11. Production Review: My Production and My Intended Improvements

In order  to recognise flaws in my advert and improve upon them, I received criticism through a review, from four different sources, Mrs Blackborow, Mrs Dymioti, the media technician, Sam, and a few non-media students, representative of the target audience.

Advert 1
Mrs Dymioti: Commented on three main issues: a slow, prolonged shot 2, a lack of face time for the female actor and a poorly made deodorant bottle. Shot 2 was originally prolonged for two reasons: to fit runtime of 30 seconds, and to help fix continuity between shots 2 and 3, as my female actor only moved into position after she received the ball, which is a mistake I made during shooting. However, the timing of the shot transition also fits well with the soundtrack, and due to a lack of time to reshoot, I will not be changing this feature.

Lack of face time for the female actor is another mistake I made during shooting, but I do not have time to reshoot that, so I will be unable to change this. I have changed the deodorant bottle though, reshooting the pack shot and replacing the old one with the new one.

Non-media student: A few different angles and more shots required. Continuity was also an issue, with positions of actors changing between shot transitions. Unable to fix extra shot and angle as I did not have time to carry out a reshoot. However, I was able to improve on continuity by extending the time period at the start and end of particular shots.

Mrs Blackborow:  Issues with the pack shot, ident and timing. Pack shot was too wobbly, as a result of camera not being mounted on the tripod. As well as this, there was no text during the pack shot. I proceeded to add text to the pack shot, all to the right of the bottle. To remove the shaking of the camera, I slowed down the shot to 0.02%of original speed, and cut together the same first few frames of the shot. The result was as I intended, with the shaking completely gone.

The ident was unnecessary and didn't fit, as it seemed very forced in the advert, and there was no ident in the other advert. I proceeded to remove it. With the removal of the ident, the length of the advert was too short, so I extended some of the shots towards the end, and included a bit of slow-motion in one of the shots.

Another issue was a lack of diegetic sound at the beginning of the advert. To fix this, I set the music volume to low, allowing it to build up over time, as well as unmuting each clip.

Advert 2
Technician: Advert too lengthy, and music too loud at several points. I adjusted the music accordingly, and cut down several clips to fit specified runtime of 30 seconds.

Mrs Blackborow: Commented on lack of diegetic sound in the beginning, and no text to accompany the pack shot. I set the music volume to low, allowing it to build up over time, as well as unmuting each clip, in order to fix the diegetic sound issue, whilst adding text to the right of the can in the pack shot  to fix the text issue.