Media Advertisement
What am I talking about?
This term, during Project X, I have been doing Media. We have made ads with our groups, learning about the different levels and distances for filming. Sue Ning, Emily, Ananya and I made an advertisement for a babysitting company, called the “Sitters Of Babies”. We worked on this project over the term so far, and to the right, you can see a section of the ad.
The Process
Firstly, we watched ads from the TV show “The Simpsons”, advertising the fictional character “Homer”s ploughing business. We saw how they addressed our needs, fears and wants, what is good and bad, and what we would change. This helped us to understand what makes ads good and how to make our ads successful. Next, we got into groups. We decided what product we would advertise, and made some ideas of how to sell it. After our ideas had been approved, we started writing our scripts. We read our scripts out loud and kept working on them. Once they were finished, we turned them into storyboards. This meant deciding what the scene would look like, and what the actor would do as they were speaking. We learned about the difference between close-ups, medium shots, and long shots. We also learned about how the camera’s level can affect the shot. We finally got to filming, and even got to use the green screen! We learned how to use the cameras, SD cards, and tripods. After, we edited our work, added music, and finished our ads!
How we got our idea!
We did a brainstorm of all the different ideas we had. We then thought of the idea that would be easiest for showing needs, fears and wants. This led us to the idea of babysitting. We thought we could use the parents’ fears of their child being hurt to make our ad successful. We then decided to make the ad an example of what can happen without a babysitter (The child dying) and then an example of what can happen with our babysitting service (The child having an amazing time). We decided on this ad to show that your child needs our babysitting service, otherwise your fear of them being hurt will happen, and you can’t fill your wants to go out.
Some challenges we faced…
Our first challenge was that we didn’t know how to use the different levels on our storyboard in real life. We weren’t sure how to use these levels and still be able to see the people in the scene. We eventually realised that we just needed to adjust the angle that the camera was on, so it was pointing more upwards/downwards. Our next challenge was not being able to use the full height of our tripod. In the second lesson of filming, our tripod couldn’t go to the full length, but only expanded 2 legs. We changed the scene slightly so we didn’t need the full height. Our last challenge was editing. We struggled with how to use the greenscreen, and we didn’t have something for everyone to do. We eventually found out how to edit, and the people doing nothing found music/recorded our voiceover.
What I would do differently…
Next time, I think we could work together better. We mostly worked well, but sometimes we argued over things like who played what character. We also argued over what the costumes would be, and what the finer details of our script was. I think next time, we could also split up our scenes more since our scenes were all fairly big, and could have had more changing shots. I think we did fairly well, but we could have tried breaking up scenes more and working together better.
