Task 1 Radio Report

Radio Advert Report

In this radio advert i will analysing two radio adverts from my perspective, but i will also be include some facts which i read on the internet.

Snickers Advert with MR T

Commercial radios are radios that aren’t public. An example of a public radio station is The BBC. Commercial radios make their profit mostly from playing commercials on their airwaves. Of all the output of a commercial radio, 20% of it is dedicated to commercials. A typical commercial hour is 48 minutes, as the remaining 12 minutes are dedicated to adverts, with each advert generally being 30 or 60 seconds long. Commercials generally serve two purposes: to earn money for the radio station and to promote the sales of the product.   This advert uses a mixture of different tactics regularly used in advertising. The most noticeable tactic used in this advert is called “Celebrity Endorsement”. Celebrity Endorsement is where celebrity, in this case Mr. T, endorses or promotes a product. This is a very clever and easy to use tactic as even if your advert is terrible, it will still be successful to a certain extent because of the celebrity. The other tactic used in this advert is the very obvious tactic of humour. Humour is effective because when the consumer is in the shop looking at a snickers bar, they will think of the humour used in the advert instead. The downside to this is that there is little information given about the product. This however is not a problem because the snickers brand is a well-known brand.

The advert starts out with some SFX re-enacting a phone call between two people. This beginning captures the attention of the audience because it’s not something you would expect to hear on the radio. Instead of music, or talking you hear a ringing tone. The two people are then engaged in a fairly monotone conversation. The reason the conversation is fairly boring is so the next bit jumps out at the audience even more. In the following section it is then revealed that one of the men is Mr. T. This is a clever way of introducing the “celebrity”, regardless of whether you love or hate Mr. T, the audience will be surprised to hear this boring conversation turn into this strange rant from him. The reason Mr. T is used is because of the brand that he carries. The roles that Mr. T is most commonly known as are; his role in The A-Team and Rocky. In these roles, Mr. T plays the same type of character, the same type of character that is also voiced in this advert.  Mr. T only then talks about the product once and is only one of two instances that the actual word “Snickers” is spoken. The Snickers tag line is then spoken “Get Some Nuts”. This slogan has been around since 2006 and as such is associated with the Snickers brand. At the end of the advertisement a man then tells the audience to go to the Snickers website for more “man” stuff. This is a regular occurrence of radio adverts to try and cram a large amount of information into the end of the advert.

The Snickers advert tries to appeal to the audience of men. This is shown through their constant reiteration of being “manly” through the advert. An instance of this occurring is when Mr. T tells the caller that he needs to “use the fact he’s a man” to sort out how to assemble his kitchen. Whilst this is a good idea, it alienates an entire market, women.

The next advert I’m reviewing is a 2010 advert for Subway.

The advert consists of no sound effects, low background music and just one VO.

The advert starts with an interesting voice asking the audience “Are you hungry?” If Subway were to play this commercial at the peak of rush hour around dinner time or around noon the advert would affect a larger amount of people as this is around the time that people look to find food. The advert then proceeds to use the humour tactic, continuing with a rhetorical question, this time a little more ridiculous. This displays Subways as a fun brand and also grabs the audience’s attention again. The VO on the commercial then becomes a little more energetic and adds some more weight to the voice. This will make the audience pay even closer attention, as they will want to see what the male voice-over is sounding so passionate about. The advert then brings in some music and the VO then talks about some of the products that Subway offer as well as using some loaded language. Loaded language is language that, when used, has connotations that we then automatically associate with the product. For example in this advert the VO mentions “scrumptious toasties”. The connotations of the word “scrumptious” generally mean that the food is beyond appetising, that it is truly delicious. Subway is trying to get us to believe that its food is really worth buying. After the VO reels off a list of products that Subway is offering, it then states that they are “from 89 pence”. This is clever marketing from Subway as the average listener will only pick up on, or remember 89 pence, so when they think where to eat, they think that the items listed on the advert are all 89 pence. At the time of releasing this commercial, only the toasties were 89 pence, the rest of the items were 10 pence or more higher. In reality, the rest of the snacks could have been £20 and Subway would still have been telling the truth. This tactic from Subway is called “bait and switch”. The VO then tries to inject some more humour into the advert before finally stating the name of the company and their slogan “Eat Fresh”.

Although the humour tactic doesn’t offer much space for information, I feel as though the advert did what it was supposed to do, promote Subway’s snack range. It also told me the price range that the snacks start from and where to get them. The “bait and switch” tactic was used effectively as the audience will presume that all the snacks are around 89 pence. Another side effect of saying “89 pence” and taking off the extra penny is that the audience don’t realise it is closer to 80 pence than 90. The advert also doesn’t tell me what sort of establishment Subway is, however it doesn’t need to, as Subway is an established brand.

Music Video Workshop.

Euro gamer advert with Theresa

Computer Game Story Development pictures

Task 2 Music Video Convention Definitions.

SECTION A

Lyric Interpretation- Lyric interpretation is when the music video represents the lyrics.

Kanye West and T-Pain's "Good Life" does exactly these. In the music video, the same lyrics they speak also appear on the screen.

Extending or Consolidating song's meaning- This is when the artist wants to extend the meaning of the song by showing it in the music video. In my opinion, Michael Jackson's "Ben" is the right example for this type of music video technique.

Focus on performer- This is a typical convention for music videos. The reason why this a typical music convention is because the artists, most of the time, feature in their music videos. Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" is the perfect example. In this music video Michael wears a white suit while the other wear black suits. This clearly makes him stand out from the rest of the other dancers, and if that wasn't enough, he has lighting on him throughout the whole video.

Lighting for mood- This when the type of colours in the music video affect the theme of the song.

Pace of cuts- This means the amount of times the video cuts and how often. The pace of cuts depend on the genre of the song. For example Boyz 2 Men's I'll make love to you. this is a slow R'n'B song, so the scenes are much longer so the pace of the cuts is much much slower.




SECTION B

Example of a music video which uses special effects such as Chroma Key (green screen)

Bruno Mars' Treasure

Bruno Mars' "Treasure" is a disco song, with funk, post and nu-disco (Nu-disco is a 21st century dance music genre associated with a renewed interest in 1970s and early 1980s disco). The video uses a green screen to conform to the genre of not only the music but to the album as well.

Example of a music video which uses Multi-mage (Multiple images on the screen)

Michael jackson's "Man in the Mirror"

Example of a music video which uses Cutting to a beat

Justin Timberlake's  "Cry me a River"

Example of a music video which uses miming or lip synching 

Michael Jackson's 1983 Billie Jean Motown 25th Anniversary

Example of a music video which uses Animation

Kanye West's Good Morning

Kanye makes the whole of this video in animation.

Example of a music video that uses "in-concert" footage

Justin Timberlake's Take Back the Night

"As-Live" Performer

an illusion or reference to another music artist

Section C

Narrative- A spoken or written account of connected events; a story

Impressionist About mood and atmosphere than meaning

Interpretative directly Interprets the lyrics of a song in a visual way

Surrealist weird imagery, seems unconnected with song, often used in videos for instrumental song and dance tracks

Pastiche/homage an affectionate or positive copy of or tribute to another artist's work, a media genre or product like TV programme, film etc.

Parody a mocking or critical copy of another artist's work, or another media genre.

Task 1: E-Magazine Article

Computer Story Telling Forms

Ever since the dawn of civilisation, man has told stories by painting on caves or sitting around a fire. As man evolved, so did their forms of storytelling. From the original form that is cave paintings, to oral forms of storytelling, to fable, myth and many more. In this article I will be explaining how different computer game genres use different forms of storytelling, when telling the story of the game.

Text/Cave Painting games

Doom (1993)

Doom is a 1993 science-fiction horror themed first-person shooter video game. It is considered one of the most significant and influential titles in the video game industry, for having ushered in the popularity of the first-person shooter genre. This is storytelling at it's most basic level. At the start of the game, or before missions, the player is presented with a block of text to read through (often to skip them) It does the job of communicating the story but it doesn't actually involve the player at all, and often leaves a big gap between the story and "actual" game. This was most common in early games, Doom (1993) for example, but mostly died out in the early 2000s and for a good reason too. Games are an interactive medium, so reading large block of text breaks the flow of playing the game and will easily bore players.

 

The Game play for DOOM

Blazblue Continuum Shift

Another example of text storytelling is the 'Blazblue' series. Although it is a modern anime 2D game, it uses text block storytelling. The reason it uses this form is because it is an anime type game, so it has to use anime conventions of storytelling. 

Prior to the events of BlazBlue, humanity was on the verge of extinction from a creature called "Black Beast". The world was saved by six heroes who wielded magic. They helped humanity create "Armaqus", a fusion of magic and science, to defeat the Beast. This event would be later known as the First War of Ars Magus. After the war, the Novus Orbis Librarium  was created to govern the world with the use of Ars Magus. A great deal to dissent was caused by the Librarium, partly due to Armagus' use in nearly every facet of society, and the widening socioeconomic gap between those who could and could not use Armagus. This dissent would eventually form years later into the Second War of Ars Magus, when the city of Ikaruga openly rebelled against the NOL. Upon winning war, the NOL imposed a harsher rule on the world, pushing any rebellion against the NOL. In December A.D. 2199, several years after the Second War of Ars Magus, a branch of the NOL was utterly destroyed by an SS-class rebel named "Ragna" also known as the "Grim Reaper", in an attempt to destroy the Librarium. The NOL, hoping to stop him, immediately announced the largest bounty ever, available to anyone who could capture him. Interestingly, Ragna possesses a powerful form of Armagus known as the "Azure Grimoire". This led the NOL, as well as the other fighters, to hunt Ragna not just for the bounty, but also for his Azure Grimoire.

 GAMEPLAY

This is how the story mode pretty much looks like, except when you play the actual battles

Although it uses text block, it's main form of storytelling is comic book style. This is in a way resembles cave painting, as it keeps the principle of a static drawings which tell a story.



Myth Games

God of War

God OF War

God of War is a video game released for the PlayStation 2. It is an action adventure game heavily influenced by the Greek mythology.Kratos is a warrior who serves the Greek Gods of Olympus. Flashbacks ( which is another form of storytelling) reveal that he was once a successful captain in the Spartan army and led his men to several victories before being defeated by a barbarian king. Facing deth, Kratos called on the God of War, Ares, whom he promised to serve if the god would spare his men and provide the power to destroy their enemies. Ares agreed and bonded the Blades of Chaos, a pair of chained blades forged in the depths of Tartarus, to his new servant. Kratos equipped with blades, then decapitated the barbarian king. Kratos waged war at the behest of Ares, eventually leading an attack on a village occupied by worshippers of Athena. 

The first God of War gameplay

Ares had secretly transported Kratos' wife and child to village; during his frenzied attack on its temple, Kratos accidentally killed them. Although Ares believed this act would free Kratos to become the perfect warrior, the Spartan instead renounced his pledge of servitude to the god. The oracle  of the destroyed village cursed Kratos by bonding the ashes of his dead family to his skin, turning is ash-white and earnig him the nickname, "Ghost of Spartar". Plagued by nightmare of his horrible deed, Kratos vowed to serve the other Gods in hope of ridding himself of the visions. The game starts, Kratos has been serving the gods for ten years. The game uses a lot of cut scenes because besides playing the game tos unveil the story, it uses cut scenes to reveal the story. Action games tend to use a lot of cut scenes to make the game even more appealing. 



Legend

Another genre of computer gaming is legend. These games focus on the historical events which happened or are happening throughout the world. For example the battle of 'Thermoplylae', which was a battle fought between an alliance of Greek-city states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta , and the Persian Empire of Xerxes. This was made into a movie called '300' and also made into a game called '300 March to Glory'.

This game in the genre of legend because it's a game about the story of King Leonidas and his bravery, strength and courage to lead his army of 300 men against the Persian Empire. The definition of a legend is a historical story that is told to show human characteristics such as bravery (which is conveyed in the '300' game), courage, honesty etc. Stories such as King Arthur and Robin Hood are legends that show a historical figure that represents such characteristics, the said Legend showing human characteristics such as power, bravery and betrayal.  These stories are based on real people who have lived through history and fabricated.

Radio Advert

Before doing the actual radio advert, we first had to make the script for it. It was kinda hard trying to make the scripts because we had no idea how to even start making it. We eventually came up with the basic concept of it and we started to produce and eventually developed the script. After coming up with the script, we then used the voice recorder. This wasn't hard at all because i had previously used it last year, so it did not take long. We finished recording and had to edit it on a program called Reaper. This is the only bit which was rather more difficult than coming up with the script because the program was hard to use. Editing the recording was difficult because me and my partner had no idea how to use it, so we asked the teacher to show us the basic, and from there we learned how to do the rest by figuring out for ourselves.