1. A2 Media Studies
G324 Advanced Portfolio:
Evaluation

2. Question 1:
In what ways does your media product
use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?V05 Advert-
http://youtu.be/nCRrthkIJxc

3. This V05 advert is similar to my sponsorship advert in the way
that both used young females ages around 18 to 20 that faced
the camera to talk, making it seem as though they are
reaching out to the audience. Different products were used
throughout both adverts, but the Hairspray was used at the
end as a ‘finishing touch’ for the style that you cannot live
without. I felt as though the informal, simple style of our
advert would suit our target audience of teenage girls to
young women, who are after a product that will do exactly
what it says- and want to see it in action. Although there is
hardly any dialogue in our advert, at the end when our actress
talks she does so in a friendly manner, speaking right to the
camera- which is similar to the V05 advert. The actress talks
throughout the professional advert, developing a
conversational tone that allows the advert to flow; however I
believe that by only putting dialogue at the end of our advert;
this allowed the hair to be the centre of attention.

4. L’Oreal Advert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_UafEV1
bQ

5. This L’Oreal advert featuring Cheryl Cole is a complete contrast to our
adverts. This high-budget, glossy, fast paced advert puts forth the
idea that to buy this hairspray, you have to be beautiful and use it
when your hair is in an intricate style already. Although the use of a
popular star was an informed decision on behalf of the advertisers, I
don’t think the content was very interesting or informative about the
product. I personally saw this advert and looked at it as a look I
would not be able to achieve with just the hairspray and one or two
other products alone. I think that this advert is very conventional of a
hairspray product- everything runs smoothly and is glamorous. My
first advert depicts a girl running around her house, trying to find
something to tame her hair. I think that this is very realistic and will
allow people watching to think ‘I do that!’- Boo Hairspray is
portrayed as the saviour for a bad hair day. I believe we have
challenged the conventions of the form, as L’Oreal has created a
glossy advert, whereas nothing goes right in ours until the product is
found by the actress.

6. Tresemme Advert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N7hxIwiLDI

7. This advert for Tresemme Hairspray is short, sharp and to
the point. Using a male voiceover, but also a
‘professional’ hairdresser- I believe this is very similar to
my second advert. Although again I strayed away from
the conventions by at first having our actress, who
happened to be me, having a bad hair day at school/work
and calling her hairdresser; I allowed the hairdresser to
be shown doing the hair. I think that was conventional
because as aforementioned, the Tresemme advert
depicts a hairdresser styling his clients hair- resulting in a
flawless finish, similar to the L’Oreal advert. However, the
conventions were challenged as my second advert had
the overall feel of a less polished hairspray advert, but
again one that could easily resonate with my target
audience- something I feel is the most important thing.

8. Question 3:
What have you learned from your audience
feedback?
My first advert idea, Russian Roulette- Hairspray for men-
did not receive a good reception when I pitched it to the
class. Everyone agreed that the idea of Hairspray for men
is very modern, maybe too inventive, and would not be a
very successful product to market. Also, the gun shape of
the bottle was deemed too controversial- which my group
agreed on, if something is too different then it will not
sell well. As a group of girls, we decided to create a
product and selection of adverts that felt more along the
lines of something we would use. So, Boo Hairspray was
created and my audience feedback told us that this was a
lot more suitable than the Hairspray for men-due to the
range of successful hair care products marketed towards
females already on the market.

9. My PowerPoint for Russian Roulette Hairspray,
my original idea-

10. To make our hairspray seem different from all the others, we
took aspects of the V05 advert and L’Oreal- forging them
together to create a product that was profession, but didn’t
alienate normal teenage girls and young women. Our audience
feedback told us that advert 2 was the least popular out of all
of them; mainly due to the fact they didn’t think it was realistic
enough to have a hairdresser randomly appear. I agree with
this, and if I was to do these adverts again, I would spend more
time planning advert 2, despite all the adverts flowing well
with one another.
I asked another group if they would buy our product after
watching our adverts, and they said they would; this was due
to the bright colours, female actresses used, description of the
product and the fact that our advert felt realistic. These
teenage girls, aged 17-18 (therefore in our target audience) felt
that unlike the polished feel of the L’Oreal Elnette advert, they
felt like Boo could be the hairspray for the majority of girls and
woman across the Country- who don’t look like Cheryl Cole.

11. I personally think my product would be very successful, our
adverts ran in smooth succession with each other and all
portrayed a female with a busy life who just wants good hair.
This is a very simple idea but one that would appeal to my target
audience, unlike the previous idea of Hairspray for men.

12. In regards to my radio advert, I think that this could have been longer
and more organised with the planning process, but I do believe that
the product details and conversational, girly tone used for this advert
was fitting with our other adverts. Our research showed that this style
of radio advert appeals most to females, as they feel like the adverts
are tailored towards them, rather than just being generic. We used our
own voices in the advert, which I think would make our target
audience of young females listen and realise that this is a product that
is especially for them, subsequently including them and therefore
making them want to buy the product. The only negative feedback we
received was that one of the girls voices used had a strong
Wolverhampton accent that could come across as humorous rather
than girly, and could also distract people from what the advert is
about.
We amended this by recording it again, and using the girl with the
strong accent to say the less noticeable ‘Boo’s’ which were said at
different points within the advert. It is imperative to have good
pronunciation and the right voice for your specific radio advert, as the
voice and what the person is saying will be the main selling point of
the product.

13. Question 4: How did you use new media technologies
in the construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
Watching television adverts in class, and also at
home, helped greatly in the planning of my own adverts. I
looked at adverts for research, and counted how many
shots were used, the different types of shots- the
majority of which were medium and close up shots, and
what genre conventions were used in each advert. The
fast paced editing of all the adverts was imperative and
very important, not for a second could my adverts be
static and boring. I think I could have improved our
sponsorship with this in mind; however I took the idea of
our sponsorship mainly from the very successful V05
adverts.

14. Still image of V05 Advert
The main shots that are used in this advert are close ups- which
is similar to our sponsorship advert. It’s evident that the best
way to show off a hair product is by putting the actress at the
forefront.

15. The Macs weren’t always very co-operative, however editing my adverts using
iMovie was very eye opening, as there is a plethora of effects that can be
used- the transition effects were useful when moving from one shot to
another without it looking too abrupt. Storyboarding allowed me to see my
adverts on paper- therefore laying out my ideas in a more clear format, so I
could see what would work and wouldn’t.
Although the tripods weren’t easy to transport, the handheld DV cameras
were extremely useful when shooting. The fact that they are so small was
only a nuisance when shooting in dark locations- however, this made me
realise that we shouldn’t be shooting in dark locations anyway! The fact that
the DV camera could easily be transported made it easier to get to our
locations, which ultimately made for a more wide variety of shots and angles;
hopefully resulting in a more professional advert.
As aforementioned, iMovie did not always work effectively whilst in the
editing process; I was unable to speed up my sponsorship sequence to the
speed I wanted, and the effects that I wanted did not originally go on. With
persistence this was sorted out, furthermore, the clips were very easy to
manoeuvre and delete if they weren’t necessary, which allowed us to speedily
arrange our clips into the correct sequence.