Blog 16- Advert

For this part of the blog, we had to analyse two adverts from our chosen artist or artists from a similar genre. This is the first advert that I found for Florence and the Machine.

The advert is promoting Florence and the Machine for the store HMV. The advert talks about what her inspiration is for her song "You've got the love". The advert is effective because it is all done in black and white apart from the statement pink for the

HMV logo. The photo of Florence is a mid- close up shot, and is effective as she is looking at the audience and therefore connecting with them. I like this idea and therefore might use it in my own advert. It also looks like she is singing, and this is reinstated with some of the lyrics that are flashed across the page. The white font also stands out against the black and white background.

The second advert that I analysed was that of the Friendly Fires advert for their UK tour, as they fall into the same 'indie' genre as Florence and the Machine.

The advert is effective as it uses quite simple colours, for example the black background with the white writing. The main picture is effective as it is quite ambiguous however it gives the impression of shattered glass and also makes me think of the human eye. The overall effect is quite quirky and would be something that Florence and the Mac

hine may possibly use in her own adverts.

After looking at both the adverts, I would like to have a simple black and white main picture mixed with some greens and browns to match the theme of the forest in our video. I would either like the photo of Florence to be a close up like the HMV advert where she is connecting with the audience or for Florence to be shown in floaty clothing pictured dancing in the forest with cinematography of a long shot.

These are my flat plans for the advertisement.

My first flat plan design includes a tree and a small coffin in the background. I chose the tree as it looks quite simple on the page and I liked the idea of the titles to be running down the branches of the tree. The plan follows my idea about having continuation with the music video which is why I have incorporated the tree as the majority of our video is filmed in the woods. The coffin is included as it fits with the title "My Boy Builds Coffins."

My second flat plan design follows my idea about a long shot of the forest and Florence shown dancing within the shot. I chose to make the advert landscape as you will be able to fit more of the landscape into the advert. The text would be at the side of the advert so that you can clearly see Florence and so that it does not follow the easy planning of running along the top. The browns and greens give the advert a woodland theme and the black font stands out well against it. I want the font for "Florence and the Machine" to be curly as after looking at her website, I feel this is a font type that would capture her style well.

This is a screen shot of the font that is used on Florence and the Machine's website. It has a curly font and I want to capture this on my advert also.

This is my third digipack flat plan. From looking at the previous adverts I tried one with a mid shot of Florence. She has her eyes shut, almost as if she is sleeping or in a coffin.

This is my finished advert:

To view it bigger, this is the link for Google documents.

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0DnGj06WOfoZjA0Zjk0OTktYjlmMy00OTA5LTg1MzAtNGQxZmIyNWVlYThk&hl=en

I decided to go for my flat plan that depicts Florence standing at an extreme long shot in the centre of the forest. Mise en scene shows her to be wearing black which shows continuation with the music video and the digipack, as it connotes death. I chose to keep the colour scheme with greens and brown as it represents the woodland that she is standing in and would also appeal to both males and females of a more mature age group which is what I am targeting with my demographical audience. I am really pleased with the outcome of this advertisement as I feel that it stands out as Florence/Lucy is not easily recognisable to begin with.

Feedback I got was that I hadn't actually included that it was advertising a digipack, so I recently included the text reading "IN EXCLUSIVE DIGIPACK FORMAT" so that onlookers are sure about what is being advertised and maybe tempted to go out and buy the digipack.

If I was to change anything about this advert, I would probably lighten the contrast a little more on the background picture so that I could make my text white so as to match the digipack rather than it being yellow. I would also learn a few more skills on Photoshop so that I could do something like edit in some birds flying out of Lucy/Florence, representing Freedom as it is something that comes across in many of her other music videos. It would also look quite effective.

In conclusion, I feel like I have learnt many new things from learning how to use Adobe Photoshop and my skills have definitely improved since using it last year for my college magazine. By using these skills on Photoshop I now know how to do things that I wanted to achieve, for example changing the font colour, adding text and changing contrast etc.