Audience & Institutions Essay

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

The success and popularity of a film/product is one of the most important factors for marketing. Mostly because it helps distribute and create more recognition of the film itself. Simply put, in order for a film to be successful and to do great in numbers, there must be a great amount of marketing put in place. The marketing of a film will undoubtedly be a benefit for a film, making it a more recognized film and increasing profits for the crew members who worked on the film as a result of increased popularity. Without proper marketing, film recognition could be very low, resulting in low profits for the crew members and people who worked on the film. There are many different ways to market and promote movies out in the world, using many different platforms. 

Firstly, the main motivation for filmmakers to even promote and market their upcoming films is to make a profit. This is especially important because if a movie does not perform well financially, it can cost the company a lot of money and their reputation. So they go all out and try to make their upcoming films recognizable to the average consumer, who they hope will view the film and purchase any products that promote and advertise the film. A very clear example of this is from Columbia Pictures, who worked hand in hand with Sony Pictures to help distribute and market their film “Spiderman: Homecoming.” During the distribution process from Sony Pictures, they stirred up many ideas on how their upcoming film can reach audiences and people of all kinds, ages, and demographics. For the digital marketplace, for example, the distribution team developed a video game based entirely off of the film. This was in order to reach different kinds of viewers and a wide array of interests. In this case, gamers and people who just simply would like to have fun. They also decided to create toys for the movie in order to attract younger viewers, for instance. This is an example of “cross-media promotion,” which simply means to try and promote a film using multiple different platforms, whether at stores, online, television, etc.. As mentioned before, the toys created by the production and distribution team was specifically aimed towards young children, who would then be exposed to the movie in a fun and enjoyable way in hopes of wanting to see the film the toys are based off of. As well as clothing and souvenirs and typical household items (cereal, chips, mugs, etc.) were also made based off of the movie, in an attempt to reach older viewers, who would likely wear the clothings or use the products, further promoting the movie. All of this in its entirety greatly helps promote the film, which is exactly what the crew intended. Production teams work hard to make their upcoming film recognizable among the public, especially through making products that average people will consume, exposing them to the film.

Furthermore, in our modern world it can be very easy to spread information around. With the help of many tools, especially technology. Filmmakers take advantage of this uniquely powerful platform in order to market their films. Walt Disney Studios, for instance, uses many of these platforms to their advantage. Whether that be through promoting and marketing through television or the internet. Nowadays, it is quite difficult to not see an ad or promotion for a Disney film when browsing the internet, whether through social media or regular websites. The same applies for television. Furthermore, one of Walt Disney Studios’ subsidiaries, Marvel Studios, always finds a way to promote their upcoming films to the public using “cross-media convergence.” This is the ability to advertise and market across different platforms and devices. And in this case, two different companies work together to help each one another with a similar goal. There are countless examples of this, one being products showing and promoting the upcoming films on their packaging in grocery store chains all throughout the world, such as Walmart, Target, and more. This helps get the image and face of the films to average consumers around the world, ultimately hoping they will notice and find the film intriguing. Pretty recently being done with the Marvel film “Black Panther '' whose promotion and marketing was handled by Walt Disney Studios. Many of the companies who handle marketing for upcoming films create budgets on how much they can spend, in an attempt to maximize profit without over-doing the promotion. All of which is also an attempt to reach their ultimate goal to build excitement for the film itself through their marketing. As well as aiming for all ages and demographics using different products to get their message across and heard. Furthermore, this can also be seen in Universal Pictures and their franchise “Fast and the Furious.” Similar to how Disney & Marvel market, Universal Studios tries to reach out to people of all ages and demographics. They even created video games and opened up new rides at their amusement parks in an attempt to help promote the movies. Technology has had a big impact on the way that these giant corporations get the public interested in their films and products, with very clear and visual examples all throughout the world.

In conclusion, marketing and promoting films are a significant part of a film’s success. Many companies and moviemakers work hard in an attempt to reach out to the average consumer and people of all kinds of demographics. Without any of this work, the film can be deemed unsuccessful, damaging the company’s financial status and reputation. It is very important for them that people go and watch these movies, buy their products, and help promote it, as their careers may depend on it. 

Extract Practice: 24

In this extract of “24”, I believe the director of the film is trying to get the audience engaged with the scene, and to give them a sense of the tense and serious situation. As well as giving the audience a glimpse of the process and intensity of the situations that detectives go through during interrogations, especially when the suspect in question is difficult to work with. It is reasonable that the director intended to make this film be of the Thriller genre. Mostly because of the emotions that a viewer can feel while watching the film, as it is intended to give them an intense and mysterious feeling. The situation presented in the extract is quite nerve-wrecking, since the lives of many people are in danger because of an unlocated bomb, as well as the jobs of the detectives in the interrogation. Mostly because of his treatment towards the woman being questioned.  One of the very immediately noticeable features of the extract was the close-up angles of the faces of the characters throughout the film. I believe this was the director’s intention with the film, as it draws more attention towards the faces of the characters, where the viewers can clearly see their facial expressions and emotions. This is also seen through the lighting in the film, where it's minimal and very dim, casting many shadows throughout the scene. This also helps draw more attention to the faces of the characters, giving them more life and emotion to be clearly seen by the audience. It also helps create a sense of mystery and tension. The entirety of the extract is located inside the interrogation room. This is the room where the detective interviews the woman in question. The background and set of the interrogation room is very dull, with few props in sight. This also helps draw more attention to the dialogue. As well as giving a more mysterious and serious mood to the scene, as the room seems eerie. Following the reveal that there were supervisors overseeing the interrogation the entire time, the following scene now includes both of the characters communicating with each other. The noise being heard throughout this scene is just the dialogue between the detective/interrogator and the suspect. This also creates much tension, as it is known that the woman being questioned knows about a bomb planted at an unknown location, as he tries her best to fool the detective. As their dialogue continues, shot-reverse-shot is added to the scene, to give the viewers a more engaging experience. As well to make the conversation feel more natural and to highlight the expressions and reactions of the characters. Furthermore, zooming is also used in the scene. Once a character in the scene was finished talking, the scene would cut to a close-up shot, along with a zoomed shot of the other character’s face. All of these shots used in the film help keep the audience engaged with the film, and the experience of the characters. As well as building stress and tension among the viewers, as the scene starts to feel more up close and personal.  During the third scene of the extract, incidental noise is heard in the background during the characters’ interactions. The light sound/music is meant to insert tension and stress throughout the interactions of the characters. As the audience watches the film, the incidental noise will be heard by them, dragging them into all of the tension as well. This helps build anxiety and questions as to what is going to happen as a result of the intense dialogue and actions of the characters, especially given their current situation. This sound, accompanied by the split-screen incorporated into the scene gives the audience a whole roller coaster of feelings and emotions. This is all followed by a scene of the supervisors who were overseeing the interrogation, rushing to the interrogation room in hopes of putting a stop to what the detective is doing. The director most likely intended these two scenes to be occuring at the same time, that way it was shown how quickly things went dark. These two scenes are shown next to each other simultaneously, and when they both are now in the same physical location, it returns to a normal state with just one scene on the screen. Finally, after this scene, the supervisor successfully ended the tension between the detective and the woman, as she was removed from the room. In conclusion, the core of this extract of the film “24” is to put the audience in the center of all the comotion and tension. The intent of the director was to give the film as much tension as possible, in an attempt to give the audience a sense of anxiousness and stress, as the characters in the extract are feeling themselves. This is all done with simply using the right editing, camera angles, and noise, all coming together in order to give the viewers an inside look in the extremely intense scene.

Editing: Music & Sound

We needed music for our film. It took us a while to find some royalty-free music for our opening scene. We had multiple choices before we all collectively chose a nice mellow song called Summertime. When we planned this video, we wanted the sound to be somewhat quiet. For example, we diegetic sound of the engine starting and the car keys were meant to not be too loud or quiet. When we were filming the scenes, we also recorded the sounds and audios themselves to make sure that they wouldn't be too quiet. Now we would be sure that the audio would be heard in the final product. Then, we finally began to edit the scenes together. We clipped some of the sound audios and added them to the track. We also separated the audio from their original videos, and added them under the correct scene. This meaning where the audio was meant to match with the video. We watched as Rafi separated all of the sound while we placed them under the scenes. While this was happening, we were also looking for music choices and options. The music needed to be royalty-free in order to use it with no trouble. So we searched through many different websites for music, which we invisioned being chill and relaxing. We played it out loud for all of us to listen and see if we liked it. We went through about 7 songs. After a while we found a song that seemed to fit best for our film. The song was by the artist Egozi. None of us have ever heard of this artist before. We downloaded the song from the website we found it on, and then applied it to the editing software. We then noticed that the sound effects sounds off with the music together, so we had to get rid of it.

Editing: Putting the Scenes Together

I have already blogged about editing the scenes together and what we have filmed so far. Our group, like many others, filmed our scenes in multiple days. We had already known from the start that we would have to re-edit, as we filmed more scenes. These filming/editing days were throughout 2 months. We had aso switched to use a different editing software than the first time we edited. This was mostly because we were unhappy with the original editing software. Whenever we get more footage, we always sort it out first before editing. By sorting, I mean that we usually sort out the good footage into a seperate folder, to be used later. On the night we were done filming, my partner Mariapaula, accidentally deleted the footage. This is because instead of moving the good footage into a seperate folder, she just deletes the bad footage. So by mistake she deleted one of the good scenes of me getting into the car and driving away. She knew she had made the mistake and asked the rest of the group on what we should do about it. We initially looked up YouTube videos, which then all seemed to direct us to different websites that were supposed to help. So instead we just looked up websites on our own. These claimed to help restore deleted files from SD cards, but then tried to charge us for year-long membership fees. We as a group decided collectively that this was not worth the price. So in the end, we all decided that we should just might as well not reshoot or try to recover the scene, as the scene was not that important to the film anyways. So to prevent any further mistakes, we then handed the editing job to Rafi to do on his own. He then used a software app on his phone for the editing. Which is what we finally ended us using to produce our film.

Helping A Friend Film

As I've mentioned before, a friend of ours, Macy, came over while we filmed. She was doing her own film while we were doing ours. She needed our group to be in her film, and she also helped us with our film. In her film, I was an assassin with a long lost sister who is also an assassin. We both get assigned to kill each other without knowing. She filmed numerous scenes of me. Many of which consist of me being on the phone or similar things. As for our film, she needed a shot of me shaving in the mirror. So we shot the same scene different times and each used different takes for our films.

Another thing that Macy needed me for was a scene of me grabbing my things in the morning before heading out. This consisted of keys, a wallet, and a knife. The wallet had a photo of my "sister" which fell out. This picture is supposed to be the only picture I had left of her. As well as a scene of me getting a photo album I had and sitting down on the couch. On the couch, I looked through them smiling, then slammed the album shut and got up. Later, we then shot a scene of me talking on the phone with my assistant. My assistant was played by Rafi who was shot separately. In that scene I was in the backseat of a car supposed to be an Uber. I speak about being assigned my new victim and then get out of the car.  We also took some pictures of me meant to be a mugshot, which was then used for a different scene without me.

Final Task: Reviewing

After the peer reviewing activity, our group decided to review our own film. We took in the advice and comments given by our peer reviewers. As well as rewatching all the scenes ourselves together. This was done to see if there had been any errors and any possible improvements we could make. We took a picture of the peer review sheet from our peer reviewers. We looked it over and took in their criticisms and their observations. Before this, our film wasn't "finished," because we didn't add any music or titles. Afterwards, Rafi added music and titles to it, so now we were more complete with it. We rewatched every scene, and noticed how some things would look better cut. As well as some scenes being sped up.

For example, the scene where I was picking out my clothes felt too long still, so we both cut it shorter and sped it us. The same can be said about the scene with Mariapaula's clothes. In this scene she is throwing her clothes onto the bed. This appeared to take too long, so we cut it and sped it up to fit much more nicely in the film. Other than small changes like that, not much else was needed to be changed. We also tried different fonts and styles for the titles, when Rafi was editing it. We settled on the current one, which seemed to fit the mood best. As well as the music. The music is not too hardcore or present to draw attention to it, but still present enough to add character to the film.

Peer Review

On Monday, our teacher was absent and left a list on the wall assigning each group a partner. We were also given a sheet of paper to fill out for our peer review. My group was assigned to peer review our classmate Ambi's final task. My group and I approached her and she sent us her project via AirDrop. As soon as she sent her video, I checked the time and it was 22 seconds longer than needed. So on the paper, I wrote that down when asked about it. In the beginning of her video, she included an eyeline match, which I really enjoyed. It included the kidnappers in a library, where one of them removed a book right in front of the camera, where it then revealed them. This also builds up mystery. It leaves the audience wondering what they were up to. It also is a great way to introduce the character, as it was very smooth. One suggestion I gave them would be to reshoot some scenes, as the audio does not match with the video. As well as in some scenes, the reflection of the cameraperson can be scene. Such as in a scene of the girl getting in the car, the car shows the reflection. Also, I would suggest they make some scenes shorter, as they took too long. Especially since the time was 22 seconds longer. As well as making the scenes more smooth. For the majority of the film it feels very choppy. This can easily be fixed with transitions and less ambient noise and music.