Friday, 18 March 2011

Blog 16 - Advert

Advertising is one of the key elements in the promotion of an artist or group. An example of an advert from Florence and the Machine is for her album 'Lungs'. Included on the advert is the key information; Name of the band, name of the album, the formats it is available on and the date it is released. The advert is an enlarged version of the album cover. This means that the consumer can immediately visually relate the album to this advert when they see it. This is important as it means that once they have seen the advert, the album in the shop will stand out as they have already seen the picture, immediately drawing their attention to it. The colours used on the advert are natural dark brows and greens, however, the writing stands out immediately as they have used the most contrasting colours possible; white on a black background. This makes sure that the first word you read is 'LUNGS'. This is all in capitols and is quite powerful as a word on its own which encourages you to read more to find out why its is written. The fact that Florence Welsh has a pair of lungs on the outside of her body is also quite eye catching and you can immediately associate this with the album name. Florence Welch is not making eye contact with the camera. This technique is often used in other advertising campaigns to create a connection be yourself and the subject. This technique was not adopted for this advert however as Florence Welch is looking down and turning away. This stance works well for this advert because it creates a shy but endearing quality, contrasting with the boldness of wearing a pair of lungs around her neck and therefore ultimately intriguing the audience. Another band that also incorporates 'Indie' in their hybrid genre are: We are Scientists. The colours used in this particular advert are much brighter than the colours used in Florence and the Machine's advert. This creates a less mysterious quality but instead a more up beat and joyful style. This is also enforced by having a guitar featured as well as having the two members, Kieth Murray and Chris Cain, singing in the advert. Similarly to Florence and the Machine's advert, neither band member is making eye contact with the camera. This has a different effect on the audience however as it shows them to be to emerged in their singing and enjoying it too much to notice that a picture is being taken of them. This illustrates how exciting their music is thus making the single more appealing to the audience.

When creating my advert i chose to incorporate the eye catching qualities seen in the adverts above. This made me choose to have a bright font and feature a medium close up of the person we had playing Florence Welch. The picture used for my advert relates directly to the digipack and music video. This is because the subject is wearing the same costume (including hair an make up) and is in the same location that the video was filmed and the pictures for the digipack were taken. This means that when the consumer see's the advert, they can immediately associate it with the video and the digipack, therefore making it more memorable.




This is one of the flat plans I created for my own advert. I chose to use a black and white effect to help create a more edgy and mysterious effect. This would also make facial features such as her eyes stand out. I also wanted to have the trees as a main part of the advert as they relate to the woodland setting of the video. When experimenting with this design in Photoshop however, the black and white effect did not make the advert eye catching enough. This led me to decide to use colour in my advert.





In this Flat plan I incorporated the tree image with a coffin. I created this with the idea of having all of the images (a tree and a coffin) and texts faded over each other. Similar to using a cross fade on final cut express. I also chose chose to use the same purple used in my digipack. The font used for My Boy Builds coffins is much bolder and therefore contrasts with the italic font that Florence and the Machine is written in, this was to make it stand out the most. I chose not to use this design though because when I tried to create it on photoshop, it looked to confusing and messy to have the pictures overlaying each other.









This was my final flat plan for my advert. To create this flat plan I took the idea of having Florence on it from my first flat plan and the idea of using colour for it from my second flat plan. I liked this design the most because it used a range of techniques to catch the audiences attention, including; eye contact with the subject and bright colours used for the font. I also chose to use the woodland setting again as this relates to both the digipack and the video.














For my finial advert I chose to use purple and white font on my advert as I used these colours in the digipack. I chose these colours because they contrast well against the background and compliment each other. The colour purple is also a connotation of mystery and femininity and I thought this was closely associated with Florence and the machine as well as the song, My Boy Builds Coffins.


I kept the information on my advert minimal as I felt the picture would stand out more if there was minimal text to cover it. It also makes the advert less daunting to read for the target audience.From my target audience research i found out that the audience is mostly female and has a range of ages. I feel that the purple colours used appeal to this target audience as they are associated with femininity. I also chose to use a soft italic font -Vijaya. I feel this also emphasized the femininity of the advert. The subject (Florence) is also wearing a lace top with he hair down, these re again stereotypical female qualities. I also took the genre into consideration when creating the advert. The setting in which both the photo and video were shot associates well with the usual earthy and woodland theme in Florence and the Machine's music videos.


This is the feedback I recieved for my advert:

Blog 12 - Health and Safety

It is important to ensure that when filming on set that are cast and crew members are safe and that no one is being put at risk during shooting. As we chose an outdoor set for most of our filming it was important to inform the cast of the weather conditions and the environment they would be in to make sure that everyone had correct clothing and footwear. We also conducted a 'reccy' prior to shooting as this allowed us to check the environment for any possible dangers that might occur on the day of shooting. We then signed a risk assessment prior to shooting in which we had to outline how we would avoid the following hazards; poor weather conditions, obstacles and obstructions (e.g trailing wires), flammable substances and publicly crowded environments. As the outdoor conditions we chose were not particularly crowded we were able to avoid this risk without affecting our shooting. The only other outdoor risk we would have faced during shooting was poor weather conditions, we therefore agreed to cancel shooting if it started to rain as this would damage the equipment. During our indoor filming we checked and cleared the room of all dangerous obstructions, such as unnecessary chairs and tables, before bringing in our cast member and equipment. We also ensured that all the equipment was set up before bringing our cast in the room. This was because the room wasn't particularly large and it would have been dangerous to have unauthorised people around the equipment when it is unstable and being set up.

Blog 13 - Shooting Schedule

This is the link to our shooting schedule: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xm5pUVe0R7YMN8kQ6A9aIr0HwVnN2AN1Lg8ivE80OfY/edit?hl=en#