Advanced Portfolio Evaluation - Question 2 - How effective is the combination of your main product and your ancillary tasks?
Transcript:
Every film will have a marketing budget which is a certain amount of money set aside to spend on promoting the film. It doesn't matter it the film is a low budge short film or a high budget feature length film they will all have a marketing budget. The reason for this is because the marketing of the film is arguable the most important part of the post-production process because its how the film is promoted to the target audience. There are lots of ways that a company can create a good marketing campaign to promote their film, for example, they could create a film poster which has some information about the film on it and it is used to entice the target audience into watching the film. Also, a film review could be used to market the film because if a reviewer find the film good then they will recommend it to other people, therefore, more of the target audience will watch the film.Film posters are a very good way to market a film because they can be used in lots of different ways. This is because once the poster and the advertisement campaign has been created it can be placed in lots of different locations. For example, a high budget film could have a poster placed at a bus stop, on a billboard, in a newspaper or magazine or it could be placed on the production company website. When an advertisement campaign for the film is first being created the production company will go to an advertisement company and they will be the ones that create the campaign. This is dependent on the budget for the film because high budget films can use advertisement companies that are very well known and very expensive and the result of using a more well known company that's more expensive is that more of the target audience will know about the film. However, a low budget independent film can't use this method so depending on the budget they might use a cheaper advertisement company or they might do it themselves. After this the poster and other advertisement material is created and these are designed to stand out and to make the target audience want to go and watch the film. After the poster has been created and all of the other promotional material has been created the production company will arrange a release date with the distributor and then the promotion campaign can be released. All of the promotional material that is released for the film should work together as one, this means that they should all correspond to each other, for example, they should all have the same title with the same font and colour. Also, the main image should be the same, however, sometimes different images are used in feature length films, but, they create the same affect on the target audience. Also, all of the information on the promotional material should be the same. A good example of an effective promotional campaign is James Bond. This is because no matter what James Bond film poster you are looking at whether it be 'The man with the golden gun' which is an old Bond film or if it is 'Skyfall' which is a newer Bond film you can always tell they are Bond films form the poster. This is due to the great promotional work and the advertisement company have created a globally recognisable brand.
Our film is an independent low budget short film. This means that we didn't have the money to pay for an advertisement company to create the short film poster. We create the poster ourselves and it still enticed the target audience to watch our short film and it created a brand or an image that represented the short film. Our short film poster showed the audience the genre of the short film, it enticed the target audience to go and watch the short film and it gave some information about the narrative to the audience. As a group we sat down and discussed the look of the title on the poster and we decided to make the lettering spaced out which would connote the loneliness of the protagonist. Originally, the font was very thin like the title that is in the short film, however, we had to change it to be thicker so that it could stand out from the rest of the text on the poster. This means that the title on the short film poster and the title that it in the short film are different, however, they are the same font. On top of this, the main image of the poster has the protagonist walking towards the camera and the friend walking away from the camera. This is very similar to an actual shot that it in the short film and it is from a key scene in the short film. This provides the audience with information like the protagonist being lonely and the protagonist searching for his friend because he is looking, also, the protagonist has a very serious facial expression which suggests the serious tone of the short film. In addition, the genre of the short film is shown by the poster, for example, the thriller elements of the short film are shown by the vignette border around the edge of the poster and by the dark overlay that is on the protagonist and the lighter overlay that is on the friend. Overall, the poster stays with the key aspects of the short film and it is a good representation of the short film that can be used to promote the short film and get the target audience to watch the short film.
Furthermore, young film makers like our production group could use film festivals like the London Short Film Festival or the Cambridge Film Festival to promote their short films. This is because short film enthusiasts will go to these events and it means that the film makers can get a live audience watching their short film. Also, it is an easy way for the film maker to get their short film shown to the target audience of the short film and this could help boost the recognition of the film.
On top of this, another method that is used to promote a film is a review about the film. A review of a film shows what the review thinks about the film after they have watched it and commonly the target audience will be the people that are going to read the review about the film. A review can be positive or it can be negative. The review works in the same way as the poster in the sense that it reveals certain parts of the film to the reader, however, it doesn't give away the whole plot of the film. The main thing about the review is that it's a critical piece of information about the film which means that if the review doesn't like the film then it will put the target audience off from going to watch the film, on the other hand, if the review is good then it may entice more people to go and watch the film.
The review that was written for our short film was done by a company called Little White Lies. The target audience for the Little White Lies magazine is very different to the target audience for the short film. This means that they will create the content of the magazine will appeal to the target audience of Little White Lies. The demographic of Little White Lies magazine is mostly male and some female between the ages of 25 and 35. Also, the magazine is designed for the classes A, B and C1 which is considered to be middle class, therefore, the magazine is of a high quality which means when people have finished reading the magazine they don't just through it away. This magazine is rather expensive compared to other popular magazines because Little White Lies costs £5, where as, most other popular magazines cost up to £2. The high quality of the physical product is reflected in the quality of the content inside the magazine. The language used in the film reviews is very complex English that is presented in a chatty format that still keeps a serious tone at the same time which helps to engage the reader in the review. The reason for the high quality of English is because most of the film reviews in the magazine are written by journalists that have a degree in English which means that they can use English in a sophisticated way. Additionally, this high standard of English is reflected in the target audience because they can understand the reviews where as someone that is not part of the target audience might not be able to understand the language of the review as well. Some of the English techniques used are:
- Nouns and Complex Nouns
- Metaphors
- Complex Sentences
- Adjectives
- Puns
- Restricted Code in Language
- Simile
- Adverbs
- Rhetorical Question
As a group we managed to create an effective short film review that was in the style of a Little White Lies film review. The main problem that we had with the review was creating the actual content for the review this is because none of the group members were degree level journalists that could use complex English very effectively. However, after some feedback and tweaking of the content we managed to create high quality content for the review that was complex enough to match the target audience and was chatty at the same time so that the audience didn't become disengaged. When we were decided the rating for our short film we didn't want to give it all 5's because we knew our short film wasn't perfect so for Anticipation we gave it 4, Enjoyment we gave it 3 and In Retrospect we gave it 3. We felt that these were accurate ratings that reflected our short film. The overall look of the review was almost identical to a real Little White Lies film review because we followed measurements and key styles of the review to make it appear like a real review. Also, the content of the review followed the same pattern as a real Little White Lies review and it appealed to the target audience.
Excellent work again Sam!
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