26/09/16: MARK BOOTH
In this session I will conduct more research and complete more work for my presentation for Lee’s lesson, I will also look at the results that I got from my questionnaire.
03/10/16: MARK BOOTH
Today I will finish off the research that I was doing in Sally’s lesson, I will also look at work that I have left over from other lessons and make sure that I do this to the best of my ability.
17/10/16: MARK BOOTH
Today I will look at the recent feedback that Lee has given me for my presentation and makes notes on what I need to change/ improve on to make my presentation better.
07/1/16: MARK BOOTH
TodayI will finish some of Lee’s unit 9 work including the planning/ pre production. I will also look at applying to university and finishing my ucas profile.
14/1/16: MARK BOOTH
I will finish some pre-production for filming and also work on Kayti’s digital portfolio work.
21/1/16: MARK BOOTH
I will plan out tomorrows shooting and make sure that all the cast and crew have their sheets of what they need to know.
To create a buzz for your film it is very important to connect with your audience and get to know what they want to see, keeping your audience up to date is very important to create a hype for your film. Sharing similar things to your film will help people interact with you, you can search for things that match your interests/ what your film is about and people who have liked similar pages are likely to enjoy your work too. So it is very important to look for people who are interested in similar things to your film.
According to DesktopDocumentaries: “In recent years, the internet has become a boon for independent filmmakers and transformed the landscape for distributing your film.” This tells me that there are a range of places online where I can distribute my film & over time the internet has developed to make this easier for film makers to do. There are many different ways to connect to your audience including using various types of social media and online sites. These social media could include:
Facebook- On Facebook you can create pages and events on Facebook and invite friends and other people to look at these, you can also invite people you are not friends with who have liked similar things before. Using Facebook allows you to connect with hundreds of people at one time and helps you create a background of people who you know will watch your film. If people like your Facebook page you know that they are more likely to watch your film and maybe share the posts you upload to Facebook. Disadvantages of using Facebook would be, not everyone engages with Facebook or has an account so people maybe of a young age or older age wouldn’t see the advertising that you do. Another disadvantage would be if you have a personal account you might want to create another account or email to create another Facebook account so that people can’t see your personal details or personal posts on your private account. If you choose not to do this then people would be able to access your private posts, pictures and also look into your friends lists etc, which wouldn’t give off much of a professional feel to the film page that you’re creating, and make it look quite unorganised and informal.
Twitter- When you tweet you can interact with people all over the world from different backgrounds and different views, and millions of people will interact with your tweet by using tags and hashtags. You can talk directly to people who have interest in films similar to the one you’re creating- this will help you build an audience all around the world. Using Twitter lets you connect to millions of people at a time and even though there is less privacy settings on Twitter than (for example) Facebook, your account is secure and safe. Another advantage of Twitter is that you can follow anyone on Twitter and they can follow you back, this helps you reach out to a lot of people and build an audience at the same time. A disadvantage of using Twitter is that a lot of people could think that your account is spam or a scam to get money off of them- this would end up with people blocking your account or just ignoring it. Because there is a lot of spam on Twitter it is known to get report for such things. Another disadvantage is that Twitter isn’t as effective for putting up films and photos and such social medias as Instagram and Youtube and so its not very popular to see people advertise films on Twitter.
Instagram- Instagram is one of the most popular mobile photo, video sharing applications/social media’s out at the moment. It is very popular for its wide audience as millions of people around the world connect using this app. You can advertise your product and connect other people using tags and hashtags to link people to your post, for example if you hashtag “film”, if someone put into the search engine the hashtag film, your post would be at the top of the search for everyone to see. Tagging is also good to get companies etc involved, when you upload a short clip of your film you could tag film makers and producers etc to your post which would also give you more recognition for your work. However a disadvantage of using Instagram is that you are limited to the amount of time your video can be to be uploaded. Now (in 2016) it has gone up from having a limit of 30 seconds of video to 1 minute, however for someone who’s making a film this is still a short amount of video to be uploaded to your post. Another disadvantage is that you can’t use Instagram as a website, it only loads on smart phones such as iPhones and Androids in an app format, this makes your audience smaller and lose out on people as not many people in the older age range know a lot about smart phones etc.
Snapchat- On snapchat you can create stories that disappear after 24 hours of your post, you can post videos and pictures to your story and people who you have as friends/followers can see everything you put on your story. This is a mix of both advantage and disadvantage, it works well because you can keep your audience up to date however you have to have a big list of friends on Snapchat for people to see the story. It is also a disadvantage because if everything disappears after 24hrs people may forget your post and won’t be able to look back at it. I don’t think it would be good to use snapchat as a way to connect to your audience because when you friend request someone they HAVE to accept to be able to see anything you post and you would need a huge amount of people that know you or have heard of your product to be able to find your snapchat. Overall I believe it is not an efficient way to connect to your audience.
YouTube- Youtube is used by millions to watch and upload videos and films, you can broadcast your own videos to millions of viewers around the world. Creating and posting trailers and snippets of your work/film will keep your audience up to date and interested in your film and people will be more likely to watch your film if you create a buzz for it before its out.There is a comment section which allows you to get feedback on your work and you can keep track of your favourite videos by using ‘likes’ and ‘favourites’. You can connect with other ‘Youtubers’ easily via messaging, email and commenting on their posts- this allows you to get more followers and viewers as you can gain people from a range of interests. The most important disadvantage of using Youtube is that sometimes the servers go down and/or offline, this causes the website to crash- making people not able to view your profile and also it stops you from uploading your work and keeping your audience up to date. Other than this YouTube is one of the most popular ways to promote your work; especially films, videos and trailers.
What is your initial idea for unit 13?
My initial idea for my FMP is to create a documentary based on bullying, I will speak to people who have been effected by bullying and ask them questions about their personal stories. I will include facts and information about bullying and inform the viewers about things they may not know about bullying and how it effects peoples lives.
Existing Outlets
There are many places in which I could show my final film. My film is all about bullying and so I presume that many different schools would like to use my work of a way or talking about bullying and how it can be controlled in school and also out of school. I would maybe want to contact anti-bullying charities such as ‘Stand Up To Bullying’ and ‘KidPower’, they may want to use my work for their anti bullying schemes to show children and also to put on their websites etc. This would help me get recognition and it may also help me get more work etc for the future with that company. There are a few film festivals that I could enter my film into for example: Cambridge Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival. Each one of these film festivals show both short and long films and allow a range of genres so this would be appropriate if I wanted to enter my film into any festivals/competitions. However I am more focused on just putting my final film on Youtube rather than in competitions, because I am not as interested in the film festivals as I am promoting my work on Youtube- which I have done many times before.
Research Existing Audiences -My Demographic
To find out who will be the demographic for my film, I will conduct some primary research by creating my own survey using TypeForms. This will give me a good idea of who will watch my film and it will allow me to get to know my audience better.
I created my own survey and posted it on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and asked other people who had completed my survey to share my questionnaire too. I made sure that I posted my questionnaire online so that many people would see it, it made me think more about the amount of people who may actually watch my final film. After creating my survey and posting it on social media, I had quite a few responses which allowed me to think about what type of people like the type of film that I am creating. Looking at my results I can see that the majority of the people were females and aged in the under 18 category. I can also tell that a lot of people who answered have been effected by bullying and/or have been effected bullying at some time in their life. This shows me that my film will be relatable for many people and hopefully a lot of people will watch my film because of these results.
I had a look on Facebook, searching for Facebook pages and events that relate to my film. I firstly looked and a few pages that were based on Documentary and Films and looked at the sort of people that had liked these pages and/or said that they were going to upcoming film events. I found that a lot of the people who liked film pages were a complete range of people (ages, genders, personalities), however the people who liked documentary film pages seemed to be a more mature age range (elder ages, 20’s/30’s) and the sort of people who studies or has studied film before. I couldn’t really find any other pages or events that are similar to my film, there weren’t any that were about bullying or bullying docs so I just looked more into the people who looked at documentaries.
I had a quick look at the people who watch YouTube videos, however it is very limited to what you can find out about people when looking at their YouTube. I could look at their profile pictures and what they have put on YouTube etc but if they were private I couldn’t look at their personal information. After looking at these pages and groups online it helped me think more about who will actually watch my film and the sort of people that they are (including their interests and personalities.)
Focus Group
To get more of a idea of what people thought about my film I decided to conduct a focus group including people in my course. I firstly pitched my idea to the group and asked them what they thought of my idea. I recorded my answers and listened to the feedback I got from the group.
I listened to what my focus group had to say about my idea, one of my first questions was “do you like my idea and would you watch this type of film”the answers that I got from this showed that people are interested in my film and will watch my final project, I think that this question sparked the most interest. Another question I asked was about where I should set my interviews, this made me more confident about my ideas because I wanted to set interviews in peoples homes or bedrooms etc so that they are comfortable. When asking about this in with the group they said that it would be good if they’re comfortable.
I think that the group responded well to a lot of my questions and gave really good answers too, all the feedback I received has helped me become more focused on my ideas and also helped me come up with new ones too. Once I told the group about my idea, I got asked (by one of the people in the group) who will be in my film, this made me think more about who I should have in it but also who the people in the focus group expected to be in it. Having someone ask me this question made me question the people who I have already chosen as to whether they will work well with my film but also made me think about who else would be open to be in my film. So overall the answers that I got from the focus group has helped me a lot with developing my ideas and how to interpret them into my film.
The only question that people didn’t respond well to was, when I explained my idea and asked if people would watch it or not. Before asking this question I knew that the answers I was going to get weren’t going to be accurate because I was talking to people I knew so the answers were going to be biased. The general answer from everyone in the group was that they would watch my film however, I know that if their answers were anonymous a few would’ve answered differently.
Overall, I think that the focus group has helped me a lot, firstly it has helped me get some honest feedback on my film which has made me when thinking about how it will come across to the audience. It has helped me become more sure on any ideas I already had and helped me develop new ones. So in general it has helped me develop my film with new ideas and think more about how I will plan out each part of my doc.
Commissioning
Commissioning is where a big distribution or media production company will actively seek out new ideas and encourage people to make stuff for their platform. As part of my research I will look into different ways that I can get my work out to an audience and commissioning may be a good way to do this.
I firstly looked into the existing types of commissioning and where I can get involved with this. I have had a look at the Channel 4 website and found that they advertise a lot of their careers onto their website and they keep it updated quite a lot. Here is a example of a job that they have advertised on their site. Although this is something that my final film wouldn’t fit into it has made me more aware to keep checking Channel 4’s website for new jobs that they have just incase they have something that I may be able to work on.
To look for a range of different places for commissioning I took a lot at the most popular TV channels such as Channel 4 (above), ITV and BBC. Below is an example of the page shown on the ITV website, it explains exactly what they’re looking for and details about what they expect to be in the TV show/film. Even though there isn’t any work that I will be able to do yet (that will fit the criteria they are looking for), I will still keep an eye out for work available with the ITV. I know exactly where to be looking on their site as it is easily navigational and is clear with different sections for each genre and for different times of the day that the work will be shown in. I took a look into some of the factual work that ITV have put on before- watching some of their documentary shows and daytime TV fact shows to get to know the style of what ITV look for, this will help me in the future when thinking about projects and styles that I could work with which I could apply to the ITV commissioning page with.
After looking at the ITV website I then took further time to look at BBC commissioning site , this site came across as looking for more professional work. It doesn’t give off a lot of detail about who they want (people who have an agent or don’t) however, they gave a lot of detail about what they specifically want in the work that they will show on their channel. Again, there isn’t any work for me to be able to apply for or to put my work forward for however it has allowed me to explore the page and look more into what sort of work BBC are looking for- which will help me in the future when looking for where to distribute my work.
Overall, I have found quite a lot of work that a range of companies are looking for, knowing where to find these pages will help me in the future if I want to apply to work with any of the companies. I will make sure that I check the pages on a range of production websites to make sure that I am open to all opportunities with working big production teams. A lot of the work that I found usually as for work from people who are already working with/ are representing a production company or agent. Although, I will still make sure that I apply for a range of work on these sites and keep an eye out for work that comes up that fits what I am working on at the moment- (I didn’t find any pages on the sites that are looking for the type of work I am producing.)
Youtube Analytics
I have emailed more than 5 youtubers and I am yet to here back from them, I asked to look at their analytics for their documentary films as part of my research. Finding out simple likes, dislikes and roughly the amount of views they got on their documentaries, would help me think more about the amount that I might get if I put my work on Youtube. The most useful thing to me would be the amount of views that each video gets and also where the viewers are from- whether or not the video has been watched all around the world, this will give me an idea of what to expect from my film.
Because I haven’t had any replies from the accounts on Youtube who I reached out to, I decided to take on some more research to give me a bit more insight into the analytics of the channels whose work I looked at.
I went on the SocialBlade website to look more into what statistics each site had, firstly I looked at “One Bird Studios” the results showed that the account got over 6,000 views in the last 30 days and also gained 30 subscribers too. From this I can see that this account gets and average £12-£195 yearly earnings.
I then looked at a smaller account which weren’t as known as the previous account, the results showed that “Nathalie Basoska”‘s account got over 3,000 views and 11 new subscribers in the past 30 days. Searching these youtube accounts also lets me see how much money these channels are making and which of their videos are most popular. I can see this account gets an estimated £6-£101 yearly earnings.
Overall, looking at these analytics of these accounts has made me think more about what sort of results I’m going to get when I upload my final project and the sort of views, likes, subscribers and maybe money I could gain from putting my work on Youtube.
Crowd funding
Crowdfunding is a way of raising money for a project, small amounts of money from a large amount of people are invested into a project to help it get made- usually used via internet and social media sites.
Crowdfunding would help me not only raise awareness that my film is being made but it also raises money for your project to be made- this could make my project 10 times better than what it would’ve been without funding. Having people put money towards my project would help me pay towards any props I may need, any travelling costs, equipment costs, maybe even talent and actors and any food etc they may need to have.
I have decided that I will use crowd funding in my project, although my project doesn’t need a lot of money or maybe even none, it will help me improve my project overall. I think that I will be able to spend more money on travel etc to be able to shoot in better locations that just in the college tv studio etc. I will hopefully get a small amount of money from the funding to help me pay for small things in my project, even if that means food for the talent in their breaks- it will still help in some way. I will make sure that once I have created my funding site I will put it on every social media account I own: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram. I will ask people I know (who are also on social media) to share it- this will help it get around a lot of different people and hopefully get some money put into the funder.
Success story example:
Gosnell Movie: A historic crowdfunding campaign for a movie about America’s biggest serial killer Kermit Gosnell. $2,342,886 USD total funds raised, 107% funded on May 13, 2014. They asked for $2.1m and got a lot more than what they expected in a short space of time.
The groundbreaking “Veronica Mars” movie ended up making $5,702,153 from 91,585 total backers. The Kickstarter’s goal had only been $2 million. Making it the biggest “crowd funded” film of all-time.
Summary
Doing this research has helped me find out a lot more about what I need to do for my final project and what I can do to help my film get recognition. From researching which social media are best to promote films, I decided that I will use Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram. I found out that these are the best ways to get recognition from a range of people- I plan on posting trailers and teasers on all of the social media accounts I will make. I will create new accounts for each one to keep my personal profiles separate from my work. I now have more knowledge about where I will be able to put my film and existing outlets for my genre. Researching existing audiences helped me think more about the amount of people who will watch my film, and the sort of people who already like Documentary pages- that I could invite to my Facebook Pages etc. Conducting my own focus group helped me set my ideas in places and it allowed me to get peoples opinions on my idea. As part of my research I looked into commissioning, this made me more aware of what sort of jobs are out there for the big TV production companies- I will now know where to look if I am wanting a job with one of these companies. After looking at crowd funding I now know more about how I can fund my film and where I can put my funding site. So overall I have found out a look of research that will effect my production in a good way, I now have more knowledge about my production and what I need to do to get it noticed.
Hannah Walker 
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