How upcoming films attract their audience.

New films that are being introduced into the film industry need marketing to make people go and watch it. If films don't attract enough people to watch their film then not many people will go and watch it. Advertisement play's a massive part in a films success, if the film look's good to potential audiences they have more of a chance of going to watch it.

When I was on YouTube yesterday I came across a viral video, the video looked very interesting and had a whopping 45,000,000 views!! The video is called 'Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise' and is the fastest growing video of all time. The video looks like a normal You Tube clip however it is actually an advertisement for an upcoming film called 'Carrie'. The advertisers have been very clever and noticed that pranks on You Tube are very popular and get a lot of views in a short amount of time. They used this knowledge to create a prank related to the film which went viral very quickly. At the end of the video the film was promoted, this was a very clever way to get an upcoming film promoted and will make many people want to watch the film due to this clip.

Here is the video:


This is a great example of smart advertisement of a movie and how upcoming films attract their audience. Many films are promoted in the same way, by TV, radio, billboards, leaflets ect. Although these techniques do bring in people to watch the film many people get bored of them. However this film has been promoted in a very clever way and advertisers have thought out of the box to get their target audience to watch their film. This film has not stuck to the conventions of film advertisement and therefore the film will stand out from the others and potentially bring in more people to watch the film.

Ratings for post-apocalyptic films.

From the website http://www.imdb.com/list/f0vG-RUAoT8/ I have found some ratings from audiences watching post-apocalyptic films. This website is very useful as there is a lot of information about post-apocalyptic films including audiences, actors included and also info about production companies ect.

The link I have included in this post shows 200+ post-apocalyptic movies from 1927 to 2013 with an IMDB rating with a minimum of 5 starts out of 10. This tells me that post-apocalyptic films are rated very highly and obviously work well with a range of audiences. I think post-apocalyptic films work well because they are interesting in the sense that some of these events could actually happen and people to tend to wonder what would happen if these events occurred.

The list from the website includes different post-apocalyptic scenarios including nuclear warfare and fallout, zombies, extra-terrestrial attack's, virus and pandemic, environmental climate change and many more.

Overall from these statistics I have found that post-apocalyptic films are very popular and tend to work well with audiences if done well.

Research on Costumes.

Many different variations of costumes are used in post-apocalyptic films. Costumes play a big part in all films for example costumes help to set the scene in a movie and make it look more realistic and visually interesting, they also help the viewer to get a look into a characters personality and costumes are designed to make the character look how he or she acts. Costumes are suited to where the film is set and helps the scene look more authentic.

Here are some examples of costumes in post-apocalyptic films and how they vary:

Here are the costumes used for the main character in Oblivion- 

The costumes used in Oblivion are made to look futuristic because the film is set in the future after the apocalypse.

Here are the costumes used for the main characters in The Book Of Eli-

As you can see the costumes are not futuristic in any shape or form compared to Oblivion's costume designs, the costumes in this film are made to look scruffy and old because the film is set after a nuclear war. These costumes suit the film very well.

 

Overall costumes are used to suit the context of the film. After looking at costumes from post-apocalyptic films most are either futuristic, or scruffy looking, the reason for this is because most post-apocalyptic films are set in the future and are after a catastrophic events therefore the clothing will be old or futuristic.

 

I think the costumes we will be going for will be similar to The Book of Eli because they are easy to create and it looks very authentic. The futuristic costumes would probably be out of our budget and the old costumes look just as good.



                                                                                                                                 

Typical Sound Tracks/Music for my Genre.

From my research on post-apocalyptic conventions I found that there is a certain type of music used in post-apocalyptic movies. Slow and depressing tracks are usually used to create enigma and get you into the mood of the film. Because post-apocalyptic films are about disasters and death the music wouldn't be high tempo and up-beat, it is always low tempo and rather sad.

Here are some examples of the music included in some post-apocalyptic movies:
This example is from I Am Legend:

 

As you can see from this clip the music is very slow and played by a piano, this fits with the movie opening and genre, the music then fades out slowly. This music is a good example as it creates mystery and makes you feel sad and sorry for the character in the voice over as the music is playing.

 

Here is another example of track from a post-apocalyptic movie, This example is from Book Of Eli:

Quite a lot of sound is included in this clip to create mystery and tension in this opening scene, firstly there is a very quiet chime of some sort that plays at the start, the music then gets louder and includes more instrument which I think is a violin to indicate something is going to happen. As well as the music there is a sound track of whirring wind in the background which blends in with the music well and makes it sound more scary and mysterious.

Overall the music and sound tracks used in post-apocalyptic films is quiet, instrumental and sad. Sound tracks are used such as wind and birds quirking. From this research I now have a good idea of what soundtracks and music I shall use in my movie opening.

Classification categorys.

Today I am going to looking into different classification category's for my chosen genre, the reason for this is because we need to make sure our video is suited to the classification rating, if not it will not appeal to the audience and they will not watch the movie. It also may have inappropriate content for a certain age range therefore we need to make sure we get it right.

Post-apocalyptic films have many different classifications, varying between PG-13 to 18. For example Pacific Rim is rated a 12, After Earth is rated a 12A, World War Z is rated a 15 and The Divide is rated 18.  I would say the average rating for a post-apocalyptic film is a 15, because it is very rare to see a PG and 12A's do not come out that often, furthermore 15 is the most popular classification over an 18 as they are most common in horror's and physiological thrillers.

Overall I think my group should use a classification of a 15 because that is the most suited audience for our movie and we can relate to that audience because


Suitable for all

Parental guidance

Cinema release suitable for 12 years and over

Video release suitable for 12 years and over

Suitable only for 15 years and over

Suitable only for adults

Adult works for licensed premises only we are a similar age group.

Production and Distribution companies.

Production and Distribution companies make and market a film, without these companies films wouldn't exist. A film distributor is a company or individual responsible for the marketing of the film. The distributor may set the release date of the film, when it will be released and where it will be shown. A production company is responsible for the development and filming of the movie. I'm going to be looking into what production and distribution companies are associated with my genre.

To help me with this I found a web page on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_production_companies which shows you a list of production and distribution companies and what films they have made.

By looking at this I can see that the companies like to stick to the same genre and audience maybe because they are good are making these particular films and like to stick to it. The genre I will be looking at is post-apocalyptic, as you can see from the chart I can pick out certain companies that like to make post-apocalyptic films, for example....

• 20th Centaury Fox made Planet of the Apes and  Independence Day.
• Universal Studios made Battleship and Oblivion
• TriStar Pictures made Terminator 2: Judgement day and District 9
• I Am Legend and Book of Eli both distributed by Warner Bros
• The Asylum produces low budget films with similar scripts to post-apocalyptic movies such as Battleship, Battle: Los Angles and I Am Legend.

After researching I have found that production and distribution companies like to stick to a specific genre or audience and many dabble into many different genres and audiences rather than sticking to just one.

Analysis of opening credits.

Today I'm going to be analysing opening credits from post-apocalyptic films. The websites I will be using to get the titles from are- http://www.artofthetitle.com/titles/ and http://www.watchthetitles.com/collections/Film, take a look!

The first opening credits sequence I will be analysing is Pacific Rim, a recent post-apocalyptic film about robots invading earth.
Pacific Rim (2013) — Art of the Title

The order of the titles are as follows:

• T1-00.02-DIRECTED BY.
• T2-00.08-SCREENPLAY BY.
• T3-00.13-STORY BY.
• T4-00.20-PRODUCED BY. (1)
• T5-00.25-PRODUCED BY. (2)
• T6-00.30-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER.
• T7-00.37-DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
• T8-00.43-PRODUCTION DESIGNERS
• T9-00.47-EDITED BY.
• T10-00.52-MUSIC BY.
• T11-00.56-COSTUMES DESIGNED BY.
• T12-01.01-CO-PRODUCER
• T13-01.06-CASTING BY.
• T14-01.12-VISUAL EFFECTS SUPIVISOR. (1)
• T15-01.16-VISUAL EFFECTS SUPIVISOR. (2)
• T16-01.22-ANIMATION SUPIVISOR.
• T17-01.27-ACTOR (1) TO ACTOR (12)-02.02-T24.
• T25-02.06-PRODUCTION COMPANIES.
• T26-02.11-PRODUCTION COMPANIES.
• T27-02.16-PRODUCTION COMPANY.
• T28-02.22-TITLE OF THE FILM.

As you can see the titles have a specific order and a specific time they come on, this will be planned before hand for a reason. After analysing the terminator title sequence and pacific rim I have noticed some patterns that occur in the titles. For example the director always comes at the start of the titles or at the end maybe because of the importance of his role. Furthermore the titles always come close to each other minimum 4 seconds apart and maximum 7 seconds apart. Finally the titles are always in organised form and are grouped together when they come on. I have gained a lot of information from analysing these titles and will use this when creating my title sequence for my final video.