Ancillary Task - Research Analysis - Part 1

For the film trailers I analysed I mainly stuck to action films as this is a genre that appeals to both myself and my team. For the ancillary task we will be making film posters for our own film trailer and so analysing and understanding already existing posters is important to learn techniques and gain ideas. I decided to analyse the film posters that go along side the trailers I analysed in the previous posts. My first analysis was for the film 'Edge of Tomorrow' (2014), when analysing these posters I will focus on the micro elements including the print, colour, layout, font size and the images used, etc.

By looking at the 'Edge of Tomorrow' poster I could pick out some key techniques used and analyse them to further my thoughts and knowledge on the techniques conveyed by the producers. As well as analysing the film posters I also decided to ask a couple of friends who have not seen the film to give a review on the poster so I could extend my knowledge on what viewers find appealing about the posters and what is seen as generic or unnecessary.

"The poster is a generic action film poster. The armour looks pretty cool on the characters. I recognised both Tom and Emily but the slogan sounds too cheesy and like the name of a song. It looks futuristic and is intriguing as to what they are wearing and what is going on. The vehicles in the sky are reminiscent of something from Star Wars which makes me worry it could be trying to copy that element. The poster makes me think the film will be generic and unoriginal and therefore does not entice me to watch the film enough". - Tom Cooper (A Level Student).

"The slogan/other name gives away a lot about the premise of the film and the character's armour looks very impressive. The background looks a bit convoluted and the characters look out of place as the background seems to present intense war while the characters appear to be relaxed and stood still at that time. However, the futuristic feel the poster gives off makes it seem like it will be an exciting action movie". - Adam Newton (A Level Student)

I thought the reviews were clear and concise and their was some clear concerns throughout about the film, mainly the tagline 'Live Die Repeat' which some labelled as cheesy or too much that it confuses viewers. I will remember the techniques used and these reviews when making our posters as it is an important stage of marketing when selling a film. 

Primary Task - The Groups Findings

I have created in-depth analysis presentations on film trailers for action films in previous posts. As well as this, my team (Vince and Max) also independently created some presentations as well. By doing a few each independently, we can then view each others and learn new techniques that we may not have considered for our own analysis but also suggest methods to the team. By working independently but sharing our work, the team is pulled closer in co-operation which is a great start of the project as we will be working together very much in future stages of this task. Vince's and Max's presentations are attached below:

Primary Task - Research Analysis - Part 2

Similarly to the previous post, I decided to select another film trailer for analysis to further my skills in spotting techniques used in film trailers and their effectiveness. As before I will remember details such as micro elements (mise-en-scene, editing, sound etc) as well as the macro elements (narrative, genre, star power, etc). I decided to again use Google Slides for this presentation as it is a great tool for incorporating YouTube videos and is very user friendly which is important to me.



As with my first study into the 'Edge of Tomorrow' trailer, this trailer showed media techniques in order to create tension and engagement with viewers. In many cases both trailers used the same techniques although there was some differences. As before I decided to send the trailer to two friends that have not seen the film to write a review for the trailer. The two friends do not take media studies A level and have wrote a short review below, I thought it was important that they didn't take the subject as I feel other class members may over think and over analyse the trailer.

"The trailer was enticing in the sense that it was short, snappy and effectively portrayed the key elements of the '007' franchise such as: action, erotica and luxury. The downside of the trailer was, in my opinion, that it lacked a display of the actual 'James Bond' character and I feel it could have better achieved this in an extended trailer. Overall the trailer is attractive enough to make me like to see Casino Royale" - Seb Gappa (A Level Student).

"It looked like a classic James Bond film with beautiful women and a lot of action. You can tell there's going to be comedy elements between Bond and 'M'. It looks like something I would enjoy going and seeing. Not much to fault other than most of the stunts seem fairly unbelievable, for example, when Bond is seen to jump on to a crane and just hang on, I don't think he could've held on and not have been hurt." - Ben Glanville (Platform One Music College Student).

I thought the comments about the fact it felt like a Bond film were interesting as it proves there has been so many films that people can identify a Bond film by its unique array of cars, women and action and shows how powerful and engaging the franchise has been.

Primary Task - Research Analysis - Part 1

For the next part of the research task, I went onto YouTube and found film trailers I enjoy and analysed them remembering details such as the micro elements (mise-en-scene, editing, sound etc) as well as the macro elements (narrative, genre, star power, etc). By doing this task, I will be able to understand techniques used in real trailers for big films and think about whether there is similarities between them as well as my personal and groups favourite techniques which we will be able to consider using when making our own film trailer. I have embedded the full trailer below within Google Slides and then picked out individual scenes for analysis.



By looking at the 'Edge of Tomorrow' trailer I could pick out some key media techniques and analyse them and it has given me thoughts and ideas about what I would like to see in a trailer. Especially one of this sort with complexity and action. Although film reviews are very common on the internet, it is harder to find trailer reviews and so I could see if others shared the views of myself, I decided to ask my parents to watch the trailer and give it a short review.

"The trailer was quite long and clearly was trying to make clear how the story was going to work in terms of elements of it being repeated plus showing plenty of action so that you can understand the nature of the movie. The trailer has made me want to watch the film but made me wonder why they chose such a lengthy full name (Life Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow) and why they considered that the audience wouldn't be able to quickly grasp the concept because the trailer was some-what repetitive in terms of telling you the nature of the story" - My Dad (Paul Barfoot).

"A very exciting thrilling adventure that wasn't obviously predictable. Mixed with humour and a love story. Excellent graphics but I worried I was seeing the best parts of the film in the trailer. The scenery was nice. It looked action packed and it made me want to see the film despite the long trailer!" - My Mum (Julie Barfoot)

I thought the comments about the length of the trailer was interesting considering my research into trailer norms suggesting that over two minutes is too long and this trailer does indeed go over two minutes, however I believe this is because they needed to include enough content to make the story clear to viewers.

Regulation

For this task, I will be looking into the rules and regulations that are enforced onto films by the BBFC. Last school year, we had a BBFC employee talk us media students about the ratings and they issues they face. This speech was very interesting and can help me with this task and my knowledge about the BBFC. I decided to make this presentation on 'PowToon' as it is a programme I enjoyed experimenting with in the AS tasks and would like to continue to learn features it includes, I will then upload it to YouTube and post below.

Target Audience - Part 3

For the final post in this task about target audiences I will be looking at how audiences are measured for the film industry. For the film industry, figures and statistics are found from multiple different places.

FAME
FAME (Film Audience Measurement and Evaluation) by Pearl and Dean is the cinema industry's key tool for analysing film viewing and viewing habits/behaviours. The FAME survey was launched in 2007 and replaced CAVIAR which had a similar purpose but used face-to-face interviews unlike FAME which uses full online surveys. FAME aims to cover all aspects of film consumption and find according statistics. It looks at the experience of cinema, DVD, on-demand viewing, trailers, advertising, reviews, 3D viewing, digital, information sourcing, social media, piracy, etc. The FAME survey only asks questions to those who have been to the cinema within the last 6 months to ensure they have valid experience. The sample size is around 3,300 all aged 7+. The look into both behaviour of gender, race and age. The FAME 2015 research was conduced independently by CrowdDNA. The Film Monitor survey is another survey conducted by FAME and finds out information on individual films. The Film Monitor Survey by TNS is carried out every two week and askes over 1,000 people ages 7+. They also monitor films to see the demographics including sex, age, social class and race, etc. Pearl and Dean and the FAME survey helps to find audience and industry statistics including this fact about advertising...

MINTEL
Mintel International Group Ltd are a marketing intelligence company. They produce an annual report on the UK cinema market and is aimed at the commercial sector. It covers the market factors, size and trends and discusses segmentation, the supply structure, advertising, promotion and consumers.

ONS
ONS (Office for National Statistics) produced figures on cinema admissions based on estimates for the film exhibition in 2009. The ONS still produces reports on household spending, including these cinema tickets.

DODONA/CINEMAGOING UK
DODONA and CINEMAGOING UK produce annual reports covering the UK, Europe and wider markets. They provide information on films released, distributed and look the finance such as revenues and forecasts.

There are other ways in which audience viewing is measured in the film industry. This included exit polls after the cinema etc, or simply looking into box office returns and profit on films aswell as the UK Cinema Association. These firms are essential to the industry to allow for audiences to be understood by the firms to allow for films to be made that are demanded and to be tailored for the correct audience. The table below shows the UK cinema goers in 2016 and are for me, very surprising. For every month this year there has been more than 11,000,000 cinema goers which is more than one sixth of the population. I found this very surprising but would be interested to find out how many of these are the same people that go multiple times per month.

Target Audience - Part 2

For my second part in research into target audiences I decided to create a survey to find out viewing habits of audiences with films and their trailers. I decided to create a survey on Google Forms as I am familiar with it and feel that a printed out survey may mean that more people take time to fill it out and think more about their answers. It also makes it easier for me to give it to a good sample of ages and gender and other factors. Below is a screenshot of the survey as well as it being filled out by a participant.

 

By the end, I had given out 40 surveys, I tried to give them out to a fair amount of ages. This proved difficult as the age range at school is very small but I managed to get some older people to fill out the survey as I have multiple copies to my grandparents who gave them to neighbours and friends as well as my parents and their friends. The charts below show the results of the questionnaires.

Target Audience - Part 1

For the first part of this task I decided to look at the techniques used to find a specific target audience and how information is found and gathered to allow for an ideal audience to be established. Once this is found the production and advertising can be tailored in a certain way for this audience. For example, if the audience is young they may focus their marketing on social media instead of newspaper adverts.




The audio clip below is a little over 8 minutes long and discusses my watching habits and how they have changed over the last few years. I then asked my mum and dad to answer some questions about the topic as heard below.

After having heard about the viewing habits of my parents I tried to create links between them and myself. I had suspected that there may be a difference because of gender and more specifically age. From the questions asked I found that there were not many differences when talking about viewing devices because as we live in the same house, the technology is the same for all. To conclude, asking my parents about their viewing habits was not particularly successful as it is too small a sample to get good ideas about audiences in general. From here, I will create a survey... (see next post!).