Fears and reboots

The lesson today was to see how the fears of past movies can be changed for the audience today. I looked at the 80's and 90's looked at how the fears of the time was represented in the films. I found out that the 80's and 90's feared everything as the cold war was happening they feared Russia and another communist nations(The day after film). The internet started up and people feared that computers would be come to interigent and kill us all(Terminator film). radioactive monster and animals they feared with was shown in film like Godzilla and King Kong. Aliens was also an issue with film like men in black this film also used the fear of stranger dangerous by you not knowing who is an alien and who is human, this fear was also used in home alone. natural disasters were a fear as well as north Korea this fears are still used in films today(2012). 

This films are rebooted to show the fears of now. Red Dawn is rebooted last year the original was out in the 80's with Russia invading America. The reboot version was north Korea invading America this shows how the film up dates to fears of now to get the audience full attention .

pirates of the caribbean space reboot

Film Advertising essay- Starship Troopers

British poster for the film.

Starship Troopers is a sci fi action movie in which it shows how propaganda can change the way people think and the action they do in their lives. This can be told by the lines "what's the difference between a citizen and civilian?" http://www.youtube.co/watch?v=w_urWSSZgwU

 This shows how the propaganda effects people in the film. Starship Troopers is based on the book by Robert A. Heinlein. The movie expectation was high as with all films based on popular fiction. The storyline hinted throughout the film on how the propaganda  takes effect on the world and those who live in it. A lot of people were not expecting the film to be very violent and gory, maybe because of the political propaganda theme of the books, but also because the posters were misleading.  The poster on the left makes the film look like a poster for children's sci fi movie like Star Wars -  this is because of the colours used in the poster are blue, which are cold colours and that the bug/alien does not look scary or menacing. Even with the certificate rating of 15, people still had expectations of some thing this film wasn't. Audiences felts that the storyline, marketing and certificate rating were misleading.  In fact it was felt it was so far from what the audiences would expect, with violence and gore, for a 15 certificate, that the BBFC said sorry for the wrong age rating when it come out on video tape by changing the age rating from 15 to 18. Due to this misrepresentation, the film also received bad reviews when it was first released.  However opinions have changed and now the film has received good reviews, and even considered as art.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y07I_KER5fE This was the original trailer for the film the trailer and the posters show that the target audience was males aged 15-25 and fans of Robocop and Total Recall. This is demonstrated by the fact there are explosions, fighting and showing it's from the same director as Robocop, which has the same target audience. I would also say the target audience would be fans of the book and middle class people as the story is about propaganda and a political system, which working class people will not get the hints about it or like that it's about that and upper class people won't like the idea of a sci fi action film as they're more into realistic films. The producers test screened this film to see how popular it was with the audience. They also did focus groups to see if the idea was liked. The film's received negative views as audiences thought the acting and humour was rubbish and aimed at  children. The audience also thought the film was misleading, because of the bad reviews and bad word of mouth, the film made $22,058,773 on 2,971 screens on the opening weekend in America when the budget was estimated to be $100,000,000. The movie did not do as well as the production company had hoped and as a consequence of this, the company didn't make a large profit from the film from the cinema goers at the time.

french movie poster

Spanish movie poster

Starship Troopers was marketed in different ways around the world. In France, it was advertised as cheap sci fi horror film. This can be told by the limited use of colours (just three - blue white and black) and also shows the lack of effect and money used on the poster implying it's a cheap film.  The drawing of the bug spike going down to the person's head, almost impaling them, shows it's a horror film.  When Spain advertised this film, it was clear from the posters that it was a sci fi action film. This is demonstrated by the imagery, showing the alien is running to the person and the person running to it it, as well as showing a battle in the background. These posters show how the same film is advertised, with different messages, in different countries to suit their audience members. This is another reason why the audience was mislead about the film.

Starship Troopers miniatures board game come out in 2005

Even with the film failing the financial expectations of how much profit it was going to make, the film still has a huge income from the merchandising that is still being made today. There is a huge list of film merchandise that was produced, from trading cards and party invitations, to shot glasses  and a model board game like the War Hammer branded games. The film has become more and more popular over the years. When it first came out it was a flop, but after seven years they made a second film that went straight to DVD and  following the success of the first two films, a third film was released, 1 CGI film, a reboot for the film aimed for children and an anime series. The anime series was made to appeal to their Japanese fan audience a year after the film was released. This helped not only with their Japanese fan base and anime fan base but also appealed to the young adults audience and comic book fans. The children's toys based on the film which were sold would of course appeal to dads who buy them for their sons so they could have some thing in common but also collectors of comic book and film merchandise, whilst the Xbox game appealed to the next generation of viewers who may have been given the toys from their dad when they were young and fans of first person shooter games. All of this merchandising helped make the film get its name out there, years after the film was released and helped it advertise to an audience that may not have watched it otherwise as they liked reading comics instead of watching a film as well as reaching people in a different generation.

single camera idea and focus group

My idea for the single camera is a Sherlock Homes parody in which Sherlock is mentally ill person who gets all the credit for solving crimes when its really Watson who solves them. The title for the short film is The Less Mentally Fortunate Sherlock Homes. This title came about in the focus group, the title and plot was highly popular with the focus group. The characters that I have decided on are: Sherlock Homes, Watson, Moriarty and the Chief of police. The cast and crew of this production is going to be about 5-7 people. I'm going to film it in rural areas, inside the college and at home. The target audience is going to be fans of Sherlock Homes and comedy shows, Aged 15-21, middle and working class and both males and females. I have a small budget however i have all the equipment and editing software provided to be by the college.

test screening week 2

Test Screening

I learnt that before the internet film companies did test screening and if the film scored less than 70% there was something wrong with the film. however film companies did not care if the audience don't like the film, but it all changed with the film Batman and robin were it was very unpopular and the film company don't care however one of them uploaded his review online and people read the review and don't see the movie since then test screening has become less and less in the media industry.