An Attempt of the Commercial Film Production Support System Based on the Image Rhetoric of Commercial Film

Narrative and Advertising

This chapter considers narrative from the business point of view. For novels, movies, theater shows, and so on, the narrative itself is the product and service, and the consumer pays a fee to use the service. The narrative must be good enough that consumers are willing to pay these fees; if consumers are satisfied, the writer can then create narratives with any content. The contents of the narratives vary, as does the structure of narrative expressions. The writer builds the narrative world and provides it to consumers.

On the other hand, the narrative within an advertisement is not the product or service, but rather acts as a means to trigger consumers to pay for the products and services presented in the narrative. Advertisements are profitable when they successfully convince consumers to pay for the products and services presented through the narrative. The writer creates a narrative about the contents and features of products and services while considering consumer behavior. Since consumer behavior varies, narratives with various contents are created, though they all maintain the basic communication structure between businesses and consumers through the products and services. The creator always assumes a consumer's status (awareness of products, understanding, interest, willingness to buy, purchase results, etc.) and drafts a story according to that status. Providing this narrative to consumers builds the relationship between the consumer and products and services.

This chapter takes the view that the basic structure of the advertising story is the communication structure between businesses and consumers through products and services, and attempts to analyze advertising image techniques and build an information system to generate commercial films.

Characteristics of Commercial Films

A commercial film lasting roughly 15 to 30 seconds is complex in terms of the information it contains because the film itself (shots or cuts) includes various information and because the chronological editing shots allow viewers to envision different images. For instance, a film with numerous shots shown within a short time frame quickly provides viewers with an image. The following characteristics of a commercial film are especially interesting:

• 1.

  The film is short and embraces only a brief advertising story selected from among the various characteristics of the product and its consumption.

• 2.

  Despite its brevity, the film comprises broken information elements that constitute the shot. The audience perceives these expressed elements to have the potential to invoke ideas.

• 3.

  When the film is edited chronologically, the tempo created from the series of shots and the shot-to-shot relationship may give the audience different images. The audience may also perceive any image related to the event (and information elements) of a series of shots.

• 4.

  The audio produced throughout a film with the components of sounds and events also invokes ideas in the mind of the audience.