My CR

How do your products represent groups or issues

The main character of our film is a teenage girl named "April". As a teenager most specifically a girl, there are a million and one things constantly running through. Such as, remembering to do the math homework or even watching the new episode of the popular show. Within our film, these common emotions are heavily promoted. We see the main character being forgetful which eventually cost her, her life. In order to break this trend, she must learn to be patient. While forgetfulness is a human trait. We all forget things from time to time. However, when our forgetfulness hinders our abilities to remain patient, we can regret it. Teens all around the world will be able to watch our films and feel represented. Additionally, Floridians are greatly represented within our films. Being Floridians ourselves we were prone to include some popular landmarks while filming. Publix is one of our filming sites. The cold green logo will stand out to each and every Florida citizen. We even included a Publix cake as one of our props. Fans of the cakes will be ecstatic to see the small cameo. Another product of ours is the website and postcards. Both are very similar to each other. Not only are the themes dark and eerie. They spark curiosity within a viewer. Those interested will feel compelled to learn more. Lore fanatics will love our website and postcard. We all of the issues and social groups we touch on in our short film, we made sure to do it subtly!   

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of 'branding'?

'Branding' was a big part of our process. Staring off we knew that we needed to advertise our short film early. The earlier allowed us to build a strong foundation of supporters. With that being said, we started brainstorming great advertising ideas. Thus, we came up with the website. Our website acts as an atrium for our other platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. Each platform provides information about the film, ways of contact, and other impact topics. On Instagram, we actively post stories and in feed media. They often ask a question or invite out viewers to engage in some way shape or form. For example, yesterday I posted a story asking "What are you most excited about for "Wednesday Drive." We have river 50+ interactions. That one post brought a ton of new faces involved with our story. Even with little posts, we still make sure to include a sense of mystery, as if they're in the short film before even viewing it. When it comes to postcards it is our finest piece of branding. We've made it both digital and physical. Not only posting it on our Instagram but handing them out in public to our friends, family, and strangers. The postcard is like a piece of the movie fit into a 6x6 piece of paper. Handing them out allows for knowledge of our short film to spread. A person may give it to their friend and their friend might give it to their sister. Thus, the cycle continues!

 How do your products engage with the audience?

Our Instagram page and website create spaces for our supports to interact with us. Such as the comments where there are free to share their excitement and appreciation for our work. Once a week we promote the film on our Instagram story where people can swipe up and respond. There we can have one on one conversations about anticipation for opening night or just some positive affirmations. In this way, we can constantly engage with our audience, as supporters mean everything to us. Within our website, we added a “Concerns” section where anyone can send us an email illustrating their inquiry they may have. Also on our Instagram page, we do weekly polls to keep our followers interested and ready for the release of the film. We have plans of sending a few secret PR packages to some fans that give me a makeshift car key that has the embroidery “Wednesday Drive” on it. Once they’ve received their packages, they will be instructed to record an unboxing and posy on their stories to help promote our film. This is an extremely effective way to promote whilst still actively involving our audience while expanding it at the same time. Lastly, we physically engaged with our audience as we are a part of our product. Being the directors, aka the people formulating this film, we spend time connecting with our peers and informing them of our upcoming project. Including, family, friends, and friends or friends. Engagement is something we sincerely value as a team!

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

We first started by researching different short films. Getting a feel of what a film is in general, was needed for a sturdy foundation. We needed to feel the difference between a regular-length short film and a full length. It felt surface-level at first, but as we researched we found the fine details. The biggest convention is time, so we prioritized learning the differences. We assigned ourselves about 3 short films each to watch, study, and take notes on. Doing this we found that conciseness was key. Next, we furthered the short film research by assigning 2 short films for each person that fell under the “Mystery genre” As our film is also a mystery we need to see key conventions within this genre. We found out that mystery is generated through the use of diegetic, non-diegetic sound, costumes, and tone.  Getting it right in fine detail is something we honored. We kept that in mind as we start writing the script. After our first draft, we saw that our product mostly used all of the normal conventions within the genre of mystery. However, we also incorporated conventions from different genres. Such as drama and suspense. From our research, we saw that the genre mystery and suspense play hand to hand. While they are different, they still of tons of similarities. Such as the use of costumes, diegetic, and non-diegetic sound; there were extremely interesting to learn more about All in all, our research has helped us greatly with the use of proper conventions!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  xoxo, Dru