"How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?"
I answered this question through a blog post, whereby I further made a film poster for my opening title sequence.
When deciding our target audience we had to take into account the violence included in our opening title sequence. I researched the BBFC, whereby I was able to find out what was legally allowed in films depending on their ratings. Here's a link to my blog post on it.
BBFC research post
I additionally looked into our specific target audience by comparing our product to others, here's a link to the blog post.
Therefore, when taking into account my research, our film would have to be at least a 15, due to the violent theme throughout. I believe that our main target audience would be men aged 20-25, due to elements of Laura Mulveys theory "The Male Gaze" whereby our protagonist is a good looking female character, as well as this other films, such as The Hunt and The Hunger Games mainly target this audience. Despite this, there is a further secondary female target audience, as our protagonist is a strong female character who subverts common stereotypes in other movies, which highlights female empowerment.
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One way that we engaged our audience was through the use of enigma codes throughout our sequence. Roland Barthes enigma codes theory is when film directors leave unanswered questions for the audience as they create cliffhangers. This is typical for thriller films so we decided to follow these conventions. A key way in which we did this is by having the girl running and screaming as the first shot in the sequence, this could leave the audience asking questions such as "why is she running?" "Who is she?" "who is she running from?" etc. Another enigma code we used is when the girl kills one of the hunters, although we don't know whether she will kill the second or if he will get to her first. We did this to leave our sequence on a cliffhanger, whereby the audience is engaged and wants to keep them watching the rest of the movie.
We followed some of the typical character representations of an action-thriller genre, although by making our protagonist a strong female character, this subverts common stereotypes further engaging our audience. From our opening title sequence alone it appears to the audience that the main character is going to be either the hunter or the girl, the hunter is clearly the villain and holds more power and status, we made this clear in a number of ways, through the use of costume as well as camera angles, whereby we used a high angle shot of him to show the status within the scene. Despite this, the girl is portrayed as the victim and the more likeable character because of this, we also give her more of a personality which highlights her importance in the rest of the movie, by making the girl not so black and white the audience are engaged as they want to know what she's going to do next, highlighting Blumber and Katz theory of "uses and gratification" whereby the secondary, female audience (and the predominant, male audience) are able to recognise role models within products that they share similar characteristics with, highlighting her strong-minded, intelligent characteristics. We further gave her more screen time which highlights the importance she holds over the hunter, which subverts the status shown at the beginning, highlighting her importance within the film. By adhering to and subverting from common stereotypes the audience is engaged as the film follows basic conventions of the genre whilst not being so predictable.
We further used the location to engage our audience, whereby we shot our entire sequence in the woods. This location creates instant tension, as forests can often signify isolation and are often locations in horror films. Many other similar products such as The Hunt and The Hunger Games are set in the woods, helping to reiterate our genre. The location creates tension from the offset, which automatically engages audiences and keeps them interested in the rest of the film.
Additionally, the use of sound and editing helps to engage the audience, whereby we had little to no dialogue and used a fast-paced soundtrack which created tension throughout the entire scene. This soundtrack further helped establish our genre as well as creating tension within the sequence as it suggested that something bad was going to happen within the sequence, due to its intensity. Moreover, we used linear editing, whereby everything happened in chronological order, this helped to encapsulate the audience as it fully emersed them within the sequence as they were experiencing the events at the same time as the characters. This highlights Blumbler and Katz theory of “uses and gratification” whereby the audience are able to escape into the movie through the use of tension as they are so invested in the narrative.
Finally, to engage our target audience we used the conventional camera angles that are typical of action and thriller films. action films typically use a variation of camera angles, including: high angles, low angles, close-ups, tracking shots, and panning shots. By including a wide range of these in our sequence, we were able to engage audiences. For example, we used low angles to make the hunter look more powerful and superior to the girl. By doing this we were able to show the audience who the villain is as well as who holds the power in the scene. We further used close-ups to show the characters' feelings through the use of facial expressions and body language, this helps the audience to further understand them.
I think that we were successful at engaging our target as we created a suspenseful atmosphere which almost traps the audience in the scene with the characters, keeping them engaged and wanting to know more. Despite this, if we were to make our sequence again I would have probably included more action as well as more violence to intensify the suspense, making our audience even more gripped.
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How the poster engages the audience.
The additional use of the colour scheme makes the poster more engaging for the audience. Prior to making the poster I googled colours that go well with one another, I knew I wanted to use green in order to reiterate the woodland location, by using yellow writing on the dark green background, the title fully engages the audience's attention as they go very well with one another.
How the choices on the poster help to sell/distribute our film
I believe if our film were to actually be released Blumhouse Productions would most likely distribute it. Blumhouse Productions is an American production company founded in the year 2000 by Jason Blum. it mainly specifies in horror movies, although they also make thrillers, some examples of their films are: The Hunt, The Purge, Get Out, insidious and Paranormal Activity. The film most similar to ours is “The Hunt”, although The Purge also resembles elements of our sequence throughout the movie franchise. Despite Blumhouse mainly specifying in the horror genre, they create jaw-dropping twists in within the narrative which relays elements from our action thriller.
I also think Blumhouse would be successful at marketing our movie, as they have effectively distributed and provided marketing campaigns for similar films with similar target audiences. Additionally, Blumhouse is known for producing low-budget movies that do exceptionally well and go on to become highly profitable franchises. I believe that our movie with the right marketing could go on to become highly profitable and possibly even a franchise, and Blumhouse could massively benefit us.
Moreover, I believe that if our film were to have a cinema release it would be relatively short as a production company like Blumhouse makes most of their money through physical sales, therefore we’d have a limited cinema run with This is the Day, before we release it on streaming services such as Amazon Prime or Netflix, where many of Blumhouse other films are streamed.
Although, if we did show our film in the cinema, the cinematic experience would be exceptional due to the use of camera, sound, and mise-en-scene, as we included several enticing camera angles as well as high-quality sound. Additionally, the lighting within the movie would look incredible on the big scenes at the cinema, which is a large part of the cinema experience.
Furthermore, the use of enigma codes and cliffhangers is so special about Blumhouse, whereby the audience is always so engaged due to high tensions and suspense. Due to our target audience being 15 years and above, but specifically men aged 21 to 25, our marketing campaign would rely heavily on social media. This is typical of Blumhouse whereby they post daily/weekly updates on their Instagram @blumhouse regarding all of their films, this page has over 374,000 followers on. Therefore, when they post new content to their page their followers are like-minded and clearly take a liking to other films Blumhouse has released.
I would also use other social media such as Twitter, whereby Blumhouse had a trending hashtag, #ThePurge where fans discussed what they would do in order to combat The Purge, this reaches more target audiences as hashtags and content is easily spreadable on Twitter. This highlights Henry Jenkins's "spreadability" theory where he states "If it doesn't spread its dead" when referencing the distribution of media, highlighting new media needs to be digital and easy to "spread" in order to be successful.Moreover, Blumhouse also produced "Paranormal Activity", the marketing campaign on this was labelled "so ingenious it's scary", Blumhouse worked alongside Paramount, whereby there was a live website where the general public was able to "vote for the film to come to their city", whereby whichever city had the most votes is where the movie would be released.
Additionally, Blumhouse is releasing a new film on July 29th, 2022, they have started their marketing now in order to generate awareness, by doing so, the audience is keen to watch it as the use of marketing has meant that lots of media companies, such as The New York Times and Vulture are talking about it. They've further created a trailer that has received over 70,000 views despite the release date still being over a month away.
To conclude, trailers are always necessary when releasing a new movie, The Purge movie has received over 40 million views on YouTube. Uploading a trailer is cheap yet very effective when releasing a movie, and the ability to target a specific audience is further important.
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