Creative Critical Reflection Task 2

 CCR Task 2

The Question: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

Targeted Audience:

For my groups opening title sequence, our primary targeted audience is age 15 to 30 year olds. With in this age group the targeted audience would mainly be women and members of the LGBT+ community. 

6 Moments from my opening title sequence that engage my targeted audience. 

A engaging moment in my opening title sequence is when Saskia looks at her parents for help while having a pleading and fearful expression on her face. This is moments before the vicar comes in which may suggest that Saskia is wanting support from her parents before the worst happens. This engages the LGBT+ community as they may be aware of this feeling and know what it's like when family members don't support you. Parents are meant to be key figures in their children life, where they are expected to support, provide and protect their children at all costs. Many parents don't support their children when they finally have the confidence to come out, this is a clear example of this in our film and this is where many can relate. This could make the audience have an emotional connection to the film. 

Another engaging moment during the exorcism scenes, is when the vicar is pointing directly at Saskia face. This can successfully bring in our targeted audience of the LGBT+ community as it shows the pressure put on gay community. The pointing can symbolises the anger and control certain individuals and communities put onto members of the LGBT+ community, such as "this is wrong", "this is against god" and "this is not normal". This is something nearly all members have heard which would successfully give them an emotional connection to the film. This also engages a wide audience as it shows the harshness of religion towards the LGBTQ. Although exorcism towards gay individuals is not as common anyway, homophobia is still a massive issue  in religious communities. This can engage the audience as it may get them to think about the parents views on the exorcism and why they put their religious beliefs over their daughters safety, especially if something was to go awfully wrong. 

Another engaging moment during the exorcism scenes, is when the father is smiling directly at the vicar. This shot could engage the audience by making them feel sympathy for Saskia. The facial expression from the father clearly shows that he is in agreement with the vicar and is completely disregarding his daughter physical well being and emotions for his faith in religion. This engages our age range as its three powerful adults against a helpless kid. This can make the audience relate to past or current times when they have felt ganged up on and vulnerable with in a group, relating back to the viewers feeling sympathy for Saskia. 

An engaging moment in the lover fort scene, is when the girls have moved closer to one and other and began laughing while looking at each other and then looking down. This brings in the LBGT+ community and successfully engages them. This scene represent the changing of a friendship to having feelings for one another. It is clear that the girls are behaving innocently and it is there first time having feelings for the same sex due to how nervous they are. This engages the LGBT+ community as it may bring back memories of their first gay relationship or viewers may even be at the same place as the girls while watching this, allowing them to form a emotional connection. 

Another engaging moment during the lover fort scenes, is when the girls lean in for their first kiss. This once again engages the LGBT+ community as it may be seen as the "perfect" first kiss. The location is innocent and pretty, as well as being hidden from the outside world. The hidden from the outside world element may bring in comfort for the audience as it shows the girls feel comfortable to be themselves where as in the outside world they could be judge for their sexuality. The kiss is extremely innocent compared to other products covering the same subject, this is because we wanted to keep the kiss realistic to not lose the engagement from the audience by overdoing it. This moment is one many members of the LGBT+ community can relate to as they have most likely been in the situation where they are taking their friendship to the next level for the first time with the same sex. 

The final engaging moment in our opening title sequence, is when the girls are lying down making strong eye contact while holding hands. This engages our whole targeted audience just from the romantic connection between the girls. The whole audience, whether being straight, gay, male or female, can relate to this moment of utter happiness and love. The innocents of this scene makes the audience feel comfortable and allows them to appreciate the wholesome moment. This could also engage the audience by letting them see how happy and at peace  Saskia is as they have had to seen her helpless and scared during the exorcism scene, this shows the audience that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. This could make the members of the LGBT+ community hopeful that whatever they are going through will turn out ok. This shot makes the audience on a whole excited to see how this new relationship progresses further keeping them engage and invested through out the whole film. 

Overall, I think my group and I were successful in engaging our audience as I think the opening title sequence left people with question and wanting to see where this relationship, between the girls and the girl and her parents will go. I think our group were mainly focused on showing the innocent of young love and highlighting issues members of the LGBT+ community have to face. I think we successfully kept members of the LGBT+ community engage by relating scenes to moments they have experienced which allows them to make a emotional connection to the film. I think we should have focused more on maturing the exorcism scene and making it more realistic. We could have achieved this by making adding lines into our sequence, such as a scream from the girl, a comment from the father and prays from the vicar. I think this would have given off a harsher reality making the audience more sympathetic and engaged. 

How does my poster engage a audience and hint moments from my opening title sequence:

In my poster, I have hinted moments from my opening title sequence to engage my audience. I believe I did this successfully through the image and the quote. The quote is "She's proof that you can walk through hell and still be an angel", I think this relates to my opening title sequence and would engage an audience. The reason I put this quote in is because I imagine Girl 2 (the conservative girl) to say this to another person at the end of the movie. This could engage the audience as it could make them wonder what
he went through that was so hard, being the exorcism. It also portrays the conservative girls option of religious girl as she thinks of her highly, like an angel. I think the image engages the audience as it makes the movie look peaceful and content, as that's what the girl in the image looks like. This is not the case as the movie will include upset and trauma however in my idea the ending of the film will be peaceful and happy. For me, this image is like a POV from the other girl perspective at the end of the film, when the worst is over and they can be happy together. 

Annotation of poster:

- Date of release draws people attention in and gets them excited. Due to the release date being exactly a month before gay pride day (28th of June), it will bring successfully bring in our targeted audience.

- Film festivals logos showing that the film has been successful, making the film more engaging to the audience as its clear it has been nominated and won. 

- Three main characters spread out in larger at the top of the poster. 

- Directors name in the centre of the poster. This is so he gets credit and it allows the audience to identify the directors previous work, which gives the audience an idea about the genre of the film. 

- The poster includes a girl lying in the middle of a field looking peaceful and happy. The girl is in focus and the field is out of focus, this allows the audience attention to go straight onto the girl. The colours in the poster are neutral and green. The poster may get the audience wondering why the girl is so at peace and happy, This could make them want to watch the film as they are interested in how she got to this point.

- The title of the film is in bold, big and the centre of the poster. The title engages the audience as it makes them want to know what is "In The Way".

Studio who would distribute our film:

I think that if any studio had to distribute our film it would be Belstone Pictures. Belstone Pictures is a small independent British company founded in 2012 and owned by Finn Bruce. Belstone Pictures have three movies up to date, these being Tank432, Tucked and Making Tracks, with another film in the makings. Tank 432 was the first movie made by Belstone pictures and is a horror/thriller directed by Nick Gillespie.Tucked was the second film that Belstone pictures made and produced which was directed by Jamie Patterson. The genre of tucked is drama/comedy and mainly applied to the LGBQ community. Making tracks is the third and most recent movie that Belstone pictures created and was directed by Jamie Patterson again. Making tacks is a comedy staring April Pearson who is a well known British actress from skins.

Although Belstone Pictures films all are different genres, I still think they would distribute our film. Belstone Pictures operate on a small budget and I think our film would also have a small budget. Belstone Pictures is based in the uk with most of their audience being from here, I think our audience would mainly be from the uk. Our film also shares some similarities with Tucked, such as the LGBT+ theme. Belstone Pictures were able to get Tucked to be successful, this is the reason I think they would distribute our film. 

Marketing Campaign and Distribution:

For the marketing campaign, We would use the buzz of pride month to achieve a small cinema release across the UK as we are releasing the film a month before pride day. On pride day, The 28th of June, the film will be released onto streaming platforms. This gets people to go see it in cinema in the lead up to pride month, as well as getting to watch it on pride day online to celebrate pride day. This also gets people to feel proud of their sexuality and their coming out stories in the lead up to pride month. I think this relies date and release strategy is extremely clever as its being released at the peak of the year for LGBT+ members. I think this movie is showing the progression of coming out and how hard at times it can be but how there's always light at the end of a dark tunnel. We would also mainly market through social media as that the most successful way to spread our movie to our targeted age group, as everything is online now and that's where our age group find out about new things. I think it's important that we still use classic marketing such as posters, however make our main focus on social media. I would make an instagram account promoting our film as well as promoting LGBT+ community, For example we could post quotes and images that represent the community while also posting clips and images from our film. I think this would successfully help gain a wider audience and reach our targeted audience. For our film we will enter for several film festivals, such as 

-British Independent Film Awards 

-Filmfest homochrom

-LA Outfest 

-London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival 

-Leeds Queer Film Festival 

-Paris Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival 

-Film4 Summer Screen at Somerset House 

I would want to distribute the film onto Netflix and Amazon prime if possible. I think this would be extremely beneficial for the film as they are both big streaming sites that would get our film out there and know about. Netflix also has filtered genres to help the audience find a movie they want to watch, one of the genre is LGBT+. If our film was to go onto Netflix it would fall under this category which would help our film reach our targeted audience. Therefore the reason for entering film festivals would help us get a distribution deal with Netflix and other big streaming sites.