New Media Technology

Final Cut Pro
This is editing software that is widely used within the professional film and television industry. It has many features that allow for the creation of a professional piece of work. The software is capable of producing videos in formats such as DV, HDV and more.

Editing Tools
Apple 'Final Cut Pro Editing Tools' In: Apple Website(http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/editing-tools.html) Accessed on 27th January 2010.

iMovie
This is a video editing software that is designed to be of easier access and use than other video editing software such as Final Cut and Avid. This software enables Mac users to effectively edit their videos at home.

iMovie New Features
Apple 'iMovie Version 9 New Features' In: Apple Website (http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/whats-new.html) Accessed on: 27th January 2010.

Sony A1E Palm Camcorder
This a small camcorder with HD capabilities that Sony boasts has lots of advanced features available for professional users.

Features
Sony Corporation 'Features for Sony HVR-A1E Palm Camcorder' In: Sony Website (http://www.sony.co.uk/biz/view/ShowProduct.action?product=HVR-A1E&site=biz_en_GB&pageType=Features&imageType=Main&category=HDVCamcorders) Accessed on: 26th January 2010.

This camera will allow us to incorporate High Definition into our filming and the quality of the footage will be to a professional standard. As the camera is small it is going to be lighter and easier to manoeuvre, giving is more freedom in general with where and how we film.

Zoom MP3 Recorder
This is a portable MP3 recorder that can be useful for recording meetings, voice overs, interviews and events. It comes with a really large memory capacity so it is very useful for long recordings.

Zoom MP3 Recorder Features
Anon 'Zoom MP3 Recorder Features' In: Advanced MP3 Players Website (http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/Gadgets.4/Zoom_Telephonics.229/ZOOMH2/Zoom_H2_Handy_Recorder.3418.html?display=features&3sid=6jhku4sak63plajddtkik3qq01) Accessed on 28th January 2010.

Digidesign Pro Tools
This is described as one of the most advanced audio creation and production software that exists today. It is widely used by professionals throughout audio industries for recording and editing in music and film production. It is also used within the post production process within film and television.

Pro Tools Features
Digidesign/Avid 'Pro Tools 8 Overview' In: Digidesign Website (http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=507&langid=100&itemid=35911) Accessed on 28th January 2010.

Soundtrack Pro
This is a music composing and audio editing application that allows access to over 5000 royalty free professional instrument loops and sound effects. It will be extremely useful when we come to include sound effects and music within our adverts.

Soundtrack Pro Features
Apple 'Soundtrack Pro 3' In: Apple Website (http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/soundtrackpro/powerful-audio-editing.html) Accessed on 28th January 2010.

Market Research, Primary and Secondary

Primary Research:

"This kind of research involves the collection of new information by conducting market surveys, telephonic interviews, questionnaires and focus group interviews. This information is gathered by directly contacting the customers. This research is customised according to the research requirements of the company. Firms can gain insights about the target markets by means of focus groups, surveys, interviews or observation. Primary research is generally based on sampling techniques and requires statistical methodologies. The sample size could be as small as 1 percent of the market and thus the information and results gathered are highly accurate."

Secondary Research:

"Secondary research involves processing data that has already been collected by previous researchers. It refers to consultation of previous studies and findings such as reports, press articles and previous market research projects in order to come to a conclusion. This type of research is based on information gathered from studies previously performed by government agencies, trade associations, and other organizations. This type of research is less expensive as opposed to the primary research as it does not require new research methods. However, its main disadvantage is that the information gathered may be old and obsolete and therefore results of analysis may be inaccurate. Further, it is not necessary that the earlier studies were conducted with the same objectives as required in the current situation"

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade its audience to take some action. Adverts usually include the name of the product or service concerned and explains in what way it can benefit the customer.

There are many different types of advertising, almost any medium can be used. The mediums include; television, radio, print, cinemas and online advertising. Adverts can be seen anywhere, printed adverts alone can be seen on the side of buildings, bus shelters, on buses themselves and many other vehicles, in phone-boxes, and many more.

Media Methods of Advertising
Television adverts are the most popular form of media advertising as people of any age can sit down and watch a television. The television advertisements' conventions differ dependent on product, for example adverts aimed at children, i.e toys and sweets, use an abundance of colour and special effects and music to create an excitement around their product which should transfer onto the child. All adverts must be eye catching one way or another, and be memorable by sound as well. A lot of television adverts come with a jingle that is designed to stay with the target audience and remind them of the product in a bid to get them to buy the product or service.

Radio adverts are restricted to advertising purely by sound alone so they have to be catchy and entertaining to listen to even more so than a television Ad. Therefore, radio adverts will almost certainly contain music and usually a jingle that will stay with the audience long after the advert has ended. Sound effects can be used to emphasise sounds creating a setting that would otherwise be made obvious through the image if it were a TV Ad.

Print adverts are shown through the visual medium of newspapers, magazines or trade journals. Print advertisements can be shown in a small local scale to a national scale depending on the desired range the product that is being advertised.

Online advertising uses the Internet to accomplish the desired effect of delivering advertising messages to it's target audience. Online adverts can be seen as banner ads, search engine results, interactive content, spam emails and more. Software programs such as Spotify rely on the success of adverts to fund them, allowing you to stream a huge catalogue of music for free and create your own playlists, so long as you listen to an advert in between every 4 or 5 songs.

Products
Toys provide a wide range of marketing items but due to the dismal economic climate at the moment it wouldn't be the best product to advertise as most working class and some middle class families may be unable to afford the product so the advertising campaign would be less successful.

Cars and Electrical items would not be easy to advertise as we have to create the actual product that we are going to show. We would be unable to build a prototype car or electrical item within the allotted time.

As we would have to create our own product to advertise it would be difficult create a new item of clothing and successfully advertise it as most clothes lines advertise more than one item of clothing in one advert. In order to create a successful advertising campaign we would have to create more than one piece of clothing and it would take too long.

With travel we would have to actually show the destination that we are advertising in order to be convincing. We don't have a large enough budget to allow us to find an original destination and successfully advertise it.

Confectionery would most likely be the best product to advertise as there is a wide range of products in that area with new products emerging all the time. We would be able to create a product easily and successfully create an advertising campaign. Sweets also appeal to most people so creating a successful advert would be the easiest to do for a confectionery product.

Cross Media Advertising

Using many different types of media to advertise one product in different formats is called 'Cross Media Advertising'.

Some of the formats this regularly involves are; Television advertisements and sponsorship sequences, printed posters/billboards, magazine and newspaper articles, direct mail, the internet and the radio. A specific target audience is reached depending on the product, using a combination of these formats.

Cross media advertising is used particularly well when advertising feature films. Distributors give their product a saturated release using many or all forms of media so that people cannot escape the hype of their films. For example the recent release of 'Avatar' (directed by James Cameron, Produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox) was accompanied by;
- Trailers in television ad-breaks
- Videos banners and interactive content all over the internet
- Photo's and articles in/on newspapers and magazines, (even appearing on the cover of 'Empire Magazine', and several different "avatar edition" covers were made for the December 16th edition of 'LIFE' magazine featuring different members of the cast.

The same can be said for the even more recent release of 'Avatar' on DVD and Blu-ray.

Aside from feature films, companies such as 'The Carphone Warehouse' are prominent in using cross media advertising. They advertise through television and radio at the same time in order to maximise coverage. They boast monumental sponsorship deals with hugely popular TV shows. For example a past deal (reportedly worth £3 million a year) with Channel 4 to sponsor reality show 'Big Brother'. The Carphone Warehouse unsurprisingly axed this deal in 2007 after 3 years when the Big Brother franchise was infamously catapulted to global limelight by the seemingly racist (but undeniably moronic) actions of "Celebrities" Jade Goody and Jo O'Meara towards Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty.

"We have concluded that the huge publicity around the show and our involvement within that means it is now time to look for an alternative."

The Carphone Warehouse have now moved on to even bigger things, in the form of a sponsorship deal with ITV's 'The X Factor'.

Being a retail outlet themselves Carphone Warehouse are able to advertise their services and products in print media, cataloging what they have to offer in their own booklets, leaflets and flyers where companies advertising a specific product (most confectioners for example) would be less successful.

Also, acknowledging that not everyone watches a lot of TV and might instead be glued to a laptop/computer on the internet, Carphone Warehouse have deals with some of the most visited websites in the world, for example social networking sites Myspace and Facebook, allowing them to publish mini-ads at the side of home-pages.

Group Production Schedule

22nd January – Continue with individual and group research.

29th January – Finish individual and group research.

5th February – Begin writing treatment and outline initial ideas.

12th February – Begin writing all scripts storyboards and shot lists.

19th February – Finished first drafts of scripts storyboards, shot lists and started location recce and costume planning.

26nd February – Finalise all planning work.

5th March – Begin filming main task.

12th March – Continue filming main task.

19th March – Finalise main task.

26th March – Begin recording and filming Ancillary texts.

2nd April – Continue recording and filming Ancillary texts.

9th April – Finalise Ancillary texts and begin evaluation.

16th April – Continue evaluation.

23rd April – Continue evaluation.

30th April – Finish evaluation and hand in complete project.

Research and Planning Checklist

 Primary and secondary research into similar products
 Research into target audiences for existing texts and for your own product
 Research into new media being used
 Research into cross-media advertising

Design Brief - Advertising

Having established our own independant production company, we were given the choice of five different briefs.

The Brief i have chosen is 'Brief Five', an advertising package for a new product or service which should include two television adverts (as the main text), and TV programme sponsorship sequence and a radio advert (as ancillary texts).