Below is the final edit for my college assignment to create a Christmas Advert.
The theme for this project was to create a Christmas advert. This particular advert was themed after a local milkshake and ice-cream shop, Quakes for Shakes (as seen in the advert itself), which we were granted permission to create an advert for. This is not the advert they will be using due to the copyrighted music used for the assignment, but we intend to create a non-copyright version for them to advertise their business on social media, which may get linked here. The idea was to create a child-friendly advert in the theme of other children's adverts to keep the intended audience attentive, interested and enthusiastic for the product.
We started off with the idea of creating our advert for a big toy brand, until a member of our group suggested we create the advert for a smaller, more local place to save on time and costs, as a toy advert would require the purchasing of toys, which would be difficult for college students to acquire (for American comparison, 16-18 year olds). When we realised there was a local ice-cream/milkshake brand available to use, we offered to create their adverts provided we could create our own edits for college, and we began creating ideas.
Based on the research of other children's adverts (such as the Lelli Kelly advert featured in the previous post on this blog) we determined that a non-realistic, fast paced advert was the best way to advertise for children. The shop advertised informed us that they had a polar bear suit available, which helped with both the non-realistic theme, and fitting in with being a Christmas advert, as Arctic and Antarctic animals are seen as 'Christmassy' animals. Thanks to this, we were able to create sequences of short shots involving a friend in the bear costume and the children of a very kind woman who offered to help us, to keep it relatable, interesting and surreal enough to keep the attention of children who would be interested in the product. We shot it in the ice-cream shop, which gave it more of a grounded in reality feel, but was helpful in providing advertising the shop as the product, and was a necessary sacrifice from the full Lelli Kelly research experience.
As the original idea was to create an advert for a toy brand, we looked at some adverts for brands like Smyths and Toys R Us, which gave a decent idea of how to advertise a variety of products, by keeping them as the main focus, or by showing a large range of products for brief periods at a time, which allowed us to determine that a range of products would be ideal to advertise the brand as opposed to the milkshake shown, giving us further inspiration for the advert as a whole.
As can be seen in the advert, certain techniques were used to enhance the advert. For example, the use of cuts to keep the advert fast paced and (relatively) in time with the music was done to keep the advert short and show the necessary information to try and sell the product. It also featured a few fades to give the feeling of something magical in a similar method to the animation of the Lelli Kelly advert in the research as well as fading into the name of the shop, to make it seem like a more natural and subtle cut where the music begins to fade out. There was also a variety of camera angles, such as a long shot where the girl is seen entering the shop, and a variety of close-ups and side shots, as well as several mid-shots to make the overall advert seem more varied. Some other shots not used included shots from the outside window, which weren't used due to the camera shaking, but can still be mentioned as evidence of creative techniques and styles. Stylistically, we did our best to replicate a child-oriented advert that relies on showing a series of products to advertise the brand and create an overall happy and fun advert.
During this project, I feel that I have become better at the editing software. Due to a technical difficulty, I was unable to work on it for approximately 5 days (which is why this is a little bit later than it ideally would be), and in trying to fix the issue, I grew very accustomed to the software, checking every single option to try and find what had broken, and even using other software by Adobe to try and locate the problem (which, by the way, ended up being an arbitrary, unnecessary picture file that had a long name, which ended up breaking Adobe entirely. Unrelated to the assignment, but I need to vent the frustration, and it makes this long post look even longer, which is helpful for my assignment in a way.) The shoot was very smooth, the child and person in the bear costume were very friendly and co-operative, and the shop was relatively empty throughout most of it, allowing us to record freely as much as we needed to for the advert. Unfortunately, one team member decided not to join us, and I showed up late due to the bus being slow, but overall, it worked according to plan and we were able to finish very quickly.
Despite how well things went, in a way, I wish we had explored Christmas adverts specifically a bit further, to get a feel of what else could have been done to show the shop. However, we are aware that the local weather would not have complied to make an advert that looked perfect for Christmas, making it feel somewhat unnecessary to research. Despite this, in a way, it feels it may have helped to research a little bit before going in, to make it look a little more professional, but it worked out well, and shows that the study of Christmas adverts may not have been necessary.
We showed a slightly unfinished version of the advert to a group of other college students, as well, to get their feedback. Upon review of the feedback, the biggest issue was the lack of music, which, thankfully, was just due to the technical difficulties we had been having, and has been fixed for the final version, and, thankfully, was able to fit with the edit fairly well. The only other negative feedback received was the lack of a story compared to other groups projects, but, due to this being a more kid-friendly advert, we deemed as unnecessary and didn't change, to keep things simpler.
In the edit, a more interesting decision was fading into a title card at the end, which we feared may feel too forced and sudden product placement, but overall appears to have worked fairly successfully. My edit also featured fading to white in a way of entering a fantasy, non-realistic setting at the very beginning, which also appears to have been somewhat successful in the way it transitions in time with the song to pick up the pace, and show the shop as somewhere fantastic, which, in my humble opinion, appears to have successfully worked.
Thankfully, our simple advert idea did not need to convey any messages or meanings overall, and was simply trying to show a product, which made for a task that relied more on forcing a product down the audiences throat than trying to say how magical Christmas is with family.
My final piece feels like it fits all the criteria desired, and is something I can be happy and proud of, and I particularly like the way the music works with selling the product and picking up the pace as the advert does, and I am proud of my title card at the end to finish the advert, which I made in the advanced programme of Microsoft Paint, which looks oddly professional and well-made for a small business, which I am somewhat proud to say. I am also somewhat fond of the camera angles, but the majority of camera angles were not done by me, making them more of a preference as opposed to a thing of pride (like my MS Paint title card).
If I had to change anything, I would change the issue I had with the editing software, so that the project could be finished sooner, and with more time sunk into the edit, which at points feels like it is not in-time with the music. Overall, I feel it worked out well, and with a little bit of extra time would have been perfect, but, with the circumstances given, this is as close to perfect I will get, and it's not too far off in my standards, which suits me very well.
Thank you for reading this incredibly long post, it took me a very long time.
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