Blackfish Case Study

Blackfish is documentary style movie based around Orca's also known as Killer Whales and how they are in captivity and the wild. The documentary is an unbiased documentary showing the good and the bad side of Orca's and them being in captivity. This documentary is based around the Orca called Tilikum at Sea World Florida and how the Orca has killed three people in the past and is still being used at Sea World. The most recent death from Tilikum being its well known and respected trainer called Dawn Brancheau.
The movie was directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite her view on the matter is not to rid SeaWorld of having these animals in captivity but to rather the Orca's be used for entertainment purpose's but to use them for education and teach the millions of people that visit every year what Orca's are capable of and how they are in the wild.
The making of this movie would have been difficult for Gabriela Cowperthwaite as getting footage of incidents in the past may have copyright issues or people may not want it broadcasted. Not only this but being a documentary based film its very conventional to have interviews with people such as trainers and locals. This would have been hard work as getting a trainer of Sea World to interview about who they work for could cost them their job. Which is why throughout the documentary we see 'Former Trainers of SeaWorld' being interviewed about the whales and how they were treated.
We see former trainers of SeaLand where the Orc Tilikum was first taken and how he was mistreated by being shoved into tiny holding pins where he could barely move and and be beat up by two other killer whales. This could of had an impact on the whales future behaviour and probably shows he should of been kept in captivity.
Throughout the movie the film maker interviews different trainers and owners to show everyones opinions to get both sides of the story for these whales. The reason being as the director does not want to give of a bias view of the story and to put all the blame on SeaWorld.  The documentary does well to show people the true nature of these Whales and what they are capable of. It is aimed towards any audience as the director wants to get the story known.

Film Advertising Essay

When advertising and marketing a film there are many things you have to look at in order to market your film across correctly. For example film posters can be created to look completely different to what the film may be about just by using certain images from the film and choosing certain fonts. This can generate negative views towards a film as people could misinterpret the movie.The poster on the right is one I made for the horror movie Insidious. The poster looks like a family movie just by using a particular font and family images from the film. This shows how easy  it is to misinterpret the film to possibly generate a bigger audience.

By looking at posters made for ‘The Hunger Games’ they are very basic showing the main characters and a badge for the movie. But they never misinterpret what the movie is about as most images show them with fire backgrounds and weapons, which keeps in key with it being an action movie. They also tell the audience that their is a female lead role and her look tells the audience a lot about her just from the one image. She is holding a bow and arrow and has a fierce look in her which tells the audience she is the hero.

Film company's will market their films differently to aim towards certain cultures, as ‘The Hunger Games’ will already have a fan base through its books.  Another way the marketing campaigners will market to its target audience is through conventions. ‘The Hunger Games” was first shown by ‘Lionsgate’ to its fans at one of the biggest conventions called ‘ComicCon’ all that was shown was the mocking jay logo on fire which its fans would recognize what’s being revealed and then underneath was the title ‘The Hunger Games’ which became the films main poster.

A massive way to get a film marketed is through trailers. Trailers are seen everywhere through the cinema, the Internet and on the Television. The official trailer for ‘The Hunger Games’ is perfect for interesting a wider audience the trailer focus's on the female lead an builds her up to be special within the film by using certain dialogues from the film talking about her to show her importance. The trailer also promotes the film through its books by telling its audience the film is based on a best seller, which again can attract an audience as the film has already been successful in its books. The trailer tells everything the audience might need to know but ends just as the games are about to begin, this is done as it leaves the audience wanting more and will intrigue them to see the film to see what will happen. A trailer shouldn’t misinterpret what the film may be about because if a film does this it can lose its audience as they will expect something different and therefore it can lead to bad word of mouth.

Before a film is released Producers have a test screening of the film to a small audience of the ‘unfinished’ film to get some feedback so that they may change the movie if there is a lot of negative feedback. But nowadays if a film does have a negative response at a test screen it can ruin its campaign due to word of mouth spreading so easily due to the amount of use over the web with blogs and social networks. But this is crucial for a producer to make drastic changes to a film for it to successful.

Interactive marketing is very important for a film and has become a great importance in getting a movie known. ‘The Hunger Games’ had a very good campaign for its fans. They released a website which would then link to your ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’ page and then you would be assigned to a district from the movie. From then the site released messages from the president know as President Snow from the film itself to get people to run for mayor of their district through the website and released what their duties would be for example ‘public appearances’ this was a great way to market the movie as it gets people involved with the culture of the film. The marketing campaign still runs this website and updating it with updates of fake clothing lines and perfumes to buy from a company that is based in the film, as the film as a very strange look in clothing its a great way to show the fans and an audience what to expect. ‘The Hunger Games’ UK and US premiere was promoted on Yahoo Movies as it was streamed from the red carpet to fans were able to see the stars of the film arrive and see them being interviewed before the film so fans could get a live look at the stars opinions and thoughts of the film. This is another great way to get fans involved and closer to the film.

Nowadays films make millions from merchandising, not only is it a great way to let the world know about your film through other peoples merchandise but it’s a great way for the producers to make more money through their film. For example with ‘The Hunger Games’ the main character Katniss uses a Bow and arrow throughout the film and people are able to purchase film replicas. Merchandising started with Disney and Mickey Mouse in 1928 but didn’t really become popular until 1977’s movie Star Wars with the action figures and movie replicas.  Another popular merchandise is clothing whether it is costumes or just a simple t-shirt with the logo on it. I made a t-shirt for ‘The Hunger Games’ and used the popular “KEEP CALM” phrase on it and then referenced the movie on the t shirt and added the logo of the movie.

Distributing a film is what gets it to the audience. A movie used to be played at a cinema then never seen again till it was re released at a cinema, today films are brought out at a cinema and then within months are brought to its audience through DVD and Blu-ray sales. 'The Hunger Games' had a big cinema release making a profit of over 600 million dollars. It was first released with a premier in Los Angeles USA on March 12^th 2012 but was officially released alongside the UK on the 23rd of March 2012.  From when a film is at a cinema to its DVD release is called a theatrical window, which gets shorter and shorter due to the Internet streaming these movies illegally with cameras in cinemas and DVD-rips. So Producers have to make this window smaller and smaller. ‘The Hunger Games’ Theatrical window was only 4 months long.

The marketing campaign was similar in the idea of making a website but they made it their own in how they made people feel they were apart of the movie by putting them into districts from the movie and giving them a chance to browse what’s on offer in ‘The Hunger Games’ world and compete to be a mayor of their district. They also have made good representation of the movie and the logo and they can tie that in with the use of the bow and arrow for its new and old audience to market the films future movies. I think the campaign for ‘The Hunger Games’ was successful, well thought out and had a lot of attention on it to grab a new and old audience and keep them.

Proposal 'The Shadowing'

Our Single Camera Drama is going to be a Horrow called ‘The Shadowing’ we have decided to write and direct a Horror because we feel it’s a challenge and we have a great idea. Our Horror is all filmed as if its in real life to make the audience fear what they are seeing and question whether its real or not.Although there is many films around like ours, we feel ours is different as its a small and young group being terrorised and where as others aren't real our research has helped us find a real life haunted house and we've used its history to make our horror feel more real.

Our Horror will be based around four students at University, each character will be playing as themselves but with different background, Reggie plays a film student asked by his tutor to make a movie so his idea is to make a documentary based movie on somewhere haunted, he hires Rob to do the research and mapping to find the place which is called Borley Rectory a real life haunted house burnt down in 1939. Shaun plays Reggie's cousin who is studying drama at the college who will play as a presenter in his project and finally George who is also a film student who is dealing with the camera.

The movie is set in a wooded area where the crew begin filming a documentary until slowly a mysterious character begins croping up in the background and when the night hits the character begins taking out the students one by one.

The first charatcer to die is the cameraman George who gets his neck snapped from then Reggie ends up taking the camera to try catch everything that happens on camera for the world to see, from here the building Borely Rectory which was apparently burned down in 1939 appears in front of them and the charater walks out the front door after them to which Rob gets left behind and assumed dead. The movie does end with all the characters being killed except for Reggie is feared dead but opens his eyes before the camera cuts to end the movie.

The movie is aimed at a young audience of between 15-24 this is due to the fact the film contains violence and small use of foul language which could make it a certificate 15. We also feel that that real life horrors appeal to a younger audience like the famous films Paranormal Activity.

The movie will be filmed in multiple locations due to where the movie leads; we will need to film, around a college, in a forest area and a old house. For this we will require a full HD camera a tripod a shotgun microphone and most importantly torches for our night scenes.

Focus Group

I participated in a focus group in a lesson between  me and two others. This gave me the chance to get a small amount of feedback and opinion on the idea. I pitched my short movie idea and I got positive feedback. This has got me and my group excited to start filming and editing our idea.

Test Results

I took a test based on final cut pro and camera techniques. There were 21 questions. And i got 11 and a half correct. I expected a higher result, So from the test I've learnt I need to broaden my knowledge of some of final cut pro and camera techniques. But I found with some of the questions I knew what to do but was unsure of the answer.

Merchandising\Distribution

Merchandising:
I learnt today how important merchandising is for films and how much money they can actually make. When George Lucas made Star Wars he went back to his producers cut his pay in half and managed to convince them to give him merchandising rights, that way he could get a lot of cash out of merchandising and have the rights to go through with making more movies. The producers then thought they would be getting a good deal and did not make much of it because merchandising was not all important, until Star Wars came out. where between 1977 and 2005 Star Wars merchandising has made over 20 Billion and the film has made 2.
Merchandising first came about with Disney and Micky Mouse where he starred in his first film Steam Boat Willy in 1928, they got a merchandising deal of $300 dollars to have the mouse put on a companies tablet.
As an exercise we researched merchandise you can buy for a film which we are doing a essay on and how it was marketed, my films choice is the 'The Hunger Games' and I also had to make some merchandise of my own for it, I made a movie T-Shirt with the Hunger Games Logo on it.

Distribution:

Distribution is what gets the film to its audience. This has changed over time it used to be just cinema and you would have to wait a year or so for it to be re released, until VHS came about and people could rent and buy movies. To begin with the big companies were worried about releasing their films to VHS as they was worried it would stop their income and wont be able to re release a film so small companies took advantage of this by releasing their movies to peoples homes and making a fortune. after this it went on to DVD which killed off VHS completely and followed on to Blu Ray which enhances picture and sound quality like nothing else. But now the use of online and lovefilm and netflix where streaming films online is taking over. And unfortunately video piracy is ruining the movie and film experience. 

The movie I am studying 'The Hunger Games' had a big cinema release making a profit of over 600 million dollars. It was first released with a premier in Los Angeles USA on March 12th but was officially released alongside the UK on the 23rd of March. France managed to have the cinema release two days before on the 21st and Germany on the 22nd. But Japan was the final country to get the movie release on September the 28th.

The theatrical window was between the end of March and and very end of August and beginning of September. USA got a first DVD\Blu Ray release with Netherlands on August 18th and rest of Europe was on September 3rd.