Partnering Up

 Hey guys I'm back at it again. So today's blog is basically going to be about who I decided to work with. My teachers gave us the option to work by ourselves or work with a partner or group of people. Normally I would've automatically joined a group. However, due to covid 19 that wasn't the case. At first I was considering working by myself for obvious safety reasons. Then my teachers put out a list for all A level students to see to choose if they would like to work with anyone on the list. I was still leaning more towards working by myself until I saw someone's name that I knew. I saw the name Jasmine and I remembered I had a class with her freshman year and we worked together before. She was a good partner to work with so I decided to text her. After communicating with her the two of us decided we would work together. Instead of doing a group of 4 we decided to just stick to two people. With two people in a group we'll still be able to split the work. For example, since were at home one person will film at their house with their family members or friends as our film actors and the other person would edit and write the blogs. If we the covid 19 cases continue to decline then of course we will try to meet up with each other in person to film. Jasmine and I plan on brain storming ideas of what we want our film to be about this upcoming weekend. So far I've been considering doing a murder mystery or a domestic violence theme. I know I want it to fall in the thriller or horror category for sure. I haven't heard any of Jasmine's ideas yet. When I do hear them I might even have a change of heart. Nothing has been finalized yet but it will be soon. The sooner we choose an idea the sooner we can get started on planning out everything. I'm so excited for this I literally can't wait to get started !

Welcome Back Blog

I guess this is my welcome back to blogging. It's a new school year and I'm now in the A level AICE Media class. I can definitely say it's a big change but I'm ready to take on this new challenge. Last year covid 19 struck the U.S. so schools were permanently closed for the rest of the school year. After the shutting down of schools I had to complete my AICE Media project online. It was a challenge but my group members and I made it work. I ended up passing the class as well as the Cambridge test. My final grade was a B and I scored an E on the exam. I was beyond thankful for that. However, this year I want to do better than I did last year. I expect to have an A in the class every quarter and I expect to score at least a C or higher this time. Today my teacher explained what our final project was. I think this project will teach me many new things. I've never created a website before so I'm extremely excited about that. I've also never used Facebook before so using the app should be an interesting experience for me. I say this because most teens only use Snapchat, Twitter, or Instagram. I'm also excited about filming and editing this year. I haven't figured out whether or not I will be working in a group or not but as of right now I'm planning on working alone. I've had several ideas about what I want my 5 minute film to be on. Although, I have a number of ideas none seem to jump out to me. Hopefully I'll have picked an idea for my film by next week.

Audience and Institution Essay

The area of study that I chose was film. I will be assessing the importance of marketing in the film media area. In my opinion, marketing is an extremely important thing to do for a film to be successful. I feel this way for several reasons. The main reason is because marketing is required in order to attract an audience to come and watch the film. Without appropriate marketing production companies would have no source of income, which would mean that creating the film was a total waste of time.

As previously mentioned, marketing is essential for films in order to attract an audience. With the proper marketing a film will draw in a large crowd which will bring in more revenue for the production company. If a film has bad marketing, it won’t do well because if the audience doesn’t like how the film is being portrayed or how it’s being talked about then they won’t want to spend their money or their time watching the film. For example, the Marvel production company marketed the movie “Blank Panther”, which was directed by Ryan Coogler and produced by Kevin Fiege and David J. Grant, by reaching out to the audiences that lie within African American community. The film made approximately 1.344 billion dollars in box offices after its release. The film was later released on Xfinity on demand, which is a way to watch movies at home. By doing this they also brought in money because people were able to but or rent the film from home. The film was able to gain this much money all because of the way it was marketed.

In addition, the main goal of film marketing is to properly promote the movie. The main way that film companies go about promoting movies is by making short trailers. If the trailer catches the audience’s eye, then they will want to see the movie when it comes out. There are also other ways that film companies endorse their films. Some of these ways include interacting with fans through social media (Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook etc.), making posters, or doing interviews with the actors of the film. Of course, those aren’t all the marketing techniques that are used but those are probably the most frequently used ones. Market campaigns are essential when it comes to drawing in viewers. The campaigns are meant to make the movie seem interesting. For example, in Marvels hit movie “End Game”, which was directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, they created an intriguing trailer which made fans want to watch the movie. The people that were behind the marketing for this film new exactly how to attract a large audience. In the trailer for the movie they included action as well as suspense and mystery which left the viewers in a state of shock and wonder, which is what you want to do. If marketing teams didn’t use any of these techniques, then people probably wouldn’t be interested in seeing the films that they are trying to promote.

Lastly, proper marketing is essential especially when it comes to the release of the film. Market campaigns are essential when it comes to drawing in viewers. The campaigns are meant to make the movie seem interesting. “Bad Boys for Life” recently came out and the marketing campaign for that movie was phenomenal. Posters were made as well as an amazing trailer. The trailer included comedy as well as tons of action. Things like this attracted many viewers which resulted in high numbers in the box office. After being in theaters for about 3 weeks the movie generated approximately 17.7 million dollars. All that money was made in three weeks now just imagine the amount of money that they gained overall, and this was all due to great marketing strategies. You will never actually know how well a film was marketed until the film is released out into theaters. Studies have shown that box office sales from the first week show how well the film was marketed. If box office sales were low, then that means poor marketing was done for the film and if the box office sales are high then that means the marketing for the film was done perfectly.

In conclusion, without film marketing movies wouldn’t be as popular as they are now nor would they generate as much money as they do right now. It is essential that films are strategically marketed, so that money can be made from the films being made. The whole point of marketing is to get people interested in the film which is why it is so important in the media area called “film”.

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

Final Project CCR

Due to the corona virus we had to become creative. We had to make our Creative critical reflection "CCR" from home due to the pandemic. Our original plan was to schedule a day where we would all meet at Laurens house. Once we got to Laurens home Lauren was going to have her friend ask the questions as if we were in an interview. The President of the United States has set a mandatory quarantine for all 50 states. Due to the quarantine everyone has been social distancing. Schools are closed as well as restaurants and malls. We had to get extremely creative when doing our CCR. we decided that each of us will get a question. However, Anishkaneel and I had two parts to answer for the questions that we chose. After we all picked out the questions we wanted to do we had to record a video of us answering then questions. Of course this took us some time because we had to formulate our answers and word them correctly. her friend also had to send in a video of her asking us the questions. After filming our videos we sent them in our groupchat on iMessage. Lauren took all of the recordings and began to edit them, Lauren has to edit because she is the only one of us that access to iMovie. Throughout this project Lauren probably got the best editing experience, which is what she said in the answer to her question. This pandemic has caused us to shift the way we get our work done. Everything is now being done using the internet. Hopefully a cure is made soon. This has definitely been a different experience but a productive one.

Final Project

Our final project was to create the opening sequence to a film. It had to be between one minute and fifty seconds and two minutes. My group and I reached one minute and fifty five seconds. This project was definitely a challenge. I feel that this project was more of a challenge due to the fact that we were all so busy and it was harder to film on the weekends. In class our storyboard was created. Although we had made our storyboard in class we had to change some scenes while filming. For example, we added in a garage scene. In our original storyboard that wasn't in there so we had to change it. We also used props. The props that we used were a knife and a flower bouquet. Editing this film was definitely harder than editing the other films. Mainly because we had to add in titles and get our film peer edited. After receiving feedback from another group we realized that we had a lot to work on. Finishing the re shooting of our video was challenging to the corona virus. The United states has been put on a mandatory quarantine so it was hard for us to leave the house and meet up. Fortunately, we were able to meet at Laurens house one day and film the final footage or the film. After filming Lauren edited our movie and we assisted her over the phone. This pandemic has really effected the way we work but we are still getting it done even with all of the issues that have been arising. I think that we have come a long way with out filming skills and people will be impressed by our movie.

Music Video

The second project that my class was assigned was a music video. Our task was to create a music video that could be up to one minute and 20 seconds. My groups video ended up being one minute and sixteen seconds which was a good time. With this assignment we were told that we couldn't film on school grounds. This assignment required us to plan a way to meet up with each other outside of school. This was slightly challenging due to the fact that we all have different schedules. Eventually  we picked out a Saturday where we were all available. In class we discussed where and how we were going to film our video. We decided to film it at a local mall but we had to make accomodations due to Lauren injuring her ankle. We decided that we could get a shopping cart and push her around. In class we also created a storyboard so that we would have a plan to follow. Eventually it came time for us to film. We filmed the first scenes at Laurens house. After filming those scenes we went to the mall. We ended up not following our storyboard because we had better ideas after we noticed certain things in the mall. For example, we decided to add in a scene where we did a slow motion shot of us trying on clothes. When it came to editing we decided to use iMovie again. This time we had a ton of footage. Due to all of this footage we had to cut a lot of scenes but our commercial turned out very nice. I'd say that this project was much more productive and I learned way more.

Commercial Video

 My class was assigned a commercial project to do. We had options on what our commercial could be about. Some of these options were: a commercial about our school, Nike products, or food places such as McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts. My group and I chose to do a McDonalds commercial. After reviewing our idea we decided to keep the focus on the happy meal. The McDonalds happy meal is basically a kids meal. We decided to make a commercial based on a mother and her children ordering the happy meal from McDonalds. We used barbie dolls as well as  an actual McDonalds happy meal box for our props. We only had 2 real days to film in school. We had 1 hour before lunch started to film the scenes that were on the senior patio. We were only allowed one hour because we weren't allowed to be at another lunch. We did make a storyboard prior to filming our commercial. We actually did follow every scene in our storyboard. Due to us doing this our filming process went much smoother. The only issue that occurred during this process was when it was time to edit. We had trouble using pinnacle studios due to the school laptops running slow. The due date for our commercial came closer so we decided to use Laurens laptop to edit. We edited our film with iMovie and found that is was much easier to use. After editing we turned our film in by using a flash drive and uploading it to my teachers laptop. This was a very good and beneficial learning experience.