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