Allison Albee

4-9-12

7th Period- Corbett

Everyone has a favorite movie or a favorite commercial from last year's Super Bowl.

Some have a favorite television show that they watch every Monday night, while others are

counting down the days until their favorite movie is released. The film and media industry has

grown so quickly and has become so common in today's society that we don't even realize what a

huge part of our lives it has become. When I was younger I aspired to be the next James

Cameron, but as I've grown older I found the need to explore the more career-oriented fields of

the media and took my senior project as the chance to try my hand at advertising. 

When starting my research, I first covered the basics. I learned that a standard

commercial can only run up to thirty seconds long, which is imperative to know. For example,

Super Bowl commercial slots can cost millions of dollars to buy out. If a commercial goes even

one second over the allotted time, the company would have to pay for two slots, so in planning a

commercial, the timing is essential. Later in my research I was surprised to find that the key to

designing a successful advertisement did not necessarily depend on choosing the right music or

using the right colors. The biggest part of an advertisement is who it is you are trying to

persuade, whether it's teenage girls, senior citizens, or middle-aged mothers. The majority of my

research was based around how to pick the perfect audience to target, and then how to best

persuade them to buy into your product. I had chosen to advertise for The Humane Society

because it is a very meaningful organization to me, but during my research I realized that it

wasn't my job to convince myself, but to convince everyone else. 

For the product of my project I chose to film a commercial and design two print

advertisements. I really enjoyed the process of creating the advertisements because it was

essentially the same process as creating a film. During pre-production I had to brainstorm and

establish everything that I wanted to convey through the ads. I chose to target people who are

skeptical about adopting a pet, and so I wanted my campaign to revolve around highlighting the

different dynamics of a dog and stress that they are not just pets. In order to make this theme

obvious I found it best to use repetition; I decided to present the saying "I am a ______, I am a

shelter dog." in each of the ads. I thought that this would allow me to expand upon all of a dog's

different qualities while still drilling the idea of adoption. Later, I had to storyboard the shots that

I needed for the commercial and plan the timing. Storyboarding not only helped me to correct the

timing if it ran over, but it also made filming a breeze because it essentially provided me a list of

exactly what I needed.

For the filming portion of my project I was fortunate enough to be able to use the school's

Canon AXH1 cameras. The filming of the commercial took place in my back yard, but for the

print ads I had to prepare a green screen for background placement. The only major issue I had

during filming was my actors, Dino and Pebbles. There were times when it was difficult to keep

them in one position for very long because I could not have a leash in the shots. Luckily, I made

excellent use of my Milkbone dog treat supply and was able to get them to stay still long enough

to capture what I needed for the ads. 

Once I had all of the shots that I needed, I was able to move onto my favorite part, post-

production. I used both Final Cut Express and iMovie to edit the commercial and edited the print

ads on Photoshop. While editing the commercial I came across the issue that the lighting over the

green screen was too bright, which caused my dog's fur to blend with the color of the screen once

I replaced the background. I was worried at first, but managed to edit together an alternate

ending with the extra shots that I had. (SHOW COMMERCIAL) While I was very comfortable

working with this video editing software, I was a bit worried about using Photoshop. My

facilitator, Dr. Estapa, who is also my video production teacher, started me off by learning to use

the cloning tool, which later proved to be the most useful. Photoshop's cloning tool allows you to

duplicate portions of a picture and seamlessly copy it to another section of the photo. I was able

to utilize this tool most noticeably when editing my basset hound's photo; along with an arm

holding her in place across the shot, Pebbles had six inches of drool dripping out of her mouth.

With the cloning tool, I was able to duplicate her fur and copy it over both the arm and the drool,

basically erasing the imperfections. Along with the cloning tool I learned to use the eraser tool to

replace the background and also made use of the text features. I had originally not intended to

use the eraser tool, but the shot that I liked the best of Pebbles was actually taken just for fun and

turned out really well. The picture was not taken on the green screen, so I was not able to use

background replacement, but after exploring Photoshop a bit I found that with the eraser tool I

could give the photo a white background. Photoshop had always made me nervous, but after

much practice I felt very proud with the product.

Throughout my project I found that I had the most fun filming and editing as opposed to

actually designing the advertising campaign. While I found my research to be very interesting

and drafting the campaign was a fun challenge I have decided that I would prefer to solely

pursue the media aspect of my project. I've always had so much fun filming and editing footage

and I feel much more comfortable in my abilities to use Photoshop now. I would love to one day

edit film and photography and possibly make a business out of it. I am so glad that I explored

these fields through my project and look forward to studying mass media arts at the University of

Georgia next year! Thank you so much for your time.