1. Ashleigh Darlington’s NHS Advertising Assignment Review
For this assignment we was given a live brief and this was to create a ninety second advert
for the NHS, there were four briefs that the NHS had given us, our class was put into four
separate advertising groups to carry out these individual briefs. I was initially put into a
group of four, which ended up turning into a group of three as a member of our group left,
but most the time it was just two people as another member of the group has a great deal
of time off. The brief was given the “right treatment, right place” brief. The idea we chose
was to at the beginning have a short clip of a person being at home ill in bed then getting up
and taking some medicine and feeling better, this was to show that for minor illnesses you
do not need to go to other places you can just simply care for yourself in your own home.
Then we would have a black background with animated text on this background to show the
illnesses you can treat at home, this is called self care. We would then show a picture of a
man walking towards a chemist and then on a blank background again, with animated text
to show why you would go there, then get some shots outside of the hospital and then a
black background again with animated text saying why you would go there. We chose this
idea because for our brief we had to show how you treat what you have got and where to
go to do this, making sure it is clear as the whole aim of this advert is to ensure that people
go to the right place.
Due to somebody leaving our group, and people not being in, all our preparation and idea
planning got delayed, this led to us still not knowing what we was doing far into the actual
assignment itself. There was also an attendance issue with the group I was put in and there
was many times when a different person would be in on their own, making it impossible to
do any of the group work. This was mainly a problem at the beginning but once all the group
was in together we was able to come up with an idea that we all agreed on and contributed
towards and when people was off, the people/person that was here was still able to carry
on with all the pre-production work.
It took us a while to start the actual filming due to the earlier complications, but we decided
that I would be the one to film what would film at my house to show how you can treat
minor illnesses such as coughs, colds, headaches or vomiting at home by yourself. Then the
group leader Charlotte took care of all the After Effects work, as me and the other group
member did all the pre-production work, which was basically writing up our ideas, doing call
sheets, mind maps, schedules, location recognisance’s, mood boards and story boards.
However once all this was sorted out we came together and started our filming at the places
we had chose to feature in our films. This has now all come together and I am pleased with
our final piece and what we have. We did end up meeting the deadline however due to not
starting the work as soon as we was given the task, we couldn’t spend as long as planned on
creating the actual advert itself and completing all the pieces of work that had to be done
for our pre-production, there for because of this the work wasn’t to as good of a standard as

2. we had initially hoped for at the start of the assignment when we were first given this brief
to do.
So because of all these issues that occurred, if I had the option to do this again then I would
and I’d defiantly do quite a few things differently. The things I would change if I did do this
assignment again is: instead of waiting for the whole group to attend the classes so that we
could all decide on an idea together and all contribute towards this idea, so that it would be
the whole groups idea and not just one persons which is what we did in the first place and is
one of the things that delayed the process, so instead of doing this I would come up with an
idea with the people that was in at the time we first had the chance to start working on this
assignment, even if this meant coming up with the idea on my own so that I could then start
the work, there and then so we would have got off to a good start rather than being behind
which for a few weeks we was. I would of also planned properly beforehand where and
when we would go the places as we didn’t do this at the beginning so sometimes we would
have no pre- production work to do and nowhere to go and film as we didn’t plan it before
hand, only when we actually wanted to go and needed to go, but couldn’t because we didn’t
have anywhere booked.
Although in the end the actual advert was a success despite all of the issues that we had in
the beginning and come across during the creative process of the advert.