Final Evaluation

Here I shall be evaluating my full project. I thought of an idea for what advert to make over the summer, and I decided that initially that the best idea would be to have some hipsters in a bar, and for many of these hipsters to be having these ridiculously absurd sounding drinks that don't really exist (such as a Sunday Swirl with a pinch of vinegar) whilst this one other guy just has the drink that is being advertised. The drinks would arrive, with the hipsters simply hating their given drinks, coughing etc. whilst pretending to enjoy them. Meanwhile, the "normal" person in the group is quietly enjoying his drink. The hipsters exclaim that their drinks are refreshing and enjoyable, and sarcastically ask how the ordinary drink is going, to which the guy states that he is enjoying it. The hipsters reply with phrases such as "haha yeah, sure mate" whilst laughing, believing he is lying about it.

I initially decided to pursue with this idea when I began the course. However over time I encountered difficulties, such as determination and struggles in getting the right setting and cast. Initially I had a potential setting in mind but eventually that fell through, and I hadn't managed to find any cast. As such by the time I managed to get onto production, I had to drastically rush both the setting and the casting. I got my cast finalized quite literally at the last minute, decided on a setting at the same time, and had a limited time to film due to the casts schedule. The weather was poor and there were some unruly people in the background, shouting and playing their music. I also didn't manage to film enough different shots, thus the final product was by far less than satisfactory.

Understandably, it was requested of me to re-film the advertisement. i decided it would be more viable to use a back-up idea I thought of a few nights prior. Back when i was unsure of who would be available for filming, I thought of what i could potentially do if I couldn't find a cast. As such, I kept the drink idea, but completely changed the advert's premise; here there would be some depressed teddy bears, moaning about life then one would pop up and offer them the drink to cheer them up.

I went home and set up my scenery, with the teddies sat in my bedroom. Initially I considered the bears being drunk with bottles of booze before being offered the non- alcoholic Chezzle (the fictional brand name I decided upon), but I decided to scrap the alcohol idea as i felt it wasn't needed. The advert consists of two bears (Ian and graham) sitting on my bed, Ian moaning about how depressing his life is with Graham agreeing, then Colin, another teddy comes along with the Chezzle and makes Ian drink it. This then very mildly cheers Ian up, or at least to the degree that his eternal suffering has momentarily become more mild, he then makes an "mm" noise. At the end of the advert, writing saying "Just, Chezzle" appears, denoting that Chezzle is a simply, humble drink but nonetheless offers its small and satisfactory pleasures. For the voices, I used my one of my mates for some voice acting, which i dubbed over the footage. His Scottish accent and array of different voices proved successful in making a good product.

This advert is superior to my original in basically every way. There are far more different camera shots than the previous one, with numerous different angles and shots taken as opposed to my original advert which consisted of two different angles then a close up of the product. The advert is strongly pathos, appealing to people's sense of humor as it is a very comedic advert, whilst my original one was quite frankly, terrible and utterly un-entertaining, the idea was not executed well by me at all. Although the setting looks somewhat drab, due to the advert meaning to look gloomy I thought it worked rather well. I opted to keep my curtains closed as opposed to left open because the light was too harsh and bright beforehand, whilst the closed curtains offered a warmer and softer aesthetic. I brought a simple apple juice drink from the Co-Op and stuck onto it a Chezzle label that I fashioned myself by using Photoshop, printing and cutting it out and finally gluing it onto the bottle via a glue-stick. The voices, I decided to use my Scottish friend as he had access to suitable recording equipment on hand, which was more practical than me going into college and doing it on such limited time, but mostly because he simply had a better range of acting skills and voices to hand, which I feel fitted the feel and atmosphere of the advert excellently. Finally, the music was some simple royalty-free music which I found and downloaded from Youtube. I looked for something with a gloomy, depressing atmosphere as I thought it would complete the advert splendidly, and managed to find the ideal candidate for the video.

Overall, if I was doing this project again I would like to put more consideration into it, as well as giving myself some more time to rectify possibly mistakes by filming a lot earlier than I did - I filmed a mere day before the deadline and edited on the last day. Despite this, much to my surprise even, I am actually thoroughly pleased with the end result. I wish I used stronger humour initially instead of right at the end of the project; I feel where I went wrong was not using my natural comedic style, instead I tried to make something more mainstream in order to maximize chances of success. However as it turns out, that was my downfall in this project as I ended up creating something bland and completely dis-interesting. I decided to create the advert I eventually used for this project as it was more practical to produce due to its lack of cast requiring to be filmed, could be filmed in a comparatively shorted amount of time to that of if I was using a live cast, and it was just a more interesting, humourous and enjoyable product in general. I suppose one nit-pick I would make about the new advert though is in some shots the lighting did still vary somewhat; some scenes were to a degree lighter than other, darker scenes. However I still think of this advert as beign satisfactory.