Final

Alex Dee

Period 2

Prompt #5

AICE Media Final

Assess the importance of marketing in film

Over the past decades, marketing has become more and more of an asset for success in the film industry. As can be seen in multiple scenarios, movies with more marketing create more revenue. Marketing gives films exposure, and makes the audience excited for the release of that film. Marketing can take multiple forms in the film industry from cross media convergence, and merchendice.

Starting off, the first form of marketing in the film industry is cross media convergence. When the producers use this marketing strategy, they are exposing as many people as possible to the film. This is such an effective method of marketing because it can be seen before the film has premiered, as well as during the film’s arrival to the audience. As can be seen throughout multiple films, the ones with more cross media convergence, end up making more sales than those without. One perfect example of this is when Beauty and the Beast outsold Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. When looking at the cross media convergence of both the films, it can be seen that Beauty and the Beast had five forms of cross media convergence whereas Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 only had three. Beauty and the Beast’s cross media convergence consisted of a soundtrack being released, special imessage stickers that can be used, exclusive twitter stickers that can be added to photos, playing the original Beauty and the Beast more frequently on TV, and Cosmopolitan keeping the fans updated with articles about the film. Guardians of the Galaxy’s three uses of cross media convergence appeared in the blizzard cup sold at Dairy Queen, appearance of the actors on BBC news, and a monopoly game that was sold for marketing. After analyzing the cross media convergence and the gross income of the movie, it is obvious that there is a relation. Whereas Guardians of the Galaxy produced just $863,756,051 in it’s lifetime gross, Beauty and the Beast who utilized more forms of cross media convergence produced a whopping 1.3 billion. This just proves my point in saying that marketing is a key asset for a movie to perform well in the box office.

Furthermore, another form of marketing that is often used in the film industry is merchandise. Merchandise gives people something to remember the movie by. After getting excited over the movie, and watching the movie, what’s the next step? The answer to this, merchandise. Merchandise gives the film it promotes a lot more exposure, and it makes people more invested in the film as now they own something that has to do with that film. With the help of merchandise, some of the biggest grossing movies of all time have been given birth to. One great example that represents just how essential merchandise for a film's success is Black Panther and Ugly Dolls. In the movie Black panther, there are a plethora of merchandise being sold from toys for kids, to shirts and clothes for adults. This film uses merchandise to connect with a vast range of audience, and through doing this became one of the highest grossing films of all time. Whereas this was the case for Black Panther, Ugly Dolls had a rather disappointing turnout, they used no merchandise. No merchandise means less hype around the film, a smaller range of audience, less publicity for the film, and ultimately makes the film underperform. Whereas Black Panther, using multiple forms of merchandise, produced 1.2 billion dollars, Ugly Dolls using no merchandise came out with a total of 55.7 million. As can be seen there is a drastic difference between box office results of films that used merchandise, and films that have not.

As I have clearly presented, marketing is essential for a film to perform well. The benefits of marketing are endless, some of these benefits include: Cross media convergence which increases the exposure, and Marketing gives the film exposure, draws in a wider range of audience, and creates interest around the film. Through marketing, one can truly give birth to a high grossing film. With lack of marketing, one can only experience the downfall of that film. Therefore, after analyzing all the facts, it can bee seen that marketing is clearly vital.

Extraxt

Alex Dee

Period 2

Extract Essay

The author seems to be conveying a feeling of suspense. The author is trying to convey an action genre. The author wants the audience to be on the edge of their chairs. The direct message from this scene seems to be that the man is very intent on getting information out of this woman. The director uses many elements to convey a feeling of suspense and action.

In the first scene, we start with a fade on transition. The fade on transition, although very simple, makes for a suspenseful feeling as we know the scene is starting and it slowly shows us what the starting frames are. We then switch to an over the shoulder shot of the man walking into the door. This adds to the suspenseful feeling as we now know that she will be interrogated by him and that the interrogation will now begin. We then get a zoom shot of the camera in the corner of the room, which adds suspense as now we know that the interrogation is being watched. We are also introduced to a very menacing soundtrack that makes the scene even more suspenseful as the man is walking towards the girl about to interrogate her. 

In the next scene, we are introduced by a zoom shot of the clock in the room, this builds suspense as it shows that he only has a limited amount of time to get information out of the woman. Then the dialogue starts. There is a pan shot of the pan walking which builds suspense because it makes the viewer think, where is he walking towards, will he end up harming this lady. The dialogue then talks about a bomb which builds even more suspense. In the next scene we have a wide angle of the man flipping over the table due to frustration. This builds suspense and builds on the action theme of the extract. Now, there is even more of a suspenseful soundtrack playing in the background as we have an over the shoulder shot of the lady speaking. This builds suspense as it makes the viewer think he might harm the lady. 

We then start off the next scene with a pan shot of the man and the woman in a stare down, neither of them talking. This builds the tension between the two characters and raises suspense levels. Due to the even more suspenseful mise en scene that we can see with the dim lighting, handcuffs, and table and chair, combined with the even more suspenseful sound track that starts playing, the suspense is at an all time peak. This is until the lady smirks and the man loses it. He flips the table and pushes her chair all the way up to the wall and starts to choke her and question her. The intense breathing of the man builds on the action theme of this extract. We then see a split screen with the officers running from the viewing room into the interrogation room. In the other screen we have the man interrogating the woman. It builds suspense because either the man will get the information out of her, or the officials will come in before he is able to. This shot is the most suspenseful and they end up pulling him away from her before he gets answers. We then see him leave the room and a fade to black screen.

AICE Media CCR

AICE Media Final Project

This is my groups unfinished Final Project. It is the title sequence to an action movie, however we never got to finish due to the corona virus outbreak.  This was an issue as we still needed to get to the part that links what the movie is about to the title of the movie. The part I am talking about is of the man eating cereal when the robber walk in and sees him. This links to the name of our movie which is called the Cereal Killer. This was the easiest to film as the entirety of the time there was only one person. This was due to the fact that our filming got cut short. This meant we didn't have to worry as much about having everyone in the shot. We also were all together which made things a lot easier. The first step to making the movie was choosing roles. I was chosen as the cameraman as we knew I was going to do the majority of the editing. We were able to all get together because Jack drove us all to his house after school. We filmed about half of our video before the corona virus occurred and we had to stop filming. This was unfortunate as we were making good progress and were being efficient with our time. The only scenes we would have to film after this is the robber finding the man eating cereal. After this the man eating would run out of the house. Then the robber would chase him resulting in a man hunt. This forces the man to jump into the water. As can be seen, most of the upcoming scenes have more than one person in them. With all the coronavirus and not being able to leave out homes, we weren't able to film anything.

AICE Media Music Video

Our music video was the hardest to film as none of our schedules lined up. We tried for so many days to film all of us together. This however did not work and we ended up having to film our parts separately. Jorge filmed some of the establishing shots for the beginning of the movie. Jack drove by chick fil a to get more shots there for the beginning and middle of the film. After that he drove to my house and filmed the rest of the video together. For the ending, Jack and I lathered hand sanitizer all over the paper bag and then set it on fire. We did this inside a church to keep the theme of Sundays.  We did not have a ton to work with so I knew we would have to spice the video up with effects. First, I added in a animated design underneath the chic fil a sign. Then, I added the luma keyer effect overtop the chic fil a sign. The luma keyer effect targets the darkest areas of the footage. So you must revert what the effect is effecting. This will change it to key out the lightest colors, or white. Now the finished product should look like a chic fil a sign that has a blue and purple animation inside the sign. We used a similar idea when making the chic fil a store during a sunset. I took a video of a sunset and did the exact same thing. However, this time you do not have to revert the shades effected by the effect. After all of this was completed, it seemed as if we did the best with what we had. However, there were many more bumps along the road. We filmed the majority of this film with our iphones. This made for super HD video footage. This may seem like a good thing, however when you are trying to export it or upload it to anything there are bound to be little mistakes because of how big the file is. One example of this is when we uploaded the video to youtube. I waited three hours for it to upload, and then when i watch it it turns out some of the video is missing.

AICE Media Commercial

This is my finished AICE Media Commercial. In the beginning of this project we were given a couple brands to choose from. My group was me, Jack, and Aitan. We quickly realized Nike as the best choice for all of us. It was something we all liked so there were no disputed about wether or not to choose the brand. We also realized that we should be wearing nike clothes because it was a nike commercial. I wore nike socks, cleats, shorts, and a nike shirt. We also decided the commercial would be about soccer. Jack happened to have a Barcelona jersey that he lent to Aitan as he would be the goalie. We also used a bag for the cleats which was thrown to me in the beginning of the video. Jack was playing the role of the goalie. It was hard using all three of our members in the commercial. This basically meant we had to start filming and then run over and act out the scene. We would then cut out the unwanted parts of the film. I played the role of the soccer player. My favorite aspect of this film is the POV shots. We used this when I was putting on my cleats. I also like the first transition I made in the beginning of the video. Right when I catch the bag the scenery switches over to the field. The hardest shot to film was the rainbow flick over Aitan and scoring. This was difficult as we had to make sure everyone was in the frame which messed us up a couple times. I had trouble doing the rainbow perfect every time so this shot ended up taking longer than usual. For the Nike branding we put in the end, we just found pictures online. If the outside was black, we used it. I then put a luma keyer over the footage to take away the black around the nike sign. Then, I inverted the colors to make it black. Then I added the prism effect to make it look better overall.

Filming again

          Today, we filmed a part of our video that we realized was missing and we still hadn't added to the video. This was completely unintentional, so it was best that we got it out of the way as fast as possible. We noticed the missing clip when we were watching it for fun in class. I realized that there was a part of the video we completely forgot to film. This was the footage of jack driving into his driveway, using a wide angle. This would just be a minor part in the beginning of our film, however I still believed it was necessary to film and add into the video. Jack checked out a camera and tripod once school let out. We all congregated at the student parking lot after school. Jack then drove us to his house. On the way there, we decided to get chic-fil-a a popular fast food restaurant. We arrived at Jack's house and headed inside. Before starting to film the single missing shot, we sat down and ate our food. After we were all done eating, We headed out to film. We started by setting up the tripod in the desired position. This was a struggle as many cars were passing by, and we had to film in the middle of the road. However, we were safe about it and made sure to have a person watching for cars at all times. We screwed in the camera, turned it on, focused on the desired point, and we were ready to film. I told Jack the camera was set up, and had him move his car into the desired spot, I, the cameraman, gave Jack the okay to start pulling into the driveway. There was a problem with the first clip however. Jack was looking in the camera, a crucial mistake that could not be looked over. We filmed the scene again, and this time it looked perfect.

Reviewing progress 3/9

          Today, we did not do much. Basically, we just reviewed everything we had. We also made a list of everything we still have to do. To make sure I was on the right track, I checked in with Ms. Katz and made sure I had all of my blogs submitted. I had all of my blogs submitted, except for the one I am doing right now. After confirming that i was on the right path for success in this class, i decided it would be a good idea to review out video so far and make a clear list of what still had to be done. After watching, we found a couple components were missing. We realized that we did not have a tilt shot in our video. This, however, will be easily fixable as my group is reshooting soon. We also needed to add the ending fade to black, which I just forgot to put in. This will be an easy fix as well. Then, we made a list of these two things so we can be more organized, and check off tasks as we complete them. my group had a realization while we were discussing our project today. The sewage roadwork is still happening near the park we are supposed to film at. This means that we probably will not be able to film at the park we intended to. But in life, not everything goes your way, and you have to learn to adapt and work around problems. We also added to our list, possible parks that we can film at instead of George English. We had to try to choose parks that were closest to Jack's house as we still need to film some clips there. We made a list compiling of Holiday Park, Hardy Park, and Mills Pond Park. These were the three closest alternative parks that would most likely be empty for when we film there. After reshooting, all that will be left to do is edit the final product, and submit.

Re editing

          For re editing, there was quite a lot that had to get done. We had to add in new scenes, a couple new transitions, and fix some of the titles. Also, I have to make some changes to the color grading of the video. First, I worked on replacing some of the scenes that weren’t adequate. In one scene, Jack was driving his car into the driveway. The problem with this clip is that when he was driving his car into the driveway, he looked at the camera almost the whole time. This was a vital mistake that had to be reshot, as we cannot have any of the characters looking directly into the camera. I added in the new and revised shot on jack driving his car into the driveway and not looking into the camera. Next, was transitions. I decided to put myself through the torture of making a very difficult transition to make. Basically, you take an object that covers the top to the bottom of the screen and as you pass by it, the new footage appears behind the o next moving by. It is a very long process in order to create this transition. First, you have to put the old clip on top of the new one. After doing this, apply the draw mask effect onto the new clip. Now, as the object covering the screen moves make the new video’s key points for the draw mask move with the object. Now, you move over two frames and redo the last step. Repeat these steps u til the new clip covers the entire screen, then un apply the draw mask once the entire screen is filled up. The last element in our video that had to be tweaked was the color grading. Color grading a video essentially makes the video look more professional and complete. The colors look more satisfying to the eye, and depending on the theme, different color grading can be used to build a different tones in the video. For example, if I color grade the video to have blue undertones, then the viewer might be more inclined to think that it is cold weather in the video. The easiest way to color grade is to apply a LUT onto the entire video. Essentially what a LUT is is a already made color grading formula that you apply over a whole video. I will use the LUT called Aspen. This LUT puts a cool blue tone over the entire video, and makes the coloring just a little darker making the cinematic experience when watching it more professional.

Peer Review

          Today, we peer reciewed each other’s videos in class. I had to bring in my computor and hard drive this day so that I could show the video. Basically, we first were assigned partners to peer review. I was assigned Macy as my partner for peer review, and the person I was reviewing was Kenely. Once we found each other and congregated, we were then ready to start the peer review process. I watched kenely’s video while filling out the peer review sheet. His movie turned out very good and ha da good storyline. There were many different camera angles used in the video which was very good. The titles were also all there which was good since they are a key component to the video.  His storyline was about a man who is in his room laying in bed. Doesn’t sound very interesting at first, however, then we learn that there is an evil mastermind watching this man in his sleep. We see him watching this man in his room through a computor screen, which was my favorite part of it.

           Now, it was our turn to show our video. The first time, we got half way through watching our video and then the usb somehow disconnected so we had to restart watching the video. After watching through the video completely, we silently waited as Macy finished writing her peer review sheet for our video. She liked everything in our video, and said they it just needed to have some more scenes. There was one part in our video that she also said had inadequate lighting. In order to improve this we are going to film during the day and not the afternoon when it is a little darker outside. We also realized one of our biggest mistakes, for example in one of the POV shots, we weren’t facing the camera the right way. When we were filming it, we just need to make sure the footage is more steady. Also one thing to be improved upon was our sound. There were some parts of our video that had poor sound quality due to cars moving in the background, or someone talking in the background. The last thing that could be improved upon was not looking at the camera. In one shot, jack accident looks at the camera. We will make sure to fix this vital mistake.

Editing Blog 2

          Over the span of this weekend, I have felt more stress than I have in a very long time. It was my responsibility to edit the video with my other group members input whilst on a group Face Time call. I ended up driving home Sunday around 8:00 PM as I had to meet with my group members for an AICE Euro project. It was at this point that i had realized I had to get the camera, SD Card reader, and the tripod from Jack's house. I also realized I didn't have a SD Card reader so there was no way of me to dump the information onto my computer. So here I am brainstorming in the car at 8:00 PM on a Sunday night, i know very irresponsible of me, but it couldn't be helped. Best buy was closed, and so was Office Depot. So I called my sister who also took AICE Media to ask if she had one. She said she did not, however, there was one built into her computer. After having the pressure of that lifted, I drove to Jack's house to pick up the camera. After this, i raced home and dumped all of the footage onto my sister's computer. The footage, however, then had to be transferred onto my Mac so I could edit. I manually emailed every video to my computer, downloaded them from the email, and moved them onto my external hard drive.
          Now, it was finally time to start editing. While referencing the storyboard, I started the editing process with a black screen. Then Jack, Jorge, and we decided on the font and color of the titles, we decided on handwriting font, and red lettering. I added all the clips in after this. Next was transitions, I mostly used dissolve transitions with some luma fade to blacks. I then added in all the titles, and it was done!

Our Journey So Far

        This weekend, we ended up finally filming. Jorge and I found Jack after school and went to his house after school to film. We got to his house, and decided we should grab a snack before we started filming. After fueling up for filming, we set up the tripod. There was one leg that wouldn't open, but after wiggling it for a while it finally loosened up. We then attached the camera to the tripod, as we were going to film shots of Jack's car. We set the tripod in position and Jack started to drive the car along the various paths that we would need to film. First, was a shot of him driving straight, then was a shot of jack turning a corner, and was of him parking. Jack was driving the car even though Jorge was playing the robber that drives the car, this is because Jorge doesn't have his license yet. We filmed Jack driving into the driveway from two different angles. We also used a panning shot when Jack was pulling into the driveway.
        At this point, it was time to start filming the scenes where the robber is breaking an entry. First we were trying to decide what weapon the robber would be carrying whilst robbing the house. We were looking through Jack's garage to look for potential weapon props. We narrowed the list down to a bow and arrow, baseball bat, and golf club. In the end, we decided it would be best to use the baseball bat. Jorge is seen taking the baseball bat out of the trunk. He then proceeds to walk to the door, and then opens it and walks inside. At this point, we thought we had filmed enough to be able to call it a day. We took apart the tripod and packed everything up. Now, all that's needed to be done is the ending scenes, and the editing.

                                                     

Editing Blog 1

          On Friday, we checked out a camera and were ready to start filming. However, our schedules unfortunately did not line up. On Sunday Jorge had work so we weren't able to film. And on Saturday Jack had work so we weren't able to film. We also didn't film Friday and Monday for various occurring reasons. Even though the weekend was starting to look completely unproductive, we decided to get some work done that did not require all three of us to be together at the same time. We decided that Jorge would film some of the establishing shots for the video. Then after filming some of the establishing shots, he came to my house and dumped all of the footage onto a folder called Video Clips on my Mac Book. This was a process as there was so much footage and we didn't know how to transport it all. My computer only has USB-C ports and the SunDisc card reader needed a normal USB port. Our only option was to find a USB-C to USB adaptor. I went upstairs and went through some drawers by my dad's desk. I found the USB adaptor I was looking for. Now we were able to plug in the reader and dump the footage onto my computer. I'm probably going to be doing the majority of the editing during this project. The reason why we are dumping the footage onto my Mac is because we will be doing the editing on FinalCutProX which I have.  I have a few ideas as to what I want to do for the editing of this video. First, I am going to make the titles come onto the screen with a cool animation. I will also put a LUT over the entire video for color correction and to make the video have a more professional feel overall.

Struggling to Film

          We were assigned filming last week but since we have not been able to film. We were going to meet up last weekend to film. Jack was going to pick us up and drive Jorge and I to his house where we were going to film. Jack has even confirmed that it was alright to use his house to film with his parents. We had planned to film on Sunday, which happened to be a holiday. However, we could not film at the park we were originally going to because of a sewage spill that took place near by. We decided only to film the beginning of the movie that took place in Jack’s house and the street. Unfortunately, soon later there were too many people in Jack’s house to film. The noises from people was messing up everyone’s work ethic and focus. Plus, there was too much external noise to film at this point. This meant we would have to try to film at my house. This, unfortunately, failed as my sister was studying and didn’t want us making any noise. Overall, Sunday we didn’t get anything done. Monday, we couldn’t film because Jack was getting his wisdom teeth taken out. This meant that we did not have a ride in order to film. We thought that if we could get rides to Jack’s house we could all film. This, however, failed as Jack was in too much discomfort and pain in order to film. We figured the least we could do is walk through the plan. We did this and decided to switch a few minor points in order to improve the movie. Overall, we did not end up filming or getting much done. However it was good meeting as we were able to refine our plan. This may have not been ideal, but we still have a decent amount if time in order to film, edit, and make a great movie.

Planning: Storyboarding

Attached is our scene ideas for the movie. We had a debate on how we wanted to do things because we all saw different visions. These were solved quickly as we were able to settle our differences. We did this my dividing up who got what slides. This allowed us to divide them based on who wanted what. This meant we could have different visions and for them still to work. I think this will really help in the long run as we now are not disagreeing on what we want. The hardest thing was probably having to cut things out that were not important enough. We only had so many slots for scenes, and this meant much of our ideas wouldn't make it. We ended up voting many off and decided we liked what we had, and if we end up changing things this is ok too as we have planned many backup plans in case of failure.

Planning: Title Design

          Attached is our plan of our title design. We wanted to keep is simple, yet still useful. We wanted to not do too much as this would take the attention off the actual film. We are going to use only one font, spectral. Our hope for only using one is to keep it simple so not too much is going on. This will also allow the viewer to take in the blogs while still watching the movie. We also plan on keeping the movie simple by fading in and out the titles. All of this will allow for a simple title display that will show all the information. We also only plan on using contrasting colors like a black back round and white letters. This is easy and good because it allows simplicity which is not a bad thing in films.

Planning: Location, Health & Safety, Participants, Schedule

    For the planning blog, we were assigned to plan out the specifications of our filming process. In this blog it talks about our filming locations and the participants. Along with the participants and the locations, we also had to plan out what out health and safety resources will be. With this being planned, we also had to plan out what our filming process will look like until the date we will turn in the final product. To compose the schedule we began by listing the pre-production dates and task. The pre production consisted of planning, storyboarding, and finalizing ideas. After this we listed the production dates and task. During the production we will be primarily filming.To end off, we listed how we will finalize our film. The post production consisted of the editing that all go into finalizing the film. 

Planning: Title Design

          Attached is our plan of our title design. We wanted to keep is simple, yet still useful. We wanted to not do too much as this would take the attention off the actual film. We are going to use only one font, spectral. Our hope for only using one is to keep it simple so not too much is going on. This will also allow the viewer to take in the blogs while still watching the movie. We also plan on keeping the movie simple by fading in and out the titles. All of this will allow for a simple title display that will show all the information. We also only plan on using contrasting colors like a black back round and white letters. This is easy and good because it allows simplicity which is not a bad thing in films.

Planning: Sound Script

Attached is our presentation on the sounds going on in the movie clip. We felt presenting it scene by scene would be best, as it very logically shows the progression of our sounds. We wanted to start off not diving into action, so we have little to no sound. As we progress in the presentation you will see there is more and more dialogue and diegetic sound. We thought this would be best as we want to build suspense. Another reason this presentation is important is because of the fact that it will be used as a check list for us. We can compare it to the scenes we have and make sure we hit everything we want. We did not include it in the slideshow, but we have multiple plan-b's if one of these sounds doesn't work out and we cannot create it correctly. The biggest thing in the presentation we liked to see is the continuation of the music. This will allow for a clean flowing 2 minutes as making it choppy with too much sound and music may not be best for the movie as a whole.

Planning: Shooting Script

     Attached is our planned out shooting script. We wanted to incorporate a chase scene as it was something we all grew up watching. We went from scene to scene and tried to portray each of the major plot points of the first two minutes. The hardest part of making this script is going to be keeping to it. During the writing, we had many disagreements of what we wanted, and had to cut out many good ideas. We knew we wanted to use many unique shots like trunk shots, but still wanted to keep the plot normal through use of things like wide shots. We really like how we have developed the movie so far, I just do not know if everything we have in mind like the crane shots will work. We also have a few extra backup plans if things fall through. However, I dont think we will need to go to these extremes as none of out locations are changing and we have minimalistic props. These such locations are houses, public parks, and docks, all of which are public access and never close.