Chapter 3 - Research
Inspiration
I’ve always had a huge interest in the local area and the history of it, Even right down to the rise and fall of Southport. This has what has got be interested in local politics and to get me more involved in it to help support the town as much as I can. I never intended to get into it as a career or to work my way up the ladder into Westminster politics. I have a keen interest in film making and website design and being able to incorporate this into my local politics especially with the experience I have with gained from campaigning when I was part of the Southport Town Deal for the state of the art Events Centre on the Promenade. I gained over 8,000 consultations alone from the public and school/college students. Being able to direct and create videos is what I am good at down to even knowing how to encourage the younger generation is what primarily what my job was as I know exactly how they think and what they want which is what would encourage them. It even comes down to being offered jobs in the Conservative Campaign Headquarters because their crying out for people to run campaigns in different constituencies in the country.
Identify requirements for your media project and discuss how your project would be different to comparable products and justify the need for it.
As I am standing in the next local elections in Kew Ward for Southport, something like an election campaign video would help out my campaign a lot and would boost up support. As this is a real election campaign video; I have external deadlines to meet, in other words my deadline has been moved forward so that I can create the video and have it approved by the association.
For this video I will be identifying issues/problems with the new Eastern Access Scheme which is being put across in Southport and in my area, the main requirements I would say for this video is to make a really compelling and persuasive argument which puts across to residents that something like this would increase congestion, increased level in pollution, cause more side roads to become rat runs and damage the local independent businesses who are running in front of these schemes.
This project would be different in so far as that I am highlighting an issue which doesn’t seem to be talking about by anyone and I feel like people are dismissing such scheme out of hand thinking it won’t happen even when it probably will happen.
Refer to industry examples throughout your portfolio. Comparing and contrasting a range of work to similar type of products / industry examples.
With it being a Conservative Party Local Election Campaign video featuring me representing Kew Ward in Southport, I will need to be able to keep everything brand driven based on party image etc. Comparing with industry examples from my portfolio, I will be looking back at my existing clothing campaign video to see if I can add a little bit of artistic creation to this campaign video as I feel like it will give off that a lot of thought has gone into creating it. Comparing with other existing videos I have analysed and placed below in the research finds, The Pier campaign update video; I think that the concept and script worked well, but the way the video were shot in terms of colour contrast was poorly made and I don’t think it was properly filmed on anything other then a mobile phone. It gives off the illusion that the video was green screened when it wasn’t. I want to be able to create something using my Panasonic Lumix GH5 so that everything comes out in the best possible colour grade and nothing looks really peachy and blurry, paired with the gimbal so that the movement shots are really smooth and works well with the campaign video. It’s alright having a good compelling argument but without an enticing video, this will deter the audience away and wouldn’t make them interested in the slightest.
Different Media Products
Opposition Campaigns Which Aren’t Governed by Anyone
Led By Donkeys is prime example of an opposition campaign where they were established in 2018 as an Anti-Brexit organisation, but also criticised the actions of the Conservative Government. The original campaign consisted of past tweets from pro-Brexit politicians and quoted them in there’re own tweets. They started off as a guerrilla campaign which in other words mean independent and not controlled by any media outlet or political party; they plastered over existing adverts and then expanding into a crowdfunded campaign that actually legitimately purchased hundreds of billboards across Britain. They later started projecting messages on buildings such as the Houses of Parliament and even the White Cliffs of Dover. They even went as far as drawing messages on beaches and fields. They won an award for The Best Social Media Campaign in 2019 at the Social Purpose Awards.
Campaigns’ Led By Donkeys
The main and biggest campaign which was Led By Donkeys was to hold the Brexiteers to account and which is still ongoing and their strategy is to research into the achieves of other pro-Brexit politicians and displayed them for public show and which seems to be at the odds with reality when displayed in 2019. Over 300 billboards started to be displayed in areas of pro-Brexit areas and it was established to reached about 30 million people.
There was a few billboards that has some tweaked in late 2019 which featured Jacob Rees-Mogg’s 2011 statement in the Commons that it made sense to have a second referendum and of course this billboard was really dishonest because he actually wasn’t on twitter yet and he said this was based on different circumstances. From then on, they added footnotes to their billboards rather then a statement from somebody else’s Twitter. In that case Jacob never never tweeted anything, he said his speech in the House of Commons. They have collaborated with a music artist called Coldwar Steve with a more detailed billboard shown at the headlining show Glastonbury in 2019.
One of the most famous campaigns the European Union was considering extending the deadline of Brexit from the 29th March 2019, Led By Donkeys used a giant projector to display a video on the White Cliffs of Dover; which displayed a message of asking the EU leaders for much more time to deicide as they think there should have been a second referendum. The video footage actually showed an SOS sign with the O made up of yellow starts; to replicate the EU flag. The leader of the EU at the time Guy Verhofstaf endorsed this by tweeting out that it was “quite something to see the White Cliffs of Dover turn blue”. They also projected messages onto Buckingham Palace asking if the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a criminal after they thought he unlawfully suspended Parliament.
The point I am trying to make here is that as it is a democracy, you are able to say what you like without being governed by somebody else and as this is an independent organisation, where as other political parties sensor what you say and it is a lot more controlled and governed. This campaign group are not governed by anyone and can say what they like without fear of being censored or the modern term of Cancel Culture.
Controversy of WhatsApp Group Chats
I am going to start off with the famous British controversy story over Boris Johnson and his WhatsApp group chat called “Number 10 Action Group” Corresponding from what The Guardian Newspaper said about this and rewording it the best I can.
The former boss of the GCHQ has asked for the end of handling sensitive and important decision making over WhatsApp. Sir David Omand, who ran the UK intelligence service has expressed his concern of the way the Government handled the pandemic and said they didn’t handle it with the proper process. He spoken by giving in evidence at the parliamentary inquiry as they are heading into General Election year. “The complexities and nuances of any decent strategic analysis; cannot be conveyed in a WhatsApp exchange”
These kind of interventions are supposed to put pressure on the government to make sure that decision making is properly written down and recorded for the future, as all this seem to be strengthening the demands for Labour as they are leading the polls.
Omand has also said that the evidence he has gathered shows that Ministers and officials often engaged in Gossip and informal exchanges as they gather cabinet meetings, by which he believes that has “helped let off steam when pressure has built up”. He also said that “It is understandable that WhatsApp messages might fulfil a comparable function during lockdowns that limit much face-to-face contact”
This leads me back to when Boris Johnson used WhatsApp group chats to discuss decision making and critical national importance in the pandemic. The extend it went was when there was tens of thousands of messages to and from the former health secretary as well messages to do with the Covid inquiry. A message from Johnsons former chief advisor Dominic Cummings has said that the Prime Minister was “careering around on WhatsApp as usual creating chaos and undermining everybody”.
As from reading and writing this out here, You can see the scrutiny over WhatsApp messages and group chats because it seems there’re all having these conversations without thinking about the consequences which are coming with them. High profile people who are using these platforms for sensitive decision making seems really wrong and also when it comes to holding them to account over these matters it works well because they think that this data is end to end encrypted when it actually isn’t, it is protected in the middle not when it finally reaches the receiver.
Activities, Strategies & Questions
I created a Google Forums survey which received a total of 6 responses. I asked questions based on my research which was on political broadcasts and controversy over decision making over WhatsApp group chats. The responses were very mixed between each question and looking at the statistics 80% out of 20% said that political broadcasts haven’t influenced any decisions and 60% out of 40% said that there isn’t massive controversy over decision making for WhatsApp group chats. A lot of people also thought that it was down to the type of person who wins landslide victories in elections because they think it if the person is well liked then they will win irrelevant of anything else. With this being sent around to class friends generally and this demographic is between 18 - 20 year olds, they have said they haven’t actually watched any sort of campaign videos, but if they have done they think some are actually quite well produced.
Research Findings
The History of The Political Broadcasting
With my final major project being a local election campaign video, what relates heavily to this is party/political broadcasts.
The first broadcast was aired by the BBC for the 1924 General Election Campaign with the three main leaders. Stanley Baldwin of the Conservative Party, Herbert Asquith of the Liberal Party and Ramsey MacDonald of the Labour Party. They made a public speech to the public which lasted twenty minutes. By 1947 they had to regulate the number of slots for broadcasting, The BBC created a committee which comprised representatives from the three main parties to help establish a regulation system.
Following the rise of television broadcasting, for the 1951 General Election Campaign, the first televised one was made by the Liberal Party’s representative Lord Viscount Samuel. At the time this television broadcast was seen as farse because it was seen as he was reading from a prepared script like if he was on the radio. On the same evening, the Conservatives produced a more professional broadcast with Anthony Eden who was interviewed by Leslie Mitchel who was a pre-war television veteran. On the same evening the Labour Party’s broadcast followed the same rhythm with the interviews where Christopher Mayhew asked Sir Hartley Shawcross “Why a man so well educated, well off as he should support the Labour Party”. Back in the 50s, fifteen minutes for each broadcast was very normal. Presumably would get boring afterwards if it was longer and due to the fact of slot allocation for political broadcasts.
The first televised political broadcast was on the 15th October 1951 by Viscount Samuel.
A new type of political broadcasting started in the 1970s were advertising started featuring with more formal public addresses. Producers and Directors from Hollywood offered and showed their support to help their favoured party and at the same time the involvement of celebrities were support was taken out by all the main parties as I would presume it got really controversial. Today - A lot of broadcasts featuring political parties are now usually lasting around 5 minutes; some are even around 2 minutes. Apart from party political broadcasts which usually take place around when a General Election happens, these usually happen on a seasonal basis i.e. autumn, Party conferences usually happen around winter or spring.
What Makes a Video Campaign Successful?
In the world of campaign videos, it is a powerful marketing tool which can be used to capture attention, create emotion and motivate action. Video is one unique way because you are incorporating sound and motion together and can be much more productive way in the terms of gathering an audiences attention. This is included with the increased level of engagement, there is a handful of things which should take place in order for a campaign video to be seen successful.
Having a content strategy is the main part because the video needs to be able to stand out with companies or people needing to invest any sort of time into what they want their video to say or show before they start to create it. Not even making an attempt to create such video shows a lack of promotion that will not catch anyone’s attention as it was intended. This is where the content strategy comes into the video as it will end up helping us pick out the main message and the story which is being told so it fits with the brand’s aim and budget.
Another way which helps with a campaign video being really successful is that knowing who you are targeting with the promotional efforts. You should not assume one type of person will respond well to it, having different demographics may react differently is based on several different things such as age, gender, culture etc. It is also a good thing to understand what people expect out of campaign videos from different groups so that you can create a video meeting those criteria’s. This could become really difficult if you start looking at smaller audiences; such as people who engage with a specific YouTube channel. It is also very important understand probably from the beginning that not everyone is going to respond positively, but it is the matter of finding the right people who are using these strategies above to engage them.
It is also very easy to get overwhelmed by every kind of possibility that a campaign video can bring. Firstly you need to set realistic goals, which then need to be broken down into bite size chunks to secure success. These also should align with the goals set for any ongoing campaign video if there is any. After these have been rectified for each stage, then this should move on from the planning and to start creating content for the promotional efforts.
Analyse x3 Campaign Videos
Southport Pier Campaign Update W/ Damien Moore MP
Adobe Stock Graphic - The Beginning
To start with from the right beginning, this campaign video starts off with a a graphic at the start of the video which gets people enticed and interested in to see the latest progress of Save the Pier campaign. It looks as if they have used Adobe Stock to create the intro graphic. The text which is being used for Damien’s name is in bold letters with a border around it and then at the top the border breaks off with the lettering which says “Member of Parliament for Southport” which shows it is an update from the local MP, this text is set to the bottom left. To title the campaign video, in the top it still uses bold letters to make it really easy to read; with Southport Pier being blue which contrasts well with the graphic behind and then Campaign Update is in white. Another artistic creation which is basically part of the graphic, all the text flickers and transitions with the audio used and then transitions into the actual video.
Video Footage - The Middle
The video footage which is used is very generic, the shot type which is being used is a mid shot as it is only showing from the waist up, the shot angle used is a mixture between eye level and over the shoulder because it is showing the subject as if the any other person would have a conversation with that person and also it is slightly elevated above the subject so you can see the Pier which is leading off into the distance which is showing leading of lines; the camera movement is stationary. There are bold captions being displayed on the bottom which are really easy to read and are set in line with when the subject is talking. The aspect ratio which is being used is a 1:1 which is a square mainly because this is a targeted advert for Facebook and Instagram.
The Drone Shot - The Ending
For the last scene of the video uses a wide shot with a birds eye view shot paired with a panning camera movement to capture the Pier and the landscape surrounding it. As the camera pans around, a blue see through square is put in the centre of the screen which white bold text has been placed in the centre of it; the text changes three times as the camera pans around from “Save Our Pier” - “Sign Our Petition” - “Join The Campaign”. Lastly, their is an imprint on the infographic which you have to compulsory put somewhere in the video to show who actually promotes and runs the social media pages etc. So for this, it uses simple white bold lettering which says “Promoted By: Thomas de Freitas on behalf of Damien Moore MP” etc.
I think the colour grading of the footage itself was really poor and it creates the illusion that the video was filmed on a green screen, when really it wasn’t; it makes things look really peachy and blurry.
Boris Johnson’s 12 Questions General Election Advert
To start with the the video fades in to a blurred camera and as the subject walks out of the door and the video becomes unblurred. As the video plays we can see the shot type which is being used is a medium shot type with the camera angle being at eye level and the camera movement is called a follow. This shot list stays constant through out and hardly changes. The context behind this advert was to create something which was funny and witty as this seemed to fit with the subject’s personality, creating something like this twelve questions was to try and entice viewer into see what he does in his daily life, favourite bands and among other things questions about why he should be the next Prime Minister; There is no captions through out the video showing you the questions, all the questions are being asked by the cameraman himself. To create videos like this is supposed to show a different side and make people believe that he is not what people thought he was; all this is down to a funny personality and it worked well hence why he won a landslide majority. At the same time as he is walking through his office building, their is small little posters on the wall dotted around the office which were manifesto promises, they were trying to keep you on your toes as the subject spoken so that you looked and listened. The most artistic thing I can see which was created was at the end of the video was where the video blurred and then the famous words came up which said Get Brexit Done - Unleash Britain’s Potential and then the background changed to white with the colour changes on the for the slogan.
Opposition Campaign Video
Led By Donkeys - A Historic Failure
After watching this video irrelevant of the politics behind it, we can see from the get go that this video has been produced in such a high quality compared to the Conservative Party videos I have analysed before. What also makes the production value also 10x better is that they managed to record the projection onto the building and then overlay the crystal clear sound over the top and even kept a little bit of background noise in for bit of ambient noise.
To start with the background of this video is a protest against Liz Truss and her leadership of the country. Led By Donkeys are exposing Truss and her friends for the way they have ran the country and they believe that the country was ran from Tufton Street in London rather then 10 Downing Street. As the video plays out you can see that they have three activists who are propping up a ladder against the office building and then one person is climbing up the ladder with the sign while two other people are holding it. They are putting a sign up which says “55 Tufton Street - The UK economy was crashed here - 23rd September 2022 - mini budget day” As I can see from the footage it was recorded using a good DSLR video camera and the footage is pretty raw meaning it wasn’t edited. There was a few position changes and angles but like I said pretty raw, not edited. An artistic decision which I would say which was made by the makers was to have the aspect ratio being 1:1 and I think the reason why it was done like this because it was specifically designed for mobile phone viewing. They would of posted this on for example social media sites such as Facebook or Tik Tok to name a few.
Later on in the video, they took us back to earlier in the night we’re they were dragging a few carts along the road back roads of London full of presumably a projector and a white background to Tufton Street which is where they projected a video outside of the office building exposing all kinds of people who they think were under Liz Truss’s wing when she was in office. To start with used a simple slightly slanted easy to read font type which read “A little earlier…” which enticed the viewer in to see what happened the night before they stuck up a banner on the building. They used a medium shot and followed the subjects and then it moves onto a wide angle shot of them dragging the carts along the back streets. The text overlapped onto two of those footages.
After that section the video shows them move onto setting up the peaceful protest and the a narration starts and starts talking about how “This is 55 Tufton Street in London, you may have heard of it, you may not have, but this isn’t your average address” etc.
The protest moves onto talking about how Liz Truss teamed up with what they believe to been pushing a “Extreme economic ideology - Free market fundamentalism”, as they go on talking about all that, As this is a eight minute video I will dissect the projection as much as I can without talking about anything random which isn’t necessary.
They are using a lot of stock videos being used, for example a handshake, ice glaciers, a brick layer, birds eye view of London, stock market figures and even a hospital corridor. They also use a lot of footage from out of Downing Street showing the subject in question and many other government buildings. There is a close up shot of the projector. They also doing a overlays with text, “ideology = government policy”, and even changing the footage from colour to black and white. Another artistic decision which was made is they are putting subtitles underneath so people can read as they go along. Putting in bar graphs in the videos is showing the evidence they have gathered so prove and persuade the the audience. The one thing that has stuck out to be is as it seems to be a flagship thing of Led By Donkeys, they are also featuring tweets in the video footage and of course underlining them for quotes of what other people have said too.
As I have said on many occasions all this is an artistic creation/decision by the creator of the video and whoever creates it does put across a good argument and has a really good goal and the target audience is also shown to persuade their opposition their ideology then believing what other people say.
Viewing/Comments/Reaction Figures
As you can see above I have piled together all the viewing and feedback figures for each video I have analysed in depth.
To begun I am going to start off with Damien Moore’s Save Our Pier campaign figures, as this is a Facebook/Meta boosted advert this video hasn’t done very well. Since the 12th January when it was posted, it has only gained 12k views in 3 months which doesn’t strike me as successful. Neither when you look at the 32 shares it has shows how badly performing the video is. I think this is mainly down to how poor quality it was made and it didn’t seem to entice people in very well; Recorded on an iPhone, what do you expect? This video also has 69 likes and 5 laughing reactions, this also shows how under performed it is and of course how little people seem to be interested in it. The kickback in the comments has been shown because it has more comments then reactions, which again shows people want to comment more about it then like or share it. I think this is mainly down to what party he represents and because of who he is.
Moving onto Boris Johnson’s campaign video, for a start the video has done miles better then his former colleague Damien Moore has done with it gaining 451k views; I think this is mainly down to who the subject was in the video and at the time how popular the guy was before he eventually got kicked out of office. When I analysed this video originally I did say that everything to do with this video was very generic and nothing really special as it was the cameraman being the narrator and of course asking him questions. On this video the like and dislike ratio has been switched off so I can’t actually tell how tell it really did based on that and it did receive 1.7k comments and mainly from what I read from it; they quoted him on the kind things he said and then took the micky out of it for saying it. The comments only go back about 3 years, so you can really see how well it aged from that perspective.
Lastly we are moving onto the opposition video Led By Donkeys which talks about how Liz Truss and her friends ran the country from 55 Tufton Street in London for a short while. In my opinion this video was produced in such a higher quality then the two other counterparts which by the way were really dreadful to watch and listen to, it is something I think that the Conservative Party haven’t understood yet is the usefulness of social media and how things need to be produced at such a high quality otherwise people keep on scrolling. I don’t think it’s necessarily down to peoples attention span, I think if people see garbage they keep scrolling and that’s the mentality and I agree with them.
Now then, as this video has been out for about a year it has gained about 128k views and to be fair they are only a small organisation pushing for their voices to be heard and if I am contrasting this back with Damien Moore’s video with 12k and he is “supposed” to be a well-respected government official and to carry round lots of clout then this shows how unsuccessful his video was compared to Led By Donkeys who produced a higher quality film with a lot less following and still gained more views then Moore. I would also like to touch on how many likes they received as this is a very good indicator to how well the video did in retrospect, it got 6.5k likes and this also shows that again for a small campaigning organisation, they are actually reaching to a wider audience on wider scale. Only having 644 comments in total seems very small but when you have a quick cycle through, you can see many are really positive and I think this mainly down to how many people are viewing it rather then it hitting a wider audience. Slowly it is, but for such videos to take off you need to put the money behind it and I am not sure if they are a non funded organisation or not and if they aren’t then they are doing really well with allocating resources in the right places and pushing hard to have their voice heard.
What strategies did you use to analyse your data?
What did you find out?
When analysing the data and looking over what peoples I saw that a lot of people didn’t think there is much controversy over WhatsApp group chats which actually surprised me because from what we have seen already with government officials using it, it seems like a bad idea but I guess with it being used appropriately then sounds like there isn’t much wrong with it. In terms of political figures winning land slide victories at elections like for example Boris Johnson; I a lot of people thought it was down to the person and personality and I am inclined to agree when somebody said it was down to dog whistle politics. On the campaign video topic, not many people were persuaded by videos and they always seem to go off the instincts over video persuasion. All in all, it was very mixed opinions.
What did you learn from your research and how it informed your project?
To reiterate from what I said before that I think the production value of the campaign videos that I have seen were very poor. For example the colour contrast which was used in the Pier campaign update, was dreadful; things looked really peachy and even mention it all out of focus. So I think I can do a better job combining a good script with brilliant production quality. I’m sure we can do better then a mobile phone recording; I also think the market is also lacking in a good quality campaign video as it only seems that small organisations like Led By Donkeys are actually creating good quality campaign videos. From what I gather not many political organisations have understood the depths and usages of social media and how impactful it can be if you can use it in the right way to reach out to people. If I use the gimbal in my campaign video, I want to be able to create nice smooth moving shots and I think being able to do that might entice the viewer into watching the video and investing their time into watching the video.
Did the research support your idea, or did you have to change your idea because of your research?
Give specific examples to support this question.
In so far as the ideas and scripting behind other practitioners campaign video, I think there is nothing wrong with that side of things; But what I do think is that the production quality could be drastically improved because when I analysed the two Conservative videos above, I felt as if things were not in focus or too peachy and not very visually appealing. What I am trying to say is I think that having a very enticing video paired with a good script which is very compelling, I think that will go along way as people will deicide to view such video because it is enticing people in. An opposition campaign group like Led By Donkeys proved this very well with pairing a good quality video and a good enticing video because of the viewing figures were drastically higher. It was only dog whistle politics which made Boris Johnson’s video gain lots of views.
How have similar media products influenced and shaped your research ideas?
As this will be a real campaign video, this will be going out on Facebook advertising and will be helping towards my local election campaign video. Using such medium for this video will help it get out to people across Southport and Kew Ward. This has shaped my research ideas because helping it get out their and to be viewed by a few thousand is the key to success in this case. Social media is one of the biggest places to get your work out there nowadays and not understanding this early on makes you fail drastically because you need to be able to reach out to a wider audience and without that then there is no use for the video. Unless you go down the political broadcasting route then maybe, but who actually watches terrestrial television nowadays?
