Okay so yesterday I filmed the opening to my trailer, and let me just tell you, that was quite an experience. First off, I babysit these kids for four days every three weeks. I pick them up from school at 2 and stay with them until 6:30 and it is exhausting. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids and I want to work with them in my future, but after an over 6 hour school day on top of waking up at 6 am everyday ON TOP of staying up late doing hw and studying, it is a lot. Normally it is not so bad, they are great kids but what kills me is the questions. Why so many questions kids? Everything I do I get ask why?Who?When?How? And I don’t have to answer once but usually four times. Not because I am not speaking clearly but because they get distracted and don't listen to my first answers. Anyway this relates I promise.
*I interrupt this program to introduce some of my actresses*
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Isa is on the left playing the homeless sister. Tali is in the middle playing younger Cat who is on the right. Abby is not pictured here, sorry about that I forgot to take one of her.
Now back to the story!
So I finish babysitting at 6:30 and Tali (one of kids I babysit) and I go to pickup my other little actress Abby who is the question queen. After explaining what they have to do three times, I go to Cat’s house to film and set up while we wait for her Mom to come home (her Mom is needed for my opening). Well, little miss Cat Castro decides to tell the kids I will get them ice cream after this, which I was not planning on doing because I am hungry, want to go home, tired, and as a matter of fact don’t feel like paying for both kids’ overly priced ice creams. If you know kids, you know they don’t drop topics. They keep pestering you about it until you answer them and are basically forced to say yes. Not me though, nooooo, I was going to stand my ground but then I felt like a mean person because they are doing me a favor by acting in this film. As I tried to divert away from their questions, I was quietly shunning Cat in my head actually I was greatly shunning her for even bringing up the two words.
Moving along this narrative, I had to see how I wanted to position the children for my shot which they did not appreciate this tedious process and all the step to your lefts, move forward, actually jk take a step backward, you get the point. This brings me to problem number 2, Tali is significantly shorter than Abby and even though they are only 2 years apart in age, they are many many inches apart in height. So, I had Abby go down on her knees which made her shorter than Tali and I wanted Tali to be the younger one. Which I don’t know why I could’ve just said that the older one be shorter or Tali hypothetically is the younger version of my oldest actress Isa, but like I said I was exhausted. This is why I had to play with a little thing called perspective in who was taller and it was just a process. Anyway we finish filming and refilming because it is a little difficult to work with non-actresses and I begin to capture my movie poster idea. This was probably the kids least favorite part because they were fed up with me and my repositioning. As we go to leave the house, I realize my poster was HORIZONTAL NOT VERTICAL- a definite face in palm moment. I realize a movie poster can be horizontal and go against conventions, but that is not how I pictured it.
So now here I am sitting here, terrified to play back the shots I got and am praying that everything turned out more than decent
Side note: I had an idea that when I film Isa (the older one) I will use handheld camera to make it look more raw and relateable.
Anyways until next time,
-C
The one to the right is my favorite. Some have the arms bent, other have one arm locked, the Mom is in some of the pictures and absent in others too. As you can tell, some are horizontal because if you read my blog yesterday, you would know that I did that accidentally. However, I do not hate it. The one to the right is my favorite. I think it will look even better with the title and everything. Also only a couple are edited but I still wanted you guys to see what kind of pictures I took. My only issue with the picture is I don't know if it gives off the wrong idea of the story. My second idea is to do the shot of the shoes and the duffle bag that I showed you guys in my storyboard. Then I realized the people won't know what the story is about if it is just shoes, but then I just thought of what if I did a collage of that shot, with different pairs of shoes like in the trailer. This way it shows she is going to different houses. I don't know I will have to try it, but I think it could be cool! 
The first row in the first picture is shots of the mother who is going to be drunk I think instead of high. The little girls come out of the room and look scared. The mother tells them to go to bed and when they stare at her she comes toward them violently. Then cue police sirens, the shots will jump to the girls being pulled away and that is when the shoe shots come in to symbolize one sister going through the foster system. The other sister walks inside the first time to show she got adopted and didn't have to go from house to house. There are shots of Isa under the highway (I will be scouting a place in Markham tomorrow to shoot this) sleeping.
Deadpool released two different trailers, one of them clean the other restricted (each one is linked if you click on the words). The restricted one features more curse words that were blipped out in the clean version, but they still show pretty much the exact same content and shots. What is interesting about this was how they marketed it because at the end of the clean version they have the main character say that there is a more restricted Red Band version but “make sure you ask your Mommy.” The word restricted intrigues the audience because it is something they are not supposed to watch but want to anyway. This technique allows the audience to want to go and see both trailers and see what makes it restricted. Although my movie is clean considering I am also targeting Gen Z, the idea of the trailer reaching out to two different audiences is really smart.
The following piece of information that I found in this great analysis of Millennials is very important for marketing, “Studies have shown that Millennials don’t like brands that explicitly “sell” to them; but brands that sell by providing new, robust, relevant information will have more success and create repeat engagement,”(Gailewics). Basically saying that Millennials prefer to be involved in the brand and the experience for them to obtain satisfaction.
Technology has been ever so present in their entire generation allowing them to access the media in the palm of their hands. Gen Z is a generation with attention spans as short as 8 seconds so it is imperative you spark their interest quickly. They want to remake the content which is why campaigns with a little postmodernist marking where they achieve that one to one relationship with their consumer is ideal. 
Merchandise is something I am going to look into in creating as well. In other research projects for this class, one thing I have learned is that the viewer’s are walking advertisements. Providing them with cool gear may spark questions from their friends which will get them to check it out themselves. Marketing is a pretty manipulative process but hey you gotta do what you gotta do, am I right? I will be going over my strategies in another post, so stay tuned
This is going to be huge in my campaign because, especially considering my target audience, it is so so important and it is where Gen Z and Millennials go for information. This tab will link all the social media accounts so the audience can follow along and keep up with the movie.
This movie’s website has some features I really liked, and some I didn’t like. For example, it has a great marketing technique, which is something I had planned to do similarly, in which they have people submit their idea of home. This allows for a creative, fun, and interactive experience that also
playing. This is smart because it forces the audience to watch it. The trailer is captivating as well so it holds their attention. The site offers a gallery of images that automatically plays through a slideshow. There are tabs like videos, reviews, awards, soundtracks, and finally the really cool “true story” tab. I like how they included the real story on their website because it allows for some context and you can see what specific elements from the movie actually happened in real life. 
This site also opens to DVD/download options like “The Impossible” did. As I already noted this I want to talk about how the home page of the whole site has a GIF of Jack running ahead of Ma in the background. This is just a very cute personal touch that I loved. Also there is an audio on loop of Ma singing the song she sang to Jack to add to a more immersive experience for the site viewers. I really like the bright yellows and blue combinations scattered throughout the text. They also advertised a great marketing campaign about how “No one has to be strong alone” because Jack always talked about how his strong was his hair. If you click on that part of the site it takes you to a page like the one on the right. A video eventually opens up about Bri Larson speaking on this topic and I just really like how they got the cast involved.
