level2mediadan: March 2016

Monday, 28 March 2016

Don't Panic unit 9 task 7 write up report 3C AND 9C

The client that issued the creation of this advert is Don’t Panic! ‘’Random Acts of Kindness’’ 2016

Our target audience for this advert are: young British youth around the ages of 16-24 that may be in college, studying at a university or living away from home.

My peers for this video are the people that watched the video on my YouTube. IE young people from my class that were in the target audience and two others that commented on my video: A 21-year-old female and an 18-year-old male.

Upon reading their feedback it seems like the advert was a success. Six out of the seven comments agreed that the message was clear. Only the 18 year old male was confused with what the message of the advert was about ‘’ to me it just looked like he saw the 10 pound note when he read the book, and just didn’t take it’’. He explained that he couldn’t see the note because the lighting was off.

Re-watching the advert I noticed what I think are its three main strengths: The camera was static and very still in the advert. So all the camera angles were set and looked well done. Lots of different camera angles and different techniques were used in the advert IE there was two match on action during the advert when the first person and the second person walking into the small library. Plus there was two eyeline matches when they both looked down towards the note followed by the next shot having the note in it and there was a match on action in the product. We were sure to add eyeline matches and match on actions because it helps the continuity of the advert flow and it makes the advert seems much more interesting.

While the advert has three main strengths, it has one big weakness: the lighting. The lighting in the advert could become a problem at times and four out of seven commentator's noticed it. The major reason why the lighting could be a problem is because it gets dark during a close-up of the bright yellow sticky note with ‘’pass it on’’ written on it. If the audience can’t see the pass it on message at the start and they might get confused with what the advert is trying to tell them. Plus we are missing some shots for the advert IE the establishing shot of the college from in front of the college. Without this it makes the advert seem rushed and less professional. I believe that the advert had been edited skilfully because there are no breaks in the continuity in the advert and there are a few different techniques in it. The lighting in the advert is the weakest part of mise-en-scene as it had problems.

The narrative in the advert is simple and makes sense; the first students heads towards a library in order to find something to read. He finds a sticky note with ten pounds inside the book with the note saying ‘’pass it on’’. He takes the money and looks at the note, and then a second student also goes to the library after the first one left then finds 10 pounds with the same sticky note as before. This tells us the first one passed it on and did something kind for another person. The editing in the advert tells us the narrative in a linear fashion with the normal speed of the editing.

Technically the advert looks well done. The camera is static and steady throughout the advert, not once tilting to the left or right. Other things like costume and location look professionally done; the actors both wear regular clothing and aren’t restricted by a dress code. This helps appeal to both college and more so university students as they don’t have any sort of dress code to follow on their sites. The location holds up well as it can be interpenetrated as either a college or university library area. There is also a slide-screen wipe transition during the advert. I chose this because I think it would appeal to the target audience. The editing of the advert is okay, it moves at a decent pace but isn’t as fast as I wanted it to be. It also lacks any beat editing to make it more interesting and appealing to the target audience. The editing techniques in the advert are: Match-on-action, eyeline matching and transitions. The match-on-action helps the continuity flow and kept the audience’s attention and appealed to them. The eyeline match was also somewhat successful, it kept continuity flowing but the target audience didn’t notice it. Finally the transition of the screen splitting was successful as it appealed to the target audience and helped them keep watching the advert. These editing techniques helped get the message of ‘’pass it on’’ across as the message is clear and the editing was paced to make sure that the camera stayed on the yellow sticky note with ‘’pass it on’’.

The costume and location make this more appealing. However they don’t create any sort of meaning or character. If the first guy had his hood over his face or something that would create a suspicious character and the audience would question his motives. This is a part of the mise-en-scene of the advert, and I believe that the costume part of it is the strongest out of the elements of mise-en-scene.

The advert meets the demands of both the client and the brief. When the advert was shown to the client, he agreed that the message of pass it on was clear in the advert and was happy with how the advert turned out. It also meets the demands of the brief because it appealed towards the audience, promoted the ‘’random acts of kindness and pass it on’’ messages well. However the advert isn’t 30 seconds long as required in the brief and it lacks anything interesting to make it go viral. My audience have also agreed that the message of ‘’pass it on’’ is very clear and some of them were inspired by the advert.

As stated above the advert lacks anything to make it go viral. Because it lacks any of the six elements of viral buzz, which are: The taboo, the remarkable, the secrets, hilarious, outrageous or anything unusual. This advert doesn’t have any of those elements and focuses on just telling the linear narrative about young people passing on a random act of kindness to a stranger.

It’s uncertain if the advert reaches the full scope of the target audience: 16-25. We know that the advert appeals to the 16-21 mark as people around these ages have commented and most of them agreed that the advert appeals to them with the upbeat background music and simple editing. But we were unable to get anyone past the age of 21 the comment about the video and if it would appeal to them. So the advert only reaches some of its intended audience.

Overall my conclusion about three main areas for improvement is; the lighting in the advert needs to be fixed as it clearly affects some areas of the advert and forces the audience to stop and look at the advert to see what is going on. A second area for improvement would be how it was edited. The editing pace of the advert seems kind of slow which could bore the audience and make them skip the advert. So maybe having some beat editing to make in more interesting should have been added. Finally the third area for improvement would be adding some sort of viral buzz to the advert. During the post-production stage I was thinking about making the advert entirely colorless with one of the special effects Final cut pro had to offer in order for it to look more out there and unique. However this would have clashed with the upbeat and colorful style I wanted the advert to have. I was able to edit skilfully as the continuity flowed through out the advert and the message was clear for the audience to understand. However I failed to include beat editing as the background music didn’t fit the pace of editing.

Next time I have to create an advert I will do things far differently. For example, looking more closely at viral adverts and what kind of techniques they used in order to become viral on the internet. Like the old spice advert having a battle between two of their established characters. I would also be far more creative with how the advert is edited. I will also be sure that the lighting in the area is well lit so the audience can see what’s happening in the advert.

Finally the idea I had in at the time was much grander and bigger scope. Originally the advert had a establishing shot of the college, had a part when we see the first young man putting in the 10 pound note and a special effect to do with the clock to show that time has passed. These were not included in the final product because there wasn’t ant time to film some of the senses and some of the footage we had for the product got lost before the post-production begun

Don't panic collect audince feedback worksheet Daniel Oke

Random Acts of Kindness Evaluation Assignment Pt1: Collect Feedback

Pass:

Task 1: Collect adequate feedback from the client, target audience and peers

Show the finished advert to their client, target audience and class and obtain feedback via a basic questionnaire (given)

1. Client (me)

2. Target Audience (Youth Audience, survey monkey social media)

3. Peers (Others in the class)

IMP: Put this evidence on your blogs (screen captures, comments & client audio feedback)

Task 2: Examine your feedback and identify quotes and overall percentages (i.e. 5/10 said ‘exciting’) for each question response.

	Peer	Client	Target Audience
Q1	The audience agreed that the message is clear and 6/7 people agree in the comments.	The client also agreed that the message was clear.	The advert reaches most of the target audience and they agreed the message was clear and focused. Only one viewer didn’t get the message due to the lighting on the sticky note.
Q2	Most of the audience enjoyed the background music. 4/7 people said this with the others not motioning it in their comment.	The client also enjoyed the music and was impressed with how the music came to a end at the end of the advert.	The music appeals to the target audience and they enjoyed it. The only reason we were unable to get full feedback was because 3/7 didn’t comment about the music so I don’t know if they enjoyed it or not.
Q3	The audience seemed unsure if they would share the advert because only 1/7 people commented that they would share it because they knew what it was about.	The client would share/distribute the advert. But they pointed out that it lacked the company’s logo at the end of the advert.	I am unsure if the target audience would share this advert across because only 1/7 people said they would. This doesn’t mean they wouldn’t because they might have forgot to add this answer in their comment.
Q4	The only viral buzz word that was mentioned in the feedback was the ‘’remarkable’’ one. So only 1/7 believed it had a form of viral buzz.	While the client enjoyed the advert. He said that it lacked any real viral buzz elements because it was simple and didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.	Overall the majority of the target audience thought that this advert lacked any real viral buzz elements. Because only 1/7 mentioned what element of viral buzz the advert has.
Q5	4/7 of the audience agreed that the advert flowed well, with one person saying they would watch the advert again.	The client also thought the advert flowed well and was simple enough.	So most of the audience believed that the advert flowed well with one person saying ‘’ The video flowed well and was framed properly’’. Showing that the audience weren’t distracted by any off framing.
Q6	3/7 people agreed that the camerawork in the advert was good. With one person going as far to say it looked ‘’ professional’’	The client also agreed that the camerawork in the advert was up to a good standard.	While only 3/7 people mentioned the camerawork in their comment. The feedback from them was very positive, 2 people enjoyed the amount of different shots in the advert which kept them interested and one person said it looked ‘’professional’’.
Q7	The most prominent area for improvably was the lighting in the advert as 4/7 people mentioned that the advert could get dark during certain times in the advert. IE when the pass it on note is being showed.	Not only did the client agree with the small lighting problem the advert had. He also mentioned that the intro with the fluffy clouds doesn’t really appeal to the audience and said it would have been better with a hash tag. Finally he also mentioned that the company’s logo was missing at the end of the advert.	So, most of the target audience enjoyed the advert but the major problem with the lighting stands out to them and makes the advert less appealing.

Task 3: Present this as either pie charts and quotes from the feedback for each question – Client (red), Audience (green), Peer (blue)

Merit:

Task 4: Compare the feedback from client, target audience and peers.

Similarities

Positives Negatives

Overall both the client and the audience However, they also

Enjoyed the advert and believed that Mentioned that the advert

The message of ‘’pass it on’’ was clear lacked any viral buzz.

In the advert. They also said that the lighting

In the advert was poor at times.

Differences

Positives Negatives

While the majority of the audience failed Our client noted the

To mention any viral buzz elements, one person problem of using fluffy

Did and they said it would fall under the clouds as an intro whereas

‘’remarkable’’ whereas the client thought the target audience didn’t

That the advert lacked any kind of viral seem to mind them.

Buzz. But he enjoyed it nether the less.

Task 5: Summarise using your graphs and quotes to show clearly the points of agreement and difference.

For Merit response now skip to Conclusion

Distinction:

Task 6: Assess (judge, weigh up, balance) the feedback from client, target audience and peers and draw conclusions from it.

Which sources is most valid/valuable in judging the success and why?

The most valid source needed was the feedback left on the video from the target audience. Because they are the people that the advert is targeted towards and if there is something that they don’t like we could change it. It’s vital because its direct from the audience and with the comment system on YouTube (where our advert was first distributed) we can answer them directly if we needed to ask for their reaction towards the advert. IE did they enjoy it? Would they share it across social media sites? This is crucial for getting the advert viral.

What were the expected or unexpected findings?

Expected: I knew that the advert would appeal towards the audience, so i expected them to overall enjoy the advert as something simple. I also expected the message of ‘’pass it on’’ to be clear to the audience as there are two close ups of a bright yellow sticky note with pass it on written in bright red pen. However I also knew the advert wasn’t going to go viral because it’s so simple and doesn’t take any risks.

Unexpected: On the other hand, I didn’t expect the audience to pick up on the lighting issues the advert had during certain scenes, most notably on one of the close-ups of the sticky note. I also sure the audience was going have a problem with the music that was used, because the music could overpower the advert at times. However, the only feedback were the music has been concerned had been positive.

Task 7: Justify their comments – why do you think they said/thought this and do you agree with their comments/feedback

Summarise and explain the strengths and areas for improvement

The biggest strength of the advert would be that the message of ‘’pass it on’’ is clear and that the audience was able to pick up on. This was because during the post-production stage I was sure to add two different close-ups of a bright yellow sticky note in the advert, to enforce the message of the advert.

The area for improvement is the lighting during the advert. The audience picked up the issues straight away as well as the client. This lighting problem is more noticeable during one of the close-ups of the sticky note which has shown to be a problem as one the audience members noted they didn’t fully understand the message because they couldn’t see the note properly. So overall I agree with the audience that the lighting problems need to be fixed.

What caused it (ie didn’t plan or have strong idea, shoot original images?)

What caused the lighting issues was where the actor was standing. The camera didn’t pick up the lighting during the first part of filming and it was suggested that we use a lighter to balance the lighting in the advert at first. However when we filmed the second actor looking down at the note the lighting seemed to have sorted itself out.

How did this affect meeting the requirements of the brief?

The only real affect this had was that the message of ‘’pass it on’’ isn’t clear at first to some of the audience members. However they all realized what the message was before the advert ended and said the message was strong regardless.

Merit/Distinction:

Task 8: Conclusion (weigh up the positive and improvements) was your advert a success overall from the viewpoint of your feedback

Overall, my advert was/was not successful in meeting the brief because:

Youth Audience (idea, locations, pace of editing, costume, shots)

My advert was successful in reaching the youth audience required for the brief. Because there are enough shots to keep the audience interested as one comment pointed out. The location where the advert took place could be seen as a college or university library so it would appeal to both of the target audiences for this advert. Finally the costume’s used in the advert were regular clothing, so the actors look like they could be either college or university students.

Message (was clear – story made sense, encouraged them to do this?)

The overall message of the advert was very clear. Most of the target audience realized the message of the advert which is to ‘pass it on’’ on their first viewing of the advert. The message was made clear by two close-ups of two bright yellow sticky notes with pass it on written on them. This also made the story make sense to the audience of one person finding a ten pound note with the sticky note, then deciding to do the same thing of hiding a ten pound note in a book for another person to find.

Would go Viral (taboo, outrageous, unusual, funny, special effects, memorable… would make you share it?)

The advert would not go viral as it lacks any of the elements of buzz. It was seen as a lain simple advert with the message of passing on acts of kindness, but because it was so simple it didn’t stand out much in comparison to other viral adverts IE the 3kitty advert. However the message was clear and the advert was nice so it would still be shared on different social media sites like: Facebook, Intsagram and twitter.

Regulation (copyright use of music?)

The usage of music was one of the strongest points of the advert. The audience didn’t complain about the volume of the music and it appealed to them. The music used was copyright free music that was uplifting and fit the overall bright theme of the advert.