I've always contained a knack for analysis and picking out thematic elements, but I have a hard time quantifying them. The group had a few people that maybe weren't as good at thinking on their feet and analyzing, but were good at organizing and planning. Together I feel we learned from each other and taught the strengths and weaknesses of our techniques.
For instance, I was able to pick out the eye grabbing imagery and themes, along with the feeling the commercial evokes, but I couldn't find a way to really put that down on paper. My team then broke down each of the elements into their most basic forms and elaborated on each. I learned from this that sometimes you have take individual parts of what makes up the theme and look at them, instead of just taking the entire theme for face value. Furthermore, the group showed me that there is more to a commercial than thematic elements, that emotion plays a role as well.
All in all it was a very constructive exercise that essentially taught me to slow down and look at the human side of things, either for the viewer or what's going on in the advert itself.
