I have chosen to create my own television advert for Herbal Essences, the famous throughout the world shampoo brand. The fact that this is a well known brand made it both easier and harder to create my own version. It made it easier as I was able to look up lots of examples and take inspiration from them. However because they're so well known, it was hard to come up with something original rather than just copying what they do in their own advertisements.
The fact that most shampoo adverts have the same codes and conventions also made it easier for me to shoot my own as I could follow the simple structure that others have set.
Before shooting my advert I put quite a lot of research into finding out what the codes and conventions of your typical shampoo advertisement were. I came up with the basic structure of - actress is fed up of bad hair, finds out about certain brand, uses it, has beautiful hair, attitude and often life changes.
After finding this out I began to create my own storyboard complete with cameras shots and angles which were to be used. I again took inspiration from the adverts I had already watched when deciding on what shots I was going to use. The most popular being head shots and close ups.
My idea was to have a young girl struggling to tame her dull and lifeless hair. She would look fed up. She would then try her own fruit hair remedy which would not be pleasant until a friend recommended the brand Herbal Essences which she would then use and love. This would end with her whole facial expression changing and her showing off her freshly washed and styled hair.
I also had to fill out an equipment booking form before I could start filming, which I sent to Chris Gladwin which was accepted and I was given a camera and able to film the next day. I filled out a risk assessment form and a production log which helped me to record and keep track of what I did on certain days/weeks.
When I eventually started to film I found that the storyboard I created earlier was extremely useful. It gave me a clearer idea of where to start and what I needed to do which saved me a lot of time as I wasn't trying to make it up as the day went along.
I used Chloe Whittle as an actress in my advertisement who proved to be very helpful throughout. She not only starred in it but helped me to film a few of the shots and gave me constructive criticism if she thought I could do something better. Her suggestions helped me a lot as sometimes I became stuck on what to do.
I was lucky because it only took me one day to film my whole advert, and then I was ready to go back to college the next day and import all of my footage onto the computer and put it into Adobe Premiere Pro which we were going to be using for editing.
The only problem that I encountered was the fact that I had shot so much footage that my advert was over two minutes long, rather than the allocated 30seconds that it was supposed to be. I had to start cutting lots of things down whilst still trying to keep it making sense and not looking too jumpy and all over the place.
I also realised that I hadn't really advertised the brand itself that much throughout my advert, so thought it was best to import a Herbal Essences logo off of the Internet to use right at the end of my ad, just to remind people of the brand.
As there was only a small amount of speech in my advert, I decided to use music in the background to make it more interesting and attention grabbing. I decided on the song by Andy Grammer, Keep Your Head Up which fit in nicely with the style of my video.
After watching it through and making sure it was done to the best of my ability, I rendered it out and uploaded it to my YouTube channel, ready to place on my blog when needed. Overall I am happy with the quality and effort put into my work, however after watching back the version I uploaded to YouTube, I have realised that there is 21 seconds of plain black screen after the video has finished playing, this isn't accompanied by any music at all, just blackness. I have since discovered that this is because when I rendered it out, I selected a larger time scale than was needed. This, thankfully doesn't effect the overall quality of my advertisement.
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