choc-o-lait advert

Self-evaluation

The advert that was chosen to be made was for a product called ‘Choc-o-lait’, which is a luxuriously smooth hot chocolate drink that you can lay back and drift into heaven with. The tag line was ’luxuriously smooth lay back and indulge yourself in heaven’. The concept for the advert was to follow a couple walking their dog through a park, but, they had had an argument and were looking really moody with each other.  Then they sit down on a bench, the boyfriend pours out some hot chocolate and the girlfriend looks at him jealously as he is sipping the drink and so he offers her some.  She sips it, then they both become happier and put their heads together and cuddle as if the hot chocolate has made everything better again.

The unique selling point to the product is that it is deliciously smooth and gives the consumer the indulgence of being able to relax and enjoy the drink and it has the potential to make your day that much better.

The advert I feel did not quite fit its purpose of successfully promoting the product as it was not the advert that I had designed and I had no say in how it was planned.  I feel the advert was successful in selling the dream, however, it doesn’t show the product very well at all with the whole way the advert was planned and located should have changes with maybe showing the couple getting in from a busy day at work and cuddling up on the sofa drinking the hot chocolate. I feel that this would have made the purpose of the product more visible and easier to understand.  However, it is still understandable in the fact that it is portraying that it doesn’t matter if you get into an argument with the one you love, give them Choc-o-lait and they will forgive you.

However, we had to edit the video clip as we did not actually add the product logo into the advert so I added it into the end shot of the flask to clarify what the product actually is.  This was not ideal and didn’t promote the product very well which to no fault of my own due to the fact that it was not my advert and so had no part in the concept planning.

I feel the tag line saves the advert somewhat as it clearly gives a good description of what the advert is about, with the extra lines of dialogue being ‘don’t break your heart’ at the end to signify the whole point of the advert.  Also emphasising that if you don’t want to get a broken heart then you should get the product so that this doesn’t happen.

Next time, learning from my mistakes, I would have made the logo and stuck it onto the actual flask in the production process meaning that in the pre-production stage we could have planned the filming out more efficiently but this I have learnt and can bear in mind for future projects.

I think the concept of the advert is very appropriate for the audience in this day and age as everyone wants to improve their lives and will try different products to help with this. For instance, consumers who buy toothpaste to make their breath smell fresher and teeth whiter think that this will help them feel better about themselves and improve their self-esteem.  With the aim of advertising the restorative magic that comes with buying these products with the sale of the ‘dream’.

Compared to the original intentions that the group decided on, the final product became very similar to the original concept thought of. Our initial intentions were to have a couple walking through a park walking their dog and looking as if they had had an argument they sit down on a bench and drink the hot chocolate and then everything is better.  This is exactly what we portrayed in all stages of the process with the only big differences being in the shots we were going to use.  It ended up with us using fewer shots so that in the editing suite we would have less to work with.  The time limit was only 30-50 seconds and in the editing suite I had to seriously cut scenes to get within that time zone. However, I have kept the initial concept and it is still very much linked to the original idea as I said above with the couple walking the dog and the bench scene.

The effectiveness of  the content; although we had to cut out a few scenes, because of time constraints in the editing suite, the advert still successfully promotes its purpose as it still shows how the product is supposed to work and is still connected to the original brief we had been given.

The technical quality of the advert, such as the camera shots, focus, lighting and the mise en scene I think was executed well as  the shots were all framed and shot very well as we all made sure that the shot was framed properly before the shot was taken. The only thing that I think we could have looked out for more was the lighting as we did get glare from the sun in a few of the shots.  We should have looked for this at the time and that is something to bear in mind for future projects.

I think this is particularly well framed as it is showing the male and the fact that the girl is still ignoring him also gives another layer to the narrative.

Aesthetically the location that we chose to film in was Dane John Gardens which is a very beautiful park that we thought would be perfect for the makeup scene as everything is supposed to go from being dreary, grey and dull to full of life, love and colour. This is why I have put three quarters of the advert in black and white as this is then also telling us that the scene is supposed to look depressing and cold, I did this as I thought the rushes were to full of colour and needed dulling down as the day we chose to film was not a particularly dreary day.  Furthermore the couple aren’t the usual couple you would see in an advert as the two actors aren’t aesthetically pleasing to the eye to most people and by using a ‘bigger’ couple could get complaints as they don’t look the healthiest, this could get negative ‘niggles’ from the audience so we should also consider our casting better before filming.  Along with this the fact that we used a breed of dog, the Staffordshire bull terrier, which could also be seen as controversial and could also get negative feedback.  Not everyone likes the breed because of their reputation however we tried to make her look as ‘cute ‘ as possible by putting her in a costume and showing the ‘good’ side to the breed as she was being very affectionate towards the female actor and had her tail wagging the whole time showing her as a ‘softy’.  This could also gave a positive effect on the breed itself if they were featured in more products such as this advert as they get a very bad press because of the minority of bad owners who badly train the dogs.  ‘They're being dumped in record numbers and branded a "yob dog", yet Staffordshire bull terriers are ideal family pets, say experts. So why is this nation of dog lovers turning against them?’[1]

Going back to task 2 for the pre-production planning pack, the advert has veered slightly in the shots that were portraying in the story board, as we had a lot more wide shots and close ups of the single characters showing more of their expressions, however in the production process we thought that it would be equally clear as of the message we were trying to get across. As we used long and medium shots as well as a few over the shoulder shots and took less time to edit them so that I could concentrate more on how the advert looks without having to do complex editing to make it look good.

As well as the storyboards the mood board can also be seen in the advert as we have kept the main concept of the advert with the couple arguing and the whole walking of the dog in Dane John Gardens.

 

 

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[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7239464.stm