Audiences and institutions essay

Question # 1

Marketing is extremely important in the filming industry. This is because marketing is arguably the only way to inform the public of an upcoming film. As a movie goer myself I can say that the only way I have ever found out about an upcoming film was through marketing for the film through advertisements such as previews in a movie theater or through commercials on the television. Even if a movie generates an audience without marketing, they will still have had a larger audience if they had used marketing.

One of the most popular ways that filming companies market their products is through social media. According to a case study on the movie Avengers Endgame, Disney, one of the most well-known production companies used marketing via Twitter to inform its customers on when new movies are going to be released or are in the works. Considering the fact that Avengers Endgame is the top grossing movie of all time it would be safe to assume that marketing techniques such as social media marketing are a valuable tool in the filming industry. When also looking at the fact that Disney and Universal, two of the largest filming conglomerates, use social media on a daily basis it is obvious that these techniques are important to them. 

Next, we can look at Toy Story 3. According to an article on Disney’s marketing strategies, several YouTube videos that were made to advertise the movie Toy Story 3 generated “millions” of views. It is very likely that a large amount of the people who saw these videos also decided to go out and watch the film or at the very least tell other people about it. Here it is clear to see how marketing played an important part in generated a larger audience and more awareness for a film. 

Moving away from technology marketing strategies, synergy between the different subsidiary companies in a conglomerate can generate more revenue for a movie. According to a case study about the DreamWorks movie Kung Fu Panda, one way that Universal marketed the movie was through the “Kung Fu Panda Ride” at Universal Studio Hollywood. I personally remember going on this ride when I was little on a vacation to California and wanting to see the movie afterwards. This is a good example of successful marketing to kids through the use of synergy. While this fact alone doesn’t prove that the film brought the movie a larger, it does show how more than one major filming company uses marketing for their films.

Despite this evidence, some people might use the argument that there are other important elements to the film industry that make marketing insignificant. According to an article titled “Universal is Disney’s Chief Rival Because it Isn’t trying to Be Disney” conglomerates like Universal have found success in balancing “modern market demands.” This means that focusing on an underdeveloped film genre can help studios optimize their revenue. For their argument they might use a case study on the box office hit movie, Hobbs and Shaw. Here Universal strays away from the superhero and animated movie genre and goes for a gangster/action movie.  While this movie is a good example of one way to generate a larger audience for a film, it does not prove that marketing is unimportant to the filming industry and is strategy would instead most likely be implemented along with different marketing strategies. 

After analyzing the benefits of marketing and looking at examples of how marketing has been used in film I believe that without a doubt marketing is essential to the film industry. Through social media, viral marketing, and synergy filming companies have used marketing to generate millions of dollars in revenue. Although the filming industry oligopoly is changing and will continue to change, I think that it’s safe to say that marketing will remain an essential part of the business. 

Game of Thrones Extract Practice

The director’s vision in this Game of Thrones extract was to show the viewers how the protagonist in this scene overcame an obstacle that was preventing him from being successful. In it he faces a challenge and even when it seems that he might fail he still persists. This vision is portrayed to the viewer with the different shots, angles, and mis en scene elements. 

In the opening scene an aerial shot is used to show a ship that the two protagonists are traveling in to reach their destination which is the city of Bravos. The aerial shot of the sip gives the viewer a feeling of impending danger as the ship slowly makes its way into the city. Also in the opening scene, an establishing shot is used to show the city of Bravos when the ship has finally reached it. The establishing shot gives the viewer the feeling that an important point in the story is about to be reached.

In the second scene a long shot is used to show the protagonists waiting in the bank at Bravos. This shot gives the viewer a feeling of apprehension as they watch the episode and wait for the bankers to arrive. Another shot used in this scene was the two shot that showed the protagonists standing waiting for the arrival of the bankers. This shot gives the viewer an understanding for the characters’ impatience as they wait. 

In the third scene an eye line match is used to show the bankers arriving from the main protagonist, Stannis’s, point of view. This ends the short but suspenseful wait for both the viewers and the characters for the bankers to arrive. After the eye line match, a shot reverse shot is used to show the conversation that is going on between the banker and Stannis along with the conversation between the banker and Davos Seaworth. The shot reverse shot finally shows the director's vision completed with Davos Seaworth overcoming the challenge by convincing the bankers to loan them money even after it seemed as though they wouldn’t.

In these three scenes the author uses an aerial shot and an establishing shot to give the sense of an upcoming challenge. They then use long shot and a two shot to give the viewer a feeling of anticipation for this challenge, and finally they use and eye line match and a shot reverse shot to show the challenge and how the characters overcome it. The author effectively uses these filming techniques to show his vision to the viewers.

CCR

For the CCR of my movie the most difficult part was finding time to film. Since I am out of school teachers have assigned me several assignments weekly. I had to find a way to balance filming with other work. I also had to work at a time that wouldn't disrupt my parent's work and my brother's online classes. These factors made it take around a week to finish the video, but if I didn't have these factors it might have taken an hour. When I did record the video I would read out the question then I would spend about two minutes answering it and I would include some footage from my movie. Then I would explain how the footage helped to answer my question. Using this system I was able to record over ten minutes of footage. After I made sure that I recorded enough film I started the editing process. For this I used the Filmora editing platform. In my opinion this is the best free editing software. The first technique that I used was the fade in and fade out technique. This gave a smooth transition between the questions. This is also a technique I used in my movie and I found it to be very effective. Also used a burn in and burn out techniques to transition between clips from the movie and the actual video. I used this because it felt like a more natural transition for the video. I also inserted the music that I used in the movie to explain how I followed conventions for my genre. I believe that with all the editing and recording that I used really payed off. This has been an amazing year and AICE Media is a great class that I would recommend to everyone. I am excited to turn this in and look forward to next year.

Movie Opener

Above is my movie. The last video that I filmed was this two minute opener to an action movie. Unlike my first video there were only two people in my group this time, me and Emiliano. We filmed at my house and the whole filming process only took an hour the first time. We did a lot of re shoots before we finally submitted it. Usually the re shoots focused on one scene and took about half an hour. Then we would edit it my laptop. Most of the editing sessions happened on my laptop because the school computers weren't working properly. This meant that we couldn't use the school's free editing software, pinnacle studios, and we had to find a different watermark free software. The one that I found was filmora, I personally think it's the best free editing software and that it was better than pinnacle studios. When the time came to edit it took way longer than the other two videos did. This is because we had over two minutes of footage and we had to place the clips in the proper order and then trim the video down to two minutes. I would say that the whole process took about four hours not including the re shot footage. We also had to do other schoolwork so it was hard to find time to work on the film. But in the end I think that we made an amazing film and I am really proud of what we accomplished.

Commercial

Above is my commercial. The first time I ever filmed a movie. For this project I worked with my friends Kathy, Amy and Emiliano. Our commercial is an advertisement for Gatorade. We chose three different Gatorade products to advertise when using our video. We used the drink, the chewables and the protein bar. We had each of the three actors consume one of the products while they performed an athletic activity. The first one was Kathy who was preparing for a track meet. Afterwards was me who was doing conditioning while eating a chewaable. The last one was Amy who was doing gymnastics after she ate an energy bar. Emiliano was the camera man for the commercial. Luckily we only had to shoot the movie once. We did run into problems during the editing process however. The entire class experienced computer problems for most of the week, but when we came back after the weekend they were working normally. Since this was my first video my acting wasn't as good as it was in my music video and movie but I think that I still had a decent performance. We also had to work around the fact that other filming groups were on the field to and at times, they got in the way of our filming. I think that the editing was the most complicated part, but once we figured out how to use the software it was easy. While I enjoyed filming the other two videos I think that this one was the most fun to film because we had a larger group and we got to film outside. I'm both excited and anxious to submit my work. Despite this I am confident that I have a good video. I look forward to receiving my grade in August.

Final editing

Today I did the final editing for my film. With all that has been going on for the past few weeks I wasn't able to film as much as I wanted to but I think that I did well with what I was able to use. As I have said in previous blogs I had to use my phone's camera to re shoot but luckily the quality of the video didn't drastically decrease. After each re shoot I would also re edit my video and I wouldn't sue all of the footage that I re shot because I would notice that some of the older videos were better. I repeated this process for this editing session as well. After this I used my storyboard to place each clip that I filmed in its proper order. Then I checked my storyboard again to make sure everything was in order. Then I watched the entire movie so that I could look for areas where the film can be trimmed so that the video isn't too long. I mainly trimmed out footage where the person holding the camera's finger might have gotten in the way or where the video quality was really bad. After I trimmed the video I had exactly two minutes of film. After this I moved on to adding transitions. The ones that I used the most were fade in and fade out. These were for the scenes were it switched from one room to another. The other transition I used was burn out, I used this near the end to give the impression that the entire opening was merely a memory or a dream. Once I was satisfied with my transitions I listened to the song I had chosen in my previous editing sessions to make sure that it was appropriate for the film. After listening to it I added it to the video and trimmed it so that it only lasted two minutes. Then I added titles to my film. I decided to use a yellow font and have the text in the center, then I checked my class notes and made sure that my titles were in the proper order. Finally I rendered my video and saved it to my computer and SD card. I'm very excited to submit it.

Reshoot

Since I have plenty of free time since I'm out of school I decided to do another reshoot. First I looked over my video and tried to find any footage with a flaw in it. I found a few with a couple different problems. Some of them were shaky. A few of them had bad acting. Then there were some where whoever was filming had accidentally put his finger in front of the camera. Since circumstances have changed since we last filmed I had to alter the way that I filmed the footage. I had to use my phone instead of an actual camera because I couldn't check one out from my school. The next thing I had to compensate for was Emi not being able to help me film because we are in lockdown at the moment, this required me to use books and other things to prop up my phone so that I could film. This also made the camera steady which fixed the scenes where the camera was shaking. In order to fix the scenes with bad acting I tried to make my movements more natural and tried to make my tone sound more realistic. I didn't change the filming angles and for most of the reshoot I strictly followed the storyboard. Except for the scene in my room when I didn't spend as much time on the prop. I did this because I already has two minutes and thirty seconds worth of footage and wanted to make it shorter. When I used the camera from my phone I expected a drop in quality but it actually stayed the same when I looked at the video. I'm sure if I had an I phone the quality would have been better. After I finished filming I emailed what I reshot to Emi. I made sure to tell him I was refilming so we were both on the same page. I hope that I will have a chance to go to school and submit this. Yet the prospect of going back to school doesn't seem likely so I will just have to continue learning from home.