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

The genre we have used across both products and ancillary texts is comedy. Unlike other genres, where it follows strict conventions such as dark lighting in horror, comedy is something that is often present across many media products as oppose to a distinct genre.

This is useful in some ways as it has allowed us to have more flexibility when creating our products. Despite this, we did follow some of the typical conventions and when took elements from existing media products for inspiration.

We focused on the Specsavers advert and used this as a guideline for how our advert would be formulated. Something used across all of their adverts was the use of dramatic irony for comedic affect. Timing is an essential component of comedy as the audience as the audience gain pleasure from watching the character experience humiliation.

We have ensured that we don't reveal the punchline until the end in both adverts. In comedy, the character that is often humiliated is represented as powerful, accident prone, socially awkward or a fairly regular character that has accidents occur around them.

Todorov's narrative theory: EQUILIBRIUM . DISEQUILIBRIUM . RESOLUTION 
The effect of this is to leave the audience satisfied knowing the final outcome for the character. Comedy is often present during the state of disequilibrium as humour is created from their being a disruption in the narrative where problems happen. In both our main task and sponsorship, we have left an unresolved, open ending. Therefore this allows the audience to imagine what will go on to happen...

Toothpaste advert:
In our toothpaste advert, the girl (played by Kate) is represented as quite a gentle character as she is seen painting and through her image, we tried to indicate that she is a teacher - not a typically powerful character. Rather than removing the power from an individual, she fits into the 'regular character that has accidents occur around them' category. We have chosen to instead build up her character through mis-en-scene and finish with her walking away into the distance leaving an open ending allowing the audience to think up possible funny scenarios.

How we have portrayed her as regular character:
Costume:
-doesn't indicate a particular career e.g police officer
-colours used are relatively ordinary, not particularly glamorous or implying power.
Mis-en-scene:
-setting: house isn't particularly grand
-we show her carrying out ordinary tasks such as painting, clearing away

1. State of equilibrium- Kate is painting

2. Disequilibrium: paint on teeth. Dramatic irony as Kate unaware

3. Disequilibrium continued: neighbour's reaction4. Situation left unresolved - open ending

We have left the narrative unresolved - comedy tends to finish with a new resolution.  As the focal point of our media product is to advertise our product, we have used the '20/20 vision' to imply a resolution to this narrative. The message given to consumers is that complex narrative issues are resolved through buying our product.

'This Morning' sponsorship:

 1. State of equilibrium - audience are not yet aware of mistake

  2. State of Disequilibrium - audience aware that  she is about to eat dog food

 

3. Situation left unresolved, but 20/20 appears on the screen to suggest a possible resolution...





 Life drawing sponsorship:
 A typical convention in the media is the stereotype of females being portrayed as sensitive. We have conformed to this by using only females in our advert and showing them crying. In this was we have not challenged conventions as if we were to have a man crying, it would be more noticeable and thus detract away from the punchline.
1.                                                                                                              3.

2.

This advert has a slightly different pattern however it follows roughly the same guidelines. The 1st screenshot is at a state of equilibrium. The 2nd and 3rd however are both states of disequilibrium as  in the second screenshot, the people look upset and almost disgusted, implying that normality has been disrupted however it is not yet revealed to the audience what that is. The joke is revealed in the last screenshot along with the 20/20 vision logo to imply a resolution.

Dramatic irony used in toothpaste advert as we don't reveal the punchline until the end, and also in the life drawing advert as the door sign 'bereavement support meeting' isn't displayed until the last shot and in the 

Web pop-up: The rule of thirds is often used to make the photo more interesting and dynamic which is essential in our media product as we are aiming to catch the audience’s attention. 

I have divided our web pop-up into thirds to see if we have used the rule of thirds. We have aligned our subject near the vertical line on the left hand side of the picture and the written information is near the vertical line on the right hand side. An improvement could have been that the banana be more central to the left vertical line as this is essentially, the punchline. The right vertical line runs approximately in the middle of all three written texts. 

Another way we conformed to conventions is with our use of 'click here' on the bottom right of the picture which is often where advertisers place the piece of text that they want the audience to read last.

Technical codes: mid shot, straight on to emphasise the banana and make it appear bigger. We have challenged conventions as typically a low angle would be used to make the subject look more powerful. We decided that as it was an advert with a joke pun, we didn't want the subject to look too threatening as it would be too great a contrast. A neutral shot, which we have used, has no psychological affect on the viewer which was our intention.
Symbolic codes: Dark clothing, balaclava to indicate that he is a robber.

Our adverts have an element of the sub genre satire. Satire often involves irony, it also uses wit to expose human foolishness. Although in our adverts we have replaced foolishness with bad sight, it follows the same guidelines.

Other conventions we have followed:
- Slogan comes at the end of all 3 products. This is usually where adverts put their slogan.
- We have kept the length of our products similar to existing ones. 30 seconds, 48 seconds and slightly shorter for our sponsorship (23 seconds)
-Technical codes in comedy:
Iconography: lighting used in comedy is often bright and shot in daylight. We have conformed to this convention in all of our products.

In general, we have conformed to conventions of existing products and haven't challenged conventions. This was mainly because as we are producing adverts, we need to ensure that we have kept to our brief by using strong marketing techniques. The audience are more likely to remember something that conforms witht their schema, including stereotypes.

20/20 Life drawing advert (Final)

This is our final second advert, after we filmed the draft we realised we had a few corrections that needed to be made which we feel we have met.

At the start we use an establishing shot with Kona walking into the building and asking the receptionist for directions, this immediately gives the audience some narrative which is something we realised we were lacking in our draft. The receptionist also tells her where to get changed which makes it clear why Kona comes out wearing a robe.

We wrote signs on each door and when Kona walks past she acknowledges the signs, which suggests she went into the wrong room due to her sight not because she was in a rush and was being careless.
The issue we had with the door we still slightly have but its now not so obvious, when Kona walks into the room she positions herself to the left which could be seen as her blocking the view of the window
however, if you are aware of this you will clearly see there is no window there at all.

Another criticism is that the sign on the door when Kona walks into the room is handwritten and then at the end of the advert it is printed.
When Kona walks into the bereavement group she is actually walking into a toilet and when she comes out we forgot to turn the light on which could be confusing, as she is meant to be coming from the corridor which would obviously have a light on, however i don't think its  obviously nor will it question
the narrative.

We were able to get more actors which creates realism as before there was only 3 people in the group and we wanted it to look as if there was a circle of people, when Kona runs in you first see the two women who look as if they have been crying- we smudged makeup around their eyes to create this. We placed the camera outside of the circle, which made it look as if there was a lot more people in the circle, you could see the side of Kates head, the shot after this then shows Kate and i looking very shocked and again we used makeup to create the impression that we had been crying before.

My favourite shot is the end shot, i think the use of the window creates professionalism, and is a great way to reveal the misunderstanding to the audience with them still being able to view the action.

Web Pop-up (final)

This is our finished pop-up.

We chose to keep the mis en scene simple (white background) as we don't want to detract attention from the informative text. We feel that a background (a bank) is not necessary in making the plot obvious to the audience. The white creates a convenient backdrop for our text to stand out on. We used photoshop to neaten up aspects of his costume.

       There are really only three colours in this advert; blue, black and yellow. We felt this was important in making the advert simple and quick to read. Yellow is the brightest colour and so immediately attracts attention, instantly telling the plot.  We hold synergy in that the colour of the CLICK HERE button is that of the logo.

We have put the text in vertical order of how we want it to be read. The punchline, and slogan, at the top and the CLICK HERE at the bottom right (where people look last).

       At first we didn't have the photographs of the glasses. But after deciding that the product of the advert wasn't obvious enough we put in 3 different styles of glasses. All designer; they act as references to the DESIGNER GLASSES that we mention in the offer. 

The introduction to the offer DAYLIGHT ROBBERY DEALS is a very effective pun because it also sticks with the theme of the advert (a robber).

20/20 Teeth Advert (Final)

This is our finished teeth advert (advert1). Changes we have made since our draft;

The first shot acts as an establishing shot. We see her face and are introduced to the idea that she is an artist. This is implied by her costume and her actions (painting) and the mise en scene. The mise en scene, namely the paintings in the background, allow the audience feel a sense of intimacy with her which will help them to relate to her later on. It also helps to build her character meaning that the brown paint on her teeth is more embarrassing. 

We filmed her waking up in her room, looking at the alarm clock and then rushing out of the room. We felt this made the narrative more obvious and showing her in her bedroom further allows the audience to feel a connection with her. It also builds her character because the bedroom we filmed her in was busy and cluttered (helping to create the realism of her mistake) and was colourful and the walls covered in arty posters (helping to build her arty character). However post-editing we felt the footage dragged a bit and was unnecessary as we could make the plot obvious enough with birdsong and a fade in implying the rising of the sun. Therefore we chose not to use that footage and to skip straight to her brushing her teeth. We set up the sink to look busy. 

The brushing of the teeth is quicker than in the draft which suggests a sense of rush and therefore unawareness.

The walking out of the shot (bathroom) and the walking into the next one (stairs) implies that she has got ready.

We chose to show her looking in the mirror (at the camera) to show that she is conscious of her appearance and the embarrassment that follows is therefore increased. Looking into the camera further connects with the audience. Note that the art piece in the background adds to her character.  

A problem with all our previous pieces has been the sudden audio jump from one shot to the next. So after researching how to overlap audio from different clips we applied this to the transition between nearly all shots. The advert therefore runs more smoothly and implies continuity. 

We have also added a shot of her walking away. This is so that the advert has a conclusion. The shot of her walking away suggests further embaresment in front of many more people and leaves the audience wondering what happens next! It also allows a period of time for the audience to react; hopefully in laughter!

A further thought: Because of the obvious presence of snow we thought that we could advertise winter deals at the end. For example 'Buy one get one free this Winter'. We will try this out.

Sponsorship Final

Because of the problems with the previously shoot we had another shoot in which we aimed to break the original first shot into two shots. We had to film this at a different location for practical reasons. The lighting is more effective and realistic because we filmed by a window in which natural light is coming through creating the impression of morning. All of the shots are in focus this time and the logo and sponsorship slogan are composed more successfully and the fonts look more professional. The non-diegetic sound does't sound very professional but I think that is down to our limited recording technology (we used iMovie recorder). Another criticism is that the advert is still quite boring. This is the nature of the plot (it lacks action and features a mundane daily task), and I don't think we could have avoided this.