Media Studies Blog

My film engages with audiences through the advertisement process. The film will be advertised all over social media in hopes to reach our target audience perfectly, which is teenagers, therefore where else do teenagers go more than social media. Social media like Instagram sponsored posts, Snapchat ads and YouTube trailer ads. These will all be very vital in the process. It will engage through the audience by having contests where you can win tickets to the opening premier of the film, these contests will also be mentioned over social media and radios. However will will be distributing this in a less traditional way due to it being a teen drama that would not make as much money as big budget films.  We will being doing a same day VOD release as well as releasing in theaters. We will only keep the movie in theaters for 2 weekends unless movie sales bring in a lot of income. From there 90 days later we plan to give rights to Netflix and other movie subscription services to allow play...

My film uses conventions very much throughout our film. We use typical ones to benefit our film.This is because the way we are filming this teen drama is very similar to many other teen dramas. There seems to be certain stereotypical way that teen movies go, and our film follows many of those stereotypes. For example the typical high school setting. Also it is bright and upbeat to show the youthfulness of the movie. Yet we did try to challenge some of the conventions by making our film also a mystery, we wanted the audience to wonder and question what has happened in Samantha's life to make her family move and be so concerned. We wanted to challenge the norms and make her have a uncommon past, that viewers are anticipating to understand. Our film still fits into stereotypes with the typical new girl movie with the boy next door. Many movies have this plot where the new girl instantly is loved by the "popular guy". Our film is similar to Mean Girls in this way, due to both...

My production skills have developed a lot compared to the beginning of the filming and prepping process. MY group and I have learned many new things due to our research and revisions. Throughout the process we worked with our angles in filming learning which works best for the film. We also devolved our skills after the midterm draft when people analysed our film and gave us there honest opinions, this really helped us understand what we need to develop and do in order to change our film for the best. We overall have a better understanding of the movie industry and we learnt this through all of our research, including the target audience research and distribution research. Throughout the process my editing skills have progressed, I have done research on how to implement movie features into the editing and I also learnt how to use a somewhat new editing software called Adobe After Effects. Another thing I have developed in was at the beginning of the filming process i used Sony Vegas Pr...

The way I integrated technology into my film was through many technologies- software, hardware, and online. For filming the hardware I used a canon rebel t5 camera for many of the scenes. However for some the scenery shots that are used in the beginning it was taken on an iPhone 8. We did not have a microphone to help but we made use of the camera the best we could. A very important program that was used for this film was Sony Vegas Pro 13. This was the software that I used to edit, cut and put everything together for my film. It also helped put titles and transitions in the editing process. However from there I began to use Final Cut Pro which is what I finalized my film with.  I used free fonts and music from online to integrate into my finalized project. Another editing software I used was Adobe After Effects, this was to add cinematic effects.  Also I did a lot of my research online to learn how to use all these programs. For example through tutorial videos on YouTube I ta...

The second film I researched the digital distribution of was If I Stay. It is a teen drama about a inspiring cellist in high school whose whole life changes one day due to a car wreak. It has a similar target audience as mine as well as similar genre. The way this film was distributed was the traditional way. It was released into theaters in August 2014 earring a box office of 78.9 million, while there budget for the film was 11 million. It made 6 million on opening day. The film stayed in theaters for 3/4 weeks before being taken to the next step of distribution. From there it was released to DVD, VOD and Bluray on November 18 2014. Later on 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment gave the rights to Netflix and made the movie available on there and as well as Amazon video, and Vudu. However since then it has been removed from Netflix and was available on Netflix to stream until September 30, 2015. They did a good job at the marketing of this film, once again this film was based of the pre...

The first film I did digital distribution research on was The Fault of Our Stars. I chose this because it has a very similar if not same target audience as my film hence it being a teen drama. It was released in 2014 so it is relatively new.  The film had  a extremely good social media campaign and was called a "social media supernova". Said by George Dewy who is Fox's senior vice president of digital marketing,  “I think the combination of the passion that pre-existed the movie with the decision to involve fans every single step of the way is why you see so much conversation about The Fault in Our Stars now.”. This shows how targeting the fans on social media worked for them. This was because production company Fox successfully marketed it to fans of the prior published book. It was released in June 2014, some say the release date also had to do with the movies huge success. The Fault In Our Stars benefited from its source material and the fan base that came with i...

There is a traditional distribution model for distributing film. Although this model has been changing recently due to popularity of streaming services such as Netflix, online and video on demand. The traditional way is to release the film into theaters first after a few months of advertising and however long taken to produce the film. These is the pre-theatrical stages.  From there on average the films are in theaters for 4 weeks and in at least 2,000 theaters, usually with a two week minimum unless profit made is a flop. The main profit is made in the first two/three weekends, this is when the excitement for the film is most prominent still. The production company and movie theater make much of the money from this, yet the movie theater bases its profit also off high priced drinks and food from the theater. Also a day & date theatrical/VOD release is when a film is released in theaters and is also available to rent or buy on  VOD (video on demand) provider at the same ti...