Evaluation question 2.0
- 1. Evaluation Question 2 How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
- 2. Target audience We are aiming our film at both male and females aged 15 and above. We have done this as most crime films are rated at a 15 and that is what we have decided to do. We did not want to specify ourselves to one gender and also did not want to offend viewers by adding an age limit. We are releasing our film on February 14th 2015 (Valentines Day). We had done this because we felt it added a twist to usual films released around this day. It is well-known for couples, as well as singles to visit the cinema on this day every year. Some people may not want to watch a typical romantic film, but do want to visit the cinema. As 50 Shades of Grey would be released the day before our film, we felt that not all audiences would want to watch this genre of film, so we wanted to offer something different, to almost juxtapose the idea of love on Valentines day, as our film is a about a twisted marriage, similar to the narrative of Mr and Mrs Smith.
- 3. Marketing a film…and how important it is… Throughout the planning, production, post- production to marketing and releasing a film, the film industry will need to keep careful consideration for the target audience. They need this to gain as many people as possible to watch their film as word of mouth is the best advertising technique. It also makes sure that the film producers To be able to do this, the industry need to have developed an in- depth understanding about their audience. They will need to look into the age groups, lifestyle, social networking and how their media consumption activities take place.
- 4. Our target audience of ages 15 and upwards, have grown up within the era of the internet. Therefore it is inevitable that we would need to make sure the internet plays a big part in the advertising of our film. The internet can be accessed from several platforms in the present day; mobile phones; tablets; TV’s; computer etc. Web 2.0 is the internet; this comes at an advantage for film industries and distributors as a positive buzz can be created between audiences, adding another aspect of advertisement.
- 5. Promoting our film… We chose to use Miramax as our distribution company. We did this as although we did not want to have a high-end mainstream film, using a well-known distribution company will allow us to promote our film in a much more large-scale manner. This would then include focusing on promoting our film to a wider audience. As we are not using high-end technology to produce our film, we would be able to focus on spending the money on promotion specifically.
- 6. Other films promoting techniques… Most films have their film trailers shown on television and in cinemas. They also pay for posters to be displayed on bus shelters as well billboards and on buses themselves. We realised that as we are focusing on audiences from the age of 15 and up, we should depend on using web 2.0 to spread the word and allow people to share and collaborate information within each other, about our film. Many social networking sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook allow films to display interactive posts of their film on their websites. By simply showing a small banner of our film on one of these websites and using interactive techniques, we could interact with our audiences without direct interaction itself. Also, using web 2.0 allows us to use the ‘related films’ and ‘other films you might like’ approach whilst audiences are perhaps looking at other films similar to ours. Advertisements such as these, come at a small cost on social network sites and would allow us to make bigger profits for the rest of our film to sell.
- 7. Film previews… Our film is mainstream and will therefore be screened at cinemas nationwide. As well as film festivals such as Cannes, most films nowadays screen previews of their films. This is usually a way to entice wider audiences for films that have well-known and loved actors and actresses. Films such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games will have these previews in London as a way of getting people in to try and ‘catch a glimpse’ of their favourite characters. Most cinemas also advertise one off screenings for films to see what feedback and response they receive. Both Cineworld and Odeon cinemas are known to screen previews of films. This is a way that we considered as it would see how and what type of audience reacts with our film. We can do this as cinemas offer different ticket types. Cineworld for example offer tickets such as; Adult, Child, Senior, Student and Family. This way, we can communicate with cinemas and see what age of audiences are buying tickets to watch our film.
- 8. Feedback As previously mentioned that Web 2.0 allows audiences to communicate between one another; it also means that as the producers, we can see what feedback that was received from our audiences. As well as this, the user can use comments from others to inform their decisions. We also want to use Web 2.0 so that reviews and awards can be displayed which enables a buzz to be created about the film and gives more ‘authority’ when influencing cinema goers.
- 9. Posters are a great advertisement technique. It can offer information about a film without giving too much away, unlike a trailer, it it simplistic and a lot cheaper. They can be seen on bus shelters, billboard, buses and many more places.
- 10. For our film posters we wanted to have more than one. This could offer a better way of promoting our film as it would show different aspects, with regards to characters in our film. We wanted to follow a similar theme to the Star Wars posters shown above. We liked the way that you can get an idea of the characters but not too much is given away. It’s a simplistic idea which would hopefully entice our audience into wanting to find out more.
- 11. This is the second of our two posters. It follows the same idea as the other, similar to Star Wars. We liked the fact that we used both our main characters for the picture. We also liked that it shows both a male and a female perspective and would therefore be attracted by both a male and female audience. Both the posters have a characters outline with an image of Brighton. We liked this idea as it introduced both character, setting and a hint of narrative for the audience to want to see more. The smear/drip effect is an idea we found from a Skyfall poster. It shows no end and works well with the lighting, especially from the pier on this poster.