Audience and Institutions Essay

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

Spiderman Homecoming, The Lego Movie 2, Beauty and the Beast, Furious 7

The three movies, Spiderman Homecoming, The Lego Movie 2, Beauty and the Beast, and Furious
7 all have one thing in common. They were all marketed successfully. However, this leads us to wonder
how they marketed it.. It questions how much recognition was gained due to marketing. Marketing
allowed much more fame and recognition for these movies.

First, let’s start off with Spiderman Homecoming. Spiderman Homecoming used marketing for
their film. They cross-promoted with Target. Due to this, they got more popular. Many people go to
Target, hence they will see Spiderman products all around target. Along with this, Target gets the same
treatment. Moving along, Spider Man Homecoming’s market team used toys and other products as a
way to get kids to want to watch the movie. This was a great move on behalf of the marketing team.
They also used the new Spiderman game for te ps4 to create hype for the movie. Synergy was also used.
They partnered with Cinnamon Toast Crunch for more promotion. On the boxes of Cinnamon Toast
Crunch, Spiderman was posted. Along with this, to increase demand, a toy was placed inside of the
box, which kids would want. 

Next, The Lego Movie 2 also used marketing for their film. Burger King was cross promoted with
this movie. On the Burger King flyers, Legoland was promoted. Legoland is the production of The
Lego Movie 2. As for merchandise, there were toys produced. These toys would be wanted by kids.
They range from little monster figurines to actual tiny people. There are also actually sets of toys that
you can buy in bulk. This was a great strategy produced by the merchandising team. The reason for this
is because the kids will want to buy the whole set, causing a massive increase in demand. As for
synergy, the Warner Brothers were the distribution company.

Another movie, Beauty and the Beast, also used marketing for their film. They partnered with
Kohl’s and brought out exclusive items. They partnered with Twinning and put their packaging branded
Beauty and the Beast. The Bachelor hosted a whole special edition episode to promote the upcoming
release. And Silverware had a set of Fine China. There were also special iMessage stickers themed
Beauty and the Beast. Along with this, there were also Twitter stickers. As for the merchandise that
the marketing team set out, there were a variety of clothes, ornaments, dolls, and more on the Disney
website. They teamed up with Hot Topic to release t-shirts, mugs, jewelry, and more. Target released
the clothing for it, and Hallmark released the ornaments and mugs. As for synergy, Disney used it
when a couple of the movie’s stars hosted a special edition of ‘The Bachelor’ on ABC to promote
the upcoming release.

Lastly, Furious 7 used marketing for their film. There were special events to promote this movie.
Universal CityWalk had a movie marathon at their AMC theater, which included Furious 7. Along
with this, Universal Studios introduced a new ride called “Fast and Furious - Supercharged.” This
ride is based off of the movie Furious 7, giving a lot of promotion. A video game was released based
on Furious 7 by Forza Horizon 2. There were contests all over the US on radio stations where they
would give tickets away for the premiere or they would give updates on the movie. Merchandise was
sold by different providers. There were shirts, key chains, hats, water bottles, and much more. It also
won 2 teen choice awards, giving away more exposure.

To sum it all up, marketing has a huge impact on these movies. Spider Man Homecoming uses
Target to gain more attention on the movies by having products with Spider Man himself on it. The
Lego Movie 2 uses Burger King flyers to promote its film by having pictures of Lego on it. Beauty and
the Beast uses many products to promote themselves on multiple platforms. Lastly, Furious 7 uses
Universal to self market by creating the ride “Fast and Furious - Supercharged.” All of these movies
also market through merchandise produced based off of the movie.

CCR Final Task

I made my CCR for The Chase in my house. I had to make it in my house because we cannot go out. Due to the corona virus, I could not have Maya in my CCR. She would have been my interviewer. I would have done the same for her. However, due to the circumstances, my mom was the interviewer. We were not going to let the virus stop us from creating our CCR. As to uploading my CCR, it was quite tricky. It was a big upload. That was expected since it was over 10 minutes long. Since I was unable to upload it directly to Blogger, I tried to use Google Slides. However, I realized there was not a button for video uploads. But, there was one for YouTube videos. Hence, I decided to make my video into a YouTube video. I made it unlisted so no one could see it, but it can be viewed by anyone with the link. From here, I uploaded the video onto my Google Slides. Then, I imported the link onto Blogger. My CCR was nothing great. I admit that because I know I could do better. The virus stopped my access for me to do anything extraordinary. I am content with my CCR.

Opening Scene to Film: The Chase

Maya and I finally finished our film. Even throughout all of this chaos with the corona virus. We had it finished before. It still needed touches to it though. Maya had the film on her iMovie. There was no way I could help her with anything. The most I could do was help give her plans on what to do and how. But, it was finally done. We were happy with what we had. We think we could have improved on a lot of things. However, with this epidemic going around, there was not much we could do. We were able to FaceTime and discuss what we could do. But, being in person with her would have been much better. Our film was better than we expected though. We captured many angles than we expected. Along with this, our transitions were very good. We timed everything great. Despite only having two people in our group, everything went pretty smoothly. We managed to get everything done. All in all, Maya and I are very proud of our finished opening sequence.
     

Filming Blog: Completed

Maya and I have finally finished filming. Today, I went over to her house. It was about 7:00 in the night. Then, we changed into the proper clothes needed for the scene. We also had to do our light makeup. From here, we got in Maya's car. She drove us to the gas station. I got out of the car at the entrance. I took a shot of her pulling into the gas station. We then proceeded to take shots of each other. She had to take multiple of me running away as we did not know which direction to go to. After this, we kept shooting each shot. We followed our storyboard. We tried to line up every shot as we assumed we were going to use dissolve as our transition. There were not many people in the gas station. We had Maya's mom near us in case any accidents occurred. Thankfully there were no accidents. We kept taking shots of each other. We had to reshoot a couple of times. We took about 3 shots per scene. We did this so hopefully we won’t have to refilm.

Reedit Blog: Fixing Mistakes

Maya and I filmed again. We had to edit again next. We used iMovie. All of our stuff was already on there. We went to the section where I shouted. We removed the audio. Then, we replaced it with the new one. To do this, we had to place the video next to it. Then, we removed the video. After this, we dragged the audio underneath the new one. Therefore, we had the new audio with the old video. Next, we needed to add in the new footage of Maya. The footage is of her at the same level as I was. We filmed this again so that we could be at the same level when it dissolves. Thankfully we leveled it perfectly the second time around. Due to this, we removed the previous footage. Then, we proceeded to import the new footage. Then we put it where the previous footage was. We had to turn off the sound as that is what we did last time. Maya and I are happy with the outcome of our final product.

Reshoot Blog: Content with our film

When Maya and I filmed for the first time, we thought it looked great. The visuals were great. However, the audio wasn't. When I shouted in one film, it did not sound how we thought it would. Hence, we decided to do a voice-over. I shouted what I needed to as a video. I did not do it too close to the mic, as that was the problem last time. Along with this, we had another issue. When we added the dissolve transition, we wanted the characters to be in the same place. Yet, Maya was a bit taller than me. So the proportions were off. We filmed her again, but she was crouched down a little. Thankfully, the shot cut off at her chest. This was good for us because it did not show her knees. There was not much we had to re film. We were thankful for this because it meant we had to re edit less. Maya and I were glad we filmed using the storyboard. We were also glad we planned the transitions. We were glad because we could see what we messed up on. We hope our re edits come out as good as we plan.

Editing Blog: Free Music

Maya and I needed music for our film. But, we did not want to get music that had copyright. We did not want to do this because we felt like it would take too much time. We did not want to go through the process. Hence, we were on the hunt for free music. We went on an MP3 website that allowed downloads. We did not want an MP4. We didn't want an MP4 because it would show the video. This would create more complications. It wouldn't be that hard; we would just have to delete the video portion and leave in the audio. Yet, this would still take more time, and we were on a time crunch. So, we explored the MP3 website. We looked in the relaxing section. We found some upbeat songs that we liked. We used one for the beginning of our film. Yet, we still needed a shocking type of sound. One that gives you chills just by the beat. So, we continued our exploration. We finally found one after a long time, and inserted it in the background. It was a light beat, just so we could still hear the dialogue. Maya and I were content with the music chosen.

Editing Blog: Switching to iMovie

Maya and I were trying our best to complete the editing process. We did not want it to carry out for too long. It had already been a couple days of editing. Also, we were behind. We were behind because of the previous issue of Pinnacle Studios crashing on us. Thankfully we had iMovie to fall onto. iMovie has proven to be sufficient. However, we would prefer Pinnacle Studios. The laptops were quite slow though. Yet, it would still get the job done. We were just upset how it failed us at the last second. We were practically done. All we needed were our titles and the music. The music was downloaded. The titles were written on a piece of paper infront of us. It was just a matter of inserting it. We had already put down one title, which was the K&M "Studios Presents". Then, we decided to insert music then continue inserting titles. Even though Pinnacle Studios crashed when we were almost done, we were glad that we tried to put the music first so we conserved some time. Maya and I decided we would not let this setback affect us harshly.

Editing Blog: Starting over

Maya and I did a lot. We are almost done editing. There is only a bit we have left. We have added in some clips. Then we trim it. From here, we add in transitions. We had the transitions on the storyboard. We used some of the transitions. For the others, we just added in what felt right. As we progressed, we constantly re-watched our film. We did this to make sure it was flowing. As we hoped, it was going pretty well. We were doing great as for the time. We finally narrowed our time down to one minute and 56 seconds. We were content. Then, sadly, as we were putting in the music the whole video crashed. Hence, we had to delete the whole film. Unfortunately, there was not enough time for us to restart, so we had to do everything over the weekend on iMovie. Thankfully, the little amount of our film came out amazing. All in all, even though we had setbacks, we believe our opening sequence will be great.

Peer - Edits: Success!

Today I worked on my peer edit review. My partner was Maya. I got a group of four people. Their project was filmed pretty good. However, they were missing many aspects. For one, Maya and I could not figure out the story-line. We watched it about 3 times. Yet, we still could not figure it out. So, we interpreted it. There was no voice-overs. In fact, there was no non diegetic sound. Along with this, there was interruptions in the background. Due to this, they have to either take out the audio or re - film. Another huge error they had was that there were no titles. The titles were major points towards the film. If there are no titles, you will not know who the director, producer, and production company and many other elements were. Lastly, they also exceeded the time limit. Their film was 2 minutes and 16 seconds. The time frame was supposed to be from 1 minute and 50 seconds to 2 minutes maximum. Maya and I enjoyed comparing our film to others to see areas we needed to improve in.

Editing Blog: Partially Done

Maya and I have been working our best to edit our film. It's been quite hectic. We first turned on our laptop. It took quite a long time. The laptops are very slow. It took about 10 minutes, which left us with only around 70 minutes of class time to edit. We then put all of the pictures from my jump drive onto the laptop. We did this so we always have them stored. We then opened Pinnacle Studios. We proceeded and imported all of our videos onto there. We only had the first half of all of our films. This took about another 10 minutes. We used the rest of the class to edit. We inserted take by take. We sorted out which clips we liked better than others. We even removed one scene because it did not match up with our others. While we were doing this, we also added transitions. We decided not to worry about titles until the end. We had only gotten one - third of our opening sequence done this class. We were very proud of our progress.

Filming Blog: Maya's House

Today, Maya and I filmed part of the last bit of our film. Thankfully, we were successful in filming most of the rest. It was not as much as we thought it'd be. However, we forgot to check out a camera from our teachers. We were not going to let this set us back. We filmed on Maya's phone. It surprisingly had better quality than the camera. I got to her house around 8:00 pm. We then proceeded to start the filming process. We wanted outside to be dark but not very dark. We did not want it to be very dark due to the fact that we still wanted to be able to see what we were filming. We thought the lighting was perfect. I took a shot of her in the car, putting the car in drive. We then followed our storyboard. We went in order instead of just doing her parts first then mine. We did this because we hope it will make it easier on us to edit. We assumed filming today would take about two more hours. Gladly, it only took 1 hour. Maya and I were very happy with the outcome of our current shots. We can't wait to film the rest of our opening sequence.

Filming Blog: Halfway Done!

Maya and I have gotten a lot done. As for filming, we have been successful. Not completely, but partially. We have filmed about 5 scenes. We have around 3 left. This indicates that Maya and I should be done soon. We need to get together again to film the remaining parts. When we filmed on Sunday, we completed the beginning of the film. We were glad we did this because we were able to start the editing process in class. We hope that if we start editing early, we will finish early. Also, we hope our film turns out how we pictured it. The storyboard was the most helpful part for filming. We kept it with us all the time. If we didn't have it when we were outside, we just used our phone. It was pretty easy. We changed a few minor details. It wasn't anything too big. It just made it easier for us to film and more flowing. Maya and I plan to get back together on Thursday. We can't wait to see the final product for our film!

Filming Blog: Cancelled

Maya and I planned on filming yesterday. Sadly, we were not able to. The reason for this is because our film must take place during the night as it is darker. This is because we wanted it during the night to create a more eerie feeling throughout the film. However, Maya had a track meet. We knew this before, but it that went longer than she expected. Hence, we were not able to meet up and film. She believed that her meet would end around 6 P.M. However, due to weather delays, it ended at 10 P.M. Due to this, we have decided to film as soon as we could. After talking about when we are busy, we concluded that Sunday was the best day for the both of us. We do not have any plans that day and hope to film successfully. We need to space out our time. The reason for this is because we need to make sure we have enough time to edit. If we successfully finish filming on Sunday, we can edit for the rest of the time we have. The editing process shouldn't take too long, but if the laptops give trouble then it may take longer than expected. Thankfully, Maya and I already know the transitions we are going to use. This should hopefully make the editing process a lot easier. We looked up the weather beforehand and it stated that it should not rain. From this, we should not have any weather issues. Hopefully we are able to complete all of our takes on Sunday as we are going to film as long as we can. I believe that we can get it done if we work hard.

Planning Blog: Storyboard

Maya and I worked on our storyboard. We actually started before we completed the sound and shooting script. We did this because we believed it would make the workload easier if we had it all planned out. We were indeed correct. Our storyboard was completed with 11 pages. We made sure to include all of the necessary shots. We also included the transitions we plan to use. The transitions being labeled will be helpful during the editing process. The storyboard is a very essential piece to the process. Maya and I are very happy with the outcome of our storyboard.

 

Planning Blog: Title Design in Detail

Katelyn and I discussed the titles. We both agreed that the color of the titles needed to contrast the background. Also, we wanted the titles to give off a gory feel. Thus, we chose the color red for our titles. Moreover, we decided on the working title for our video. Katelyn and I debated over a few strong possibilities. Then, we decided on the title: "Chase". This is because it sums up the plot of our video without giving anything away. In fact, it also makes the audience curious as the chase is an interesting title. Overall, I am very pleased about how Katelyn and I came up with the titles and our designs.

Planning Blog: Location, Participants, Health, Schedule

Maya and I worked on the Location, Participants, Health, and Schedule Planning Blog. In this blog, we included the locations we are filming at. We also included the participants. This contained the actors, who filmed, who edited, and who directed. We also included a health and safety slide. This slide states that we are not actually putting ourselves in harms way. We will be using items that cannot harm each other or ourselves. Lastly, we included a schedule. This is very important, because it shows the dates we will be filming, editing, and reviewing. Overall, I believe this blog was very helpful for Maya and my journey to making our opening sequence to the film.

Planning Blog: Shooting Script

I completed the shooting script alongside with Maya. We both contributed ideas for what we envisioned for this project. Maya added details to the beginning scenes. Meanwhile, I planned the ending scenes with details. I created the names Jordan and Rose. They're nice and simple, but their characters reveal they truly aren't all they seem. Furthermore, the shooting scripts describe what will happen in each scene. It also discusses the lighting that is desired for each scene which in this case describes the time. Overall, I think the shooting script will be extremely helpful when it comes time to shoot this project.

Planning Blog: Sound Script

Maya and I completed the sound script. We put together our ideas for this. We envisioned a lot of things, but had to narrow it down due to the time limit. We had to think carefully of what we wanted our characters to say. There is Rose, a young girl on her way to a party. She just wanted to hang out with her friends, but was not expecting what was to come. Then there was Jordan, the mysterious character who wants to take Rose for some reasons that are unknown. This created further horror for the audience watching. We put a lot of thought into what each character would say, as it would affect our film harshly. I believe our sound script will be very helpful when we create our opening film.

Title Research: Slice

1) How many titles are displayed during the opening sequences to the film?

  - There are 25 titles displayed during the opening sequences to the film.

2) What images are prioritized in the opening sequence?

  - Pictures of eyes and a forest were prioritized in the opening sequence.

3) What connotations do the images carry?

  - These images carry a stalker and creepy associated connotation.

4) How is genre reinforced through symbolic and technical codes for the outset?

  - Between both the knifes, eyes, and forest the genre is conveyed as horror because it leads the audience to feel scarred.

5) How does the film establish an enigma from the outset?

  - The use of the eyes throughout creates a sense of creepiness that leaves the audience curious. This enigma ensures the audience will want to watch more.

6) What strategies are used to ensure the film appeals to its target audience?

   - The slicing of each title is  pleasing to the eye which would make the audience watch the whole film.

7) How has technology been used effectively? You want to consider camera angles, transitions, and editing techniques.

  - Editing techniques were used to slice the names. Both eye level and low angles are used to capture different angles of the forest during the opening scene. The transitions are smooth and include the use of a knife to further portray a horror genre.