CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION

My promotional package represents a variety of social groups and issues in many ways. Our film is set in 2020 whereby the UK government acted upon the Covid-19 virus and put the whole country into a tier 4 lockdown. Rather than ignoring the pandemic and its challenges, we decided to embrace it and use it as the basis for our film. This is because many films and tv shows being made now incoherently ignore the pandemic and the impacts of it. 

As our genre is a horror, it leaves us vulnerable to creating a movie that creates unrealistic threats or representations. Therefore, to offer a sense of realism and relevance to contemporary times we decided to narrow in on the contrasting opinions that covid offers, which leads us to our first social group, protestors. People are discontented and restive about the restrictions on their liberty. The public mood turns nasty. It is suspected that the government welcomes the chance to control the population and the people in turn become hostile about being “locked up like animals”. The protestors in our film are constructed and represented as anonymous bandits roaming the streets with their flares, placards, animal masks and all black tracksuits. The significance of all black tracksuits and animal masks is part of which defines these protesters, it makes them seem very mysterious and unpredictable, which in turn creates suspense and horror. England has experienced very bad protests in the past, and as our film is clearly based in England, the past repeating itself or déjà vu in a way also contributes to the horror. This is because protesters with flares could potentially have weapons which adds to the intimidation. 

A contrasting social group which contributes to the awareness of the protesters would be our news reporter Tom. Through Tom’s clothing selection to his tone of speech, everything about this scene is textbook news reporter. For example, news reporters tend to wear suits which have solid colours. This is because solid colours like grey or black are unlikely to distract the viewer, whereas a pattern or neon colour is likely to catch the eye and distract the audience from the important information. In a way Tom adds to the intimidation that these protestors intend to produce. This is because in Tom’s news report raises awareness and encourages people to stay away from the protesters as well as the woods where the protesters seem to hold base.

 As the effects of covid is so relevant, it is likely that our viewers will have a negotiated understanding of our movie. In relation to Stuart Hall’s representation theory, a negotiated understanding is a comprise between the dominant and oppositional understandings, which as a result means that audiences will agree with some elements of our movie but still reserve their own views. As many conspiracies about covid-19 had emerged since the beginning of the pandemic, we represent different views through different social groups and personalities within those social groups. The four main characters in Off the Leash are Blake, Kyle, Tommy, and Marcus. Everything about this friendship dynamic is how this group conform to social norms. A typical teenage male friend group is likely to consist of an instigator which is Blake, the friend who is always first to listen to the instigator which is Kyle, Tommy falls into the category of just being individual but will partake in group activities and then Marcus, who is the person in the friendship group who is always weary of doing something which he possibly shouldn’t do. As a result of his passive personality, sometimes Marcus can be susceptible to lighthearted teasing from the others in the friendship group. These are all qualities of a friendship group which you would expect to see, especially to in a teenage boy group. These characters are all constructed to represent these character traits. Marcus is not as confident verbally, which represents his introverted personality. Whereas someone like Blake talks confidently and often due to his extroverted personality. Blake also walks more proudly, whereas Marcus can often be seen walking with his shoulders and head down, which is indicative of his lack of confidence.

To further represent Marcus’s social group which is introverted teenage boys with a lack of confidence, we introduce Marcus’ sister Alecia. Scientific “research shows that beyond the influence of parents, both older and younger siblings positively influence each other’s empathic concern over time. Older siblings play an important role in the lives of their younger siblings” – as quoted from a scientific report. Therefore, introducing a caring older sister, who looks out for her vulnerable younger brother, helps the audience understand and emphasises Marcus’s submission to peer pressure and reliance on an older wiser sister.

As part of this promotional package, I have created a poster, merchandise, social media, interviews, trailer, and teaser trailer, which are all collated together to give a sense of branding. For example, the font on my poster is called Shock Therapy BB, which is the same font I used for my profile picture of my social media page. My facebook page banner leverages the four animal masks and uses the line drawings of each mask rather than to use text. Visually this looks very strong but can also be seen throughout the other social media pages created by my team, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. The merchandise I created uses Shock Therapy BB for title of OFF the Leash, throughout my merchandise. Using synergy, on my poster and in the trailers, I leverage the success of my previous film ‘Suspect’. This is because audiences who enjoyed Suspect are likely to enjoy Off the Leash as it is made by the same creators. 

Having had researched film trailer codes and conventions, this had a huge impact into the editing of the trailer. For example, from my research I found that other film companies leverage their past endeavours. Therefore, in the trailer there is a intertitle which says from the makers of Suspect. Films are required to produce a BBFC age verified certificate, which is exactly what I have put at the start of the trailer. This makes the trailer appear to be more authentic and official. Unlike film openings, I found that film trailers have a lack of continuity, to preserve the storyline and entice audiences to watch their movie. Therefore, during my editing, I made sure that I wasn’t editing the footage in chronological order, instead, I edited the footage to suit the music best, which naturally put clips all over the place, thus ignoring continuity.