Wednesday 11 May 2011
Wednesday 4 May 2011
Monday 2 May 2011
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
It is the task of distributors to identify and deliver the largest possible audience for every film. The UK has 6 major distributors and many independent distributors. According to the Film Distributor’s Association, most cinemagoers know in advance which film they want to see – and that is principally a result of competing distributor’s efforts to promote interests in the title(s) they are handling. Media institutions such as Universal would be appropriate to distribute our film because Universal is associated with chick flicks such as Wild Child. We researched other smaller institutions, which might help us create our media product because our film is low budget and not well known. We found suitable institutions such as Bedlam Productions or See Saw Films. Bedlam Productions, might be interested in helping us create our film. They collaborated to make the multiple Oscar winning, “The King’s Speech”; this film is also a comparatively low budget movie like ours. Although their main key areas have been feature films and documentaries, focusing on “real-life” stories, we feel our UK girls independent school setting also raises lots of historical and social issues in teenage lives, which would attract similar audiences.
Most importantly, See Saw Films has a first-look deal with Momentum Pictures in the UK and a film finance deal with the American Paramount Pictures. Since American institutions have much more capital at their disposal than British companies, this link with the US could be the secret to the success of distributing our film. Moreover, as distributer of “Mean Girls”, Paramount may well be interested in our film as it is aimed at a similar audience, addressing similar high school issues and stereotypes.
Momentum and Paramount would be great distributors for our product because they can distribute our film through larger companies and to the USA. These institutions would also be interested in distributing our media product because British audiences tend to warm to good quality, British films, and could work well on the back of the success of “The King’s Speech”. This might also attract funding from the UK Film Council.
The cinema is a place where film makers would love to have their products showcased. Films have the opportunity to come across as their best in cinemas as audiences enjoy an uninterrupted cinema experience. Therefore, we would like to show our feature film theatrically – in cinemas, as it is the best and most effective way to show a film and it creates a demand to see it. Showcasing our film on television channels rather than the cinema would be less effective because it would gain less audience attention.
According to the Film Distributor’s Association, the most frequent cinema goers tend to be teenagers, students and young adults, and they are the most voracious media consumers. This benefits us because our media product is aimed at a young target audience. More than half of 15-25 year olds in the UK visit the cinema at least once a month. Due to this, hopefully a good distributor such as Momentum or Paramount will distribute our product because it is aimed a large, young audience.
We invented a collaboration of production companies to produce our film. We created Starship Pictures and COSMO Productions, inspired by a space-like theme which has connotations of innovation and groundbreaking material. Our Starship Pictures logo of the globe surrounded by stars, was inspired by the logo of Univeral Pictures. COSMO also connotes a “girly essence” reminiscent of the fashion magazine named “Cosmo”.
Most importantly, See Saw Films has a first-look deal with Momentum Pictures in the UK and a film finance deal with the American Paramount Pictures. Since American institutions have much more capital at their disposal than British companies, this link with the US could be the secret to the success of distributing our film. Moreover, as distributer of “Mean Girls”, Paramount may well be interested in our film as it is aimed at a similar audience, addressing similar high school issues and stereotypes.
Momentum and Paramount would be great distributors for our product because they can distribute our film through larger companies and to the USA. These institutions would also be interested in distributing our media product because British audiences tend to warm to good quality, British films, and could work well on the back of the success of “The King’s Speech”. This might also attract funding from the UK Film Council.
The cinema is a place where film makers would love to have their products showcased. Films have the opportunity to come across as their best in cinemas as audiences enjoy an uninterrupted cinema experience. Therefore, we would like to show our feature film theatrically – in cinemas, as it is the best and most effective way to show a film and it creates a demand to see it. Showcasing our film on television channels rather than the cinema would be less effective because it would gain less audience attention.
According to the Film Distributor’s Association, the most frequent cinema goers tend to be teenagers, students and young adults, and they are the most voracious media consumers. This benefits us because our media product is aimed at a young target audience. More than half of 15-25 year olds in the UK visit the cinema at least once a month. Due to this, hopefully a good distributor such as Momentum or Paramount will distribute our product because it is aimed a large, young audience.
We invented a collaboration of production companies to produce our film. We created Starship Pictures and COSMO Productions, inspired by a space-like theme which has connotations of innovation and groundbreaking material. Our Starship Pictures logo of the globe surrounded by stars, was inspired by the logo of Univeral Pictures. COSMO also connotes a “girly essence” reminiscent of the fashion magazine named “Cosmo”.
Thursday 28 April 2011
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We chose to podcast our answer to this question. Click on the media player to hear our response
Wednesday 27 April 2011
5) How did you address/attract your audience?
The target audience for our main piece in mostly teenage girls between the ages of 10-18 and we researched modern chick flicks with a similar target group and found out how they made the film fit the need of the main audience. Like in films such as wild child and St Trinians, we decided our main character would be a young, fashionable and pretty female. This was because our research found that this was common of modern, girly chick flicks aimed at teenage girls. We chose to have this stereotypical female character as the hero of the story, since she would be someone that the audience could recognise and relate to, attracting them to our film. So in a sense, we showed our audience in our film, by choosing an actress who was female and of the age group.
During our first discussions about the plot and idea of our main piece, we were unsure of how to make the character of Cally stand out from the other girls in the school. We first thought that Cally should be of lower class, dressed less well than the other girls, so that she felt intimidated by the typical snobby girls at the posh private school. However we decided against this, having Cally dress fashionably, but be a rebellious character and so making the other girls look up to her, though they appear to be jealous of her, giving her dark looks as she passes. We found that this idea was more common in chick flicks and was more suited both our actress and our original idea.
We found that the way we dressed Cally did seem to be the right decision as when we showed a preview of our film opening to our target audience, the shoes our actress was wearing was hugely popular among the girls. They commented on how they really liked them, wanting to buy the shoes themselves. Therefore, this did reach out to our target audience and attract them to our film opening.
With the girls who played extras in our film, we allowed them to form their own groups, making the film more realistic as they were in similar age and friendship groups. This created verisimilitude, along with the chosen setting, which was our school, which we found was the perfect setting. We also had girls in the windows of the school building, which showed that everyone was focusing on Cally as she arrived for her first day. We handheld the camera in part of our film, showing Callys point of view as she looked over at the small group of sixth form girls and the head girl. This also would help the audience to relate to Cally, getting the sense of being watched by the girls who think they are superior to her.
Another important thing that we also found attracted the girls that we showed a preview of our opening to, was the music. Our song Dirty Little Secret by The All American Rejects was the perfect song for our piece as it was a well known, upbeat, current song that was widely and often used in the chick flick films we had researched. We also felt that the lyrics of the song applied to the plot for our film and so decided that Dirty Little Secret would also be the title to our film. From the questionnaire given to the girls at the screening and the interviews we had with a few of them afterwards, the music was scored extremely highly and the girls were very enthusiastic about it.
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