T.V Advert Evaluation

Our T.V Advert was a considerable challenge for many reasons, considering the head-start  we had over our Radio Advert.
We started with the group consisting of Me, Jade and Jestina. Our original idea was simply to do our radio advert but put visuals to it as it would be most simple. However after talking to Mr Price we found that this idea would make for a very dry and boring advertisement.
We then went back to the drawing board and tried to brainstorm some more ideas. Jestina then came up with the idea of using Gillian Wearing’s signs concept. We planned on having students in BOA holding up certain words about Futures, about what was wrong with it and how we can change it on a piece of white card. This would have incorporated the whole school and showed unity as well as getting our message across. However after watching one of Gillian’s campaign videos we noticed that she adds a large amount of graphics and animation to it to not make it boring. As we did not have the ability to do that we decided that we would have to have some sort of action going on around the signs.
Jade and I then came up with the idea of a boy running to Futures and the signs would be in the background. The signs were to be “hidden in plain sight”, superimposing them on signs familiar around BOA. Jade then said that she would be able to do this, however, due to her lack of attendance, we could never really organise this. In retrospect this is a problem that we could have seen coming.
The role of producer was assigned to me, Jestina was to be the director and Jade was to be the cameraperson. Our contingency plan for Jade not being present on the shoot day was to have me shoot the advert and Jestina direct. I did the call sheet, risk assessments and shot list for the T.V advert and assigned Jestina the role of doing the storyboard. Jade’s role was to devise the small script for the T.V Advert. Jestina arranged getting a dancer in for our T.V Advert. We felt that a dancer would be more appropriate to use as the advert requires a large amount of running, something that not every actor would be able to do. Jade had an issue with this, however it was unclear what it was. We set our shoot date and had everything in line to shoot on the 7b. However on the morning of the shoot our dancer decided to drop out on us. Jestina then arranged another candidate for shooting. However Jade had major issues with using him and although I was happy to do the advert, it would have been alot more difficult to do the advert. It was also unclear as to whether he would be available. We then decided to reschedule the advertisement and have me as the lead role as then we were not relying on other people.
We had then rescheduled it for an inappropriate time and were unable to go and shoot. It was then rescheduled again, however due to a lack of communication this date did not occur once again. Finally Jestina and I got round to filming the advert. It was difficult to shoot as we were only going from the shot list as Jestina had not completed the storyboard. Our script had also not been completed, which in retrospect we should have realised that Jade wasn’t going to do it.
When we came back and looked at our footage, we realised that it was all pretty rubbish. Our idea had not worked due to a severe lack of organisation and planning. We had left the shooting far too late due to one reason or another and a simple idea had turned into a very poor, very messy advert.
Running out of time we then decided to revert back to our original idea of putting visuals to our radio advert. We had very little planning time and Jestina had been assigned to create a very quick shot list. We had decided to cast people in our class that weren’t busy as we knew that there was a very small chance they would let us down. We also drafted in Conor Hickey to help with the shooting, however Conor ended up doing the majority of the directing. too. We get back to the classroom and realised that a portion of the advert was out of focus. Jestina then came up with the idea of making the whole thing purposefully out of focus and having it as a dream sequence. With the advert done, Jestina said that she would edit it as I had a large amount of work to do, however, fearful of it not being done I decided to edit it instead.

I believe that our advert could have been miles better, mainly if there was a little more interest from the rest of the people that I was working with. On numerous occasion it felt like I was doing a most of the work as otherwise it would not have been completed. However, this is an issue I could have rectified by leaving the group at an earlier date and going solo, which I will do in the future.