Week 13/14: Preparing for break

So last week I wanted to look at what really sells a product and what advertisers do to sell their goods without the consumers even noticing. To find out more about this subliminal advertising, the class analyzed two stores selling similar products, and we looked in depth at store layout, lighting, music, and a lot of other aspects of the store that the consumer wouldn't typically notice or pay attention to. What we found was that every little detail, whether we notice it or not, helps or hurts the producer greatly. A store with more walking room and better lighting will make someone feel more inclined to shop there instead of a darker, smaller store that sells the same thing.

It is amazing to see how much effort an advertiser will put into something that generally goes unnoticed unless we watch out for it. These techniques move to persuade the consumer in a certain direction, but most of the time, we aren't even aware of the manipulation that takes place during a commercial or just walking through a store. These techniques are generally very effective, whether they use humor like Jim Gaffigan's Sierra Mist commercials, or try to captivate the audience with a sense of elegance, like most car commercials. They still get stuck in your head regardless.

Ok, so lately our groups have been working diligently on our documentaries. It was deffinately a lot more work than we originally expected. The hardest part throughout the making of the film, was finding the right level of sensitivity to use in the documentary. We struggled with finding a good balance because on the one hand, we didn't want to offend parents by portraying their children without any censorship or any kind of filter. On the other hand, we didn't want to be so over-the-top with sympathizing a group of people that we really had no reson to feel sorry for. We had to make sure we weren't dehumanizing anyone. With that came the need for permission, which was also difficult to obtain. I had to type up letters to distribute to all the parents of students within the MOID program, which also took a bit longer than expected to receive a response.

Lastly, we had to find time. With exam week approaching much faster than we would have liked it, our deadline was much sooner than we had prepared for it to be. we were also limited on filming days because we had to work around what was convenient for Mr. Early and Mrs. Spurr. We couldn't just show up to their classroom one day and ask to do some filming. The editing job was very last-minute, and I've always hated editing because it's truely only a one man job.

Other than a few obstacles, setbacks, and large levels of stress that we experienced, I do feel like this was a great experience and I really did enjoy getting to make this film. I learned a lot more than I had expected, about documentaries and the MOID program, and I think my other group members did too.

This week I'd like to look at how others conducted their documentaries and compare our ethical approach to other groups' unethical approaches. What techniques did they use? How did their message delivery and and the viewers reaction to it differ from ours?

Sources:

Beard combover. Photograph. Price Scope. Web. .

Sierra Mist- Beard Combover. Perf. Jim Gaffigan. Youtube. Web. .