Audiences and Institutions Practice Essay

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

Media is a very versatile subject because there is so many different domains we all call media, like radio, television, film, music, and newspaper. In this essay I will mainly focus on the domain of film, assessing the importance of marketing. In my opinion, marketing is the most important part of the film making process because that is the only way your audience will know about the movie. Film makers must market to make sure their audience wants to spend their money to watch their movie. 

 In the case study of the “Ugly Dolls” movie, their marketing article talked about the marketing strategies they used in order to get people to want to watch the movie when it comes out. The article stated how they put out trailers and posters before the movie came out to tease people to want to watch the upcoming movie. In the first trailer they mostly showed their famous singing celebrities to show people that the movie is going to be a great musical because they had such great voices in the movie like Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas, and Janelle Monae, etc. This strategy helped them get more potential viewers because the celebrities used in the movie have big followings which would help get the word out to more people. But even good strategies like this one don’t always guarantee a success in film making. In the opposing article in this case study was called, “Ugly Dolls is a flop”, states the movie “Ugly Dolls” was the first animated film released from STX films, which means they had a lot riding on this movie, but they faced some challenges due to the new Pokémon movie coming out that same weekend which took most of their young viewers away from their movie. This evidence helps me come up with a theme that not every marketing strategy works the same for every company, other things may work better than others. 

I wanted to compare some of the case studies because the movies are so different, and I wanted to see the different marketing techniques they used in order to bring viewers to their movie to prove my theme. For the movie “Black Panther” they used different marketing techniques like cross promotion with the artist they used on the soundtrack. As a marketing technique they used very known musicians for their soundtrack like Kendrick Lamar and SZA, which helped keep their soundtrack at number one on Billboard charts for weeks. According to the case study they also played a trailer of the movie at the NBA all-stars game because they knew it was going to be a lot of people watching so they knew it would be a great way to get people to want to watch the movie. They also did a cross promotion with Lexus where they used the cars in the movies and they also did a commercial for Lexus to get even more people to watch the movie. Even though the marketing strategies are very helpful, they really didn’t have to promote that much because people already wanted to watch this movie because it was very important to the black community to see a black superhero based in Africa. That was another reason why this movie did well in theaters and in the box office, which also goes back to my theme that some marketing strategies work better for some movies than others. 

Another case study I chose to do was “The Beauty and the Beast” because its different from the animation film and the Marvel film and as was stated previously I wanted to compare the marketing techniques for different movies. Based on the case study they used synergy with ABC’s “The Bachelor” to promote the movie coming out. Since both networks are known for their work, it was a great way to get lots of people to know about the upcoming movies. The case study also states that they did many successful cross promotions like, Kohl’s, Twitter, and Apple. Kohl’s premiered many different clothing merchandises as a strategy to get more people to know about the movie. Twitter and Apple also added stickers so people can send them to their friends. This movie was also one of the earliest live action Disney movies and everybody wanted to see how they would make the beast look beastly enough. They also created lots of toys and clothes they put on the Disney website for children to play with. They used this marketing strategy to mainly target children to get their parents to buy movie tickets for them which raised tickets sales. 

Now that we’ve discussed three totally different movies with three totally different target audiences, you understand which marketing strategies worked best for them and the marketing strategies that didn’t work as well as they thought it would. All in all, not all strategies work for every movie, find your particular audience and you all the strategies to get them to want to watch your film. 

Extract Practice-24

       The extract was a great example of how film makers use objects to give a scene more depth. The theme I gathered from watching this extract was that men don't like it when women know more than they do and won't tell them what they want to know. This essay will further explain why I came up with that theme and how I support it.
       The two camera angles, movements and shots that stuck out to me that emphasized the theme of the extract was the two shot of her sitting and him standing over her and the zoom shot of them talking. The two shot was most memorable because the way he was standing over her showed how angry he actually was that she wasn't giving him all the information he wanted to hear. The zoom camera shot was also memorable because they would do it repeatedly while they were talking in the beginning of the extract, which made me notice it. The zoom shot helped showed the reactions of the actors because their emotions in that scene were fluctuating, it also helped show the severity of the scene with him being really angry at her.
       Even though the camera angles, movements and shots in creating a theme for an extract, the editing also has a major part as well. I also found two editing skills they used in the extract to help me come up with the theme. The two editing techniques that also helped me come up with this theme was the shot reverse shot they used when the tension was building while they were talking and also the eye line match when came into the room and looked at the clock to show that he probably had a time limit, which shows why he was that upset that she wasn't telling him what he needed to know before the time was up.
       In the extract there were also sound that helped with the theme. The two sound types that helped emphasize the theme of the extract was the sound motif right before the choking scene because it let me know something was going to happen out his anger. The dialogue in the extract because its the most clearest form of communication of the theme in the extract because it tells us exactly what is going on in the scene and it also illustrates emotion the best.
       There were also mis en scene in the extract to help me come up with the theme. Some of the mis en scene that helped was the lighting design throughout the whole extract because it foreshadowed that something physical was going to happen. They also used props to add to theme, like they used the table as a prop he threw to show his anger level at her because she wouldn't tell him what he wanted to her, which supports my theme perfectly.
        This extract has taught a lot about these tools add to the making of a film. It also taught me that men don't like that women would know more than them.

My Music Video

Now the music video. This had to be my favorite project all around. This was my favorite thing to film, edit and blog about. I had an absolute blast doing this project with my family. I don't feel the story line was that clear but I can say that I'm still proud. Now that I'm watching it, it doesn't make any sense. It was really hard because my family quickly realized they didn't want to continue doing it. Mainly because we filmed this on Thanksgiving and it was now food time and everyone was getting cranky. But it was still really funny because the two girls on the left had the most struggle with the dance moves. And I know your probably like, "it was only like two moves", yes it was. It was so hard to just get one good take of this shot. But it was still my favorite because I got to be with my family. For this being my first project that I worked on by myself, I managed surprisingly well. I hit every deadline and did just as good as everyone else who worked in a group. The only struggle I had was choosing the song because I had so many ideas but most of the songs I wanted to do was inappropriate and had to much cursing words in it.

My Commercial

I wanted to take you guys and also myself down memory lane. I've insert the very first project that I've ever done in this class. And now that I'm re-watching it, I see that I didn't know as much as I know now. If I were to do this project now I would make the music a lot lower so that the audience can hear the dialogue more clearly. I feel that the idea was really good, but it wasn't executed in the best way. I honestly thought this was the hardest project for me to do. The due date was the hardest for me because one of the group members weren't there and she wanted us to add more to it but we didn't really understand the program then. Which was one of the reasons I furthered to work alone for the remaining projects. Like I said previously, working in a group taught me lots of things that helped me with the other projects. They taught me how to edit and properly blog. Our group chemistry wasn't the best then because we didn't really know each other that well.

Creative Critical Reflection

Now on to the CCR. The CCR wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be a challenge having to talk for 12 minutes but it wasn't hard at all. The key that helped me was getting a great interviewee. Courtnie helped me a lot throughout this project because she was prepared and knew how she was going to do it. When we was introduced to the CCR style this time we were aware that it was supposed to be a video. Then I got an idea to do it like a "YouTube" video in a mukbang style. I knew that mukbang so we're really popular and my cousin and I always wanted to do a mukbang. You can imagine how excited we were to get started. My interviewee also came with her own questions to add to the mukbang theme. We communicated really smoothly together and it was honestly a great filming process. The hardest part apart this CCR was the editing portion. I had to restart the editing process two times. The editing software was hard to keep things saved. I also had a big problem with the music, and I wasn't able to add it to the video like I planned. It made me really upset that I couldn't finish this with my best but I hope you still enjoy. I also had trouble adding it to this blog because it said it was too large to insert so I had to chop it into sections.

The Final Movie

You would not believe it! The movie is finally done. Yes, I said it, its done! I'm honestly so excited that I finally get to show it to you all. This has been an actual roller coaster. And just like roller coaster their fun but also full of surprises. This journey has been crazy but I'm so grateful that I got the chance to experience it. I learned so much during this time like the importance of having your own sd card and the benefits of working alone. Since we've been quarantined we haven't been able to be physically in school, which means we couldn't continue to use the school computers for the editing software. At school, before we were instructed to stay home, I dumped all my footage on the computer and lost all of my footage when I got home. Then I had to find a new editing software and film most of the movie over. I even had to cut out the gas station scene because the movie was too long. While editing I figure that I really didn't need it. I really hope whoever is watching it enjoys it because I worked really hard on it. I'm sure you all will enjoy it.

"Re-edit" Blog

Now that I've completed all of my re-filming for this movie, the next step is to piece it all together. Usually after we finish filming, its time to go back to school and edit what we have, but since the virus has spread more rapidly over the past days, we are forced to self quarantine ourselves for our safety. Since we are now forced to stay that means I can no longer finish editing my movie. Since I used pinnacle studios it limits what I can do at home to little to none. It would be more helpful if the software I use was on my own lab top at home. Luckily I didn't have to re-shoot the parts of the movie where we were at race trac or the parking garage. I only had to re-shoot the part of the movie where it was at my house. The social distancing luckily didn't effect my filming process as much as it would've. In the link below it's a link to an article that talks about how even major movies like Fast and Furious 9 has been pushed back due to this same issue. I can relate in so many ways, because of social distancing the editing process will get pushed back. Which will eventually push back the due date. In some ways I do feel bad for not being all the way done with the editing process. Even though I know its not my fault at all, I just wish I could've been more prepared for this delay. If we were able to attend school this week, I know I would've been able to complete this in full.
https://variety.com/2020/film/uncategorized/fast-and-furious-9-vin-diesel-coronavirus-1203531860/