Looking at Advertisement (Jodie)

One idea which our group came up with to make our mise en scene quite interesting, is to use advertisement in the background of the shots. The products and services being advertised would not only be related to what is on screen at the time but to the overall storyline too. According to wikipedia.org, this is called Covert Advertising;

when a product, service or brand is embedded in media and entertainment.

To decide what we would be advertising, Kathy and myself (Jodie) started by creating a mind map with the main branches coming off covering the key themes and issues we thought of when analysing our film opening idea. From these we thought of all the possible companies, products or services which could be related to them.

The Mind Map

Then I looked around the internet for possible ideas for posters we could use relating back to the mind map. Here are some I found;

Mind
Mind is a leading mental health charity who helps those who suffer from a mental disorder. I felt advertising them in our opening would be appropriate as our media deals with the concept of psychological disorders. While researching i found it difficult to find an actual poster for this charity but i have contacted them to see if it would be possible for them to send me one. If this can not happen we can use just the logo instead.

The National Blood Service
The National Blood Service is an organisation who encourages those who are eligable, to give blood. As our protagonist is dealing with the issue of blood on his hads I thought advertising this charity would be intersting and clever for our mise en scene. The NBS also does not have any official poster but once again I contacted to see whether they could send me anything. However there are blood donation posters on the interent for other charites so we could maybe use them.

I feel advertising charities in our mise en scene would also be beneficial to the charities themselves because we are helping get their point across. By promoting them our group is doing our own part to help the community :)

Dog Walking Services
We could use a dog walking advertisement in our mise en scene because it is a dog walker who reports the dead body to the police in the first place. Therefore the advertisement has been been placed by the caller which would be interesting for the audience to notice and also this creates the link between the protagonist and this dog walking character. This type of advertisement would be easy to create ourselves using various computer software.

Police Recruitment
Advertising Police recruitment could also be another positive piece of advertisement. It relates to the openng as it suggest that our protagonist is running from the police because they may have commited a murder. This could put the police is a negative light as they are not doing their job of catching him but by advertising them this can couter act this light through promotion. Also if we decide to make the protagonist notice the posters while running this one could scare him as to suggest he can not run from the police.

Missing Persons Poster
Missing persons posters often comes up in films associated with solving a crime about a death or murder and therefore could be consdidered a code and convention of our genre. However the main issue is whether the poster is to be of the person in the previous CSI photos or to be a character we have not met yet. I am still unsure whether to include this type of advertisement in the film opening as if the poster was of the person in the CSI photos it would be too early for missing person posters of them to be up. However if we as a group decide to use one, they can also easily be created through computer software.

Amateur Macbeth Performance
This links to our other intersting idea of incorporating characterists from Shakespeare's play Macbeth. As we noticed the washing of the blood off the hands is similar to Lady Macbeth's actions in the play, having a poster of an amateur performance just enhances the theme throughout. Also the poster may make the audience notice the similarities between the opening and the play if they have not already. However one problem with this is they may expect a modern day remake of the play but this not our film opening idea.

Overall advertisemnt in our mise en scene can be very intersting as it can affect the audience's expectations of the film. Also we could use the advertisement as a prop for our protagonist to work from. However the main result I wish to get from the advertisement is for it to be subtle so that the audience does not notice it the first time round. This is because personally i enjoy films where you notice subtle items in the background which relates to the story line. Our next step is to decide on our final poster ideas and create any which need to be made by ourselves.