Produced by Dissolve, a stock footage company, to promote its catalog of video clips, this video can be read differently by different audiences.

The company sells its clips to promotional firms that want to send specific values messages about their clients’ products. Its target audience is comprised of executives and artists that might buy its clips.

If you were a creative worker in a PR firm, how might this video be appealing to you?

Might you interpret the narration as promotional or cynical? (“There’s a shitload of…”)

If you were a media literacy student, what might this video mean to you?

How might a media literacy student interpret the gruff male voice on the narration track? Cynical or promotional?

How might this video influence the way that people make meaning from future promo ads that they see, e.g., this Shell Oil ad?

What other ads can you identify that use imagery and techniques seen in the Dissolve video?

How might this video help people understand that different audiences make different meanings from the same texts?

(These ideas can be applied to both Elementary and Secondary classrooms – ed.)