Amnesty Waterboarding Ad Research

Charity : Amnesty

Ideology: The ideology behind the advert is to raise awareness about different forms of torture, in this advert it specifically focuses on waterboarding. It wants to give the audience an insight into what waterboarding is like by having a person getting it done to them and the true horror of the torture method.

Characters/ Visual style

We only see 4 characters in the advert and they only are in shot for a minority of the advert, there are 3 people who are all black and wearing white gloves. We don't see the faces of these people which gives the advert a much scarier feel. This could also be suggesting that the torturers personality is very dark because of what they are doing to another human being is not ethical in the slightest.
The advert has low key lighting throughout it which matches with what is happening in the advert, this lighting has been chosen to show the darkness of torture. for the first minute all we see is a close up of water falling which would leave the audience confused as to what is going to happen.
There is background music from the start, the music makes the audience feel as if something bad is happening before we actually we see what is happening because it is quite intense.

Lines of appeal

There is shock tactics used in this advert, it is the person being waterboarded. This is shocking as you wouldn't normally expect to see somebody getting tortured on a TV advert, you don't even normally see any form of violence on a advert which is what makes this advert so shocking, and will make people remember the advert more than an advert. This advert is not targetted at a specific audience which allows it to rase awareness to masses of people

What works
the shock tactics used in the advert are very affective, it makes the advert remain in the heads of the people who watch it for a long time which will raise awareness over time.