Things with which I have done in New York

About a week before I went to New York with my course, I was given a brief by the Bandujo advertising agency. This was to be worked on in a group of three, including a member from each year of the course, and was based around the New York Conservatory for Drama - School of Film and Television.

Our task was to advertise the 2 year acting course that it offered through a print ad, which would help to distinguish it from the other, better known acting schools in New Nork. To do this, we would have to make the SFT seem like the best education and training an actor can get. The target market was 18-25 year olds who had just left school, or were struggling young actors.

We started by looking at what made it different to the competition, which included it being a two year course, so students can become professionals in a short space of time and that they require auditions to get on the course and they even dismiss those who don't show any improvement once they are on it.

Our execution would emphasise the speed at which the course can turn you into a professional by using the before and after style imigary. Due to the subject of the course however, we decided to reverse the images, to provide shock and interest in the poster and emphasise the range of emotions actors must show.

Once we had been able to catch the attention of passers by, we could then put through the message that SFT is 'New York's most serious acting school'. We would do this by focusing on their strict quality control of students. Images of distress in the 'After' box, mixed with taglines like 'Audition Required' help to not only show the quality of acting achieved by the students, but also emphasise that fact that it is a school reserved only for the very best actors.

Other executions would then use recognisable acting imigary and past successful students to make it imidiately clear what the SFT offered.

We presented our concept to the agency in New York and they seemed to like our ideas, with our focus on the auditions actually being quite close to their own work on the project.

The tight week long deadline and the need to stick to a poster format limited what we could achieve with the brief, which is a shame, as we had some good ideas for how to take it further, such as a 'spot the bad acting' Facebook application.

I worked on this project with Esme Burford and Adam Lowe.