Audience and Institutions Essay

Marketing is extremely important in the film processes. Marketing is the way that audiences of the films are aware of the films. Different production companies have realized the importance of marketing and have enacted a plethora of different strategies in order to fully market their films. 

Spiderman Homecoming seems to be a great example of the importance of marketing in order to acquire a successful and profitable piece of film. The production companies for this movie is Columbia Pictures and Marvel studios. The marketing seemed to be a success as it was the second best opening ever for Sony. The first marketing strategy and debatably the best strategy for the movie was merchandise through toys. The merchandise for this movie seemed to be the best marketing strategy out there. The films advertisement department recognized the demographic for their product and was able to capitalize on that to further push their movie. The merchandising for Spider-man Homecoming was also done through a PS4 exclusive title that brought hype for the movie. The marketing seemed to be specific to a certain demographic. The marketing also went a step further and had cross promotion with target in order to push their action figures. They then did some synergy between Cinnamon Toast Crunch in order to market their movie through them. All the merchandise for the movie was released before the movie came out in order to create hype for the release. The actors and artist who were involved in this movie went on to the movie made about $880.2 million worldwide and only put $140 million dollars into advertisement. The marketing seemed to be highly important in the success of this movie. There was a huge emphasis in the marketing of this film, and it created a huge profit for the parties involved in the creation of this film.

 Guardian of the galaxy Vol. 2 is another Marvel studio film that used marketing to boost the film in the end. The film utilized a lot of cross promotion in order to boost the marketing of the film. The film had a couple of campaign partners when trying to promote itself. Some of these partners were Hasbro, M&M’s, Sprint Corporation just to name a few. These companies propelled the marketing of the film and plastered the film all around. They also made a lot of toys to target the kid demographic in the marketing process. The marketers also decided to plaster the film on a game of monopoly. The film seemed to be everywhere and on practically on every product. There were shirts, posters, cups and phone cases used to market the film. This was done prior to the film release to have this film in the minds of the people of the world. The biggest marketing strategy I believe is the decision to plaster a commercial for the movie during The Super Bowl. The price to have a commercial play during The Super Bowl is extremely expensive but the advertisement department realized the importance of marketing this film and decided to play it during the Superbowl. The trailer played across the screen of millions around America and was talked about for weeks on end. Due to the marketing and advertisement the movie was able to make $863.8 million worldwide. The marketing is what propelled the movie into the minds of the audience. Through this the audience will go out and view the film and this was a perfect example of how marketing is extremely important to the success of a film.

 Jurassic World was another film that utilize a lot of marketing in order to garner its success. The movie started its advertisements through the trailers. The trailers were distributed through the internet was able to garner a good view count. The official trailer posted on the Universal Pictures YouTube channels has garnered 89 million views. The trailers did a good job hyping the public up for the movie. They decided to also re-run older Jurassic Park movies on NBC in order to bring hype and excitement for the upcoming Jurassic World. They then decided to release posters that were limited editions for the movie. These posters garnered a lot of attention from the fans of the series. The movie was extremely hyped through the video and game promotions. There was Lego sets and a Lego Jurassic World video game that was announced while the film was announced. Lego also released an abundant number of toys pertaining to the film. To help reach the kid demographic they had Jurassic World themed candy. There was also another video game released through mobile that helped boost the recognition of this film. Through the past films and a number advertisement through trailers and toys this film was able to garner $1.67 billion USD worldwide.

Black Panther had a very unique and diverse marketing strategies. The strategy used a lot of different tactics and elements in order to push this movie into the minds of its audiences. The first unique strategy that they utilized is to host certain events in order to promote the movie. This movie was unique and had a different demographic to it, so the promotion wasn’t focused on the kid demographic. Yet this still did have merchandise that appealed to them. They released a lot of clothes, toys and accessories that represented the movie. The did this through online and physical shops. This wasn’t their only strategy though. The merchandise through toy would be easy because the character isn’t as popular any other marvel superheroes. so, they initiated another form of advertisement. One of the best marketing strategies that was done was to host special events. One of the events, hosted by Marvel Studios, was a New York Fashion week. The marketing was done through a form of art. The pieces shown through this event were outfits inspired by the movie. They also had the lead actor participate in a mobile game event to market the movie further. Though this helped I believe the biggest marketing strategy was the one they did with Kendrick Lamar. He was a main feature on the Black Panther soundtrack and had many other popular artists featured in it. The soundtrack stayed at number one for three consecutive weeks on the Billboard 100 chart. The popularity of the song propelled the movie and made it a huge success. The movie was able to reach $1.344 billion USD worldwide. Through its unique and successful marketing strategy, the film was capable of garnering a huge sum of profit.

 The film industry has recognized the importance of marketing. They have unique and effective tactics when it comes to marketing that propel their films. Through marketing all these films were able to earn a great load of profit. This shows the importance of marketing in the film industry.

CCR for Final Project

This is my CCR for the final project that I had to do. I go through and reflect on the project and remember the process of creating this film. I state the conventions that may have been used in the project, I also go through any social groups I may have represented in this project. Furthermore, I go through how my movie will engage with audiences and how I will distribute my media to them. Then I reflect on how my skills as a filmmaker were challenged and improved upon. Lastly, I talk about what technology did I integrate when making this film.

Final Project (Intro to Movie)

This was the last final project that I had to do. My reflection on this piece can be seen in my CCR blog but this movie was great. It taught me and gave me a lot of experience. I was able to finish this project even with the circumstances at play. It was difficult but in the end, I finished and that's all that matters. I put a lot of effort into this project and really hope it was worth it. This project has made me realize my appreciation for film-making.

Second Project ( Music Video)

This was the second project we had to complete for this class. As my previous blogs have stated when doing this project. It has helped me with preparation, filming and this time problem solving. This project was extremely valuable. It helped me figure out sound design and how to edit that. Which is shown in my final product.

First Project (Commercial)

This was the first project. This project was short which was great at the time because it gave me a taste at what filming is like. It didn't overwhelm me and I had a lot of fun making it. This short commercial tested my editing, filming, and planning skills. It was a great start and valuable in starting my filming journey.

Last time Editing (Video, Fx, Color)

Now that I finished with the fixing up of certain aspects of the movie, I have to edit the video it self. That means putting the clips in the correct order and in the correct way. That was kind of difficult because the video was way over the time. Now with this in mind I had to cut some clips shorts and change the whole movie it self. There were complete plot points that I took out because it was just too long. This was unfortunate but I did what I had to do to make this a good movie. There was no difficult edits I had to do for the videos itself, I just had to cut it short. When it came to the visual effects of the movie that was tasking. Of course this would be hard and time consuming but I did my best. The first VFX that I had to do was the eyes and face of the catcher. I had to use the tracking tool to do so. After I pulled up the tracking tool, I made sure I tracked the yes and the mouth of the catcher. Once I did that and got the tracking information I saved it. I did some drawing on the catchers face and applied the tracking data to it so it would follow him if he made any movements. After that there was many different edits I did with the transitions and cuts. That was relatively easy and didn’t take me that long. When it came to the color of the movie I kept it relatively the same throughout. But I had to make it kind of stylistic in a way. The stylistic choice was to make it that anytime the catcher was in frame and had malice intent the color would invert. That’s what I chose and I think it worked out well as the inverted color made it seem spooky. The way I did that was I cut the clips into different sections. I did this so I could apply the inverted color to only a section of it. If I did t do this basically the whole clip would of been inverted. Once that was done and the inverted color was applied to everything I felt happy with the results and didn’t bother to change it. This is a picture of the catcher who has the tracked face drawings and the inverted color.

Re-Editing Blog (Fixing titles)

When doing the video I didn’t realize a crucial point when it came to the titles. I went and edited everything thoroughly. I made all the titles necessary for the project. I even put the titles in the correct order. But when making it I tried to make the titles as streamline as possible. I combined certain titles and tried to make it as streamline as possible. But that was a mistake. I don’t think I should of done that. Now I have to go back and try to fix my mistake. Which is unfortunate because I will have to go on the computer and do it on the editing software. What I figured out from the peer review is what caused it. During the day of the peer review I came in and finished the peer review. After the group that was reviewing our film was done, they came up to us. When they came up they informed me of a mistake that I made. I didn’t let the titles run through the whole film. I didn’t know I had to do this, I even squeezed titles together because I assumed that’s what was necessary. That was a huge mistake and could have cost me some points. Luckily we have the peer review which allowed me to go back and fix this. I will fix this by going  back and moving the title section around to allow it to go through the whole movie. Once I do this my editing will be completed and I won’t have to worry about losing points.

Re-shooting Blog

The movie that we created was able to get peer edited. We had the ability to get feedback from other team members when we did this. They gave us feedback that we could use to conduct a reshoot. That was the plan but unfortunately that didn’t occur. The news has been informing us about the unfortunate events that have been taking place. There was no way I could go back to my teammates house and conduct a re shoot. There was issue with our film that we could of fixed but it was already too late to do so. I wished there was a way that we could of re shot some scenes but I had to work on what I had. This made me focus more on the re editing aspect of the film. I was able to re edit some scenes that could of easily been fixed through re shooting. Re shooting the film would of made it a lot easier but unfortunately that didn’t occur. If I were to have the ability to re-film some scenes I would of took the liberty to fix the lighting and acting. The acting in the films was honestly not that great and the story was hard to grasp due to that. I would of directed the actors to be more animated in their actions in order to sell the story. The lighting would of been fixed as well. The sun seems to be an unreliable light source and was inconsistent throughout the film. It seems that I made it make sense with the editing but at the same time, time seemed to fly by extremely quick and I would want to fix that. I also found that some clips had been cut together but had different lighting which was extremely unfortunate, that is something I would want to fix.

Editing (Volume, SFX & dialogue) blog

The editing was hard and took a while to do. I had to go and think about all the things I might have missed in my first edits. There was the fact that the music and the audio was not correctly tuned. To tune it and level it out was difficult. I had to figure out which one I would want louder. The voices of the song and this fluctuated based on the scene that we were doing. On the first scene with the music I made the voice louder than the music. I could of just turned down the volume of the music. That wouldn’t work because I feel like the music was an important part of the scene and I just had to do it right. So instead I made the sound of the voices louder. This was beneficial as now the scenes wouldn’t be overrun by the loud music. The second scene I did I had to make the music louder than the voices and the audio from the video. The audio straight from the video didn’t add anything to the scene. It was just irritating background noise that I had to remove so that’s exactly what I did. The music that I previously found was used to fill in the dead silence. The music also acted as bring suspense to the scene. The way I found that song was to look through a plethora of websites. I had to find royalty free music that fit my scene. It had to be suspenseful and with a little bit of digging I finally got it and used it in the scene. Also during some scenes I added different sound effects to really emphasize what might be going on in the movie. It was hard editing the sound but I figured it out. 

Peer Review

The peer review was very hectic at first. I didn’t really know anyone’s name but I soon figured that out I got to peer reviewing. I handed my video to the group that was peer reviewing us and I got the video from the other group. Now that I had their video I really wanted to give them constructive criticism and help them with their video. While watching the video with my teammates we were able to have a lot of eyes on the video and could make proper criticism. The first questions were talking about the semantics of the video. It needed to reach a certain time and have certain titles in specific order. From what we watched, it seemed decent and even though they didn't have everything perfect they still did a good job. Luckily we were able to give them the criticism they needed to fix those issues. Moving on to the lighting. There lighting was decent but some parts were a little bit dark. I told them how to fix that issue and I hope they listened to that.  Their sound quality was also decent but some parts weren't that good and were inaudible at some parts. It was hard to focus on the audio with all the background noise. They did avoid any clips of them laughing and or any indication of someone holding the camera. When it came to the different shots they had about 8/14 of what they needed to have. I really liked he plot of the movie. I twas easy to understand and seemed familiar but had a different take. I would suggest they try out different shots. It would make the film more engaging and creative-looking.

First Editing Blog

This is the first editing blog that we had to do. It took a long time to do. We had to finish filming late and start editing really quickly. It took me a long time to finish editing because I had to trim it down to  2 minutes.  I found that especially hard because the film would of made no sense. But I tried my hardest to do it in order to finish this blog. When first doing editing, I had to put all the clips in the editing software. To do so I had to look through 107 clips and distinguish the real clips from the bloopers. It was hard and it took a long time to figure this out. Once I did, I had to import all the clips into the editing software. Now some of the takes were good but there was this period in the clips where I was telling them to “go.” Also there was a period after the clips where I kept recording. I had to edit 47 different videos individually. After that I had to put it in the timeline and beginning the editing process which took a long time.  After I put all the clips in and made it It in chronological order it was about 4 minutes long. This was 4 minutes long without the title sequence which sucked. So now I had to think about what I could cut out in order to keep the story and allow it to still make sense. That was a hard process. Once I did that, it was time to add the effects and music which was probably the easiest and most fun thing to do. Lastly, the title sequence was excruciating. The titles weren’t really working but I figured it out.

Supposedly The Last Day of Filming

This filming process for are movie is filled with trials and tribulations. There is so many things that we have to consider when doing this project. I think it’s the hardest project we have ever done. It has take n a toll on me honestly and is very tiring. With your the knowledge of the last projects, I wouldn’t really know how to handle this. Luckily, we had experience before doing this project. The filming process was hard to figure out. It’s not easy finding a good time to film when all of your group mates have some sort of issue and or event in their schedule. We were all busy and it was really hard for us to do any filming. From the last two blogs it’s clearly shown how hard it was for us to film. The weather was even against us. But this time we were determined to film. I even decided to skip track practice in hopes that  we will film. It was around 4:00 and we were all ready to film and meet up at my group mates house. But my group mates was not responding. I didn’t want to drive all the way to his house just to find out he isn’t there. I called him and called him but no answer. We didn’t have enough footage so I couldn’t just start editing. My mom was getting impatient and she had plans of her own. She needed to know if I actually was going or not. Unfortunate, it didn’t work out. My mom didn’t have time for me to get in touch with my friend to confirm that I could come to his house. It’s annoying not being able to film as we have a deadline coming up and editing will take a long time. I hope we can film Saturday and my mom can drive me there. In her car:

Another Day or Filming

Filiming didn’t occur last time which is extremely unfortunate. Now we had to make up for the time lost and make sure we filmed enough this time. That’s what we wanted to do but that is not what happened. The filming process went sideways which is unfortunate. We did film though which is nice but it was unfortunately cut short. The most important thing we have to worry about is the sun setting. Are film must be filmed in the morning or it wouldn’t make any sense.  The sun had to be in a similar position for all the shots so it doesn’t seem confusing. So the other day we were meant to film and planned on it. We all meet up to film and decide to film. It goes well I’m the beginning but of course something had to go wrong. We look up in the sky and realize clouds are starting to form. Now they are blocking the sunlight which is unfortunate. Now we can’t film because the sun was blocked. But we still had hope. Maybe we could film in this setting instead and the movie take place on a cloudy day. But that caused to much variables if we didn’t finish on that day. But we still decided to film. Then, it stArted raining. Of course it would start raining and that ruined everything. We don’t want to get wet not break any of our filming equipment due to water. So this forced us all to go home. We still had hope though after track practice we planned on meeting up after school but when I came home ate, showered and did my homework I looked out the window and it was completely dark:

First Filming Blog

This is our first filming day that we were supposed to film for our movie. But it didn’t happen because of certain time constraints. The time that we could of filmed had to be after school. That was the only way we were going to film this movie. But that couldn’t happen. I had track practice to go to everyday after school and I would get home at 5:30 and since I’m the director and a main they couldn’t have started filming without me. Another thing was that Marckins one of my teammates also stayed after school and he’s the main character as well and had most of the screen time so there was no way we could of filmed. Even if we tried to film after school and after my practice and his we would obviously be extremely drained and tired and the film wouldn’t come out as we pleased. Also the sun would have settled way too son and would of ruin our shot as the lighting would be constantly changing. We are filming our scenes in the day time so it wouldn’t workout. But that’s okay though because we plan on filming another time. This will affect our schedule a lot. We will need to move everything back and really try to be faster on certain parts like editing and or filming. During this week though we did do something to contribute to the film. We gathered the last bit of supplies needed to start filming and we scooped out the general area of our film to make sure we were all set. We all confirmed it with our parents so we don’t have any confusion the real filming day. The issue was the gathering of supplies. We don’t have jobs and don’t have the necessary sponsorship to acquire some supplies so we obviously had to improvise. For my character I have to wear a very specific color And clothes. My character has to be dark and a figure. So I scrambled around my house to find the perfect outfit for this. I got a black jacket and a black beanie that will do wonders at hiding my appearance when doing the film. And here are the pictures of them:

Storyboard For Movie

When creating the story blog it was a spit effort. The script really helped in visualizing the story board. The story board and the script go hand and hand. So, it helped my teammates know what to draw and write on the story board. We split the effort three ways. So that is why some of the art seems different. That isn’t important thought because the story board still conveys the story. I know for sure now when we go filming it will be as easy as ever. When we hopefully bring more actors the story board will allow them to easily catch on to the story. The story board is actually pretty detailed.

Title Design

Titles is going to be an important aspect of this project. So, it's imperative that we get them right. The way I will do this is keep the titles simple. They will be simple enough that it's not jarring but it still holds complex meaning. I want the title to somewhat represent the movie. Of course the background and music of the tile sequence will do that but if I can personalize the tile to do the same I think it will help the audience understand the movie a lot better. I'll personalize the titles to be correlated to the tag aspect of the movie. It will also have movements that represents tag.

Details for LPHS

Details for LPHS is the details for the location, Participants, Health and safety and Schedule. This slide goes into detail on what the LPHS of our film will be. Finding a location wasn't hard, we used the same location from our music video that we did in the middle of the year. It's a great neighborhood. Schedule was hard to make but when I thought it out I made the perfect Schedule. It takes into account everything and gives us more than enough time to do this project accurately. Health and safety wasn't hard. I knew already what measures were put in place to ensure our well-being. Participants wasn't final. I know that 3 people including me will participate but I don't know if the other people will be also participating.

Dialouge & Sound Script

This script had to match the shooting script. Though this was easier in a way it was hard to find the right songs. The song had to be royalty free and had to be perfect for the scenes. After searching I found great songs on youtube that worked to my liking. Doing the script was hard. I had to really think about the sound that would be happening during a scene. I had to think about the dialogue and how that would work. In the end I think it turned out great. My partners will appreciate the scripts and be able to comprehend them. The sound script will help me when editing.

Shooting Script

When doing the script about the character movements, movements of the camera and angles it was really hard to do. I had to consult my team and we had to think of a story to write about. The story we already made from our pitch but we have to figure out the details. The slides that I made is the script. It doesn't outline everything but it does outline what the characters are doing. The story is explained in the dialogue so it was hard making the script without that. I tried to implement most camera angles in my script. Including high angle, low angle tilt and even more. I didn't force the movements. It fit right into the story. Including the camera movements those were easy. Figuring out the story was the
hardest part.

Title Research: The Final Destination

-How many titles are displayed during the opening sequences to the film?

The title sequences displays 21 titles

-What images are prioritized in the opening sequence?

The image of death and danger and dying is portrayed in the opening sequences and it's constantly showed in different manors how an individual is killed. Some are creative and it follows this theme throughout the tile sequence.

-What connotations do the images carry?

The title sequence obviously takes the connotative meaning of death and dying in the most gruesome ways. It portrays this as characters continuously get hurt in the worst ways possible. They follow this theme throughout the title sequence and its really pushed.

-How is genre reinforced through symbolic and technical codes from the outset?

The genre is reinforced by the continuous scenes of skeleton characters getting hurt. The genre is like an action slasher but the one doing the slashing is a mysterious force. This is reinforced because the characters in the opening seemingly die from random incidents.

-How does the film establish an enigma from the outset?

The films opening is a whole enigma. Though people are dying, it is still interesting to know why they are dying. It's interesting to see the ways the actors die but its more interesting to know why and get a clearer perspective on it. and that's what the movie tries to hide which gives it a sense of mystery.

-What strategies are used to ensure the film appeals to its target audience?
The interesting deaths and cool transition will appeal to the masses. People want to see that happen and the movie doesn't hide it. The masses are amazed by random exciting images and the movie provides that.

-What strategies are used to ensure the film appeals to its target audience?

The CGI used in the beginning is what appeals to the audience and its cool transition and kills. The audience gets to watch cool things happen on screen and it is interesting and appealing to them.