Judgement
Day
The Bench
#Vnewfood
My Work
This film was made as part of an assignment for my final year filmmaking module. The brief of the assignment was to create a 10 minute short film in teams, the film could be on any subject that we wanted but it had to be based on an original idea and a script that we would come up with. My group was split between using a romantic genre or a darker genre such as a thriller, as a compromise we decided to include both genres within our film. After group discussions we established that the main outline of our film would be that two men (Alfie and Damon) meet by chance on a park bench but through the two characters talking one of them learns that the other is the husband of the woman (Rose) who he had killed years before on that very spot. The group made the decision that the plot would revolve around a character transformation of the killer who wanted to be reformed, which is why he returned to the scene of the crime to seek some sort of redemption.
After devising our main plot we had to decide how we would structure this film for our audience. We wanted to take on a more experimental approach when making our film rather than following a traditional Hollywood filmmaking structure. For our film we decided that we would use flashbacks to disrupt the narrative flow, reflecting films such as Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), which relies on being told in a non-linear narrative. To carry on in this non-mainstream style of storytelling our film did not have a clear narrative outcome, it is revealed to the audience that Damon is a killer but not to any other character in the film therefore he does not receive any punishment for his crime. In doing this we wanted to try to reflect the notion that not everyone gets what they deserve and that there are injustices in the world, rather than having a typically Hollywood style ending where the bad guy gets his comeuppance. We also tried to keep a distance from the narrative structures set out by theorists such as Vladimir Propp, in order to try a more unconventional style of filmmaking.
For the pre-production of this film I took on two roles, creating a shooting script and my main role in making the production schedule. These roles meant that I had to be very organised and detailed in the scheduling of our film to save time and production costs, and to effectively manage the timetables of the actors and crew on a small budget. During filming I was in charge of sound recording and in post-production I was the main editor on the film. In editing it was my responsibility to organise the structure of the film so that it made narrative sense, and to keep to the time limit of the brief, by using my skills of the editing package Final Cut Pro. The feedback we received for the film was very positive both from our peers and tutors. We were awarded a high first class grade for the film for successfully fulfilling the brief to a high standard and creating a film that showed excellent storytelling, instinctive and artistic filmmaking.
This campaign was part of my second year university module Convergence Media. For this project I had to create an marketing campaign for the re-release of a classic film that would be shown at a special event. To do so I had to use a variety of both online and print media to create a journey for the customer that would bulid up anticipation and result in them learning of and being invited to the event. The original idea came from research into other campagins of this type through which I found fake social media profiles for biblical characters that post content based on their dailey lives in the modern day. I decided to adpot this idea into our campaign for the re-release of The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965, George Stevens) and make these biblical characters take on modern day personas instead of trying to expand on the representations given in the film to make it entertainment driven, in order to reach a wider community with our transmedia campaign.
This project is part of my work as a social media assistant for Village Hotel Liverpool and is still ongoing which is why I am not able to display any links to the campaign. In order to maximise the awareness of a new menu being released in the restaurant of the hotel I was tasked with creating a campaign to promote the new menu over our social media channels of Facebook and Twitter. While thinking of an idea of how to promote the menu I came upon the idea of using a food selfie aspect to the campaign as while in the restaurant I noticed that a large number of customers would take a photo of their food as it got to their table. It occurred to me that most of these photos would probably go on to some form of social media but would never be associated with the company. In order to use this now common social norm of taking a food selfie before you have your meal I decided that we should run a competition on our social media sites were customers would take a photo of their food off the new menu and then post it on to either Facebook or Twitter with the hashtag Vnewfood, utilising the company’s common usage of the letter "V" in other marketing. The main aims of the campaign will be to promote the menu by using user generated content as the driving force and to increase the number of customers to the restaurant and followers on our social media sites.
The Campaign to promote the menu and let customers know of the competition would start a week before the new menu will go live. During this time Facebook and Twitter updates will be posted on both sites to inform customers about the release of the new menu and of the competition that we will be running alongside its release. Also during this period examples of the food selfie will be displayed on both sites after the cook off for staff to taste the new menu items. This will help customers who are not aware of what a food selfie is to understand it and to show what new foods will be on the menu also. Once the menu goes live customers will be able to post their food selfies for a chance to win the competition they will also be informed that the competition will be judged on which ever photo gains the most number of likes/favourites and shares/retweets. The competition will run for 2-3 weeks during which time I hope to gather data on our customers and the restaurant. I will use Twitter and Facebook analytics and other analytic software to measure the number of new followers, mentions and engagement on our sites. This will tell me which site is used more commonly by our customers and give me an insight as to how I can improve our other site to match their needs. I will also get an insight in to who our most influential customers are from the photos that gain the most engagement so I can then target them more effectively in future marketing. The competition will also give a lot of information about which dishes are most popular with our customers and will also tell us if it has had an increase in the number of customers that dine at the restaurant by comparing the weekly financial numbers. Finally as the prize for the competition will be a free meal in the restaurant this will promote repeat custom from the winner who will be our most influential social media interacter.
Transmedia Marketing Campaign
Short Film
Social Media Competition
To create our transmedia campaign I wanted to use different social medias and location based technologies. In order to create the characters of Jesus and his followers I created Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts for them, on which I would blog and post their daily activities in and around Liverpool, with them commenting on current events and communicating with each other. I also wanted to create a modern day version of Mary Magdalene who was a reformed call girl who had now found Jesus. To create her character I would use business cards that had her website address on. On this website people would find that she is no longer in her previous profession and now wants other people to follow Jesus, literally on his social media pages to which there would be links on her website. While creating my transmedia idea I found it difficult to see how what I was making could be linked back to the original film and how I could incorporate promotional material for the re-release for the film. To rectify this matter I decided that I would create an event for when and where the film would be shown, which gave the campaign an end point. The film would be shown on Easter 2014, the social media and other materials would appear at the start of Easter. During the course of the four weeks blogs and posts would appear saying that “Judgement Day is coming”, along with the other day to day posts, then “Judgement Day is coming” with the date of the event attached to it. Finally a week before the event I would create posts saying the “Judgement Day is a week away” these final posts would have a link on them to a website. The website that the links would lead to would be a website that contained all the information about the re-release of the film, explaining the reason for the Jesus social sites.
To create more points of access to the social media pages I created QR codes would be placed around Liverpool at different specific locations and would give links to the social media sites. Another idea I came up with was to create posters that would also be placed around Liverpool with images and quotations of Jesus on them which would have a website address at the bottom of them for the social media sites. I decided to not use a QR code on the posters as there are still a large number of people who do not have phones with QR code scanning capabilities. I did not want these people to be alienated from my transmedia campaign so created this way for them to access it. QR codes would also be used on the Mary Magdalene business cards which would bring up the text “Judgement Day is coming” to get users used to seeing this quote that will be present on the Jesus social media sites. As the campaign is promoting an event for the re-release of a film I wanted to target people who like to go out and attend events. In order to reach these people with the campaign I came up with the idea to make a cocktail, called “water into wine” this would be available at Alma De Cuba, a converted church. When customers bought this cocktail bar staff would have been instructed to serve the drink on top of a napkin that would contain a QR code. Once scanned this QR code would lead the customer to one of the Jesus social media sites. By adding these multiple points of access to the transmedia campaign this gave it a pathway for users to follow, with a clear start and end point. Users would access it from a poster or QR code which would lead them either to a Jesus Social media site or Mary Magdalene website that would eventually lead the user to the website for the event.
My transmedia campaign did fulfil many of the aspects of the brief that I was given. I was able to create a campaign for a re-release of a classic film, The Greatest Story Ever Told, that promoted the film over a multiple of medias and had a clear start and end point. I used posters and business cards for users to gain access to the campaign. Users were then directed to social media sites where they could communicate with a character from our film and follow his activities and a website that told the users the reason for the campaign. I also used location based storytelling by using Google maps to give users accounts of Jesus’ modern day miracles in Liverpool. I believe that I was able to create a transmedia campaign that used different media types to effecitvly promote the re-release of a film.
Link to Judegement day website: www.judegmentday2014/wix.com
QR codes produced for napkins and street use.