Years ago, products were often advertised simply by having someone stand in front of a camera and talking about the product. In those days, watching an advertisement was like listening to a salesman.
The spokesman would introduce himself. Then he would talk about the product. Sometimes he would demonstrate the product for television viewers.
As television advertising developed, advertisers would develop little skits to promote their products. Many advertisers continued to do well by having celebrity spokesmen talk directly into the camera.
Nowadays, fewer advertisements rely on having famous people talk like salesmen. The most effective advertising strategy these days is psychology and entertainment. If an advertisement seems more like entertainment, people will pay more attention to it.
Affective Filter
Affective filter is a psychological term. It’s kind of like a guard standing at the gateway to your mind, and it decides what information is going to pass into your brain.
When you are aware that someone is trying to convince you of something, you’re more “on your guard.” Your unconscious mind decides whether the message is true. If it says, “No,” or, “I doubt it,” the message is not allowed into your brain, except as “someone else’s opinion.”
But, what if the “guard at the gate” is told that it’s not really a message; that it’s just entertainment? Then the “guard at the gate” lets the message through without questioning it, and it goes straight to your brain. Then you’re more likely to accept it as your own opinion.
That’s one of the reasons that the most effective advertisements don’t look like advertisements; they look like entertainment. These advertisements are scripted and blocked in the same manner as movies, stage plays, and television programs.
(When a movie director blocks a scene, this means that he has already decided where everyone and everything in the scene is supposed to be. Whether someone stands in one place or moves is decided by the director. Everything about how the scene is supposed to look is blocked by the director even before it is filmed. We’ll tell you more about blocking later.)
As for celebrity spokesmen, they can hardly be called “spokesmen” anymore, because they usually don’t speak. Advertisers still use the technique of transference, but without making the advertisement look as much like an advertisement. Instead, the celebrity “spokesman” is seen using the product. Since that doesn’t look as much like a message, the “guard at the gate” is more likely to let the message go straight through to the brain.
Transference is the subtle art of taking the viewer’s feelings about one thing and transferring it to something else. Take, for example, a typical political advertisement in Taiwan. When an unknown person is running for public office (we’ll call him Ou-yang), you often see pictures of him standing next to a popular politician (we’ll call him Su). They hope that your good feelings about Su will be transferred to Ou-yang and that you’ll vote for Ou-yang as a result.
Sometimes, in your college life, you’ll see a person with low self esteem associating with a popular person in hopes that some of that popularity will “rub off” on the insecure person.
Let us give you an example of the use of a storyboard to block a scene. In the scene below, the Little Mermaid is talking with the sea hag. The director has decided that the scene would open with the two of them in the same frame. Then the camera cuts to show only the mermaid, then the sea hag, and so on. The scene ends with the mermaid and the sea hag in the same frame.
If you were filming live actors, that would be a great deal of trouble. Each time you changed the scene, you’d have to move the camera, the lights, the actors, and everything else. It’s much more convenient to film it the way you see it below.
Both scenes with the mermaid and the sea hag in the same frame are filmed. Then all the scenes with just the sea hag are filmed. Then all the scenes with just the mermaid are filmed. Later, the film editor cuts and splices the film to produce a scene in the order that the audience will see (as above.)
Now it’s your turn!
You and your team, now design a television or video advertisement for your product or service.
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