CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION

In our film ‘Dodging a Bullet’, the main social group are criminals. The four main characters take part in a heist, acting carefully and rebelliously whist taking the risk of stealing a painting, sneaking around the mansion in order to not be seen. They also represent the stereotypical roles in heist and comedy movies where there are elements of mockery presented through the impracticable disguises and unnoticed mistakes made by the criminals.

Within the group, the characters have different roles, Millie's character, being the ‘mastermind’ and leader of the group, shown through her costume of a suit, disappointed looks towards the incompetence of the other characters and seemingly flawless execution of the heist. She is shown to be the most competent character making the other three criminals seem hopeless and unskilled.

'The Boss’ of the heist is represented by a mysterious figure, shown to be in limited light without a shown face, which is stereotypical of most heist films, where the group of burglars are working for an organisation or single person. This is shown through the group only interacting with her when she yells at them through the phone, stereotypically representing the power she has, as she has hired the four criminals to do her ‘leg work’ for her and only has concern for the money and not the criminals, further showing her greed and lack of personal attachment to the criminals. However, our film goes against the typical stereotype of the powerful and villainous character being a male, as this character is female. Our characters are following in the footsteps of Angela McRobbie's Post Feminist Icon Theory, as post-feminist icons for the audience. 

Our film also goes against typical stereotypes for heist films through the object of interest to the criminals, as in typical heist movies such as ‘Ocean’s 8’ or ‘Baby Driver’ the criminals are either stealing jewellery or robbing an entire bank. Our film has focused on the painting being the valuable object of interest, as we were inspired by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft in 1990, where 13 artworks valued at $500 million were stolen, and is still deemed unsolved today.

Within out branding, we ensured that we had a clear sense of who our target audience is which allowed us to create a clear sense of branding. One aspect of this is the range of posters we made, as we were able to create 4 different posters, to create a sense of branding within them, we made the font for the titles the same, showing our audience a signature title, and cohesion between the posters.

Silver Screen Productions has a memorable design which showcases the branding of our independent film company well. The name of the company is shown, adding cohesion across both our productions and our marketing. The logo of the company features at the start of all productions, which adds a realistic industry look, and creates a connection between our products and productions, making it a big part of our brand.

Our production also has a tagline ‘this much fun should be criminal’, which is used on our posters, our production inter-titles and merchandise and posters. This cohesion creates branding through the spread of both physical and digital media. The tagline is relevant to our production as it combines the characters of the criminals with a light-hearted take, which showcases our comedic genre well.

 

Branding was also shown through our social media pages on the platforms of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. I took responsibility of TikTok, which would reach our target audience of 15-25 year olds well. I made sure to show a few shots of the production with some trending sounds, to add enigma and hook in the viewers. By using the hashtags #dodgingabullet and #dodgingabulletthemovie, our branding would be able to create another way of spreading marketing, hashtags showcase the title of the movie, and differentiate between the common idiom ‘dodging a bullet’ and our title. Social media allowed us to reach our target demographic and spread coverage of the film and products to audiences worldwide.

It believed that teenagers attention span has shortened to around 7 seconds to a minute, as our target age group is young people, we took this into account for our branding. I made a social media account on TikTok which showcases short videos or 'bite size content', therefore we will be able to engage without target audience.

We incorporated conventions of our genre by adding in voiceovers where our character explained the plan of the heist, when ‘the Boss’ is talking to the other characters to act as a type of Watson character - the character whose job it is to ask the same questions the audience must be asking and let other characters explain what's going on. This convention also allows the typical hierarchical structure within the criminal group, where the other characters are being told what to do. We researched trailers such as Ocean’s 8, The Hustle, which both included these kind of voiceovers. The enigma created another typical convention used in trailers, we did this by using lighting to keep the face of the ‘Big Boss’, we made sure that the placement of the camera only captured the actor’s silhouette, to not reveal who she is. 

Our film is aimed towards young adults - 15 to 25 year olds - which meant that we had to engage this target audience through our trailers. After researching marketing plans, promo packages and the codes and conventions of trailer from different films with a similar target audience. One of these films was The Hustle, which used popular music, two female leads, and comedic one-liners. The trailer beats stereotypes through the female leads who are shown to be much more than fragile, docile women - they are con-artists and criminals. The description of the trailer on YouTube contains links to the social media platforms along with the hashtag #HustleMovie. The trailer also contains the popular song 'She's a Lady' by Tom Jones. In our production we used the songs 'Pump It' by the Black Eyed Peas and 'Jump Around' by House of Pain which engages our young audience members.