What we have to consider to attract audience members to our film

Our film's main genre is Drama, some of the key conventions of a Drama film are;
- Real life situations
- Realistic relatable characters
- Portrays a journey of character development
- Designed to move an audience emotionally
- Conflict

These are just some conventions of a Drama film, however Drama is a specific genre which can be easily interlinked with other sub-genres like Comedy, Tragedy and Romance. Our film is a Coming-of-age Drama which is centred around teenagers lives, aimed at a teenage audience. Films that have influenced ours would be Cyberbully, Submarine and Mean Girls.

Cyberbully starring Emily Osment which was a direct-to-TV based around a main protagonist who is being cyberbullied online. The creators of Cyberbully worked with Seventeen magazine to create and market the film because both products are aimed at a teenage audience. Seventeen magazine's involvement in the film creates a substantial amount of Cross Media Convergence between the two and adds a lot of marketing value to the film.

Left: Emily Osment at the promotion of Cyberbully.

Osment, being a Disney Channel star and famous child actress and singer was a good choice for main character by Muse Entertainment Enterprises because of the buzz from the audience who enjoyed seeing her in Hannah Montana. This would attract an audience who have followed her career from Hannah Montana and other Disney Channel shows and a new audience who appreciate films involving hard-hitting subjects.

ABC created badges that could be added to Facebook and Twitter saying "[Delete] Digital Drama!" to create a social buzz for stopping Cyberbullying from happening. The films purpose was to show how much someone can be affected by online violence which can the film a moral value as well as entertainment value.
Our film is quite a mature film to portray the message about the dangers of cyberbullying, in contrast to other films of the same genre which are created to respect the maturity levels of a teenage audience.


Campaigns for our film would be a good attraction point. Lots of films have campaigns and fans which run the campaigns who are devoted to the projects. As an independent company our budget wouldn't realistically be big enough to start running a campaign but I have decide to search for an independent indie artist who's songs could be good for our piece. The initial idea is to get approval from Sony Entertainment to be able to use Walk This Way by MO in our film opening. Just like Submarine's soundtrack which was performed by the Arctic Monkey's lead vocalist Alex Turner, Back At Ya will feature a song which will be a marketing point for our film opening and create below the line advertising which is a free way of advertising for our film. Music is a good marketing strategy which can be created fairly cheaply, good examples of iconic songs which associate with their films are;
- Over The Rainbow - The Wizard of Oz
- My Heart Will Go On - Titanic
- Come What May - Moulin Rouge
- I Will Always Love You - The Bodyguard
- (I've Had) The Time of My Life - Dirty Dancing

All these songs, plus the amazing soundtrack in Submarine are famous songs from famous films which either attract an audience or directly associate with the film itself. A more modern example would be Pharrell William's song Happy which has recently been used in Despicable Me 2.

By Jack Jolly