AS1 Task 4: Analysing a television advertisement in detail.

ANALYSING A TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENT IN DETAIL

If London was Syria

The advert I will be analysing is " If London was Syria" by Save the children. The goal of this advert was to make everyone aware of what is happening in Syria, how innocents lives are being turned upside down because of the bombings.  The advert style is shocking and emotional because it shows and explains that a little girl who doesn't know anything has to go through a dramatic change in her life, from having a nice birthday cake with more than one candles and enjoying with her family and friends, to a simple cake that doesn't look like a birthday cake and one candle and everyone she loved was not there to celebrate her birthday with her, as we can how her face expression changed over the time. The use of mise en scene made it emotional because at the beginning the family was in a normal,happy environment and at the end there's explosions and bombs, everything that started happing was unexpected and they little girl looked terrified and confused. The target audience would be parents and young adults since its a charity advert, this allows them to realise what is actually happening, at the end of the advert it said "Just because it isn't happening here, doesn't mean it isn't happening", I believe that an advert like this is purposely made to provoke an emotional response.the persuasive device that is used in this advert is shock, fear and guilt, a parent or young adult watching this advert would realise that they need to do something to help because they can be in that situation.

The positioning of the camera throughout the advert is very important. we have a lot of close up of the child to shows us the emotion of the character in the advert, an example is when the girl had to sleep on the floor whilst explosions going off, we cant see the floor but the the surrounding didn't look like it was a place with nice floorings, this is a powerful image as it is horrible to think that a child of that age should be involved with something like that. The editing and sound is very effective throughout the advert. Throughout the advert the shots changed from a normal speed to short and rapid, using this technique is effective as it develops sense on tension and builds anxiety in whats going to happen next, furthermore the sound of surroundings became vivid and distorted and what we can only hear are explosions, helicopters and people screaming, the impact that it will have on us is fear and guilty because we are now aware.