Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Water Aid
Audio-Visual Advert
- Context
- Social Context
- WaterAid, launching the Rain For Good
campaign, said that it had "deliberately broken
away from the traditional charity ad formula"
- The stereotypical 'victim' needing our help is an
archetype with which the audience would be
familiar from many other charity adverts
- This would perhaps make the more positive representation
of Claudia as a healthy, independent and musically talented
woman stand out to an audience who might otherwise have
become immune to the emotive representations
conventionally deployed by this advertising sub-genre
- Cultural Context
- The audience would be expected to be familiar
with charity advertisements as they would
have grown up during the big charity events of
Live Aid and Band Aid
- Genre
- The advert reinforces charity advert
conventions by including key information
about the concern, a narrative relevant to
the cause and an appeal for money
- How it reinforces the genre
- The advert includes key
information about the cause
- It includes a narrative that
is relevant to the cause and
the audience can relate to
in some way
- It contains an appeal to
the audience for money
- How it contrasts the genre
- The advert lacks a
non-diegetic voiceover
- It doesn't include
melancholic audio codes
- It doesn't use black
and white visual codes
- Theory: Saussure's
Binary Opposition
- Codes and Conventions
- The opening medium shot with a pull focus
between the radio and the rain on the
window establishes the advert as a
modern, British setting, this is backed by
the audio code of the British voiceover
- It's connoted that the scenes that
follow are happening at the same time
- The visual and audio codes work together
to construct the narrative of "sunshine"
(in Africa) "on a rainy day" (in Britain) with
the associated problems of drought "lack
of easy access to clean drinking water"
that the charity is aiming to relieve
- The advert uses a shallow
depth of field, focusing on
Claudia after setting the scene
- The people are shown wringing out
their clothes showing the clear water
and bright colours contrast the ideas
that the media has of charity adverts
- At the tap there were large amounts of
buckets, this connotes that a many people
had brought the buckets for the clean water
- Theorists
- Roland Barthes
- Enigma Code
- Suspense is made through the use of
the slow-motion, medium and
close-up, low-angle tracking shot of
Claudia's feet and the swinging bucket
- Stuart Hall
- Representations
- The images of a dry, dusty African environment
in which people may be struggling to survive
form part of the "shard conceptual road map"
that give meaning to the "world" of the advert
- The more positive audio codes then work to
challenge these stereotypical representations,
creating enigmas around why Claudia appears to
be so positive
- The solution to these enigmas is given to
the audience at 01:00 when we first see
the water pump
- David Gauntlett
- Identity
- Claudia acts as a role model for the
type of lifestyle changes that the
audience could be responsible for
creating if they donate to Water Aid
- Liesbet Van Zoonen
- Feminism
- By assuming the stereotypically male roles of 'protagonist'
and 'provider', Claudia is perhaps contributing to social
change by representing women in non-traditional roles
- Representations
- The dress codes of the advert's main
female character include a stereotypical
knee-length skirt and pink colour palette
in both her top and shoes
- Claudia's age is similar to the other
young women she walks past at 00:30
and those who join her at the water
pump at 01:00
- This connotes that she has perhaps had
to "grow up too quickly" because of the
tough environment in which she lives
- Her independence is connoted by the
wide-angled shot at 00:18 in which she is
denoted on her own on a long and empty
dust road
- Close-up shots using handheld cameras (00:16), her open,
confident gesture codes (00:51) and her smiling gesture
code (01:09) represent her as the advert's protagonist and
a 'character' with whom the audience can positively
associate