1. Radio Advert
Evaluation
Sophie Bell

2. 1.Whatcreativedecisionsdidyouhavetomaketosolveproblemsand
howdidthisdepartfromyouroriginalplan?
The first problem that we encountered was the length of the advert, it
was about 37 seconds but it had to be only 30 seconds long. We had to
decide which bits of the advert to cut out in order to make it shorter.
Me and my partner listened to our advert and decided to cut out
unnecessary pauses at the start or end etc.
We also sped up a part of our advert in order to make it shorter using
Sony Vegas. Another technique we used to shorten the length of our
advert was overlapping of the sound effects and voices.
This departed from our original plan as we did plan to have the school
corridor setting and sound effects, and then a change to a silent
classroom where the girls had to whisper… however we found it hard to
portray this scene change as well as not having enough time, so we
decided to have the talking taking place over the sound of the school
corridor.

3. 2.Bothindividuallyandworkingwithothershowdidyouworkand
whatchallengesdidyouface?
I think that my partner and I worked well together as we both had a
similar idea to the kind of finished output we wanted from our advert.
Also we both contributed equal amounts to the designing and
production of our advert, therefore we both worked to the best of our
ability to produce the advert that we had planned.
However we did face some challenges, neither me or my partner had
used the Sony Vegas editing software before therefore we found it hard
at first to figure out how to use all the features, but in the end we
completed the editing of our advert quite successfully. Other challenges
we faced included finding the sound effects and music that we desired,
but we managed to find the right ones in the end.

4. 3.Whatadvertisingtechniquesdidyouusetohookyourintendedtarget
audience?
Our target audience was teenage girls from ages of about 14-17. As our target audience
would be in high school, we decided to place our advert in a school environment and
then a home environment so the audience would hopefully be able to relate to it as
those are places they would be daily. We used diegetic sounds such as the ambience of a
school corridor (young people talking) and the door closing emphasis the environments
in which the advert is set as well as to help the audience to engage more. We used non-
diegetic sounds such as a bed of upbeat music that is running through most of the
advert as well as a voice over at the end which is directly advertising the shop and giving
details of the offers and terms and conditions. My partner and I thought that our voices
were relevant to the context of the advert as we are the same age and gender as the
target audience, therefore our voices would appeal to them more. We are also
whispering when we are in the school environment as we thought our target audience
would be able to relate to this as generally a lot of whispering goes on in a school
environment in the classrooms, especially with girls. We also thought that the
whispering was also fitting to the context of the advert as well, as it is about a girls
clothes shop so the girls may not want everyone to know about it therefore they would
keep it a secret. We hoped that the language we used would be persuasive as it is
advertising the shop but not in a direct way, as it is in the context of a conversation
between the two girls.

5. 4.Howdidtechnologyenablethecreativeprocess?Wasitdifficultto
useanyoftheequipmentanddidyoulearnanyskills?
The creative process would not have been possible without
the use of the technology provided. The voice recorder was
helpful as we could take it and go and record out voices for
the advert in a quiet part of the school which helped the
process, the software we then used to edit this voice
recording was called Sony Vegas and it was greatly helpful
as it allowed us to add music and sound effects to our
recording, as well as allowing us to edit the volume and
speed of these different features. It was relatively difficult
to use Sony Vegas as neither me nor my partner had used
it in the past therefore we found it hard to work out what
all of the features purposes were, however after some
exploration and instruction from our teacher and
classmates we were able to use the software and complete
our advert quite successfully.

6. 5.Whatconventionsofradioadvertshaveyouusedornotusedand
why?
we used a variety of audible radio conventions such as a bed of music and
diegetic sounds. We used these to enable the audience to engage in the
advert as well as to make it sound more effective and attention grabbing. We
used the convention of making the advert very short – approximately 30
seconds. We used conventions such as altering the tone of voices and
pronunciation we used in order to appeal to our target audience. We chose
the bed of music to be catchy and upbeat as we wanted to create a positive
atmosphere, as our target audience are relatively young therefore we thought
the music would be fitting. We used sound effects such as ‘crowd’ from a
database of sounds, we thought this one was appropriate as we wanted to
create the feeling of being in a school environment, which is generally loud
with a lot of people talking. Another sound effect we used was the ‘door’
slamming, we used this to help the audience understand the change of
settings, from school to home.

7. 6.Whatorwhoareyourepresentinginyouradvertandhow?
In our advert we are representing shop that sells clothes for teenage
girls. In our advert we represent a conversation between two
conventional teenage girls saying things such as ‘I like your dress,
where did you get it?’ we thought a conversation like this would be
suitable as teenage girls would generally be able to relate to it. The
purpose of this conversation is to promote the clothing store, as the
other girl answers ‘I got it from store 101’ then goes on to say to her
mother that she thinks that store 101 will be popular as she received
compliments about her dress. We incorporated the promotion of the
store into a normal conversation as we thought that this would be
more appealing and accessible to our target audience as opposed to
direct promotion. The use of stereotypes of teenage girls is also
evident in our advert, as the girls are whispering in class about clothes
which is something that a conventional girl would do, also the way that
the mum and daughter converse could show the stereotype of the
common interest of shopping and clothes between all females.

8. 7.Whatfeedbackdidyougetanddidthishelpyourealiseanything
aboutyourproduct?
We did not receive any feedback on our radio advert however my
partner and I evaluated it ourselves and decided the negative and
positive things about it, and what should be taken out or changed.
Through analysing our advert we realised that 1) it was too long 2)
there were too many pauses in which there were no sound effects or
voices 3) the bed of music was too loud or too quiet. If I was to do this
radio advert again, I could improve it by perhaps cutting out some bits
that could be seen as irrelevant for example when the girl gets home
from school and has a conversation with her mum. This would ensure
that our advert would be no longer than exactly 30 seconds and also
would help to keep the audiences attention. Also the dialogue is not as
good as It could be so we could improve that. We could have also
incorporated other voices in there as well as just mine and jades.

9. ThisisabitofthescriptthatmypartnerandIwroteforourradio
advert,wemainlystucktothescriptexactlysoitwasquitesuccessful
howeverwritingthescriptwasdifficultaswehadtothinkofascenario
andsomethingtoadvertiseaswell.Howeverwewerenotableto
includethesoundeffectsthatwedesiredsuchastheschoolbellringing
whichwouldindicatethegirlsgoingintoaclassroom.Wecouldn’t
includesoundeffectssuchasthebellaswecouldn’tfindonesuitable.
ButIthinkthatweimprovisedquitewellbycancellingouttheschool
corridorsceneandjustsettingitintotheclassroom.