Genres I'd Like to Research

 Since my pitch is "Sometimes the unknown, is unknown for a reason," it gives a very wide range of the genres it could relate to. I know in my previous blog I explained a potential storyline, but I'm still not sure that that is what I really want to do. Some of the genres that can go with this pitch are thriller, drama, and crime. Since you all already know my original plan, you all should that my original genre was drama. I'm really exicited this project because we explore other genres as well as the one I originally wanted to do. This actually opens my options because it lets me see a different perspective of the project. It lets me research and get more inspration for different storylines I can try. I was actually struggling to figure out which genre to pick because I wanted to research. I wanted to add comedy and action to see how far I can go with this pitch. Maybe I'll still research it for myself just so I can learn more about the genres. The reason I want to research thriller is because I feel that that genre is the easiest to portray in a movie. The reason I say that is because thriller genres are easy to come up with storylines for. I did use the thriller genre before so I think it will be a great way refresh my brain a little on what I've might've forgotten. I want to research the drama genre as well since that was my original plan for the movie. I hope that researching this genre maybe gives me more options for storyline ideas. Researching this genre will help me portay this genre better because I will know the ins and outs of the whole genre. I also wanted to research the crime genre because I never actuallythought my pitch could go in that direction. I think it will be very fun to see how I can potray my pitch during this genre.

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Pitch Blog

For this blog I will be explaining my final pitch for my movie. I honestly had the hardest time picking my final pitch. I feel like I had a hard time coming up with a storyline becasue I didn't have any inspiration. Like last year, it was easy to come up with storylines because I had students around to bounce ideas off of. Since I am home, I had to now bounce my ideas off my family, and they were no help at all. So I'm not sure I'm supposed to tell you all this, but I had to google some story ideas. I eventually saw something that gave me the storyline I chose, and ideas started pouring out of my brain. I came up with a path I wanted to go in for this storyline so that it can have a beginnning, middle, and end. Now for the moment you've all been waiting for, my pitch. My pitch is that,"Sometimes the unknown is unknown for a reason." So I was thinking it could be about a young girl, but not too young, maybe like 17-18 years old. She grew with a man in her life, that she knows as her father. But she found a photobook that look like it was supposed to be hidden and she opened it. It started off with her seeing a bunch of old pictures of herself and old pictures of her mother. She eventually gets to a page where she sees herself sittimg on a man's lap. On the back of the photo was a name and she never heard of. So she folded up the picture and put it in her pocket. So she tells her friend at school the next day because she didn't want her mom to know she was snooping. She continues to researc the name she saw in the back of the picture because she saw that she looks alot like him. She found out that the man she was researching is in jail and she decides to try and go visit him. On her visit the man tells her that he doesn't want to know her because of how her mom treated hime years ago. He continues to be very mean and abrupt to her and she starts crying and storms out of the building. Se eventually makes it back home crying and her mother is concerned. So she tells her mother everything that happen and she says how thankful she was to her mother for keeping her safe for all these years. Obviously I will go more in detail once I get deeper in the creation of this movie and hopefully it would be in the 5 minutes window for the requirement.

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Group Blog

Knowing how important this project is, you might be wondering why I'm not working with anybody. Its because I want full creative control. Me saying that ptobably makes me sound like a control freak, and your right I am. That's only because I like everything to be done a certain way. I'm very particular about the vision I have with the filming process and its really hard to to demonstrate that vision to people thats not in my brain. Last year, for my very first project in the class I work with other students. I wouldn't say it was the hardest thing to do, but I wasn't the easiest. We barely knew each other, so i guess it was kind of hard to disagree with someone you don't know. Like if I was workin with my friends or someone I usually hang out with, I wouldn't feel bad for disagreeing with them. Also with the editng and filming process, it was hard because they thought they were better editors than me. I had this idea that I shared with my group and they were so agaainst it, not even knowing what the idea was. Eventually they let me show them what I was talking about and they loved my idea. Which further explains my point, with working by myself  I could keep all my good ideas to myself. Even all the paper work we had to complete that came along with the movie, it was hard to divide with all of us because some people may end up doing more because the rest of the group didn't complete their selected parts. On top of all of that, in order to do the filming for the second project, it had to be off campus, and the group members kept asking me to go to her house, which was nice, but I didn't really know her that well and her continuing to ask me made me more and more uncomfortable. As you can see I went through alot the first few moths of the class, but my group members also taught me that I actually enjoy working by myself, while some people may think its lonely, its peaceful.

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Intro/Welcome Back Blog

Im backkkk!!! If you all didn't remember, my name is Kyndell Baskin and I am now an 11th grader in A level Media Studies. As we all know we have been in school since before spring break, and I've realized that I like online school way better than being in school. But I liked it better last year because it wasn't a set time to wake up and it wasn't a zoom call for every class. Im so exicited to get started on all the new projects that's coming up. All the projects that we did last year was really fun, I can only imagine all that we will get into this year. Im still really shocked that I'm still in this class because at the ending of last year I wasn't planning on taking this class at all. The reason I wasn't going to take this class was because I thought it was going to be too much on my work load as a junior. My original plan was to take my A level class in my senior year, but I realized the only way I can take an A level class was if I take it consecutively with AS level, so here I am. I haven't did one of these in a long time, Im not sure what else to say. I guess I can talk about how this class requires alot of creativity and I've realized that I'm not as creative as I thought and it makes do lots of thinking. Since I did it last year I know that I can do it and I know that I'm at least okay. I've heard the overview of the whole and the only thing I'm worried about is the 1,000 word essay at the end of the class only because I'm not the best writer. 

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.