Advert Evaluation
The advert me and my group created was one advertising Mac Make up. Mac is a popular brand used by women of different colours. Mac sells a range of different products, which we chose to advertise in our advert. The main products we advertised were lipstick, Lip-gloss and Fake Eyelashes.
In the beginning we have a close up shot that zooms out into a medium shot and then a long shot of Karina, which takes up to about 1-2 seconds. This shot was very stable. In the next few shots its Karina walking down the road. We edited the colours so that everything in the background was black and white and Karina in blue to show that she stands out from the rest because she uses Mac. Most of the advert is her walking and being acknowledged by other people. We used some shots of Karina acting Natural and her miming ‘Mac’. One of our most interesting shots we combined was the face collage of different peoples faces cut out and formed into one like in the opening credits to ‘Ugly Betty’. This was show that Mac is a very diverse brand that specializes in makeup for all skin types. We used a storyboard to show what shots we would use and a clear description for them. This helped to speed up the filming process so that we didn’t have to keep improvising on footage.
I think that the filming went very well because we already had locations and a basic story line in mind. It was interesting to see what kind of shots we were able to come up with and what shots would work and how stable we could make them. We were able to film all of our footage in a day and a half so it left us loads of time to edit our footage. I enjoyed working with a Canon DSR because I enjoy photography and filming and have always wanted to own a Canon or a Nikon Camera. I was able to teach myself how to adjust the settings and play around with the focus.
Our group consisted of Tashayna, Karina, Aminah and myself. So I was able to work with people I already know and get to know someone new. We all worked well as a team and all contributed to the project.
I’m Most pleased with the editing because I was able to learn a new skill which most people in the class didn’t know how to do. I was able to isolate Karina and make her another colour whilst the background was black and white using Colour Correction. This effect helped put the story across of her being different from the rest. The original idea was for colour to track her as she walked down the road to show that she brought colour and life to the scene because of her make up. But because it was too difficult to find instead we had to compromise and look on YouTube for Final Cut Pro Editing Tutorials to find something similar.
Mac doesn’t advertise their products using adverts. So it was a bit difficult to find ideas. So we had to start from scratch and think what would work for a Mac advert. We had to think about different aspects like if it was suppose to be elegant, glamorous, urban, basic etc. Most but not all parts of the advert looked professional. The similarities were that we were able to have clean and stable shots, the music corresponded well to the advert, we had one main character & we had the Mac logo at the end that worked well with the black backdrop. The differences were that we had a lot of different things going on in the advert compared to a professional one, which was a big disadvantage, & we didn’t use a voice over.
The persuasive techniques we used were Celebrity endorsement, advertising beautiful women so men and women could admire them. We made sure our main character looked very natural so it would look realistic. This would draw a thin line between the advert and the audience watching so that they could that anyone can look like that.
To be honest I would like to think that our advert would sell successfully, but the advert still has things to improve on. Such as; promoting the product more (visually), having a simple story line & to have a voice over to explain the product.
The target audience was for women of all colour from ages between a teenager and an adult. Usually make up adverts are targeted to women. But our advert illustrated that Mac makeup is obviously used by teenagers too by using a teenager and advertising bright colour lipsticks such as pink, which is a young, vibrant, girly colour.
Most of the feedback we got was that we had very good and creative shots and interesting editing techniques. And how it the target audience was clear. The Constructive criticism we were familiar with before we received the feedback such as there was too much going on in the advert, it would have been better with a voice over and how the music was cut off suddenly at the end. However I was pleased with all the positive feedback we received from everyone so our group did a good job.
I weren’t happy with how the roles were distributed in the group. Half of the members in the group did a lot less than myself and one other. I think the advert would have worked much better if we all contributed equally. We had some technical difficulties and re shooting footage because it wasn’t good enough and how we kept changing ideas in our advert, which made the story line ‘cluttered’.
Next time we would use a more simple story line to improve our advert, stick to one music track, assign roles more accurately so that everyone in the group is doing something at all times, pick who’s better at doing what so that each task is performed at a good standard and for it not to be repeated and to add clearer transitions for the footage and the music.
