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

Re-editing blog 1

This week, I started to do re-editing. Since nobody in my team took the whole film home, I had to work from scratch. Luckily, we had uploaded the raw footage to one of our google drives. Since I already have editing software on my laptop, I decided to take re-editing what we had into my own hands. I started with downloading all the videos that I wanted to include. I also downloaded some I thought I might want to use. Then, I uploaded them into the software to edit. I got out my storyboard so I could follow it. When going through the footage, I noticed some of the videos were a bit too dark. I'm going to re-shoot those but for the meantime, I just put them in as placeholders. Starting with trimming the footage, I got the time down to 1:40 seconds. Which is good and bad. This mean I might have to take some scenes out or cut them if we want all of the clips in. I had to look up the audio again. Luckily, I remembered the studio and song name so it was fairly easy to find. I downloaded and placed it in the software. I had to adjust a few things for the audio to fit but other than that, it all went well. I put some place-holders in and started on the titles. I went through a lot of colors, transitions and fonts until I settled on one I liked. Since the software I was using before and the one I was using are different, they had different fonts. It was fun to play around with the colors too. I settled on a red color and a fade in transition. I plan on replacing the footage I didn't like soon.

filming blog 3

As you, hopefully know, there is a pandemic going on at the moment. Due to this, I am unable to film. Everyone in my group's parents are paranoid about them getting the virus. They have also closed school for a month at the time of writing. This has affected our filming schedule majorly. We will try to meet up, even if its only for a half hour. Since I didn't check out a camera, Ive decided to film on my phone. I also have editing software on my computer that I can edit with over this break. Tons of movies productions have been stopped or postponed due to the coronavirus. Movies such as Black Widow, A Quiet place 2, Mulan, F9, and many more.  Some of the actors in those films already have the virus, luckily, none of our actors have it. But, we all relate to production of our movies being stopped. A quiet place 2 was supposed to come out tomorrow, at the date of writing, but will not be, due to movie theaters being shut down. Luckily, the movie had already been made and was coming out the following day when it got its premiere cancelled. All though this virus is limiting our movement, we will do everything in our power to keep filming. Though the movie production may have been completed, the release has been postponed. I can relate to that because me sending my movie to cambridge is like the release of the movie. When we get the chance to film, we will take it, though that would probably be slim. None of our, my group and I's, parents are really letting us meet up. Even the actor's parents are. And, as stated before, this will put our production behind schedule. We wont let this virus slow us down though, we will keep trying to work as hard as we can.

Editing blog 4

Today in media, we edited. Since the titles started working again, I decided to add the
 In. Though the titles were working, adding pictures to them, wasnt. That meant that I couldn’t do the plan I originally wanted to do. I just decided to pick a different way of showing the titles. I chose the font and helped pick out the color. I didn’t want something that looked off when it was on the video. I was originally going with red but that couldn’t be seen. Though all of this hard work was for nothing. About half way through the process, the computer I was using died. I had loss all the progress I had for that day. That meant I had to add all the titles I added in that day. I also had to move the computer to the laptop cart to charge it. It was a huge pain because none of the chargers reach to a comfortable place and we had to press ourselves to the cart. But, luckily, we got all of the work back before the bell rang. I was going to move my work to a flash drive so I could work at home but I couldn’t because I didn’t have one. My plan was to bring one for next class. Unfortunately, school was canceled the next week so I couldn’t even do that. This was a huge set back because we don’t know when we can go back. Since we can’t edit, I hope that we can at least meet to film some.

editing blog 3

This week, we didn’t get anything done. On Friday, I took the camera home. We had originally planned to film but the main actor couldn’t film so I had to move it to Monday. I charged the camera when I got home so we could film over the weekend. In class, I got a lot of editing done. I managed to add in some titles. Since one of my group mates wasn’t there, I couldn’t put any of the video she filmed into the software. There was barely any progress in the video filming too. I had gone through the video a few times to make sure everything was in the right position and timing. Last time we went to edit, everything  was out of place. This means I had to go back and check that everything was out of place. Luckly, this time, everything was in good shape.  I added in the stalker clips and organized them. Though, they need to be re-shot because they are too dark. Though I edited with shots I didn't like so hopefully those get done. While editing, I tried to add some titles in. Though the entire thing isnt fully filmed, I wanted to start writing the titles. I drew a few text boxes for the titles to go in and imported them. Though the text box wasn’t working when I tried to put it in. I decided to type the text directly into the box.

Peer review blog

On Monday, we did peer reviews. Since our reviewers were not here, we didn't have to worry about that. The people who we were peer reviewing didn’t have anything to review. I have no criticism to give them. I circled no for everything on the front and back page. There isn’t much I can talk about. Since they didn’t have anything to give us, we couldn’t answer any of the questions properly. The front part basically talked about all the components we were supposed to have. Since the group we got didn't have anything, I didn't circle any of the yes boxes. There were a few spots we had to write an answer in and for those, I didn't write anything. In the sections where we had to put our opinion of the film and I didn’t put anything. There was also a section where I had to explain the subject of the movie. Once again, I didn’t put anything for that spot. On the back, there were a few more questions that still couldn't be answered. Nothing can be improved in my opinion. Nothing could be done to make the film better either. There also happened to be a few yes or no questions to circle. The questions on the back are in the photo attached. I still couldn't answer those which was annoying because I like giving people helpful critique. The only critique I have is plan better for your deadlines, even if you think you can make it.

Editing blog 2

This week, we actually got to edit. Though it wasn’t that much, we managed to get some stuff done. I got the computer we used and logged in. I opened the editing software, everything was uploaded already so all we had to do was place it in. I had also looked for some music to put in. I had to look on royalty free music websites. I picked a few I thought were good and showed them to my teammates. I uploaded the sound to the computer and placed it in the software. I had brought the camera equipment to give it to another teammate. I had organized the scenes in order of our storyboards. I had also matched up the audio with the video so the most intense parts match up with the video. I was in charge of clipping the film so far. I had originally planned to film more over the weekend. This hadn’t worked out because I decided it would be better to just work with what we have already. I had to upload the videos of the stalker scenes because I hadn’t done that before. I had also reviewed over what we had filmed and made sure those were the scenes we wanted. When I uploaded them, I spent my time looking up a song to use. This wasn’t as easy as thought, even though I had to look through a few websites. I also had to place the music a bit further ahead of where the video started. I did this because it made more sense. The music starts intense and the tension rises quickly so I had to place it in a part that had started to build intensity. This was around the second or third shot.

Editing blog 1

For this blog, I will be talking about the editing process. In the first week, we didn’t get much done. I sorted through the videos that were filmed from filming blog 1. That meant I had to check for lighting errors, how well the film flowed and more. I cut out about half of the films and only chose the best videos. The second week, I got a lot done. I sorted through some more film that I did that weekend. As far as today, I didn’t do anything because I wasn’t in school. I did, though, guy my team mate the log in information for my computer. Since that information that we had from the past few days isn't on any other computer. I also told them which SD card and computer we did all that work on. I listened to the audio of the videos, making sure nothing that we didn’t want to be heard could be heard. That also meant I had to check that the actors were talking loud enough for the mic to pick up. If it didn’t, I checked down the scenes we needed to reshoot when it came time. I also watched the video to make sure it was a good quality. That meant checking for visibility since I filmed a lot in a dimly lit room. This meant I had to delete a lot of film because of that. Though we have only had a few days to film, there hasn’t been much headway. I was going to start editing last class but since I still had to go through the videos, I didn’t get to it. Though, I did get the videos uploaded to the editing software and that took the longest amount of time.

Filming blog 2

This weekend, we decided to film the stalker parts. Though, my other teammates couldn’t film. I decided to do this weekends filming myself. The actor for the stalker couldn’t make it either, he had some stuff to do that was really important. I decided to use my sister as the stalker. She looks like a boy from behind so that works out since the stalker is supposed to be a boy. I checked out a camera on Friday, not knowing we couldn’t film, and changed the camera for use. When the day came to film, I got a message saying nobody could film. When I got home, I took out the camera and asked my sister if she could be the stalker. She agreed and we got started filming. I managed to film every solo part with the stalker in it. I filmed everything, including the close ups, split screen parts and the long shots. I directed my sister and told her what to do for every scene. In some, I told her to do what she wanted or imagined a stalker would do and those turned out the best. I filmed in my sisters bedroom. I planned to film when it was dark out to give the effect of the scenes being more unsettling. I had my sister lay down on her bed with her computer up to match the storyboard. I tried my best to match up the angles of the previous scene to make the transition between characters more seamless. Though I’m not as tall as the camera person before, I think it turned out ok. Then I moved onto the close ups of the screen, which I made sure to not have the camera focused on the messages for privacy. I had my sister pull up an Instagram so the stalker could be looking through the girls Instagram. I also filmed the long shot. I stood the back of her room and filmed her looking through the Instagram and sending messages to people. Then, I did the over the shoulder shot, which I shot from over her shoulder and showed the screen. Finally, I moved onto the close up of the stalker smiling, which I just had my sister smile into the camera.

Filming blog: 1

In this weeks filming secession, we got a lot done. Over the weekend, however, we couldn’t film. This was because of complications with the filming time. We also couldn’t take a camera out which was an inconvenience on itself. When we filmed, we actually got a lot done. We took out a camera the last class and checked out a camera. I had to take it home and make sure it was charged. I found out it wasn’t so I charged it over night so we could film the next day. After school, my group mates and I went to my house so we could film. I was in charge of camera set up and directing the actor, our other group mate, where to go. I got to film some stuff too. Specifically the closeups, some of the pans and a few extra shots I wanted to film extras of. I was also in charge of the props. I placed them in the places we needed and gathered them all when we cleaned up. I even called the actor to give her an actual conversation to follow. I got the background ready for filming too. That meant moving anything in the way of our shot, like a pet or the storyboard papers. I gave the actor her lines and helped direct the shots. When it came to packing up, I put everything away. I put the camera and tripod away. I do plan to take the camera back to school too. I’m very excited to film more over the weekend and edit what film we have too.

Planning Blog: Storyboard

In this blog there is an embedded PowerPoint. Just like the others, this google slide has my plans for the video. Though, this is the storyboard for it. An almost set in stone plan for it. Some things will change but mostly will stay the same. The plan for the movie is a girl is stalked online by a mysterious guy. He’s hacked through her computer and is stalking her social media. She made plans with her friends one night and he had heard. She gave away the location and unluckily for her, it was close. The figure drove to where she was and successfully kidnapped her. We had planned out the actors too but not where we could put the titles. We do, however, have an idea of where to put them.




 

Planning Blog: Location, Participants, Health, Schedule

In this blog, there is a google slides. This slideshow has all the details to our film. Including the location, participants, health and the schedule. For the locations, we decided on two places. My house and a nearby park. There won't be too many locations so that's all I put. For the participants, we just stated the actors. Since there are only two characters, we just put two official characters in the slideshow and then an un-offical character. We also put the name of the production crew, aka us. For health, we just put our safety precautions like buckling in. And finally for our schedule, we made a rough outline for when everything will be done.


 

Planning Blog: Title and Design Details

This blog has a google slide embed into it. The slides contain information about the titles. This will help make editing them in easier to do because we have them planned out already. The plans for the appearance for the titles are white font with a blue outline. This will make it seem like a text message. We have also decided on using the closest thing we can find to message fonts. They will come in like a text message with the title name on the right and the name of the actor on the left. This will make it seem like it is being sent. It ties into our theme of the movie which is social media. The more important titles will be in a bigger font to catch the viewers eyes.



 

Planning Blog: Shooting Script

This blog has a google slides link for my shooting script. This post includes a link to said google docs. This includes angles, movements and shots. Some of the shots we have to include are low angles, over the shoulder shots, match shots and more. This was a bit hard to implement into our plan, considering we had already mapped it out quite a bit. The angles definitely won't change from the original if all goes as planned. When we started planning this movie out, it was only an idea but now it seems like it's going good. We had originally wanted to do something different with our angles, but considering our guidelines, we couldn't. The most fun part to shoot will be the trunk shot, even though itll be the last part to film. This will most likely be out final product for angles and movements unless something is messed up on filming day.