Darkest Insight: CCR #2 Question Research Blog Post

During me and my group's initial planning phase, we were planning on how we could use the conventions of our selected genre to our advantage. We had also discussed how we would realistically distribute our project in the media sphere as well as who our target audience would be.

This allows us to answer the Creative Critical Reflection question "How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?"

With the opening revolving around Asher and Austin, who are two students at the same school, it will help to establish a connection with our target audience, which are younger and middle age audiences, specifically GEN-Z. We had also supported our appeal to this audience by having fast-paced editing as well as consistent action through the storyline. This, in addition to our tense music, creates a piece of media directly engaging our core demographic.

Stories that revolve around situations their viewers can relate to have been a major aspect of many cult-classic coming of age films. We can see this through the popularity of movies such as "The Breakfast Club," which centers around a group of teenagers from different cliques becoming friends while in detention. With the setup from this story being relatable as well as the depictions of the characters with their different personalities allow for a story that directly speaks to its core audience.

This proven success attributed to our selection of our core audience, with the story we selected having proven to setup success among this specific demographic.

For the actual distribution of this opening, we would choose more cost-effective methods in order to reach our target audience just as well. This would be done through both long and short form media platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok. With these areas having a significant amount of young viewers, we would be able to personally advertise towards our main demographic without a strong fiscal responsibilty. To continue to maintain our low budget and spread our film, we would also send it to as many film festivals as possible.

This tactic has been seen working for companies such as A24, which has completely reshaped the way movies can be advertised. We could see this from the film I hadresearched extensively for my class prior, which is "I Saw the TV Glow." For the advertising of this film, with its plot centering around nostalgic elements of the 1990s and children's television, it had focused its marketing towards younger and middle age audiences. They did this through the social media methods and film festival plan I discussed previously. Although A24 had a larger advertising budget to work with, I still believe that by targeting areas that most of my core audience reside in, more individuals who could like my film would be able to find out about it. These marketing strategies of A24 apply perfectly to my story, which would already be a great plan in advertising to more youthful audiences.

With all of this information, I will be able to have a strong viewer base for my film, which they can relate to, as well as a set plan for how to distribute it. This will allow my project to have more depth as well as completely answer this Creative Critical Reflection question.

Finally, in my previous blog post, I had not included my script for my first CCR video for the first question answered. As I have said in my CCR Production Ideas post, the first story is about Asher being interviewed by the police during questioning. Here is the full script for the video, encompassing both questions answered in these first two blog posts: