CCR essay - audiences and distribution
How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
“EMMA” is a feature film that was produced by an independent media and entertainment company called ‘New Culture’. This company granted me the possibility to create and direct this film with amazing and talented actresses and actors, such as Alexis Wade and Jack Richard.
The target audience of ‘EMMA’ is broad, with the film tugging at the tender heartstrings of all ages - whether it be teenagers or millennials - while detailing the life of a young woman as she navigates through hardship, desire, and change.
Throughout the film many technical, as well as visual aspects help engage the audience and allow all viewers to feel somewhat connected to the characters involved. This is specifically done by allowing the audience to engage their imagination in interpreting what the scenes mean and what the story is trying to convey.
In a film, every word, shot, and action communicates meaning. This is done through the use of semiotics, which can be seen as an idea of being able to tell the story “visually" by employing symbols. This allows films, and specifically ‘EMMA’, to communicate meaning through images, as well as through physical actions. It also creates a construct for communicating meaning of a narrative by conveying a set of conventional expectations - which in turn keeps your audience engaged throughout the whole film.
Moreover, a plot helps engage the audience. It is an engaging thought or sensation that is the thread that pulls you through the narrative of a story, and gives the events a "reason for being" as character motivation drives the plot to progress. In the opening scene of ‘EMMA’, numerous unfolding hints and clues are provided to anticipate the viewers and cause the sensation of anticipation that is ‘who is the character that had just been introduced?’ and ‘why is it that we see all of these symbols?’.
For example, by introducing the main protagonist - in the opening scene - in a reserved and unforthcoming way, we allow the audience to engage their own thoughts and ideas of the character. By allowing them to interpret who the character is, we can guarantee that the scene is visually engaging and physically suturing.
The mise-en-scéne of the opening scene, on the other hand, provided written codes through establishing shots. These written codes further invite audience members to participate mentally with the movie's main characters and its narrative - which allows for the film to connect with its audience and engage with them.
Through emotional suturing ‘EMMA’ engages the audience into the story by conveying characters and situations that generate sympathy and relatability. With class and gender inequality being the centre of the films narrative, some audience members feel close to and identify with the protagonist due to their own personal experiences. Furthermore, by not having any dialogue in the opening scene, the song ‘Solitude’ by Billie Holiday highlights the symbolic idea of the scene and its emotive ambiance.
Distribution wise, while ’New Culture' both produces and distributes feature films, it still uses highly accessible streaming and rental platforms, such as Amazon Prime, to grant many film lovers the opportunity to watch ‘EMMA’ effortlessly - at any given moment. Therefore, the film is now available for you to watch on Amazon Prime by using a subscription, or even by renting or buying it.
The reason that ‘New Culture’ is an independent company is centred around the fact that we, as producers and distributors, want to retain all decision making in our films, control the majority of the marketing for our films and their distribution. We wanted and will continue to want films like ‘EMMA’ to have their own transparency and appeal without having to rely on other companies and their choices for our films.
And the reason why our independent company trusts and loves Amazon Prime to now exclusively stream ‘EMMA’ on Prime Video is due to its deal with our company - ‘New Culture’. Amazon got the rights as part of its multi-year arrangement with our company that brought many of our other films to arrive and become a success on the platform. Therefore, we decided that Amazon subscribers will now be in store for more ‘New Culture’ movies down the line - especially since their subscribers are also a big part of our audience.
With ‘EMMA’ we also use conventional, yet powerful marketing strategies for distribution to be a greater success. Yet due to the pandemic, we have been limited to online marketing campaigns in order to prioritise the safety of our audience members and our cast and crew.
One of our marketing campaigns includes using social networks in an interactive way, which include instagram and twitter. Our approach to social media is centred around authenticity and interactions with our audience. You can discover videos usually centred around upcoming movies, which will provide you with sneak peeks of what’s in store. Apart from videos, we also publish images, gifs, and plain text posts in the form of questions based on the current movies streaming online. You can have access and interact with all of this by following @new.culture. So our main strategy is to entertain our audience not just through movies but also through exclusive social media content.
Also, we do things like interviews - just like we are right now. This allows great exposure for our upcoming films and promotes interest from the audience due to "marketing buzz". These interviews open up the chance for us to publicly advertise our movie on TV and in front of people. Moreover, we try to broaden the spectrum of the interviews that we attend for example, this is the first open conversation we have ever done. We do this in order to try and reach a different audience, as well as to stray away from the traditional film promotion.
I think it’s important to understand that it’s not an easy task to promote movies. If you want to stand out from the crowd, do something extraordinary with your marketing goals, collaborate with specialists, and don't buy the fallacy that exceptional results require a significant budget. Money is helpful, but in marketing, creativity is the ultimate currency.
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