How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Main Task
What is the purpose of creating the short film?
One of the main purposes of creating a short film for any production company is to make high quality, original films. If the film makes reaches this aim then more audience members are likely to see the film and will therefore allow the production company to continue in making more films. This shows just how important it is to make a high quality film that the audience will enjoy. With Life of Hermit, we wanted to create a unique, original story with a deep meaning behind it. Another purpose of producing Life of Hermit is that we wanted to shock the audience by creating a interesting twist that the audience will not see coming. This is a common convention in short films and it is important that the twist is effective so that the audience can be satisfied. One more purpose in creating Life of Hermit is that we, Laconic Productions, wanted to subvert the representation of gender by including a female dominant cast and a slightly feminine male protagonist. This is done so the audience will be able to see the representation of gender in a new light.
What is the moral of the story?
The moral of the story that we wanted to create is that it’s okay to be alone and that no matter who you are, you will always have to deal with problems like everybody else. However, we also wanted to create a film that is open to interpretation because we wanted the audience to have a personal connection with the film’s story and characters. This is based on Hall’s audience decoding theory, which states that films with a meaning that is own to interpretation is known as the negotiated decoding.
Poster
Purpose:
Our poster is very simple, yet very effective. It teases the audience without spoiling the plot, it interests them in the film and also the use of masks and colours allows us to create a marketing campaign with the posters.
Audience:
The audience for our film are people who like collectables allowing them to collect all the different posters of the film and people who are interested in psychological drama.
Effect:
Our poster is a simple yet effective. It creates mystery for the audience which increases the interest. The mask and bright colours firstly catch the eye of the audience and they will ask the questions: What is this face? By taking away the elastic bands we took away the indication that this face is a mask, allowing the audience's imagination to wonder. In our film we have a lot of different colours, so deciding on one colour for our poster was important, so we decided that we would choose blue, the connotations of blue are calmness and a colour that is seen to not make a fuss or bring attention to itself, and this is Hermit's main characteristics, also Blue is linked with males and is a colour that will stand out to the audience. The poster informs the audience of the casting of only one actor, but by not showing the actor on the poster it may excite the audience to see a new actor as there are audiences who watch films for the performance of actors. Adding good reviews on our poster, such as the positive quote and the 5/4 stars indicates to the audience that this is a good film, which will increase their interest in the film.
Marketing Campaign:
We decided that we would have more than one poster with our film, as the main two aspects are the masks and colours, this can be changed for our film as we have an equal combination of both in our film. By creating these other posters for our marketing campaign, we are creating more questions for the audience as there are more strange faces with different emotions, and different colours. The 'concerned' masked colours are all stereotypically girl colours and emotion, will make the audience question why there is a girl mask when the main actors name is male. These questionings and mystery will result in the audience wanting these answered and more likely to see the film.
Other film posters we created:
Video Feedback:
We decided to interview three females from in our target audience range about the effectiveness of the poster and their opinions on the poster. We asked them the following three questions:
- Do you like the film poster?
- What do you think the film poster may be about from looking at the poster?
- Does the film poster make you want to see the film?
With these three questions is enables us to understand if they like the poster, if purpose of our film poster has worked, and as an effective has it made them want to watch the film.
Film Review
Purpose:
The purpose of the film review is to promote and inform our short film 'Life of Hermit' to fans of the psychological drama genre. The film review should appeal to fans of this genre and to people who enjoy reading film reviews.
Audience:
The audience for our film review will be rather broad, as we intend to attract any film lover who reads film reviews such as Empire. However, our specific audience for the review is female teenagers.
For example this is our target audience profile:
Name: Gabrielle Raven
Age: 18
Education: Gabrielle is in her last year at sixth form, studying Drama, English and Psychology. She is predicted with high grades and is looking at going to Manchester University.
Lives: Walsall, West Midlands
Lifestyle: She lives at home with her parents, but hopes to live independently when she goes to university. Gabrielle has a part time job at Asda and likes to spend her weekends going out with her friends or going to the cinemas. She also likes read books and watch movies/TV shows on Netflix as well as researching into behavioural studies of the mind as she has a passion of Psychology. Her favourite genre of film is Fantasy/Drama
Film History: She goes to the cinemas with her friends twice a month, or whenever she sees a film that she really wants to go and see. Her favourite film is 'Donnie Darko' and the latest film that she watched is 'The Hobbit'.
Effect:
Our film review is effective as far as film reviews go, as the global look of the review does look like a real film review according to the numerous amount of feedback which we received. To have our film review looking like a real film review suggests that it look professional, we were very happy to hear this as if it didn't look professional then potential viewers wouldn't bother reading the review which would lead to them not watching our short film. To ensure that our film review did look professional we payed close attention to detail to every aspect of the review. For example, for the furniture which we included in our review we taken inspiration from Empire magazines and how they design their reviews.
Video Feedback:
We decided to interview three females from in our target audience range about the effectiveness of the review and their opinions on the review. We asked them the following three questions:
- Do you like the review?
- What information have you gained about the film after reading the review?
- From the image used in the review, what do you think the film may be about?
Combination: Film Review and Poster
By looking at the effectiveness of the combination of the film poster and the short film, we believe this is something that we can clearly answer because we, the production, has produced both the poster and the film. The reason why the film poster is produced is so we can market and advertise the film to our target audience so it is important that the poster works well with the film as it should create a misinterpretation to the audience.
By looking at different elements of the film poster, we will be able to look how those parts of the poster creates an effect towards the short film.
Table:
Evidence:
Evidence:
Evidence:
Target audience:
We also decided to look at how effective is film poster with the short film at an audience’s point of view. To do this, we decided to interview 3 consumers who fit our target audience profile and ask them how the film poster compliments the short film as well as if they would want to see the film, just by looking at the poster.
Here is the target audience interview:
By looking at the interview above, the target audience believes that the poster links well with the short film because they believe the mask is a clear element to the film and that it represents that same tone as the short film. All three consumers has agreed that would want to see the movie just by looking at the poster. This is something that we wanted to achieve in the marketing area of the film production.
Combination: Film & Review
By looking at the effectiveness of the combination of the film review and short film, it is difficult to analyse as we, the production company, have no say in what is included into the the film review, as that is part of another institution. However, with film reviews, they tend to follow the same elements that anyone would expect a film review to include.
Here is a list of some of these elements:
By looking at the effectiveness of the combination of the film review and short film, it is difficult to analyse as we, the production company, have no say in what is included into the the film review, as that is part of another institution. However, with film reviews, they tend to follow the same elements that anyone would expect a film review to include.
Here is a list of some of these elements:
- Cast and Crew highlighted
- Image used
- Rating System
Table:
Evidence:
Evidence:
Evidence:
Target Audience
Just like with the film poster, we also decided to look at how effective is film review with the short film at an audience’s point of view. To do this, we decided to interview 3 consumers who fit our target audience profile and ask them how the film review creates an interest to the short film and if the review provides any spoilers.
Here is the target audience interview:
By looking at the interview, the target audience are more intrigued in seeing the film after reading the review as it highlights interesting points, such as the actor's performance and the plot twist. The target audience also reveals that no spoilers are made in the film review, which means that they are able to read the the review before watch the short film, which is something that every film review should do.
