Hi again! As you may recall, I published our final product in my last blog, which means it is now time for some much need ruminative reflection. Regarding our finished product, I felt that we were able to challenge common conventions found across a variety of soft drink commercials, whilst also representing generally faced issues.
Beginning with the conventions themselves, we refrained from using high-angle shots because we did not want to create any kind of tension in our audience. We also strayed away from incorporating tilting because there was no need for any dramatization, nor did we need to showcase any sort of vertical scenery as our commercial was horizontally oriented. Furthermore, we also did not include over-the-shoulder shots, instead using medium shot framing as to not waste time switching between different subjects' viewpoints by focusing on both of their expressions simultaneously. Moreover, since we focused heavily on inter-subject dialogue to make our actresses' performances more dynamic and realistic, we avoided the inevitably awkward silence that we would have had if had we chosen to make a song the forefront of our sound compilation, using voiceover to emphasize certain points in our commercial. These all allowed for us to have a fresh and original take on our soft drink commercial. Shifting our focus to the issues our commercial represented, I would not necessarily say that we brought attention to any major social issues, but rather smaller-scale problems, perhaps what one may refer to as daily inconveniences. Seeing that our product was a beverage, its main purpose is to quench the thirst of consumers, which means that our target audience can be comprised of any and all kinds of people, ranging from children to older adults, athletes and executives, essentially anyone who wants a way to satisfy their sweet tooth (with about seventeen grams of sugar to be exact) and cool down. Hence why we are able to solve the problem and answer the question, "What should I drink(?)" for people who are in need of a refreshing boost of sweet, ice-cold, beverage.
Moving on to how our product engages with our audience, we ensured to subtly include colors that stimulated a sense of thirst or the feeling of heat in our viewers, which as mentioned in my earlier blogs, was achieved through the imposition of heat-like filters, giving our shots a reddish tint, as well as through the colors of the clothing that our actresses wore. We also had our actresses actively engage in dialogue to create a more relatable and conversational tone, which captivates the attention of our audience.
As for how we would go about distributing it as a real media text, we would likely do so through a televised advertisement or YouTube commercial, thus allowing us to have a wider outreach. If we were to consider how our product would be dispersed from a real-world standpoint, there would be a number of different factors to take into account. First, one must assess the baseline pricing for a thirty-second advertisement like our own. Typically, advertisements of said length, when aired on national television cost $115,000, at least in 2020, according to Kelly Main, a staff writer whose main focus lies in marketing. Of course, this is not always the case being that a number of other variables also come into play. With that being said, one would also need to consider the location in which their commercial would air. For instance, our commercial relied heavily on the conveyance of the fact that it was extremely hot outside. Therefore, it would be more likely for someone from Florida to purchase the drink after watching our commercial, being that they can personally relate to the excruciating heat we ensured to highlight, as opposed to someone from Maine, where temperatures are not as extreme. Additionally, one would also need to evaluate the best time of year to air their commercial. Since our advertisement intends to emphasize the heat outside by using elements like the diegetic sound of cicadas to set a summerlike atmosphere, a time when there is an increased demand for cool and refreshing drinks, it would be quite counterproductive to have it released during the cold winter and fall months because sales would not be as high. Lower sales would make for a smaller profit, meaning that we would be making unnecessary expenses instead of maximizing returns by waiting for the right season.
Regarding the actual schematics of creating a real-world commercial, production costs can be upwards of $150,000 as claimed by Beverly Boy Productions, a video production company. However, when you factor in fluctuating CPMs, which are the cost-per-thousand impressions, one will find that the summer months are the optimal time for commercial production being that CPM costs are driven downwards due to the lack of competition between companies. Sortable, a website intended to help publishers simplify the strenuous process of publicizing their work, states that this comes as a result of the lowered advertisement budgets across the board as different brands begin planning and preparing for the packed upcoming third and fourth quarters, which contain a number of different widely celebrated holidays in the United States of America, including Independence Day, Labor Day (and its preceding weekend), Halloween, Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, Chanukah, Christmas, and New Year's Eve. With that being said, money could be saved on production costs if simple and effective, convention challenging techniques like the ones we used, which I previously mentioned above, are applied. As with any endeavor, commercials are a gamble, being a sort of risk and reward situation, where sometimes the profits do not outweigh the investment, which is why it is important to take in the bigger picture when trying to determine when and where to air our commercial, lest it be lost in the immense stream of mass media that consumers intake on a daily basis.
Upon considering how I was able to mature and develop my production skills throughout the project, I would like to note that when I first began the project, I had a very vague idea of the official production process, being that I had never applied it myself in a hands-on manner. That then meant that I was very unfamiliar with editing programs outside of iMovie (which I had used for previous projects), so I needed to dedicate more time towards acquainting myself with said applications. Additionally, I had never had to make any difficult or particularly tedious shots before this project, like the one that was required for our initial panning from the sun because of the fact that we did not consider the Sun's positioning around noon into our production calculations. This then allowed me to learn how to be more creative and take more open-minded approaches to obtain the perfect shot, making me a better cinematographer on the whole.
Now, in order for this project to have been made into reality, I needed to use a variety of technological aids, which mainly included editing software and websites where I could obtain visual aids and enhancers in the form of GIFs (Graphics Interchange Formats), or audio samples from platforms like YouTube. Going into the specifics, I used Remove Bg to get rid of the white background behind our font, which we got off of the My Fonts website, and I was able to convert audio from YouTube videos by using the iPhone screen recording feature and then putting it through an MP3 converter I came across online. To put everything together, on top of iMovie, we also used ClipChamp, a free video editing website. As for adding in our final touches, which included the addition of filters, I used Prequel, a free-to-download application from the App Store. Regarding the hardware we used, our commercial was shot entirely on two iPhone 11 Pro Maxes. Now, considering our limited budget (we are high school students after all), I think we made the most of the resources available at our disposal, and have now become familiarized with the various programs we can easily access, which means that we are prepared and equally as excited for our upcoming project.
All in all, I think this quote by Kiki Layne who played Tish Rivers in the 2018 movie, "If Beale Street Could Talk" sums up my attitude towards our next assignment: "I've never been more ready for anything in my whole life."
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