advert evaluation

The Brief 

The brief was to create an advert for a unilever product but to re-market it to a different demographic than it was originally meant for. 

We chose to make an advert on Marmite because we all agreed on an idea for an advert that we all liked. We came up with a good idea that would change the current target audience for Marmite 

The original target audience of Marmite is middle aged men and woman, people with families, we decided to target younger children and their parents, we chose this audience because there’s a large market to appeal to and because we liked the idea of animation, it seemed the best way to implement animation. 

Feedback 

We collected feedback from a survey on survey monkey, this was a very good way to collect responses from our audience because it’s very simple and user friendly. The main things we asked in the survey were things like: 

• Did you like the advert? 
• What target audience do you think the advert is trying to appeal to? 
• Here are some examples of some responses:
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  Did you like the animation, if not how could it be improved?

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all our criticisms were valid and helped us improve our advert, survey monkey was a really easy way to collect and summarise all of the data we collected. We got a range of male an female participants to fill out the survey so we had a wide range of opinions. It was great to see things we could improve on for next time. We found out that our advert is generally liked by people but there are a few things that could have been better. If we had managed our time a bit better we could have avoided most of the criticisms for our advert. 

To see the full survey click Here

  The first half of our advert was slightly darker

I think we achieved our aim to appeal to our demographic, which was younger children as our advert is very obviously marketing towards young children. I think the animation turned out well and it will catch the attention of young children. 

Our camera work was good apart from because we film on different days some scenes are slightly different shades, but we managed to fix that for the most part in the editing process, apart from that all the camera work was well done, everything made complete sense in terms of positioning. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The second half of our advert was slightly lighter

We didn’t really use any persuasion techniques because it would have seem too forced. We showed people enjoying the product and how all ages can enjoy it. 

I wanted to show children that they could also enjoy Marmite, so we used an animated monkey to relate to them. 

Our advert is fit for purpose, it looks professional l and could attract younger children/their parents to buy Marmite. It does comply with the advertising regulations; it doesn’t show anyone being harmed or anything at all that could be considered harmful to children. 

I think our advert sells the product intended, the narrative is every simple and easy to follow (because of the younger audience), so the narrative combined with the animated monkey would be very appealing to a younger audience. It’s also obvious what the advert is promoting so there wouldn’t be any confusion. 

We could improve by managing our time better, we spent too long editing we re filming that we didn't have enough rime to perfect the after effects, like the text on screen. We also had to over dub a part of the audio last minute so it didn't sound great.

There were also a couple of shots that were slightly out of focus but because we spent too much time on other things we could re film them.

I would also improve our organisation of the whole project, we finished it, but we could have been a lot more efficient if we had all communicated properly.  

  

Personal reflection 

The advert was close to our original plan, although it’s not exactly how we planned. Originally, we were going to film in an actual kitchen but due to time restraints we had make a room in college look like a kitchen. 

Our story boards are very similar to our finished advert. Although we did change a few things due to not having enough time. We completed all the pre-production paper fully. We had some peer and tutor feedback while in the production process. All the feedback we had was very useful and helped improve our production. 

I’m happy with our final production, although there are a few things that I wish we did to make it look a little bit better. For example, I think we should have filmed in an actual kitchen, and I think we should have started animating earlier than we did. I think I involved myself in the task very well, I wrote up the shot list and edited a lot of the advert. 

Banned UK TV Advert

Product advert analysis

                      This mar-mite advert is an example of a mockumentary, which means it's a parody of a regular documentary. It's about a rescue team saving neglected mar mite jars, hence the title. It's also shot very much like a documentary, foe example the camera isn't on a tripod so the footage is a bit shaky making it look a bit rough. It also looks very natural, like there's no obvious artificial lighting etc. Because it's in the style of a documentary there aren't any complex shot types or anything. This decision could have been made to save money on production.


It is also a humorous advert because it is parodying something in a funny way, although it isn't harmless and could be seen as offence to some people because of the very serious topic it is parodying, but the fact that is it something that could be offensive it would stick in the audiences minds. Although the controversy of the advert gathered a lot of complaint against marmite the advert done very well and sold a lot of marmite.


At the start of the advert the colours are all washed out and dark, this is to make the scene seem sad and less upbeat. The end of the advert is much brighter and more colourful, this makes it seem much more happy, the contrast between the two opposites makes it more noticeable. This is because they want to make their product appealing, seem like mar-mite will brighten up the customers day. This is a very standard technique for adverts to use

This shot at the end of the advert shows a family enjoying Marmite, in this shot the colours aren't washed out at all and everyone in the shot is happy. This is a great way to end to advert because it shows Marmite being enjoyed by a traditional family.

The lack of special effects throughout the whole advert is to suppose the form and style. There wasn't any use for special effects because the advert was very much grounded in reality.

There isn't much variation in shot types most of them being medium/ close ups, with a few establishing shots in the middle. The establishing shots were used to show a transition in location, this is a very common convention in film making, but it is very useful to show change.






this is an example of an establishing shot.



The use of medium shots is very typical for a documentary because it can show people interacting with each other. Medium shots are often used for interviews. Most of the shots in this advert are medium shots because most of it is filmed indoors in quite small rooms so there isn't enough space for long shots.



This advert also used a lot of close up shots, this is also a very typical convention of documentaries, they are sometimes used in interviews to closely show someones reaction to something. They are also used sometimes to create suspense or to build tension by showing someone looking nervous. There are some close ups in this advert to show tension in some on the characters.

In this advert no real benefits are being offered to the customer, which i think is apart of Marmites brand identity, the fact that they know there are people who absolutely hate Marmite and they're not trying to change that is a very good adverting technique because if they kept trying to market to everyone people would get really frustrated and annoyed.

The ASA (advertising standards authority) regulate adverts and decide if they're appropriate to be televised. They can refer problematic advertisements to Ofcom who can take legal action. The code that advertisers advertising on TV have to follow is called the bcap code, there is a different code for other forms of advertising called the cap code.

 The Marmite advert follows the bcap code although there are some grey areas, for example, the code says advertisements must not offend people, but the Marmite advert offend a lot of people and had a lot of Ofcom complaints about it. This is a grey area because it's difficult to decide what people will be offended by when creating an advert.




The unique selling point of marmite is that is it very unique and there's nothing really like it.

Primary audience

The primary audience for mar-mite would be a typical British family. This isn't difficult to see because near the end of the advert a typical British family come to adopt a jar of mar-mite. It's definitely targeted towards adults because of the type of humour, although the advert would still be accessible
 by children.

The house that they show in the advert is very normal, it isn't overly fancy, which makes it more appealing to the general public because it doesn't seem like an elitist product.
Also the benefit of having a family in the advert is that it is appealing to all ages, because it's showing that all ages can enjoy it. 

The downside to this advert is that it could offend some people because it is parodying a very serious issue, so some people might take offence to this. Although the advert followed all the guidelines it received a large amount of complaints, though it didn't get banned from being aired.
I believe this advert is targeted towards roughly C1-C2 social grade, this is because everything seems very average in the advert, like a middle of the range family. This is a very good advertising technique because it's not excluding anyone.
They are advertising to average suburban families, although it might seem offensive to some families that are similar to the people who were neglecting the mar-mites, although this advert got a fair amount of complaints it didn't get take off air.
The advert is trying to make the viewer emotional as well as find it funny, which is very difficult to do.


Most of the Advert has mellow sad music in the background, this further parodies that documentary genre, it also had a voice over, which is very common with documentaries. the editing style is very basic, there isn't any special effects. It's vert fast pasted, although most adverts are, most of the/ advert consists of very shorts shots that last a couple seconds.

Banned advert

A kfc advert from 2008 was taken off air because it got too many complaints, from parents saying it taught children bad manners. Although the advert passed through ASA, because it doesn't have anything explicitly wrong with it. Adverts rarely get taken down because of complaints, but this advert got an extortionate about of complaints so kfc didn't really have a choice.
 This is why adverting companies need to be very careful not to offend anyone because adverts are so expensive to make and if they get pulled from the air then all the money has gone to waste. Although this advert didn't do anything wrong (it didn't promote any violence or anything illegal). But it still offended a lot of people.

re branding a Unilever product

Requirements for production essay, finished

REMOVE THE RED AFTER CHANGES

LOOK AT YOUR POST ONCE IT'S PUBLISHED AND FORMAT THE 'IFFY' AREAS, E.G., ALIGNMENT, LOTS OF SPACE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST, MAKING SURE IMAGES ARE WITH THE APPROPRIATE TEXT, ETC.
I'M NOT SURE WHAT HAS HAPPENED BUT THE FORMATTING IS VERY ODD - IT'S ALL INDENTED AND WILL TAKE A WHILE TO SORT. YOUR FONT CHANGES THROUGHOUT SO I THINK SOME HAS BEEN COPY AND PASTED (BUT IT MIGHT BE FROM YOUR OWN WORK). HOWEVER, YOU CAN SORT THIS BY SELECTING THE TEXT AND HITTING THE Tx BUTTON ABOVE (WHICH WILL REMOVE ANY FORMATTING).
TOO MANY FILMS DON'T HAVE CAPITAL LETTERS
LOTS OF TYPOS - LOOK FOR THE RED LINES AND CORRECT

Production essay

Media forms

The piece of media we produced was for the depict short film competition, it was a 90 second film (which are the requirements for the depict competition). The film will be distributed by the college YouTube channel. There are many other ways of distributing it, for example there are physical ways of distributing it, like DVDs, screening in the cinema, blue ray, etc. There are also many digital way of distributing, like Netflix, Amazon prime vide, digital download etc.Although uploading it on the college YouTube channel will be very simple and will reach the most amount of people.


We ran into a few problems when filming, but it’ll all fit the plan in the end. Roughly the last 30 seconds had to be filmed again because of rain on the lens and unfocused footage. Although we had to go into our editing time to re shoot it, but we only took one extra lesson to film. The rest of the filming went as planned. Although we slightly disrupted our production schedule, but we still had plenty of time edit and finish it. When it came to editing, we didn’t have to cut down our video it fit I the 90 seconds we had, although we did have to makes some of the shots a little bit longer so it could be 90 seconds long. We didn’t run into too many problems when we were editing. Finding the right sound effects for the different gun shots etc. The whole editing process to a bit longer than we originally thought. We ran into a few problems when we were adding visual effects on the video, like just not finding the right looking effects to match with the visuals. It also took some time to sync the effects to raw video.


Finance
There any many different type of funding for media productions, for example:


Kung Fury was a film entirely funded by crowd funding
· Crowd funding:
production companies could invest in a film and take a cut of the revenue that the film makes, although it isn’t easy to get funded by a production company because films are a very risky business, many films flop and don’t profit. This goes for all types of funding, it’s not easy. relatively new way of funding media productions would be crowd funding. Websites such as Kickstarter and Gofundme allow anyone with an idea to upload a project explaining why they want people to donate to them. This idea has only come to be a viable way of funding in the last decade or so. It has been very good for making lesser known talents to create projects of their own. This is a great way for film students to get their ideas known and noticed by larger investors. But the down side of crowd funding is that there are many people who try it so it’s difficult to stand out.

· Private funding
There are also people who specifically invest into movies and take a cut of the total revenue. This is a very large part of the media industry. this could also be a company that privately funds smaller studios. An example of a private funding company is Ingenious Media, who have funded Wolverine, Bronson etc.



· Studio funding
The British Film institute also fund a lot of films, £26 million of lottery funds are invested into the BFI ever year, they support many different independent organizations. Production companies could invest in a film and take a cut of the revenue that the film makes, although it isn’t easy to get funded by a production company because films are a very risky business, many films flop and don’t profit. This goes for all types of funding, it’s not easy. relatively new way of funding media productions would be crowd funding. Websites such as Kickstarter and Gofundme allow anyone with an idea to upload a project explaining why they want people to donate to them. This idea has only come to be a viable way of funding in the last decade or so. It has been very good for making lesser known talents to create projects of their own. This is a great way for film students to get their ideas known and noticed by larger investors. But the down side of crowd funding is that there are many people who try it so it’s difficult to stand out.

LIKE WHO? GIVE A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE OF A PERSON AND A FILM THEY HAVE INVESTED IN. THIS SHOULD BE EARLIER, UNDER THE PRIVATE FUNDING HEADING










Add caption
There are lots of things that you need to spend money on when making a media production. This is why movies tend to cost millions and millions of pounds to make, on top to paying for everything, production companies have to pay for licenses for different songs etc. it’s typically very expensive. Things such as. Here are some examples:

• Talents (actors)
• Camera
• Sets (if needed)
• Licenses for filming in curtain places
• Copyrights (for music, effects etc.)
• Camera men/women
• Props
• Costumes
• Makeup
• People who work on the set

camera crew working on a set

The depict project was very cheap relative to other major media projects. We had to but a few props for example we bought the plastic grenade and an ammo belt, for the costumes we had to buy two blue shirts and 2 red shirts. I already had the Nerf guns so all together it cost roughly £45. As for the actors they all volunteered. Whereas professionally made films could cost hundreds of millions to make. Having a massive budget doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a good film. For example, Billionaire Boys Club, the film cost roughly 15 million dollars to make but was a complete flop and only made 2.2 million dollars. Whereas there have been many films that have had a tiny budget but been massively successful, for example, the Blair Witch Project cost roughly 60,000 dollars to make but made 248 million dollars.

Many films have gone massively over budget, such as Titanic and Apocalypse now, even though both of these films went over double their original budgets they still managed to be hugely successful and make a lot of money. This isn’t always the case, the lone ranger went over triple its budget and it flopped, I didn’t make its money back and no one really liked it. Many things can cause a film to go over budget, for example, films could go over schedule meaning they'd have to pay the crew more, they might have to pay more for where ever they are shooting.

The makeup of a low budget short would be very different from a Hollywood feature. A low budget short would typically have a lot less people working on than a feature. People working on a low budget short could have a lot more roles, they could film and act (to save money). Like a few people would do everything e.g. acting, writing, directing, producing etc. Whereas in a feature film everyone would typically have a specific role, although that's not always the case, some people act and direct etc. As for a TV show the makeup of a typical team would be very similar to a feature film, although it could be a smaller because TV shows after a running for a while tend to be more expensive than films, so having a smaller team could save some money.


We evenly spread out the roles of the production in our small group. We had relatively similar acting roles. A member of our group didn't feel comfortable in front of the camera, so they took most of the camera work, we've all done our fair share of editing. I have had experience in filming and editing as I've filmed and edited my own personal projects.

People involved in a media production

• Cameramen
• Directors
• Actors
• Producers
• Audio engineers
• On set caterer
• Lighting engineers
• Editors
• Composers

Movie props/ costumes
In a lower buget film one person could have multiple roles to save money, and maybe even in higher buget films to save on money

Production timing
We were given 2 weeks for planning our project, 3 weeks to film and 2 weeks to edit. We finished the whole project in the right amount of time although because of weather conditions we had to edit the first halve of the film during the filming period, and because of this we had to cut into the rest of the editing time to finish filming. We used our time very carefully to make sure we could do everything we needed to. It can be very stressful, trying to meet deadlines, but as we were very calm and efficient throughout the whole process. Although we did have to be quite fast with the film as we knew that we didn’t have a lot of time to fit it all in. We took our time more with the editing, as we knew less about it so we had to use some of our time to learn techniques. We also took our time in the pre-production phase because we knew that it was very important to get right. I believe that the finished product was very good. If I had to do something differently, I wouldn’t have tried to film when it was raing because all of that footage wasn’t usable, so we effectively just wasted a whole lesson wen we could have been putting together the rough cut of the edit.

It is very important to meet deadlines in the media industry. There are very serious repercussions if deadlines aren’t met. People could easily lose their jobs if deadlines aren‘t met. This I why it can be a very stressful business to work in. That’s why it is essential to meet deadlines in the media industry. Warren Beatty, who wrote and directed "Rules don't apply" which was over budget and over schedule reputation was ruined after the film released as it was a huge flop making less than 1 million dollars.

Equipment/Facilities
There are many ways to obtain professional equipment, or examples you could just buy the equipment (although most products tend to be very expensive) or you could rent different products for example: https://mykitplace.com/camera-hire-in-east-anglia is a website where you can rent cameras, lenses etc. This still isn’t cheap. Some cameras can be rented for £20 a day whereas they are cameras that cost upwards of £350. As for big production companies it varies, a lot of production companies have their own equipment, but some rent equipment.

It is important to keep very good care of equipment because generally, media equipment costs a lot of money so if it’s damaged it would cost a lot of money to repair. For example Christopher Nolan broke an Imax camera while filming a stunt for The Dark Knight, at the time of filming there was only 4 Imax cameras in the world. Now there are many more, although they still cost $12,000-$16,000 to rent for a week. This would have a huge affect on a films budget. It is also very important to clean camera lenses, if the camera lens is dirty it can seriously affect how the shot will look. Smudges on the lens can also lead to scratches, this permanent damage could mean that lens would never be able to shoot a clean shot again, depending on where the scratches are. This would mean the lens would have to be replaced. It would be less dire if other types of equipment got scratched. For examples, it wouldn’t matter too much if the tripod got scratched because it wouldn’t have an impact of the function of the tripod, it would only affect how it looks.

We had a fair amount of equipment available to us, although we only used a camera and a fluid head tripod. We obtained it by borrowing it from the library. The booking system is good because it keeps track of all the items that have been taken out and when they need to be returned, this is a good system because the staff can see when something hasn't been returned, so they chase the student up abut it and get the piece of equipment back.

Locations



Western town film set.

The entirety of our film was filming in a public park/forest, so we didn’t need to get any permissions to film there. We picked these locations because they fit the tone of the film very well, the fact that we didn’t have to get any permissions was a bonus. There were weather conditions that we had to deal with when we were filming, so we had to work around that, also the floor in the forest had a lot of broken glass on it so we had to properly risk assess it. We overcame this by finding a patch were there was no broken glass. Although even in public areas there is paper work that needs to be filled out, every prop that is used needs to be risk assessed properly, which we did.

A location recce is when someone or a group of people go to a location to see if it's appropriate for filming. They would take pictures of the location so the rest of the crew could get an idea of that it looks like. A location release is something the owner of the property your filming on needs to sign to say you’re allowed to film there. This is not needed if you’re filming in a public place.

Pictures from location recce; Different props are very important for a media production, because our film was a short film, we didn’t need too many props. We did have a problem with one of the shirts because one of the final scenes one character gets shot so we used fake but, after we filmed it, we realised that we had to re shoot some scenes before that point, so we had to turn the shirt inside out. Also, the prop grenade we had broken within the first day of filming, we still managed to use it although it was more difficult. We had all the props we needed during filming.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER MATERIALS, E.G., THINK RESEARCH

There are many things that could cause legal issues within a media production, for example where can’t be any copyrighted logos or brands in professional media productions without the companies consent. Also, any copyrighted music cannot be used within a media product unless you have a license to use it. For our production we found some copyright free music that we have used. We also made sure we didn’t wear clothes with logos on, so we were protected from copyright. But companies can pay production companies to feature their products in a film, this is called product placement. Quote from: https://info.legalzoom.com/movie-copyright-laws-20352.

Public lability insurance is for if someone gets hurt on set, they won’t be able to sue you. If someone gets hurt or becomes ill on set or in the studio this will cover the costs of claims made by the people who got hurt or became ill. An example for a tragic accident on a set would be when Conway Wickliffe was killed in a test run while filming for The Dark Knight. Later a jury cleared the special effects expert for health and safety breaches.
Completion guarantee is a type of insurance. This is often used for independent films to make sure that the producer will finish the film. the Company would take a percentage of the earnings of the film based on how big the budget for the film was. If a project does overrun the funder can take suitable action to protect the financer.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/completion-guarantee

Copyright clearance is when you make sure that you are able to do something without breaking copyright or seeing if something is copyrighted. There are some logos that are public and can be used by anyone. We made sure that we either had the licensing for the music we used or that is was royalty free. We also made sure not to include and logos in our video. We wouldn't be able to sure and logos without the companies permission. In the hangover 2 a character wakes up with a tattoo on his face, although the tattoo artist didn't consent to his artwork being in the movie. He took it to court and won a large sum of money.
A regulatory body makes sure a piece of media isn’t breaking any rules and to enforce restrictions. They aren’t just for media productions, they cover a wide amount of professions. OFCOM (which stands for office of communications) is a regulatory authority for television and postal services provided by the government. They oversee licensing, complaints, etc. They don't just regulate things to do with television and movies, they also regulate things like education, charities etc. They also oversee the UK postal service, making Royal Mail deliver parcels 5 days a week and letters 6 days a week.
https://info.legalzoom.com/movie-copyright-laws-
BBFC stands for British Board of Film Classification and it is the company that is responsible for different levels of censorship. They provide age ratings for films. such as universal, parental guidance, 12, 12a, 15 and 18.

Media regulation makes sure the audiences that will be viewing it are protected against things that could possible upset them. Although it has become a lot harder to regulate media effectively because of the new wave of internet content. This is because anyone anywhere can upload something on the internet, and they don’t have to go through a regulation service to make it on to the internet. Some websites such as YouTube have made algorithms to take down people's videos if they have something inappropriate in them although this doesn’t work all the time and it could take down a video that is fine. It also allows people to report videos that they think are offensive, this is a good and bad thing because it allows people to have an opinion which is great but also what’s offensive is subjective. So, the system is flawed. The system for copyright is also quite flawed. Anyone can copyright strike any video, if this happens the video will be taken down. The person taking down the video may even be able to claim the ad revenue, with minimal evidence. The creator of the video can appeal the video, but it goes back to the person how made the strike. Personally, I think this system needs to change because it's very flawed and is very one sided. If the creator was wrongly accused, then it is very hard for them to get the video back. The way that videos on the internet are much less regulated can be a good thing because it allows people to be more creative, they don’t have to follow the rules and regulations of standard media.

A trade union is when a group of people come together to achieve common goals. They are important because without them working conditions could be very bad and general things about different work places may have never been improved. Someone working in film might join a trade union to protect their job, or if they are feeling lie they are not being paid enough or not being treated right, a trade union could help with things like this.BECTU stands for Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre union. And they help people gets jobs in the media industry. They are a trade union.They also support people working in the media industry,they negotiate pay for employees I media jobs, they offer personal advice for it's members. A trade association is when many businesses come together to figure out a problem with the industry. For examples, in the media industry if there's something generally unacceptable about the industry many companies would come together to make a difference. But that isn't all trade associations do, sometimes they will produce educational materials or classes, they also hold charity.
FIND AN EXAMPLE (LOOK ON THE WALLS IN W12) AND ADD MORE DETAIL.

Pre production and story board

Pictures from location recce: