Evaluation
This project was our advertising assignment 'It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas - The advertising industry'. For this assignment our group of 4 (Myself, Kane, Danniella & Jess) each had to make an Christmas advert for the same brand following the same theme.
We started completely from scratch. First we had to think of which brand we wanted to represent. As a group we agreed John Lewis would be the best choice because they had a very distinguishable style which we would have to replicate. John Lewis are known for the emotionally engaging, story driven adverts so we had to think of an emotionally engaging plot for our own adverts. My idea was to follow the point of view of a young boy who's dad leaves to go to the army and he misses Christmas for several years in a row. He always gets a present from his dad every year until one year he goes downstairs to see there is no present from his dad and he assumes the worst however his dad comes in surprising him. There were minor changes but I mostly stuck to this idea for the final product.Other people's ideas, however, did change. For example Jess' original idea would have been too complicated as it involved the protagonist magically making a whole town Christmas. We tried to make the advert easier to make so instead Jess had an idea of a sick person at Christmas and then the idea was mixed with the original and the new idea was someone magically decorating the house for a sick person at Christmas.
For inspiration for our adverts we went straight to previous John Lewis adverts. We didn't look at much else other than this. By watching this we got a good idea of how they are put together and it gave us a better understanding. We knew which type of music to use, how they tend to be filmed etc. This would make our adverts more authentic and more fitting to John Lewis.
I feel I've developed my skills very well during this project. On my advert shoot, we had to wait for the actor to arrive so we got on with filming the shots where we didn't need him. One of these shots was the zooming shot where the middle present stays still and the presents around it change (to show passage of time). While it seemed like a simple task we had to organise the presents in a way which would make make each shot look as different as possible. We also decided that it would be a good idea to clearly show that the character is getting older. To do this we had only childish wrapping paper on the presents in the first shot and as we progressed through the years we had an increasing amount of more mature wrapping paper until we had only mature wrapping paper. This was a large amount of detail for such a short scene in the advert. I feel I've learnt more about set design in this project and I now see that even the tiniest details matter. This was my first time directing (as I was DoP on the music video project) so once the actor arrived it was my first time having to really instruct an actor around. I had given tips when I was DoP but this time it was fully my responsibility. Not only did I have to instruct the actor, the actor was very young so it was even more challenging. I was also at some of Danniella's shoot as camera operator. This turned out to be a difficult process as well since almost none of the filming went to plan and we had to change what we wanted to do completely. However it turned out well in the end and we got some good, successful footage.
Once I'd completed my advert I showed it to a focus group. The response I got in the questionnaire was very positive which I was pleased with. The only negatives I did receive was the way I showed the passage of time with the time lapsed sky however I had nothing to replace this with so I couldn't change it completely. Instead I edited the colouring of the sky to see if it could fit more with the rest of the advert and hopefully it was successful.
When editing I had to put together the zooming out shot I mentioned earlier. I had never done this before and it was very experimental to me. Thankfully it came together nicely and looked exactly how I wanted it to. The cut's between the shots are smooth and there is no movement of the middle present.
One mistake I made directing was that I forgot to get a crucial shot. The shot I missed was the shot of the presents without the dad's gift in the centre to show the audience that it wasn't there. Without it the scene was very unclear. Because of the missing shot I had to take a shot with a present in it into Photoshop and edit the present out. I managed to do this and luckily nobody noticed to it fits well into the advert. However I will be much more careful in the future to make sure I have every shot
Overall I'm very happy with how my final piece turned out. I got to do everything I wanted with it and the response from people watching it has been great and all the reactions I wanted people to have, they had. I feel I very much captured the emotional engagement of an official John Lewis advert in my own.
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