Focus groups and commentary script

Questions

1. What do you think the purpose of the advert is?
2. We thought that the purpose of our advert was to raise awareness and promote the 5 million young futures campaign, do you think that the advert did this? if so then why?
3. Is the message of the advert clear?
4. Do you understand why the tortoise was incorporated into the advert?
5. What do you think of the sound in the advert?
6. What do you think of the camera work in the advert?
7. Did you think the use of the green screen was effective?
8. What emotional response did you get from the advert?
9. Why did it make you feel that way?
10. Does it inspire you to get involved with the campaign, if so then why?
11. Overall do you think this advert is a good advert? 
12. Does it have typical advert qualities?

Jamie

1.  to promote the 5 million young futures
2. yes because it explained what it was and why barclays is involved 
3. yes it was straightforward 
4. yes because it's a metaphor
5. yes because it has a catchy song
6. i liked it especially the birds eye view shot
7. yes it added to it and made it funny
8. it made me want to be part of the campaign
9. because it shown the difference they make 
10. yes because it shows the work they do
11. yes it makes me want to keep watching 
12. yes because it has a catchy song and it has everything you'd expect in an advert 

Josh Ellingworth

1. To get the point of the campaign across 
2. Yes because there is facts about the campaign in the advert
3. Yes because it was easy to follow and came to a good conclusion at the end
4. It is a different way to advertise for the campaign 
5. The sound was very clear and the voice over was detailed. The music suited the advert well
6. A lot of important shots of the maim character (the tortoise) was used
7. Yes because the character was seen in front of the barclays sign   
8. It makes me feel happy 
9. because it is helping people
10. Yes it does because it helps people change their life 
11. Yes because it gets the point across to the audience and shows the benefits of the campaign
12. Yes because it shows the company logo at the beginning and end and it is mentioned through the advert, also catchy music is used.

Jades mum - Collette

1. to advertise the bank
2. yes because that's what was being talked about.
3. yes
4. not at first but I understood at the end.
5. I  liked it and I felt like dancing wanted to keep watching.
6. it was good as different shots were used.
7. I liked it, it was my favourite part.
8. made me feel happy.
9. the music was upbeat and engaging
10. yes because I liked the tortoise it gave me the feel good factor and made me want to help
11. yes I enjoyed watching it.
12. yes, it has good music and a voice over which is what normally features in adverts.

Video script

Video commentary by Maddi, Jade and Matt.

For our focus groups we asked a group of people 12 questions and all said they got the gist of our advert and agreed the message of it was clear and straightforward. We asked them if they understood why we had used the tortoise in the advert, 2 said they did and the other said that they realised at the end when they heard the "slowly but surely", following from this all said that the chroma keying added humour to the advert and they enjoyed it.  Everyone also said the sound was clear and the music really suited the advert and because the song was recognisable it made it more engaging for the audience. Our aim was to make an advert that was upbeat and positive and from this focus group everyone said it gave them a feel good factor and inspired them to get involved with the campaign.

We didn't face that many challenges with the brief but one of the things we did find challenging was the fact that the brief was quite open, it was mostly an advantage because it give us creative freedom. We worked well with the brief because it was so open and it gave us a lot of flexibility with what we could do. We fulfilled the brief because we focussed on the positives of the campaign and not the negatives, (slowly but surely part) keeping it upbeat by using well known music and kept it interesting by using a tortoise. We also made the 5,000,000 young future campaign the centre point and it played a big part in the advert, the brief wanted us to promote this campaign and we feel like we did. 

We could of made it serious or funny but barclays didn't want us to dwell at all. The disadvantages of having an open brief was that it made us spend longer coming up with an idea for the advert. We made changes due to unforeseen challenges such as having to film inside and not outside as we originally planned because it was raining.  

We experienced some problems with the technical side to the advert such as, it took us a while to get the focus right on the close up of tommy because he was so small and the lighting in the room wasn't very good, we couldn't of used lights because there wasn't enough room and there wasn't enough plugs for them anyway. Generally working with tommy was a challenge because he wasn't very cooperative, the first time we shot the advert because he would hardly move but then when we re-shot it he was overly active and wouldn't keep still. He was also walking over all the lettuce so we had to keep putting it back in place when we were filming every shot.

The positive sides of the technical stuff was that when we re-shot the advert we used a better camera this helped us get more of a professional quality and the close ups were a lot more clear and not grainy. The setting was simple and effective because we didn't need any permission to film there and there wasn't any restrictions with regards to time. I think the song on the advert went well because it was upbeat and it had a happy tone, and the song is well known because it was in Matilda and it was quite catchy so this made the advert memorable. We thought that our voice over guy brain, a media teacher at college was suitable because we felt that a tortoise needed a older male voice compare to someone young which we originally used because we feel like it suited the character more to use an older voice and appeal more to the adult audience. 

We manage our time quite well because we only had one location so we could work fast and focus more on the editing. Things that affected our time management were working with the tortoise as it was un cooperative at times and we could only film when Joe was available as he was the owner. Overall we worked well as a group because we put ourselves together and we could work comfortably together because we didn't feel like we couldn't give our opinions. We shared the tasks out fairly and to each others strengths. With the filming we wanted to get started straight away because we were working with an animal so if anything wasn't working out we has time to fix it or change our idea. We had to film around our timetables and around when tommy was available and we had to takes these things into consideration we got it done quite fast and had plenty of time to re-shoot whenever we wanted.

We took inspiration from the previous barclays advert which had a talking hamster in it. This helped us with our idea because barclays have used animals before so our advert was more relevant to barclays. Our final advert was successful because it turned out to be what we initially planned to do and stuck to our idea apart from we added in the chromakeying to tie in tommy's voice with what you could see.