Espresso Burst Advert Evaluation

1) What was the task you were given and who was your target audience? As the audience wasn't typical of the product how did you manage to sell it? What was the name of your brand?

Our task was to invent a product and to create a TV advert. We got given the task of creating a new sweet for middle-aged, city working women. In order to sell our product we called it 'Espresso Burst' to highlight it's caffeine-like features to give people a boost to their day ahead.

2) Who did you work with and how did you divide the research, planning, filming and responsibilities?

For this assessment I worked with Molly, Hannah, Rebeka and Billy. In order to work quickly and efficiently, we each performed a certain role. I was in charge of creative design and filming. I created a storyboard as a rough plan and designed the title and font. Molly was in charge of the blog, ensuring that we had everything completed to a high standard. Hannah was our editor, and Billy was the production assistant. Molly took the role of the business woman, whilst Hannah, Billy and Rebeka, with the addition of Mollie and James were the other actors.

3) How did you plan your sequence?

We planned our video by first preparing a storyboard to get a rough idea of what scenes we wanted to include and what order we would want them in. We then applied it to a shooting schedule and decided to film the videos in an order that would save us time, as we only had one hour booked in the conference room to film our advert-with a substantial high standard. After we had the filming done we then edited the clips and re arranged them into the order we felt was best for the advert and made it as cohesive as possible, to ensure our intended message and story line got across.

4) What research and planning did you undertake?

Before filming our advert, we had to watch and analyse three similar adverts in order to understand and get inspiration from other sweet products. We also researched several slogans from other products, making sure our one was unique from most others. 

5) What was you initial feedback? What did others say about your production? How successful was your sequence?

People who watched our productions enjoyed the fading of the song, as it helped create the emphasis on the positive atmosphere. Moreover, I believe that our sequence was a success, as those who watched our advert understood the concept and encoded message that eating these sweets can give you confidence and popularity.

6) Identify what went well and with hindsight what you do to improve/do differently.

Overall I think the advert went really well as we managed to get all the filming done in a short space of time. Some things that did go well was the overall storyline to our advert as we all had the same vision and therefore were easily able to create a storyboard, shooting schedule and edit the advert which also went really well as we reflected the emotions in the scene through the colour scheme by setting half the advert in colour and the other half in black and white to reflect the woman's struggle before taking the sweet and her success afterwards. The song choice for our advert also accurately matched the advert as we used 'I will survive' by Gloria Gaynor which emphasized the woman's struggle alongside the black and white filter and the clock ticking sound effect to emphasize her lateness, the chorus of the song also worked well with the woman's success after taking the sweet as the song becomes upbeat and adds a positive mood to the advert which is also aided by the advert coming back in colour.

However, if it were possible to have two hours filming time in the conference room we would've been able to have more scenes to choose from for the advert and re take some that we had to cut. Furthermore, it would have also been good to include more actors to fill up the empty space at the conference room to emphasize the awkward and happy atmosphere, and to convey emotions we needed in the advert to allow the audience to understand the purpose of our product.

7) What have you learnt from completing this task (groups skills, communication, compromise, using your initiative, creative input, production skills, editing etc)

During this task, I have learnt the importance of time management. It helped significantly when we each gave each other specified roles and tasks, as we could get most of the planning and preparation done all at the same time; it would have wasted a lot of time doing it consecutively. 

8) Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing your future productions?

The understanding of time management has become a crucial part of producing a good advert. This helps to complete future productions, as it provides me with the knowledge that by planning efficiently, it makes the task less stressful. Moreover, by having a clear storyboard and idea of your filming schedule also helps to iterate how planning can make your overall production run smoothly.