project!

Final Project

The process of our project wasn’t very complicated. We had the visual rhetoric theory. In order to portray this theory, Cynthia and I interviewed various people asking them what they thought of when they first saw the certain advertisements presented to them. We then continued to ask them questions pertaining to the advertisements and what can help get the message across, more visual or texts. I interviewed people about the advertisements that were newer while Cynthia asked people to evaluate the older or more vintage looking advertisements. With our theory of visual rhetoric we wanted to show how advertisements have changed over time and how depending on the genre of the advertisement that visuals or texts have more of an effect on what people see. At first, I thought this project would be a lot easier, but it is harder to tie a movie in with a theory. With our video we open it up with a lot of older looking ads and then use all the people that Cynthia asked after that. We then proceeded to use the people who were shown the newer advertisements and end it was various new advertisements to tie the video together. With the theory presented by Kress, we wanted to get the idea of different genres of advertisements being presented at different times. With the editing process part of the project, Cynthia used a imovie and iphoto to put the advertisements we asked the people about as still images in it with captions. We ended the video with a bunch of different billboard advertisements. A lot of people know that when an advertisement of snow and polar bears during Christmas time, means it is related to Coca Cola or that a lot of advertisements use a lot of sex to get their point across even if they barely have the product presented in the advertisement. Also, most advertisements that contain half naked women with beer in the background or a big hamburger are presented in men’s magazines and diamond rings are shown in magazines directed towards woman. Advertisers know not where to place certain ads and direct toward the audience that will most beneficial to them. Before all of this, advertisements were a lot different and didn’t have a lot of sex in their ads. They actually had the product in the ad because that’s what they were selling and not try to show a hidden meaning or have people guess at what it means. It was just plain and simple for everyone to understand. Even with the Got Milk! Ads, people still knew what the ads were fore but they said that it would be better if the people were actually holding a glass of milk. Also with these ads, they used celebrities because they want people to have the mentality that if someone that is famous is drinking milk, they should too. Like everything else such as computers, television, and cell phones, we feel that advertisements have also been remediated. They have changed greatly over time where they have one word and people will supposedly understand the advertisement or people will just buy it because it will make them be cool or sexy if they use the product advertised. With visual rhetoric, advertisers have learned how to put just a single visual and one word to sell a product. There are times though where there does need to be more texts in order for the audience to get the message and that why we tried to ask people what would help get the message across with the ads better. In the end, the project turned out very nice.