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.
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