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

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

The product that my group chose to run with was a deodorant

called Emerge along with the slogan ‘from nothing to something’.

For starters, the message the slogan is giving is similar to the idea

and plot of most deodorant adverts nowadays, the idea that using

the product will benefit you and turn you into something that you

weren’t before. For example, the Lynx adverts all use the idea that

using their spray will get you the girls. One of their most stand-out adverts shows a man on the beach spraying Lynx on followed by a large crowd of girls running towards him. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-uVc13oDBI)

This is similar to the message from my product as it shows that he’s gone from being nothing to something by simply using the product.

The way in which my product challenges typical conventions of a deodorant advert is by addressing the audience in a serious manner. Popular deodorants such a Lynx and even the new ‘Old Spice’ use comedy to try and sell their product.

The ‘Old Spice’ advert shows a man speaking directly to the audience in a comedic voice telling them all the nice things they could have if they used that deodorant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

However the message is still the same, the idea that using the product will make you something that you weren’t before.

Another important convention in a deodorant advert, or any advert for that matter, is demonstration of the

product. In each of my adverts there

are clear close up shots of a male

applying the deodorant to his

underarms.

This convention is also used in

‘Sure for Men’s’ Ice Skating Advert.

In this advert a man is seen ice skating

around the city, ending up on his bed at the

end. My advert is similar to this as it

uses a sport as its main theme. Also

the product is shown using a close up

shot with writing at the side.

This convention is used at the end of

each of my adverts, with a close up

shot of the product in the corner and the writing ‘emerge from nothing to something’ alongside..

However, my advert is different in the style that it’s presented in. The ‘Sure for Men advert’ uses a calmer more elegant style in its filming and music choice. Whereas my adverts take a straighter to the point approach, using livelier soundtracks and a more action styled sequence. Through each of my 3 visual adverts, I

stuck to the conventions of

mise-en-scene in term of costume.

In advert 1 with the free kick the

costume, location and music are

all sports related.

The same goes for my sponsorship advert. However, in advert 2 I challenged the convention in terms of costume as my main character is wearing a shirt a tie, not something that’s usually related to sports. We did this to show two sides to the story, the idea that you can use the deodorant in both work and leisure time

In nearly all adverts today music is a key feature and selling point as its attractive and adds vibrancy to them. Music is especially important in deodorant adverts as it helps to create a fast paced atmosphere, particularly in sport deodorant adverts such as mine. For example, in the Lucozade adverts, although not the same product as mine, Lucozade gives the same message of performance enhancing. These adverts all use fast paced music and sports themes to get their idea across and sell the product.

In their advert for their product ‘sport lite’ they use the song ‘Louder’ by DJ Fresh, this gives the advert a fast paced and energetic feeling, helping to get the message across. In my adverts, fast paced tracks are also used to give this same atmosphere and message, however I developed it further in my advert with the guy doing kick ups and used a track that could be related to the sport used (football). The track is called ‘Return of the Tres’ which I took from a short clip from Nikes ‘Joga Bonito’ football videos on YouTube, and created an energetic, sporty feeling within the advert.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T_LiUAVl4g)

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

Technology is rapidly advancing and this means that there are more media technologies now than there has ever been. These opened loads of doors for me as it meant that I could research, plan and evaluate my project all using technology.

The researching stage, I used a range of web pages both in school and out, including YouTube and Survey Monkey. Once I had concreted the idea I was going to use I started watching a variety of adverts on YouTube related to that product and evaluating them, including those of ‘Lynx’ and ‘Sure For Men’, this helped me to gain an insight into the typical conventions you would see in a deodorant advert. I also watched a number of adverts that weren’t related to the product I was using and evaluated them, including that of ‘Marks and Spencer’ and ‘Cadburys’, this was just to gain a broader knowledge of what adverts in general included. YouTube also came in handy when it came to downloading sound effects such as the referee’s whistle used in Advert 1: the football match. I found the sound effect on YouTube, copied the URL and pasted it into a YouTube to mp3 converter which downloaded the file for me. (see evidence slide)

After researching the conventions I used Survey Monkey to create a questionnaire asking what people liked and disliked about deodorant adverts and whether they liked the name of the product itself and its slogan (see evidence slide). The questions included ‘do you exercise/play sports?’ and ‘do you use deodorant’. The questionnaire was then sent using Microsoft outlook to people from a local sixth form that matched the target audience, and the results were sent back to me. This was really useful in giving me an even bigger idea of what to include in my adverts and how they should be addressed. Outlook was easy and extremely practical to use and allowed me to send a blanket email to a group of people, saving me a lot of time.

The internet was also helpful in providing me with a guideline of the do’s and don’ts when it comes to creating an advert. Particularly a document on the ASA which gave me a list of typical advert conventions and even a list of banned adverts and reasons as to why they weren’t broadcasted.

Technology played its biggest role when it came to the practical side of the project. The adverts were filmed using a small, portable DV camera. The main advantage of these cameras is their small size, they allowed me to get shots that I maybe wouldn’t have been able to get with a larger camera and also meant that track shots were much easier to film as the camera was light and easy to run with. They were also practical in moving from location to location, because they were lightweight and portable and could easily be kept in a bag, unlike the extremely large cameras used in the industry. A good thing about the DV cameras was its rotatable screen which allowed us to watch what we were filming as we did it; this therefore meant I could make sure the shots I was filming were effective and looked professional. A disadvantage of the cameras however is their battery life, which is typically rather short. This had to be taken into consideration when going out to film as any time wasting could result in a dead camera before the filming is complete. Another problem was the lighting, the cameras were poor when it came to picking up light so we weren’t able to film in darker conditions and therefore had to film in the morning or early afternoon, something which, again had to be taken into consideration when planning the task.

The final part of the project also used technology significantly, including the use of Apple Macs and particularly it’s built in movie editing programme ‘iMovie’. The programme was extremely helpful when it came to editing the film; it was user friendly and easily imported my clips into it. Clips could be cropped and moved around easily and this meant the film could be put together with sounds and music smoothly. Using iMovie allowed me to easily apply writing over my video clips meaning I could add ‘EMERGE’ in writing at the end of each advert (see evidence slide) However, at times the software crashed leaving us with unsaved work that had to be done; luckily we weren’t that far into editing anyway. Also, when applying effects such as slow motion I found that the clip would just disappear altogether leaving a blank screen until I reversed the effect back to normal.

Evidence Slide

The software I used to download my adverts soundtracks off YouTube

Evidence for the Survey Monkey questionnaire

Evidence Slide

Using iMovie to add text to the end of my advert