Christmas Advert

Summer Advert

Ancillary task - Web pop-up

Evaluation

I created this web pop-up using Photoshop. I was referring to my skeleton layout that I created months ago, as this had such positive feedback, to ensure that what I used as the final outcome was meeting the criteria that my target audience found so appealing. The main attraction in this web pop-up is most certainly the colours, which I have deliberately portrayed as highly saturated and bright. This has the connotation of Summer which is exactly what the carrots, cucumbers, cupcake cases and orange juice represents at my store. I was extremely satisfied with the layout of this pop-up because it is neat, tidy and well composed. I used stills from my first advert and cut and pasted certain products into one frame to form this collection of products from my commercial. By doing this, I have thoroughly linked this web pop-up to my first advert, making it easier for my audience to connect the store together when they see either one of these advertisements methods. I used clear curvy font for the text at the top of the frame as this links to the font that I have in my logo. The 25% is in bold, with a 3D outline, to emphasise it in the composition - as this is one of the most important features in the advertisement in order to entice my audience. The font in the oval shape is different, and in caps, to separate this from the rest of the features in the frame. As the audience would be attracted to this pop-up, the next step for them would be to know where to shop. The oval is a link for the customers to find their nearest store, making it simple for them to go from seeing this online to purchasing the products Fresh sell. I included a sentence that rhymes - The food store to look out for - followed by an interesting and unique slogan below - Summer snacks, Summer deals, Summer ready - which, when paired together, makes a fascinating selling point. The logo is found in the bottom left hand side of the frame to make the connection between this, my sponsorship and my two adverts clear. Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of this web pop-up, as I believe it fulfills all requirements that a typical web pop-up require, after much research on existing web pop-ups.  

Sponsorship

Evaluation

I had intended to create a sponsorship to link to my first advert (summer) and my web pop-up as this is the season that is closest, and therefore the one that I wanted to focus on in my work. I used the stop motion technique in this sequence again, which worked extremely well - more so than the stop motion in my adverts as my tripod was more stable inbetween each shot I captured. The speed of each picture during the transitions was successful as it was in time with the beat of the sound track I used - the same one that I used in my first advert to connect these two together. I also used the luma curve to brighten the whole sponsorship, as this emphasises the bright colours found in the fruits and veg. As the background is already white, the luma curve only exaggerated this further to make the overall sponsorship stand out. The sequence of this advert from ingredients, to prep, to mixing and to pouring was a successful decision when planning the filming stage of this ancillary task as it shows the start to finish recipe for a healthy smoothie/juice, which the audience can refer back to if they planned to create this beverage themselves. 

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

For this course, I have created two adverts, a web pop up and a sponsorship sequence. These were all based around my food store Fresh, which sells food products specific to a certain season e.g. I filmed a Summer advert and a Christmas advert. The combination of my main product and my ancillary tasks is effective for many reasons:

(essay below if unable to read from the mindmap)

Firstly, white is a colour that I have employed into the frame of every task. I created an infinity curve with an A1 sheet of paper where I filmed my adverts and sponsorship. This colour has the connotation of fresh, which links to the name of my store, resulting in me using it in every task. By using this white background, I have allowed for each subject I shoot to stand out, emerging from the frame and attracting the audience. 

The products I've shot have revolved around bright and saturated colours, which contrasts with the white background and makes them more attractive and visible to the viewer, enticing them to perhaps purchase food/drinks from my store. I used saturated colours in my main product and ancillary tasks because I intended for the food and drink to pop, specifically the products featured in my Summer advert.

As Summer is a season where the sun officially comes out and people get together with a BBQ or a picnic, I aimed for the products I've advertised to link to this idea, as my store is centered around snacks and food items/drinks to get you ready for the season.

Colours associated with Summer are bright and bold, which is the aim I was going for in each task, allowing the colours and food to speak for themselves with the need for a narrator or text. 

I created my web pop-up based off of my first advert, which is the summer one. I decided to do it this way because stores don't create web pop-ups that present the food they sell all year round, and summer is the season that's closest, therefore more appropriate.

I have combined this advert with my web pop-up effectively as I have used the shots I filmed in this advert and merged them into a web pop-up. I had captured stills of some of the products I filmed, along with using the technique stop motion, collecting a variety of different photographs along the way. I used Photoshop to cut and paste certain products into one frame.

The products I used were the carrot and cucumber sticks, orange juice, and cupcake cases. I used these three items because these represent the sort of items my store sells, such as healthy snacks, fresh juices and items of confectionery. 

The logo that I created features my shop name, which is also found in my main product and ancillary tasks. A few green animated leaves and circles are featured in my logo to link to the other food stores such as Waitrose, ASDA and Wholefoods. These stores created adverts and sponsorships featuring their logo, which is why I decided to do the same.

By having my logo feature in everything that's advertising my store, it will allow the audience to link everything together. If they see the adverts on TV, they won't need to see it again as there will be a web pop-up online, which will inform them it's the same advert they saw earlier because the colours are the same and the logo is also evident.

The 25% discount featured in my main product and ancillary tasks is also something that combines these together, as the audience are always being reminded of the great deal they're getting if they order at my store.

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Firstly, I began my research into food adverts by using Youtube, where I browsed a variety of existing adverts that consisted of food. These adverts provided me with a platform of inspiration that I would take into my planning process. The adverts that I studied the most thoroughly were Schwartz, Innocent, Special K and M&S, as I carried out a timed analysis and detailed research on all of these adverts in order to acknowledge the action code, noticing how the food was portrayed and shot. I found that in all of these four adverts, the most consistent shot would be a close up, which meant that this became a shot that I intended to use most often in my adverts. I also noticed that the food seemed to have a mind of its own in the frame, where there would be products being poured, exploding and rolling across the composition etc. There was no evidence of a person moving the food, which suggests that the food has an imagination of its own. I took this as important inspiration for my advert, as I had already intended to have the food move around in the frame on its own, but by noticing this common performance in other adverts confirmed my decision to follow through with my idea. As Youtube had the advert for every brand on its website, from their first to their most recent, it meant I was able to notice the developments and progression and allow this to influence my own media product. 

Moreover, I used my SLR Canon 600D to film my media product and sponsorship. I hadn't used this camera to film before, so I used the studio to run a practise shoot on some of my ideas. I had my camera settings at ISO 200 f/8 whilst filming all of my shots, as this was effective in the studio, so therefore appropriate for filming my actual media products. Once I was aware of the buttons that performed each action, I was able to use this piece of kit with ease and confidence. As the majority of my adverts and sponsorship actually consist of the stop motion technique, I didn't need to use the camera to film long winded scenes. I simply took a photograph of a product, moved it a few centimeters, and took another photograph, until these shots were put into a sequence where they suggested the product was moving by itself. The quality of each photograph was just as sharp and bright as the footage, so the advert and sponsorship looked professional and effective as a whole once every scene was edited together.

Furthermore, I believe that my skills in production work has evolved effectively over the duration of my 2 years studying Media Studies. For my adverts, stop motion was the dominant technique that I used to advertise food and drink products. I had never explored this method in the past, and feel I experimented well with it and succeeded in creating two successful adverts and a sponsorship. The framing of my shots were consistently effective as there was never any wasted space in the compositions, along with bright lighting to emphasise the tasty appearance of each food and drink product. I used a tripod for every shot I captured to keep a still frame and make the composition look tidy and well structured instead of messy and reckless. 

In addition to this, I used the Apple macs at college to edit my media products. Macs have a variety of different programmes and tools programmed into it, allowing me to use the editing software such as Premiere Pro and Photoshop to edit my media products. As the food adverts I've researched through Youtube and the internet consist of brightly lit frames and highly saturated food products, I decided to edit my shots in Premiere Pro by using the effects, dragging them over and onto a clip and adjusting the level of colour saturation and brightness etc. The colour corrector and luma curve tools were the most popular in my editing process, because every shot needed brightening in order to make the advert pop and look attractive for the audience. I didn't want my advert to portray a yellow tint, so I decreased the warmth in a few of the shots and increased the shadows to provide the subject with some depth. I created the stop motion technique by adding photographs into the timeline at around 3 frames per second, allowing each frame to cut to the next efficiently, keeping my advert at a fast pace.

 Photoshop was another media technology that proved essential in the construction of my web pop-up. I had tried to use In Design, however found it too complicated and difficult to create the type of pop up I had in mind. Photoshop was something that I became used to a lot faster, and therefore decided this would be the programme I used to edit one of my ancillary tasks. I had an extremely enjoyable time editing this, as I was able to experiment with the composition, and if I wasn't happy with something I could click off of the eye tool that made a certain element visible. 

My blog is the final media technology that has allowed me to thoroughly connect my research with my ideas and production stage of this course. I created a blog on blogger.com with my Gmail account. I am able to upload links from Youtube with an embed code, which enables my research to link to the video I am taking inspiration from. I am also able to upload my Powerpoint's to Slideshare and insert this on my blog aswell through an embed code. By using a blog, it reduces the chance of losing any important papers and folders. If you have an idea, you can write it down on the blog and save it, instead of running the risk of writing it down on a piece of paper and misplacing it. I find that using a blog for this course is vital when it comes to gathering all of your research together, as it is all in one place and neatly organised through labels. Your audience are also able to view everything on your blog which is important when collecting feedback. 

Audience Feedback

On my private Twitter page, I showed my rough cuts to those following me, ranging between 13 and 40+ years old. Below is the feedback that I received, some complimenting my work and others criticizing it. This helped me decide what to adjust in my edits and what to keep. 

Advert 2 - Rough Cut

Advert 2 - Edit decision list

Advert 1 - 2nd rough cut

Editing

After pricing together the shots in my advert, I wanted to edit the colours and lighting of each clip because they weren't standing out as much as I'd have liked them too. I therefore selected a clip I'd like to edit, went into the video effects section and dragged each edit to the clip, where I then altered the colour and contrast etc to produce more eye catching images.

Ane example of Before and After I increased the saturation and brightness:

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Rough Cut - Advert 1

Rough Cut - Advert 1

Advert 1 - Edit decision list

Call Sheet - Advert 2

Call sheet 2 from ellieburrellbicker

Call Sheet - Advert 1

Call sheet from ellieburrellbicker