MS2 – coursework

Option 1 – Charity Advertising Campaign

Part Three – Production

Creating 3 print based adverts for your chosen charity. This is the big bit – this will require excellent organization skills, time, effort, creativity and a willingness to accept the old cliché: “If at first you don’t succeed, then try & try again.” For many of you, creating a media product that is technically proficient, professional looking and creative will be a totally new experience. Furthermore the challenge will involve using computer software that you have never used before – therefore you will need to be patient and willing to explore. Not get frustrated and make absolutely sure that if you need help, that you ask for it! The nature of production work is that you will work to your own timetable – everyone will be at different places at different times, coming up with ideas, designing logos, arranging photoshoots etc. Some of these things cannot be done in the classroom during lessons, which is not always the best place for suddenly ‘finding’ your creative side. Therefore after you have had a couple of introductory sessions on the software being used and planning some drafts of ideas you will then use time outside of lessons to create your 3 print based advertisements. Your work can be submitted to me at any time for me to check but the final deadline remains the same.

Hand in your print based adverts on………………. Before discussing steps to help you plan and organise your work, I would like to take the opportunity to draw your immediate attention to four places to go when you are stuck…

1. Your research – you should have done lots of this. This means you have lots of examples of excellent, successful (and not so successful) charity advertising campaigns. If you haven’t got enough research – do some more! I am not advocating that you steal ideas, slogans or logos – and certainly using other people’s images won’t earn you many marks – but being inspired by other ideas is fine. Being influenced and using research can really kick start your creativity.

2. Your target audience – you should know exactly who your target audience are and this should influence every decision you take. More on this later…

3. ME – My job is to help you learn, and to assess your success and guide as necessary. It is not my job to reprimand you when work isn’t done or handed in on time – however that is what it unfortunately becomes. Don’t hide work from me – let me see it, don’t wait to resolve an issue – ask as soon as it becomes an issue.

4. YOU – how hard have you tried to solve the problem? Have you tried again?

Planning & Drafting your ideas. You may already have some strong ideas for your 3 print based adverts through the work you did for your pre-production storyboards. You may continue and use some of the ideas from this TV advert as a basis for the print based campaign. Or you may have less of an idea. This is fine – and as with the Pre-Production storyboards, good ideas will come more with hard work than waiting for a flash of inspiration. Draw up some rough ideas for layouts of your ads and think about what you want them to look like, what you want them to say and importantly how you want them to say it. Here are some tips to prepare for your drafting sessions:

• Print out some of your research of print based adverts and put them around you. • Write down some of the key facts relating to your charity – that you think are the

bits that really get the message across and ‘sell’ your charity. • Have some kind of profile of your target audience to hand – who are they, what will

they respond to? • Have a pencil/pen and a few sheets of plain A4 paper and a notepad so you can

sketch ideas – and write down anything that comes into your head. Even the smallest idea can start the ball rolling so write anything down that is inspirational, tragic, unusual, moving, thought provoking.

• Use ways of organising your thoughts that suits YOU! Some people bullet point, some people draw mindmaps, some people draw pictures or doodles, some people use post-it notes, others use big sheets of sugar paper.

• Draw outlines of your ads on A4 paper once you have a good idea. Keep working through this process and you will come up with a few strong ideas. Decide which your favourite is – at this point it’s fine if it is only an idea for one advert. REMEMBER: You are creating a campaign so your adverts should be:

Similar in style and different in content. or

Similar in content and different in style!

If you have a strong idea for one advert then the second and third will follow at some point! There are still a lot of decisions to make – and at this stage your idea might just be a slogan, or a picture or even just a layout! Remember this is an advertisement, all advertisements are trying to sell something. In the case of charity adverts, they are trying to sell an idea so that people will give money to help a good cause. All adverts will sell their product in the same way:

Appealing to their Target Audience so we return to our old friends…

Audience Categorisation & The Lines of Appeal When it comes to writing your report you will need to evaluate the success of your product. To do this you will need to know how your products appeal to their audiences. You won’t know how successful they are unless you know who your target audience is. You should already have a profile of your target audience completed as part of the Tasks you completed during the pre-production process. If you didn’t do this, then now would be a good time to draw up a profile of exactly who you want to aim your print based adverts at. This, in turn, will help you know how to appeal to them. Ways of categorising your target audience:

• Young & Rubicam’s 4Cs • Lifestyle Categories • Status / Income • Subjectivities (audience profile)

The most useful thing about knowing who your target audience is – is that it means you know how to target them. To do this we need to look at the Lines of Appeal and Persuasive Devices. I’m sure you have them all tattooed on your memory, but just in case any have slipped your mind…

• Happy families - everyone wants to belong • Rich, luxurious lifestyles - aspirational • Dreams and fantasy • Successful romance and love • Elite people or experts • Glamorous places • Successful careers • Art, culture & history • Nature & the natural world • Beautiful women • Self-importance & pride • Comedy & humour • Childhood - can appeal to either nostalgia or to nurturing instincts • Need for sex • Need for affiliation • Need to nurture • Need for guidance • Need to aggress • Need to achieve • Need to dominate

• Need for prominence • Need for attention • Need for autonomy • Need to escape • Need to feel safe • Need for aesthetic sensations • Need to satisfy curiosity • Physiological needs • Humour • Music • Repetition • Intertextual references • Elite Persons • Reward/Punishment • Use of stereotypes • Shock Tactics • Emotive Language • Use of Facts/Stats

Choosing a name & Designing a logo This is another task that should have been completed during the Pre-Production phase of the coursework. The name should reflect the aims of the charity and/or the problems it deals with. Charity names can be acronyms like Oxfam (Oxford Committee for Famine Relief), or abbreviations like NSPCC. Some use parts of words to make people think, like Scope. Others use phrases that make a play on words such as mental health charity Rethink. Some combine two words to make one word which explains the problems and solutions in one go, like Addaction. To be effective Logos should be simple and to the point - think of how simple NSPCCs Full Stop logo is! Don’t try too hard to be clever, you may just confuse people – think about the strange 2012 Olympics logo?! Charities in particular will often use an emblem or a symbol to represent them – think of the Panda now synonymous with the World Wildlife Fund. The element which adds anchorage to the logo is the charity’s name – written in a specific font. Greenpeace has a very distinctive handwriting style of font which implies freedom and individuality. Barnardos uses a formal, almost old fashioned style which reflects their place as well established in society – the choice of green is also a very calming and positive colour. In creating a logo – you can search the web for images that you think represent your charity. Or you can take a photograph of an object and alter it in Photoshop to emphasise the elements you think symbolize your charity.

Writing Copy Copywriting for adverts has been the humble beginning for some of the world’s most famous authors and screenwriters. Therefore it is not an easy job and will require drafting. You want to be able to get appoint across in a memorable way without being too vague or giving too much information that may put an audience member off. It needs to be clear what the message is, anchor meaning to any images and, most importantly, reach your target audience. Adverts, unlike other written texts, are always persuasive and your copy should reflect this. Use the information you have drawn up about the target audience as well as the Lines of Appeal information to think of suitable ideas. Also remember that adverts will use the same kind of linguistic devices again and again, luckily these are the same kind of linguistic devices that you will have studied in GCSE English when you were asked to write to persuade. Here is a reminder of some of the techniques you will have used before, and which are commonly used in adverts:

• Juxtaposition • Hyperbole (exaggeration) • Groups of 3 • Adjectives/Adverbs (descriptive language) • Alliteration • Onomatopoeia • Simile/Metaphor/Personification • Facts/Statistics • Emotive language • Direct Address • Personal Pronouns • Orders/Commands • Rhetorical Questions • Play on words (puns) • Well known phrases (sometimes these can be a bit clichéd, so be careful)

Also look in the Lines of Appeal handout for a list of words that are commonly used in advertising. Remember that charities often try to get a serious message across in a unique, thought provoking and/or emotional way. When marking the adverts I should feel that a lot of thought has gone into your decision making process. Finally, go back to your research and look at the copy on other print ads. Sometimes it is very small – but there are certain conventions of charity ads that mean that they always have certain information.

Taking Photos The exam board requires you to have provided the majority of your own images (as opposed to ‘finding’ them on the internet and elsewhere). This means that you will at some point be taking your own photographs. Before you start you should have a very good idea of what you are going to take pictures of. Your draft sketches and ideas should have a rough outline of what pictures will be in your advert even if they are not drawn very well. You cannot base the idea for an advert around a picture you have. The idea must come first! From your idea two things should be clear before you take your photograph:

1. Mise-en-scene 2. Shot type

Mise-en-scene This is everything that will be in shot and everything in shot needs to be considered. Roughly broken down we can reduce it to a few key points.

• Characters/Models – which includes use of costume and make-up • Lighting – Low key or High Key, Artificial or Natural • Setting – Indoors or Outdoors, you will have to ‘dress’ the set as you want it • Props – what things are important to the advert, what needs to be in shot

All of these things need to be considered and dealt with by YOU. Providing costume and make-up is not the responsibility of someone who has kindly agreed to be your model. Get props before you go to a shoot, don’t assume they will be there when you get there. Tips on mise-en-scene: Lighting - Although you may have a good idea as to what you want your lighting to be like, always take photos in plenty of light. In Photoshop you can make things look darker very effectively, making them look lighter realistically is almost impossible. Be wary of using flashes as they often bleach out details or only light certain areas of your shot. The more light there is when you shoot will also produce a higher quality of image for downloading. Setting – Think carefully about setting, particularly about background. Many adverts have an image that takes up the entire space of the ad, so while the background of your image is important – remember that you may be placing copy over the top so you might not want it cluttered or dark all over. If you are taking a photo and know that you don’t want the background and plan to delete it – then take the photo against as plain a background as absolutely possible.

Shot Type Your draft advert should make it clear what type of shot you are going to use. Make sure you stick to this and get the photos you want that you know represent what you have drawn in your draft ads. Take your drafts with you to the shoot to act as a kind of storyboard. Take lots of photos of the same thing, it’s good to have a choice. Only once you have done this can you start to experiment with shots that weren’t on your original design. This is worth doing because you can sometimes be surprised how well something works that you didn’t expect. The key with taking pictures is to take more photos than you need, if you have organised an afternoon at the beach with models who you’ve convinced to wear swimming costumes and beach balls as props in order to take photos for your advert about climate change for an environmental charity, then the last thing you are going to want to do is organise it a second time because you didn’t get enough photos! A word on working with models… When you are working with people that have agreed to ‘star’ in your adverts, make sure you are very grateful and polite – but also remember that this is your project. You call the shots, your ideas will be marked. Be very clear as to what you want them to do, where you want them to stand, what facial expressions they should have. Be patient – they are doing you a massive favour; but make sure you come out of the shoot with the photos you wanted to get.

IMPORTANT TECHNICAL STUFF

Make sure that your camera is set to its highest resolution setting. If you have a camera on your phone, take some photos to import to Photoshop before you go on your shoot to check that the quality is high enough for your needs. It would be awful for you to have a great idea, plan a photo shoot, take some great pictures and then find that when they are downloaded that they are all pixilated because your camera isn’t as good as you thought it was. Test first and then either borrow a digital camera from a friend or relative – or come and see me to borrow one.

How you are marked As you can see – you are marked primarily on your Technical & Creative skills. Be imaginative and be a perfectionist. Use your research – but don’t just copy adverts. Do not be satisfied with your ads until they are exactly how you imagined them to be…

…these 3 adverts are worth a fifth of your overall grade in Media this year. So remember to spend the time and the effort. Try, and try again.