Project One: IPad Air, Julia Hughes

Thesis:

The IPad Air allows you to live your life to its fullest potential, by using the IPad Air you are not hindering or distracting yourself with technology but using it as a tool to enhance your life.

Brian:
The Limbic Brain is triggered by both the music and spoken word. The music starts out soft and slow but then becomes louder and more complicated. By doing so, the music creates a sense of importance and urgency. The dialogue is a quote from the Dead Poets Society and is voiced by Robin Williams. The Neocortex is triggered in making sense of dialogue.  The message the dialogue sends is one of inspiration and taking pride in one’s own life. When considering this commercial for what it is, linking this quote and the IPad suggests that each is an encouragement to go out, make something of yourself, and enjoy life. The Reptilian brain is affected by the speed of the images, their transitions, and the music. The images start out slow placed and mainly focused on nature. As the commercial progresses, the changes images are portrayed for shorted amounts of time and the people within the images move quicker. The music also becomes faster. All of these aspects combined creates a sense of urgency. The last frame includes a return to nature and silence, ending the urgency.

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

Three Trends: 

A personal shift is depicted in the sense that all of the actions that people doing in this commercial can be accomplished without the IPad Air, yet in all of these instances they are using the device. In each situation these people are still able to do what they are depicted doing, yet in this instance they chose to use the IPad Air to help them do it. An aesthetic shift is depicted as many different forms of art are able to be created with the help of the IPad. The IPad is shown as the ultimate convergence machine, it’s able to record nature, play music, and lends itself as a piece of paper to be drawn on. The epistemological shift is demonstrated by the overall lack of text displayed. There is only one glimpse of a man working with text as opposed to the many instances of people viewing and creating images.

Five Facts:

• The IPad is helpful in the workplace.
• Use of the IPad can help to enhance education.
• The IPad is in itself an artistic medium.
• The IPad is durable and can go anywhere (depicted at high altitudes, in cold climate, underneath water pressure).
• The IPad is a universal tool and everyone can find a use for it.

Three Principles:

Pacing is clearly used in this commercial. This includes the pace of the music, the pace at which the images chance, and the pacing of the content of the images. The pace starts out slow, quickens gradually, and is then brought to a complete stop. “Reality” construction is contained throughout the video. There seems to be no downfall whatsoever to using the IPad, it seems to be a pristine, always working device. If this were true of Apple produce they would simply have no use for customer service. Production techniques used to grab the viewer’s attention vastly differing camera angles, differing between extremely bright and dark lighting, and use of bright and saturated colors. All of these techniques draw the viewer into the commercial, thus having a greater interests generated in the product.

Five Persuasive Techniques:

• Bandwagon. Almost every person in this commercial is holding, using, or looking at an IPad.
• Repetition. Seeing many people use the IPad generates an interest in what it would be like for one’s self to also use and IPad.
• Simple Solutions. It seems that by just buying an IPad your life can improve in almost every single way (i.e. enhance work performance, become more artistic)
• Big Lie. While the commercial depicts people having their lives enhanced, the IPad has the capability to produces the exact opposite result. Constant use of a device such as this can produce an over reliance on technology and can cause a loss of focus on reality and a seclusion into one’s self and the device.
• Beautiful People. A great deal of people in this commercial are engaged in physical activities (hiking, swimming, dancing). Almost every person is skinny or at a healthy weight, and those who are not are seemingly muscular.

Three Course Themes:

• The commercial’s main point is that the IPad Air and digital media technology it allows access to will make your life better.  
• The IPad Air allows for the convergence of many different forms of media.
• The IPad Air allows for quick access to endless sources of information and at the same time allows for equal opportunities to produce content.