Primary & Secondary Research into Conventions and Style of Production

Public service adverts often tend to aim to raise awareness of a certain issue, affect public attitudes and potentially help the victims to take action.

The adverts used messages that were practically saying, whatever happens, all cases can be prevented. The 3 adverts have used techniques such as shock and surrealism (Cyber Bullying), solution to problem and shock (Abuse advert) and for the NHS advert, they used surrealism (child smoking a crayon with smoke coming out of it) guilt and shock. All 3 had a lot of conventions between them. Some of which were:

• Voice-over
• A clear, effective message
• Action line (NHS)
• Logo (Cyber bullying and NHS)
• All 3 adverts were around about 30 seconds long in duration
• Clear narrative (NHS and Cyber bullying)
• And all of them included music.

A successful medium product can be made out of any of these public service adverts by including conventions such as having a voice-over, a clear and effective message, making it 30 seconds in duration and including a clear narrative.

Some lines of appeal that I will include in my advert would be: Shock, surrealism, solution to problem and fear.

All 3 of these adverts had different target audiences.

Cyber bulling advert: For Cyber bullying, it is aimed towards social networking users aged from 12 to 19 whose hobbies include tweeting and talking to friends on other social networking websites. The message of this advert is that you can talk to anyone at all if you are being physically and/or emotionally bullied. The mise en scene within this advert is a girl's bedroom that endures close-ups of a picture of herself with her mum. This could connote that she could speak to her but decided that she would rather keep it a secret.

NHS Smoking advert: In the NHS Smoking advert, the targeted audience would be adults with children which like to mirror their parents in what they do, such as smoking. The message of this advert is that children would copy anything that their parents do, including pretending to smoke which would probably encourage the children to smoke in the future. The mise en scene in this advert is in various houses where parents smoke which could one day encourage their kids to smoke when they are older. This could also connote that when one of the parents was throwing their cigarette into the toy truck, the child could of picked up and played with the truck aswell as the cigarette.

Abuse advert: For the Abuse advert, the primary targeted audience was 14-18 year old females whose hobbies are going out with friends and their boyfriend. The secondary target audience is 14-17 year old males that also like to go out with their friends but also get harassed by their girlfriends. The message of this advert is to be strong and overcome any problems that you have with the people that you love. The mise en scene is once again in a girl's bedroom which could suggest that her boyfriend has things to play with such as objects to her his girlfriend with. These could be objects such as a photo frame or a desk. The mise en scene could also connote that she 'loves' her boyfriend due to the way that she is looking at him in the picture below.