Advertising Week 2: Task 2

As our advertising project this week was about Mcvities biscuits we came up with idea's again for a poster. The difference this week was that our poster would be A3 size (instead of A4 as our cutlery poster was) and that we would have to have a pack shot of the product and do something creative with our product. 

Here are the ideas I came up with:

I wanted to split my poster into two A4 pages and have the pack shot on one page and the creative idea on the other page. But after looking at my idea's I realised I could use them for a pack shot as well as a creative idea. 

I decided to try out 3 different ideas in the studio, the 2nd idea (Always the best), the 3rd idea (Made for enjoyment) and my 5th idea (Number 1 choice) to see which I liked best of all. 

This was my lighting for my first shoot:

Halfway through taking my photographs I changed my white balance because it was too blue and dark on auto white balance so I put my camera on live view and went through all my white balance settings and found that shade setting was a bit better so I kept it on this setting for the rest of my photographs. 
For my first idea I experimenting with the layout of other biscuits. I started out with just four different biscuits around the Mcvities biscuit and then decided to add 4 more biscuits of the same type I already had. I was testing out placing the biscuits in different ways. I positioned them in couples so that when the hand goes to grab the Mcvities biscuit the hand doesn't cover up too many biscuits. First I tried this with my own hand but it was difficult so I  asked my friend if she would place her hand there for me. It was better with her hand there because I had more control of taking my photograph and when I was positioned above with my camera I could move in order to make sure the hand and fingers weren't covering the Mcvities biscuit writing. 
I then moved onto my other idea's and because they were more simple I didn't take as many photographs. 

When I went to editing my photographs in Photoshop I did the same steps for each photograph: Spot healing dirt from the still life table out, Levels for brightening my photograph and adding contrast and sharpening with the unsharp mask.

For this photograph using the mask I made the background white and then erased all the over brightness on the biscuits. 

Before:

After:

Shoot 2:
I decided to focus of my first idea of having the Mcvities biscuit elevated in the middle with other biscuits around.  As for my first shoot I only had a few biscuits around I decided I wanted more biscuits. 

Snoot:

For this shoot I decided to put white card underneath my biscuits because I was didn't want to cleaning the dirt marks from the table.   
I tried to organize my biscuits in different ways to see which layout looked better. I also took out the bourbons as they were quite dominant in the picture and the photograph didn't look as interesting or colourful. Out of all the layouts I liked IMGP0489 and IMGP0497  best out of them all. 

As I forgot to have a hand in my photograph I had to reshoot.
I had the lighting the same as my second shoot.

IMGP0499 was taken with only one light and then IMGP0500 was when both lights were switched on. I had originally tried to position my biscuits on the table without the white card but my biscuits kept sliding off so I decided to keep the white card. 

First we tried the lighting techniques of switching all the lights off and then switching them on one by one to see how the biscuit looked and what the shadows were like. 
I tried different hand positions until I found the last one was the best and I was pleased with my image. 


For my Indesign layout as I had centered my biscuit the middle of the page would have cut off the biscuit which is the main point but all the other biscuits made the focus confusing.
So in Photoshop I created a background copy and using the quick selection tool I went around the hand and biscuit creating a new layer. I then changed the opacity of the background to 80% so that it was still visible but not taking the focus away from the Mcvities. I then moved the background layer so that it was towards the right hand side of the page and the hand as well so that most of the sleeve was hidden as that too was distracting. 

I then put my image into Indesign and tried to match my slogan to the Mcvities writing. 
My slogan was originally 'Always the best' but then my friend suggested 'Keep it simple, Keep it Mcvities. Which made me think and combine both my idea and my friends and came up with 'Always the best, Always Mcvities' 
I decided to make the 'always Mcvities' bolder so it stand out.

Advertising Week 2: Research

Our new advertising project is based on Mcvities digestive biscuits, I researched into other biscuit advertisements. 

These are some from an advertising company called LU. 
As the biscuits contain wheat the company decided to use this in their advertisement. 
The 3 different advertisements all have the same background, a wheat field.  The adverts have the same composition with LU logo in the top left hand corner and the pack shot of the biscuit is photoshopped into the fields and a dominating horizon line separating the sky from the fields with the angle of the pictures are taken from a side view.  In the advertisement there isn't just one biscuit there are more than 7 and there isn't any writing with it such as a slogan. But I think because the biscuits are clear and they have the LU logo people can tell the advertisement is about Lu's biscuits. I think the biscuits have been placed in a wheat field because they are showing the biscuits are made from natural ingredients. I think the pictures go in this order because the wheat is different in all the pictures, so I think its showing the process of harvesting wheat.

This advertisement is from Lu advertising their new Tuc crackers in salt and pepper flavour. As they don't have the Lu logo in the corner of their image I didn't know it belonged to them.  As their advertising their new flavour salt and pepper they have taken two crackers and made them look like salt and pepper shakers just from the holes imprinted.

The advertisement has a pack shot of the packet and of the two crackers. 

This is another advertisement but its not for biscuits its for Zentel tablets. As the tablets are for stomach related problems including hookworms and they have used food such as biscuits to show how the tablets can help and their effectiveness. But the tablets aren't the focus the biscuits are and the arrangement yet simplicity they are in. If the biscuits were stacked in the same amount then the picture would be boring but as they are stacked in different ways it becomes more interesting. 

This advert has a slogan or instructions, at the bottom of the page next to a pack shot of the tablet packet, saying 'Complete elimination with just two pills'.  There is also a key above the pack shot of the packet showing the cream biscuits are for the stomach hookworms and the chocolate biscuits are for the person. If there wasn't a key then no one would know what the picture was about, it is informing about the product and why the medicine is used. 

Here are a few more advertisements from Zentel. 
As I looked more closely to the key they provide in the adverts they alter the food shapes to match the stomach worms for example this picture is saying 'for roundworms' they have chosen a round cake to suit it.

This advertisement has a chocolate in a pyramid shape to match the shape of a tapeworm. 
They have played on the different food shapes with the tapeworms, roundworms and hookworms which is amusing and interesting at the same time. 

http://archive.epica-awards.com/pages/results/2005/winners/results2005-cat02.html

Advertising Week 1: Task 2

We were asked to come up with ideas for our cutlery advertisements and here are the ones I thought of:

For my idea I chose Idea 1 because it would be most realistic and most interesting.

Before taking our photographs we started designing our poster layout on InDesign. 
I was trying out fonts for my poster as I wanted my advertisement to say 'For elegant cutlery use (company name). I was looking into fonts that were swirly or handwritten until a teacher suggested it doesn't need to be swirly to be elegant so we looked into other fonts which could be used. 

Instead of saying elegant cutlery we thought about more slogans and we came up with 'fine dining for you'. For the font we used candara. 

I had my slogan so all I needed was my images. 

For my first shoot this was my set up. As I wanted an above shot of my set up I had to stand on the chair and place my camera directly above the plate to photograph it. I didn't take many photographs because I was pleased with the outcome of my images. As I was putting my cutlery back I placed them onto the plate and decided I wanted to put this back onto the table for another quick photograph. 

These are my final two images from my first shoot. I had some trouble editing them as the white balance was more blue compared to the other image. 

In Photoshop I changed the Levels of the image for the background and using masks I was able to erase the cutlery as it became too bright. 

Shoot 2: I decided to redo my first shoot because there was reflections of myself and the lights in the spoon.  This was my lighting set up.

My second shoot was a lot more different to my first because I had to hide the lights and myself from reflecting onto the cutlery.  As there was still a reflection I decided to lose the spoons. I also had to use blue tac to hold the cutlery up so there wasn't any bright shimmers. 

 When I went to view my pictures it felt like something was missing because the composition of my photographs looked better with the spoons in. 

I decided to copy the bow from one of the images from my first shoot and copy it into an image from my second shoot and place them where the spoons would have been. 

Using the eraser tool I rubbed out everything but the bow and centered it where the spoons were. 

I decided that the bow I used wasn't a pretty bow, so I duplicated the layer and cropped it half way so I could mirror the bow. 

I then added my final image to my poster layout but I made two posters because I liked both of the images I took.