Aleve Commercial Project Reflection

 1. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

My product was the Aleve Commercial that I filmed and edited.  I researched conventions of medicine commercials and Aleve commercials.  A common convention I observed was the presence of a happy environment or scene.  Also, the actors and actresses always had smiling faces unless they felt pain or were facing a dilemma (which was usually caused by pain).  I used this convention in the form of a picnic.  In my opening shot, I had my actors and actresses have a happy picnic with smiles on their faces.  

Another common trend I noticed in most medicine commercials was the presence of a clear shot of the bottle of medicine.  Usually at the end of the commercial.  However, in my commercial, I did not include this shot.  This is because in my third scene, the main actress showed and stated the name of the medicine very clearly for the audience.  Because of this, I did not think it was necessary to take up extra time to include the picture of the bottle up close.

A social group that has issues that was represented through my commercial was people who experience pain.  Knee pain in particular.  The main character of my advertisement had a painful knee.  My commercial represented people with knee pain because it clearly showed the troubles they have to experience.

2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as real media text?

My Aleve commercial greatly engages watchers.  It accomplishes this by containing four different scenes, three of which have different locations and different tones and moods.  This contrast that happens in only a 30 second time frame for the viewer makes them significantly absorbed.  My commercial would engage people with knee pain even more.  By giving a good example of the type of dilemmas people who experience knee pain have to deal with, and a way to fix it, my commercial makes them become very invested in the solution the main character finds.  The music also contributes at adding another layer of engagement.  

In the real world, my advertisement would be distributed as real media text through TV advertisements and online video advertisements.  It would be targeted to slightly older viewers that are more likely to experience pain.  Specifically, knee pain.

3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

The commercial project helped develop my production skills drastically.  This project was my first time filming anything.  It also served as my first editing experience.  Before the project, I did not even know how to download royalty-free music or editing software.  I didn't even know how to dump and convert my filmed shots.  With a little bit of help, I figured out how do all of that and more.  I also found out some new features of the editing software I didn't know existed before.  I look forward to making use of them in later projects.

Furthermore, this advertisement was the first time I got to try out different camera angles.  In the first shot, I experimented with three different camera angles.  I eventually settled on one to the side to capture the whole picnic evenly.  I also struggled to find the right type of position to film from in the scene the main character entered the house in.  I chose a straight up and close-up shot in the end.

The filming experience gave my a lot of valuable insight into the difficulties of a director or filmmaker. 

In the future, the knowledge I gained from this project will help me create films many times better than the commercial.

4. How did you integrate technologies into this project?

In this project, I had to use technology for many steps.  First of all, I used YouTube to aid me in my research of medicine commercials.  Thank to it, I was able to find trends and types of shots I could use in my advertisement.  Another way technology aided me was when I had to draw my story board.  I am a very bad artist and the best I was able to do before the story board was stick figures.  Unfortunately, I knew that stick figures would not cut it and I wanted to take the story board's art to the next level of complexity for accuracy.  So, I used google to find out how to draw a believable-looking human.  With Google's help, I was able to create my story board.  

I could not have filmed my commercial without my smartphone.  Because of the quarantine, I am unable to attend school.  Most of the time, the school provides AICE Media Studies students with cameras to film their projects.  However, since I can not go, they could not provide a camera for me.  The next best solution was to use my smartphone since there was no other camera present.  I shot it in landscape mode without any problems.  

Lastly, I used editing software to help me complete my commercial.  After getting all the footage, I knew I needed to compile it and put it together.  To do this, I used a free editing software to complete my advertisement with music.