AS Coursework Advice
This article originally appealed in MediaMagazine, and has since been updated to suit the WJEC’s MS2 coursework unit.
When producing coursework for AS media studies, you might think that charity or health campaign adverts are not as appealing as the more consumerist tasks focused on the production of magazine pages or videogame box sleeves. However, you’d be missing the opportunity to tackle a challenging and very satisfying task.
It’s all about the process
When undertaking any production work in media studies, it is vital that you follow the accepted process of research, followed by planning, followed by construction. Jumping straight into the construction element is rarely the way to achieve a high grade. Your campaign will be part of a wider advertising context, so it’s vital that you investigate existing adverts.
Pre-production (Research)
UK charities like Barnardo’s and the NSPCC are excellent sources of research material, largely owing to the wealth of archived print adverts on their websites. The government’s Think! road safety campaigns and NHS health campaigns are also recommended. A mistake many students make is to put ‘charity adverts’ into a Google image search; whilst this does return a wealth of interesting adverts, many would be unsuitable for publication anywhere other than the (unregulated) internet and often are from countries with different regulatory frameworks to that in the UK.
Moderators like to see evidence of purposeful research which methodically investigates existing practice; page after page of random charity adverts briefly annotated is not necessary. Also, any research you do into your chosen campaign topic should be properly annotated and referenced; moderators don’t like to see a pile of internet printouts as they prove little other than your ability to press ‘Print’!
Pre-production (Planning)
You should use your research to establish the forms and conventions – this is the perfect way into your planning. Despite the varied campaigns you will come across, there is an obvious similarity between them: their message is clear. A good test of your adverts is to ask your target audience to identify what is it you expect them to do as a result of seeing your campaign.
Planning shouldn’t mean reproducing your final adverts as sketches to go in your folder as evidence of drafting! Plans are your chance to try out your ideas, ideally taking inspiration from your research findings. Show your plans to your target audience and adjust them accordingly. Most importantly, refer to your plans when taking pictures and constructing your finished adverts, and constantly remind yourself of your overall campaign message.
A successful charity advertising campaign needs a clear message, so think carefully about what you want to get across to your target audience. Do you want to raise money, offer information, influence behaviour, or raise awareness? How can you best achieve this aim: shock, humour, thought-provoking statistics?
Language is another key ingredient of a successful charity advertising campaign. Consider how you can use rhetorical questions, puns and other word play, emotive language and facts to engage your audience. It’s worth spending time on perfecting the wording of your adverts (the ‘copy’); a well planned and executed photograph will be diminished by weak anchoring copy.
To achieve a high grade you should plan a campaign from the outset; consistency in all elements needs planning carefully. Obvious elements like colours, fonts and font sizes, layout, and your logo are all easy to make consistent, but other elements need thought. Your photographs should be united by something, perhaps shot distance, the framing, shot position, the colours or the subjects. Likewise, your copy should follow a set pattern, using similar vocabulary, sentence types or style of address.
If during the construction process your ideas develop so that your initial plans are very different, don’t worry; planning is a process which helps you to arrive at your best work, and your ideas and skills should develop.
Production
Good adverts tend to make use of strong imagery. When taking your photographs think very carefully about framing and mise-en-scène. If something in shot isn’t quite right change it, or alter your angle slightly; as a large proportion of your final grade, coursework is worth taking trouble over. When taking photographs plan for the placement of your copy, framing your shots to provide appropriate space and colour. If you haven’t got access to lighting, use your common sense: outdoor light will give a sharper image, items like kitchen foil, mirrors and even large sheets of white paper can improve the lighting of a scene in or out of doors.
When editing your images don’t overlook the obvious: brightness, contrast and colour balance adjustments can improve the effectiveness of any image. When editing backgrounds or combining elements, take the time to perfect your skills; many potentially strong student adverts are let down by a lack attention to detail in the finish, and this is especially true of crudely chopped image elements.
Use a page layout program (for example InDesign, Scribus, Publisher) to add copy to your adverts as this will ensure crisply rendered type; Photoshop has got a text button, but that doesn’t mean you should automatically use it!
Report
‘I’m really pleased with my finished campaign’ is usually how bad evaluations begin. Moderators hope to see writing which demonstrates a student’s engagement with the task. Was research undertaken and did it inform planning? Does the student have a clear sense of purpose and audience? Can the student write confidently about all stages of the construction process? Is media terminology used appropriately? Can the student intelligently analyse her own campaign in terms of the meaning created, its success in communicating with the target audience and its relationship to existing campaigns? An evaluation is not the place to blame others, make excuses or say what you would do better next time – you should make sure it’s right this time!
Examples of Successful Adverts
This advert by Chris Wells is effective owing to a carefully composed image. The positioning of the hand opening the door in the foreground is suggestive of a shocking scenario. It’s worth considering the use of shock tactics: too little can be ineffective, too much and you might alienate your audience. Here the balance seems well judged. The posture of the child in the advert was in draft versions, and the student was able to clearly explain his ideas to the model. The fan is also purposefully placed, nicely balancing the hand on the left and channelling attention to the child in the centre of the image.
This advert by Scott Dillon again shows that a strong image can demand attention. Here the incongruity of the heart in the pint glass creates an enigma which forces the audience to investigate further. The efforts of the student in this case are repaid double in marks awarded: clearly the props have been well prepared (planning), and the advert successful as a consequence (construction). When producing your own adverts plan meticulously so that you can construct images which are rich in meaning.
This campaign by Jenny Holder is effective owing to its clear sense of unity, achieved through the layout, the composition of the images (note the space for copy), the colours, the fonts and the use of quotations. The first three adverts make excellent use of close up photography of items commonly associated with childhood but here made menacing largely through the use of the anchoring copy. The quotation marks are also consistently used and subtly alter the perspective through the campaign. The final advert demonstrates that creating campaign consistency does not have to mean producing the same advert several times; it adheres to the campaign’s visual style in every respect apart from the shot distance employed, and in doing so indicates a progression of the message.
