Commercial

Part 1 - Who's international?

Part 2 - Need Subtitles?

Part 3 -Dinosaur 

The three separate videos are used in place of one long video to better address the broadness and complexity of the International Student Alliance.  The club not only functions as a place for international students to get together, but also the club can act in a way to help teach others about international students on campus.  Living in a country full of immigrants, what do we classify as international today?  What type of audience should the club be targeting?  The three videos help us not to exclude any potential audience.  The videos act in a way to inform and entice all to come to the international club.  Unity was kept between the three videos.  Each video had to use the same atmosphere and style.  We used the shooting angel to connect the videos.  This angel of looking at each person one on one, allows the audience to see each person as an individual and not simply group them.  The friendly atmosphere of the circle spin also recreated a “friend” atmosphere that we are all comfortable and familiar with.

The first video starts out rotating through small snippets of the characters meant to mimic a kind of wheel of fortune; who will it land on or who is the answer to the question posed at the bottom.  Using the music from Jeopardy makes it relatable to most people.  Panning to each person, the video lands on what appears to be a highly confused fully American person.  This is made to be humorous, and lead the audience to suppose he is the non-international.  There are no subtitles for the other “international” students, because it was found to be unnecessary as what they are saying is meant to be confusing to an English speaking audience so they relate, or at least think they do, to the “American” student.  On the second pan around subtitles were added to the presupposed American student when he states he has an idea to allow the commercial to make more sense.  The sounds used at the end are there to add a foreign texture, being those of oriental nature to accompany the informative text.  Turning it into a type of game show forces the audience to participate, and thus question their notions of who’s international.  Ultimately, getting the audience’s attention with these tactics will hopefully make them feel more likely to check out what PISA (Purdue International Student Association) is all about. 

The second video begins with the camera spinning, as a group of Asian students appear on the screen, talking in Mandarin Chinese which American/foreign viewers would usual have no idea about the contents at all; finally a confused American student appeared helplessly. In the end the text “need subtitles?” indicates the common difficulties that American students usually face while entering international clubs, and the commercial triggers the empathy with similar experience, making people think about joining the PISA club (Purdue International Student Alliance) to learn about foreign languages.

The third video makes you feel like you are sitting in a circle with your friends, creating an open and inviting atmosphere.  The dinosaur joke is used to comically present the fact that, yes, we are looking at people that are not the standard white.  The joke states the elephant (or dinosaur) in the room. The dinosaur joke also downplays the question that is being asked.  The obvious, that someone is international.  The joke makes it seem like who cares who is international we are all here to have fun.  The dinosaur joke overpowers the serious nature of “international.”  Showing that the club and people just want to have fun.  There is no need to be so serious all the time.  Come to the international club to have a good time and come to find out yourself  what the club and the people are all about.  Chris (a white male) is the one that speaks a different language in the commercial.  This further tricks the audience and makes them further relook at their definition of international.  Allan speaks English at the end to even further confuse and make the audience question, “who is international.”  The ultimate question is who is Allan, a dinosaur or international.   Comparing these two things should seem ridiculous, just as ridiculous as predefining someone.  You never know who someone is going to be, so don’t try to guess.  Hopefully all of this combined will make them want to “come find out” and visit the international club.

The main goal of all the commercials was to raise the question of what it means to be international.  People determine who is international by what attributes?  Appearance and language are the two main factors that most use for their conclusions.  The commercials explore this notion in a quirky and fun way.  With textual clues leading the audience through the commercials, the point of the commercials becomes clear in a way that everyone can get their meaning.


FINAL PROJECT RELOOK:
for my final project I improved upon the commercial video

DINO
by Jonathan and Colleen

I wanted to bring different colors into the video because I felt like the clean white background would let me do this without it looking too cheesy.  I also wanted to try to use text more as a main element. 

The lines/script of the commercial are supposed to be ambiguous enough to where the word dinosaur also fits into the definition of friend which also fits into the definition of international.  I hoped that by not revealing what the text means until the end that this would entice the audience to keep watching. 

I also felt like I wanted to try to touch on the points that Alan and Chris had made with their video:  the need subtitles portion of Alan’s and the game aspect of Chris’.   I also really wanted to keep the commercial upbeat.  I tried to choose footage where people looked most interesting and enticing.  I felt that without the changing color people might loose interest in what they were watching. 

I also liked that the changing color looked like the “horse of a different color” scene in wizard of oz.  I thought about even using these words in the video, I think the off humor would have been interesting, but the overall message would have related international students to a horse.  This I didn’t like.  I felt like the animal that Allan would need to be would have to be far off from reality, to make it clear that the animal had no significance outside being used for humor. 

I really tried to bring out the joke by making you feel like I was talking about animal language, particularly the language of dinosaur, with the word extinct.  This was a little off humor.  It played on the whole “dead language” phrase and the fact that the dinosaurs all died.  It is kinda a Stephen King humor laughing at death.  I did not want this to dominate the audiences ending thoughts so I made the word extinct instead of dead.  This seems less harsh and allows the audience to still think about the universal concept of a laugh.   I wanted them to feel like a laugh even translates to dinosaur.