Attracting and Addressing Audiences

Kate Bradford Media Studies AS

What did we do?As we wanted to attract and address our target audience we used a variety of different promotional techniques to achieve this:

• Created a Poster for Promotional & Advertising purposes• Made a website• Made and updated a Facebook page • Made and updated a Twitter page • Made and updated an Instagram page

As a result for creating these promotional strategies, it helped us endorse and promote our film, The Unhinging, creating synergy and a buzz pre release. This makes fans of the film want to go and watch it at the cinema and in turn buy merchandise. Many people in our target audience use social media websites, including the ones we decided to use to endorse our film. In turn this helped us attract attention towards our film.

As a result, fans creating a buzz pre release, would create an even bigger buzz after the film has come out or after they have watched it. This further influences more people to watch the film.

• I was in charge of updating Instagram with photos and videos pre-release of our film. I would upload predominantly photos and video of the construction (filming) stages as it was a large part of the process of successfully making the film. Also our target audience would be interested in viewing photos and videos on Instagram as they are an age group (young adults 18+) that commonly use social media such as Instagram. Therefore we can successfully get our film noticed.

• On Instagram, you have the ability to ‘like’ photos or videos as well as ‘share’ posts to social media websites such as Twitter or Facebook when you have uploaded your post to Instagram.

• As well as ‘@’ signs to tag people in Instagram posts, you can also use hashtags ‘#’. Examples that we used were ‘#theunhingingmovie’ or ‘#indiaislost’ or ‘#comingsoon’. This allows our Instagram posts to be easily accessible by global Instagram users, our followers and professionals. This allowed us to be successful in attracting and addressing our target audience.

• Instagram also allows you to connect with professionals in the media industry such as directors, producers and actors as they have Instagram accounts. Making use of ‘sharing’, ‘regramming’ and ‘liking’ information, in the form of Instagram posts, about our film opening allows our film opening to be noticeable creating a buzz pre-release. Getting professionals or celebrities to ‘regram’ information about our film opening would allow us to gather more followers as celebrities such as Justin Bieber, One Direction member have large fan bases, many of whom are the age of our target audience. This is an example of the ‘Two Step Flow Theory’ – ‘audiences influence others’.

• Facebook is an incredibly popular social network site used by millions of people globally.

• This in turn helps us to promote our film opening to a variety of different people including our target audience.

• Facebook allows us to ‘connect and share with people’ information regarding our film such as photos, information about release, popularity, cast and crew interviews, competitions related to the film such as winning tickets to view the film at the cinema. Therefore it allows to create a buzz pre release, making our film known to a wider variety of people and to a wider audience.

• Facebook allows you to ‘share’, ‘like’, ‘post’, and ‘update your status’. This allows you to share your information within seconds to your friends ‘newsfeeds’ or even globally if your profile has relaxed privacy settings. In connection to our film opening, if we shared information on Facebook onto our newsfeed, people can ‘like’, ‘share’ our post onto their newsfeed, making it visible to their friends. This allows is to promote our film as their friends would be attracted to our page via the post their friends have ‘shared’ or ‘liked’.

Our Facebook page• Facebook is incredibly valuable and useful in attracting and addressing our

audience as we have made a Facebook page that people can like, in turn being visible to their friends as it would be on their newsfeeds. This would attract and inspire people to like our Facebook page and find out more information regarding our film.

• We can upload videos, photos, status about the films release on Facebook which means that we can entitle people to learn more about the film, the process of making the film in stages. In turn these people can follow the films progression from planning, to research stages, through to the editing stages and release. This would create a buzz making them want to come to the films premier or release at their local cinema.

• As Facebook is a globally used social media network, more people would want to see our film as our page would be globally viewed.

• As well as Facebook allowing you to upload photos, videos and status’, it also allows you to invite your friends, mutual friends or Facebook users globally to an event, page or to be a friend. This invite could be sent to them regarding the premier or to our films Facebook page, displaying a notification on their account therefore attracting more people to watch our film.

Film Poster• The film poster is a prominent photo of India, our protagonist, in the forrest ‘running’

away from our antagonist, Jack. She has a red, bloody cut on the left hand side of her face, bruises around her mouth, cheek bones, jaw line and side of her forehead. This shows the brutality India has experienced from her kidnapper Jack. In contrast with her pale skin, it shows that behind the abusive wounds she has been scarred with, she is innocent and vulnerable.

• This photo signals the genre of the film and is a visual code for the target audience. This shows them how the film will visually look like and is a indicator for what they could be watching at the cinema, premier or on DVD.

• Our film poster included the release date, names of actors involved in the film, age rating and the title of the film in bold letters at the top. This allows our target audience to see the names of actors, directors and producers that may have produced, directed or acted in movies of the same genre as ours or films that our target audience have watched. This can help us attract our target audience. This also allows us to build up suspense pre-release creating synergy.

• The poster was made in Photoshop. We looked at a variety of different film poster to gather inspiration for our own including The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 and Taken 3 ( we also used these as inspiration for our films website).

• Photoshop was useful as it created a professional poster, in turn allowing us to attract and address our target audience.

• The poster has a clear visual indicator of a young, powerful, determined woman on the cover. This can be inspiring to our target audience of young adults, helping us to attract and address our target audience and gather interest in our film.

• We added a slogan on the far left hand side, ‘From her fear she gained strength’. This is a code for the audience indicating that the girl on the poster has faced a life changing, horrific course of events including violence, abandonment, all of which she was away from her family and friends. This is dangerous as it leaves her with mental scars. However she shows her inner ‘strength’, putting aside ‘fear’ towards her kidnapper and escapes Jack showing her determination and confidence to succeed.

• The image we used on our poster we have also used on our other social media websites including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and our films website. This helps us have continuity and synergy through our social media platforms, in turn helping us attract and address our audience successfully.

• In order to promote our film we used many social media network sites including Twitter. As our target audience use Twitter, this helped us attract and address our target audience. This helped us endorse our film.

• Much like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter allows you to ‘retweet’ (like sharing and liking on Facebook and Instagram), ‘favourite’ and ‘share’ tweets. Therefore this allows our film opening to gain attention if someone ‘retweets’, ‘favourites’ or ‘shares’ information about our film it would appear on their Twitter feed making information about our film opening more knowledgeable among the global Twitter community of Tweeters. This helped us attract and address our audience successfully.

• Twitter also allows you to connect with professionals in the media industry such as directors, producers and actors as they have Twitter accounts. Making use of ‘sharing’, ‘retweeting’ and ‘favouriting’ information, in the form of Tweets, about our film opening allows our film opening to be noticeable creating a buzz pre-release. Getting professionals or celebrities to ‘retweet’ information about our film opening would allow us to gather more followers as celebrities such as Justin Bieber, One Direction member have large fan bases, many of whom are the age of our target audience. This is an example of the ‘Two Step Flow Theory’ – ‘audiences influence others’.

• Using the same photo on the films website, Instagram page, Twitter page allows information about our film to be noticeable creating continuity between our films social media websites.

• As well as ‘@’ signs to tag people in Tweets, you can also use hashtags ‘#’. Examples that we used were ‘#theunhingingmovie’ or ‘#indiaislost’ or ‘#comingsoon’. This allows our Tweet to be easily accessible by global Twitter users, our followers and professionals. This allowed us to be successful in attracting and addressing our target audience.

• We can also interconnect our social media websites, for example I can share information on Twitter about my film and share it on Facebook or Instagram. I can also do this vice versa, for example I can share a photo on Instagram and share it on Twitter. This creates synergy, interconnecting our social media followers together. This also generates a vibe or buzz for the release of our film, successfully attracting and addressing our audiences.

• In the description/header bar in Twitter, we made sure we included the genre of our film opening, a description of our film and a list of the actors, actresses and director involved. This makes it appear professional as if we are professional film makers, paid for our work, not AS Media Studies pupils.

Film Website• The official website of The Unhinging has important information that are target

audience should know before the release of the film, such as the age rating, a brief description of the storyline, actors involved, directors involved, producers involved, photos from behind the scenes, film posters, videos from behind the scenes as well as trailers of the film. This website would also be hyperlinked to our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages therefore interconnecting our target audience with useful links to our film. This would increase the buzz for the target audience as they can then keep up to date with daily posts on the social media websites they follow.

• By having the above linked to the website allows us to have synergy, making our film more easily recognizable in the social media networks such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

• The website was made in Photoshop. We looked at a variety of different film poster to gather inspiration for our own including The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 and Taken 3 ( we also used these as inspiration for our films poster).

• Photoshop was useful as it created a professional website, in turn allowing us to attract and address our target audience.