Cilia's A2 Advertising Blog

Advert 1 - Couple on the bench

2009-05-08T08:10:00.001-07:00

Completed advert 1 (low quality setting)

Advert 2 - Couple and the cat

2009-05-08T08:09:00.002-07:00

Completed advert 2 (low quality setting)

Advert 3 - Couple meet the parent

2009-05-08T08:09:00.001-07:00

Completed advert 3. (Low quality setting)

Audience feedback

2009-05-06T15:22:00.001-07:00

After completing all of our adverts, me and Hannah began showing people our adverts in order to get some opinions and thoughts from our target audience. We did this by creating a group and uploading the adverts onto Facebook. (www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=81441707107) and allowing people to freely comment what they thought. We also personally showed people and asked them what they thought of our adverts in order to get more specific answers.

According to responders of Advert 1 (couple on the bench) on Facebook, these are some views of those who responded:

"Advert was cool! The location was brilliant, lightning was perfectly set, and gud actors. Lucy is very strong about any man she wants! Even the music used was suitable. However, i felt that ben's glasses were too big and should use specs. Anyway, apart from tht, i thought it was really good. :):)"
Here, the characterisation of the character did not match this particular responder suggesting that the 'geeky' image that we were trying to portray may not have the same humorous effect on everybody. Despite the difficulties that we had in creating the same lighting on different days of different weather, we have successfully managed to cover up the problem therefore meaning that people did not notice it as much.

"The advert is well good - all the shots and the way they are assorted are really good and it keeps you interested. Plus it's really clear what you're advertising. It's so funny too :p But yeah, this one's great. :) "
This proves that we managed to successfully add an aspect of humour as we originally intended. It further shows that we have engaged the audience because they know exactly what it is that we are advertising meaning that the message is clear and coherent. This again supports the fact that the product we are advertising has been made clear meaning that the structure of the advert is easily understandable.

According to responders of Advert 2 (couple and the cat) on Facebook, these are some views of those who responded:

"it wud be better if u had a girls voice for this one because its like the girls turn for bad breath lol"
This suggests that people were not fully engaging with the voice over, perhaps meaning that they were therefore unable to trust what is being said. It also shows how people notice the voice over, and how this has a large impact on the way they perceive the product meaning that if we were to do this again, we could change the voice over to suit the target audience more.

"That cat is an awesome actor, lol. This one's cool too, the shots are good again, like the first one."

"Love the cat, definitely the star!!!"
The two above comments highlight how people liked the cat within the advert suggesting that people like the originality of the idea.

"voice is weird - could someone else do it? That's all I'd change... someone with a cooler voice..."
Again, the voice over has been commented on suggesting that we perhaps got the voice over wrong for the target audience. It can be seen that the voice over is aimed more towards younger children rather than young adults therefore to improve, we could have had a more upbeat tone to the voice in order to attract more people. Furthermore, it would have to make the audience feel more like they are 'cool' to take mints.

According to responders of Advert 3 (couple meet the parent) on Facebook, these are some views of those who responded:

"i think it wud be better if there wasnt as much talking"
This highlights that some people would rather see the action rather than hear it, however in the case of this advert, it would not make sense if there was no dialogue. If we were to remove the dialogue, we would have to think of a simpler narrative, and we could not have the humorous line 'do you use protection'

No i like the alking - it lets the audience feel like they're actually meeting the parents for the first time too - if you get me.
This is an opposing opinion to above, suggesting that the voices added a sense of realism which helped the audience feel that they can relate, and feel part of the action.

"they are funny and reli engage the audience. I reli want to try ur mints now lol! i thought the way u kept the product central in the shots was very effcetive as it made the audience very aware as to what was being advertised.The music fitted in perfectly as it created a steaddy pace and wasn't to fast. I rekon ur audience recognition in this one is spot on as your portraying that dreaded question from the parents 'do u use protection?' (ha that made me laugh lol) making you directly relate to the targeted audience"
Again, the way in which it has been made clear which product is being advertised has been commented upon highlighting how we have made the advert clear enough for it to be understood. Furthermore, the responder believes that we successfully targeted our audience by having an issue which will directly have an effect on their age group showing that our audience research paid off. Furthermore, the responder clearly found the advert funny which again shows that we were successful in creating humour.

"Yeah, the music is a really good choice in all the vids. The story made it really clear what the advert was for and what it was all about, if that makes sense. You're adverts are so good though, they're clever ideas for the stories too."
Here, the narrative proves to have been a success in engaging the audience and making them aware of the product. The music also attracts the audience and fits well with the narrative structure. Furthermore, it is clear that the responder likes the originality of the narratives highlighting that the way in which we came up with something different to the normal, makes the advert more appealing.

Other useful comments:

"they all made me laugh but cat one most and i think that poss for me would stick in my mind more than the others. the couple on bench is very common doesnt stick in your mind."
This again supports the idea that originality is important in the narrative as this makes it more memorable. The couple on the bench advert could have been made more original by including more shots or having a different scenario.

"The best thing about the adverts is the product. It has bold colours so it's easy to remember what it looks like and the advertising slogan is very strong - quite similar to the 'Phones For You' slogan with the three actions, and everyone knows what that advert is.

Secondly, the continuity is very strong with the two familiar characters in each advert where you're following a story. Also very successful in the BT adverts, so a successful technique. Also Ben's 'Geek' character is memorable, and very funny so it would stick in people's minds.

The music is all catchy, up-beat and memorable. It would command attention if people were not completely concentrating on the TV."
This shows that we have clearly engaged this responder as an audience and that the advert is successful in being memorable. The characterisation of the male character has further made the adverts funny which is one of the things which we aimed for in our advert.

Advertising agencies

2009-05-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Below are links to advertising agenceies who have clients within similar fields to our mints. For example, wrigleys extra, mentos and tic tac.

http://www.amvbbdo.com/
-Did the 'get extra close' advertising campaigne (see below for one example)

http://showcase.brandrepublic.com/bartleboglehegarty/
-Have Mentos as one of their clients (see below for one example)

Final days of editing advert 3

2009-04-30T05:39:00.000-07:00

Last week we spend a large amount of time editing advert 3 in order for it to be finished. The first thing we did was to put all the shots that we had in the correct order, followed by cutting the clips down in order for it to run more smoothly. This allows us to see what may need re-shooting and what can be kept and removed from the original storyboard plans.

During one of our editing sessions, me and Hannah shared responsibilities in order to get it done quicker. Due to two shots of the mother needing to be shot, Hannah went home and took the responsibility of getting them shots done ready for us to use the following day. Due to Hannah having to leave earlier in one of our editing sessions, I made myself responsible to edit the shots on the Macs (that we had already planned to edit anyway) to makethe lip sync of the narration and the voice over fit correctly in the advert. The following day, I we both put our work together and continued finishing off the advert.

One problem which we faced was the music because none of us could find a downloadable instrumental version of the song that we had chosen to use with the advert. ('Heartbeat' by Scouting for Girls) With time running out, we therefore made a 'plan B' we decided to use the Edirol, which we had already used before, in order to record the music. Once we recorded the music, we uploaded it onto the Macs and used Adobe Soundbooth to edit the music to fit the advert. The disadvantage of doing this was the background noise from the recording which was really obvious when put into the advert, making the advert have an unfinished and unprofessional feel as well as loosing any aspects of verisimilitude. We therefore had to tweak the music by overlapping it and adjusting the sound in order to cover up these sounds. We further had to edit the dialogue of the advert because the sound did not flow well enough due to the amount of background noise.

Progress in re-shoots

2009-04-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

Me and Hannah have finally managed to get footage from our re-shoot sessions last week. To begin with, it didn’t go very well because we struggled to achieve the shots which we originally intended to use meaning we had to find ones that would be more effective. Some shots that we did were the same as the ones which we put in to the first sequence of the advert because they worked well, but had to be re-done due to the characters having slight changes to their costume.

Some of the shots were more time consuming than others, such as when the boy greets the mother, because we tried it in different ways so that we could choose the best one when we edit. Furthermore, the dialogue proved a problem at times because the actors were not speaking loud and/or clear enough meaning that we had to keep trying to get the shot looking the way we intended it to.

Whilst we began filming we also found it a challenge to make the ‘meet the mother’ part of the advert understandable to an audience. We have had several ideas in which to portray this yet many of them appeared to be too complicated to show. We have therefore kept it quite simple, and have tried not to over do the interaction between the couple and the mother because we found that the shots looked messy which brought focus away from the couple and the actual product.

After our latest filming we now have the very end shot to complete which will only take a short amount of time so can be easily done after school.

Unfortunately, me and Hannah have not been able to make use of the Macs during the half term due to us already having made plans to be out filming re-shoots on those particular days. However, if all goes to plan, (and hopefully with no more re-shoots) then we should have the advert complete by the end of this week because we have planned to use our frees and after school sessions to complete the editing of this final advert.

Plans for re-shoots

2009-04-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

The re-shoots will be on a tight schedule due to people only being available at certain times etc. We therefore have had the 6th and 8th of April to try and finish as many re-shoots as we can complete ready for editing.

Delay's that we have encountered

2009-04-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

Recently, (since prior discussions about the advert) there have been several delays in the production of advert 3 (re-shoots, editing the re-shoots and music) meaning that we are getting more and more behind our original plans/schedule therefore are not progressing. Hannah and I have tried to decide on shots in which we will use for our third advert, yet the ideas that we have seem to make the advert over complicated. We have attempted to overcome this problem make notes on the order in which we will film our re-shoots to avoid confusion, as well as draw up a brief storyboard of the shots we will need to do. This will help filming go quicker as well as give us an idea of what the outcome should look like.

Another delay which we have had is characters/actors. Firstly, it has been difficult to get our actors available at the same time meaning that it is impossible to film because we cannot change actors now, and in most of the shots we need the two of them to be present. This has therefore meant that we have had to reschedule our planned filming on several occasions despite us trying to overcome this by organising to meet in advance. Secondly, after our discussion with our teacher, we decided not to use the same girl to play the mother role, therefore we have had to try and find somebody else. Using a real mother, or somebody who is distinctively older than the couple, is the ideal because it will make the advert more understandable to an audience. The only time in which we could have a character like this is during the holiday when Hannah’s mum would be free to film with us, including any extra re-shoots if necessary. This does however mean that there would be a week where we can not do much filming, but it allows me and Hannah to look through music, deciding upon a potential soundtrack to accompany the action as well as complete shots which do not have the mother in etc. The risk of doing this is that we may not finish or even start the editing during the break therefore will have to stay after school to finish off the editing for the advert. Me and Hannah have, however, agreed that we will stay a couple of hours to complete the advert, and try and get it done within two long after school sessions in order to try and get it done in one go because we find this a better, more convenient method than doing little work across several days.

Changes of Advert 3 (2)

2009-04-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

As said in the previous post, there are going to be several changes made to the advert. Below is a quick breakdown of what happens in the advert now:

-Establishing shots of the couple arriving at the house. Both dressed smartly. Boy wearing shirt and tie and geeky glasses, girl in shirt and black trousers. (LS)
-Aud. aware of nervousness of the boy through dialogue ‘I hope your mum likes me’ said whilst girl adjusts his tie (CU)
-Couple enter the house, girl calls ‘mum, I’m home’ (MS)
-Boy is introduced to girl’s mother. It is established that the mother thinks the boy has bad breath. Dialogue including ‘mum this is Ben’ and ‘nice to finally meet you’ etc (MS & CU)
-Couple settle down in the house, when they are alone they hold hands etc like previous adverts, passing of time is shown (CU, MS)
-Mother re-joins them followed by awkwardness. Mother then raises the question ‘Do you use projection’ (MS, CU)
-Reaction shots of couple. Followed by speech such as ‘Well..’ and ‘mum!’ (CU)
-Jingle (CU)
-End shots, mother passing mint to boy and acceptance of boy by mother (CU, MS)

Changes in advert 3 (1)

2009-03-20T12:29:00.001-07:00

After filming and editing a large amount of advert 3 (see below for first uncompleted version of this advert), we weren’t sure as to whether our idea worked well in achieving verisimilitude and meeting the codes and conventions of an advert. We felt this because unlike the other two adverts, according to our original storyboard, there is a lot more speech in this advert and to begin with it did not look the way we had originally wanted it to look because it felt too story telling. Furthermore, we had difficulty finding somebody to play the role of the mother because everybody that was available for filming looked too much like the actual couple meaning that realism was lost. Me and Hannah therefore decided to get some opinions from our teacher on what can be improved on and found that we had to more or less re-shoot the whole advert. There were many aspects of the advert that needed changing as well as many problems which needed to be resolved. Below is a list of things which became an issue when we discussed our draft of the advert.

• Characters in the advert – The person who played the role of the mother looked too much like the actual couple therefore lacked realism. Furthermore, the narrative is not made clear enough meaning that the audience do not understand why the mother over reacts to the couple’s over affections/kiss. We are going to amend this by re-shooting during the half term, meaning that Hannah’s mum will be available for us to shoot.
• Mise en scene – We made both characters have a smarter look to meet the parents, yet the male character needs to be wearing a tie in order for us to include more shots at the beginning, for example, his girlfriend adjusting his tie. Furthermore, we are going to keep the ‘geek’ look by making him wear the glasses which also help in recognition for audiences.
• Dialogue – In our original storyboard, there was dialogue in the majority of the shots because this helps audiences to understand what is happening. However, when shooting, we did not use dialogue and this therefore makes the advert confusing, lacks realism and looses its narrative. Secondly, the fact that it was only the mother that spoke her line makes the whole shot look out of place. Next time we shoot, we are going to get the actors to speak so we can use this as our dialogue.
• Narrative – Some tweaks needs to be done in the narrative/arrangement of the shots in the advert. At the start, the couple ring the bell however it came to our attention that if you are seeing your parents, you would just walk in. Therefore we have to have a re-look at our original storyboard and remove some shots which are not necessary.

After these discussions of the problem, we then decided on re-shoots to replace the ones that we already had. Despite this meaning that we would have to re-shoot more or less the whole advert, it means that our advert will ultimately meet the codes and conventions a lot more than what it did before, therefore producing a higher quality advert.

Advert 3

2009-03-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

Below is a video of advert 3 so far:
(to be uploaded)

Music for Advert 3

2009-02-27T07:09:00.001-08:00

Me and Hannah have spend a large amount of time looking for music to suit advert 3. From a very early stage, we decided that we did not want music with lyrics because this would clash with the dialogue present in the advert. We have therefore had to find and instrumental version of a song and/or within a song.

Eventually we decided to use the instrumental version of 'Heartbeat' by Scouting for Girls. (See below to hear music) We have chosen this song because we feel that when edited, certain parts will fit with the action, for example, the heart beat at the start and end of the song would fit well with the beginning of the advert because it would highlight that the boy is nervous to meet his girlfriends' parents. Furthermore, the song fits well with the pace of the advert which is a vital thing to consider when choosing music.

Below are just a few other examples of music that we looked at, but rejected:
- Instrumental version of 'That's not my name' by The Ting Tings
- Instrumental version of 'Are you gonna be my girl' by Jet
- Instrumental version 'she's so lovely' by Scouting for Girls
- Intro of 'Kids' by MGMT
- Instrumental version of 'Love story' by Taylor Swift

Below is a YouTube video of the song which we ultimately decided to use:

Uploading footage onto macs

2009-02-26T11:56:00.005-08:00

After our first two shoots from the previous day me and Hannah spend a double free period in the mac suite to upload what we had so far. This proved to be very time consuming because the camera that we were using from home had problems connecting to the MACs meaning that we could not capture the footage from the camera to the programme. We wasted a significant amount of time trying to work out a way for us to upload the footage and all this meant that we had not yet moved forward with our work. With the interruption of a fire bell, we then had to abandon what we were doing and come back to it as we had planned, after school. This caused us a lot of worry because we felt like our progress had come to a halt and that we were not going to get any footage done with the seemingly bad luck that we seemed to have. We did however pick ourselves up by persisting in trying to get the things we wanted to get done so that eventually we could put something together.

After school that day, we successfully managed to get hold of a camera. This was a relief to us because we could finally get all of our filming out of the way the following day, and we could finally upload the footage that we had so far.

Me and Hannah spent about 2-3 hours uploading the footage, and taking the decent shots to put the opening on the advert together. We managed to fully edit the first couple of seconds of the advert meaning that we had to finish filming and editing the rest of the advert because we had rejected the rest of the footage. The opening which we put together matched the storyboard, and we felt that it created a successful opening couple of shots to the rest of the advert. The footage that we rejected was not good enough because it seemed sloppy, and felt too similar to the previous advert because the couple were sitting on the same sofa. We therefore have gone against the original storyboard and have decided to have the advert set in the kitchen so that the location differs in all three adverts.

Problems with equiptment and first shoots

2009-02-26T11:56:00.003-08:00

Me and Hannah have been ready to film advert 3 for some time now, however we have failed to progress in our advert due to us not having the equipment needed for us to begin filming. We have made sure that we check for equipment often enough, yet we still have had no luck.

We gathered that little progress is better than no progress, therefore I have decided to bring in one of my own camera's for us to use until we can get hold of a school camera. Unfortunately, because the camera is old, it does not work very well and cuts out regularly meaning that it will be very time consuming to film what we need to film. Despite this, we have gone ahead with using this camera in order to make a start to our advert.

In the first shoot, we attempted to begin our filming and found that we got some good opening shots of the couple arriving at the house. We tried out several angles which we felt would give us a variety to choose from when it comes to editing in the MAC suite. Unlike the other adverts, we found this one more difficult to film because we found ourselves stuck for ideas when it came to new ideas and new shots. In the first shoot we stuck to the storyboard however even when filming, we felt that this did not achieve its full potential.

In the second shoot the following day we picked up from where we left. The camera was still playing up on us which causes a lot of stress and panic meaning that we did not progress as far as what we would have hoped. In addition to this, we weren't sure if the dialogue worked well within the advert which caused us with confusion and hesitations during out filming.

Our first shoots were abandoned early due to camera problems. We found that every time we wanted to get some shots the camera kept cutting off therefore didn't capture what we wanted. This meant that we had to pros pone the rest of the filming until the following day. We also felt that if we could upload the footage onto the Macs then we can view what we have so far which we find easier to manage because it allows us to see what needs to be done and what works well.

Shooting Schedule Continued

2009-02-26T11:56:00.001-08:00

Me and Hannah have had to keep re-arranging times to film due to problems getting hold of equiptment for the filming part of the production of advert 3. This has therefore caused us to be behind our intended schedule for advert 3. These are they dates which we planned to film on after arranging eqiuptment.

Date: Tuesday 10th March
Who: Me, Hannah, Ben, Lucy
Where: Outside Hannah's house
Time: 3-4 hours in morning
To Do: Begin filming opening shots from storyboard. Do jingle.

Date: Wednesday 11th March
Who: Me, Hannah, Ben Lucy
Where: Hannahs House
Time: Lunch, P6, P7
To Do: Continue through storyboard

Date: Friday 13th March
Who: Me, Hannah, Ben, Lucy
Where: Hannah's house
Time: P3 onwards
To Do: Complete filming/re-shoots

Problems for Advert 3

2009-02-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

Me and Hannah have been discussing our plan for advert 3, and we have come to some problems. Our first problem is that tomorrow's filming, 27Th Feb, can not go ahead because our male actor is sick. We therefore have to reschedule this date and fit it into next week's shooting. This could cause some problems due to ILP day's next week, meaning that we will be loosing two days of filming. We therefore have to organise ourselves so that we can spend after school time/weekend either filming or editing.

Another problem which we have come across is the mother actor. We were originally going to use Hannah's sister as the mother, however we decided not to use her because it will not be convenient for us in the long run due to her being away at university during the week. We therefore have to find somebody who has similar frees to us so that we can film as and when we need to.

The last thing which me and Hannah had worries about is the original storyboard. We found that unlike the previous two adverts, this one has a lot more dialogue. As it stands, we plan to keep the dialogue the way it is as this is where the humour will come into it however this is liable to change if it doesn't provide our intended effect when uploaded onto the MAC's.

Progress

2009-02-26T11:06:00.000-08:00

Since we have started our coursework we have made a consistent amount of progress meaning that we have continued to move forward in our work as well improving our work through the learning process.

At this current stage, two adverts have been completed, meaning that we now only have one more to film and edit. I believe that our consistent amount of progress is down to our organisation skills and ability to work as a team. This has therefore given us a determination to make adverts which we can be proud of as well as to ultimately meet the deadlines.

After believing that I would be better off working alone due to various problems in working with a group after last years coursework, I have learnt that it is possible to work as a team and that all of you can have an equal amount to do as long as you all stick with the set schedule that you set yourself as well as apply communication skills so that everybody knows what they are doing. I also think that by making personal deadlines, it allows us to complete certain tasks by a fixed date meaning that the progress made on our coursework is more significant. I believe that I need to communicate my ideas with my partner in order to overcome everything that we face regarding our coursework. The advantage of our partnership is that we have identical timetables meaning that most of the time we can do our filming and editing together, meaning that we both put inan equal amount of effort into the coursework.

I also feel that our organisation skills have also contributed to our steady progress. To begin with, we did tend to miss dates in which we had originally planned on filming, and we realised that we could not carry on doing this if we were to meet deadlines. We found that because we did not always organise our time well, that we found ourselves rushing when it came to completing finishing touches of the advert, such as the music, meaning that we were over a week late that the original deadline that was set. We have overcome this lack of organisation stage and have been able to progress and be ahead in our work due to us sticking with our shooting schedule. In completing the majority of shooting and editing a week before the deadline, it allowed us enough time to focus on music, voiceovers, and re-shoots. We also found that by getting the filming out of the way early, it gave us more than enough time to fully edit the advert.

One of the key things which I have developed upon since last year's coursework is the use of camera. Before we started this coursework, I had very little knowledge on camera usage because my primary focus/role in my group last year was editing, meaning that I didn't use the camera as much as others. I feel that I have a much better understanding on how to use the camera. To begin with, my lack of camera skills were shown when we failed to tell the story of the advert through the camera, as well as having poor shots which did not meet the codes and conventions of an advert. However, after some discussions with our teacher and some more experimenting, we soon learned how to tell a story with the camera, as well as discovering more interesting camera shots.

Our progress was however, quite limiting at the very start of the project because we we had no experience in working with the new Adobe Premier software on the MAC's. This meant that we had to focus a lot of our time learning how to use the features meaning that valuable time was spend 'experimenting.' The advantage of this was that we could play around with the features and have an idea of what works well and what doesn't. Furthermore, the more time we spend on the programmes features and editing meant that we could master it therefore ending up with a good final piece.

At the beginning of this coursework, I wasn't feeling 100% sure about our overall idea, and i was having doubts as to whether we could achieve three good adverts. I was also quite reluctant to use other people's suggestions, believing that our idea was the one to stick with. However, as we begun the production process I soon realised the potential that our idea had and I realised that experimenting and getting feedback and/or ideas from potential consumers really helps to influence and guide my thinking. At several points during our project, we went against our storyboard and tried out new shots, which ultimately made the advert meet the codes and conventions much better, also showing the development that we have done. We also asked people's opinions of the work we had completed and this feedback helped us to see the project from an audience point of view meaning that we could tweak things in order for it to fit better with audience expectations. It also gives us a different perspective to view our work from, meaning that we could be more critical with our work leading to consistent progress in changing and improving our advert.

This coursework has enabled me to learn simple things, such as how to use several editing programmes such as Adobe Premier and Adobe Sound booth, which to begin with, I had no idea how to use. This means that if in the future I need to use these programmes, I will already have background knowledge from the work that I have been producing towards our adverts. In addition to this, the coursework has made me appreciate moving images in the media, in a variety of mediums, a lot more because I realise how much work is needed to produce a piece of media.

The next step which I will be taking from this point is to complete all of the filming during the space of a week, meaning that we have time for re-shoots etc before the deadline. I also aim to keep up the consistent progress by continuing to spend a significant amount of time editing in the MAC suite in order to get our final advert completed.

Advert 1

2009-02-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

Above is our advert 1, couple and the cat, with its improved changes. (still having problems uploading so will put it up ASAP)

Filming and editing Friday 30th

2009-02-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

On Friday 30Th January, we completed all the shots that we wanted to achieve according to our plan, as well as have an almost finished edited sequence on the Macs. Both me and Hannah focused our whole day on completing as much of advert 1, couple and the cat, in order to meet the deadline and give us enough time to complete re-shoots and final touches the following week. We found the process of constructing this advert a lot easier than the first advert we did because we had learned from the mistakes that we made when filming the first advert therefore made sure we did not make the same mistake. We also planned our time well, meaning that we could get on with filming and editing in order to finish the advert.

Filming
To begin with, we spent Period 1 in the Mac room in which we looked back on the opening sequence which we had already filmed. We used this time to improve the shots through editing as well as focus on which music we could possibly use for this advert. When going over the music we came across for the first advert, we thought that 'The One' by The Ting Tings would fit much better with this advert due to the pace and the light hearted feel that we wanted. The music has a 30second introduction which fits perfectly with the length of time that we have to work with, and the fact that it is intrumental means that we can afford to have diegetic sound in the advert which is what we originally wanted when we drew up our storyboards. During Period 1 we also organised ourselves and booked out a camera and tri-pod in order to avoid disappointment for filming later during the day. It also meant that we could fully charge the battery whilst we were editing on the Mac meaning that we can get straight on with filming.

During break and period 3-4 we met up with our actors, Lucy and Ben, and set off to Hannah's house and begun filming the rest of the advert. We progressively followed the storyboard and list of shots in order to ensure that we did not miss out any vital shots, as well as to have a set order which will make it easier for us to find when uploaded onto the Macs. When filming this advert, we took some similar ideas to that of the previous advert such as the close up of the hands touching. This is a way of further linking the adverts together because they follow a similar plot line and all revolve around the couples affections.

From the early shots that we did for this advert, we knew that the shots with the cat in were going to be much harder to shoot. To overcome this, we left the camera running whilst we set the cat into position. This meant that we didn't miss the shot and we can pick the part that we want to use when it comes to editing it on the macs. It also saves us time especially when the cat becomes restless and acts unpredictably!

Unlike the other advert, according to our storyboard, there was a lot more diegetic sound in this advert due to the speech between the characters. Whilst filming we did a variety of shots in which the actors would speak and ones in which they didn't. We found that we did not want to have too much speech as this could bring the focus away too much, however we wanted to keep dialogue in the vital points of the adverts such as when the boy says 'you smell gorgeous' because this is the key 'joke' of the whole advert.

Editing
Once we had finished all the shots that we needed for our advert, we went back to the Mac suite to upload the footage and start putting it together. Firstly, we put all the shots that we wanted into an order without editing them so that we could get a rough idea of how it would look like and follow. We were pleased that we had all the shots we needed meaning that if any more filming needs to be done, it would be re-shoots. We were also pleased that we had a variety of shots, from mid shots to close ups, meaning that we are meeting the codes and conventions of an advert. One problem that we found was that the lighting was slightly different to some of our earlier shoots due to the sunlight being brighter and/or lighter. The change in lighting is especially evident in the jingle part of the advert because it appears much darker than the rest of shots. We have however, decided to keep it like this because these shots are all together in the same place and it isn't drastic enough to change it.

Now that we had a rough layout of the sequence of the advert, we began editing it by making the shots much shorter than the original. Without the editing, we had more than double the amount of time that we needed, therefore we had to do a lot of editing in order for the advert to flow and fit into the 30-40 second time that we have to work with. Due to our variety of shots which we did during the filming process, we had more than enough shots to work with meaning that when cutting, we could have several different shots which would tell the story, rather than having one shot which is too long meaning that the actors are telling the story, not the camera. For example, we have split the 'handing over the drink' shots into two different shots: one is a mid shot of the girl handing the boy a drink, the second being a close up as the hands touch in the drink exchange. Another example is the kissing part of the advert which begins with the boy leaning in as if to kiss the girl. This is then followed by a shot of the girl leaning in to the kiss from a different angle, followed by another shot of the boy bending down to get the cat, and ending with another shot of the girl being grumpy. We found that by doing this, it is much more effective because the camera tells the story. Furthermore, it allows us to squeeze in as many shots as possible meaning that it engages the audience much more. In comparison to the first advert we did, couple on a bench, this advert has much more shots and includes a lot more than the previous one without it being over complicated.

After spending time getting the sequence together, and watching it over in order to make it fit well, we moved on to adding the voice over. This was less time consuming than before because we already had the voice over saved onto Itunes from the previous advert. Importing the voice over was simple, however once we added the voice over into the sequence we had a problem of fitting it in with the action. This is because, unlike the previous advert, the shots were quicker meaning that the beginning part of the voice over did not fit. Me and Hannah therefore added the 'Shake, Click, Fresh, Ahh' to fit with the action, but left the rest of the voice over to finish for another day. At this point, we may either make the shots slightly longer to fit the voice over in, or re-do a new voice over to fit with what we already have.

Once part of the voice over was put into place, we then had to find the diegetic sound. The reason why we had to do this was because when we uploaded the footage, the sounds for each clip went faulty meaning that the sounds did not match the correct clips. We therefore found the clip in which the 'you smell gorgeous' sound was on, and had to extract the sound in order to put it onto the right shot in our sequence. To begin with, it was a bit of a problem because of the lip syncing, however we soon managed to make it match.

After doing this, we decided to add in the music 'The One' by The Ting Tings from our previous discussions of the song. We uploaded the music and put it against the advert, and surprisingly it fitted really well and did not need much editing to it, except for the end due to the instrumental part ending too soon. One problem that we encountered once we added the music was that it was too overpowering meaning that the voice over could not be heard very well because it has to compete with the sound of the music. We therefore, on Adobe Premier, made the soundtrack slightly quieter, but not so quiet that there is a drastic change with the rest of it. We then went onto Sound booth and imported the voice over into the programme. Using this software, it enabled us to made the sound louder so that it can be clearly heard over the music. Once we editing the volume of the voice over, we imported it back into Adobe premier and put it back in place accordingly.

After all the time we spend working on the advert on Friday the 30th it left us with the following things to do for the following weeks:

-Make the beginning of the voice over fit with the action
-Edit the end of the soundtrack so that it doesn't cut off too early
-Show what we have to teachers/students for opinions on improvements

Re-shoots for advert 1

2009-01-31T11:22:00.000-08:00

On Friday the 13Th, me and Hannah spend 1-2 hours doing our re-shoots for advert one as stated in an earlier post. The re-shoots including:

-Shot of boy saying 'you smell gorgeous'
-End shots of cat jumping out of boys arms
-Couple embracing/hugging

We completed these three shots, and tried to do multiple ones of the same shot so that we have a wider selection to choose from when we upload it onto the Mac's. We struggled slightly when filming the shots of the boy throwing the cat because we weren't sure which angle it would look more effective from. Several of the shots didn't look as good as we thought they would, therefore we ended up using the mid-shot and cut the shot just before the cat jumps off in order for us to add an extra shot. This was our alternative shot due to the original shots not being good enough to use as one long one. We were also going to have the couple embrace however from our previous advert we found that it looked really fake therefore ended up sticking with the couple hugging because it is easier to bring focus onto the mints which the girl is holding.

Advert 1

2009-01-30T08:59:00.000-08:00

Above is the video of advert 1 (couple and the cat) We have since changed a couple of things (see later post for video) following the discussion we had with our teacher. In our discussion, it came to our attention that the shot of the boy saying 'you smell gorgeous' does not fit smoothly with all the other shots in the sequence. The camera angle looks odd, therefore we are going to re-shoot it by filming the shot as more of a mid-shot and the camera being on the side of the girl. This is because it needs to be established that the boy is reffering to the girl when he says this line meaning that her reaction to this makes more sence.

Another thing which needs to be altered, which came accross in the same discussion, is the last few shots of the advert. At the end, the boy notices the girl, however he is still noticing the cat meaning that it looks like the mints havent really done their job. We are therefore going to add an extra shot in which the boy throws/drops the cat once he notices the girl, and then end the advert with the couple embracing. This would help to portray the effectiveness of the mints better than what we have now.

Other than these two things, we are going to leave the rest as it is because it has turned out quite successful. Please see above posts for the newer updated version of this advert.

(we are currently having problems in uploading the video onto blogger-we will try and get it up as soon as we can!)

Advert 2

2009-01-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

This is the first advert which we filmed and edited. It is Advert 2 in the advertising campaign.The hardest part in the construction of this advert was editing and choosing the music. It took us long enough to find music with suitable lyrics that match the action, however it took even longer for the music to sound like it flowed even after lots of editing. We have come back to edit the music for this advert on Friday 13Th because we felt that the music sounded too jumpy in the places that we had cut it. The beginning part of the soundtrack was fine until it reached the point where the voice over begins. It was not an option to have lyrics continuing through this part because it would clash with what is being said in the voice over. Furthermore, we found it difficult to make it flow due to the pace and sound of the music changing at several points. We therefore tried to overlap the music in order for it to flow better and this worked in the early parts of the soundtrack. After a lot of trials and adding different sections of the music to the end part of the sequence, we ended up using the very end and very beginning of the song by putting them together. We feel that this is the best option because the rest of the song has lyrics being spoken. The pace/beat of the music also fits well with the voice over. If we can find a better way of making it flow, then me and Hannah will add this on if it means that it sounds better against the soundtrack.

This advert, in comparison to the original storyboard, has the same outline, however has new shots replacing the original shots due to the original ideas not meeting the codes and conventions of an advert. Due to these slight changes, it caused other changes meaning that the overall product is much different to the storyboard.

In comparison to Advert 1, which we are currently finishing off, there are less shots involved. We therefore contemplated adding extra shots however we thought that at this stage, it would cause us to be behind in our work because the music would have to be changed to match, and the shots may not even flow well with the existing shots. We therefore stuck to doing our re-shoot of the girls reaction and the boy first sitting down.

Begining of Advert 1

2009-01-29T11:43:00.000-08:00

Following our disastrous first shoot, followed by disappointment after watching the footage of this shoot, we are now quite happy with our progress.

After our next shoots, we put together about 12-15 seconds of the beginning of our advert. Some shots still need to be cut down further, and some will need re-shooting, however we are glad that it is finally and slowly coming together. We have changed the beginning of our advert quite drastically in comparison to the original storyboard. We are now starting with the geek reading a magazine followed by his girlfriend entering the shot and giving him a drink. We have done this in order to make it have a similar feel to the advert 2, couple on the bench, which we have already one. It also allows the cheeky, innocent part of the advert to come into it. We also feel that it adds an aspect of realism because realistically, this is likely to happen in a living room!

The part of the storyboard in which the cat is involved, will, if the shooting goes to plan, stay roughly the same and we do not plan to remove the cat from the advert. This is because the cat is the center of the 'joke'/humour of the advert therefore it is vital that the cat is kept.

The first part of the advert, which is liable to change after our next shootings, is as follows:

-Mid shot of boy on sofa, reading.
-Over the shoulder shot, boy still reading, he turns page.
-Mid shot of Girl walking towards sofa, glass in hand
-Mid shot of boy looking up and smiling
-Close up of feet as she sits
-Girl sits, mid shot as she passes drink
-Close up of hands as they meet in the passing of the drink
-CU/ECU of girls reaction
-CU/ECU of boys reaction

That is roughly what we have so far, we are probably going to change this around a bit in order to make it flow better. It is also likely that some shots will be removed in order to fit in to the 30second advert time gap.

Filming - 27th & 28th Jan

2009-01-29T11:41:00.000-08:00

For the past two days, Hannah and me have continued to film advert 1, the couple and the cat. So far, we have uploaded footage from one of the days filming (see above post) however are yet to upload the footage of the following days filming.

We went about filming by following the order of the storyboard so that the shots are in order, and therefore making it much easier to remember what has been done and what hasn't. It also makes it easier to order when it comes to editing it on the Macs. The main bulk of the shooting on the 27Th was to film as many shots of the cat as possible due to them shots being the most time consuming and harder to achieve. We got a few decent shots of the cat, however the cat wasn't in the best of moods to be filmed therefore had to leave it and continue with different shots. Both me and Hannah found that this shoot was more successful because we knew exactly what we wanted to get done as we had planned it in the Mac room when we uploaded the footage of shoot 1. From making the last advert, we were aware that we needed shots of the characters reactions to things, as well as allow the camera to tell the story not the characters, therefore we hope that this is reflected in our footage.

Whilst filming, we were using ideas from the last advert in order to aid us with this advert. Me and Hannah were getting a bit worried that this advert is too similar to our previous advert, however decided that it was important for it to have a similar plot because this helps to accentuate the fact that it is from the same advertising campaign. The main thing which we originally discussed to change in the adverts is the situation that the characters are under which should initially aid to create the intended humour for the audience. The similar shots/plots to the other advert is the over the shoulder shot, the close up of hands meeting and the attempted kiss. Despite these being similar aspects, the way they have been portrayed is in a different way to the previous advert therefore they do differ making them not identical.

Yesterday, we managed to get the shooting for the jingle completed. This went really well as they are quite easy shots to do, and we already know how it goes due to us doing it successfully first time round in making our last advert. This time, Lucy, the girl, has to take the mints therefore she is doing the jingle. We decided to do some shots in which Lucy was saying the words 'shake,click,fresh,ahh' in order to experiment what it would sound like if she says it. This is because we felt that it could be just as effective to have her addressing the audience as it is to have a voice over. We have used a different effect to the last advert for the 'ahhh' part of the jingle. Using a hairdryer, we managed to get Lucy's hair to be pushed back as if a gust of wind had passed. This helps emphasise the effects of the mints and how refreshing they are.

In our next shoot, we hope to complete as much of the cat shots as possible, as well as the ending of the advert and any re-shoots which need to be carried out.

Discussions made following uploaded footage on Mac's

2009-01-29T11:19:00.000-08:00

After uploading the footage from our first shoot for advert 1, couple and the cat, we were disappointed when we viewed our shots on the Macs because none of them met our expectations and visions of our advert. Despite us thinking that the shoot went well, the shots were not up to scratch and we did not like any that were done that day. (I guess it's not surprising for a first shoot!)We therefore have put some 'rough cuts' together and discussed how we could expand and improve the shots in order to engage our target audience as well as make the advert reach its full potential. We have also used the shots that we did on our first shoot, and compared it to our original storyboard to see which shots could be added and which shots should be kept. This is because in comparison to the original storyboard, some shots which we wanted to have, are not as good as we thought due to them not meeting the codes and conventions of an avert.

One of the things that we we rent happy about was the mise en scene of the shots. In the previous advert that we shot, and in our planning, we had the boy dressed as a geek, whereas in this shoot, he was wearing normal everyday clothes which didn't make him stand out as a geek. We therefore decided to assign our actor, Ben, with a set outfit in which would portray the image that we are going for. It is important that he is kept as a geek in all three of our adverts because this is one of the aspects which links the advert campaign together, and it is the image of the couple which makes the audience relate to the mint which we are advertising as well as create humour.

Another problem that we had with the shots, mise en scene related, is the on goings in the background. Due to the advert being set in the living room of a house, the living area changes every time and in some shots there are family member and items which move, meaning that the shots do not follow well. For example, in one shot, there is a green bag on the table, but in another shot the green bag has been moved which looks really silly when the shots are put together as you can tell it was shot on different days! Next time, We therefore have to make sure that the area we are shooting in can be easily adapted to our shooting, therefore have decided to use a different sofa which is located against the wall. This means that nothing changes behind the actors/sofas meaning that each shot will look like it was shot on the same day. The only thing that we have to be aware of is the positioning of the cushions on the sofa.

The third problem that we encountered, is that some shots were wobbly or tilted. This is because when we are trying to get footage of the cat, we tried filming it by having the camera really low down which was hard because there is only so low that the tri-pod can go. When we uploaded the footage onto the macs it looked unprofessional and rushed due to the shot not being perfectly still. Me and Hannah have therefore decided to keep the tri-pod at its lowest, but make use of the zoom in order to make the cat be in the shoot. We have also discussed having a low angle shot in order to make it look like it is from the girl/boy's perspective.

After uploading the footage and discussing how to move forward, we wrote drown all the shots that we wanted to do on our filming days, as stated in the shooting schedule post below. We now hope that this bad shoot will allow us to learn from out mistakes, an hopefully making the next couple of shoots a lot more successful.

Friday 23rd's filming

2009-01-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

We have begun to start filming the shots in which we need the cat in for advert 1. Me and Hannah have decided to do these shots first because they are the hardest ones to do due to the cat leaping out of every shot. We originally begun by following our storyboard, however, as soon as we started filming we noticed that we would have to add in a lot more shots than what is in the storyboard. This is because, as we were doing the shots in the original storyboard, we found that the Lucy and Ben were acting too much meaning that one shot would last over 3-4 seconds which doesn't follow the codes and conventions of an advert. We are therefore still using the storyboard as a guide, however we are adding more shots in between in order to have a variety of shots. We are unsure as to whether these shots will look good or not, however in order to not be limited of choice, we are experimenting with different shots so that we can pick out and edit the best ones on the Macs.

Overall, the shooting went well and we managed to get a fair bit of shots completed. We have mainly been shooting mid shots, close ups, and extreme close-ups in order to not make the same mistake that we made in with advert 2, of having too many long shots. The main problems that we had was with the cat. Despite the cat being well behaved, we found that we had to get on with the shot really quickly before the cat runs off. This meant that we had to tell Lucy and Ben what we wanted them to do in the shot, as well as set up the camera in the right position before placing the cat into the shot, allowing us to be prepared and ready to continue shooting straight away. This ultimately allowed us to work more efficiently and was less time consuming.

On the other hand, the advantage of filming indoors, in comparison to advert 2, is hat we have more control over the lighting. We now do not have the whether restrictions such as the sun and rain meaning that the shots will be easier to control. We are using ambient lighting in order to have an aspect of realism, and so far this is working well.

We plan to upload all the footage that we have got so far onto the Macs during Tuesday's lunch time lesson on January 20th. Me and Hannah are also going to move foward with this advert by spending more time on editing it in the upcoming week during our free time. In addition to this, we are going to make an early start in searching for music due to us knowing how difficult it is to choose the right song from making our last advert!

Shooting Schedule Continued...

2009-01-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

Here is more of our shooting schedule:

Date: Friday 23rd January
Time: Period 4-6
People present: Hannah, Lucy, Ben & me. And the cat!
Place: Hannah's house in living room
Task: To begin filming the shots in advert 1 in which the cat is present. Try and get these shots out of the way early as these are the hardest shots to do. Experiment with a variety of shots
Props: A sofa and the cat.

Date: Tuesday 27Th January
Time: 1:10
People present: Hannah & me
Place: Mac Suite
Task: Continue to edit music for advert 2, and upload footage so far of advert 1.

Date: Tuesday 27Th January
People present: Lucy, Ben, Hannah & Me
Place: Hannah's house
Time: Period 3, break, Period 4
Task: Shoot the jingle for advert 1 using Lucy. Do any re-shoots. Finish off shots where the cat is needed.
Props: Sofa, cat, and mint packet

Date: Wednesday 28Th January
People present: Lucy, Ben, Hannah & me
Place: Hannah's house
Time: Lunch, Period 6+7
Task: Continue doing shots for advert 1 + any re shoots. Try and complete some of the ending shots. Re-shoot 1 of the shots for advert 2.
Props: Sofa, cat, mint packet, geeky costume

Date: Friday 30th January
People present: Lucy, Ben, Hannah & me
Place: Hannah's house
Time: Break, Period 2,3, & 4
Task: Re-shoots, 'cat' shots, and ending shots
Props: Sofa, mint packet, costumes,

Date: Friday 30th January
People present: Hannah & me
Place: Mac suite
Time: Period 1, 4, 5, 6 (and other intervals)
Tasks: Upload footage, carry on editing advert, post advert 1 & 2 on Blogger.

Date: Friday 13th Feb
People present: Ben, Lucy, Hannah, me
Place: Hannah's house
Tasks: Complete re-shoots

Music Editing

2009-01-08T10:32:00.001-08:00

Since we have been back, me and Hannah have made a start on editing our chosen music to fit with the action of advert 2. To begin with, we imported the song and played it against out advert. In order to have an idea of what the song will sound like against the action, we did a quick rough cut of the song. This helped us have an idea of which parts that we need to keep and delete when it comes to editing it properly. It also determined the fact of whether we would keep that song or not because if the pace, lyrics, mood etc of the music did not fit with the advert then we would have to reject the idea. After discussing the song amongst ourselves and with Mr Michie we decided that we would keep the music as long as we did some serious editing! The music which we have chosen is Girls and Boys in Love by The Rumble Strips. We felt that this piece of music had a chorus which, when edited, was the best song we could find with lyrics that match the action quite well. In addition to this, the pace of the music fit well and we think that the music is young and lively meaning that it would appeal to our target audience.

Below are some of the lyrics of the song as well as a YouTube video so that you can listen to it. In bold are the parts of the lyrics which we want to keep. Bearing in mind that there are instrumental sections which we will use instead of the lyrics not highlighted in bold.

Rumble Strips Lyrics - Girls And Boys In Love Lyrics

Just ’cause you think it,
Don’t make it so,
Drop you to drink it,
Won’t let you go.

CHORUS
Plenty of girls and boys in love,
Plenty of girls and boys in love.

Move to the city,
Loose all your heart,
She weren’t that pretty,
You ain’t too smart.

CHORUS
Plenty of girls and boys in love,
Plenty of girls and boys in love.

But ain’t it a shame,
Woaaah oooohhh,
Ain’t it a shame,
Woaaah oooohhh,
Ain’t it a shame,I’ve let you go,
Plenty of girls… and boys in love.

Plenty of girls… and boys in love (3x)

We want to use some of the instrumental parts of the song as a mini introduction to the advert. (Perhaps only the first 1-3 shots)

The point in which we want the 'plenty of girls and boys in love' line to come in is when the girls See's her boyfriend (the geek) walking over to sit next to her. This line should last throughout the close ups of the couple holding hands and exchanging 'flirty' looks.

When the lyrics say 'Ain't it a shame' we want this to be said when the geek goes to kiss his girlfriend but he gets rejected. This helps add a sympathy aspect and is the exact message that the action is giving off.

After the rejection part, the voice over will begin.

We will then end the advert with an instrumental part of the advert, however we will have the music playing quietly behind the voice over.

I took the responsibility of saving the song onto a USB so that on Monday and Tuesday me and Hannah could go onto Adobe Sound booth, the programme which allows you to edit music. Originally we thought that the programme would be hard to use, however with a brief introduction on how to use the programme by Mr Michie as well as the use of the help tool meant that we picked it up very quickly. So far, we have cut down the music so that we are only left with the instrumental parts, the chorus, and the appropriate lyrics in the middle part of the song. We have also used what we have edited so far and imported it into our advert to see how it sounded like, and as we did so, we both discussed what extra parts needed cutting. In addition to this, it allowed us to view the timings and how much we had to work with when it came to how much introduction/instrumental music we could have before the lyrics begin. Once we discussed the timings etc, we went back onto Adobe Sound booth and have begun to narrow the music down so that it fits in the 30second time space of our advert. We still need to make the music sound 'smoother' so that it flows better and doesn't have the sound change from where we have cut the music. Once we have got this sorted, we will import it back against our advert, fit the voice over so that it fits accurately, and then we shall be complete! :)

Where we are up to...

2008-12-15T03:41:00.000-08:00

We are currently doing the final touches on advert 2. We have completed all the filming and all the shots in our advert are completed and we are happy with all the shots that we have. In order to be fully completed, we need to sort out the voiceover by editing it to fit perfectly with the action and by choosing the voice that we are happy to use in all three of our adverts. In addition to this, we currently have backing music on our advert, The One by The Ting Tings, however due to our advert not having much diegetic music, we wanted to have a song which has suitable lyrics that has a natural pause in it so that the voiceover can be played over the top. The song also needs to fit with the pace of the advert in order for it to flow well. We are also at the stage where we are organizing times to meet up with our actors for us to begin filming our other two adverts. Me and Hannah plan to use a similar work plan as we did for advert 2, because we felt that the way be went about making the advert worked well for us, because we were both able to have an equal amount of input towards the work meaning that we were both happy with the progress. Ultimately this resulted in us having an almost finished piece of work which we are happy with.

We thought we would meet the deadline, however because we did not find the music that we wanted, we have not been able to fully complete the advert. The reason why we did not meet the deadline was because were unable to find music that fitted well with the advert. In order to sort this out, we both need to do a lot more research of music, and also need to pick out a selected few and try it against out work because this will make it easier for us to establish whether or not we like the music for our advert or not. The voiceover has also caused us to be a bit behind with meeting the deadline because we did not leave enough time to do the voiceover, meaning that we had to rush when it came to learning how to use the Edirol and experimenting with it and ultimetely finding someone to use for our voiceover. We do have voices that we like, and therefore put them into our advert to see the effect that it has.

Plans for January

In January, we plan to get the filming for Advert 1 and 2 underway as soon as we get back from our Christmas holiday. Our aim is to film both of them at the same time because they are both at the same location so it makes it easier for us to do so. Once we have some footage for the adverts, we want to edit them on the Macs like we did for advert 2. The thing which we will do differently this time, is that we are going to edit advert 1 whilst continuing to film for the other advert. This will makes things much easier because whilst we are editing advert 1, the rough cuts of advert 3 will be on the Mac's meaning that once advert 1 is completed for our next deadline, we will already be ahead when it comes to working on our final advert.

Advert 2 so far

2008-12-10T07:54:00.000-08:00

This is a video of Advert 2 so far. Excuse the low quality setting!

We are not far from finishing this. The main thing which we need to do is sort out the music. We also need to edit voice overs to fit exactly with the action (especially towards the end where it is a delayed 'ahhh') We have other voice overs which we are going to try as the one we have now is a bit too quiet.

There is also one shot which we are going to replace/edit as we've just noticed that there is a shadow of the tri-pod! We have literally just added in the shot of the geek walking into the shot and sitting next to his girlfriend. The end of this shot needs to be edited in order for it to fit nicely with the shot that is immediately after it. However, this is the shot with the shadow of the tri-pod in it, so we will end up using one of the other shots. :]

The music is also going to change. We have decided to change our original idea of having only an instrumental song, to having a song with a combination of instrumental parts and vocals. We have decided to do this because the characters in the adverts do not speak therefore we need to have some sort of lyrics. In addition to this, we will also have to include some diegetic sound, preferable in the reactions of the characters and the jingle part of the advert in order to achieve and aspect of realism.

In comparison to our original storyboard, it has changed a lot. We were originally following the storyboard however as we were carry out the shots, we didn't feel like it was flowing very well and the shots did not match the codes and conventions of the advert. We had too many long and mid shots meaning that we had to change this so that we had more close ups instead. The jingle part of the storyboard, from when the geek takes the mints out of his pockets onwards, is still the same as our original storyboard and we found that this worked well even when we came to filming it.

Re-shooting problems & Voiceover/Music

2008-12-09T01:37:00.000-08:00

Our original plan was to do our last 2 re-shoot last week, however we had to prospone this to the following week due to problems that kept occurring on the days that we wanted to film. We were originally going to film on Tuesday, however the weather was so bad that we couldn't film the re-shoots because the rain was too heavy meaning that the shots would have been completely different to the shots that we already have. Due to our failure in re-shooting, we used our time to continue editing our sequence.

After Tuesday's shooting being a disaster, we planned to film either Wednesday or Thursday, however due to drama rehearsals and exams, we couldn't find a time in which one of our actors was free at the same time as us, therefore we had to again cancel the session and arrange to film the following week.

Rather than wasting time waiting for the re-shoots to be completed, me and Hannah decided to move forward with our advert by experimenting with the voice over and music. We searched the Internet to find suitable music for our advert. It is important that the music fits with the pace of the advert, as well as give a light hearted feel to it. We also do not want to use too many lyrics within the advert, however we may have instrumental and lyric parts to the song due to our advert not having much diegetic sound. Two of our favourites so far which we have experimented have been Scouting for girls-Heartbeat and The ting tings-be the one. We are in the process of searching for more love related songs.

In addition to this we tried adding a voice over to the 'jingle' part of our advert. Using the Edirol we recorded people saying our 'jingle' and then transferred it onto the Mac's and put it as audio against the sequence. We had some problems when doing this, because the pace in which some of the people were saying the jingle did not match the action. Even though we can edit this on the macs, we made the recording process easier for our volunteer voice overs by showing them the advert as they say the jingle. This allows them to understand the pace a lot better, meaning that the way they say the jingle is much clearer and understandable. Our favourite voice so far is that of Mr Michie and Atia. The voice over fits well for a first attempt, except for the part right at the end which will need a bit of editing. We are still going to try a variety of voices and pick the best one. We want to have the same person for all three adverts, so we have to make sure that whoever we choose is easy to get hold of when we need them.

Voiceover and music

2008-12-01T05:06:00.000-08:00

We are in the process of listening to a variety of different 'love' music to fit with out advert and have decided that we want to use an instrumental version. The best way for us to decide which music to use is by playing it alongside the action and see what sounds most effective. We also need to bear in mind that the music has to fit in with the pace of the actions.

Me and Hannah are looking for someone to do the voiceover. We are preferably looking for a male voice, however if we can fine a female we will give it a try. The voice has to be confident, persuasive, and trustworthy in order to sell the product to viewers.
If you would like to do it or know anyone who would like to do it, then please let us know ASAP!

MORE re-shoots & Filming for Advert 1

2008-12-01T04:36:00.000-08:00

This week we are going to re-shoot another two shots for advert 2. (couple on the bench) We need to shoot the very end shot of the advert where the couple embrace in a kiss/hug after the geek has taken the mint. This portrays the effects of the mint and shows a confident, happy boy/couple. The other re-shoot is when the boy is entering the shot. We have already done a re-shoot for this, however the shot was not effective because their heads were cut off meaning that the shot didn't really have any real purpose, we are therefore going to re-shoot this as a long shot.

In addition to this, we are going to film advert 1 (couple and the cat.) We aim to get a couple of shots from the beginning of the advert, and perhaps make a start on advert 3 (couple meets the parents) in order to have some rough cuts of the two remaining adverts.

We plan to do these shots this week, mainly on Tuesday 2nd December during our morning frees as these are the days when everybody is free and it won't clash with any other events happening that week. We are going to do the re-shoots first as this is a priority for us to complete this advert and get it out of the way. However, it will not take long to do the final 2 shots for this advert, so we will have enough time to start on the other two.

:]

Shooting Schedule - More Reshoots

2008-11-24T09:21:00.000-08:00

Currently we have got the main bulk of advert 2 complete, it is now just a case of re-shooting a few shots, editing those re-shoots, adding voice overs and music, and final touches. After going over what we have, these are the re-shoots that we will be doing this week and why we are re-shooting that particular shot:

Date: Tuesday 25Th November
Time: Morning free periods
People present: Me, Hannah, Lucy & Ben
Task: Re shoots for advert 2 are as follows
Shot 1-Girl looking at her watch. Do this as a low angle shot.
We have changed to this because the lighting didn't work to our advantage, and it will be more effective if the audience can actually see the time and are looking more from the girl's point of view.

Shot 4-Boy walking into shot and sitting down next to girl on bench. Do this as a mid-shot.
We have changed to this because the shot we currently have is too much of a close up meaning that you don't see the male character enough

After shot 6-Girl's facial expression after boy has held her hand. Do this as a close up of her face.
We have changed to this shot because once the male character comes into the shot, it looks like its all about him (with his bad breath etc) and the girl is slightly 'blanked' out, therefore we will include her facial expression to emphasise her flirty actions and to remind the audience that the couple are going out and the girl in a way expects to kiss him. (until she smells his bad breath of course!)

Shot 11-Girl fans her face after smelling boy's bad breath when he leans in for a kiss. Do this as a close up.
We have decided to change to this because the shot we have now makes her looked shocked, however it needs to be made clearer to the audience that she is rejecting him due to bad breath, and this simple action will immediately show this.

Ending shot-Couple are on bench, they are kissing and boy turns to camera looking like a happy lad! He is holding the mint packet.
We have changed to this because we are cutting the shots where the girl stomps off in disgust because this was telling to much, therefore we need an end shot of the couple on the bench, but this time the kiss goes to plan for our geek!

Practice 'jingle'

2008-11-24T04:39:00.000-08:00

Here is the first sequence that we did of our jingle of 'shake, click, fresh, ahh' We did this just to see what it could possibly look like and here it is:

Normally, in the final shot we would use a fan to create a 'wind' effect rather than the hands. Our aim was to find out roughly how long this part of the advert was going to be so that we know the remaining time left for other footage. We thought this was a good idea to test because we are using this in all three of our adverts as our 'jingle.' When we were filming this, we tried out different ways of 'shaking and clicking' the packet to see which was more effective. We found that the above (video) ways of holding the mint were the best because if there was logo or text then you can see it, meaning that audience knows what we are advertising. However, when filming the jingle within the actual advert we experimented with different angles in order to meet the codes and conventions of an advert by having a variety of close ups, which differs to the one above which are shots all from the same angle. It is important to consider that because we are making the advert, we will not be in any of our adverts and that in one of the three adverts, a boy will be doing the jingle, so we have to consider ways of showing the effects of the mint other than through the hair.

More editing

2008-11-21T05:24:00.000-08:00

Editing
Last week we did more editing than filming. We have progressed in our editing as we now have our advert more or less put together. At the moment, there are several gaps in between because they are either the shots that we still need to film or we are not happy with the shot and want to re shoot that particular one. We have not yet added any transitions in into our advert, however due to the shots being too long and making the pace of the advert too slow, we have cut almost all of our shots using the software. This means that the advert flows much better, it gives us more time to work with (as we can include more shots) and it allows us to get rid of bad beginnings and ends of shots.

One problem that we are facing with the editing is that our advert seems to be getting too long. At the moment, it is longer than what it would actually be because we have left gaps in between some shots and not all the shots have been cut yet. However, once we put them all together, we will have to eliminate the shots which are not really necessary in order to make the advert much shorter. We have already started to do this by removing shots which don't really have a purpose in the advert or if we have a shot which is already similar to it. In our original storyboard we have an 'end screen' however we may have to remove this because our advert will be too long if we use this. Alternatively, we could remove some shots in order to make space for the 'end screen' because this would be selling the product to the audience perhaps more so than the shots of the couple. I think that we are going to try out both possibilities to see which is more effective.

There are some re-shoots to be done over the next week or so, however during the editing process, the shots which need re-shooting are still in the sequence so that we know what fits in where as well as it just being a temporary shot so we can have a rough idea of what it will look like. Whilst I was editing I noticed that you could change the colour of the clips by going onto the edit drop down menu, clicking label and then choosing the colour. This has helped us a lot because we have colour coded our sequence in order for us to find clips easily, and know which ones we are keeping and which are temporary. We have used a pink coloured label to identify those shots that we will be re-shooting, whilst the other clips are in a blue label colour, as they are the ones that we are happy with.

More filming

2008-11-21T04:50:00.001-08:00

Filming
We went filming on Wednesday 19Th and decided to do some of our re-shoots. We had already previously written down the shots which we felt needed re-shooting and used this to help us on the day. Luckily, the weather worked to our advantage because the sun wasn't out and it was more dull like the second time we went filming meaning that the shots won't have as much of a 'light' contrast between them! One problem that we did face was the battery on the camera. When we went to book out a camera earlier in the day, most of them have either a very low battery, or a completely empty battery. We a battery to charge however this wasn't really useful because we had planned to go filming there and then, so we didn't want to waste time waiting for the battery to be charged. Next time, we are going to make sure that we book out a camera the lesson before we want to use it (only if we can quickly pop up to the office before our lesson) in order to give us the maximum time to film. Luckily, after a lot of rummaging through batteries and camera's, we found a battery with about 45-55 minutes left on the battery and used this. It was really annoying however, because when we were trying to get the shot angles right, we couldn't leave the camera on for too long because we didn't have much time left on it before it would die meaning that some of our shots seemed a bit rushed. Another disadvantage was that we couldn't film the end of our advert like we had planned because by the time we had done our re-shoots, the battery was more or less dead and there was no point in starting to film the end part. We overcome this problem by switching off the camera after every shot that we filmed in order for the battery to not be wasted and the fact that we knew what we wanted to re-shoot made it a lot easier because weren't having to worry about what shot we had to film next. We planned to upload and edit the new footage onto the macs the following day, on Thursday, however ended up not doing this, so we plan to do it on Monday of next week. In addition to this, despite feeling like we had to rush our shots, on Thursday we watched the footage on the camera, and the majority of the shots turned out the way we wanted it too, however we aren't getting our hopes up because when we upload onto the Mac's we always have to criticise what we are seeing!!

Editing

2008-11-16T11:14:00.000-08:00

We have uploaded all the footage that we have filmed so far onto the Macs. We aim to upload the footage the same day we have filmed it or ASAP in order to avoid us from filming over what we have already done and to allow us to edit what we have whilst we continue filming the rest of the advert. So far, we have put together and edited some of our shots. Me and Hannah are happy with our improved shots because there are more close ups and they look much more effective that the long shots which we originally had. Unfortunately we cannot use any of the footage from shoot 1 because we changed the clothing of the characters, the characters were acting more than there were camera shots and the shots did not meet the codes and conventions because there were more long shots than close ups. We have found that we need to shoot some extra shots in order to make the sequence flow better and re-shoot some shots which we are not fully happy with. We have filmed and edited the 'jingle' of our advert with one of our actors, however we want to try it with him saying the words 'shake click fresh ahh' because at the moment it seems a bit bland. We have not yet decided if we want him to say the words over the microphone or whether to re-shoot the shots yet. We are going to continue putting together a sequence for the advert and editing it to fit our needs. We are also going to experiment with the programme in order to do our 'end title screen' and we are considering using photo shop to achieve what we wanted it to look like.

Advert 2 - Shoot 3 & 4

2008-11-12T12:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (Tuesday 12Th November), and today (Wednesday 13Th November) we went and continued filming for advert 2 and have uploaded the footage that we have done over the last two days onto the macs during our last free, period 7.

On both days we continued filming for advert two, and are on our way to having completed the filming, although of course there is more than likely going to be a few re-shoots. One problem that we are facing with the filming is that due to our advert being set outside, it is important that the weather is similar every time we shoot otherwise it looks weird and you can tell that we have been shooting on separate days. On Tuesday we had a problem because the wind was really strong and this means that you can hear the sound of the wind on almost every shot. This is a problem because if we want to have an aspect of realism in our adverts we will not be able to use the original sound because it doesn't fit with the action/advert and it sounds really bad. To overcome this, we may have to re-shoot the shots or we could alternatively use the sound from another clip and add it on to the footage which we like because this will avoid us having to go out and re-shoot. On the other hand, the sound which we replace the original with may not fit in very well with the action.
The other problem that we had was also weather related. On Wednesday is was quite sunny whereas on the other days that we went filming, it was a lot more misty. This caused problems because it made the shots appear too bright, and our actors kept squinting at the sun. We tried to over come the problem by attempting to make shade on the 'set' by using an umbrella and material/coats to block out the sun, however this wasn't always successful as in some of the shots you can see shadows which makes the shot look even worse than when the sun was shining on it. This is really frustrating, as despite us having filmed several of the same shot, it is limiting the ones we can use due to faults like that.
During our filming, we filmed the same shot twice and kept it going for longer than what the shot would really last for on the advert. We did this in a lot of shots because we felt that it is important to have enough for us to choose the best shot, and in case something ruins the shot, we have another one to use. The reason why we also keep the shots long is because when we press the record button on or off at the beginning and end of each shot, we tend to shake the camera a little meaning that it ruins the shot. However, by making the shot last longer, we can cut this on the Macs and only use the part that we want to use.
During the filming which we did on these two days, we have noticed how we have experimented with different shots meaning that we are slightly going off what our original storyboard looks like. We are still following our storyboard and scripting as a guide however as we do so we keep thinking of other ideas which look better than the original. Another reason why we have changed some shots when filming is because when we upload footage onto the Mac's it does not always come out the way we want it to, for example the long shot of the couple at the beginning of the advert did not meet the codes and conventions and was not effective at all, therefore we have to think of alternatives to improve the advert.

We plan to continue filming for advert 2 next week, and also continue planning days for re-shooting, editing, and the start of filming advert 1.

Our mint packet

2008-11-12T11:32:00.000-08:00

We have got to the point where we are needing the mint packet in order to continue filming the 'jingle' part of our advert therefore today the finishing touches were made to our packet. It was quite easy to do, we simply got a large empty tic tac container, covered the pack using card to suit our liking, stuck it together and finally added the name of our mint. Here it is:

We have used green as our main colour sceme mainly because it has connotations of freshness and indicates the 'mint' flavour. We also felt that it would look odd if we had a combination of random colours so decided to stick with different shades of the same colour. The black writing is used to stand out, and the word 'new' is in red in order to attract people to the new product. As you can see, there are little images or specific detail because we want to emphasise the simplicity of the mint.

5th November - 'Tester' Jingle on Mac's

2008-11-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

Today (5th November) me and Hannah used one of our free's to go onto the Mac's and begin to put together our 'tester' of our jingle. ('shake, click, fresh, ahhh') We have managed to cut some of the clips and put together a small sequence however we stil need to add transitions, voiceover and/or music to it. This 'tester' will aid us when we create our actual jingle, because it is present in all adverts therefore it is important that we experiment, as well as to help us work out how to use some of the tools on the adobe premier software because it is a programme that neither me or Hannah have worked with before. We stuggled to use the software at the beginning however the more we play around with it the more we learn from it and the easier it becomes to use. :] Once we have completed this little 'tester' i'll upload it onto this blog.

Advert 2 - Shoot 2

2008-11-05T11:40:00.000-08:00

Today (5th November) we went out and did some more filming. We were really organised today as we fully charged the camera which we wanted to book out so that there was no risk of it going dead half way through filming and we also organised to go out filming with our actors well in advance to avoid disappointment. We noticed that this organisation made the overall filming a lot easier because it meant that we could just get along with it.

Unlike the first shoot, despite the depressing weather, we spent more time filming different shots and shot angles in order to get a variety for us to choose from when we edit. The filming went well as we got more footage than we did the first time and we filmed more CU shots in order to allow the camera to tell the story rather than the actors and hopefully these will be much better than the first ones we did. In some cases, we got slightly diverted from our storyboard and began experimenting with different shots because when we were on location we began to consider more potentially effective shot angles etc.

Originally, we planned to upload the footage from today's shooting onto the Mac's however we failed to do so because we had problems getting the camera connected to the Mac and onto the software. We also had a huge crisis when we thought we had the tape stuck in one of the camera's, but after about 15 minutes worth of investigating the camcorder, we found out that the tape was stuck because the battery on the camera was too low to operate. We have learned from this incident that rather that wasting time trying to find out how something works we should either move on to something else or try and find help so that we don't waste editing time as well as get less stressed out!!

Plans for tomorrow...
Seeing as we didn't upload the footage onto the Mac's today, me and Hannah are going to use our free's (either P2 or P3) to upload the footage.

Timetable

2008-11-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

To aid us in our shooting schedule, we made a mini timetable of the days and times that hannah, our actors (lucy and ben) and myself have frees. This will help us plan our shooting schedule (see posts below) as well as find an appropriate time for re-shooting which is vital in the later stages of the production.

Below is a chart that I created which shows the frees that we all have. This means that when we are planning shootings etc, I can look at this and know who is available. The spaces marked with an X indicate the fact that we do not have matching and/or any frees and limited time that day therefore these are they days which we will focus on editing moreso than filming. :]

Drama Studio's
We also found out when the drama studio's are free because we want to know what we are doing by the time we come to film advert 3. Me and Hannah went to see the drama teachers to find out the days and times DS3 is available, however we have to consider that this free space is likely to change at any time.

P2/7 Friday
P6/7 Tuesday
All lunch times

As you can see, the times we can use the space is very limited therefore we may need to have an alternative location in the event of the drama studio's not being free.

Advert 2 - Shoot 1

2008-11-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

Today we did our first bit of filming towards advert 2 (couple on a bench) and uploaded this footage onto the Mac's. We used our storyboard to aid us in the filming and for the first shooting, it didn't go too badly however a lot of work needs to be done and improvement is necessary as the shots were not perfect. We managed to film a couple of shots which are equivalent to shots 1-6 on our storyboard. Unfortunately, the lighting didn't work to our advantage on some of the shots because the faces of the characters appeared a bit bright in all the mid and long shots. When we next film, we will avoid this situation by not having so many mid and long shots except for the opening 3-4 seconds of the advert. This is because the codes and conventions of an advert would mainly consist of close ups and extreme close ups therefore it is important that we follow this in order to make ours as professional as possible. We followed our storyboard, however in doing so, we ended up having shots which were really long and full of acting. We didn't film enough shots from different angles, meaning that it goes against the codes and conventions. From this, we have learned that we need to rely less on the acting done by the actors, and focus more on using the camera effectively in order to engage and tell the audience what is happening.

In addition to this, some of our shots seemed a bit wonky/shaky due to us touching and/or holding the camera as it was filming. It is important that we do not let this happen because it makes the shot look unprofessional and rushed. We also have to make sure that in our next shooting, the tri pod etc is set up properly to avoid any sort of movement of the camera. I also noticed that there wasn't much sound in our filming apart from the natural surroundings. Originally, we just wanted a backing tune and a voiceover on the advert, however if we do not include a bit of sound from the characters, such as laughter or flirty sounds the make, then we could lack the aspect of verisimilitude.

Me and Hannah also made some 'tester' shots of our jingle of 'shake, click, fresh, ahh' In all three adverts we have a close up of the hand doing these actions and then consuming the mint to get freshness, therefore we have tried out our 'vision' of what we wanted it to look like today. Hannah took charge of the filming while I performed the 'jingle' sequence. This part of the filming turned out well, if not better, that the filming of the main body of the advert. The shots were clear, and with a bit of editing and an added voice over, it will be a good draft for us to work with. One improvement for this part of the advert is that the shots of the hand shaking and clicking the mints could be more of an ECU as this fits in with the codes and conventions more and it will make the audience focus on the mints.

Costumes

2008-11-03T04:59:00.000-08:00

Me and Hannah have done a plan as to what costumes the characters will need for each advert. It is important that we know what advert we are filming each time we go out so that we can bring in the correct props and costume because the characters needs to look the same throughout the whole advert.

Male Character (boyfriend)

Advert 1: T-shirt, jeans, trainers, glasses
Advert 2: Black jacket, jeans, trainers, glasses
Advert 3: Shirt, bow tie, trousers, shoes

Female character (girlfriend)

Advert 1: Hoodie, jeans
Advert 2: Coat, jeans, ugg boots
Advert 3: Pink shirt, jeans, black shoes

Female character (mother)

Advert 3: Smart clothing, 'mumsie' clothes

The reason why have chosen these types of clothing is because it is what our target audience are most likely to wear, therefore they can connect to it more. We also wanted to keep the clothing quite simple and easy to get hold of. If we find that the costume doesn't fit with the action then we may change them a bit later on.

Overall, in Ad 1 we wanted the characters to look comfy and at home which is why the clothing is very casual. In Ad 2, they are outside on a bench therefore we have made the outfits more outside wear by making them wear coats and warm clothing. Finally, in Ad 3 we have chosen to have the character's look smarter because they are trying to give a good impression on the parent.

Scripting

2008-10-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

Below are the scripts that we did for our adverts. (click for orginal size)
Advert 1
(still need to scan this)

Advert 2:
Page 1

Page 2:

Page 3

Advert 3
Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Shooting Schedule

2008-10-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

The days which we are most free are Tuesdays and Fridays therefore the majority of our filming and re-shooting will be on those two day because it gives us lots of time to film which is an advantage for us. The editing will mainly take place on the other days where we have frees where we can focus more on the editing. We have done a shooting schedule, which we will update every week, because it is important for us to plan our time in order for us to make the most of our filming time. It also gives us a guideline as to what needs to be done, however it is important to consider that some of it may change in the event of unplanned re-shooting etc. This is our shooting schedule so far:

Shooting Schedule

Date: Tuesday 4th November
Time: Period 2
People present: Hannah, Me
Place: Mac suite/drama studio's
Task: Due to our actors not being available at this time of the day, me and Hannah have decided make 'test shots' of our jingle of 'fresh, click, fresh, ahh.' This will help us to become familiar with the sequence, timings & voiceover and will help us to decide what works, and what doesn't which is important for us because this sequence is in all three of our ad's.
Props: Decorated mint packet

Date: Tuesday 4th November
Time: Period 3, break & period 4
People present: Hannah, Lucy, Ben & me
Place: Chalfont Common, by park bench
Task: Filming advert 2, couple on a bench, and aim to film shots 1-8 which consists mainly of ECU & CU. We will need a camera, tri-pod, the two actors, a bench, the scripts and costumes (see costume post)

Date: Wednesday 5th November
Time: Period 2, Period 7
People present: Hannah and me
Place: Mac Suite
Task: Uploading footage done so far and putting some shots together into a sequence

Date: Wednesday 5th November
Time: Lunch, Period 5, Period 6
People present: Hannah, Lucy, Ben & me
Place: Chalfont Common
Task: Continue filming for Ad 2

Date: Tuesday 11th November
Time: Period 2 & 3
People present: Hannah, Lucy, Ben & me
Place: Chalfont Common
Task: Continue filming Ad 2 - shooting the middle section of the advert
NB. If it is raining to heavily tomorrow we will start shooting one of the other adverts which can be filmed indoors.

Date: Tuesday 12th November and Wednesday 13th November
Time: Lunch, P6, P7
People present: Hannah, Lucy, Ben & me
Place: Chalfont Common
Task: Continue filming Ad2

Date: Wednesday 19th November
Time: Lunch, P6
People present: Hannah, Lucy, Ben & me
Place: Chalfont common
Task: Re-shooting & last shots of advert 2

Scripting & Music

2008-10-20T07:13:00.000-07:00

We have begun the scripting process of our adverts and whilst doing this, it has led us to also think about music.

Yesturday and Today, we finished off the scripting of advert 2 & 3, in which we included dialogue, timings, actions and stage directions. We have done this to help us and the actors when we film because it will make it easier for them to follow what is going on as well as allowing us to know the order in which things are said etc. We have not yet decided as to whether or not we want to have music in this advert 3 because there is already a lot of dialogue, however once we have uploaded footage onto the mac's then we will experiment with different song choices to see which gives the best effect. I will put down music suggestions in a later post.

We have also looked at advert 2 and written stage directions and timings for the action. Unlike advert 3, there is minimal dialogue except for the voiceover at the end of the advert, therefore we want to use music throughout and perhaps make the music quieter once the voiceover begin.

We are considering finding somebody who plays music to record a short peice of music for us to put in our adverts. The advantage of this is that we can make the music whatever we want it to be providing that they are capable of playing it. The second option for the music is to find a well known piece of music without lyrics to play alongside the action. We could either get a karaoke version of the music or we could get a piece of music that is mainly intstrumental. Me and Hannah are going to look up music to see what we could use.

These are some facts that we thought about the music:
-Link with love or romance
-Music without lyrics/intrumental
-Upbeat to attract target audience
-Modern music
-Easily recognisable
-Perhaps repitious

We plan to use diegetic sound in the adverts even if we do have music in the background because we still want to have aspects of verisimilitude within all the adverts.

We have not yet started the scripting for advert 1, however we plan to get this finished ASAP so that if will be ready for when we move on to filming advert 1.

Just a thought...

2008-10-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

For Ad2 (the couple on the bench) we were going to do time reversal in which we would show that happens when the guy doesnt take the mints, and then go back in time and repeat the first couple of shots, but this time with him having taken the mint beforehand. Our first thoughts on this idea was that it would be too complicated, however I watched a video on youtube which had a type of time reversal in it, and its made me think whether we could actually try it.

Here's the link for the video. I particularly like the shot of the pills about 24seconds into the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F3LbLE7oic

Once we have some filming done, we could possibility try it for Ad 2 to see what it looks like. If it doesn't look good, or if it appears to over complicated for the audience to understand then it will be best to not use it.

Pictures of possible actors and actresses to star in our adverts!

2008-10-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

We are looking for the following roles: Boy, girl & a mother. Below are some pictures of people who could be possible candidate for our couple. Still taking pictures, so I will add them as I get them.

Idealy, we need reliable people who have similar frees to us because this will make it easier for us to film and meet up with them :]

If you, or you know anyone who is interested in playing any of these roles then let either me or Hannah know. Thankyou!

Possible candidate(s) 1

1.If you take one guy...

And take one girl...

They could become a couple like this! CUTE!

Pictures of possible locations

2008-10-16T12:05:00.001-07:00

With my handy camera at the ready, I can take snaps of possible locations for our adverts. I'm still in the middle of taking pictures so i'll upload them as I take them :]

Advert 1 - Possible locations

This advert could be set in a living room highlighting how they are visiting each other. It is also an ideal location for us to film in because we will have less problems with lighting

Advert 2 - Possible locations

Advert 3 - Possible locations

School drama studio's

The good thing about the drama studios is that the walls are black meaning that it creats a blank canvas for us to use mise en scene effectively in order to create aspects of realism when creating out 'cosy living room.' The problem is that there are lessons in there regularly therefore we will have to plan our time effciently to ensure that when the place is free, we film as much as we possibly can.

Chicara study

We could possibly use this area for the living room because the sofas can be useful in creating mise en scene. We may have to arrange to use these sofas in the drama studio because the surrounding area of these sofas isn't what we want.

The couple could approach the house to meet the parents, or could be set inside the house

Treatment 2

2008-10-16T11:52:00.001-07:00

Below is our final/second treatment which we wrote out. We made changes to the way we worded things and completely changed two paragraphs to match our new storyboards.

Treatment 2
Exploring our coursework
The idea Hannah and I have created is an advertisement for mints, aimed at our chosen target audience of people aged between 15 to 25. The mint is targeted at both genders which is portrayed in our advert through the use of a couple and by having both girl and boy taking the mint in at least on of the adverts. We have targeted this audience by having themes that they can relate to, and linking the mint to people who are young and outgoing. We knew beforehand that mints were always being advertised on TV, yet none of them focused on the time in which it took a mint to work, therefore we created our own unique selling point, which was that our product works the fastest when you need it most.

Our first advert will be set in a living room in which the couple are first introduced. We want to have a couple throughout all three adverts so that when people see the couple in our advertisement campaign they will immediately associate them with our mints. We have tried to make the advert funny through the dialogue and actions of the characters. The advert begins with a long shot of the couple on the sofa, and the boy smells something nice and says: ‘Something smells nice around here.’ The girl, and the audience, will believe that he is talking to the girl therefore we have used a close up of the girl flicking her hair and feeling flirtatious. Next, we decided to include humour by making out as if the boy is going to hug the girl but instead picks up the cat and says ‘wow, you smell so good.’ For this advert, we have decided not to make out that the girl has bad breath, this will come to the audience’s imagination once she has taking the mint. After this, the girl will be in a bad mood due to the lack of attention that she received, however the mood changes immediately with the catchphrase ‘Shake, Click, Fresh, Ahh’, being narrated over the shots of her movements as she takes out the mints, shakes the packet, clicks the lid open, tastes the freshness, and then is satisfied with the end result of the product.

The second advert is aimed at the younger boundary of our target audience; it revolves around a young couple in which there is an awkward moment between the pair when the girl rejects his kiss, once she smells his bad breath. We considered using time reversal to show a before and after sequence however this could potentially be too complicated to present, and it would be very repetitious to repeat the sequence. Therefore we have decided to show this in a different way by showing how the boy is rejected when he hasn’t used the mints, and then after taking the mint he can get close to her again. We wanted to include this because it is something that our target audience can relate to and it will also continue to add humour. We are going to use a variety of shots to introduce the characters and make the audience feel involved in the action so that they feel the mint will affect their lives too. All of the shots will be either mid- close shots, to extreme- close ups, which will create the effect of a real advert. We have chosen to include more close- ups when presenting the mint, as well as in the other two adverts, so that the audience are focused on the product.

The third advert revolves around the couple meeting the parents. We have chosen to use this idea because almost everybody will face this type of experience in their lives at one point, therefore using this but adding a humorous twist will appeal more to our target audience. There will be more dialogue in this advert than the previous two, but because of this we have decided to make the dialogue funnier. At the start of the advert the couple arrive at the parents house and the boy is feeling really nervous and says things such as: ‘I hope your parents like me’ which will avoid the audience from being confused by making them understand what is happening at a very early stage of the advert. Awkward moments is key in this advert because it helps add to the humour, therefore we included awkward moments when everybody bumps into each other as they go to hug and when the mother says: ‘Do you guys use protection these days’ which causes an awkward moment for the couple as they don’t yet know that she is referring to the mints. We again have our ‘jingle’ in this advert of ‘shake, click, fresh, ahh’ but this time the actress who plays the mother will be saying it.

Overall, all our adverts will have aspects of simplicity and humour because we feel that this will make the advert more memorable and will interest out target audience into buying the product. We also want to have parallel sound in all the adverts, which will be the dialogue of the characters, however we also want to introduce contrapuntal sound which will be part of a song that will be played in the background which will make it feel more light hearted. In addition the couple will be the same throughout so that they are immediately recognised. To end all the adverts, as well as form another link between them, we want to include an end screen which will have the mint on the side followed by a voiceover saying the words: ‘all you’ve got to do is shake, click, fresh, ahh’ (where the words will come up as they are being said by the voiceover) and ending it with out line of appeal of ‘get fresh breath fast when you need it’

Final storyboards

2008-10-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

Here are the scanned images of our storyboards: (if you want to see the storyboard bigger then just click on the picture :])

Advert 1 The couple and the cat
Page 1: Page 2:Page 3:

Senario: Girl thinks that boy is talking about her when he smells something 'gorgeous' but she is mistaken because he ends up picking up the cat! = Aspect of humour

We decided to have the girl with bad breath for this advert because our mint is for all sexes, therefore it is important that both the boy and girl makes use of the mint in at least one of the three adverts. We may need to tweak the dialogue in this advert because we cannot have a silent moment in the advert therefore either we add more dialogue to fill up the gaps, or we find music which will replace the dialogue when nothing is being said. This disadvantage that we could encounter when filming this, is that the cat may not do the things that we want it to do!! (however, hannah has tricks up her sleeve to make the cats do as she says! haha) We could also possibly include more shots into this storyboard if we find that it is not long enough. The advantage that we have is that we can film at Hannah's house, and because she lives near the school then thats a bonus.

Advert 2 Couple on a bench

Page 1Page 2Page 3

Senario: Couple are on a bench, fooling around. (as couples do!) The guy tries to kiss the girl but he is rejected :(

I changed this storyboard slightly by adding extra shots to make it slightly longer. I think that this will deffinetly appeal to our target audience. Humour will be creating more through the acting in this advert, meaning that we may have to make some of the acting a bit more exagerated to make it funnier. The disadvantage of this advert is that we will be filming outside therefore it will be hard to get the lighting exactly the same if we need to re-shoot. We need to be careful about the location of the bench because if we want to use the original sound, it will sound bad if all we can hear the background noise when its something like cars passing!

Advert 3 Couple meet the parents

Page 1Page 2Page 3Alternative shots

Senario: The boy is meeting his girlfriends mum for the first time, things don't go to well when she questions them about whether they use protection or not.

Humour is created in this advert mainly through the dialogue because the way the mother says the statement is something which everybody hopes never happens, however when they find out that she's reffering to mints it creates that humour. We have including quite a lot of shots in this storyboard, and had two possibilities for this idea (see alternative shots) however we decided not to use the alternative shots because this woul over complicate the whole thing. The main problem that we have with this is that we need somebody older to play the part of the mother, as if they look the same age as the couple it will look weird! Therefore we are considering asking our drama teachers if they wouldn't mind sparing some time to help us in our adverts. Also, we need to shoot outside a door for the start of this, and then we are in a living room. If we manage to get the drama teachers to help with the acting, then we will film in the drama studios meaning that we will have to have good use of mise en scene in order to ensure that it doesnt look more like a cosy living room and not a random school drama studio!

Treatment 1

2008-10-15T02:50:00.000-07:00

Below is a copy of our first treatment which we wrote. I will also post a copy of our second treatment in another post as that is our newest draft. We changed it because we completely changed two of our storyboards!

Treatment 1
Exploring our coursework
The idea Hannah and I have created is an advertisement for mints, aimed at our chosen target audience of people aged between 15 to 25. We have targeted this audience by having themes that they can relate to. We knew beforehand that mints were always being advertised on TV, yet none of them focused on the time in which it took a mint to work. Therefore we created our own unique selling point, which was that our product works the fastest when you need it most.

Our first advert will include only one character, so that the focus isn’t taken from the product itself. The setting of the first advert will take place in a bathroom, which is where everyone starts there day, therefore we made the link between starting your day, and starting our advert sequence in this place. The first storyboard includes a female character waking up to a radio, which will start with the sound of a voice- over saying ‘Do you have bad breath?’ the girl nods to herself in the mirror while looking miserably. She scans over previous products in her bathroom which haven’t worked then picks up the ‘miracle mint’, the mood changes immediately with the catchphrase ‘Shake, Click, Fresh, Ahh’, being narrated over the shots of her movements shaking the packet, clicking the lid open, tasting the freshness, and then being satisfied with the end result of the product. All of the shots will be either mid- close shots, to extreme- close ups, which will create the effect of a real advert. The advert will finish with a shot of a fogged up bathroom mirror where the words ‘miracle mint’ appear to have been written. This idea is simple and straight- forward to film, yet we included a variety of shots that will make up for the simplicity. The narrative throughout this advert will not be used in all of them; however, we will make the link between all three adverts by using the catchphrase ‘Shake, Click, Fresh, Ahh’, with the shots to match.

The second advert is aimed at the younger boundary of our target audience; it revolves around a young couple in which there is an awkward moment between the pair when the girl rejects his kiss, once she smells his bad breath. We are going to use a variety of shots to introduce the characters and make the audience feel involved in the action so that they feel the mint will affect their lives too. We have chosen to include more close- ups when presenting the mint so that the audience are focused on the product. There are some aspects of humour throughout the advert, which will enable the audience to remember it more alongside the ‘jingle’ which is present throughout all three adverts, which is ‘Shake, Click, Fresh, Ahh.’ For this advert we were considering having a background song to keep it simple and light- hearted. The song we were thinking of using is ‘Scouting for Girls- Heartbeat’ which will form a parallel sound with the action in the advert.

The third advert revolves around a group of friends and is simpler than the previous two adverts. This is because the advert focus’ on the jingle ‘Shake Click, Fresh, Ahh’. We will be using several characters to represent the mint as being an ‘all- rounder’ and we will do this by using mainly close up and extreme close- ups of different people consuming the mint. This advert will be quite repetitive which will make it more memorable, as well as having a slight beat to it.

We want these adverts to be simple and humorous for an audience to watch so that it is easy to intake the information and they are left with a memorable advert which has persuaded them to buy the product.

Storyboarding...

2008-10-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

Like I said in the last post, me and hannah have been discussing ideas for a new and improved storyboard. We were half way through completing the drawing up of advert 3, so i took the responsibility to take it home and finish it, whislt hannah took the responsibility to draw up advert 1 which we also discussed. All these will be ready to be shown next lesson :]

The two adverts which we decided to change are now as follows: (basic/main outline of what happens)

Advert 1: Couple meeting at house
-Girl is holding an animal, preferably a cat.
-Couple are talking, and boy smells something nice
-Boy goes down on his knees and says 'you smell gorgeous'
-Girl is flattered, flicks her hair, thinking the boy is talking to her
-Boy picks up and strokes cat and talks to it. 'I can't beleive how good you smell. you're so sweet'
-Girl is in a huff. She notices she has bad breath
-Either the girl says/voiceover where she takes mint
-'Shake click fresh ahh' she has fresh breath
-Boy ends up complimenting her
-End screen (showing mints once again)

Advert 2: Couple at the park on bench
(see outline of this advert in older post)

Advert 3:Couple meet the parents
-Couple approach the house, boy is nervous about meeting his girlfriends mum
-Couple ring doorbell and adjust themselves as they wait for door to be answered
-Mother lets them in and greets her daughter with a hug
-Everybody goes in for a hug = awkward moment.
-Everybody laughs it off and girl introduced her boyfriend to her mother
-Mother happily greets him, but as they hug she smells his bad breath and holds her nose.
-Walking off and fanning her face, the mother blurts out a comment 'Do you guys use protection?'
-Couple feel aukward thinking that she is reffering to something which should not be talked about! and they exchange awkward faces
-Mother then says 'Mints that protect against bad breath...'
'Couple are relieved then it goes on to 'shake click fresh ahhh'
-End screen (showing mints once again)

At the moment im a bit worried about advert 3 as it seems a bit long winded, but we will see.

Overall, we want to create humour in our adverts as this makes audience's remember it more. Also, i think that the mint adverts that I have watched are more effective when they add humour. I also think that the adverts will relate to our target audience through the humour and the use of a couple.

Storyboards

2008-10-03T08:04:00.001-07:00

Ok, so we handed in our first drafts of our 3 storyboards last week, and this week we have been improving them using the feedback that sir gave us. Our original storyboards were as follows: I'll put in the pictures of our storyboard for Ad 3 as I havent yet done so. If you want to see the storyboards for Ad 1 & 2 then see older posts! :]

ad 1:Girls wakes up one morning with bad breath, she ends up using the mints, and has fresh breath.

ad 2:Couple on a bench. Girl rejects boy because of his bad breath, he takes the mint, this impresses the girl and they are all over each other!

ad 3:Group of friends, one guy asks if they have tried the new mints. He shows the group how they work, the mint gets passed round a circle of friends. 'spread the mint, spread the love'
Page 1Page 2

All I can say about storyboard 3 is: WHAT WERE WE THINKING? It seemed like a good idea at the time but it isnt exactly the best thing we've come up with. We have hardly any shots or variety of shots, there is no real message to it and it doesn't link with the other adverts what so ever. I think this is our turning point where we need to re think and create stronger storyboards...

The main problems we have are with the narrative structure of the adverts (well, mainly ad 1 & 3) and there was a problem with the way the adverts link, as to be honest, there was no real link at all and there was no message to the audience saying why our mints are better than anything else and why they should go out and buy it!

After some more brainstorming and idea discussions, me and hannah decided to scrap ad 1 and 3 and work with ad 2. We felt more storngly about ad 2 and the feedback that sir gave us also supported this choice.

Using ad2 as a starting point, we decided to have all our adverts link through the couple, who will be acting in it, by having a different senario between the couple in each advert. We Managed to find Mr Ford and he gave us the all clear to go ahead with storyboarding it. We came to the conclusion that as soon as people see the couple they will think 'mints.' In addition to this, using the couple will also attract our chosen target audience because they can relate to it. We still want to keep out jingle of 'Shake! Click! Fresh! Ahhhhhh' and we still want to keep our USP as the mint being able to work quickly when ever you need it. (and whatever situation your in!)

Target audience, Questionnaires & Similar mint adverts

2008-09-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Psychographics appeal

The use of demographics is to study and measure attitudes, values, lifestyles, and opinions for marketing purposes. The Criteria is by segmenting consumers by lifestyle, attitudes, beliefs, values, personality, buying motives, and/or extent of product usage. Psychographic analyses are used like geographic (place of residence or work) and demographic (age, income, occupation) criteria to describe and identify customers and prospective customers and to aid in developing promotion strategies designed to appeal to specific psychographic segments of the market for a product. Psychographic data can be gathered firsthand through personal interviews, focus group interviews or questionnaires, or purchased from research companies in the form of list overlays for direct marketers or market profiles for general marketers. In our case, the use of questionnaires would be the easiest way of performing research to determine who we want our target audience to be.

Customer profiles
A description of a customer group or type of customer based on various demographic, psychographic and/or geographic characteristics; also called shopper profile. For example, magazine advertising salespeople provide advertisers with customer profiles describing the type of person who will be exposed to advertisements in that magazine. The description may include income, occupation, level of education, age, gender, hobbies, or area of residence. Customer profiles provide the knowledge needed to select the best prospect lists and to enable advertisers to select the best media.

Questionnaires
Like I mentioned before, I don't think we are yet clear as to what our target audience expects in a mint or what exactly/specific things are included in a mint advert due to us not analysis enough mint adverts and us not putting enough thought into target audience.

Once we noticed that target audience is becoming a problem and delaying us from coming up with better ideas for our storyboard, we have decided to create a questionaire which will prodive us feedback from our target audience. We aim to find out how much, and what & why our target audience consume mints. From this we will be able to see what features our mint needs to have in order for it to make our target audience attracted to it and want to buy it over other mints available on the market. We have already started on our draft of this questionaire, and plan to give it out and have feedback by the end of the week. Here's a copy of the blank questionnaire:
Page 1Page 2

Existing mint adverts

In addition to this, we want to analyse more mint adverts because we have not analysed enough of them! So, I have just gone onto youtube and searched for mint adverts, old and new ones. Below are just six of the ones I found, all advertising Tic Tac's. I am going to search for other mint brands such as mentos, polos, soft mints etc. I will try and scan in the analysis that we did of the adverts and/or put a short evaluation of what we learned from the analysis once we are done. :]

First Three adverts link

1.

2.

3.

Things ive noticed of the above three adverts:
-all three adverts use the same woman, meaning that as an audience, people will associate her with the mint product meaning that she is memorable for that product
-there is a mixture of diegetic sound, such as the woman speaking some of her sound effects, as well as non diegetic sound, such as the added sound effects. The diegetic sound helps to add an aspect of realism.
-There is no music playing in the background
-The narrative has been kept simple, meaning that it is easy to understand
-The pace is quite quick, and the shots are mainly close ups and mid shots. The focus is kept on the mints, and how effective they are
-The jingle has been kept the same in all three advers 'its not just a mint its a tic tac' This is short and catchy meaning that people will remember it
-The packet of the mint is also shown so people can recognise what it looks like

Another tic tac advert that I found

4.

-The advert focuses on the mint and the effectiveness of the mint
-The mojority of the shots are mid shots and close ups
-There is a lot of diegetic sound through the woman's speech and some of the sound effects
-Other flavours are visiable towards the end of the advert
-The narrative is again very simple. The domino effect is unique and therefore memorable

I found these two quite funny, I like the way they added humour into it.

5.

6.

-These adverts lack informing the audience of the affect of the mint. It isn't made to look any better than a regular mint
-The entertainment factor acts as the memorable aspect
-Different characters are used in the two adverts
-There are a few long shots in order to set the scene, however all the other shots are mid shots and close ups
-These adverts lack an aspect of realism because there is no diegetic sound. There is however music playing in the background which is different compared to the above. The music fits well with the pace of the advert and matches the 'entertainment' factor
-The jingle is the same in both adverts 'entertain you mouth'

Other adverts which we can use for inspiraton are:

Trebor mints

Tic Tac

Some codes and conventions that I have picked up on are:
-Straigh cuts
-Variety of CU and MS (mainly)
-Moderate pace and/or fast
-Use of catchphrase
-Close up of product
-Simple narrative

Chosen audience
Our target audience is going to be in the age range of 15-25 for both male and female. We came to this desicion through our research of mint adverts, questionnaires etc. The questionnaires helped us decide because we got an idea of what certain ages liked about mints, and how and why they consume them. From this, it gave us ideas of how we can target them in order to suit their needs, which initially expanded and developed our ideas. We also felt that this age boundary brings the most potential to our advert, and we can use typical interests of these young people in order to get them to buy our product.

Second Storyboard

2008-09-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to have each advert start where the person has 'bad breath' and mint refreshed their breath? Because if I do this, then surely it would appear as if the mint is only for people who has bad breath? Need opinions please!!

If it is a possibility to do this, then the second storyboard could go something like this:
-Couple sitting on a bench in the park. They are fooling around
-Man leans in to the girl for a kiss but she rejects him after she smells his breath
-Feeling upset, he tries to sort out his breath
-He trys refreshing his mouth by spraying mouth freshner in it, however this does not do the job
-Next, he puts lots of chewing gum in his mouth but his jaw aches and his breath isn't fresh
-Angry, he sits down with no hope, but then spots the mint
-He tries the mint and has a sence of relief by the freshness in his mouth
-A shot of the man walking through town with a new sense of confidence and all the girls looking at him OR him back on the bench kissing his girlfriend/she can't get her hands of him

Its a bit of the same principle as the previous advert, just with a different story.

Heres the storyboard that I drew up for this advert:

Page 1Page 2Page 3

We think that this storyboard will appeal to our target audience moreso than the other storyboars that we have, making this storyboard one of our strongest ones. We also feel that we can add humour through this type of plot which is what we are aiming for. I think that this storyboard could potentially have more shots included therefore I am going to make a re-draft of this storyboard and add in more shots. I also think that this plot is achievable, and I really like the use of the end screen because it again brings up our product meaning that the focus is on the mints. (and also a lot of mint adverts have some sort of end screen with the mint being the main focus!)

First Storyboard

2008-09-14T11:00:00.001-07:00

We have created our first storyboard for the mint advert. I will scan it onto here once we get it back from Sir. I created one based on what we discussed, and so did Hannah. We plan to put together the best shots as one final/improved storyboard for the first advert.

The basic outline of the storyboard is as follows:
1.Woman gets up from bed with bad breath
2.She gets up and goes to the bathroom and brushes her teeth franically however this does not leave her breathe fresh enough nor get rid of bad breath
3.Searching the cupboards, she finds mouthwash and uses it but this does not work either
4.Angry, she slouches on the bed and gives up hope. But then she spots the mints on the side table
5.Her eyes light up and she grabs a mint - she gives a small grin as she feels the effects of the mint
6.Happy and refreshed, a shot of her walking out of the apartment confident and happy with mints in her hand.
or
7.Shot of a bathroom mirror with the condensation on it, and the name of the mint drawn in.

The main message is that out of all the things you could try to get fresh breath, the mint gives the best results. :]

Here is a copy of what this storyboard looks like. The first two are what me and Hannah went and drew up as a draft, and the third one is what we came up with when we put the first two storyboards together to make one final one:

Storyboard 1 -Girl with bad breath in morning (draft)
Page 1.Page 2

Storyboard 1- Girl with bad breath (draft)
Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4

Storyboard one-Girl with bad breath (putting ideas from above into one)
Page 1Page 2Page 3

The main problem that we have with the above storyboards is that there isn't enough shots and it doesn't tell the audience why the mints are better than the mouthwash etc. therefore not making it stand out from anything else that is out on the market. We also feel that the begining of the edited version which makes up storyboard 3, could make it look like the advert is aimed at really young children with the way the voiceover says: 'do you have bad breath?' and the girl nods etc. Therefore, we will need to re-think what the idea when we re-draft this storyboard and make sure that we relate it more to our target audience. In addition to this, the plot has aspects which may lack realism and we will have to work on it a lot more in order for it to have a link with the other two adverts.

Research from books

2008-09-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

I borrowed three books about advertising from the local library and found them quite interesting. The books are called "Advertising for Dummies", "How to advertise", "www.advertising" The three books mention similar ways to create a good advertisements therefore I now want to make sure that I follow what I have learned in order to make our advert as good as it can be.

The book which I found really useful was "Advertising for Dummies" and I would recommend it to you. The least useful was "www.advertising" because despite it having good ideas, it was mainly aimed at online advertising which we are not doing.

The following key information that i gathered, taken from the book 'Advertising for Dummies 2nd Edition' (this book provided me with really usefull information)

How to write a good advertising copy
-Make yours ads relevant and memorable
-Find, or invent, a creative jingle
-Write the way people think
-Before creating your advert, you need to know why people buy your product
-Creativity is hard work, don't get lazy with it.
-Deliver the same message across all media
-Keep it simple, the consumer needs to udnerstand it and also doesn't have time for complex copy
-Deliver your message with clarity.

Audience: Focusing on your primary market
A lot of business owners (and ME!) fall into the trap of beleiving that their products or services are "for everyone" - anyone would be interested in or needs the products. However it is wrong to think like this because even if you product appeals to a broad market, you need to identify who you ideal consumer is. Eg. childs toy aimed for rich parents.

Audience: Identifying & targeting the audience
3 Questions that I should be thinking about throughout the process of creating the 3 advertisements:
-What are you selling and what makes it so unique?
-To whom do you want to sell it
-Why should people buy the product from you?

"It is critical to know who your target audience is because the advert will not be successful if it doesn't appeal to what your potential customers want or need."

I read this in the book and this has made me realise that I need to be more aware of what our target audience want, and we need to do more research into our target audience. We did already decide that we want our mints to be aimed for an audience of young teens to mid 20s however after reading the section on audience in the book, i feel that we don't know our target audience well enough. Therefore I am going to create a questionnaire in which I can had out to people of our target audience in order to find out what they expect to have in a new mint on the market. I think that once I have got the feedback from the questionnaires, I will make it much easier to create clearer storyboards.

Advertisement Process

2008-09-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

Advertisement Process

Advertising is a way of communicating ideas about your product and services to potential consumers which help to convince/persuade them to buy the products and services that you are offering, but there are different stages in order to reach this final expectation/outcome.

The client is the person who pays for goods and services. Therefore in the case of advertising, they will approach and ad agency in order to create an advert for their product, company etc. Everything goes through the client for example, the final idea and and alterations that need to be made.

The advertising agency is the second important component of the advertising spectrum. The advertiser would be the originator of the entire process, but the advertising agency specialists takes more responsibility when it comes to planning and advert. They do this by working as a team to get advisory and creative services to advertisers in planning and preparing an advert. An advertiser would appoint an advertising agency to plan, produce and distribute advertisements to help market and sell its products and services.

Some of the following taken from the website: http://www.contentwriter.in/articles/advertising-marketing/advertising-agencies.htm
"An Advertising Agency or ad agency is a service provider that works for clients to create an effective and goal oriented advertising campaign aimed at representing the Company positively in the eyes of its target customers...Ad agencies help clients to do just this by creating attention grabbing, persuasive and unique ad campaigns that make the brand stand out in the minds of customers."

The process involved for the ad agency is as follows:
1.Understanding the client's goals, products and target audience which initially gives them an idea of what they are working with and aids in the planning.
2. Brainstorming of the advert begins, and has to match the client's needs/brief. The client has the final say, and can ask the ad agency to re-work some of the ideads.
3.The process of brand building etc is then discussed and can be put into action.

Advertising through time
In addition to the abolve, whilst I was doing research, I came a accors a website which provided me with a timeline of how advertising has changed and developed from 1704-1999. If im correct, this should be the link for the website:

I also found another website, which I stupidly forgot to save the link to, that showed me the development of advertising in America. I looked at some of the pictures and I made a few notes on the way in which they advertise. Things such as bold typography, use of images, short easy to understand phrases and use of celebrities/'popular contemporary actresses' are things which have not changed much because adverts nowadays still use these techniques. Obviously, things have developed and we can produce much better adverts now (luckily for companies!) however the basis in which you engage your consumer to your product is pretty much the same.

Adverts

2008-09-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

This is just some other advert related research that I came up with a last week:

*A message is created in an advert by the structure of signs. These signs can be interpreted differtly by different customers. 'Polysemic' being the term for multipe meanings.

*Adverts give meaning to buyers and readers of advertisements. Adverts address people in a certain manner. They aim to persuade the consumers to buy the products, usually by making it look positive.

*Definition of Intertextuality:When you borrow signs and meanings from another media text

*The jingle is the short verse/song that repeats sounds and has a catchy rhythms. Consumers usually assosicate it with the product you are advertising

*Definitions:
Association- The technique used when products are associated with the people, values, and lifestyle depicted in the adverts.

Appeal to emotion-When advertisers appeal to those emotional needs experienced by all humans.

Unique Selling Point

2008-09-14T09:40:00.001-07:00

I have researched ways in which to go about creating a USP. This is what i came up with:

*The Unique Selling Point is what sets you apart from your competition. In our case, it would be what makes us better/different to the company that owns/creates tic tac and mentos.

*It can be expressed as a summary of what you do and how you do it better or differently than others.

*It is usually made up of a few words that become your advertising jingle/catchphrase. For example we could have a jingle such as 'a breath of fresh air' or 'get minty fresh breath...' Something short and catchy works best as it will be most memorable for consumers.

*The USP should focus on how it benefits the customer. For example the Burger King USP is 'Have it your way' which benefits the customer because it gives them a sense of power and freedom, because they can request what they like and have it the way they want it.

From this, we have created a brainstorm of possible USP's (Will scan this in as soon as I can) However it has proved more difficult than expected as we have not yet decided on the one that we will deffinetly use in the adverts. Grrr.

Unique Selling Point - 2
I just read the chapter in the book I borrowed from the my library called 'Advertising for Dummies' related to the USP of adverts.

Consistency of message
-The message needs to be constant in all the media, therefore we should keep the message the same in all 3 of the adverts. This means that the message is established as yours and gives the consumer a better chance of remembering it/associated it with your product

First Ideas for adverts

2008-09-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

Below is a list of the initial ideas that me and Hannah came up with for our advertisements and things that we could include in the advert:
-Nail Polish
Long lasting, variety of colours, affordable, chip resistant,

-Deodrant
No white marks, small and easy to take with you,'exotic' smell, for all kinds of people

-Tissues/Pocket Tissues
Scented, soft, anti bacterial, different coloured tissues

-Mints
Refreshing, small/pocket sized, get rid of bad breath, mixed flavours,

-Mobile Phone
Large pixel camera, internet connectivity, small, silver, slim, free minutes,

-Healthy Eating (5 a day)
fruit & veg, cheap ways to consume,

-Shower/bath Product
Nice fragrance, free sponge, leaves skin feeling silky smooth, suitable for all skin types

-Make up remover
Takes off even waterproof makeup, kiwi extract, wipes

-Laptop
Small screen, easy, quick set up, large memory, internet connected

-Perfume
His & hers, medium sized bottle, romantic theme,

After we had discussed these ideas in more detail, we narrowed out idea down to 3 which were:
-Pocket tissues
-Mints
-Deodrant

(brief ideas which could occour in adverts)

Pocket Tissues Influences: Kleenex, Olbus tissues

-Girl with cold, shoves normal tissues losely in her bag, they blow away, someone hands her pocket tissues.
-Someone upset, uses the pocket tissues given by friend
-Child sneezing, parent hands over pocket tissues

Mints Influences: Tic Tac, Mentos

-People in restaurant eating foods like garlic etc, mint cures the smell
-People with bad breath, try everyting, but only mint gives the best and freshest effect
-Mint being shared around a group of friends.
-Mint not being shared 'too good to be shared'
-Confidence booster, one someone has the mind they are confident
-Couple, woman cant get away from boyfriend after he's had mint
-Hard day at work, mint makes them feel refreshed

Deodrant Influences: Lynx, Sure

-Could have same principle as the mint ideas
-Someone with body odour, can't fight it untill they use the deodrant
-People can't leave without it on
-Someone who has shaved has irritation, use deodrant which calms it
-Confidence boost, people walking through street confident
-On train, cramped and smelly. Use deodrant inbetween stops and problem is solved.

After discussing and planning out what will and will not work, we decided to advertise mints. We felt that there are a variety of possible ways in which we could advertise this product and felt that it was our strongest idea, and most positive one out of the others which we had come up with. From this step, we continues to think of ideas, look and analyse other adverts within the same category and move forward to creating a storyboard. We also need to think of a name for out product and a unique selling point.

Blog Update/brainstroms

2008-09-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

I have a fair bit of research which needs posting on here. I have hand written some research so I will type up or scan bits and pieces. Feel free to view and take ideas from the research etc for your adverts :]

I scanned some of our early brainstroms that we did once we had agreed on doing a mint advert: (click to see bigger version)
1.Ideas which we could include in our advertisements:
Once we had simple ideas like this, we could develop them further and eventually into a storyboard.

2.Brainstorming possible 'jingles' for our adverts:
As we were thinking about what our storyboards could include, we came up with jingles to match different things. However, from an early stage, and from the influence of the Tic Tac adverts, we decided to use of sounds as this appears more catchy. The most suitable ones were 'shake, click, fresh and ahh'

3.Possible plots for the mint advert:
These are some of the first ideas we had for a possible plot line for the mint adverts. Our main struggle was that we had quite a lot of thoughts being put into our discussion however we found it hard to find something that will link all the three adverts together.

Heinz Baked Beans Ad: Which one do you like?

2008-07-22T02:10:00.001-07:00

We have created a baked beans advertisment and would like your opinion on which one you prefer between the two. (the catchphrase is different on each!) Please vote on the poll and if you want, leave a comment saying why you like that one best :] Thankyou!

1. Ya know what beanz meanz?

2. Brewed since 1869

3. Can you handle the explosion of taste?

So theres the three you can vote for :]
(The poll box is on my profile)

Also, we experimented a bit by adding a burning light/flame behind the baked bean tin, mainly to add a bit of colour and also to see the what it would look like. Here's our try of that, although theoretically the colour of the flame and nuclear bomb need to be edited so that it blends better and perhaps the flame behind the tin needs to be smaller. Let us know what you think anyway. Better with or without the flame in the background?

Baked Bean Advert Progress :]

2008-07-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

Me and Hannah have been working on our baked bean advert for a while now, and we're slowly getting there! Been a bit of a problem using photoshop as we both don't know all there is to know about the program, however with a little help from a friend of ours who heled show us the basics about layering etc. we've managed to construct the advert. Currently thinking of a slogan to go with it, we've had some ideas but don't yet feel that it relates with the one we have created well enough...

Below are some of the initial ideas which we originally had. (its changed quite a bit!) Thought you might like to take a peak. Oh, and if you want to see the images bigger then just click on it :]

This is the very first random ideas which we drew out.

We started to create this one on photoshop, but wanted the 'explosion' to be more dramatic so experimented with a nuclear bomb. (Will post it in another post)

We thought this (the 'super bean' one) would be a bit more humourous, perhaps attracting younger children more than adults, however felt it would work better if we were creating it on the Mac's or using flash animation.

Catchphrase/slogan of an advert

2008-07-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a book that I borrowed from Mr Ford, (Media Studies: The essesntial introduction) which gives a pretty good introduction about advertising. When reading, they commented on the Pear's soap adverts and how it was quite successful because of its catchphrase 'Good Morning! Have you used Pears soap?'

It made me think about the catchphrase/slogan aspect of the whole advertising campagne, and clearly we are going to have to make one up which people will remember and associate with the advert. I know that I associate certain sayings with certain adverts which is a way in which the company has made me aware of their brand/product. (If i'm honest, I didn't even know that I recognised so many slogans, but when i think about it, i can recall plenty!)Following these thoughs I started looking at YouTube for some videos of modern and old adverts, to see if the way companies advertise have really change much over the years, or whether they use the same techniques as today. One of the ones I looked at was the Hellmans Mayonaise ad, and ive noticed that each advert has similarilties with the way they advertise the product and also the catchphrase is the same in all of them. Take a look at these two, shows the similarities well:

1. This is the 1982 mayo ad

2. Another Mayo ad

Both adverts have shown how the mayonaise can be put on different foods, (basically its an all rounder) and the slogan is the same, and easy to remember. Currently their slogan is 'Hellmans light makes it' Im sure you've seen their new adverts.

Im quite inspired by the Hellmans adverts because they don't over complicate things and the modern day ones especially, take simple everyday ideas to make their advert successfull.

Me and Hannah have found with the baked bean ad that we are trying to over complicate things, and are trying to cram in too much into one advert, and this has made me realise that you don't need to much too make an advert successful. I will definetly look more into this as the cathphrase/slogan does have a strong inpact on how the adverts come together.

:]

oops, this is a well long post!

Look out!

2008-06-27T07:23:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be posting lots of information regularly to help myself and others with their media production, have fun blogging!

Cilia