Creating an advert

Today we had a session of making our own advert in the form of film. My group was given a packet of Walkers Sweet Chilli cracker crisps. We aimed to create our own advert for these Walkers, thinking about the best ways to promote them. We decided to include footage of the crisps on screen as well as shots of them being bought from a snack machine and as a shot of them being eaten and enjoyed by a happy customer. We also recorded a voice over. We decided it was important to bring up both facts and positive use of emotive language. It was mentioned that the crisps are extremely tasty, but are 30% less fat and they’re also great for vegetarians. Combining these two elements makes for a very useful way to advertise the product.

I got the chance to be in the film. I was playing the part of the man who enjoyed eating the crisps. I learned to think about how important it is to always make sure you hold your film prop (in this case the crisps) in a way that’s clear for the camera to be able to capture it, but not in a way that looks fake. It’s important for it to look natural and not too forced. I enjoyed taking part in the film. My group hasn’t started editing it yet so all we have so far are the bits of video footage and the voice over that two of my team-mates recorded. We ended up using both the professional sound system recording and an iPhone as backup. The sound quality of the iPhone was surprisingly very good indeed, possibly even better than the voice recording system. I can’t wait for the film to get edited together.

Making this advert was a really fun activity that I enjoyed doing a lot. Being a film director used to be my dream job when I was young. I haven’t been on this course for long but it’s already helped me to get a feeling for what it feels like to take part in professional film making and I feel like I will learn a lot from it. So far, I am actually loving the course, but before I started it I was really scared and anxious about it. This is the first time I’ve ever gone full-time at a mainstream classroom so it was a big change for me but I’m enjoying it and am hoping I will learn a lot of useful skills from it.