Audience Engagement Research - The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight and Masks are both action films are targeting a male audience. The Dark Knight is a sequel to Batman Begins created by Christopher Nolan. Masks are focusing on a more specific target age at 15-25, whereas The Dark Knight is aiming for 12-35-year-olds. The reason that I researched this film's target audience is the marketing strategies of the film. During the movie's post-production, Heath Ledger had sadly post away from an overdose of legally prescribed drugs. The film than switched their marketing campaign to his role as the Joker as they posted memorials of the late actor. Some conspiracies link the method actors' role as the Joker to his mental issues that caused him to take the drugs that he overdosed on.

The marketing for this campaign focused on the Joker and Harvey Dent because Nolan's Batman had already been established as a realistic reincarnation of DC's greatest detective. The first form of marketing they established was a website under the domain WhySoSerious.com that was a fictional political campaign for the newest character. The next form was a corrupted version of the website that would show emails in support of Harvey that would end up pixelation into the first depiction of Heath Ledger's Joker. Next, the marketing team for The Dark Knight sent their fans on a scavenger hunt to unlock a new photo of the Joker and a new website that was a mimic of a newspaper, The Gotham Times, that gave some information of the events of Gotham over the time between the films. Other noticeable marketing events are showing the bank robbery scene in the opening of the film, releasing animated tie-ins to connect Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Batman insignias on race cars, a rollercoaster at Six Flags theme parks, and toys produced by Mattel.

The persuasive techniques taken to help sell movie tickets were a mix of Batman's notoriety and the new depiction of the Joker. The Joker was an iconic character that had been portrayed by legendary actors like Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Hamill (voice acting). The marketing team for the film had decided to let the hype around the Joker and the ability to interact at events like Comic-Con. The film used print, TV, billboards, and heavily relied on digital platforms. If I could use one marketing tactic for my group's film, I would use their interactional marketing with websites and scavenger hunts because it could easily allow for a fan base to get involved and excited for the film.

In-Class Activity - Art of the Title

After looking at Art of the Title, the website has allowed for some insight into how to creatively portray the title sequence. The one aspect that I noticed from the openings was that the information on screen does not have to be organized as much as I previously thought. When editing the film I added the text within the frame in the same spot every time. With films like "Conversation with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," which uses different text styles, size, and color but have the same font. The title scene that I watched that was done really well was Se7en. The text fonts that were sporadic and animated gave the film a new level of creepiness, which very quickly gave the film a bleak and morbid mood. The website gives an interesting commentary about Se7en as they say it's stuck between a cult film and a classic. The reason for this confusion is due to the minute details that are seen even within the detail that a big study wouldn't pay attention to, but it is still stacked with A-list stars. According to the Art of the Title, "...it is stocked with A-list talent and propped up by a smart script, a memorable score, and rich cinematography, and a production value in lockstep with Fincher’s vision for the film." This quote just further explains that the critics of the film though that the film had the big production company style of talent with a feel of an indie film because of the ability to portray a smart story that isn't seen in the blockbuster films of Hollywood. The opening of Se7en makes me want to invest the time to animate the titles to add some personality to the nature shots and establish the horror conventions.

Audience Engagement Research - Kingsman

Kingsman and Masks share a similar target audience in the categories of age, gender, and personal interests. Both films are about terrorism and focus on a man in his late teen's early twenties trying to stop it, but the difference is that Kingsman is a parody of a spy movie whereas Masks is a real psychological thriller. The target age is 15-25. The target gender is male. The target personal interests are based around stopping terrorist plots. The main difference between in target audience would be education level as Masks focuses on trying to crack the terrorist plans before they happen, whereas the Kingsman is a rip on the classic spy movie. Our film is supposed to be smarter than Kingsman, but still focus on similar themes.
Kingsman focuses its advertising on the main character of Eggsy more than its plot. This is something that our group wants to focus on as other films that spoil the plot within its advertising is normally ridiculed especially if there is a plot twist. The trailer does set up Valentine as the antagonist, but it doesn't explain his plan or motive. All the audience knows about Valentine's plans is that he intends to kill a bunch of people. A decent amount of the advertising shows off the start-studded cast of Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Firth, and Mark Strong plus a newer actor in Taron Egerton as the lead role. Another marketing tactic was to advertise the clothing used in the movie as the Kingsman is supposed to be in suits (example below). The Kingsman uses print, TV, billboards, and a heavy amount of digital advertising. The Kingsman had its own website that would promote their social media, trailers and inside information about the movie and subsequent series.
The main idea that I would use from the research I have done on Kingsman would create a very heavy digital marketing campaign. Social media is a huge platform that my target audience uses daily so by focusing on advertising on apps like Instagram and Twitter I would be able to reach my target audience very easily.

Audience Engagement Research - Halloween

Halloween was a psychological horror film based on the murders of fictitious serial killer Michael Myers. Our films have similar moods that the audience should be feeling. The audience should be creeped out about the location of the main antagonist. The target audience of both of these films is 15-25-year-old males. The marketing of the film Halloween had very little to Michael himself but focused on what he was doing with the slogan "The Night He Came Back" on the poster. The trailer only reveals that Michael is a murderer and that his victims in the film are babysitters. This is very similar to the idea that I pitched to the group when talking about the marketing aspects. I wanted to take a picture of the gas-masked used in the film and then have a simple phrase that didn't give away the plot of the movie. This idea of not knowing what the film is about is the persuasive technique. The marketing for Halloween is surrounded by the mystery of who Michael is and why he is trying to murder Jamie Lee Curtis' character. This is similar to the idea of our film as the movie is based on learning the true intent of the terrorists, so marketing would have to stay away from the idea of why the terrorist plans. Halloween was advertised on TV, radio, and print. The didn't use digital and billboard advertising for two different reasons; budget and technology. The internet hadn't been invented until 1983 so the film had nothing digital to use for marketing. Billboards weren't used to market Halloween due to budget restraints as the film only had $1.3 million (inflation rates applied) to create their entire film. Our film would take advantage of the digital marketing scheme as social media is a huge source of our target audience age range. The two platforms we would focus on using the most would be Instagram and Snapchat as it is easy to upload a shortened version of the trailer which would aid the idea of not spoiling the movie. Instagram's maximum Cost Per Click (CPC) is about $3.00 and Snapchat's ad campaigns are monthly charges of $3,000.

My Target Audience

"Masks" is a psychological horror film that plays with scenery to scare the audience. The age of our target audience is roughly 15-30 years old. This age is due to the violent plot as the film uses themes such as terrorism, murder, and kidnapping. The gender of our target audience is mainly male. This is due to the pattern seen in Hollywood with violent/action films being pushed towards men. Our film is targeted mostly toward the American and English audiences as the film's dialogue is in English. The target income for our film is the middle class. The movie is supposed to be thrilling for a cheap cost. The education level for our target audience would be at least at high school level as the film is supposed to reveal the plot subliminally as it furthers only to reveal the plot near the end. The interest of our target audience might be mystery plots, video games, and the idea of creating a terrorism.

Feedback and Revisions

Based on the feedback that I received after presenting, I realized that my groups film was lacking consistency in production value. While filming, our group used multiple different cameras with differing quality. The cameras that we used were a Canon EOS Rebel T7I, an IPhone 7+, and a default camera that came with the DJI Phantom. The quality of each camera vary with the Canon being the best and the drones camera being the worst. This makes each scene look very different from each other. The lighting, resolution, and frame rate are all impacted by the changing of cameras. In re-shoots we are going to re-shoot and only use one camera, a GoPro Hero 8. This is the perfect camera for our movie as we wanted to re-shoot some scenes on a gimbal to eliminate the shakiness of the camera.
 Another issue that we planned on hearing during our feedback was the weird audio during the Steadicam shot of Dan running with the camera right behind him. When editing the film together we realized that all of the drone footage's audio had been corrupted. In post, I put in some running sounds and explained that when using the Hero 8 my audio would not corrupt, and it is something that I will be looking out for when re-shooting. We plan on re-shooting most of the scene. We are using our midterm as a guide for what we want and how to evolve it into the best form we can get.

Use of Conventions

The film Masks challenges the convention of linear editing by having its main protagonist die in the first scene. We intended for the scene after the title screen to take place earlier than the opening. By using nonlinear editing it allowed for use to play with the audience by hiding or giving information that the audience would like to know. Why we decided to have Dan die in the opening scene was to show the tactics and power of the terrorists in a way that the audience couldn't explain.

A convention that we decided to use within our movie was continuity. Because our film plays with time in a nonlinear fashion, we made sure that every shot within the opening had continuity. Originally the terrorists were supposed to have this mystical appeal to them, but after realizing the confusing nature of the opening we made sure that there was only five terrorists throughout the scene and five at the ending. By using this convention it allows for audience members that are paying attention to understand how the story unfolds before Dan's inevitable death.

Masks is really only representing terrorists, not in a good way, but it shows that terror organizations are powerful and able to get what they need. Terrorism is an issue of the modern world and is wide spread after events like 9/11 and Oklahoma City Bombing. Within psychological horror aspect of the film is looking at portraying a figure that could be real while also bridging into the unrealistic nature of action movies.