"Unilever are inviting advertising agencies to participate in this exiting opportunity to carry our message to new consumers".
We were originally asked to present our individual idea's using a Prezi. I developed a new idea for a "MAGNUM" commercial, The main concept of the ad would have been that we follow a police chase with two police officers/government agents chasing a criminal across parks and down streets, finally ending up in a ally way, where the two police officers each pull out what the audience would be expecting to be a gun, but instead they would pull out magnum ice creams. The slogan would be "There's no ice cream in prison." or, "To protect and SERVE", taking the slogan of law enforcement in a "Punny" way, allowing the audience to remember the advert.
However, the idea we decided to go with was to re-brand Brut to women, We planned to have several women who are successful in their fields, a hockey player, a dancer, a scientist, and a actor. As I said before, our target audience is women, specifically between the ages of 16 - 24.
Mise-en-scene: Throughout this advert we tried our best to make it as believable as possible that these women were who they were pretending to be, so for Tia doing the dance we arranged to use DPA Performing Arts Collage's Dance studio with mirrors and speakers, as well as a professional dance floor. In the science lab, we used a variety of beakers and also a white board covered in scientific equations on it to make is look as if Viv was in the middle of a experiment.
We had to cut some shots that we filmed, due to the fact that there were elements inside the shot's that would brake the continuity of the scene. For example, we had a lot of close ups of Tia's feet while she was dancing, though we had to cut these out of the final edit because she wasn't wearing the same socks in all of the shots, meaning that mid-dance she would have changed her socks which would confuse the audience.
Cinematography: We decided that we would use a lot of camera movements so that it would help pace the advert, as well as help it flow better. We used a variety of shot, from Wide angle shots to Close ups. This made the advert more interesting, meaning that the audience would be more likely to engage in watching it. The slow zooms on some of the shots were added in post-production editing to ad vary the shots a little more.
Our main problem when using camera movements was trying to plan how to use them effectively, and not make it seem forced. We decided that if we always moved the camera from left to right, we would be able to use it in the narrative of the advert to help transition through the locations.
Editing and Sound: For me, the editing of this advert was, physically, easier than the other aspects of the ad as i have more interest and practice with editing compared to the other aspects. However, the main challenge for editing this was figuring out how to use what footage we had to make the audience want to buy the product. We decided that editing to the soundtrack would be easier and have more impact than overlaying a soundtrack over the top of a pre-existing soundtrack. We used the pen tool to lower the soundtrack at the beginning of the footage, and boosted the audio where Tia and Viv were addressing the audience, then restored the audio track to the equal balance when the music gets more exiting. We also matched the length and the speed of the footage so that it fit, then cut, in time with the beats of the music.
Effectiveness of the Advert: I believe that we were successful in creating a narrative that made the audience want to go and buy the product. There are very few adverts that focus heavily on a female presence that is using the woman as a "femme fatale", using attractive women to hypersexualise the product. This means that rather than pressure girls to look a certain way to feel good about themselves, our advert is promoting success and that females can be just as successful as males in their fields of work.
Clarity of Purpose: The purpose of our ad was to empower women between the ages of 16 and 24 and prove that they can archive whatever they set their mind to. To do this we used two you female actresses, allowing the target audience to relate more to them. We shew the dancer practicing her dance routine, slowly getting better throughout the advert. We also show a successful scientist, sometimes in the middle of her experiment, sometimes writing her findings on the board.
Feedback: We gathered feedback on our advert in a couple of ways. We first let the rest of our class watch it, then tell us what we did well, as well as what we could have done to improve it. The main consensus was that the audience enjoyed the pacing of the ad, as well as the camera movements, though some found that the focus pulls were used a bit two much. Also, several members of the class also liked the way that we used female actors to sell the product, as stereotypically men are used to sell products, with the women as a "accessory" to ad a sex appeal to the product. Several members also commented on the fact that you never see Tia personally with the product. This is only half true, due to the fact that in almost every shot of Tia the bottle of Brut is in shot, however she is not holding it, causing the bottle to look slightly like a lost puppy that no-one is paying attention to.
We also created a short questionnaire which we sent out on Facebook to get other people, none media students, to view the video and give honest, unbiased feedback.
Reflection: Through out the production stage we had multiple setbacks, such as members being off due to illness and having to re-shoot some shots because they were either composed badly or the were slightly out of focus. We had intended to use 3 - 4 actresses, a hockey player to represent female success in sport, a dancer as a stereotypical activity for young women, a actor to prove that bravery would reward them with success in their field, and a scientist to show even in a job which is predominantly male, a women could still get to the top with the best if they tried. We used the programme Celtx to create our script, our shot list as well as our prop and equipment list. Although this was a good way to keep all of our pre-production paperwork together online, as well as make it look professional, by using the website rather than the app on the computer we have lost all of the paperwork online because for unknown reasons Celtx has deleted the files from my account. However, it is not all bad news as we have still got our storyboards and a short shot list.
We worked as closely to the storyboards that we created as much as we could so that we would always have a clear vision of what we were trying to get with the shot. However, we did not only work off the storyboard because, as iu any media text, you must improvise/compromise on the day of filming, meaning that you may have idea on set that you think would improve the impact of your production, or you shoot one of the shots off the storyboard and it doesn't seem to work as well as you thought it would you so you would have try and find a replacement shot.
As a whole, by the end of the editing stage I personally was quite pleased at what we had managed to create in the amount of time we were given,m considering that we were all used to telling a story through the mediem of a short film rather than trying to sell a product, which took a while for me personally to get my head around trying to figure out how to edit it differently than if you were shooting or editing a short film. I agree with most of the feedback that we were given, especially the comments about how we should have gotten more actress's to act in the film. I feel that if we had managed to get at least one - if not two - more actress's we would have had a more impact and interesting advert.
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