HOLIDAY WORK : Film Industry essay

I have studied the film industry and will be talking about how distributors engage different audiences using a variety of platforms, including film websites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, trailers, film posters. 

Distributors will often advertise on social media as it will help reach a wide audience and help to get a larger social following and gain the attention of the media, meaning that the film will get more sales as the public understand what the movie is about. It is common for films marketed towards children and young adults to be marketed in this way as the majority of the target audience have access to social media and online websites. This also means that they can engage with the audience and they can get feedback on what the public wants out of this film so they can maximise revenue from the film, and create more interest online prior to release.

A prime example of this is the Captain Marvel campaign. It was hugely successful and was able to gain a following of over one million, by showing clips of the film, interviews with actress' and actors and also a countdown to the film's release. They also had a clear target market with people who like superhero films. Unusually the studio also tried to make the campaign appeal mostly to the female market, with a film about a superhero who is a girl. Another promotional technique was fan engagement, this can be illustrated by the massive feedback and huge fan following that it got.

I watch the Marvel films upon release and follow their marketing campaigns, therefore my experiences with the marketing campaign are that it is quite relentless, often bombarding you with posts relating to the movie so you can almost never escape the film. It is often successful as I see the films upon release, but it can feel quite cramped as your social media is often flooded with content relating to the film and it can sometimes put you off as you become alienated by the constant advertising of the film.

Captain Marvel's campaign was heavily reliant of showing off their well-known cast and the film is the first of the Marvel films starring a female lead, meaning they can use it as a forefront of their campaign and get people to watch the film. The cast includes Samuel L Jackson, Brie Larson and Jude Law, who all are accomplished actors and actress' who will get the public's attention due to their fame and successful acting careers to date.

It is also worth noting that Captain Marvel released two websites; one to showcase the film and to update of film developments and the second a retro-style website with the theme of the '90s. It features twist's on classic games such as pinball in addition to showing retro-style posters as well. This is a good way to engage audience and get them interested and involved with the upcoming film.

Roma was a film distributed by Netflix through their streaming service, However, it had a short theatrical run, which is odd for a film created by a streaming service. It was revealed that it was shot on a widescreen camera, meaning that the resolution was best seen on a cinema screen, meaning that they put the film on a short theatrical run. Roma used social media (mainly Facebook and Twitter) to advertise, but it also used their own website to advertise as well. 

Marketing is also achieved through reviews for the film, but can also be deceptive when the marketing department for a film twist word and reviews to their advantage. An example of this would be in the poster for Legend in where a two-star review was spun to make it seem like a four-star review and was labelled 'marketing gold'.

RESEARCH : My Audience Profile

My Audience Profile

I needed to plan how to reach my target audience, which means I needed to know who they are. Factors that may be relevant include age, gender, ethnicity, social class, what their media needs are. I need to research how to meet my target audience needs to ensure I can produce a product that they will want. I need to ensure I know how to reach them and this in turn will inform how I market my film. I will show how my research has influenced my planning. 

From this research I learned that my target audience will have to be older, and more mature, as to not cause the more 'active' viewers to incorporate the violent aspects of the story and minimize risk to immature viewers. However by limiting the age to 15 we will remove the immature viewers and will instead only get viewers who will enjoy the film, but not try to replicate anything they see in the film.

CASE STUDY : Rogue One, A Star Wars story

Rogue One Questions
Kathleen Kennedy, and Allison Shearmur

• Who directed the film?  Gareth Edwards

• What other films have they directed? 
Monsters, Godzilla

• What was the budget? $265 million (gross) $219.5 million (net)

• Who stars in it? Felicity Jones, Forest Whitaker

• What other films have they been in? The Theory of Everything, Black Panther, Inferno

• What technology has been used to make the film? (What cameras did they use? How was the film edited? What CGI was involved?) The film employed usage of CGI to help build the image of outer space and create the planets that the story would be set on, Alexa 65, which is Arri’s top of the line digital cinema camera. It shoots in 6K resolution.

• How was the film marketed? Which different marketing tools were used? It was primarily marketed through posters, trailers, and interviews with the cast. This meant that it would reach a wide range of audiences quickly and efficiently.

• What examples of synergy with other products/merchandise can you find? T-shirts, Figurines, books, graphic novels,lego products etc.

• What examples of cross media convergence can you find?Duracell, Nissan, Gillette, Verizon, General Mills, Uber

• What examples of technological convergence can you find? Snapchat filters which allowed pictures to be taken with members of the cast in the background

• Where and when was this film released (nationwide, worldwide) and in what cinemas? The film was released worldwide and in all cinema's as to maximise profits 

• Who produced the film?  Kathleen Kennedy, and Allison Shearmur

PLANNING : audience questionaires

I created an audience questionnaire on google forms so I could identify the target audience and work out what I need to include in my film as to appeal to the audience. The aim of my questionnaire is to gain information about my target audience so I can create a film that perfectly suits the needs of my audience so as to gain as many viewers as possible.

Due to the usage of Google forms I will be able to get as many respondents as possible and use the information to help with deciding the content of my film. Google forms helped with retrieving the information.

my film questionnaire

The questions I asked were:

1. What is your gender?
2. What is your age?
3. What is your favourite genre?
4. How do you prefer to watch films?
5. Which 3 streaming medium do you find yourself most commonly using?

Then 2 questions asking if the poster selected made the audience want to see the film, and the same, again, but instead of posters I put trailers.

POSTER 1 : infinity war ensemble poster
POSTER 2 : The joker
TRAILER 1 : The Godfather
TRAILER 2 : The Irishman

HEGEMONY

Hegemony

Hegemony is the idea that the media continuously represents certain groups as more dominant and more powerful than other groups. In western society the group that is most commonly shown to be the more dominant and powerful group are the middle-class white men. This is because middle-class white men dominate media production in the news, film, TV and writing industry.

Pluralism is when there are multiple viewpoints, ideas and ethnicities being shown through diverse and different types of media such as film, music and shows. Western media fail to hold an even distribution of various background in media, in the UK, for example the majority of jobs in the journalist proffesion is held by 94% of the journalists being white, and 55% of journalists being male. which is a clear under-representation of the masses. Therefore meaning that it requires people of separate viewpoints rather than continuous representation of the same ideals.

The uses and gratification model states that people will only consume media that reflects their own viewpoints, this means that it can be difficult to persuade someone who adopts a certain viewpoint (whether that be politically, more radical or docile). This can, if the active vs passive model is reflective of contemporary society, influence people's views and in extreme cases their actions. 

Western society is then shown more media consisting of middle-class white men, and less so of other ethnicities, gender and class. This then created the image that middle-class white men are deemed to be more successful and more powerful than other people. Which then forces western society to be ‘controlled’ by a certain group of people and not represented as in control by the whole population. This can then influence people who consume the media which can reflect in their actions and can affect society as a whole.

The writer believes that hegemony helps us to understand the ‘messy’ relationship between the society we live in now and the media we consume daily. This is because it helps us to think about and understand how we as audiences and consumers of media are influenced by the media we consume, for example seeing something online such as a challenge, then attempting to replicate it ourselves.

In the titles of the posters it says ‘if you’re surprised you don’t see enough black people in major roles’ I was surprised. Not at the concept of an black actor playing the roles, but instead that I didn’t recognise the characters being portrayed in massive mainstream film and tv posters. When I saw that the Harry Potter and Doctor Who characters, programmes I have watched before, I was surprised because I hadn’t seen these characters in the story up to that point, not that they were black.

However it is true that black people, Hispanic people and Asian people don’t get as much representation in media as white people. It wouldn’t solve the problem if established characters such as Harry Potter and The Doctor suddenly changed race after a prolonged series of time as they are established characters and people already have an image in their head, of the character’s age, race, ethnicity, gender, and body proportions.

However The Doctor is an exception to this as it is written into the lore of Doctor Who that The Doctor can change ethnicity, gender and body proportions with each reincarnation. It would be better if the scriptwriters changed their stories to better suite the representation they’re going for.

Whilst representation of different ethnicities, genders, ages and sexualities is good, it shouldn’t be forced, as then it wouldn’t feel natural, and would instead make the film, book, show, etc feel flawed and can be off-putting for a viewer to watch or read.

PLANNING : my target audience

I had to find a way to reach my target audience. I also needed to know who my target audience were. I had to research what their age would be, their gender, their ethnicity and their social class. I also needed to research what their media consumes were so that I could produce a product that they will want to watch. Finally, in order to market my film, I had to know how to reach my target audience. I will have to show how my research has influenced my planning by answering the following questions below.

1. Who is my primary target audience?

16-35 year olds who enjoy enigma, mob style films. of both genders

2. What kind of films and television are they likely to prefer?

Mob films such as The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Irishman, The Godfather part 2, Scarface,
Johnny Brasco and Little Caesar

3. What platforms do they choose to watch films and where are they likely to see information
about films?

They most likely use streaming services to watch films and keep up with film information/updates
through social media and film news agents. however there are many different platforms that the film
can be streamed on, as there are a huge number of streaming services, creating a 'stream war'. This
means that the film will be widely accessible however due to the large number of content within all the
services it may not be seen and may be skimmed over, meaning that it could be difficult to get viewers
to watch the film. so we would have to consider which streaming service it could be streamed on, if at
all.

4. What brands do they prefer?

‘cool/trendy’ brands such as Hollister, Pretty Green,etc.

5. What makes my film stand out from the competition?

This film is a modern film, that incorporates themes from classic mob films to create a familiar viewing
experience to films such as The Godfather or Goodfellas with better technology to film it and better
quality visuals.

6 . Why should my audience watch my film?

Audience should watch my film because it will be a very nostalgic feeling when you watch this
due to the themes similar to that of the classic films which is very hard to find in the cinema industry
as it is being saturated by big CGI filled blockbusters such as transformers and the marvel films. It’s
a change of pace fro the average moviegoer and hardcore film fans alike.

RESEARCH : SCOOP.IT

I used scoop.it to make it easier to access my art of the titles if i needed to in the future.