1. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? EVALUATION QUESTION TWO Luke Conboy Our Film: ‘BRUV’

2. Contents 1.) Marketing Our Film – Case Study 2.) Marketing Our Film – Case Study 3.) General Marketing 4.) Case Study – Kidulthood 5.) Case Study – Kidulthood 6.) Target Audience 7.) Releasing Our Film 8.) Releasing Our Film 9.) Classification 10.) Unique Selling Point 11.) Magazine 12.) Tagline 13.) Film Magazine Cover 14.) Film Poster

3. Marketing Our Film – Case Study To produce a successful film, we need a strong marketing campaign. Our film will be an independent British social realism film. Despite the clear differences between our film and Cloverfield, we can learn from how this film was promoted to aid with our marketing campaign. At the time of production, Cloverfield had a relatively unknown cast. This could have possibly been done to make the film more ‘real’ – a common occurrence more so in social realism films. So similarly with our film, we aim to show a relatively unknown cast to get this ‘real factor’ with our production. Despite this unknown cast, Cloverfield grossed $170,764,026 worldwide*. Which suggests that the way this film was marketed was the key factor in drawing in such a large audience. Source: *http://www.imdb. com/title/tt106027 7/businesshttp://www.imdb. com/title/tt106027 7/business

4. Marketing Our Film – Case Study For Cloverfield, it is clear that what made people want to see this film is a powerful trailer. The trailer gives little information about the film. It focuses on snippets, almost teasers to draw in an audience. trailer As such little information was given away, the people who were highly interested in this film turned to various viral and social networking websites to seek more information and discuss the film with friends. Thus a buzz was created for this film.

5. A trailer that is effective only gives away an appropriate amount of information. Trailers that essentially show their film in a two minute segment are the poor ones, What Lies Beneath is an example of this.What Lies Beneath What we have learnt from poor trailers is not to give away too much of the narrative and only show what is appropriate. However, if too little information is show, it may confuse and misguide our target audience. Like Cloverfield, our film will need a strong viral marketing campaign, via the means of social networking websites such Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Therefore: our trailer will only provide basic information, such as introducing our characters, setting and plot – but only introduce, not describe or analyse. Then with a teasing trailer and an audience wanting to know more, this is where social networking will come in and the first steps have been taken towards a successful marketing campaign.

6. Case Study: Kidulthood http://industry.bfi.org.uk/exitpolls The BFI carried out the following research, with 211 samples; 89 males, 122 females. With 158 of them under 25, leaving 53 of them being over 25. The BFI wanted to find out things such as: finding out how viewers heard about Kidulthood and what acted as their ‘baits to attendance’ – meaning what made people want to view the film, things such as hearing friends talk about it or wanting to watch the film because of its director. We can look at the data that the BFI has produced and then can further understand what makes people want to watch this film. With this film being very similar to ours: a British social realism film with a very prominent gang theme, it is very likely that whatever had drawn an audience to this film, the same methods will also draw an audience to our film.

7. The BFI’s findings show that the most common way that audiences heard about Kidulthood was via word of mouth. This is unsurprising as word of mouth usually springs from a viral marketing campaign; and as previous stated, an independent low budget film would focus on a viral campaign to minimize costs. This data further convinces that our film needs a successful viral marketing campaign in order to have high audience numbers. The most common bait for attendance for this film was the story appealing to the audience. It is likely the way people first began to understand the storyline of Kidulthood was by watching the trailer and getting a good idea about what the film entailed. The data also shows 25% of the sample wanted to see the film because their friends were talking about it. This suggests there was a successful buzz about the film, possibly due to an effective viral marketing campaign.

8. Target Audience With our target audience being: young British males aged between 15-24, steps have to be taken to attract this type of person. Our audience were very much born into a digital age. Over the years social networking has developed more and more, now it has become a powerful tool for promoting films. We aim to capitalise on this relatively new way of marketing film and then ideally have a buzz about our film. Furthermore, our target audience are more likely to find out information on various websites, as opposed to newspapers or magazines. This again supports the vitalness of our film being successfully promoted on Web 2.0 features, such as social networking sites.

9. Releasing Our Film As our film is of the genre Social Realism, this limits the time when we can release our film to enable a successful promotion. Furthermore, as we have made an independent low budget film, it will be difficult for us to compete with the mainstream big budget blockbusters. Looking at the release dates of the following films, we can make a decision as to when would be a good time to release ours. Mainstream and Big BudgetIndependent and Low Budget Inception – 16 th JulyTrainspotting – 23th February Transformers – 27 th JulyKidulthood – 3 rd March Terminator 2 – 16 th AugustShank – 26 th March 2012 – 13 th NovemberThis Is England – 27 th April I Am Legend – 26 th DecemberFish Tank – 11 th September

10. Releasing Our Film Looking at the release dates of the films, there is a clear difference as to when big budget films are released compared to low budget ones. The mainstream big budget films are mostly released around the Christmas period and the Summer months, with the low budget independent films filling in the gaps. By researching release dates of films with a similar genre to ours, we have decided to release in the month of April. This would seem appropriate as it leaves enough space either side of the Christmas period and the coming Summer months, when the big budget films are commonly released. By specifically selecting a time for when we want to release our film, we aim to optimize the amount of potential viewers. As ideally during this time, there will be limited big budget mainstream films to steal our potential audiences.

11. Classification We have decided to aim to classify our film as a 15. We reached this decision because we had already agreed that our target audience would be the ages 15-24, therefore it would be a glaring error if we were to create a film deserving of an 18 certificate: as almost half of our target audience would be unable to see the film. Equally, if we were to make a film with a 12/12A, the top end of our target audience may not then find the film appealing. Ergo, we need to seek a balance between our target audience and make a film that is appealing to all ages between 15-24. This balance includes not having too much violence or explicit language in our film making it deserving of an 18 certificate. But also having enough of these features to make it a 15 certificate, as opposed to a 12/12A certificate.

12. USP – Unique Selling Point The USP of our film is the theme of adoption and how it effects life for both adoptee and the family adopting. We then tied this in with a gang theme, so then we are taking an uncommon theme putting with a common theme and that’s our film and its USP. There are no films that focus on adoption like ours. By having such an unusual theme we are taking a risk, but it can work when it is linked together with a more typical theme. Thus minimizing the chance of our risk failing. If a film is too unusual and unfamiliar to a normal audience, they would quickly become dis-interested. Audiences like a film to be kept simple and not feature too many twists or scenes that require too much thinking. We aim to make our film simple, but not too simple so we maintain our USP - The USP is what makes people want to see our film.

13. Magazine A suitable magazine for us to use would be Little White Lies. This would be an ideal magazine for us as the target audience is of a relatively young age, close to that of our film target audience. This magazine has a modern design about it, something which makes it appealing to a younger audience. Also with the design of this magazine is that the front cover remains very minimal. Again, this can be seen as appealing to the younger audience as all they see is the main film that the magazine is focusing on. If they like the film or like the look of the film, they are likely to buy the magazine. So with our film being the main film in question, this would ideally give our film maximum exposure. As with this magazine in particular, it is not competing with any other films on the front cover. If our film were to be competing against a big-budget heavy CGI film for example, it is likely it would see much less exposure and will be over- shadowed. Meaning our film would receive much less attention. Less attention means less of a buzz – something which we heavily rely on being independent and low-budget.

14. Tagline “If it’s a choice between friends or family, who would you choose?” We were inspired by Kidulthood when coming up with our tagline. When researching films similar to ours we found that some films did not even have a tagline, Kidulthood is very much in a minority. We felt having a tagline can be very effective when summing up a film in one sentence, or even providing extra information. When it came to thinking about our actual tagline, we looked towards the main themes of our film. This is when it came clear that friends and difficulty with friendships was a prominent theme, then we deemed it suitable for a possible effective tagline. We then thought that our main character sees his friends at the foster home as ‘family’, and once he was taken away from this theoretical family, he was adopted in to a new family. So then the foster home family now became just ‘friends’ in light of this new family. Furthermore, in the film there are difficulties with the new and old ‘families’ co-exisiting. So then we saw it as a choice, friends or family. This tagline can also relate to every day real life matters, making a very effective tagline.

15. Film Magazine Cover This is my completed film magazine cover. I’ve chosen to use Little White Lies magazine for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the target audience of this magazine matches up with the target audience of our film: the ages 15- 24 and British. Secondly, the magazine typically promotes independent films. Again, this matches up with our film we have produced an independent film. Lastly, from a marketing perspective, our film would find it difficult competing alongside mainstream big budget films. Therefore it is ideal our film is the one featured on a magazine cover, as this way it is not being over-shadowed by any other films.

16. Film Poster This is the film poster I have created for our film. It features all the conventional aspects that are found on other film posters. The magazine shows: The title of the film The release date The tagline An image featuring the main characters A background image suitable for the genre The ‘copy’, listing the directors and producers The certificate of the film The logo of the production company