Greggs Advert: "Tastier Things"

Task: is to create an entertaining advert for Greggs that is entertaining, markets the company and can only be 15 seconds long. 

 I came up with my Greggs ad idea when we started researching their social media pages. I found a post on the Greggs Facebook page that joked about the Netflix platform by changing their homepage (which would be full of films and TV shows) to products from Greggs. At the top of the picture it shows a show called 'Tastier Things' (a play on Stranger Things). From this alone I then thought what it would be like if Stranger Things did include the Greggs company in its universe, as this is probably a very unrealistic thing that would happen in the show as it's set in 1980s America. 














Advert Idea

The outline of the story is Eleven (protagonist) is sat at home alone, bored, eating Eggo waffles. She then reaches into the box to find another waffle but sees that she has emptied it. Now looking around the room wondering what to do her eyes suddenly land on something (what we assume are more waffles). She now tilts her head down, eyes upwards, starting to use her telekinetic powers to bring whatever it is over to her. She starts to struggle more and more when this thing won’t come over to her, she now starts to raise her hand up using more power, her facial features becoming more furious. Blood now starts to come out of her nose as she struggles more. Then something flies into her hand, we now see a yum yum in a Greggs packet. She takes a bite and is satisfied with the taste. 

When Eleven has had her bite of the treat, the Stranger Things title sequence will start and appear, replacing the title with ‘TASTIER THINGS’ and then transitioning to black saying ‘Created By GREGGS’ (instead of THE DUFFER BROTHERS) and say a ‘GREGGSORIGINAL’ with the Greggs logo. The tagline can also be ‘One Treat Can Change Everything’ playing on the Stranger Things 3 tagline ‘One Summer Can Change Everything’.

The only character in the advert is Eleven (the protagonist of Stranger Things). The reason she is the only person in the advert is because Eleven is usually alone in the show and has to find ways to entertain and look after herself. She is also the only character because she is the main premise of the show, the story has always been about Eleven and her abilities and she is a very interesting character to try and understand. 

It was important in the advert to get elements of the character of Eleven, showing her love for Eggo waffles, her telekinesis, how powerful she is, etc. She is a very strong, empowering character to audiences, especially younger ages, as she tries to get over emotional obstacles and her past traumas to be able to try and find her freedom and happiness. Eleven is also very much a lab rat, she was brought up in a scientific lab that made her into a weapon to be able to spy on Russians at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s. So, because of her abnormal childhood (if you can even call it that) she was never educated and is not able to speak properly to people, so in the advert she doesn't speak and only uses facial expressions as she would in the show.

Roles on Set:


Cast:

• Eleven (Jane Hopper) - Sophie Laverick 

Crew:

• Director - Harriet Parvin (me)
• Script Writer - Harriet Parvin (me)
• Camera Operator - Kai Speight
• Food Artist - Tom Swales
• Editor - Harriet Parvin (me)

Filming

The advert didn't take long to film, it was roughly 20-30 minutes we spent on filming, getting 10 shots in total (that doesn't seem like much but it was everything I needed for the advert to be able to work and come together). After filming though I understood that I should have had a wide range of shots as it was all filmed on the same spot, with a few close ups. I did originally for the shot where the treat flies into Eleven's (Sophie's) hand, I wanted the camera to be by the side of Sophie, just showing her profile, as her hand would still be out and see the treat fly into it. The only reason I thought against doing that was we filmed this in the classroom at the seating area we have (I wanted the location to be somewhere that looked like a living space in an average home) and either side of Sophie didn't give the effect that she was at home, so we just kept the camera in front of her on the sofa. 

The way we filmed this scene (in the picture above) was Sophie had the yum yum in her hand and then threw it to Tom and put her hand in the same position from previous shots. So, then in editing I reversed it and made it look as if the treat was coming towards her hand.

We did film it in sequence which was very helpful and also the advert, again, is very short so it didn't matter whether the advert was filmed in order or not. The main reason we filmed in linear was because we towards the end of the advert, Sophie needed to have fake blood dripping from her nose to show the amount of force the character uses within her powers. In the beginning she doesn't have any blood on her face so it was easier to film everything like that at first, then go down to the makeup department, get the nosebleed painted on Sophie, and then filmed the rest with the blood. 

 In the beginning of filming, we made sure to add the Eggs waffles box as a little Easter egg for Stranger Things fans and also its the main reason for this advert. Eleven has ran out of Eggo's and doesn't know what next to do and, as the audience, we think she has found a waffle and it turns out it is a yum yum from Greggs. 

I made the box using an empty cereal box that I had at home and printed out the front of an old Eggo waffles box from the 1980s (which fits the time period of Stranger Things). I couldn't find a template online to be able to print out, so for the sides of the box I used the rectangle shape from the shapes section on Microsoft Word, adjusted them to the measurements of the box and then filled them in with a yellow colour to match the Eggo cover. 



Editing

I had only done editing on one project before and that was the film noir 'In the Rouge of the Night', so I am still very new to editing and using the Adobe Premiere Pro software. So, I just tried to do the best I could when editing the advert.

I think the hardest part of editing for me was that it had to be a limit of 15 seconds, so a lot of my shots in the advert looked very off when putting them together and having to cut shots down for timing issues. One of the shots, the extreme close up of Sophie, I really loved because it looked really cool and makes you feel quite uneasy of what will happen to the character the more she uses her abilities, but I had to shorten it down to get to the main part of the advert when she catches the yum yum. I was a little upset that I couldn't have had that shot in the advert for much longer, but it still looked really good as you can see the concentration in her eyes and the close up of the blood from her nose. 

A lot of the shots did look a little off, just because they were then abruptly cut by another shot, the continuity was alright but the timing for each shot didn't work as well as I wanted it to. The main shot that I don't particularly like that we did was the one where Eleven's nose starts to bleed, the blood looks great but straight after the shot where the blood hasn't come out yet, he cuts straight to where all the blood has come out of her nose. We weren't able to film it in a way that they actually do in the show where they put fake blood up of Millie Bobbie Brown's (portrays Eleven in Stranger Things) and then film her until the blood starts coming out of her nose. We were only really able to just paint the blood there and then, which looks absolutely fine and depicts the character fully, but as director/editor it is a little imperfection in my eyes but it still looks fine. 

The music I used in the advert was the Stranger Things Theme, by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. I edited the theme down and mixed and matched parts of the music with the different shots. Originally the advert was going to only use the sound effects from the show when Eleven uses her powers, it's quite hard to describe what the sound it and the only way I can describe it is that it sounds like vibrations and rumbling. The theme worked much better than I thought it would in the advert and also being able to cut parts of the theme out and work around the shots and music was interesting and fun as well. Within film and TV, and any form of media, I believe the music really makes what you see as it makes the audience feel a certain way as they are listening to it but also watch what is happening on screen. Music makes you understand how you should feel when watching something. So, working with music in this way was very interesting for me and a lot of fun and something I would like to do more. I also had help from Nathan (group member) to make the transition of the music to sound smoother and not sound as if it was all just cut up and put together. 

I also found this a challenge within my advert and that was to put the title and company name onto the ad. I wanted to find a way to put the Stranger Things title onto the advert, but replacing it with 'Tastier Things', and it was actually much harder to be able to find the ITC Benguiat font online (for free anyways). So, on the software I was using, I had to find a font that made some sort of similarity to the original font. 

I did end up with this (on the left) at the end of my advert. To me I don't think it looks great, I feel a made it look unprofessional. I wanted to make it look like a professional advert, as of it was a Netflix trailer as well. I wasn't particularly thrilled by how I created the ending of the advert but, again, I did my best and it for my second attempt for using the software, it isn't that bad. 

I think altogether the advert was a success, I got everything filmed quickly and put it all together in no time at all. The only issues I had was to not over complicate the editing and also to use a wide range of shots instead of having the camera in the one place the whole time. 

Group Work (on Greggs Ads)

As much as I had fun doing my advert and mostly thinking about that and what the outcome would be, I helped out with a few of the adverts that members of my class created. 

I helped out with Kai's advert where I played a member of a cult that worships a Greggs sausage roll,  that was a lot of fun to do and was a really clever idea as Kai used a tripod on wheels that did a 360-degree pan around us, showing the sausage roll in the middle on a stand and having our class members bow down to it. 

I also helped out with Amiliyah's advert which was a take on Mission Impossible. I helped with the lighting, part of setting and helped her out a little bit with directing. Mostly Amiliayh would ask for help on the layout of the scene and came to me about how the idea for her advert was. Her idea was really imaginative and a lot of fun to bring onto its feet.

I also helped out with Nathan's by being an extra in it, his was based on the famous scene from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indiana Jones goes into a temple and steals an ancient artefact (which is now the sausage roll in the advert). Instead of having the huge boulder chasing Jones out of the temple, we had the rest of our classmates (including me) and some of the performing arts students chasing after Joe (Indiana 'Scones'). This was a lot of fun and a very unique spin on the classic film. 

I did help out on everyones films as much as I could and everyone helped me out too. This was probably the best part of filming the adverts as we got to work with everyone and get to now each other more and have fun. I honestly love my class so much and have changed my life and make me want to come into college everyday. So, having us all work together and make sure everyones adverts were the best they could be was amazing and I can't wait to work with everyone more.