Evaluation Question 2

How does your product engage with the audience and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

How does your product engage with the audience?

We are a low budget movie which means that we were not able to hire and famous actors. One of the ways movies especially rom/com genre films engage audience is by hiring famous actors. However, we were not abled to do so we have tried to base our movie on the genre which is well known. Therefore we have engaged with the audience by using:

• Locations: we have filmed our film in variety of locations starting with the houses of our central protagonists and ending with the school. Those two locations could relate to our target audience as theses two are the  places which they have probably spent most of their life in.

• Mise-en-scene: For this we have used costumes, make up, lighting to create a better relationship between the audience and the protagonists in the movie. We dressed our characters in a specific clothing to make a clear statement of who the characters are and what their social status is like.

• We have used Sound such as diegetic and non-diegetic music thought out the opening. The music we have used for non-diegetic sound is valentina by the hunts. We have also used some voiceovers from the central protagonist. 

• Voiceover: Many rom-com genres use voiceover one example is Bridget Jones Dairy. She used voiceover right at the beginning of the movie. We made a voiceover of our central protagonist to show her feeling and thoughts to the audience so they could relate to her more as well as narrate the story to the audience.

• Characters: We have got 6 characters, 1 antagonist and 1 central protagonist. We have tried to relate to different classes and different characteristics. 

• Titles: We have used our own titles using; toothpaste, gummy bears, books and cereal. We have tried to create titles out of things that are used in everyday life of people.

• Shot types: We have also got a variety of shot types which makes the opening more interesting, creating different angles and shots allows audience to feel as if they are at the characters place. 

How would it be distributed as a real media text?
Sourced from: The Numbers

There are six big distributors: 
Warner Bros. Pictures
20th Century Fox
Paramount Pictures
Universal Pictures
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Walt Disney Studios

These are the current Major film distributors taken for Wikipedia 

Bellow are the current Mini-major studios.

These are the top movies of 2015, as you may notice most of the films are actions movies.

Mad Max was distributed by Warner Bros. which is the 3rd on the list of Major distributors. Inside Out is made by Disney and Distributed by Disney as well. Star Wars was distributed as Disney as well. Carol was by Studio Canal is UK and Weinstein Company, The was distributed in US. Avengers was by Walt Disney Studios. Ex Machina - Universal Pictures International. Bring Him Home- 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.

As you can see all the films were distributed by the Major studio parent. 

These are the romantic comedy movies, the first one "Brooklyn" was distributed by 20th Century Fox, the second one was Universal International. As you nay notice all of these movies are adult based rom-coms.

The Princess Diaries was distributed by Disney, Wild Child was distributed by Working Title, Mean Girls was distributed by Universal. The DUFF by Lionsgate.

Big Six:

Their movies are focused on global audience which means that their movies are mostly stereotyped to engage the audience and identify the characters as well as culture. The characters in their movies have to be recognisable which means that they are mostly well known celebrities and depending on the movie the accents vary from american to english to Canadian, etc. The accents would not be strong compared to "Mikybo and me".

1.Disney

2.Warner Bros.

3.20th Century Fox

5. 20th Century Fox/Warner Bros.

Working Title:

Waring Title is a subsidiary of a NBC Universal. It is originally English company which then joined the parent studio NBC Universal. Working Title has a variety of rom-com genre movies. For example: Bridget Jones Diary with a budget of $26m , "Definitely, Maybe", "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Wild Child".

Self Distribution:

It is another way of distribution, in that concept we get to distribute our film ourselves, in that way it would be a Micro budget production. The benefits of self distribution is that you will get a full control over the film as you would get to chose where your movie would be shown. This would also mean that you wouldn't have to give a cut of money made from the sales. On the other hand there are some disadvantages; it is time consuming, chasing buyers and sales and filling in paperwork. Distribution companies have long time relationship with their buyers so there is a possibility that the buyer would not trust to buy a film from you. 

Warp has self distributed film Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee. They came up a great marketing idea such as collapsed the cinema release window as they promoted a fake cinematic release campaign to advertise the DVD release by doing interviews.  

However, we have got a micro budget the chances of us doing such an advertising is low.

An example of a movie with no control over a movie is Corey Geenop's film "Wandering Rose". This film is a great example of a film which lost control over the film. Distributor has changed the trailer which was already provided and title was changed to "Demon Baby".


Bechtel Test:

Bechtel Test is when the movie is tested on whether there are more than two females in the movie if so do they have names? And if they do! Do they talk about something other than men? Believe it or not many movies have not passed the test so now the question is made for us. Does our movie pass the Bechtel test?

Our movie passed the test but half way through. We based our movie on already existing movies such as "Mean Girls", "DUFF" which do pass the test. However, we have only done the film opening which means that the movie cannot be fully marked. The female characters are given names and there are more females than males. However, the characters are all against each other, which later on appears to be because of the guy.

Conclusion:
Overall, I thought that StudioCanal because it works with low budget films such as Billy Eliot. StudioCanal was abled to distribute the film not only in UK but also worldwide. StudioCanal has a long history and they are reliable in a distribution sphere. Our movie would be made in DVD and would be able to translate over TV. However, I think that self distributing it would be better because we will have a full control over the film and where to distribute it. To start of we can market it on social media because it is cheap, easy to access and can go viral. For example FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube which we have already worked with to share our film opening. Self distributing means that we would have to do more work in order to get people to see it. This process is very tiering but for the genre such as our it would be easier because this format has already been distributed and has been successful in different movies. For the distribution platform, it would be available on DVD, TV and social media as I have mentioned before.