Analyse and Research the Audience 10.1.1,10.1.2

My idea is a short crime thriller focusing on a old detective who loses his family to a crime syndicate and he is out for revenge he is looking to take something of theirs like they took his family. He does this by going after the leader who killed his family who he has discovered is hiding at the syndicates warehouse in the old industrial district. It starts with him stood over a grave in the rain look fa lorn and sad as the he looks we then see the first flash back which shows him and his family happy in a park playing showing him in particular smiling and laughing. The camera pans round to reveal that the graves belong to his wife and  young child. We then see a silhouetted flashback off the gun firing, the bullet casing hitting the floor and then a body hitting the floor before cutting back to the detective looking at the grave. He then turns and walks away with his head down. He gets in his car and sets off to confront the leader at the warehouse and to take his revenge for what he did to him. Whilst in the car he has multiple short flash backs of his family and he starts to question whether or not he should do what he’s about to do. He shakes off the thoughts and keeps going on his way for revenge. As the car pulls up to the warehouse he knows what he has to do. As he enters the build and walks to where he knows he is he pauses briefly, he looks and says I’m sorry before he continues as he busts the door down the criminal leader stands in front of him begging for mercy. As he does this the leader drops to his knees before the screen cuts to black and a gunshot is heard followed by another and then it ends.

The target of audience of this film would by young adults between the ages of 16 to 26 from both genders. I would also look at sending its to various film festivals around the UK to increase the coverage and help the distribution of the film to the target audience. For example the Newcastle International Film and Television Festival which aims to showcase the best of independent film making and TV. The festival has been running for 2 years and is held between the 24th and the 27th of October 2019. In 2018 the festival had a reach 11 million across all traditional media and a further 1.2 million through the use of social media. An other example is World of Film International Festival Glasgow  which is in its Sixth year and aspires to bring audiences, filmmakers and industry professionals together. The main focus of the focus of the festival is on independent cinema from all over the globe. The price to enter these film festivals can range in price the Newcastle Festival is £26.07 and £23.00 for students to enter the festival at the early bird deadline but rises to £35.27 but stays the same for students to enter their films into the festival. The festival in Glasgow is £15.34 at the very early deadline but rises to £46.01 at the latest deadline for entry of films. The terms of these festivals are often that the films must not include a political messages and if the film shows any explicit content that they must be notified of this when the film is submitted. I would like to enter the these film festivals as it helps to expand the audience that the film reaches and also increase the international recognition as these film festivals attract a global audience. The festivals also open the to people who may not be covered by your target audience this means that you have are expanded target audience and a better chance to have your film seen be a larger audience.

Another way I could advertise the film is through the use of social media such as Facebook and Instagram which is widely used by my target audience and would help get the film noticed. For example the website Statistica reports that 18 to 24 year old’s make up a total of 27% of Facebook’s total users (16% Male, 11% Female) and for 25 to 34 that number becomes 30% (18% Male, 12% Female). For Instagram the 18 to 24 year old users make up 32% (17% Male, 15% Female) and this is the same for 25 to 34 year old’s. These statistics are useful to see the gender split in each age group and to see which gender is more likely to see more about the film. Another social media platform is Twitter  which is used by 36% of Americans aged between 18 and 29, twitter also estimates that 80% of its users are “affluent millennial’s.” The gender split is near equal with around 21% of Men and Women using Twitter in the USA. Twitter is also the most widely used social media for news in America in 2018 followed by Reddit and Facebook with Instagram much further down the list with only 27% of people get news compared to Twitter’s 74% and Facebook’s 68%. To get more accurate statistics I conducted a survey. In this survey I wanted to know what most people use and how to market the film to its target audience.

Existing social media campaigns for certain films are another way of looking into how to market the film. For example the Marvel Studios Twitter account uses small clips from films as well as retweeting tweets from other twitter accounts of the films it is attempting to promote. This has the effective getting the film to reach a larger audience who may not be aware of the film’s account but may follow the main account. Another account that also does this is Universal Pictures which again uses short clips and promotional material from the films account to raise more peoples awareness to the film. Another way of doing it however is through the film’s main account which is more focused. An example of this is the twitter account for the up coming film First Man this account is to promote the film by posting promotional material such as the trailer and sneak previews as well as retweeting posts from the actors. Another main stream account for promoting films is the Warner Bros. Pictures twitter which is currently promoting the new Fantastic Beasts film which is currently in cinemas. The film has been received well and has currently made $272.6 million at the box office currently but the film is still in cinemas and will make much more from the these campaigns continue to increase the reach of the film to more people. The use of Facebook is also important to films as its another vital tool for advertising films, Marvel studios is one of the film studios to use Facebook as its one of the largest social media platform and is seen by the largest demographic of people which increases the audience it reaches. These campaigns helped the films they where promoting where spread to such a large audience that these film were incredibly successful at the box office with Night School making $99.7 million and Ant Man and The Wasp making $622.6 million and this was undoubtedly influenced by the reach of social media and the people brought in by its reach.

A way that I could fund my film is thought the use of crowd funding on websites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. These sites are often used by independent film makers to fund small budget films that aren’t going to be made by large studios. This young, independent filmmakers to get there films made and to get there name out to the larger studios. An example of a crowd funded film is Wish I Was Here by Zach Braff which hit its target of $2000000 and reached $3105473, this goal being reached meant the the film could by made independent of studios and large scale investors. This means that the director the film has complete creative freedom over the final film. Another example of a film being crowd fund is Da Sweet Blood of Jesus by Spike Lee. The film wanted to rise $1250000 but eventually raised $1400000 which mean’t that the film got made without studio interference like Spike Lee had previously experienced on other films. One of the most successful examples of this is The Veronica Mars Movie Project which raised $5702153 from a goal of $2000000 which made it one of the most well funded projects ever. A smaller film that was Innocente which raised $52527 of its $50000 target. All these projects used incentives to attract people to the films. For Example Wish I Was Here which had a total of 64 reward tiers as incentives the cheapest of these was $10 and the most expensive was $10000 the wide range of pledge sizes mean’t that the people who didn’t have much to pledge still could and those who really wanted to see the film could pledge loads to help the project be produced. Innocente also had reward tiers but it only had 10 ranging from $10 to $10000 however due to the small amount of tiers the range of prices is more varied and there aren’t as many tiers for people with less money to pledge.

In this focus group I was involved i which we talked about how we were market our films. In the group we talked about which social media we were going to use to market them the ones we mention are Facebook and Instagram to promote the films as they are tow of the most widely used social media platforms we talk about the reasons for using these platforms.

In this question I asked which social media people used the most selected social media was Facebook followed by Instagram. Two people put other they said YouTube and Tumblr. These results show that Facebook and Instagram are the most popular which means that they be the best to market the film on.

In this question I asked about the length of time people spend on social media which shows that the people who took this survey mostly use social media for long periods of time per day. This suggests that the use of social media for marketing is a very viable way of attracting more people than any other for of marketing.

In this question I asked on which question I asked which social media site had the most noticeable advertising. The answers showed the most noticeable advertising was on Facebook with most of the people asked saying Facebook other the other options.

In this question I asked at what time of day people used social media, the results of the question were very varied as most people used social media later on in the day. However some of the people do use social media earlier on in the day.

In this question I asked what most people would notice on the more on social media. People showed that there were more likely too notice memes than anything else which shows that one of the best ways that you can market the film is through the use of memes.

In this question I asked the which social media do people interact with the most. People said Facebook the most however the results were varied as the other people who did the survey also said was that the people interacted on Instagram and Snapchat as well.

In this question I asked which film advert was the last that most people saw. The answer to this question were all different as they all had different genres and styles for example Johnny English: Reborn and Captain Marvel.

In this question I asked how the advert caught there eye. The responses where again very varied as the advert occasionally was forced at the start of the a YouTube video or had short pieces of action from the film.

In this question I asked people what kind of effect these adverts have on people. The majority of people said that these adverts had no influence over them as they would choose what films they want to see.

In this question I asked people what there opinions of this type of advertise was and there was relatively even split of people who liked and disliked this kind of advertising. This shows it would be useful to use.

In conclusion this post has helped me to understand the best use of social media for my film. I have learn’t that the use of social media is a vital tool to promote a film. The use of platforms like Facebook and Instagram are vital to expand the audience. I have also learn’t that film festivals are also useful in expand the viewers of the film and open it up to other people who are outside the target audience. It has also showed me the best ways to market my film and to gather support for my film and help open it up to more people. It has also helped me gain feed back for the film and what people would like to see from the film as well as spreading my film to multiple different areas and people who may not be as interested in a film of this type if they hadn’t seen the social media campaign.

Bibliography:

Hootsuite Social Media Management. (2018). 28 Twitter Stats All Marketers Should Know in 2018. [online] Available at: https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-statistics/ [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

Distribution of Facebook users worldwide as of July 2018, a. (2018). Global Facebook user age & gender distribution 2018 | Statistic. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/376128/facebook-global-user-age-distribution/ [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

Distribution of Instagram users worldwide as of January 2018, a. (2018). Instagram: age distribution of global audiences 2018 | Statistic. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/325587/instagram-global-age-group/ [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

FilmFreeway. (2018). Newcastle International Film and Television Festival. [online] Available at: https://filmfreeway.com/NiFT2019 [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].

FilmFreeway. (2018). World of Film International Festival Glasgow. [online] Available at: https://filmfreeway.com/WorldofFilmFestivalGlasgow [Accessed 28 Sep. 2018].