Our intention was to produce a hard-hitting storyline based around a central narrative. The basic element of the narrative worked well, as the representation of the characters was easily understandable from the beginning and throughout the production. The characters used in the production have had previous acting experience, and this is evident in the final product, as they look professional, and performed well. I believe that the friendship between us was important, as we understood each other, and acknowledged each other’s plans without any troubles. The representation was treated with care due to the content of our advert. We used a mixed ethnic group of people to play the part of a bully and a victim to show the effects of multicultural racism. This also shows the ideology of ‘…it can happen to anyone…’
Research undertaken by the group proved how serious the problem of multicultural racism is. It made us realise how our advert must be tackled in order to get our message across successfully. The institution of our advert is cinema. With our public service announcement being shown in cinemas, we were given a chance to include more scenes that would otherwise be seen as inappropriate for a television screen. Our advertisement would fit most suitably in to the 12a category as these children would be watching a film with their parents, and could discuss this problem with them.
We decided to use two soundtracks for the advertisement; one being a gloomy, unhappy song, which would play in the background of the bullying scenes, and the other, a more upbeat and uplifting ballad for the climax of the advert, where there is a montage of clips, showing happier faces towards the end. During the planning stage of the project we had a clear idea of which songs to use, but the lyrical content was inappropriate. We were told the ballad was too sluggish, and didn’t complement the scenes. We decided to use a Hip-Hop beat by Kanye West which is more brassy and harsh, and the tempo of the song compliments that of the advert. Although I was disappointed that we were asked to change our original music (Another Day In Paradise by Brandy and Ray J) I was really pleased with the final result, as it had improved loads.
We used a series of different visual techniques when editing our advertisement; cross-fades, fade in and fade out and cross-dissolve techniques. We used these to their best possible effect, with the advert being consistent and each scene lasting approximately the same amount of time leading into the next one.
The transcripts we used in our advertisement were contemporary and realistic. They were statistics that we had researched, and we used them as a shock tactic to show the audience how severe multicultural racism is.
We came across some major problems when transferring our footage on to the computer and after many attempts and lots of time wasted; we decided to use a different computer. Although this was a huge setback, I am extremely pleased with the final outcome of our production. I feel that we have worked well as a group and our production contains some very good elements that work successfully in relation to how we planned it. The soundtracks compliment the whole piece, and I feel that the transformation from pre-production to the end result has been effective, and the final product is professional and accurate.