AS3 Task 3 - Screening

"So did you like the advert?"

- I did. It's really random with the explosions and game references.

- Yes. I found it quite amusing to watch because of the unexpected explosions half way through it.

"Do you think I succeeded in making it appeal to teenagers and young adults?"

- I think so. It really doesn't look like a serious advert and I think teenagers and young adults still enjoy immature things every now and then.

- I'm not sure. It's funny, yeah, but I'm not sure if the immaturity is a bit too much or not. It almost becomes an "MLG" video with the explosions and spinning clips.

"Would you consider buying the product because of the advert?"

- I would consider it, yeah. I'm not sure if I actually would because the ingredients seem a bit strange for a milkshake.

- I'd be willing to give it a try. The milkshake seems to have an interesting combination of ingredients.

"Can you find any faults or things that you think look wrong in the advert?"

- The introductory bit where all of the ingredients are placed was too fast. I only saw a glimpse or everything before it moved on. The outro was also a bit too fast. Maybe 2 or 3 more seconds would have been enough for it. Other than that, I don't see anything wrong with it.

- The introduction was a bit too fast. The table view of everything doesn't last long enough before the rest of the advert continues. The calm music is a bit too quiet. It would help if it was a bit louder. I don't think there's anything else wrong with it.

I used a focus group to get feedback on the finished advert so I could find out what was good about it and what wasn't. I think that using a focus group to get feedback on my advert is a good idea because feedback and comments can be received instantly making it a lot easier to write everything down and also ask any further questions if I needed to.

Some cons about using this method of receiving feedback is that it's difficult to get the correct age group to watch the advert to give feedback as many people in public don't want to do so. It also means that the people who do give feedback sometimes give a lot in one go, making it difficult to copy everything down word-for-word onto paper.

AS3 Task 2 - Sources of Information

Before creating the advert me and my group had spent a considerable amount of time planning everything out and completing research in order to make sure that everything made sense and would work when filming the actual advert. The main reason for planning everything was to make sure that no key points were going to be missed out which would ensure the success of the advert.

Before starting all of the research, however, it was necessary that we threw out ideas to each other to decide on what we could make an advert on. Most of the competition involved technology or clothing related things and so we decided to make an advert on milkshakes as we wanted to be as unique as possible. I helped with the thinking of including inspiration from HowToBasic as that was the first thing that came to mind when we were talking about milkshake adverts.

Proposal

The proposal was a rather stressful part in the production of the advert as it involved speaking to people who have quite a bit of authority over the control of the adverts aired on TV, but I'm glad that it was successful in attracting their attention and piquing their interest.

The entire reason why we had to create and present a proposal is to ensure that people would actually be interested in the idea for our advert just so we didn't waste any resources on something that no one would be interested in.

I tried to make sure that I included all of the necessary information that the assessors would require in order to be interested in helping us fund parts of the advert. I made sure not to miss out any key information just so everything was there, even if it was for a brief moment.


Storyboard

We used a storyboard to come up with the actual advert and what would happen in the advert. We used this to jot down anything we would need for the filming, when it would be needed and what would have to be done for a number of the shots.

The storyboard can also be used as a tool that shows people what is to be expected of the future when filming as it gives people the chance to look at what would work well with everything else and what wouldn't as you can think about possible shots, angles, techniques and so on. And it's not a plan that is set in stone instantly so during shooting you can still film things that you think would work better together.

I do think that we followed the storyboard quite well. Everything turned out how to we wanted it to and we all made our own versions of the advert that suited our own styles.

Location Visit & Risk Assessment

Planning the location that we would be filming in was a moderately difficult task. We had to talk about where it would be acceptable to film our advert which would require us to be throwing around ingredients used for a milkshake. We knew that it would be a bad idea to do such a thing in public as it would attract attention from a lot of people and possible even authorities as they would think that we are littering and would probably be concerned with us, so Jess said that her parents would be cool with us using their garden for the advert, which is what we did and it worked out well.

When writing out the location visit sheet I tried to take into account the possible dangers of filming and what potential risks there would be when we filmed. I tried to calculate the possibility of one of the crew suffering from said risks but none of them happened to any of us, fortunately. I think I could have done a better job at making sure everyone had the lowest possible risk of being injured by telling everyone what to do to prevent it from happening in the first place.

One thing that happened during filming that nobody expected was Jessica getting an electric shock from the blender after we blended the milkshake together and spilled milk onto it randomly. This resulted in some of the liquid going past the button and into the wiring, giving off a current that Jess received when she pressed it. She wasn't seriously injured, however.


Shooting Schedule and Shot List

The shooting schedule is a good way to plan your time as it gives an approximation as to when to record what, where and when with who. The shot list is a bit more useful in my opinion however as it gives everyone an idea as to what would need to be shot in what order and how along with what it should be used for. We used the shot list a lot more as we could film everything in one day so we just needed to know what to do and what shot would be best suited to the shots.

The shot list is a lot more specialised with the actual shooting process and how everything would be shot rather than the storyboard which goes over everything in a brief fashion, giving people an idea of what to do.


Cast and Crew Contact Details and Budget

It was important that everyone was able to contact one another in case something happened to someone or if someone couldn't attend that they told the rest of the screw so that they were informed and knew what to do afterwards.

We didn't necessarily need all of the information provided on the sheet as we already were able to contact each other easily, but just in case we still double checked with each other.


Conclusion

In conclusion, planning is necessary and helpful to make sure that everything is planned out and organised. It made sure that we knew what we were doing if we ever forgot or were confused on how to progress.

AS3 Task 1 - Finished Advert

This is the finished Smash-Shakes advert for a 30-second TV air time. I tried to make it over-the-top in order to continue with the whole idea of keeping the audience entertained and believe I managed to succeed in doing so.

AS2 Task 6 - Pre-Production

We won't be needing any costumes and props as all the viewer will be able to see is the arms of Jess

I have also discussed the prices of everything before, and the recording equipment rental and ingredients will roughly total up to £60 or £70, as mentioned before in previous posts

AS2 Task 5 - Pitch

Before production of the advert and products themselves, a pitch must be presented to market investors to gain support and public awareness for the company. To get this support, there must be an intriguing and informative presentation that tells the investor/s what the company or project is aiming to do. These include things such as the overall goal of the company/project, production costs and the unique selling point. Once the pitch is finished, the investor/s will then proceed to ask questions concerning the pitch and the presenter will then have to answer the questions in a controlled, formal and "cool" manner in order to persuade or encourage the support from the investor/s. If all of this is done successfully and the investor/s decide to support the idea then production for the advertisement and pitched company will proceed, hopefully with additional financial support and a larger public awareness.

I tried to limit the amount of information shown on the screen during the presentation to limit repetition and so there isn't too much to read on the screen so I didn't read a story. I also didn't include many images or additional details on my presentation so as to limit distractions, but it may have bored people due to there not being a lot of additional interesting things onscreen.

Smash Shakes Pitch from David Vavilovas

Pitch:

AS2 Task 4 - Pitch Issues

When making our advert we are going to make sure that we use non-copyright music from that we downloaded from the internet. Someone who provides free music is, for example, Kevin MacLeod who has quite a large range of royalty-free music which means that he provides music for free for others to download with no risks of being charged with copyright infringement. Kevin also has own website called Incompetech which lets you download his royalty-free music straight from there. http://incompetech.com/

I have checked online and have not found any other companies or adverts containing syrup and waffles in a milkshake, so I think that we are in the clear for this advert idea.

I can't think of any legal or ethical issues that we will encounter because of this advert because all we will be doing is making a mess of someone's interior making a milkshake and then clearing it up afterwards, as for ethical issues, we won't be talking about anything related to religion or varying morals which could cause controversy.

We don't intend on using any risky content or controversial material in our advert which means that there won't be anything that people would take offence to unless there is something that we put into our advert by accident that we didn't mean to include.

We don't plan on using false advertising as there is no point in lying about a milkshake containing a minimum of 3 ingredients to be any different from what it is in real life, unlike adverts which show us that their burgers are perfectly made in a few minutes after the order is placed whereas they aren't even close to looking like that in the real world.

Finally, we won't be thinking of product placement as we don't think it would be very easy to show our milkshakes to the public through films and such, but if we had a clear way of showing people what company made the milkshake and sells it, then we would consider it as it would allow us to easily show many people what we are selling, even though it may end up being expensive.

AS2 Task 3 - Production Requirements

Technical Equipment

We're going to need some equipment and areas to film our advert and for this, we can find information on the internet.

To start off, we're going to need some technical equipment such as cameras, tripods, possibly boom mic's and maybe a pair of headphones.

I found a website that offers a very big variety of camera rentals: http://www.hireacamera.com/en-gb/motion/cameras/

Hiring a decent camera from the website would cost us £44.10 for only one day, the tripod would cost £7.20, the microphone would cost £9.60 and since we already have headphones they wouldn't cost anything. This totals up to £60.90 split between 4 people.

The shooting shouldn't take more than a day since we already have the basic idea planned out and we know what we're going to be using in the scenes.

Filming Locations

We were thinking that since we're going to be making a mess with food and stuff that we would do it inside in the kitchen where it would be easier to clean up, rather than make a mess outside and ruin an area of a park or garden.

Since we're going to be filming inside in a kitchen we decided to use someone's house who has a kitchen with no nearby carpeted flooring. Jess offered to let us use her kitchen for filming, so we'll need to be careful when filming not too ruin anything too much. If we end up not being able to do this, then we can just film in Central Park where there's loads of space and we wouldn't be interrupting anyone.

The park is literally outside of the Robert Clack upper site so we would just walk there, but we would take a bus to get to Jess' house as it's further away.

The only problems we would encounter when filming in Central Park is the gusts of wind, so we'd need to find a way to cover the microphone from the wind, and the weather in case there are random changes in weather and it goes from sun to rain in which case we would need to choose a day that would be safe to film outside on.

Actors and Actresses

It doesn't matter who we use for the advert, we just need someone to record from their perspective of what they are doing or someone to just stand in front of the camera and mess their milkshakes up before placing our product down on the table.

We already work in a group so we have enough people. If we need any more then we can always ask our friends who would be willing to help us out.

We're just going to use the group the is going to make this advert and also our friends, so they wouldn't be paid because there is no need to do so, but if we were going to use someone famous for our advert, we might need to pay them for the work that they did for us.

We aren't planning on using the any populated public scenes so we wouldn't need to use a disclaimer and get their permission to use them in the video.

Costumes and Props

We might need to dress up in washable casual clothes with possibly an apron, just casual clothes or if we're going to use the PoV camera then it might get a bit personal and just have our legs showing for comedic purposes. But that would only happen if we are planning on completely following how HowToBasic creates his videos.

I'm not sure if we all have aprons, so if we don't we'll just go to a shop that sells them such as B&M, for example. As for other items, we'll just look for them on the internet and decide on where to get them if we need them. We might need to get disposable plastic cups and paper plates from somewhere like Hobbycraft or B&M as well.

Most likely in the house closest to where we are filming, or we might take our own props and clothing back home with us.

I think we'd spend a maximum of £60 each on clothing and props for the advert. We don't all have too much money so we'd need to share it out between us sometimes if something is too expensive.