Marketing Plan

Due to this film's violent and mature themes, our marketing strategy will center around advertising to adults. To do this, we will utilize several mediums through which we post and share ads, and focus on technology to transmit them. Our goal is to develop an effective procedure to maximize movie rentals, streams, and sales. 

Our first plan of action for marketing would be to create movie posters to put in movie theaters and on billboards around big cities. We have seen that posters are an effective way to capture viewers' attention, so we would artistically formulate a few of them to showcase the film's story without giving away too much detail. This would intrigue others but leave them in suspense so they will be urged to watch it.

Our next plan would be to make a trailer of our film. This would likely be a short compilation of some scenes from the movie arranged together to leave the audience in suspense, similar to the posters. In order to do this, we would have to film the rest of the movie and then select parts from it that are important to the theme but do not take away from the surprise of watching the actual film. 

Our final plan would be to create a social media page, such as an Instagram account. This would allow us to promote our product to people all over the world, and allow others to share it with each other. Below is a mock Instagram page, made to approximately show what one would look like if we made one. Our page would clearly show the name of the film, and would give suspenseful posts to instill interest. 

Audience Engagement Research: Joker

Joker is a thriller about Arthur Fleck and his mental transition into the Joker. The movie is violent and has mature themes, and is also about an evolving character, which is similar to our film.
The movie advertised posters with the Joker being the focus point of them. The point of these posters was to get people's attention for the new movie while not giving away too much information about the plot.

A teaser trailer was released by the producers on YouTube, which racked up 62.1 million views. The trailer consisted of short scenes from the movie to make sure the story was not given away, but enough to get peoples' interest. After that, they released two more longer trailers that were similar to the first one.
The movie's website consisted of basic advertising and trailers.
The producers released banner ads on other websites, which sparked controversy on the internet about the movie. This was because of the recent shootings in the media, which people cited as evidence that America was not ready for a movie like this. Nonetheless, it was released, and the dissension over the movie only added to its popularity.
Based on Joker's success, it is clear that posters and trailers are an effective way to advertise a movie. We could implement these strategies in our own film, like creating a main character poster or a short teaser trailer, to maximize our publicity. Although a risky idea, finding a controversial time to release our film - possibly during a drug or crime epidemic - could also raise the attention of the media. However, this could hurt our film as we would likely be seen as cynical for doing something like that, so we will stick with conventional methods.

Audience Engagement Research: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a movie by Quentin Tarantino, and is set in Hollywood in 1969. It follows Rick Dalton and his stunt devil Cliff Booth as they make their way through an industry that has progressed passed them.

Both this movie and ours have mature themes, so it is similar to ours in that matter. The also revolve around a main character struggling to find their way in a new world.
The movie made a website that showcased stills and trailers of the film, and offered tickets.
They also used their cast as a selling point for the movie. With actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, they generated a lot of excitement about the movie because of their high profiles. They also made appearances on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. This would not work with our film, however, because our cast members are not well known like these ones.

For our movie, our best bet would be to make a website. This doesn't require a big budget and doesn't need a high profile cast. 

Audience Engagement Research: Get Out

Get Out is a mystery thriller film that is rated R and was released in 2017.

Get Out would have a similar audience as The Rise because they are both rated R and both have a thriller aspect to them. This makes it a good movie to analyze in regards to marketing.

The film used ominous posters showing scenes from the movie to get people's attention, and including menacing quotes about the plot. They also included the director's name, Jordan Peele, because he is well known in the entertainment industry.

Get Out also advertised trailers on YouTube. The trailers, while not too plot revealing, gave viewers an idea of what the movie would be about and how good it would be. Putting the ads on YouTube was important because the director has a fan base that correlates to that of YouTube content, so his target audience would be exposed. Ads were also run during sporting events to help broaden the viewer base of the movie.

Get Out also employed their own website, with spoiler-free synopses of the film, trailers, an art gallery, tickets, and a share feature so that people could send it all to each other and gain a larger audience.

Art of the Title Class Activity

Today in class we analyzed some title sequences from Artofthetitle.com. I thought the Goodfellas intro was clever because the opening credits zoomed into the screen from the side, and the sound of a car passing went along with it. This gave the effect that the credits were cars coming into view and then driving off, which I thought was well done. Scorsese commented that he got the idea for the title sequence from the movie Big. We might use a sound bridge when introducing the credits like Goodfellas did, but I don't think we will be using the text effects that they did. 

Target Audience Research

The target audience for this movie will be American men in their early twenties that are making average income and have a standard education. While these are not the only type of people that will enjoy this movie, we predict they will be the most abundant.
Our audience will likely have an interest in crime dramas and action movies. They might find organized crime a fascinating topic, and have a soft spot for the underdog. Anyone that has experience with overcoming obstacles might also like this film.
The criminal setting of the film makes it appealing to anyone who enjoys the mystery and thrill of underground vices. Likewise, the "rising to success" theme of the movie makes it great for anyone who likes to side with an underdog and see them achieve their goal.

Feedback and Revisions

After receiving feedback on my midterm submission, my group and I have decided on a few parts of the movie the change or remove.
The most important thing that needs to be changed is the movie length. As it is, the opening is three minutes long, which is a minute over the required time. Therefore, we need to remove some scenes to shorten it and make it admissible. A scene we want to take out is the one after the phone call, where Giovanne gets in his car and drives away. It will be replaced with a quick fade out and fade in to the scene where Giovanne is pulling into the parking lot. This scene isn't important to the movie, so taking it out will not make the movie confusing, and will actually make the movie flow better.

Another problem we had was costume design. In the scenes with Daniella, she was wearing a Drug Free Youth t-shirt and an ID on a lanyard. This choice of clothing doesn't fit the typical style of a shady criminal, so we will have her wear something more representative of that stereotype.

Finally, we will edit the phone conversation so it will flow better. As it is, there are long pauses between speaking lines that make the phone call seem choppy. We will edit those pauses out to make the conversation flow like a normal phone call.