Victor Inc.

Friday, 10 May 2019

D2: Comparing my product to the client brief

The client brief

Have I produced an advertising campaign?

The aim was to create a cross-media advertising campaign which is various adverts being presented in different ways. On the basis of this I accomplished the task as I used more than one type of advertising, I made a radio advert, posters/billboards, social media interviews and a short trailer. I believe that my advert would raise a lot of awareness although there is a big looming question that the audience would have of "What is it?" since at almost no point throughout all the advertising is it clear what the show is about. This is an issue that realised whilst in post production. I realised that although I - along with the people around me - knew exactly what it was about, when I was to show other people, I had to explain the premise of the show which isn't ideal for a shows advertisement. However, despite this I do strongly believe that the vast majority of my advertising will be suitable enough for purpose of intriguing the audience and making them want to find out more - even if it is a little confusing for them. I know that I could improve this by trying to make the story-line of the show and tone more clear without revealing too much.

Target audience

BBC Three's target audience is primarily for people between the ages of 16 and 34. My target audience for Promised Land is broader than the typical audience for BBC Three (aiming at people between 16 to 45) however I believe this could work to my benefit since it'd be something fresh for the BBC Three audience. All the promotion I made covers at least a small age demographic of the age range with the social media, YouTube and Vimeo interviews aimed at the younger end of the target audience (16-26) as they are the age range that use social media the most. The trailer is also aimed at the same audience and people that are older as well (16-36) where as the radio advert will mostly be shown on BBC Radio 4 whose target audience is people between the ages of 35 and 54. The most effective method however is the posters and billboards as they are can be seen by anyone who goes into the city centre or uses public transport. I think I've done everything that I can to appeal to the target audience and have used the right methods of promotion to appeal to as many people within my target audience.

Message

As mentioned before, I think the message is really weak in the promotional material I've made. The trailer and interviews don't mention what channel the show will be shown or when it'll be available for viewing. The trailer and the radio advert do little to give the message of what the show is about which would leave the audience clueless and confused rather than the element of intrigue I wanted it to have. I wanted the promotional material to give the audience a feel of what the show was going to be like while also introducing the characters all in a new and diverse way. However, with the poor quality of some of the footage and sound in some of the advertising, I feel like I lost this. Despite all this I believe I did a good job with the radio advert which does give some information about what could happen in the show as well as informing the listener the day of release for the show. The print advertisements are also really good as the quality could pass as genuine BBC Three quality as they're all clear 4K pictures. I tried to include the message in the interviews by asking the actors their thoughts on the show but in hindsight, I should've done one with myself answering the questions because I would be able to explain the details in more depth. I believe I could have improved the message by including more content from the how or by ensuring that some of the dialogue I used referenced what happens in the show, this would make the promotional material much more understandable.

Legal and ethical

I'm not worried about being in trouble for intellectual property because the concept of the show is my own idea, in addition to this I have tried hard to ensure that there are minimal brand names being shown in the promotion. There is no worry for breaking any copyright laws as all the content I used is original and the sound effects I downloaded are all copyright free. I chose not to use any music so that was never a worry for me. All the information shown and said in the promotions are factual meaning I am not infringing any of the ASA's rules and regulations. I think I have a good balance of representation with both white and black characters with a range of ages between them and both men and women.

M3: Comparing Promised Land to Fleabag

Posters

Promised Land poster

The first big noticeable difference is that my show has multiple posters for different characters whereas Fleabag only focuses on the main character played by Phoebe Walker-Bridge. Although also being known as a BBC show, Fleabag has the Amazon Prime logo which is a sign of the network the show can be viewed on and despite the difference in networks, all my posters do the same thing by having the BBC Three logo in the corner and clear to see. Another similarity between the shows is that both have the release dates on them to inform the audience when they can start watching the shows. Both posters have the title of the show in big writing and are both clear to see and read, although my Promised land logo is a little harder to read. In addition to this both posters depict a main character showing some facial expression but more importantly, they both focus on one person rather than a group or the background.
The differences can first be seen in the quality of the picture, the image seems to have been taken in HD whereas mine is taken in 4K - although it is hard to judge with the quality of the picture I used not being of the highest quality. I believe that my posters are of a similar quality to the ones used for Fleabag and if I was to use photoshop, their quality would be better. The colour schemes between the two products is also very different with the Fleabag poster being consistent with the prominent red, black and green colours of the background being a big part of the text used where as my poster uses more greens and blacks but the colours of the picture aren't necessarily used in the text. The positioning of the characters and text is very different as mine requires the reader to look primarily at the top half of the picture and read it from left to right whereas the Fleabag poster is more focused in the centre and as the character and all text is central and it requires the audience to read it from top to bottom.

Fleabag poster

Interviews

Both Fleabag and my show use interviews which are posted on social media and YouTube as a way to advertise and reach a mass amount of people for promotional purposes.

Like the Fleabag Season 2 promotional interviews I got actors to answer a few questions and talk about the show that they're in however, I didn't include people with various roles in the making of the show so I didn't have the director or producers having interviews, maybe this could be something I could incorporate another time. A difference between the two however is that the Fleabag interview includes scenes from the show that they refer to throughout the interview as well as there is always the BBC Three logo in the top left corner to constantly remind the audience where they will be able to watch the show when it comes out. Another difference between the two interviews is that the BBC Three one was done in an editing studio and various other locations whereas mine is inspired by the Film 4 interviews I used to watch when I was younger where the actor was always the point of focus in front of a white background, even with comparison to this mine is a horizontal video compared to Film 4's more traditional vertical video format. As seen in my interview, despite not interviewing different people with various roles in production, I do have video from various actors and mine focuses more on the opinions and views about the show from the actors.

Radio Ads

I couldn't find a radio advert for a TV show so I've decided to use a Pizza Hut advert to compare mine to. I assume that it's not very often that a TV show would use the radio to advertise their show, however mine does need to have a radio advert to attract more people in my target audience.

My radio advert is quite dramatic and busy as there are so many sound effects that go along with the dialogue that it could even be too much. However, the Pizza Hut radio ad is similar with lots of dialogue along with relatable and relevant background noise. Also like my radio advert, the Pizza Hut advert gives the listener a lot of information at the end about the product itself.

The differences come from the way that the adverts are delivered, whereas my Promised Land advert is intended to be calm and uses some of the dialogue and sound effects to set the tone of the show, the Pizza Hut advert's dialogue is very loud and enthusiastic which suits the high energy audience their aiming to attract.

Trailers

These are two very different trailers with differing tones. Firstly there's the Promised land which is a small minimalist trailer that tries to intrigue the audience more than anything else with it's serious tone. It shows glimpses of the families and characters as well as some of the locations that will feature in the show but no actual scenes that will be a part of the show. On the other hand, the Fleabag trailer is more than double the length of my trailer, it has a much more comical tone, sets up the characters really well so that the audience knows what to expect when they tune in and it has plenty of scenes from the show in. The Fleabag trailer does also contains an element that I forgot to include - the network logo in the corner to inform the audience, especially since at no point in the trailer did I mention what channel it can be viewed on. The length of the shots used is much shorter in my trailer than in the fleabag trailer as the Fleabag one is small sections of scenes put together. The quality of my Promised land trailer also looks to be better which could be up to the time of release as the Fleabag trailer is two years older than mine, or it could just be that the Promised Land trailer is filmed with a better resolution/quality camera.

Unit 20: M1 - Describe an existing media advertising campaign - McDonalds

What is it

McDonalds' Monopoly contest game is an annual event that McDonalds do to increase the amount of people buying their products as people know that buying certain food could result in them winning a large amount of money, a car or various other rewards. It has proven to be a very successful scheme over the past few years has consistently made McDonalds a boat load of money but how? The advertising. McDonalds rely heavily to get the message out to the public about when the Monopoly event starts and what people can win so the adverts are in view weeks before the colossal event begins as a way to inform as many people as possible.

TV Advert

McDonalds does a great job in the advert of appealing to it's younger target audience by delivering an advert which has an element of fun and humour whilst also showing that a person would look like an idiot/fool if they don't participate in the event as basically everyone in the advert seems to have done taken part.

Image result for mcdonalds monopoly poster

McDonalds Monopoly billboard

This McDonalds poster was one of the ads that was shown on various websites, billboards and apps as it was also digitally available to view with all the aspects being able to move around as all the features exploded into motion.

McDonalds Monopoly digital advertisement

The posters are always plastered everywhere in cities to allow as many people to see them as possible and make people aware and remember that the event is happening. They are in public view on roadside billboards and all over public transport stations, bus stops etc.

Throughout all the methods of adverts, McDonalds has incorporated their tradition of having a strong, colourful and vibrant ad campaign to appeal to a wide and youthful audience and the colours they use are all inviting and engaging for the people that see them. All the ways of promotion for the campaign are very consistent with the colours, the message, the tone, fonts and the characters. All the advertisement mentions the same things about winning big money and prizes by playing the game - which they back up by posting on their social media the people that won big prizes to prove that it is possible to win. Majorly unappreciated and overlooked aspects of McDonalds adverts are the artwork - which is constantly consistent - as they always look the same no matter the campaign and the somewhat iconic voice during or at the end of the advert.

McDonalds ensure that all the messages they want to tell the audience are translated through all forms of advertising by having the same character and images in all advertising. They also manage to do it by a

The social media adverts are always very successful as people use social media a lot and more specifically their target audience who are the primary users of apps like snapchat and instagram which is where the majority of their social media adverts were.

Tuesday, 7 May 2019

Unit 21: D1 - How I'd change my show

Making a smaller Promise

One issue about the show is that it may be too ambitious and big for the client - BBC Three - which means that I'd fail the task of creating a good show that suits the channels usual type of content. One way that I would alter the show to achieve the task set is to ether reduce the amount of topics that I'll touch on in the show, change the topics to smaller ones or to not touch on them as much as planned/not as in depth as planned. I'll adopt the method of not covering all the topics in as much depth as I strongly believe that the topics areas that will be raised (religion, sacrifice, poverty, freedom and rights, racism, corruption, human trafficking and slavery). Evidently, a lot of the topics will only be touched on or shown whereas areas like religion, sacrifice, poverty and racism will be looked into and mentioned more in depth than the others.
Another area I can make the show smaller in size is by reducing the amount of characters that will be in focus. However, what I'll actually do is focus on three characters (Temi, Lucy and Grace) and when another character needs to be in focus, I will give them more screen time and development e.g. developing Joy Adeola (the mum) in the episode before she dies at sea to give the audience a closer relationship to her and to make the death more emotional.
The last part of making the show smaller comes from having smart ways to save money especially whilst filming. With some animation to be featured in the show as a story-telling method and some scene to be filmed at sea, there will need to be some creative ways used to film the scenes like using drones when at sea or even filming in an open water research lab - which can be found in Scotland.

Protagonists and focus

As mentioned above, a response to the show having too many characters to focus on is to have three man focus' and give more screen time to characters that need it because of their big upcoming scene(s).
The other thing with the characters is making them more relatable to the audience in order to keep their interest. This is partially the reason that I chose to focus on Temi and Lucy as I know that they are characters who are definitely in BBC Three's audience range of 16-34 years old with Lucy being 16 and Temi being 20. This along with the characteristics of the positive but honest and realistic young characters should hopefully be enough to make the audience relate to them in some way, whether it's because of the exam stress, coming of age and journey to find herself that Lucy will go on or the rebellious nature of Temi to go against what his parents say or his internal feeling of needing to help the helpless. The third main character is Grace, and as a very young girl she'll be used as an outlet for the audience as every situation she is in will be shown from her perspective so that the audience will learn along side her about the experiences that the family go though.

Connecting the families

I could find a way to link the two families to each other so that their story becomes more connected. This was picked up by the client as they didn't understand why the families care for each other - or at least why Lucy cares for immigrants in general since she starts the season with no real opinion about the subject. One way I contemplated connecting the families is by making Lucy and Temi pen pals from school, this would give Lucy a reason to care for the Adeola family and take action to actively help them find their way to Britain. However, whilst considering this I realised that they would have to be pen pals before the show starts and since in the first episode the Adeola's leave their home, Lucy would have no idea where to post the letters to since she'd know that the family have left their home. Despite this, I believe that the link can still work if it's heavily relied on in the first episode and the friendship is not played as a relationship but rather a standard friendship.
Throughout the run of the season, they'll be constant references of how actions have consequences, especially in the case of a politician where their actions and decisions will have a big impact of potentially millions of lives. This is just another way that I'll show the link, every time a new deal or law is enforced in the show's version of Britain and the EU, the Adeola family will feel, see and experience the consequences.
As well as being pen pals with Temi in the first episode, Lucy will gain a drive for helping immigrants when her dad is injured in a rock climbing accident and he is helped by a group of foreign nurses at the hospital. This leads Lucy to discover that the majority of foreign nurses are at risk of being deported which acts as further fuel for her to help other immigrants.

Interesting characters

The characters are more than just good and bad, and this is exemplified with the character arc of Temi who starts the series off as "the perfect" character with a good sense of humour, compassion, honesty, a gentle spirit and all the usual likeable character tropes however as the season goes on and he faces more and more hardships and events that test his patience and resolve. He eventually cracks when he finds out about his mothers death and his attitude and demeanour change to the point where he isn't recognisable in comparison to the beginning of the season. This is just an example of how a character will change throughout the season with a focus on how the environment of a person will change how they act and behave, this sort of change will also happen with Godfrey with his belief in a God and Sue Walker with her morals, goals and intentions in life.
Each character will have a large amount of character development as they go on their journey throughout the season, as mentioned Temi will experience things that will change how he views the world and that will definitely change his attitude. Godfrey Adeola goes on a literal journey as well as starting to question his own faith after so long of just believing and being a devoted Christian. Lucy is on a path to find herself, finding out what she truly does and needs to value as well as determining her morals and beliefs. She will find out just how important migrants are to Britain and then actively protest and urge her mum to stand for them rather than against them. The beliefs of Sue Walker will also be tested but not her religious beliefs but rather her political beliefs and her political stance on major topics. She will try hard to become the leader of the party she stands for and then to pass all her anti-immigration laws in parliament as part of a bid to become the PM all whilst trying - and failing -to balance work and home life with a daughter that becomes increasingly frustrated with her.
When the characters accomplish the goal that they set for themselves, they won't just fade out of the show but rather will go on to start their next adventure which will be the beginning of their adventure for the second season.

Promised future

The overarching storylines throughout the first season are the Adeola families (without Temi) journey to get to Britain, with them finishing the season at Zona Portuale in Italy after Joy Adeola (Grace's mum) drowns at sea and Godfrey holding out for the body to be returned to them so they can bury her and "properly lay her to rest before moving on". The second storyline is of Lucy who is trying to find herself and what she really believes in before trying to convince her mum that she shouldn't be against immigrants but rather for them as her mother - Sue Walker - is trying to gain political power by rebuking them and being against immigrants and asylum seekers. The last storyline is of what Temi gets up to in Libya as he helps as many people seeking to leave for Europe as possible whilst also fighting and standing against the racist people in the country.
Similar topics will be explored in future seasons but I will also focus on how change can affect people and look more into the various reasons why people flee their country. It will also be looking more into politics like corruption in government for Africa and the potential sexism in British politics as well as looking at how modern slavery is working and people can get away with it.
In future seasons I will focus a little more on the blossoming relationship between Lucy and Sue, the continued journey of Godfrey and Grace as well as what they do next when they arrive in England the struggles of change and adapting to a totally new culture.
The show's overall aim is to make people more sympathetic and understanding of the struggle that immigrants go through and to show that there are a lot of misconceptions about them. I will hopefully achieve this by the focusing more on Grace and Temi and their experiences, lots of close up shots in major scenes to capture the expression and emotions of characters, and putting more of a focus on characters that are about to have a major scene like Joy's death to make the impact of her death more meaningful and saddening to the audience. I need to make them feel like they know the characters like their own friends by exposing their strengths and weaknesses to the audience.

Friday, 12 April 2019

Unit 21: Supporting Documents

Promised Lans trailer storyboard

Visualisation Diagram:
Social Media:-

Wednesday, 10 April 2019

P4: Production Material

Promised Land trailer

The trailer was the most time consuming part of the production process as it meant planning a way that it would be engaging for the target audience and still in some way inform them about what the show is about without blowing the budget on it. This meant that I had to make the most out of the resources and locations I had at my disposal as I couldn't go to Libya or Nigeria and didn't have access to the BBC library of footage. This coupled up with the busy schedules of the actors and actresses I had meant that I could only do a certain amount of work so I had to be as efficient and quick as possible with shooting which meant a lot of compromises had to be made and scenes I really wanted to put in were cut. Although I did manage to get some footage of Africa through family members living and coincidentally visiting Africa the week I started shooting, the footage I received wasn't of great quality in terms of how the camera kept shaking and the constant rotation of the camera by the person taking the footage, making the footage almost impossible to use. Because of this the scenes I wanted to include Africa in the trailer also had to be drastically reduced. Because of the time constraints and the constant compromises, the trailer is closer to being a teaser than it is a trailer with its 51 second run time. I started off by changing the size of the screen to a square of 1080 by 1080 before rotating all the pics to stand up right and zoomed in on them 81% as they didn't all fit the full screen. As well as zooming in, I had to chose what part of the video I wanted to focus on because not all the video could be seen on screen. Then I had to cut every video to be the right length for the teaser and to organise the video's to fit the storyboard I made. I then inputted the audio of Lesley Marshall and Frank Kuyeli I took on the shooting day as they are narrating everything in the trailer. Then I downloaded and inputted copyright free sounds in the areas and times I wanted to put them in. The last details I added were for the beginning and the end, I inputted a black screen at the beginning to allow the trailer to fade from black by using the "cross-dissolve" transition and at the end as well to allow the teaser to fade to black by using he "fade to colour" transition. The last actions I did was inputting an image of the logo which faded in at the end from black with the use of the "Gaussian" transition, then finally inputted the slogan by inputting it with the "Basic title" text.

"Promised Land" interviews

- Interviews with the actors that are playing the Walker family in the TV show: Lesley and Derek Marshall & Gabriella "Gabby" Bull. These were taken moments after the photos and video's for the teaser trailer and edited in a very similar fashion.

I changed the size of the screen to ensure it would be perfect for the portrait video's I was using and also to suit the portable video mode on YouTube. I also had to rotate all the video's used 90 degrees to make them stand up right properly. I watched each of the videos that I took with the actors and chose to cut at the point where either they or I made a mistake to make sure that only the good content will be put up when I uploaded the video. I also inputted a cross-dissolve transition between time I cut the interviews and a fade-to-colour transition when cutting between characters to show the ending of one person and the beginning of another persons interview. The last part of action I did for the interviews was to include some text that "Blurred" in and out when each character came on screen as well.

Radio Advert

The radio advert was relatively easy and quick to make. the first thing I did was input an image to make it easier to drag audio in and ensured it was no longer than exactly 30 seconds. Since I recorded almost all the dialogue I needed for the radio advert on the same day as everything else I didn't need to re-record anything. However, I did need to record the ending of the ad on an audio recorder as I hadn't done that, then once recorded and placed in Final Cut, I used my script to see when everything should be said and done to help with organising it all accordingly. I downloaded and inputted all the sound effects and things I needed before also placing them at their right times. After this, there was the hardest part of making sure the sound quality was good throughout and that the dialogue could always be heard. This was hard to do as it meant constantly playing with the volume control. After this there was just the little matter of ensuring everything sounds good and that there were no awkward moments of complete silence, which meant I had to extend the sound of nature to last till the end and make it quiet so it wouldn't overpower the narration.

Poster, billboard and print advertising

The posters and billboards were made in a more unconventional way than most people did because the photoshop on my computer was not working so I had to find a way to make them without the software. As with all other methods of advertising, I took all these pictures on the same day as taking the videos for the teaser/trailer. They were done directly after the video's for the teaser/trailer were taken and were edited in the days and weeks that followed. As I didn't have photoshop at my disposal I decided to do as much as possible on Microsoft PowerPoint because of my knowledge of the software and programming.

Derek Marshall as Steve Walker

Lesley Marshall as Sue Walker

"Gabby" Bull as Lucy-Sky Walker

The Walker Family

The first thing I did was to input the picture I wanted to use onto the blank page.

The second step was to input and incorporate the BBC Three logo onto the picture in a reasonable place, so I put it in the bottom left of every picture I used to show continuity throughout the posters.

The next step was to try figure out where the best place for the shows name and logo would go. This was possibly the most difficult part of the process as I had to locate a good space in the pic where it is clearly visible, doesn't block anything and doesn't blend in with anything else in the background. So a lot of moving and altering took place to make everything look right.

The last step was to include the vital information on the posters, which was the channel people can view it on, what it is and the date it'll be available to view. I also had to make sure I could balance the continuity of all the posters and where the information is placed as well as the colours I used to make it visible.