Audience and Institutions Practice Essay

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

Personally, I believe marketing through the media is essential to the film industry. Now and even before the age of advance technology that we live in, films can’t rely solely on word-of-mouth for advertising. Promoting films through different forms of media can be effective and makes movies more likely to be successful.  

To begin with, cross media convergence is one method used to help films gain publicity. Before ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’ was released, there were many reruns of the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter merchandise was distributed alongside the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ merchandise is stores such as Walmart. By marketing the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ movie with close relations to the Harry Potter franchise, this attracted Harry Potter fans to the film which increased its number of viewers. As a Harry Potter fan, I found myself being drawn to ‘Fantastic Beats’ because of the correlation between the films; I even saw ‘Fantastic Beasts’ as soon as it was out in theaters. In short, cross media convergence was impactful for marketing ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’ and was most likely the reason for the film’s great profit.  

Moreover, music has also been used to market films. The nostalgic soundtrack of ‘Jurassic World’ captivated new and old fans of the ‘Jurassic Park’ to the new film. As a child, I watched ‘Jurassic Park’ so when I discovered that ‘Jurassic World’ had music based off the iconic theme of the film, it made me want to see it even more than I already did. As a cross promotion technique, Kendrick Lamar preformed “All The Stars” featuring SZA, a song off of the ‘Black Panther’ soundtrack, at the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. This was a good strategy because there were many viewers at the event so the movie could gain more exposure. Kendrick Lamar is also a popular artist so it makes fans, like myself, excited about ‘Black Panther’ since he was one of the movie’s main features. Therefore, music can bring in more viewers and generate buzz which can help films gain more popularity.  

However, advertising through the media doesn’t mean automatic success for films. ‘UglyDolls’, a film based off of a toy line called Ugly Dolls, didn’t make as big of a profit as STX hoped it would. The film had characters voiced by well-known singers such as Nick Jonas, Kelly Clarkson, and Janelle Monae which attracts viewers to the film and made creating a soundtrack for the movie an easier process. A synergetic relationship between Cold Stone and ‘UglyDolls’ because Cold Stone made an ice cream flavor and candy toppings specifically for the movie. ‘UglyDolls’ was launched on 3,562 screens but only brought in a net of $8.5 million despite its substantial advertising. What also lead to its demise was that the film was released only days before the movie ‘Pokémon Detective Pikachu’ was out in theaters which would take away the spotlight from ‘UglyDolls’. This demonstrates that media marketing doesn’t guarantee that films will be a blockbuster hit. 

In conclusion, marketing through the media is vital asset for films. Promotions through different methods of media advertisement can help films entice viewers and make good profit. However, sometimes media marketing just isn’t enough for a film to prosper. 

Extract Practice: 24

The theme that the director was trying to convey is that the main character is an important, prominent figure in the storyline. The situation that seems to be occurring in the extract is that a bomb is set to go off and the main character is the only one who can stop it. The director has incorporated different elements that build suspense and tension that revolves around the main character.  

The interrogation room the main character is in while being questioned is used to show that she has valuable information and also contributes to the overall suspense of the film. A man, who seems to be an interrogator, sets down paperwork on the table which demonstrates that the main character is an important figure in the plot since it is signed by the president. The ticking that is heard when the main character looks at the clock shows that the situation at hand is high risk because there isn’t a lot of time before the bomb goes off. The clock the main character glances at could also be a graphic match that represents the amount of time that is left before the bomb explodes. The shot reverse shot of when the main character and the interrogator are talking builds tension because the more straightforward questions the main character is asked the more heated the exchange gets.  

The high angle when the interrogator is speaking to the main character displays that he’s trying to get her to submit to his authority and give him the information that he wants. The closeup of the main character when she smiles at the interrogator after saying he has to follow her lead shows that she is condescending and has more superiority in this situation than he does. The split scene when the interrogator choked the main character creates panic and shows that the interrogator doesn’t like that he doesn’t have as much power as she does. The fast tempo music when the people watching from the monitors ran to the interrogation room while the main character is being choked suggests that the spectators have to be quick or their only source of stopping the bomb could be killed.  

In conclusion, the director of this film made it so that the words and actions of the main character have heavy influence on the situation at hand. The interrogation room setting implies that the main character has some sort of value to the people she is being questioned by. Her presence has also been acknowledged by the president which also adds to her prominence in the film.  

CCR

Final Task

Re-editing

The corona virus pandemic caused Stephanie and I to not physically be able to edit together. We agreed that Stephanie would handle the re-editing. We got on a phone call to discuss the edits we would make. After that, Stephanie got to work. Typically, we would call each other while she was editing. However, this time we didn’t call but I knew Stephanie was more than capable of handling this by herself. When she finished, she sent me the video. She also informed me on what edits she made beforehand. She added in a black screen in the first 10 seconds of the opening. The screen had white text which gave background information as to what the film was about. We added this because we wanted to give the viewers some clarification on what’s going on in the film since our reviewers told us they were confused on the plot. We took inspiration from Star Wars for this part. 

The next thing Stephanie added was an establishing shot. Our reviewers said that we didn’t include an establishing shot in our film. To fix our mistake, Stephanie inserted the shot I took of my backyard and included it in the opening. Stephanie also inserted some new clips for the opening sequence. She had to add filters to the new scenes that were apart of the flash forward. For some of the clips, she duplicated the audio and inserted it into its designated scene. She did this so that the audience could hear some of the actual audio over the music in the background. Lastly, Stephanie inserted some new titles and rearranged them so that they were evenly spaced out. She told me this editing process took about 90 minutes. 

Looking at Our Review Sheets

While Re-editing, Stephanie and I referred to our review sheets that we got. Two different groups watched our opening and filled out a sheet about their thoughts on it. I only have one of the sheets so I will be discussing that one. Our movie was the correct length and did tell a story. However, what Stephanie and I were alarmed by was what they thought the plot of our story was. The group believed our opening was about a girl that makes a wish on her birthday and enters a nightmare that she realizes is fake. The second group that reviewed us also didn’t get the plot right either. Their guesses weren’t too far off to the original storyline. However, Stephanie and I discussed this and realized we needed to fix this issue when we re-edit. We were glad to see that they thought our transitions weren’t choppy and that we had the correct titles.

They also thought that our lighting was good throughout the film. They did not have any critiques on how we can improve the lighting. They also thought that we had good sound while filming. They did not have anything to say on how we can improve the sound quality also. They didn’t see our tripod or other people filming. We were confident in this aspect because most of the time one of us was behind the camera making sure anything that wasn’t supposed to be seen was not caught on camera. When it came to the camera angles and movements, some angles they didn’t mark as present in our opening. However, Stephanie and I felt that some of those camera shots that they said weren’t there were actually in the film. Things that our reviewers liked was the sound and light quality. However, they did find the plot to be confusing and suggested that we add dialogue in order to clarify where the red dot comes from.

Re-shoot Blog

The corona virus outbreak has made reshooting much more difficult. When we were back in school, Stephanie and I originally planned on doing reshoots the weekend before spring break. We didn’t feel that we had many scenes to redo but we knew that we had a lot to do in re-editing. We had discussed which scenes we wanted to re-film such as the scene when Stephanie falls out of the chair and looks towards the door. We also wanted to add in scenes that we were missing such as an establishing shot. But before we could actually reshoot, our school was closed due to the corona virus. We attempted to try and plan someway for Stephanie and I to meet up. Stephanie’s mom agreed to letting us film only if I could go over to Stephanie’s house. However, Stephanie’s mother kept changing her mind about letting me come over and my parents were also skeptical about letting me go. We decided that it would be better for us to do our parts for reshoots individually.

A few days later, Stephanie and I FaceTimed to talk about which scenes we should redo. We decided that I should do an establishing shot of my backyard and Stephanie does a redo of her falling out of her chair. When I went to go and film my backyard, my camera’s SD card wasn’t working. Instead, I used my phone to record it. I found that my cellphone has a camera quality that’s almost as good as my Nikon camera. After that, I sent the video to Stephanie. She informed me that she had also finished her reshooting as well. We FaceTimed again to talk about how we were doing in our new environments and how we would go forward with our media project. Our teachers suggested that we put our previous projects in the blog where we post our final opening so we can show progress. We were a bit stressed because we couldn’t find our music video and commercial projects because they were downloaded onto our school laptops. We ended up deciding not to include them since we didn’t have access to them. We also decided that Stephanie will handle re-editing while on call with me so we can try our best to work on our opening together.