Tide Print Advert (1950's)

Layout

• Rule of thirds/Visual Hierarchy, The most important information is near the lines if split into three parts, The Heading "TIDE'S GOT WHAT WOMEN WANT!" in the top, the biggest image in the middle and the facts about the product in the bottom.
• The repetition of women in the Tide advert reinforces that this is for women but also can tell men that this product makes women happier as it makes their lives easier.
• Red is used to contrast to the rest of the ad, Words like "Tide", "Clean", "Cleanest", "Whitest" and "Brightens" to show the most important things about Tide and red also matches with the colour of the box of Tide.

Images

• The largest image is of a happy woman with a Tide box in her arms showing how women will adore this product if they had it and will make lives much better.
• Another image is of women hanging up clothes and they're talking to each other about how good Tide is.
• The next image is of the women who appears twice on the print advert where she is talking about how good Tide is compared to other products.

Language

• The rule of three helps make the product sound better, '1. World's CLEANEST wash! 2. World's WHITEST wash! 3. Actually BRIGHTENS colours!' makes it more interesting and better compared to other wash products.

Save The Children vs WaterAid

Save the Children and Water Aid both focus on saving people but represents their message using different methods. Save the Children focuses more on the negative impact on children during a war and shows the suffering they go through however WaterAid uses a risky method of showing the positive impact of people in Africa after they receive the help they need, this is risky as from a different point of view it seems that the people are ok and don't need help however their base message is to show people how helping WaterAid can help other people from not having the necessary needs to being happy like the people in the advert. Save the Children is the usual type of charity advert as it uses guilt and sympathy and is effective at helping people in need successfully. WaterAid approached the charity advert differently by choosing a different view of people in need by showing  the positive side but is a smart method as if analysed properly then you can see what it really means and how there is some guilt and sympathy methods used still in the WaterAid advert.

WaterAid uses some close up shots of Claudia to create a connection between her and the audience, some close up shots of over people happy in the village to show their feelings about having water. Save the Children's advert is completely different as they don't use a close up but instead use a constant upper body shot of a girl living a normal life and then shows her facial expression changing as her normal days starts to go downhill as a war starts in her area. They don't use a close up shot and instead only use upper body shot as they want to show what's happening in the environment and with her face also. Another comparison is the use of colours, WaterAid starts with a lack of colours but throughout the advert more and more colour come through to show how water can brighten up these peoples lives. However, Save the Children starts with bright colours and happy emotions and transitions into dark colours with sad emotions to reinforce their final message of "Just because it isn't happening here, Doesn't mean it isn't happening" as it can happen to anyone at anytime and you don't know its coming even if you live the best and happiest life.

Another thing you can see with the close ups of peoples faces is that if that person is looking directly at you or something else. In the WaterAid advert, no one; not even Claudia looks directly at you which follows the rest of the advert as they don't use much guilt and sympathy like usual charity adverts so they didn't make any look at the camera to not connect a direct connection between them and the audience. However, in Save the Children, the girl doesn't look at the camera for most of the advert until the end when she looks very ill and upset next to her mum celebrating her birthday, she looks straight at the camera for the last few seconds to create the connection between her and the audience and also makes the audience feel sympathy and guilty for her making them want to help her.

Water Aid Advert

Usual WaterAid adverts use empathy, guilt and sad, negative scenes of children struggling however this advert shows the aftermath of if you do donate to WaterAid showing people in Africa being happy as they have water. This is quite risky as not using negative emotions usually make the audience not donate as their first view of the advert makes them think that they don't need water but this is still a quite clever advert as they use little things to show how donating can really help. The main message of the advert is to show that if you donate then you can help more people in poverty without water to be happy with water. First of all they show a shot of a window sill with a radio and a plant on top with a very green garden while its raining, this could be a house of a middle class person as the radio isn't too modern and are listening to the weather. Also this could be the target audience of this Advert as they have enough time and money to donate.  Its a very blue tinted shot to show that its cold suggesting that its in UK and exaggerates on how its raining and we take advantage over the amount of water we have, Also to reinforce that we don't think about how much water we have, the weather channel is talking about how its raining in a negative way to show how most people in UK hate when it rains creating a sense of guilt as we hate rain but people in Africa can't even get that much rain and get clean water like UK and makes the audience to feel sympathy for people in Africa increasing the chances of them donating to WaterAid. The sound transitions from rain to the sound of grasshoppers and other bugs and the transitions from a cold wet shot to a warm dry shot to also create more sympathy for Africans in poverty. The warm dry shot is a image of crops and then transitions to a really blank wide shot of Claudia in the middle of a dirt pathway, blank in the way that there is hardly any colour and seems like its going to be like the usual dark and sad WaterAid adverts however throughout the advert more and more colour starts flowing in showing how giving these people water means a lot to them and can have a huge impact. Claudia starts to hum the song "Sunshine on a Rainy Day" and then starts to sing it, this could link to the first dry shot of Africa and how her mouth is dry that she hums first ; not only colour transitions more throughout the advert but also does water, then she sings it to show that she's got a bit of moisture in her mouth to be able to sing to show water transitioning into the advert. The Western Pop Song creates a connection between Claudia and the audience, especially people who know the song like Middle class people. They use close ups onto Claudia to show a slight happy face to create even more connections that Claudia is an actual person making the audience feel sympathy for her.

Advertising ideas

Realism and anti realism are two sides of a philosophy debate behind the whole bases of scientific proof.

Today I accidentally gave myself a paper cut, it was the worst one I've ever had. The reason for this was that it went really deep into my skin and also cut my muscles open, me just saying that makes me  feel horrible but it actually happened. But when I done it I felt creative

Venice Jay Riptide Music Video

Indie Genre

Short for independent music meaning that when producing the product e.g. music and games etc they create this themselves without being mainstream and with no major record labels but are allowed to collaborate with other record labels who aren't so popular. The indie genre is usually guitar based and alternative rock in music but really can be anything if the industry matches what indie means. Now, many indie genre music doesn't follow the industry rules, like they create a music with a major record label but they do keep the indie genre within their music so it still classes as indie. 

Vance Joy - Riptide Music Video

Riptide is an example of an indie genre song as it was made without major record labels. The song is described as being a "coming of age love story" but is also known for its metaphors and pop culture references. Throughout the music video, the images that come up exactly match the lyrics in a very obvious way but in some cases it's slightly different or has multiple meanings. For example of an obvious one is a short clip of a girl being dragged into the shadows with the lyrics saying "Taken away to the dark side" at the same time but in other times its different, a clip of a girl being tied up to a tree and escaping with the lyrics being "Oh and they come unstuck" but the image of a girl being tied up to a tree in the middle of nowhere connoting that women are weak but then being controversial when she manages to escape showing women to be strong. In the video, women are presented in different ways, most of the time women are shown to be scared or terrified as they've been abused or attacked or that they are presented to be objectified and sexualised as they aren't looking at the camera not knowing that they are being viewed at from behind. 

Dizzee Rascal

Dizzee Rascal

Dylan Kwabena Mills was born 18th of September 1984 in Bow, London. Unfortunately his father died when Dylan was at a young age. Dylan says that he was violent and disruptive when he was young and had many issues as he always got kicked out of schools and his mum would have to find him another school with a system that would fit him in. He started making music on the computer with encouraged by a Music teacher and Dylan attended music workshops during the summer holidays. Dylan was a childhood friend with Danny Shittu who was like a big brother and Dylan made his first mixtape and tracks at Danny's house. He read Kerrang! and enjoyed listening to Nirvana. At 14 he started his career at drum and bass DJ, also rapping over tracks as customary in sound system culture. Now he is a British rapper and record producer. He is a pioneer of Grime music but also incorporates elements of UK garage, baseline, British Hip-Hop and R&B. 

Dizzee Rascal music video Dream has a lot of messages hidden within that may have been accidental or on purpose. The obvious one is the title and the lyrics of the song telling us of Dizzee's dream of becoming an artist and being successful but what is shown in the video does alter the original meaning of the video creating new messages. For example, Dizzee uses a 1950's children television programme 'Muffin the Mule' for the set in Dizzee's video of an elderly woman next to a grand piano in a house, also Dizzee uses the puppet idea from the programme. The use of the children television programme is a binary opposite to what a grime artist would use in their video but Dizzee wanted to do something different to maybe show how his childhood started. However there are still some similarities in the music video to a normal stereotypical grime genre video like violence and the type of of clothes people wear. Dizzee is wearing a hoodie which is close to what most of the other puppets are wearing but this is another  binary opposite to what the woman is wearing, which is a blue dress with a 50's like haircut and speech, this could suggest how the woman is representing white British middle class people and Dizzee and his puppet friends represent black British working class, this link to hierarchy with the sizes as well showing how she has power to let Dizzee out and to put him back in, black working class are controlled by the white British middle class, another hint to this is how the puppets are on strings being controlled and most of the puppets are black and shown to be friends of Dizzee in puppet form to show Dizzee's life. Dizzee does make a few changes to using the idea from the children television programme like using the set of an urban building with graffiti all over it to show that it's in Britain as Britain in a stereotypical view is like that. With gangsta puppets and police fighting to bring in the grime stereotype idea but in a puppet way. There is also a scene where Dizzee is in a studio with a microphone and with a close up which is common in a grime video, this could link to what Dizzee started on in the music industry. Dizzee has a lot of representations but also uses a lot of intertextuality, an example would be how one of the puppets looks like Golliwog with the rest of the puppets, Golliwog is a message of Blackface which is that white actors painted there face black but with a hideous look during the 19th century, Dizzee uses this to send a message to the viewer that Dizzee believes that white British middle class people view black British working class people like Blackface but uses Golliwog instead to support the children television programme, Dizzee just puts the message out there showing some annoyance on how people could think that and he wants to change the stereotype of Black British people.

Advertising

Advertising: 3 Golden Rules

1. Inform

2. Persuade

3. Sell

Doves Beauty Campaign












Dove's Beauty Campaign is to tell the world how everyone is distorted by the everyday things we see of how women are viewed. Distorted as in how women are changed as shown in the image above using makeup and editing the photo to finish it off, Dove wanted to go against this and instead have the beauty of natural skin on women. I some cases this was successful as many women probably felt more confident and comfortable being out there with their natural look however Dove still did got criticism from many people. Many people made parodies by reversing Doves message of looking at natural beautiful women and instead how people don't want to look at ugly people. They made a very similar video like Dove but instead starting with a nice guy and making him look fat towards the end as shown in the image below.

Introduction Written Task

Representation of gender and ethnicity are shown in different types of media. Firstly, Robin Thicke's music video Blurred Lines is a great example of showing gender stereotypes. Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams have women all around them to make them look good in front of their audience, the video never shows women look responsible near men or by themselves, instead they are dominated by men and they are there for the male gaze so the video is pleasing for men and is financially better for Thicke himself as more views equals more money. The representation of men in the music video also makes them look smart as their wearing suits and they have power and independence and that they have wealth and a good status. Also, the women don’t sing or has no agency in the video at all obviously they want the attention on the men as its their video but also because they don't want to give much power to them as they only want them to be a sexual object. Aswell, they dress the women provocatively to add to the sexual object theme and they look to the camera/men either blankly or indicating sexual availability. The lyrics sung by the men aren’t respecting the women either as they talk about them like their nothing but something nice to look at and be with like “You the hottest bitch in this place” and they talk only sexual towards them “The way you grab me/Must wanna get nasty”. This shows how that in 2012-13 many other music videos probably have similar uses of women to make men look better than other men. However, in the music video, the girls don’t do much but dance and sexual pose near men but also the girls aren’t only white, there are different colour skin girls showing a positive message that no matter the colour of your skin, you are beautiful.

Asda also has a good representation of gender and ethnicity. Another good representation of stereotypical women and men is in the Asda Christmas Advert 2012. They show the housewife/mother side of women which is opposite of Robin Thicke’s music video as he represents them as sexual objects. Asda represents the mum as a busy individual who does all the work in the house and the man is busy outside of the house, this is following the stereotype of women staying indoors doing all the domestic work and men work for the money. The mum’s own desires secondary to family and is the decision maker and organiser in all domestic matters, as everyone thanks her at the Christmas dinner and Asda shows that the mum done all the hard work to see the family happy and cheerful of her work at the end. Through the video she looks exhausted and completely warn out and hardly gets any help, the only time she gets help is at the beginning where they are selecting a Christmas tree and also when he is home from work and he is moving the tree, this particular scene shows the stereotype of women being fussy and boss the men about and shows the stereotype of men looking exhausted after work. Asda try to make out that they are on the side of women as at the end it says “Behind mum there’s Asda showing that they help mum do the domestic jobs however they are still supporting the stereotype of housewives/mum’s and instead they could change it by changing the popular stereotype of men and women by swapping them but in 2012, there are so many adverts that support these stereotypes that its now a normal thing to use. A good scene that represents gender equality is the scene where all the family is at the dinner table eating Christmas dinner and even though she has done all the hard work she is not sitting on a normal chair instead she’s sitting on the bean bag lower than everyone else and that the dad didn’t really do anything to support the mum however he can sit on the chair at the end of the table showing hierarchy that man have more domination and power over women.

Lastly, the men’s magazine ‘Men’s Health’ has Cristiano Ronaldo on the front page topless with tips on staying fit. This shows the stereotypical view on men that they should be fit. Using Ronaldo makes men feels like they need to be like him to be masculine and have sexual attractiveness with the body image and physique. The tips around Cristiano shows how you can be like him and has men’s interests like sex and looking good and being stronger. Using a famous footballer not only helps the magazine company financially for more people to buy the magazine but also inspires men to be like him so they can be successful like him. This magazine was published in September 2014 and at this time there might have been a trend of men trying to be more fit so this magazine at the time fit with the context.