The aim; to help them see/understand the building blocks within advertising images, so that they can make more informed and conscious decisions when creating there own.
To do this I decided on keeping the source material focussed. By choosing images from Chanel campaigns, I was able to highlight consistencies within images over time, to demonstrate the importance of product/brand placement, and how a product is portrayed.
The session was quite loose, with a steady flow back and forth between the students and myself. Often with me introducing an image then getting them to break it down into its various components (lead by prompts from myself if they came up blank) We focused first on the image itself, ie; What can you see, name the parts that build up the picture, what can you not see, where is the focus, what is similar in this campaign to the last, what is identical in this campaign to the last, how much of the frame is taken up by what, which photographic techniques were used. Then I questioned 'Why?' to all the above and broke it down further to help them appreciate that every advert is very consciously constructed.
Then we moved onto the subject character, ie; who is advertising this image, what do you know about them, what are they famous for, how are they portrayed in the press etc. Which lead to the discussion of why choosing the right person to sell your product is so very important, then took it further by talking about who they thought could possibly be used in the next campaign.
We broke all the images down in a similar fashion and by the end there was a general consensus that there was more to creating an advert than they originally imagined - Which makes me feel there was an element of success to the workshop.
Getting the students to play an active role throughout the activity was a key part to making the workshop flow
