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Deconstructing Commercials

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July 25, 2005. During Summer Session I, the Deconstructor was used in Robert Gilbralter's class Strategy and Creativity in Today's Marketplace, a nine-week summer course that focuses on reading print advertisements and video commercials. Initially launched as a tool to facilitate the close analysis of movie clips in film studies courses, students used the Deconstructor to analyze television commercials. Gibralter asked students to examine when and how the product was shown or mentioned, to analyze where a viewer's attention was directed and how, and to observe other visual or audio clues in the background in order to perform a close textual analysis.