TV Advert - Evaluation

Our task was to create a television advert promoting an original product/charity/event. To start with I collected multiple ideas of what my original product could be; at first I had the idea of doing an advert promoting a new drink, but then I also came up with the idea of a made up charity. In the end I decided to make a television advert for an original charity because through the use of a small focus group I found that the majority of my feedback said that was the strongest and most practical idea. After this I developed my idea further, before making a proposal of my idea, talking about my charity (an environmental safety charity called 'Tree Huggers') and how my advert would be a success. Next, I had to get more feedback on my developed idea, therefore I made a short questionnaire to gain some perspective of my potential audience. From this it allowed me to make any more further adjustments to ensure my advert would be effective. My next step was to write a treatment, which is like a plan for the more industry side to creating my advert - it spoke about the budget, timings and more. From here I had to make the storyboard, script, location report and cast list. All of these things showed visual evidence of planning that was going towards the making of my ad - so that when I filmed it I knew what types of shots I would have to do. Once this was done I filmed my advert, edited it, recorded a voice over and it was done.

Now that my advert was finally complete I had to evaluate it; how it fits the purpose, if it was original, whether it was appropriate to my audience, did it follow my intentions, were there technical and persuasive techniques used. To start off with, I think that my advert definitely clearly communicated about my product and promoted it. As our task was to create an advert to promote, my advert does that - it clearly states the name of the charity, what they do, and what they want from the advert (to raise awareness). However, to make my message even more clear, I could have clearly stated what the product is, blatantly telling my audience it's a charity rather having them gather that information from everything else being said. But I think that if I did this then it could have made my ad a bit too simple, if everything was just clearly said then it wouldn't have been as effective.

In addition to this, I think to an extent my advert was creative and original. I think that it was quite simple, but it followed the conventions of the type of advert it was. By this I mean that it was like most charity adverts, it played towards the target audiences' fears and desires, being persuasive in order to gain awareness. Therefore, I think that it probably wasn't the most original idea but for it's purpose and style is was creative in the sense that aesthetically it was pleasing. So if I made my idea more individual and original then the meaning of the advert would have been lost, the point was to clearly send a message which I believe my advert does.

Furthermore, I think that my advertisement was not only appropriate for it's style but to it's audience. I had a quite broad demo-graphic (a mass market audience) and therefore by keeping it somewhat simple but still effective, it allowed the message to get across to my audience as well as being relevant. My advert was promoting a environmental charity therefore by presenting visuals of trees and pollution it was relevant, where as if I didn't do this then it would be besides the point, possibly making my audience miss my intentions and being irrelevant and inappropriate.

Throughout this whole process I did a lot of pre-production planning to ensure that my ad kept to my original intentions which it has. However, visually, my advert didn't completely follow my storyboard/script it still kept to my intentions of promoting my original charity and raising awareness. Like mentioned, the only things that changed where that the advert wasn't filmed exactly like I planned it to be, however this was actually a good thing as it actually made my advert more technically creative.

When it comes to the technical conventions such as use of camera, editing, lighting, sound and music, it was definitely effective and successful. Firstly, the use of camera was effective because there were many wide shots which allowed a big view of the landscape and therefore show the pollution to the environment which meant that my audience would clearly see the damage. Also, the lighting was effective as through editing I added a duller filter to the shots of the polluted environment and a brighter filter to the fixed environment, this gave a connotation of dark being bad and bright being good therefore having a better effect on my audience. Lastly, the use of sound and music were effective because I had sad orchestral music in the background which evoked an emotional response from my audience. Furthermore, my voice over was effective because it persuaded as well as informing my audience about my charity and what they do.

Lastly, the persuasive technique that I used that were effective was having an emotional response from my audience. By this I mean that through the technical conventions such as lighting and sound, it played to my audiences' fears and desires. By visually showing the endangered environment it evoked an emotional response of my audience feeling either sad, guilty, worried (etc) and this therefore meant that they would feel persuaded to either donate to the charity or help raise awareness.

Overall, I found that the whole process had to be done in a precise way to ensure that my initial ideas were kept to and pushed through to be as successful/effective as possible. When it came to planning I had to make sure that every detail was perfected through the use of taking other's feedback and using it to adjust my idea and make it even better. Then through filming and editing I had to ensure that I was using technical and persuasive conventions/techniques to make sure that my ad was effective. I believe that my advert was successful in keeping to the original task of promoting an original product and the only things I would change was to possible make it slightly more unique, but overall I am happy with my final outcome.