to build a style so that it is recognisable to the audience. I used short, straight edits in the main adverts and the sponsorship sequence with a fast sound track to create this affect. For the radio advert this was more difficult as the emphasis had to be put across by using only sound. I also included intense music to keep the interest of listeners.
