Audience and Institution Practice Essay

1. 1. Assess the importance of marketing in the media area you have studied. 

Marketing is one of the most crucial aspects of releasing a theatrical film. Marketing can determine how well your film will do at the box office. This makes perfect sense in that if people don’t know about your film, they obviously won’t go and see it. The same thing applies if you do have lots of marketing, but it’s bad marketing. Three common techniques are used to promote films. These are cross-media advertisements, merchandising, and putting out your trailer on television.  

Cross-media advertisements are beneficial in multiple ways. They not only promote your film but help to promote another product as well. Take the 2018 film, Black Panther, for example. The car company Lexus paired up with the movie to promote their new 2018 Lexus LS 500. The car appeared in advertisements for the movie and the characters in the movies appeared in commercials for the car. The car even ended up in several scenes in the actual film itself. This helped to sell more of the new car, while the film benefitted from it because they were paid to include the car in their film and advertisements. Another example of cross-media comes from another Marvel film, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. The ice cream and fast-food chain Dairy Queen paired up with the film to promote their ice cream, or more specifically their signature product, the Blizzard. The Guardians of the Galaxy logo and characters were printed on the cups and the film even got a Blizzard flavor made in its honor. The results of this cross-media were like the cross between Black Panther and Lexus.  

The second technique films use for marketing is merchandising. The creation of toys or other products such as clothing can help to promote your film. Some examples of merchandising in the film industry are Jurassic World and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The film Jurassic World is a sequel/reboot to the Jurassic Park trilogy. Due to the film being centered around dinosaurs, it made sense to create and sell lots of dinosaur toys for the film. These toys would not only bring in tons of sales for the company but could promote the film as well. Parents who buy the toys would likely also want to see the movie that the toys are based on, therefore increasing box office sales. For the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a prequel to the Harry Potter film series, merchandising was used for clothing and jewelry. Stores like Hot Topic were given the right to sell Fantastic Beasts inspired shirts, hoodies, and other articles of clothing. On websites like harrypottershop.com, you could buy jewelry that was inspired by jewelry characters wore in the film. This type of merchandising worked pretty much the same way as Jurassic World’s did. The company got increased profits from these sales while also having their film promoted.  

Last, companies use trailers and commercials to promote the films to audiences through television. Universal Pictures is the company behind the major film franchise, Despicable Me. The franchise is so big that a spinoff movie called Minions was created, which focused on the little yellow characters that were always with the main character of franchise, Gru. The trailers for the film were very crucial in bringing about the film’s box office success. The film’s trailers were featured in commercials for shows like “The Voice” and the trailer was even shown in a Super Bowl commercial. All these advertisements in major television led to the film making about $115.2 million dollars its opening weekend, which was huge for an animated movie. It’s safe to say that the all the trailers and promoting on television this film had is what helped the film reach that box office success.  

Overall, marketing in films is very essential in creating greater profits and box office success. Cross-media allows film companies to not only promote their own film, but to promote other products as well. Merchandising creates another opportunity for profit while still promoting a film, and trailers and commercials on big television channels and programs help to increase your opening weekend box office revenue. Without good marketing, it would be difficult for a film to make its way and survive in the industry.  

Game of Thrones Extract Essay

CCR

 After each film project that we do for AICE Media Studies, we do a CCR. For the commercial, the CCR was just answering the questions. For the music video, the CCR was a PowerPoint, but we still had to answer the questions through the PowerPoint. This time around, we had to make a CCR for the final task, which was a two minute long film introduction. For this CCR had to be a 12-15 minute long video and had to answer all 4 questions. These questions are the same four questions we've had for every CCR, however this time I had to put an extreme amount of thinking into them. This is due to how long the video has to be. The CCR is also supposed to be creative, so my initial idea to be creative was to do an interview style video. I didn't have anyone to interview, so I interviewed myself. I dressed up in two different outfits to make this as clear as possible. This was somewhat strange to do, but I think it ended up working pretty well. In terms of answering the questions, I realized that each response had to be about three minutes long in order to reach the minimum time, which was 12 minutes. Filming the CCR didn't take very long, and I didn't find it to be too difficult. The hardest part came in editing the footage together to create one cohesive interview. It was a very time consuming process. To make the CCR even more exciting, I added in clips from my film introduction. This helped to provide context to what I was talking about in the interview. I think I did a pretty good job at this. At the end of my CCR, I decided to have some fun with it. I had the interviewer ask questions that I came up with after the 4 essential questions were answered. This made the interview more friendly and lighthearted, which reflects back to the filming process, which I found to be very fun and enjoyable. I believe that's the best part about AICE Media Studies. You get to learn a lot and gain hands on experiences while also having fun doing it. When I finished with the CCR, I had to upload it. This was tricky due to the file being so large. Eventually, I figured I could just upload it to YouTube in order to embed it to my blog.

Final Task - The Film Intro

  The last film project we were assigned for our AICE Media Studies class was to create a two minute long film introduction. We could make the introduction in any genre we wanted to, as long as it left the audiences wanting more. Before choosing our genre, we did lots of research on genres. Then we were tasked by our teachers to come up with three different plots for three different genres. One team member came up with a romantic comedy film, another came up with an adventure film, and I came up with a thriller film. We decided to make the thriller film that I had pitched, as it would be the best in leaving the audience to want more. We also chose the thriller because thrillers are good for cliffhangers and thrillers are one of our favorite genres to watch in general as a group. We also researched the art of titles in film introductions, as we would have to incorporate them into our project. After this, we started our storyboard. As a group we modified the story to the point where we felt it was really good. We made sure the story made sense and that you could create a full length film off of it. Next we started to think about what cool and unique shots and angles we could incorporate into the film. Like the other projects, I assumed I would be given camera duties. However, this was not the case and another team member and I actually split up filming duties. Now that we had all the planning ready, it was time to film. We decided to film at one of the group members' houses and also at a park by his house. We brought in a friend to act and drive us around, as he had a car and a license. Our antagonist needed to be able to drive, so he was the perfect candidate. This was easily the most fun shoot that we have done this year. We focused really hard to make it as good as possible and we even had some fun while doing it. When it came to the editing, I was in charge of putting the clips together, as well adding in music and sound. Overall, this was by far my favorite project out of the three.

Music Video

The second project we had for our AICE Media Studies class was a music video. We could choose any song as long as it was appropriate and we could work with anyone we wanted to in groups of up to four. Of course, I worked with the same group I had worked with for the commercial. It took us a lot of thinking, but we finally decided to use Rock Lobster by the B-52's for our song. We realized we could incorporate a lobster into the song and thought it would provide some humor. The next step we took was to make our storyboard. This time, I did the drawing with one of the other team members, even though I'm not the best at drawing, but I think I did pretty good. After all of our planning it was done, it was time for the most important part: filming. This had also proved to be the most difficult part. At the time, all four us were super busy with school, extracurricular activities, and family life. For example, it felt like every night I had band practice and the other members of my group had swimming practice (the other three are all on the swim team). We realized we were running out of time to film, as the deadline was approaching sooner and sooner. Finally, we all decided to skip our practices and film after school one day. We made this decision because this is a school assignment, and school work should come before extracurricular activities. After settling this out, we agreed on our shooting location. We knew we wanted to film at a beach in order to really incorporate the lobster theme into the music video. We decided to film at the first life guard post at Fort Lauderdale beach since we all live close to that area and since it is a public beach. This is when we ran into another problem though. One of our team members had to go out of town with his family the day we were supposed to film. This was such a big problem because he had our camera, tripod, and SD card, which were essentials for filming. We decided to still film because we couldn't reschedule at that point. Now we had to improvise, so we used my iPhone 8 to film the entire thing. This was very unusual and we wondered if it would even work, however it thankfully did. We didn't incorporate that many new types of shots into the film this time. They were mostly the same as in the commercial. The editing was also very minimal as well. All we did in that department was add the song Rock Lobster to our footage.

Commercial

  The very first project we had for our AICE Media Studies class was a commercial. I remember we could choose from a list of companies to make a commercial on and work in groups of up to four students with whoever we wanted. The group I worked with for this project is who I worked with for every project we did. This project was significant in that it was my first hands-on experience with film making. For this project I was the one behind the camera. I never really saw myself as an actor, but camera work sounded fun and I was excited to start filming. We had started with the storyboard and we had came up with a story that we liked. I was then in charge of coming up with the shots and angles we would use to execute that story. When it came to this, I looked my list of film terms that I wrote in class when we took notes. I realized that there was a lot of terms and it would be challenging to incorporate a lot of them into the commercial. In the end, a lot of these shots and angles were cut out of the final project due to the time limit, which was 30 seconds. In the end we had a mid shot, a high angle, a wide shot, a zoom, an extreme close up, a long shot, and a two shot. A lot of what we planned in our storyboard for the commercial didn't end up coming to fruition. This was mostly because we had a very limited amount of time to film. Due to this we just couldn't film some of things we wanted to do. However, this may have been good since we had to cut out over 35 seconds of footage to get the commercial within the time limit anyway. When it came to editing, it was very simple, surface level stuff. When we got to the computer, the hardest part was putting clips all together to create one cohesive film that was under the time limit. I was mostly in charge of cutting shots out and proved to be very difficult, since I had to decide which shots were more important than the others. After this, we added some music to make the commercial more exciting. Last, we added the smoke effect that you see when one of the characters eats a spicy chicken nugget from Wendy's. Overall, this was a great project to get us kick started into the world of film making.

The Future is Uncertain

   Recently, the state of Florida has gotten news of what will happen regarding the schools. The Coronavirus outbreak has spread rapidly throughout the state and has caused many changes this past week. This is especially true in my county, which is Broward county. Our governor has announced that school is cancelled until April 15. This is not good news for our film project. I am certain that re-shooting will no longer be possible at this point. The risk of contracting the virus is too high. We can try to get together but I doubt that our parents would actually let us get together during this outbreak. Besides, we wouldn’t to potentially spread the virus to each other as well. This leaves us with two options. The first is that one person re-shoots scenes at their house and it’ll only be them. The problem with this, however, is that the scenes we need to reshoot include multiple character so this would not workout at all. It would also not workout for consistency of the setting. The second option I think is much better and much more practical. This option is just taking the footage that we already have and editing it up to make it work better. This option’s problem is that one of the scenes that needed to be reshot was very dark. This means that the lighting was too dark to really get a clear sight of what was happening. This was not our fault though and the problem could have been avoided if we filmed quicker. What had happened was that the lights in the park we were filming in had shut off on us leaving us in almost complete darkness. This is not something we can go back and edit to fix. We would have to reshoot it entirely. However, I still believe option 2 is a lot better than option 1.


This is a picture of that dark scene.

Re-shoots Might Not Happen Soon

   This past week has been very interesting, for the entire world I would say. An outbreak of a deadly virus has plagued the world as of recently. It is known as the corona virus or COVID-19. It first started out in China but quickly has found its way to the U.S., and even worse, our own county. There was talk about school getting cancelled for a few days but on Friday afternoon, our superintendent made an announcement that school would be cancelled the week of March 16th. Unfortunately, this was the last week of the third quarter. A lot of students and teachers were unhappy about this due to not knowing what would happen with grades. However some good news was that next week would be spring break though so we wouldn’t be missing anything if we had to miss that week too. This has impacted our re-shooting schedule though. Everybody is under self quarantine as of right now. The government is telling that we must practice social distancing for the time being. This means we should have the least amount of human interaction possible. This will supposedly help to combat the virus, or at least help to stop it from spreading so quickly. However, this means that we can’t do re-shoots for a while. We’re not sure what we can do about this and we’re scared for the future of our film project. For now, all we can do is edit the footage that we do have. I was planning on editing the footage either tomorrow or sometime next week but unfortunately my computer has broken. It will not start up and when it does, it just crashes. This is the worst time for my computer to be broken because after spring break, there’s a good chance that we may have to online school. If I can get a hold of a computer though, I will definitely work on editing some footage. Maybe I will even get a new computer, but I’m not sure at this time.

Here is a computer model of the Coronavirus or COVID-19.

What we need to fix

  In our AICE Media Studies class, we have had our film peer reviewed and are ready to start the next step, which is to reshoot and re-edit. The peer review gave us lots of insight on what we could do better in our film. For starters, in the peer review, it was mentioned and suggested that we clean up the story a bit. The reviewers pointed out that there were several plot holes in the story. This included character motivations and explanations as to how a character was in a certain scene at one point. We took this into consideration and realized the only way we could fix this is if we did a reshoot. We would use the reshoot to replace the old scenes that don’t make sense with new ones that do make sense. This would allow the film to have a better overall story. We also had a problem with lighting in one of the last shots of the film. This was not our fault because the lights in the park we were filming in shut off randomly in the middle of one of our takes. This was not very convenient for us, so the last three shots in the film are very dark and hard to see. So we’d need to reshoot those parts when there’s actually lights on. We also need to do some more editing. We need to add in some sounds, like for example, we need to add a thud noise in one scene. We also want to add some music to it as well to try and set the mood of the film better. We also want to edit in our titles. We know that they were supposed to be in the film in time for the peer review, however it just didn’t work out. This was mostly due to the fact that we filmed the Saturday before it was due. It was our fault for sure, but at least we could still add the titles. When we finished doing all of that, I believe our film will be really good and up to par with what Cambridge expects. I have a good feeling about our final product.


This is a picture of the bad lighting towards the end of the film.

Week in Review

 We have now completed the peer evidenced at the time of writing this. Prior to that however, we had filmed the Saturday before at one of my group members’ house. We all met there at around five o’clock. Another person who was not in our group was with us as well. He is a sophomore, just like the rest of us in the group, except he has his license and a car. The original plan was for him to just drive us around, but he ended up playing the villain character in our film. His acting abilities were actually pretty good, so there was no issue there. So we had started filming outside of my group member’s house, which was supposed to be the setting of a party. This is where I filmed my little comic relief moment and acted as a spring breaker. That was a very fun scene to shoot and it definitely took a couple of tries to get it right. After we finished filming at his house, we decided to drive to a park for our second location. When we got to the park, I got out of the car and they filmed the scenes that would take place inside the car. I could not be in there because there was no room, as it was a relatively small car, and I wasn’t a character in that scene. Therefore, while they drove around the area, I waited for them at the park. When they came back we wrapped up the rest of it, and I got to film my trunk shot, which was fun. We filmed the chase scene which took a couple tries due to lighting issues. Speaking of lighting issues though, during one of our takes, the lights in the park suddenly shut off, and you can actually see it in the film. All in all, filming this was a fun experience, and my favorite filming of the three projects we have had this school year. The peer review allowed us to get some great feed back on our film. We realized that we still have a lot of editing to clean up with our film and we are excited to make it as best as possible.

Peer Review

On Tuesday in our AICE Media Studies class, we did peer reviews on everybody’s final project/video.

Before the peer review, our group filmed, re-shot, and edited. The video that we produced was not the final product, however. We plan on making more changes editing wise, as well as adding more titles to the film. I do not believe re-shoot will be necessary.

The group that we graded had a great film. It was about a girl that wakes up in a simulation. She comes home and passes out, and then it switches to her in a training ground. The group was able to fill almost all of the criteria. I hope that our group can learn some things from the group that we peer reviewed, and implement it into our own film.

As well as peer reviewing another group, we had our video peer reviewed. Most of the comments were positive, but some were not. I have learned what we need to change and put into our film. One of the things being titles. Things such as "edited by" and "filmed by" were missing in our film. Our group will definitely be able to put these things into our film by the time it is due.

I am glad we had the ability to experience peer reviewing. It has helped me see what our group is doing good in, and what we are lacking in. I plan on going home and changing the video transitions. I will also add the title slides, and some eerie music.

We're Filming Tomorrow!

    My group is finally filming tomorrow and I can't be more excited. We have had almost two weeks to film and we are finally going to be filming. It is probably irresponsible to be waiting to film this late, but we've all been very busy. Between school, and extracurricular activities like swimming and band, it's hard to find a time to film where everyone can be able to participate and be involved in shooting. Friday is a good time to film because we're all free and available, surprisingly. It was hard enough to find a time to film for the music video. However, this time around, it was an even greater challenge. Another challenge will be trying to edit the entire thing by Tuesday. On Tuesday, our film is due, no matter if it's done or not. This is because we will be doing a peer review. A peer review will be very beneficial to us and our film project. A peer review will allow us to get feedback on what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we could improve on. Ultimately, it will help us perfect it (at least to the best of our ability) and we would be more knowledgeable. My group still decided it was for the best to not check out a camera. They still believe using one of the cameras in unnecessary and that we don't need to use one. Therefore, we will still be using someone's phone to film. All of us have the same phone, which is an iPhone 8. With everybody's camera quality being the same, whoever's phone we use depends on who feels comfortable using their own phone. Additionally, it also depends on who still has storage space available on their phone. Unlike the music video, we will not be filming with my iPhone. I did not enjoy doing that at all and it was too much hassle. I'm still excited to film tomorrow and see how our vision will play out through the footage.

Filming Has Not Started Yet

   In reference to my last blog, we did not film over the weekend. My schedule was clear and I was fine with filming so that was not the issue. The other members in my group said that they had homework from other classes that they needed to do instead. Therefore, this is our reason for not filming over the weekend. Personally I do not think this was a very good excuse, but I do realize that other school work is important. I am not too happy with this though, considering we only have one more weekend to film and then that's it. The final project will be due for peer review and we must have it done by then because I do not want a zero in the grade book. The plan as of right now is to film Friday night. This is because our entire film intro takes place at night. We are also all free on Friday night with no after-school activities such as swimming or band. Honestly, I did not want to film this late because I knew this would cause a lot of stress. It would be stressful because we have to cram in all of our filming, without the possibility of re-shoots. We also have to quickly do all the editing, which is stressful and because the editing is a bit more complicated this time around than it was in previous projects. This time, our camera angles and shots will be more sophisticated and we also have to add in titles. In addition to this, my group still does not want to check out a camera. They still think it's a great idea to film on someone's phone. I know for a fact that my phone will not be used though. As I stated in the previous blog, I did not enjoy filming on my phone for the music video project. I'm still looking forward to filming on Friday, even though this blog may seem like I'm not. I'm mostly excited because the story's idea is something I came up with, so I'm eager to see how my vision will turn out. However, all I know is that our project must be completed in time for the peer review, or we will find ourselves in a tight spot.

Beginning the Filming Process for the Final Task

    In AICE Media Studies, we have began working on our final task. At this point, all of our research has been completed. We researched genres and the titles in introductions in films. We have finished drawing the storyboard and writing a shooting script and sound script. We have until March 2nd to have our intro filmed and edited. It must be done by this day because we will being doing a peer review in class. In this peer review, we will be watching other groups' videos and critiquing them. In class today, we were offered to checkout camera's with tripods and SD cards. My group decided to make a decision I did not agree with. They had decided not to check out a camera. This is because of what happened when we were filming our music video. Back when we filmed our music video, the group member who had our camera happened to be out of town and we needed to shoot soon. Therefore, we ended shooting the music video completely on my phone's camera. So today in class when our teacher called groups up to check out a camera, my group voted not to. They assured me that filming on my phone was way better than filming with the camera. However, what they didn't know was the big struggle I had getting the footage for the music video from my phone to the computer. That was very time consuming and not an enjoyable experience for me. My group still decided to film on somebody's phone. This time though, it will not be my phone because first, I didn't like exporting the footage, and second, I don't have much storage left on my phone. In terms of creating a filming schedule, we are not quite sure what that is going to be yet, however we are going to try to get some filming in this weekend. As far as location, we will be filming at someone's house and there's a chance it could be at mine.

Planning Blog: Storyboard

     In AICE Media Studies we have continued to plan out our final task. We now have our storyboard completed and therefore should not have trouble with the story during filming. This has been a problem for us in prior projects. In prior projects we would create a storyboard, but then not really follow it at all. Due to throwing out the storyboard, the filming process was much longer than it should have been and less efficient than it could have been. This time around is going to be different however. During class time, we worked closely as a group to really think about what we were going to do with this story. We all contributed our own ideas and also took turns drawing. The final storyboard we came up with is something we're proud of. We tried to make it as professional as possible and intend to execute the vision we have created through the storyboard to the best of our abilities. We can't wait to start filming.

Planning blog: Title Design

 Title designs may not seem like the most important factor of a film, however they are probably one of the most important parts of the film. If written and edited right, they can really set the standard for your film from the very beginning. Having a boring and poorly edited title design/designs will make the expectations of the rest of your film very low and will discourage the viewers from watching more. The most important parts of media are satisfying your viewers, which will in turn make money for you and your industry. That is why the title designs are such an important factor. We will have a multitude of different types of title design, while also following the order of titles. Our film will consist of middle screen titles. This will mainly just be the actual title of our film. We will add effects to this to make it less boring and more engaging. We will also have foreground titles which relate with the theme of the film. Finally we will implement titles that are blended in the background. These are meant to be the "less important" titles that the viewers are supposed to try to catch. These will help engage the audience as well.

Planning Blog: Location, Participants, Health, and Schedule

    This blog and google slides presentation are about some of the logistic aspects of our final filming task. This task is a two minute intro to a film in the thriller genre. In order to incorporate the thriller genre, we are using dark and spooky settings. These include a cemetery and a party at night. We will try to use a lot of conventions that thriller movies have and we talk about this in the google slides presentation. We also talk about who is going to be involved in this final task. Of course this includes the four of us in the group. If all of us weren't involved it wouldn't be a true group project. We also go over the safety measures we will be taking during the filming process. We must remember the importance of safety at all times. Last we talked about our filming schedule, which is not yet finalized but we still have a general idea of when we want to film.

Planning blog: Shooting Script

This script describes everything that will be in our final project not including the dialogue and sound. Our shooting script consists of 11 different and unique scenes, each scene having a variety of different camera angles, and lighting effects. This is especially important in our film because our film is a thriller/horror film. One of the most important elements of a thriller is its use of mystery and suspense. The different camera angles will help build suspense. For example, the over-the-shoulder shots will build suspense by concealing the killers identity. The lighting effects will also build suspense. Low key lighting will also help conceal the killers identity, showing him only as a silhouette. This will build tension which should make the viewer scared and tense. This will be backed up by eery sound effects and dialogue to create even more suspense.

Planning Blog: Sound Script

For our sound script, we wrote down all of our noises that we will use for our movie. Thankfully, the noises are all during the scene while we film, so we do not have to add any noises post editing process. Any transitions that we would have to use thankfully only would be jump cuts, further lowering the time it would take to edit. All in all, we will have a very brief and quick editing process so we can focus on filming and making our acting the best it can be. The sounds take very little meaning in this film portion, but it is made up for by the acting. The majority of our film is focused on the angles of the camera and how the characters react to the crazy situation that both of these loveable scamps get into. The driver is silent for most of the film but this adds to his mysterious aura. Tyler and Steive obviously have a past history and the dialogue shows as much. The dialogue will help bring suspense and confusion. We will also add diegetic sound like wind breezing by to create more suspense, because that is the most important element in a thriller.

Title Research: Crime/Action

This film is Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
How many titles are displayed during the opening sequences to the film?
-19 titles are shown in the first 4 minutes of the movie.
What images are prioritized in the opening sequence?
-Images that are prioritized in the opening sequence would be Austin Powers and freeze frames of him jumping up and dancing and stuff.
What connotations do the images carry?
-Connotations of him would be everyone loving him and you are supposed to think that it is pretty dumb of everyone for thinking that because there isn’t that much that's special about him.
How is genre reinforced through symbolic and technical codes from the outset?
-The genre of this movie is humorous and the way they reinforce this is by using technical and symbolic codes like having over the top cliches, funny bits, and funny freeze frames.
How does the film establish an enigma from the outset?
-The film uses enigmas in the outset with subtle jokes and the font of the titles.
What strategies are used to ensure the film appeals to its target audience?
-In the outset, strategies the film uses to ensure that it appeals to the target audience is by having hilarity going on constantly through the beginning.
How has technology been used effectively?
Technology that has been used were camera angles like wide shots, medium shots, long shots, and establishing shots to help convey the jokes they are putting in; transitions like running from people, funny disguises, and leading a parade for comedic timing; editing like cross cuts, freeze frames, and a sound track to fit everything together.