Evaluation - Submission Evidence/ advert

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Evaluation

John Lewis Advert

‘It Started with a note’

 

I am proud of how my and the rest of IDP (In Depth Productions) John Lewis Christmas advert ‘It Started With A Note’ has turned out. I think you can really see that we were inspired by John Lewis adverts by all the emotion and vulnerability that was put into it. I think Josh and Tom did an excellent Job of directing the advert to have similar shots that the successful brand would use in their iconic adverts. One shot that really stands out to me is the shot where Liv (La Toya) is sat doing her work when the whole class leaves and she’s left all alone. That scene made me really feel for her which is exactly what we wanted. Speaking of Liv, I don’t think anyone could have played her as well as La Toya did. She does an excellent job of expressing Liv’s nervousness and sadness and I also think La Toya does a really good job of conveying a lot of emotion into one look which is what we really needed since the advert has to be short and we can’t drag it out. As for me, Kadie and Emie, I think we all understood our role well and show the nervousness and joy of helping someone feel included and happy by inviting her to our group. Also, I’m grateful that Casey agreed to edit for us because she always does an amazing job, I was worried that the shots might look snappy and un-connected, but I think Casey & Josh (camera operator) both did a good job at making it look professional. I think the music choice was great. The lyrics are really meaningful to our story since they talk about someone who is going through something similar. I love jasmine Thompson’s cover of ‘mad world’ for our advert, since she is also a young girl singing it, so it represents Liv’s inner monologue. Whereas if we were to use the cover from Chase Eagleson it wouldn’t be as meaningful because it wouldn’t feel as connected to Liv and the story and the connection to Liv’s story was the main reason, we picked the song. With the line “went to school and I was very nervous, no one knew me” it just made the song stand out to us when picking which we wanted. It did take us a few conversations to decide which song we wanted because the song is very important, it sets the tone to the whole thing, that’s why having a soft piano song was a good idea.                                                                                                                                               I will be honest and say that I was scared to watch the advert because I thought it was going to be terrible. It just didn’t feel like a story because we shot different scenes on different weeks, so we never saw it coming together, if I had to change something I’d organize a set schedule that we actually stick to, so it doesn’t get as stressful and confusing. This way there’d be no problems with which outfit to wear for each scene or which rooms reserve for which time because that was a problem. There was one day where we were meant to film a few scenes in the LRC which we had told the staff about but when we got there, they said we couldn’t do it there because we hadn’t put the signs up earlier. However, we already had all the extras we needed so we filmed it in a different room instead which isn’t what we had planned but thankfully it still worked out. So, in the future we do need to work on organization. We did have a schedule but when Josh's brother got COVID and was off for a few days and our backup camera person (Martin) couldn’t film the day we planned, it knocked us of schedule a bit. Another thing that I would do differently, is show the title of the book because that is what linked it all together. The title of the book ‘one small act of kindness’, foreshadowed the note that the girls left that read, “come sit with us? One small act of kindness” however Casey wasn’t in our group and the message wasn’t passed so she didn’t know that it was meaningful. Our advert could’ve had a whole new level of vulnerability and heart-warmth if we didn’t cut out some of the script which shown an unhappy home life which was later resolved however, when we asked Martin to film it for us when we thought Josh couldn’t he rewrote the whole script and turned it into a completely different story which had completely different meaning. His script was good however, it wasn’t what we were going for. We wanted ours to have a sweet and simplistic ending like her getting a note and just walking with the girls whereas Martins ending was more dramatic and less personal because he wanted the girls to throw a surprise part for Liv. I see what martin was going for when he wrote the script but the age category, he was writing for seemed to be children around 11 years old whereas after watching John Lewis adverts, we realized that they normally target middle aged women and mothers we decided we would too whilst also targeting teens of a similar age to Liv. That’s why we decided to stick to the original script. But because some people were very against one of the shadows that represented her father pushing the other shadow which represented her mother in case it was inappropriate for an advert, we decided to cut that part out which also took away a lot of the pity and sadness that the audience could’ve had for Liv.                                                                                                                                     After having a bigger part in the production other than just acting in it I learnt a lot. I really enjoyed writing the story for the advert and it was very exiting to see it come to life. I never really thought about how when you write an advert you must think about who you’re writing it for, the purpose of the advert but now I feel like I know a lot more of what goes on behind the scenes. I know that all of us learnt a lot from making this advert because everyone was involved in nearly every aspect of it. If we were to make another film production you would definitely be able to see the growth from this advert but for our first time or properly being part of what were creating for film, I am happy with it. The purpose of our advert wasn’t to sell any products it was to publicize our brand (John Lewis). The way we did that was by leaving people with the chance to feel something from our advert. We tried to make people remember our advert because they related to or sympathized with Liv and got hope from her story. Or because they wanted to do something good for someone else like Serena Kat and Elena. That’s why we branded it as doing ‘one small act of kindness.                                                                                                                                                          I played the advert to different people and here’s some responses we got.  One person said, “I really like how the whole advert came out. It made me very emotional because someone I care for has gone through the same thing. This advert shows that there are people who do care which gave me hope. I also really like the song choice it fits very well.” I was very happy with this response because it basically said everything we hoped to hear. Another said, “The advert was sweet. I think it’s smart to make an advert that a lot of people will relate to. The song was because the lyrics are also telling the story. It did make me emotional when she was on her own and when you all went over to her so good job.” Again, I was very happy with this response because we were worried about not making anyone feel emotional because then we’d basically failed our task of making an advert like John Lewis. And then my final response was, “I really enjoyed the advert. It felt real, authentic and moving. The song choice fit very well, and the lyrics added tot the emotion. I connected to the storyline and was took on a journey. Very well done.” All three of these responses were very nice to hear and I feel proud that we managed to make people emotional through something we made. My favorite response was La Toya telling me that her mam and dad both cried! I’ve never been happier to hear that people were crying haha but overall, despite the problems we had I’m proud of the advert that ‘in depth productions’ created and I would like to work and grow more at creating productions as well as acting in them.