Audience and Institution Essay

    Marketing for films are very important, but they also have their downfalls. Marketing is important in the sense that this is how the movie gets to everyone. It’s also how the companies get their money, via toys and merchandise, for more marketing. 

     There are many movies that have had major successes with marketing such as Spider-man: Homecoming. This movie was marketed through cross-media methods. Columbia Pictures partnered with Target and Kellogg’s cereal as their marketing. They also pre-released the movie’s merchandise so people got hyped for the movie. This movie is also on xfinity stream and is still getting profit off of It. The game proved to be popular too, also creating hype and proved to be another great marketing tactic. All though this is a lot of marketing, the Spider-man franchise is popular as a whole. This also has a play in how popular this movie was. Prequels to the movies and how popular might make the future movies more popular and have higher expectations by the public. The Fast and Furious franchise is also quite popular. These are a series of movies, 14 to be more specifically, that have been going since 2001. The first fast and furious movie was featured in a film festival which started its whole franchise. The movies even have a ride in Disney World along with cross promotion from a phone company which came with new posters and promotional chances. Fast and Furious Is one of the most popular movie franchises because of how many movies and clout they got. Since these movies are so popular the automatic response to being told they are making a new movie is to be excited. This is just one of the many examples of popular media due to marketing. There are so many movies that have benefited from marketing. Only a few haven’t benefited from marketing or even didn’t need it for success. 

    Sometimes, marketing means nothing in a movie’s popularity. Well, the movie The Babadook, an Australian psychological horror movie, was barely marketed. This movie was very popular and many people I know really love the movie for its horror aspect. Though the budget isn’t important, it was 1 million dollars which is pretty low compared to every other film. The movie started off as just an Indi film which premiered in a film festival. It soon got popular and was released in theaters in 2014. This is an example of marketing. All though this movie was a great success because of its marketing, this does not mean every film with low marketing or even high marketing makes it big. Despite its large marketing display, movies such as Ugly Dolls weren’t exactly popular. Even though the marketing was huge for it, the hype didn’t match up to the actual quality of the movie. They had tons of commercials during and before it had been released but automatically had stopped after it was taken from the TV as it left the theaters. According to Deadline, it was a “disastrous start” for this movie. The director thought that if he had enough marketing and exposure that his movie would be popular, he proved that to be wrong. This movie just proves that marketing doesn’t automatically make a movie popular. Yes, some people watched the movie due to marketing, but overall, this was a huge flop. So no, marketing doesn’t exactly make or break a movie.

    In conclusion, marketing is both important and not important at the same time. Some marketing can be beneficial or can damage the popularity.

Essay practice

      From the scene of 24 that I watched, I believe the theme is justice. Since, from what I gathered, the characters are trying to stop a bomb from going off. The director is trying to create a tense atmosphere with everything they use. From the lighting to the camera angles, everything is planned to make the feeling tense. The whole premise of the movie even suggests the director is trying to make a tense atmosphere. 

      The scene starts off with a fade in, because this is just the opening edit, it really has nothing to do with the theme. Then, a close up, showing how the main character is slightly upset by her plan being stopped. This sets up the intensity of the scene. It then goes to an over the shoulder shot, showing who will be interrogating her for information, which, this person looks pretty upset. Showing how upset this person is already, makes you feel tense, hence making this show feel intense. next, there is a zoom-in, which makes you really focused on the main character’s face which shows her looking seriously. As I will keep mentioning throughout this essay, the lighting really effects the scene by only having one source, giving a good unsettling atmosphere. Because it is only one light source, it creates shadows that are good for horror movies. It goes to a shot reverse shot, showing that they are being filmed in there, this makes you know that they are being watched and sets up for a good impact later on. Then it goes back to an over the shoulder, followed by a close up of the woman looking a bit annoyed, going to a closeup of the man’s face as he’s looking at the woman. After that, it goes to a shot pan and tilt over to the women’s face. This paper doesn’t get explained right away, leading the audience in suspense and thinking “whats on that paper?”. Finally, more close ups of the character, giving off a suspenseful vibe. 

       Moving onto the next seen, which starts off as two shot of two people holding a camera. These are the people who are watching the two in the private room. The shot is crowded as people walk in and out of shot. This scene is done with a handheld camera as it is a bit shaky. This scene is intense because it shows that the people are watching and will make sure nothing happens to any of the people in there.

        The scene after this, were back in the interrogation room with another close up and eye line match. Once again, these  Its time I talk about the music. The music helps you feel unsettled and gives you a sense of tension because of how suspenseful this is. It makes you feel like you’re in the room with the characters and feeling the same way they do. Then its back  to another close up of the main character followed by yet again, another over the shoulder. Using the over the shoulder shot is effective because it shows how the character is seeing the other person without it being point of view. They keep alternating between close ups and the over the shoulder, even changing it up follow the man who is pacing back and forth. This creates tension by having the man pacing and looking right at the woman and into the camera as they talk about reasons why the main character should be transported somewhere for the bomb. Finally, after a few back and forth of over the shoulder and close up. We get a close up of the man and the shot moves into a over the shoulder shot as he moves into the screen shot. Then it pans from the man to the women as he sounds pretty upset, this makes it intense because of how angry he sounds. Then it automatically goes back to a closeup of the man talking directly to the woman. This makes it intense because of the lighting, since its only one light,  the shadows are harsher. It then cuts to a two shot of the man slamming his hands on the table. 

It then cuts to the next scene is a close up of the woman who was watching the cameras looking frightened. Same thing with the man watching the cameras. They nervously watch this scene go on which makes what just happened more intense. In the next scene, its on the woman in the room as the man is inches apart from her face. The next scene is a zoom in on the mans face as he stares intently into the camera which is unsettling on itself with the lighting and how intent he is on doing what he’s going to do. The same shot then moves to an over the shoulder as he moves to sit back down and look at the woman.

The scene then moves to a shot of the cameras footage as they zoom out to show the two people watching them. This isn’t exactly an intense shot but it helps build up the momentum of it. The next scene is of the women as she’s sitting in the chair and it pans to the man looking at her. She seems nervous and the man still seems intent, which pared together makes a tense scene. And then another close up of both the man and the women as they stare at each other. The intensity comes from how many times it switches. Finally, the man bursts out of his chair from a two shot and slams her into the wall with an action match. This scene is intense because of the surprise of what just happened. There’s also that sudden hint of fear. The sound of the chair being pushed and slammed into the wall is also pretty tensing for me personally.

    In the last scene, the first shot is a split screen which show the man choking the woman and the security guard running towards the room. The use of a handheld shot makes it more tense because you can see the security running and something about the handheld shot just makes something very tense.  As the man bursts into the room, it breaks the split and turns into a two shot. This scene is intense because of the sounds. They stopped the intense music and just let the characters breath heavily as the man storms out of the room. Then it goes to another closeup and fades away.

     I think the director was trying to give the audience a sense of tension through his work. He manages to do this, even in relation to just the scene I watched, I felt tense the entire time. Knowing the whole movie would make the viewer even more tense, too. I think the director was trying to give off a theme of justice because the characters are trying to stop a bomb. 

final CCR

These are my CCR questions for my final video, or the post before this. This is actually for one of my classes. For this assignment, we had to answer a few questions. The questions included use of technology, progress, and public interaction. I had my mom ask questions, like in an interview. I had set up my
phone so then it looked like an interview. I did each question separately  at first but then decided to place them together. I had told my mom what she had to say right before so all she had to do was say what I told her to. I had to do a few over but thats all apart of the editing process. After I finished the filming, I sent the files to my computer, I started the editing process. This didn't take too long, to my surprise. I had to edit the first parts and last out so they didn't show me walking back and forth to stop the recording. I also added in some titles to show the question that I was answering. finally, I added in some video clips into it. I wanted to show what i was talking about instead of just explaining it with words. I had to go through the entire video to make sure everything was in order and matched up. I thought about putting the music in but decided against it. All though it would be a good idea to add it in, I had no clue where to put it in. The hardest part was typing all of what I wanted to say out. That took a while to write out but it was worth it in the long term. Anyways, I'm happy about how this project turned out, I hope to keep doing this someday.

final video

The video below is of what I have been working on for the past month and a half. This was a very fun experience all getting together and filming. This is an opening to a horror film for an AICE class project. It's about a girl whos being cyber stalked by someone who got her information from her social media. This was originally an idea about just a girl who wants to be famous on social media. Since that didn't exactly go anywhere, we changed it up a bit since I wanted to do a horror film. We also had a different actor planed for the stalker but due to him not being able to show up when we needed him to film, so I changed it. Due to the pandemic, we couldn't film about a quarter of it. So, to make up for this, I decided to edit the storyboards original plan and so that the main girl didn't show up. This was just something we had to do to finish the movie. This entire thing was so satisfying to see come together. The entire process was exciting, from initial planning to an actual film being started. It was really exciting to see a plan being turned into an actual thing. I asked my teammates to make sure everything was ok with them too. After such a long time of planning and filming, I finally have a finished project. Im honestly really proud of what I've done so far. I hope to continue filming and producing in the future.

first video

This is the first video I made in this class. This was an assignment. We had almost two weeks to complete this project. All from the planning to the editing and the emailing. This is a gatorade commercial that we had to film. My group mates and I had a ton of fun while making this. I was in charge of filming some things and editing. I had drawn the story board out and helped plan the shots. Though this is not the best film, I still think its great for our first time filming. Unfortunately, I dont have the second video we film but I think this shows tons of improvement. If I could change one thing about this would be the use of a voice over for the steps. I would have just left the original audio but maybe the voice over was a requirement. I wish I could have re-done that pan and tilt because it looks out of place. But other than those critiques, I liked the video a lot for out first try.

Re-edit blog 2

This time, I took the things I had filmed from last night and placed them into the video. This editing process didn't take too long. I didn't have that many clips to edit so that was nice. I sifted through the video clips and pulled out the few I was going to add in. I actually ended up keeping only three or four of the raw footage. I then replaced the clips I had in there as place holders with the ones I was going to do. The place holders were just so I could finish doing the titles. I then had to go in and delete said holders. When I had finished placing all the scenes, I went through and trimmed some clips. The film went over 2 minutes so I had to trim some stuff down.  I watched the video over a few times, had my family watch it and made some more changes. I had to switch some scenes around so they made sense. After that, I fixed all the titles once again one last time. That just meant going through and checking they all had the right times and even spacing. I wanted the music to end right when the car trunk slammed shut which was fairly easy to do. All I did was trim the music so that it matched up to right before the trunk sound. Adding that part wasn't exactly important but I still wanted to add it in. Once I was finished, I saved the video to my computer. When it came to the whole editing process, this project was pretty fun. Im sad its over now but I'm going to keep making videos.

re-shoot blog

This weekend I needed to film in a last minute time-crunch. Due to not being able to meet up with my groupmates, I had to take some stuff out. These were clips such as the scene where the girl asks where her friends are and add some scenes in. I filmed some scenes I thought would fit in the movie such as the stalker pulling out a weapon from the back of the car and some scenes of the car driving off. This was just so I could actually finish the film in time for the due date. I placed my phone into the trunk and had the actor pick up a hammer. This was to show the weapon he will use to knock the girl out. This is where the opening ends; with the slam of the trunk. I had to position the camera so it looked like an actual trunk shot. This was more difficult than I thought because I wanted a specific angle. Im happy with the result I got so far, though. This filming process didn't take too long