Creating a TV Commercial to Air on Morning Announcements

Skills: Organizing, creating, presenting, problem solving

Objectives:
~Students will demonstrate their ability to find advertising (client) opportunities within the school and the local community.
~Students will develop a plan, stay organized and provide feedback to ad clients.
~Students will use their creativity to design a TV commercial.
~Students will combine sounds and creative video taping, picture taking in their TV commercial.
~Students will problem solve by reflecting on the process from start to finish; alleviating future problems.

Time required: Three to five class periods; one period for brainstorming ideas, organizing the commercial, and assigning specific tasks to team. Remaining class periods to tape, take pictures, put commercial together, and get client approvals and burn onto CD or DVD.

Group Size: Three to Four students per group

Materials Needed: Sample Video’s of commercials, digital camera, digital video camera, CD’s, DVD’s, computer with CD/DVD burner.

Background: Millions of dollars are spent every year on commercials to sell goods, services, and ideas. The most creative commercials garner the greatest benefits. These commercials are typically 30 seconds or less, follow a theme, use good music or sound effects, and often include humor. Focused advertising is everywhere; and the goal is to make the student more aware of how they are targeted negatively and/or positively and the choices they have as consumers. Students learn about various types of media and advertising tactics and how they fit into our economy as consumers.

Procedure:
1. Divide students into groups. Each group chooses a product, service, or special event to advertise. Tobacco, alcohol, and sexual devices cannot be advertised. Profanity (including music) is prohibited.
2. Groups brainstorm their approach, develop a script and obtains approval from “client.” Students set goal for airing. Assemble props if needed.
3. Students take pictures and video, edit and burn onto CD or DVD and give to Media Specialist for airing on the School’s TV announcements in the morning.
4. After the lesson, students reflect and analyze the process and problem solve by performing self and team assessments.

Assessment: Commercials evaluated on creativity, clarity, content, organization, and meeting goal date (each worth 20 percent).
Variations: Students can produuce audio only to create Mp3 files to be downloaded and played on individual digital music devices.