The project asked us to form a team and each create a 30 second to 1 minute long Christmas advert. Each member of the team would direct an advert each, our team was made up of 4 people and there for we would create 4 adverts. We started by brainstorming ideas together in our group, we took inspiration from previous Christmas adverts from brands such as John Lewis. Deciding that we wanted to make an advert in the style of a John Lewis advert we began researching the brands advertising campaigns of the past and eventually came up with our idea. The idea was that our advert would be one big story split into 4 parts, we would each direct a part each. The story was of a little boy who wanted to show his appreciation for his single mother by getting her Christmas presents. This idea was developed over time as our original idea involved the little boy being greeted by the gift of a new sibling as his parents come home on Xmas day from the hospital with the boys new born brother (explaining why he was left alone), however we wanted to focus more on the little boy and thought that the original idea focused to much on the family so we changed it. I think that our idea was good and fit with John Lewis's theme of adverts as it was very cute and tried to trigger emotion in the advert. I think our research helped us greatly as we discovered how the advert should be structured and learnt what type of music that John Lewis were likely to apply to an advert. The music had to be soft and slow, with thoughtful lyrics that match the on screen actions, we found that acoustic covers were used in most of John Lewis's Christmas advertisements. I think that my skills in managing a team and more practical skills including using the camera and gaining experience with it have developed over the project. For example I think I am becoming more confident in giving my team instructions and having faith in them fulfilling there roles as a member of the team. I think I have also gained valuable experience in working with child actors as I had previously never done this, the most important thing when working with them from what I gathered was patience, as our child actor was trying to be funny on set sometimes it took a while to get the right take without him messing around. Eventually we go all of the shots that we needed though.
The feedback we got from our focus group was as expected, they thought that it wasn't logical for a child to be left at his home alone like portrayed in the advert. Lot of people mentioned it so we went out and tried to fix this by getting someone to play the child's carer in a grandma, we took a panning shot of the grandma asleep on the sofa. Therefor it is implied that the boy has not been left on his own just that his carer has fallen asleep.
In the shoot we tried to get a good variation of shots, for example we had canted shots, close ups and longs shots however we didn't use all these shots when it came to editing the advert. But the advantage of having all these extra shots means that we didn't have to go back to get shots to fill gaps. We tried a range of techniques including fading shots from unfocused to focus and panning shots. We attempted tracking shots but the lack of space hindered us.
We tried to convey a feeling of joy in our advert, it was suppose to be emotional as the little boy shows his love and appreciation for his mother after everything she has done for him. It shows that Christmas isn't just about getting presents to the little boy, he is excited to see his mothers reaction to the present she got him.
I am quiet happy with my final piece, I think that the story has continuity and is understandable. It is simple yet effective as it is quiet emotional, the emotions comes from the last few scenes were the little boy looks sad waiting for his mother all of a sudden his face lights up as she walks through the door. I liked this moment in particular as I thought that it conveyed a message of giving and joy. If I could change anything I would get better shots of the little boy waking up and walking through the house, space and lighting really limited us. For example when shooting in the boys bedroom we couldn't get a prefect shot because there was very little room to shoot, as well as this the lighting was quiet bad and something I would change if I did this project again.
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