Christmas Advert Task 4

 I believe the final advertisement went decently well in the film itself. The planning, however, was slightly stressful and a bit disorganised. I do believe the PowerPoint was well put together, each of us made a slide on the PowerPoint and everyone presented their own slides. I, believe me, Morgan and Jamie did primarily the most work. Whilst Jason did a slide, he didn't help in the research for songs, or the research of other adverts, leaving us to do it. However, apart from that, the planning process wasn't bad. We knew what we were doing and what to look for, we started by looking at adverts, such as the most recent John Lewis advert at the time, called "Unexpected Guest" which is about a child meeting an alien as he experiences Christmas with them, sharing mince pies, watching tv and falling in love with them, but they inevitably have to go back home. It plays with the audience's feelings and we thought that if we find music to match what we were going for, we could try and pull on the audience's heartstrings like they did. We figured out our idea to be based on eviction notices. Using the idea that everyone should have a place to go and people to be with at Christmas, the story goes that the main character gets eviction notice after eviction notice, not having enough money to pay rent and stay in the home, his house, uncleaned and losing himself to alcohol, his friend calls him, seeing if he wants to hang out, he doesn't pick up, and so the friend tells the others that he'll meet up with them later, the scene goes to the MC's house where the friend sees the state of his house, and calls the other friends, as the three of them clean the house and make a check to cover the eviction notice, giving him it as a Christmas present. Then the MC gets home, realising the check, looking at his friends, as he goes to them, giving them a hug and celebrating the Christmas season, and thus the music comes to a close and the advert ends. We managed to match it to when the music ends so that It's a good clean ending to the advert, tugging on heartstrings whilst also being an original idea. We kept the advert silent, just having the music over it so that the dialogue wouldn't keep away from the main part of the advert. We made sure to keep on top of facing the camera, keeping our facial expressions on point to the situation at hand and we tried to get into the mindset of what would happen. Like how you'd be too unmotivated to tidy a house that you're going to lose soon, which is why we thought to include the friends tidying up, keeping the Christmas decorations up. We managed to borrow a room in the college that looks like an actual "house" It has a working kitchen, living room and a bed in the same room, once we had the room given to us, we printed out the eviction notices and began signing them, once they were signed, we scattered them around the room and floor, but it was a while until we could actually get started. We were missing Jason and our camera operator, a few messages later, our camera operator found where we were and just told us he had to fetch the equipment, and then while he went looking, Jason showed up. Although unfortunately, 15 minutes later, Jason told us he couldn't stay to do the film, and asked if it was okay if he left, we said it was okay and so he did. Course it wasn't really okay, we needed him to play a part in the film but as his lack of work already proved, we didn't think he'd have done much regardless. We weren't really sure of how to replace him, but Dylan came in to help us out, he even waited for our Camera operator to come back and was with us the entire time during filming, even though it was still late. He helped out and was present in every scene he needed to be in, and despite the fact he didn't have to do it for us, he wanted to be in it, and I honestly think it was a lifesaver. I don't think the film would have looked as good if the MC was surprised by only 2 people, instead of three. We did get distracted a couple of times during shooting but they were few in number and the end product was worth the time it took to shoot it all regardless. I believe that despite the hiccups down the road, and the time we waited to do it, the research needed and such, it turned out in the best way possible, especially with Dylan's help. I believe the most tedious part about it was finding what to use for our PowerPoint logo, we went through many different fonts and sizes as a group, including different frames, just deciding what to go with, it was one of those moments where the stress of the film left my mind and I was reminded that I'm with my friends, just doing a film that we all wanted to do, we had some breaks and laughs during the production and I don't think it would've been anywhere near as enjoyable if It was done with people who weren't my friends, there are some errors in the clips that we didn't have time to remove, but It's nothing massively huge, I still think it was enjoyable, and we got to experience more professional filming, with the different shots taken, different scenes, camera angles and when we stop and start.