Unit 4, 5 and 62 Proposal

I have been tasked to create a promotional DVD for the Extended Creative Media course - to be sent out to prospective students who may want to join the college at the start of the coming year. This proposal will run through some of the important aspects my DVD will incorporate, and I will explain why I chose to use this specific method. I will include both a small explanation as to why the format was used, and also an evaluation as to the thought process of choosing that specific medium.

After reviewing the following scenario:

“You have been asked to tender a proposal by the college to produce a promotional video for a department within the college which can then be used on the college website, be produced as a DVD to send to potential students and also be uploaded to the college YouTube site and Facebook site. As part of this assignment you will have to negotiate a brief with your client and have records of communication and correspondence between yourself and the client. While negotiating the brief you will decide on the style, length and content of the video depending on your client’s requirements”

I have a good idea as to what you, the client, is looking for.

Because this DVD is being used to promote the college and attract high school students, it is going to need to be effective at putting the college in a good light for students from ages 16-17. This means I will need to think carefully about what people in this age group would like to see, and what might make them choose Cheadle and Marple College over any other college in the area. It is always a good idea to make sure the promotional media used to attract people to something is fitting of the typical audience that the product/service may attract. I have compiled a short list as to what needs to be considered when planning and producing a promotional product:

Relevant to the course – It is very important to make sure all information about the course is 100% factual and true to the course, as it would be unfair to students if the course was completely different to how it was portrayed in the DVD.

Suitable for the age group – When creating the DVD it will need to be suitable for people around the age of 16. This will greatly alter how the final product will look.

Making sure equipment is fit for purpose – However I finally decide to create my DVD I will need to make sure it is able to be created with the equipment and software in the college. For example I will not be able to use advanced CGI or helicopter shots as these kinds of things are not feasible in college.

A suitable length – The promotional DVD will have to be a good length to both keep people interested and to be long enough to get all of the information across. I have decided my video will be from 3-5 minutes long as I feel this time frame will be capable of fitting all of the information in, whilst still keeping people interested throughout.

Most, if not all companies will enforce some kind of promotional material to attract new customers. There are many different formats of advertisement and many ways in which they will attempt to promote themselves in the best and most effective light, these range from videos to text ads, graphic advertisements in magazines and papers and also viral marketing. In this section of my proposal I will cover each of the specific applications and explain the advantages and disadvantages to each of the methods.

Promotional material is the distribution of items that companies or organizations will send out to prospective or existing customers in order to attract new business. These can be from coffee mugs featuring the brand logo, to DVD videos that can be watched in order to gain a more in depth look at the product. This method is a particularly effective one as typically the items sent out will be used, which will give the company more coverage and thus increase sales. This is one of the primary methods in which I will distribute the DVD video that will be made in order to promote the college, as it is fairly simple to send a batch of DVD’s out to the homes of perspective students. As with every form of advertisement this method has its drawbacks. The first and perhaps most important is the cost – typically this kind of advertisement is one of the most expensive, as you have to acquire a large number of promotional items before you distribute them, and this can be fairly expensive. Another drawback to this method is that if the person you distribute the material to does not use it you have effectively wasted the money that that piece of promotional material cost. However for the most part this form of advertisement is effective, and is a good way for companies to interact with customers by giving them something for free. This is also a good way to promote a company as it can give prospective customers a good indication as to the attitude of the company, as the promotional material that is distributed can be quirky and fun, or serious and formal, each of which will give the client a rough idea of how the company operates.

Advertisement is one of many forms of communication in marketing. It is used to change the mind of potential customers and sway the beliefs of audiences. Billions are spent every year by companies around the world to get the most effective campaign. “In 2010, spending on advertising was estimated at $142.5 billion in the United States and $467 billion worldwide” Typically most companies will have a consistent logo or brand throughout the campaign, and this is called branding - which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort to associate certain qualities with the brand in

the minds of consumers. Advertising can come in a huge number of formats including, but not exclusively: Radio, T.V, Posters, Direct Mail, Newspapers and magazines. Because advertisements can become so famous and well known often large companies will have a loyal fan base behind just the adverts, and expect advertisements of a similar style every time a new one is produced. Some adverts have also become synonymous with a company, for example the Coca-Cola advert celebrating Christmas has come to be expected of the company each Christmas. All things considered, I

would like my video to feature a consistent throughout, such as the use of the college logo, or colours.

Whenever you are creating anything to do with advertising, it is important to understand and know the basic fundamentals of the technology associated with the creative packages to be used, and the formats in which things will be saved and stored. It is much more important when dealing with video to choose the most effective and best optimised file format because choosing the wrong one can result in the video looking choppy and bad quality. There are a number of different file formats, and the following should be taken into consideration before starting a video.

Compression: Compression is the shrinking of files whist also maintaining a level of quality. Good compression is reducing the size of a file significantly whilst also retaining an acceptable level of quality. A bad example of this would be reducing the quality of an item but not doing anything to the file size. There are two main forms of compression – lossy and lossless. They do as explained in the name. Lossless compression makes the file smaller without deleting any visible data; it does this by using complex mathematical shapes and theories. Lossy physically deletes data in order to lower the file size. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages.

File Sizes: Depending on what you are doing with the final product this step becomes extremely important as it will limit its uses. If you intend to upload a file to the web it is important to have the smallest file possible whist still retaining the maximum quality as larger file sizes will significantly slow down the download speed of media over the internet. Slower computers also have trouble playing and opening larger file sizes making it impossible for some people to access the content. Another way in which file size can play an important part is when you are putting content onto a DVD. It is impossible to load very large files onto a DVD as they only have a certain amount of memory.

Digital Rights Management Systems: This is a system in which companies will protect and manage the distribution of their products. For example, products with a 30 day trial will have a watermark somewhere denoting to the fact that it is only available for trial or evaluation purposes, it would be wise to not use these products for important assignments as it makes the company seem cheap and unprofessional.