A2 Media Studies

G324 Advanced Portfolio:Evaluation

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

V05 Advert-http://youtu.be/nCRrthkIJxc

This V05 advert is similar to my sponsorship advert in the way that both used young females ages around 18 to 20 that faced the camera to talk, making it seem as though they are reaching out to the audience. Different products were used throughout both adverts, but the Hairspray was used at the end as a ‘finishing touch’ for the style that you cannot live without. I felt as though the informal, simple style of our advert would suit our target audience of teenage girls to young women, who are after a product that will do exactly what it says- and want to see it in action. Although there is hardly any dialogue in our advert, at the end when our actress talks she does so in a friendly manner, speaking right to the camera- which is similar to the V05 advert. The actress talks throughout the professional advert, developing a conversational tone that allows the advert to flow; however I believe that by only putting dialogue at the end of our advert; this allowed the hair to be the centre of attention.

L’Oreal Advert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_UafEV1bQ

This L’Oreal advert featuring Cheryl Cole is a complete contrast to our adverts. This high-budget, glossy, fast paced advert puts forth the idea that to buy this hairspray, you have to be beautiful and use it when your hair is in an intricate style already. Although the use of a popular star was an informed decision on behalf of the advertisers, I don’t think the content was very interesting or informative about the product. I personally saw this advert and looked at it as a look I would not be able to achieve with just the hairspray and one or two other products alone. I think that this advert is very conventional of a hairspray product- everything runs smoothly and is glamorous. My first advert depicts a girl running around her house, trying to find something to tame her hair. I think that this is very realistic and will allow people watching to think ‘I do that!’- Boo Hairspray is portrayed as the saviour for a bad hair day. I believe we have challenged the conventions of the form, as L’Oreal has created a glossy advert, whereas nothing goes right in ours until the product is found by the actress.

Tresemme Advert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N7hxIwiLDI

This advert for Tresemme Hairspray is short, sharp and to the point. Using a male voiceover, but also a ‘professional’ hairdresser- I believe this is very similar to my second advert. Although again I strayed away from the conventions by at first having our actress, who happened to be me, having a bad hair day at school/work and calling her hairdresser; I allowed the hairdresser to be shown doing the hair. I think that was conventional because as aforementioned, the Tresemme advert depicts a hairdresser styling his clients hair- resulting in a flawless finish, similar to the L’Oreal advert. However, the conventions were challenged as my second advert had the overall feel of a less polished hairspray advert, but again one that could easily resonate with my target audience- something I feel is the most important thing.

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience

feedback?My first advert idea, Russian Roulette- Hairspray for men- did not receive a good reception when I pitched it to the class. Everyone agreed that the idea of Hairspray for men is very modern, maybe too inventive, and would not be a very successful product to market. Also, the gun shape of the bottle was deemed too controversial- which my group agreed on, if something is too different then it will not sell well. As a group of girls, we decided to create a product and selection of adverts that felt more along the lines of something we would use. So, Boo Hairspray was created and my audience feedback told us that this was a lot more suitable than the Hairspray for men-due to the range of successful hair care products marketed towards females already on the market.

My PowerPoint for Russian Roulette Hairspray, my original idea-

To make our hairspray seem different from all the others, we took aspects of the V05 advert and L’Oreal- forging them together to create a product that was profession, but didn’t alienate normal teenage girls and young women. Our audience feedback told us that advert 2 was the least popular out of all of them; mainly due to the fact they didn’t think it was realistic enough to have a hairdresser randomly appear. I agree with this, and if I was to do these adverts again, I would spend more time planning advert 2, despite all the adverts flowing well with one another.I asked another group if they would buy our product after watching our adverts, and they said they would; this was due to the bright colours, female actresses used, description of the product and the fact that our advert felt realistic. These teenage girls, aged 17-18 (therefore in our target audience) felt that unlike the polished feel of the L’Oreal Elnette advert, they felt like Boo could be the hairspray for the majority of girls and woman across the Country- who don’t look like Cheryl Cole.

I personally think my product would be very successful, our adverts ran in smooth succession with each other and all portrayed a female with a busy life who just wants good hair. This is a very simple idea but one that would appeal to my target audience, unlike the previous idea of Hairspray for men.

In regards to my radio advert, I think that this could have been longer and more organised with the planning process, but I do believe that the product details and conversational, girly tone used for this advert was fitting with our other adverts. Our research showed that this style of radio advert appeals most to females, as they feel like the adverts are tailored towards them, rather than just being generic. We used our own voices in the advert, which I think would make our target audience of young females listen and realise that this is a product that is especially for them, subsequently including them and therefore making them want to buy the product. The only negative feedback we received was that one of the girls voices used had a strong Wolverhampton accent that could come across as humorous rather than girly, and could also distract people from what the advert is about.We amended this by recording it again, and using the girl with the strong accent to say the less noticeable ‘Boo’s’ which were said at different points within the advert. It is imperative to have good pronunciation and the right voice for your specific radio advert, as the voice and what the person is saying will be the main selling point of the product.

Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages?Watching television adverts in class, and also at home, helped greatly in the planning of my own adverts. I looked at adverts for research, and counted how many shots were used, the different types of shots- the majority of which were medium and close up shots, and what genre conventions were used in each advert. The fast paced editing of all the adverts was imperative and very important, not for a second could my adverts be static and boring. I think I could have improved our sponsorship with this in mind; however I took the idea of our sponsorship mainly from the very successful V05 adverts.

Still image of V05 AdvertThe main shots that are used in this advert are close ups- which is similar to our sponsorship advert. It’s evident that the best way to show off a hair product is by putting the actress at the forefront.

The Macs weren’t always very co-operative, however editing my adverts using iMovie was very eye opening, as there is a plethora of effects that can be used- the transition effects were useful when moving from one shot to another without it looking too abrupt. Storyboarding allowed me to see my adverts on paper- therefore laying out my ideas in a more clear format, so I could see what would work and wouldn’t.

Although the tripods weren’t easy to transport, the handheld DV cameras were extremely useful when shooting. The fact that they are so small was only a nuisance when shooting in dark locations- however, this made me realise that we shouldn’t be shooting in dark locations anyway! The fact that the DV camera could easily be transported made it easier to get to our locations, which ultimately made for a more wide variety of shots and angles; hopefully resulting in a more professional advert.

As aforementioned, iMovie did not always work effectively whilst in the editing process; I was unable to speed up my sponsorship sequence to the speed I wanted, and the effects that I wanted did not originally go on. With persistence this was sorted out, furthermore, the clips were very easy to manoeuvre and delete if they weren’t necessary, which allowed us to speedily arrange our clips into the correct sequence.