Unit 1: Introduction to media processes and technical skills & Unit 2: Introduction to design and research skills in creative media production - Advertising production

Comparison of adverts

As part of our research we all went away and researched two different Christmas adverts and compared how they are different and how they are similar. I compared the 2018 John Lewis advert and Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot Christmas advert. These two adverts are very different, John Lewis tries to advertise the brand of John Lewis with their Christmas adverts and Aldi try and advertise their products that they sell with their adverts.

The John Lewis Christmas advert uses the advertisement technique with PATHOS and it makes the target audience feel happy and emotional by going through Elton John’s past and how he became famous. This advert has an emotional response with the audience because they can relate to having happy memories with Christmas and how special presents are. However in contrast to this The Aldi’s Christmas advert uses the advertisement technique Plain Folks, by emphasising with their advert that Aldi’s products are good value for ordinary people.

Secondly the John Lewis advert uses the song ‘Your song’ by Elton John as the music track for the John Lewis advert. This song is emotional and relates to the advert as it is about Elton John’s life and how he became famous. Furthermore the song creates an emotional response and it doesn’t advertise John Lewis products, but John Lewis as a brand. John Lewis also begin the advert by using diegetic sounds of Elton John playing the piano at the end of the advert with young and older Elton John playing the piano with non-diegetic sounds. In contrast Aldi’s 2019 Christmas advert they use a parody of the song ‘Let me entertain you’ by Robbie Williams. With this advert they change the lyrics of the song to Christmas food and products which they sell at Aldi. This is shown with the line ‘bring those mince pies over here, with cream’. Aldi wants to advertise their products in a fun and different way, and appeal to more of a younger audience with how silly and childish the song and advert is.

In addition, the 2018 John Lewis advert uses many close ups of older and younger and older Elton John, having close ups of their face creates more emotion and emphasises his memory from a child to an adult. Secondly, near the end of the John Lewis they have close up of the younger Elton John playing the piano then it cuts to a close up of older Elton’s Johns hand playing the same notes on the piano. This further emphasises how much the present (piano) has had an impact on his life when he got the piano as a child. The Aldi’s Christmas advert is an animation and is a skit on the movie ‘The Greatest Showman’. This is a well-known and popular movie meaning that it will entertain the audience even more when they recognise the references to the movie. Aldi advert is animated making it more childish and humorous for the audience. Also the advert uses wide shots of the main character (Kevin the Carrot) surrounded by the Aldi Christmas products such as mince pies and Christmas turkeys. This creates a happy atmosphere with the wide shots being fun with Kevin the Carrot dancing with all the Aldi products.

In the 2018 John Lewis advert the main character is Elton John as the adverts explores his life and shows that his passion for music started with getting a piano for Christmas. John Lewis uses the advertisement technique ETHOS. They use this advertisement technique to appeal to credibility. They appeal to credibility by having the advert based around a famous and well known popstar, Elton John. However, Aldi uses the character Kevin the Carrot who is an animated character that Aldi created. They have this character to give a fun and humorous theme to their advert as they use this character and multiple other cartoon vegetables and fruit with their adverts.


Finally, the John Lewis advert target audience is targeted at middle age people and any Elton John fans, however anyone can relate to this advert because they can remember happy memories during Christmas, also they can relate to getting a present that was special and important. Secondly, Aldi’s Christmas advert is targeted towards more of a younger audience, this is because they have funny cartoon characters which highlight the younger audience. Furthermore, the advert is aimed at family’s emphasising that Aldi is a family fun shop and it is for everything.

Pre-Production
Monday 18th November 2019
We all went and did some research about John Lewis and what they do to appeal to the audience.  Then on Monday 18th November we all discussed the research we did.  We looked at the themes in John Lewis adverts that we wished to replicate such as using a cover of a song and using themes of family and love. We also went away and thought of different ideas and different stories of what our adverts could be about. We all had good and interesting ideas but we decided to go with my idea of an elderly lady reminiscing about her family on Christmas and using the theme of family and love to connect emotionally with the audience. Furthermore I had an idea of using photo frame to do nice and complex transitions and I wanted to use photo frames to show the memories that the elderly woman has with her family. We then brainstormed different ideas and we finally had our story together.

Tuesday 19th November 2019
On Tuesday we started to plan out our pitch and how we would present our idea to make it fit the aesthetic of a John Lewis advert.  We researched about audience and what demographic we wanted to sell too, we wrote out our proposal as well and made sure our idea was finalised and ready to be shown and make it as professional as possible, covering all aspects of our advert with detail from music to certain shots we wanted to achieve, even planning out contingencies and sorting out locations and actors to use during the shoot.
Wednesday 20th November 2019
On Wednesday we presented our pitch to our class and tutor, explaining what we were hoping to achieve and how we were going to achieve those goals in detail. We had to do an introduction about our team, explain research we have undertaken about John Lewis, skills we will bring to the project, target audience, contingency plans and locations for filming. We all had to speak with confidence and excitement to show that we believe in our idea and that we are excited for this project.









Monday 25th November 2019
On Monday I made a detailed script for our film so we knew exactly what would happen in each scene in detail. Including whether it would be interior or exterior or day or night as well as breaking down each part into scenes.  This would help the actors know what they would be doing in this advert. Furthermore we did research about the locations we could use to film our John Lewis advert. We first looked at the old woman's house, we looked at each of our house's and friends houses and to see which one looked the most John Lewis. We also needed a house with a good set-up so we could be able to do the dolly track shot. After looking around we decided to use my Nana's house as it is perfectly set up for the dolly track shot and the fireplace shot. Secondly the house has a nice and friendly feeling which fits John Lewis's brand. Secondly we researched different work place's for the second scene when the daughter declines the phone call. We originally were going to film on Yarm High Street however this would of been a problem because Yarm is very busy during the day and we would of been behind on filming because of the travel from college to Yarm. So instead we used some office building near the college and this worked better because it created a nice background for this scene. 
Tuesday 26th November 2019
On Tuesday we planned out all the shot lists and story board so we knew exactly what we were filming and how we were achieving all the shots, to give us a better idea of what our final piece would look like, we also made a shooting schedule to know what days we would be filming and to make sure we were on the right track with filming and production. I then took pictures of the set where we would be filming at the elderly woman's scene. Taking pictures allowed me to show the team where all the cameras will be and show them how we are going to film each scene. Furthermore, this helped us with the camera plans and where we would set up the camera for this scene.





Wednesday 27th November 2019
On the Wednesday we made a risk assessment for anything that could go wrong on set and how we would deal with it if it did. We finished off the Shot list and made a camera plan for the certain setups we would be using to film in the house. When I first made the camera plans I did it wrong. We started drawing it not from a birds eye point of view and we didn't have the correct symbols for actors and the camera. Once we asked for the teachers opinion we understood how to do the camera plans and how important they are. Furthermore, using camera plans allowed everyone (cast and crew) to understand where the camera will be set up and what shots will be filmed first for each scene. 

Filming the advert


Tuesday 3rd December 2019
On Tuesday 3rd December we started filming, we started with scene two when the daughter declines the phone call when walking away from work. When looking at locations we originally planned to film this scene at Yarm high street, however if we filmed there it would of been busy during the day and the travel to Yarm high street  would leave us behind on schedule with filming and editing. Instead we decided to film at the work buildings over Stockton Bridge, overall this was a better location with the background being visually effective. We began filming and from the story board we had a master shot and wide shot so in edit we could cut in between. Furthermore, we had a tracking shot of us following Danniella down the stairs. We wanted to keep the camera as smooth as possible when following the actress, Danniella, walking down the stairs. We use a fig rig to make the shot smooth, so the camera wouldn’t shake when we followed Danniella walking down the stairs. This shot was useful because we wanted an interesting way to show her walking down the stairs to not make the scene boring. However when we reviewed the footage we realised that the lighting was bad and we tried changing the setting on the camera and the lighting didn’t change much. So instead we switched camera to a DSLR this allowed the footage to be more crisp and we changed the exposure on the camera to let more light in so the footage was brighter. The first shot that we got was a master shot of the daughter walking away from work and declining the phone call. We got this shot as a safety shot so we could cut in between the footage.  Also we were going to have a point of view shot of the phone ringing and the daughter declining it. This shot didn’t work because you could see the reflection of the camera in the phone, secondly if we used this shot it would be wrong product placement because the phone that we used was an iPhone. Instead in edit we cut in-between the mother ringing and the daughter declining emphasising the daughter declining the phone call.


Wednesday 4th December 2019
On Wednesday 4th December we began filming the first scene, for this scene we used a dolly track to get ambitious and different shot. Travel to the location where we were filming made it difficult for us to have a lot of time to film. Overall we had about an hour to film all the shots in scene 1. Our plan was to get the elderly lady walk into the kitchen and the camera follows her on a dolly track from the opposite side of the room.  Then when the elderly woman comes back into the room the camera follows her walking back in, but all the Christmas decorations are up. This was a very ambitious shot which did work in edit. To get this shot we needed to keep the camera in the exact same position so the transition was smooth. However because we didn’t have long to film this scene we couldn’t set up all the Christmas decorations, we could only set up the Christmas tree and put lights on it. If I was going to film this scene again I would plan more in advanced so we could set up more decorations to make our advert look more Christmassy.  The second shot we got was the elderly lady looking at the photo of her and her daughter. We wanted the image in the picture frame to come to life, we did this by putting a green piece of card in the picture frame. In edit this would allow us to make the picture come to life, emphasising the old woman remembering her time with her daughter. Overall this worked in edit and it looked good, however due to us having limited time the old woman is in the same clothes in photo frame. Furthermore we got a close up of the elderly woman looking happy and sad.We decided to do a close up of the elderly woman's face, we did this shot because we wanted it to feel emotional that the woman has been left alone. This shot is scene in many other John Lewis adverts including the man on the moon, they do this to emphasise how alone they are and create an emotional impact on the audience.  As a director I had to make sure the actress knew what they were doing and give good direction so we got the correct emotion. The final shot that we needed was the elderly woman walking back to her seat and ringing her daughter. One thing that didn’t look John Lewis was that in the background was there was a bit of mess in the background, subtle things like this wouldn’t be used in a real John Lewis advert but other than that the shot was good.
Tuesday 10th December 2019
On Tuesday 10th December we filmed the third scene of the daughter realising that she hasn’t been spending much time with her mother. We originally planned to have children in our advert as John Lewis often use children in their adverts. However due to the time children would be able to film the advert because of school, we had to think of something different. After looking into more John Lewis adverts, they don’t always use children they often use animals to appeal emotionally with the audience. So instead we used a dog in our advert, as it would mean we were not behind schedule and so we could have something unique in the scene to make the advert stand out. As we were filming at my house we decided to use my dog in our student film John Lewis advert. The first shot was Danniella walking down the stair and the dog quickly follows. Furthermore, we had to plan this perfectly to make sure the dog didn’t move when we were filming different shots. We did this so the continuity was perfect and the advert ran smoothly. When filming the shot when the daughter realises the photo of her and the mother, we wanted to do an over the shoulder shot. The problem we had with this shot was the banister was in the way when trying to film. We fixed this problem by using depth of field with the banisters so you could clearly see the photo frame but the banisters are out of focus. We also wanted a shot from behind the dog and a POV of the daughter looking at the dog. This was difficult because we had to keep the dog in the same place, to keep continuity. We did this by holding a dog treat near the camera so we could move the dog in the same place where the dog was sitting in the previous shot. When filming the lighting was really bad, we tried changing this by having more natural light coming into the house. We also tried to use small lights to try and help the lighting. This struggled to work so we adjusted the settings on the camera. When looking back at the footage in edit, I was a bit disappointed with the lighting in the shot so I tried changing the exposure in edit. However this made the footage look grainy and was a bit frustrating. If I was going to film this again I would bring lights on set to make sure the lighting is perfect in our advert.


Wednesday 11th December 2019
On Wednesday 11th December we started filming the final scene. The scene began with the elderly lady crossing of the 25th December, this would signify that it is Christmas. We then had the daughter walking to the house, I had the direct the both actresses so they knew what they were doing in the scene. We had a problem because there was a work van in the background so for some shots we had angle the camera in a certain way so we didn’t get it in the background. Furthermore, we originally was going to have the daughter give John Lewis bags to her mother. This would have been good product placement for our advert. However the John Lewis bags were misplaced and Kai forgot to pick up the bag when collecting the camera equipment. But my contingency plan was to have presents already wrapped so the daughter had something to give to her mother on Christmas day. Overall the final scene went well because everyone was ready and the lighting was perfect for the scene. 



Research and development
In media there are two forms of research that you could undertake, market research and production research. These are the main form of research and is the research that we were undertaking when planning and filming our student film, John Lewis advert.

Market research looks at audience date, audience awareness, product reach, and competitor analysis. With audience data, John Lewis would look at the main demographic who shop at John Lewis and aim their adverts at them. Their main customers are middle aged women who are well off. Through doing this research when creating their adverts they will aim the adverts at this target audience. John Lewis do this to appeal to the main group of customers that go to John Lewis. A middle aged man who is on minimum wage wouldn’t be bothered about shopping at John Lewis so John Lewis tries to not aim their adverts at them.

Secondly, audience awareness is whether the general public know about the company John Lewis. Audience awareness shows how well John Lewis as a company is being advertised. This is evident with John Lewis adverts because their main advert comes out at Christmas time, this is because John Lewis are well known for their Christmas adverts every year. This further emphasises that John Lewis is really good with audience awareness because even if you don’t shop at John Lewis, you still heard of the company. This highlights that John Lewis are really good at audience awareness to make their company well known.

Product reach is how the advertisement reaches different types of customers. Furthermore, product reach shows how well people know about John Lewis and how they know about them. With a younger audience they would see the John Lewis brand being advertised on the internet and they would watch the John Lewis advert on YouTube. However with an older audience they would probably see John Lewis being advertised on the TV during an ad break when they are watching a TV programme.

Finally, competitor analysis is when a company researched what adverts other companies are releasing. They do this so their company stand out from other company’s when it comes to advertisement. This is why John Lewis Christmas adverts are so popular because they are so different to normal advert because they are telling a short story with their adverts.
The advantages of market research are that the researchers can improve their advert and how they advertise their brand. The disadvantages are that the sources may not be reliable because some information websites can be edited meaning that not all information could be correct. If researchers collect the wrong information then the advert won’t be as much of a success.
Production research is a pre-production research that look at assembling a crew, finding a location and financing. The researchers would gather all the correct and suitable information for the area they are looking for e.g. financial or locations. Production research also includes advertising and where it might be placed to gain the best possible reaction from the audience. John Lewis do this by putting their main advert out around Christmas.

When assembling a crew for a John Lewis advert, the company will need to assemble a team who are a specialist in their field. When getting the camera crew they will need to make sure they are all confident and strong with camera and work well as a team. Furthermore, the company need to make sure that when assembling a crew it is cost effective. Researchers would find out what locations and facilities are available and how much they will cost. When filming the John Lewis advert it would have to be cost effective because they would need to make profit with the advert. The 2019 John Lewis advert was filmed in Budapest, this would have been a cheap location because of tax cuts. This was a good location for the style of the advert John Lewis was going for.
Researchers can help the employer’s chances of creating a profit by finding out how much everything costs and try to decrease the overall cost. This could include the wages of employees, cost of equipment and other resources. This is potentially the most important part of research because it overall shows the full cost of the production. From research of my own, I found out that the 2019 John Lewis advert cost about 7 million pounds for the production of their advert.There advantages include the gain of knowledge of how much everything is going to cost and where to get all the main resources from. It will help to avoid copyright infringement to prevent buyers from being confused. Disadvantages include unreliable sources like with market research and unreliable people and suppliers which can affect the deadline date.


Our own research
When doing research, we did primary and secondary research to find out what most people enjoy about adverts and try and replicate this this our advert. This will allow our team to know if it’s the emotional Christmas adverts that they enjoy or the funny and silly adverts instead.  

Primary research is the research that we found out ourselves by doing surveys about what adverts people enjoy. From our own research people enjoyed the emotional John Lewis adverts over any other advert. Another question we asked was if they enjoy animated or real-life adverts. Most people prefer animated but due to us having a small budget and a limited amount of time we decided to do a real-life advert, as we felt it was more heart-warming and more real. Finally, we asked which John Lewis advert they liked the most, the 2018 Elton John advert was voted the favourite. This further emphasises to our group that the audience prefer a real-life story which they can relate to and more. 


We then did secondary research; this is where we look at research that we can get of the internet. With this research we carried on from our primary research and found out what sons John Lewis uses, the theme and the advertisement technique. John Lewis always use an emotional and well-known song in their Christmas adverts. Then they get someone to sing a cover of the song, so it is different and unique. The constant t theme scene throughout John Lewis adverts that we researched is feeling alone or feeling like you don’t fit in. We tried to use the theme of loneliness with the daughter ignoring her mum and her feeling lonely. Finally, the last piece of research we found out was about John Lewis using the advertisement technique PATHOS to appeal emotionally to the audience. We did this research by looking at John Lewis adverts and articles about them.







Evaluation
Our assignment was to create a John Lewis Christmas advert. John Lewis are very well known for their Christmas adverts due to them always having an emotional connection with the audience. John Lewis use the advertisement technique, PATHOS, so it appeals emotionally with the audience. As a group we brainstormed different ideas and did a vote on our favorite idea and started writing a synopsis for it. The idea that we decided to go with was of an elderly lady reminiscing about her family on Christmas and using the theme of family and love to connect emotionally with the audience. As group we agreed that it felt the most emotional and we felt like we had some ambitious ideas which were unique. 

When doing pre-production, we struggled when creating the camera plans, this is because we didn’t draw it as a bird’s eye view of the set.  As a group we soon understood how important camera plans are for the camera team. This is because it allows everyone on set to understand where each camera will be set up at each time.  Overall with our pre-production folder we realised how important this was before filming our advert. The pre-production sheets e.g. storyboard, camera plans, shooting schedule and shooting script. This helped us all when we began filming because having camera plans allowed the whole camera team to know which shot to film first and where in the room it would be filmed. Furthermore, having storyboards allowed me to visualise my idea get the correct shots. One of our ambitious ideas was to have the photo frame come to life when the elderly lady is looking at the photo. We had multiple ideas for how this would work, and as a group we decided that we would use a green card and use the effect ultra-key in edit. After doing some research I figured out how to use ultra-key and put an image/video behind the picture frame using the green card. I was impressed with how this turned out in the final advert because it looked realistic, however there was some grey border which was pixilated around the picture frame so with more time I would be bake to adjust the settings on ultra-key to make it look better. Finally, another thing that we learnt during editing was using the gladial blur and fading it in at the end of the advert and adding the John Lewis title with our tagline, ‘Picture Perfect Christmas’. This made our advert look more professional and made it look like a real John Lewis advert. 

The main thing that I would improve is in the third scene with the lighting. The lighting looked dark when filming. We tried fixing this issue by trying to get more natural light into the house. This worked a bit however the scene was still very dark. We tried multiple different options such as having small lights to brighten up the scene, but this didn’t really work. We tried to fix this problem in edit by changing the exposure, however when we did this it made the shot look a bit grainy. If we were going to do this scene again, I would bring the technician lights so the scene would look perfect and brightened up. Secondly, another thing that I would re-do the first scene when the camera comes back in on the dolly track and the house is decorated for Christmas. When re-doing this scene, I would make the room more decorated and have more Christmas decoration other than just the Christmas tree with a few lights. This would make the advert look more Christmassy and give a nicer look to the house, furthermore if we had more Christmas decorations it would emphasise the change from a bare house to a fully decorated house.  However due to our time being limited we were not able to put up many Christmas decorations. Furthermore, I would also make the elderly lady change clothes when it goes from none decorated to decorated. This is because it would emphasise more to the audience that the elderly lady was alone all year round.  

Once we finished our first edit of the advert, we got 3 unbiased people to watch our advert and give us feedback of what they liked and what they disliked. The positives that we got from the first edit was that they liked the idea and the concept. Others said they liked the photo frame idea and the transitions at the beginning of the advert. However, some negative feedback that we got was that it felt too long for a John Lewis advert and some of the shots felt too long. We fixed this by getting rid of a few seconds from a few shots. Which allowed the advert to flow at faster pace and made the advert be around 2 minutes, which is the average time for a John Lewis advert. Secondly, the advert felt too slow compared to the song and the song could fit the advert. When watching it back over we realised that we could shorten or have a shot on for a bit longer to keep the, so the pace of the song matches the advert. 

Overall, I think the project turned out well and the story was very emotional and happy at the end which is like most John Lewis adverts. However, most John Lewis adverts are animated and emotional but different. However, we only had limited equipment, so we had to create a real-life story, instead of having an animated like previous John Lewis adverts. However, our advert does compare well with previous John Lewis adverts as we used a well-known and emotional song for our advert, which was a cover as John Lewis often get another artist to cover a song. We also used the advertisement technique PATHOS in our advert, by having the bond between the mother and daughter broken at the beginning of the advert and the relationship restored at the end of the advert. Finally, John Lewis often use children or animals in their adverts to appeal to the emotion of the audience. We did this in our advert by using a dog to create a more of an innocence to our advert and make it more like a John Lewis advert. 

John Lewis - Student advert


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