This is our EVALUATION QUESTION 2 page. Throughout this page, you'll get the chance to see our film, Ursula, presented across many different media platforms in order to demonstrate the combination of our main product and ancillary texts. We will be looking very closely at the synergy, continuity and identity of all 3 of our final products before looking into possible forms of cross media convergence. Media convergence is the merging of distinct media to create entirely new forms of communication expression. Convergence is at the heart of today’s digital media revolution and includes such technologies and software applications as the Internet and electronic commerce, smartphone technology, digital-film animation, DVD (digital video disc) music and high-definition television (HDTV), and video game systems to name only a few.
Having a strong brand is important for any horror film particularly if it aims to become a franchise and this is something we will also be looking into on this page. We will discuss the brand identity of Ursula and look at how it compares to other real media texts and whether or not we have a strong enough brand to possible develop sequels or even crossovers.
Having a strong brand is important for any horror film particularly if it aims to become a franchise and this is something we will also be looking into on this page. We will discuss the brand identity of Ursula and look at how it compares to other real media texts and whether or not we have a strong enough brand to possible develop sequels or even crossovers.
In order to gain a fair amount of success from a film, it has to be presented to an audience through as many different media platforms as possible. Many of the successful horror film franchises spend a lot of their budget on marketing the film well so that it can make a sizeable return through box office revenue. Below is just some examples of different ways in which an audience can come across a film:
An excellent example of a horror franchise, although not of the same sub-genre as ours, that uses CMC and Synergy incredibly well is Saw. Saw is a horror franchise distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment and produced by Twisted Pictures that consists of seven feature films and additional merchandise. Originally created by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, all 7 Saw films have collectively grossed over $873 million at the box office worldwide and sold over 30 million DVDs. Saw's successful use or synergy and cross media convergence earned the franchise a place in the Guinness World Records as the "Most Successful Horror Movie Series" as of 2010.
Fast forward to 2013 and Saw is everywhere. From video games to theme park rides, it's hard to escape the horror phenomena that is Saw. The continuity throughout all their products is what makes Saw so marketable and easy to brand. Whether it's on their film posters or coffee mugs it is clear that the same colour scheme and typography is used throughout which is a very important factor in the franchises overall success. The use of the white background and grunge coloured images that are present from Saw all the way until the final film of the franchise, Saw 3D, is a testament to the amazing marketing ability of the film. What would normally be considered as a lazy, uninspired effort at a marketing campaigned has proved to be a huge success for the Saw franchise.
Having the budget to spend on advertising space of this size is a luxury Lions Gate Entertainment used to their advantage when they used this billboard to market the release of Saw 3D. Just like the franchises film posters, the billboard has a similar look and feel about it with the white background and vague grunge texture. The continuity throughout the marketing campaign for Saw 3D, including this billboard, went a long way to helping the film itself rack in over $135 million at box office off a budget of just $17 million.
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Here is another perfect example of the continuity present throughout different media platforms. On the Blu Ray cover of Saw 3D we see a very similar concept to the one on the billboard. A very similar mouse trap style weapon appears on the cover with the very recognisable "Saw" title although this time in which and with the "3D" element missing. According to the Nielsen VideoScan chart, the DVD and Blu-ray formats placed number three in its first week.
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There are not many video games released that are based on existing films, let alone horror films, so this shows just truly how marketable Saw really is. Not only was it able to release a video game but there was also a sequel to that game. The first game features the iconic doll face of Jigsaw as well as the noticeable typography of the film title. The colours used are fairly similar to the ones used on the posters, billboards and DVD covers. Saw II: Flesh & Blood was released on October 19, 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, ten days before the release of the seventh film, Saw 3D.
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Finally the pièce de résistance of the Saw franchise. Not only is their Saw: The Ride but their is also Saw: Alive which is a live-action horror maze built specifically just to complement the roller coaster ride. Surrounding the ride is several Saw like elements from severed heads to barbed wire. Even with this the continuity still lives on, with the roller coaster and maze featuring the same typography and colour scheme of the based upon film franchise. Saw is well and truly one for the ages.
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Another example of a horror film series, although it has now digressed into a science-fiction film series, that has benefit from a successful use of CMC, synergy and continuity is Resident Evil. Resident Evil is a science fiction film series based upon the Capcom video games of the same name. The film series consists of five instalments spanning from 2002 until 2012 with a sixth instalment scheduled for release in 2014. Distributed by Screen Gems, the franchise has collectively brought in $915 million worldwide on a $248 million budget and is the most successful film series to be based on video games.
The main reason we sited Resident Evil as an example is because they have taken a different approach to Saw in terms of their use of continuity throughout their sequels over the years, yet managed to find similar success, in fact grossing almost $42 million more at box office than the Saw franchise with a lesser number of films. Although this could be a result of Resident Evil releasing their latter two films both in 3D which managed to gross a combined total of just under $540 million at box office, another reason could be because of the films brand identity. Despite being based upon the Resident Evil video game, the two don't share the same typography for the words "Resident Evil". When comparing the original logo for the video game series with the current typography used for the film series it is easy to see why the film series is so successful and also why many people are unaware that it is in fact the film series that is based upon the video games and not the other way around.
Although the video game series has since developed its logo to a much more modern and effective style, it is clear that the film series carries a much stronger logo in terms of branding and marketing potential. The typography is instantly recognisable as "Resident Evil" and is surely an important factor when measuring the film series's overall success. With that being said, Resident Evil exists across many different media platforms, which is truly a testament to the concept of the media franchise created by Shinji Mikami.
The video game series has progressed vastly as the film series found success and now has a strong brand identity in its own right. Although the logo is different to that of the film series, it is still very distinct and has been used on all of the recent Resident Evil video games to good effect. Some of the games, most notably Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 4, have been bestowed with multiple Game of the Year honors and often placed on lists of the best video games ever made. In 2012, Complex ranked Resident Evil at number 22 on the list of the best video game franchises.That same year, G4tv called it "one of the most successful series in gaming history." The game series has sold 50 million units as of 2012.
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Similar to many other successful films such as Twilight, Harry Potter and Hunger Games, there are several Resident Evil novelizations with some being based upon the original video game series and some being based upon the film series. S. D. Perry has written novelizations of the first five games, as well as two original novels taking place between games. Novelizations of three of the five films; Genesis, Apocalypse and Extinction, were written by Keith R. A. DeCandido, while Retribution was written by John Shirley, though Afterlife did not receive a novelization.
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Resident Evil theme restaurant Biohazard Cafe & Grill S.T.A.R.S. opened in Tokyo in 2012. It appears to be a cross between the video game series and the film series with the logo sharing the typography from the film series however there appears to be characters from the video game series mocked up in chef hats. This shows just how strong and increasingly popular the Resident Evil brand identity really is becoming.
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FONT: The fonts used throughout the Insidious trailer are identical to that of its poster. The is a repetitive caption of "Insidious Is" and "Is Insidious" which are both of the same font as the Insidious on the poster. This is important so that there is an air of continuity between the two and so they don't appear to be for two different films. Another reason this is important is because of brand identity, particularly if the film is part of a franchise, which Insidious is having recently released a sequel.
COLOUR SCHEME: Just by looking at the YouTube thumbnail beside the Insidious poster you can already see that a similar sense of colour scheme is used. Not many bright colours are used in the trailer, nor are there many used on the poster.
CHARACTERS: A lot of the time a film poster would feature at least one character from the trailer and this is the case for Insidious, however they have managed to do something quite clever. In the trailer we hear a woman say "It's not the house that's haunted... it's your son!" and it so happens that they are the two main elements visible on the poster. The poster features a little boy,looking demoniacally into the camera with his eyes scratched out, placed dominantly in front of a house and this cleverly depicts the bold statement made by the woman in the trailer.
COLOUR SCHEME: Just by looking at the YouTube thumbnail beside the Insidious poster you can already see that a similar sense of colour scheme is used. Not many bright colours are used in the trailer, nor are there many used on the poster.
CHARACTERS: A lot of the time a film poster would feature at least one character from the trailer and this is the case for Insidious, however they have managed to do something quite clever. In the trailer we hear a woman say "It's not the house that's haunted... it's your son!" and it so happens that they are the two main elements visible on the poster. The poster features a little boy,looking demoniacally into the camera with his eyes scratched out, placed dominantly in front of a house and this cleverly depicts the bold statement made by the woman in the trailer.
The font used for the captions in the trailer is fairly similar to the font we used for our tagline "Innocence is lost... Evil is found" on our poster. The font used on the poster for the tagline is called Assassin$ and is a serif font. We chose this font to avoid our poster or trailer looking unprofessional which we felt would have occurred had we chosen a horror specific font. The font for the title of our film is called An Unfortunate Event and we undertook a lot of research before we came to the decision to use it for our film. The same font is present in our trailer and poster and using the same fonts, with the same colour, effectively keeps the continuity between our main product and one of our ancillary texts.
In keeping with the horror genre of our trailer we didn't include many bright colours. One of the elements of our trailer that was including to be iconic was the red eye transformation of our main subject Ursula. Our poster doesn't feature Ursula with red eyes but instead features her with everything but her eyes being red. We feel as if there is still a sense of continuity from the colours we've used as it's still very clear that red is key. The reason we chose not to turn her eyes red on the poster is because we didn't want to give the entire story aware and also it works well with the tagline of our film.
Despite our film centring around one main character, Ursula, it was important that our trailer didn't just feature lots of repetitive shots of her as this could have confused the audience and disrupted the narrative. However the same problems didn't occur when we made the poster and it was absolutely fine to feature just Ursula on the front of the poster. Although not particularly visible in the poster, her hairstyle was actually the same as it was in most of the trailer which helped to keep the continuity.
FONT: After doing a bit of research, we found that not many magazines use the exact same typography for the title of a film when it's on the cover of an issue, however they do often use similar fonts. On this Inception edition of Empire magazine the font used for the title of the film is fairly similar to the font seen at the end of the trailer that reads "Inception" in a maze style when the camera pans out.
COLOUR SCHEME: Besides from the RED, the colour scheme of the magazine is quite similar to colour scheme in the trailer. The type of BLUE colour from the magazine is one of three colours that is ever present throughout the trailer as well as a slight SEPIA colour and black. This helps with continuity and makes the magazine particularly eye-catching and instantly recognisable amongst the many fans of Inception.
CHARACTERS: The magazine features Leonardo DiCaprio on its cover and he is someone who is seen often throughout the trailer. The same suit he is wearing in the picture on the cover of the magazine is one completely identical to a suit he is seen to be wearing in the trailer at around the 0:38 mark, including the prop gun.
COLOUR SCHEME: Besides from the RED, the colour scheme of the magazine is quite similar to colour scheme in the trailer. The type of BLUE colour from the magazine is one of three colours that is ever present throughout the trailer as well as a slight SEPIA colour and black. This helps with continuity and makes the magazine particularly eye-catching and instantly recognisable amongst the many fans of Inception.
CHARACTERS: The magazine features Leonardo DiCaprio on its cover and he is someone who is seen often throughout the trailer. The same suit he is wearing in the picture on the cover of the magazine is one completely identical to a suit he is seen to be wearing in the trailer at around the 0:38 mark, including the prop gun.
After doing a bit of research, we found that not many magazines use the exact same typography for the title of a film when it's on the cover of an issue, however they do often use similar fonts. Despite this, we decided to use the same font for the title of our film in both our main product and ancillary text in order to keep the continuity.
The book that Ursula finds in the LRC is an iconic prop in the film so we decided to feature it on the cover of our ancillary text. However on the magazine cover we put a little twist on it and in fact changed the colour using Photoshop so that it was in fact red as opposed to the original brownish, purple colour seen in the trailer. It was important that the magazine continued to feature the colour red even if it meant altering some of the elements to achieve it.
Despite our film centring around one main character, Ursula, it was important that our trailer didn't just feature lots of repetitive shots of her as this could have confused the audience and disrupted the narrative. However the same problems didn't occur when we made the poster and it was absolutely fine to feature just Ursula on the front of the poster. Although not particularly visible in the poster, her hairstyle was actually the same as it was in most of the trailer which helped to keep the continuity. We decided to make her black and white in order to heavily emphasise the red of her eyes and the red of the book.
FONT: The fonts used for the captions in the trailer are of an identical font and style to the words "HP 7 Part 2" on the website. Harry Potter is renowned for its great sense of cross media convergence and synergy. There is a lot of continuity between the trailer and website.
COLOUR SCHEME: The colour scheme present throughout the whole of the trailer depicts dark tones and is the same colour scheme present on the website. The successful continuity between the trailer and website is one of the reasons Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 managed to gross over $1 billion, all the ninth film in history to manage such a feat.
CHARACTERS: The entire franchise centres around Harry Potter and his two best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and they are all present in the trailer and on the website. Similar to the Inception trailer and magazine, their is actually a part in this trailer at 1:29 when Harry Potter is wearing identical clothes to the ones he is seen to be wearing on the website.
COLOUR SCHEME: The colour scheme present throughout the whole of the trailer depicts dark tones and is the same colour scheme present on the website. The successful continuity between the trailer and website is one of the reasons Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 managed to gross over $1 billion, all the ninth film in history to manage such a feat.
CHARACTERS: The entire franchise centres around Harry Potter and his two best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and they are all present in the trailer and on the website. Similar to the Inception trailer and magazine, their is actually a part in this trailer at 1:29 when Harry Potter is wearing identical clothes to the ones he is seen to be wearing on the website.
The colour scheme present throughout our trailer and website is very much black, red and white. The colour scheme is consistently used throughout the whole of the website and this proved to be of use when we created our trailer. At the end of the trailer when it reads "In Cinemas This Winter" we went for a similar style that had already been deployed on our website using both white and red colours for the font. This worked well on our trailer and has worked well thus far on our website.
On each of our websites pages, apart from two, there is a banner advertising the release of Ursula. The image of Ursula is unlike any used on our ancillary texts although there is a similar look in our trailer. It is important that any image used to promote the film features somehow in the film and that's what we've done.
FONT: After doing a bit of research, we found that not many magazines use the exact same typography for the title of a film when it's on the cover of an issue, however do often use similar fonts. The font used on the magazine for the film title is different to the actual film title on the Thor poster but it is not entirely dissimilar and works well with the rest of the magazine.
COLOUR SCHEME: We chose these two examples because the colour schemes are extremely similar to each other. Dark BLUE and a dark RED are two colours that frequently features amongst the poster and magazine. The colour scheme being the same on the magazine as the poster is important especially since the film title font isn't instantly recognisable.
CHARACTERS: Although the poster features four more characters than the magazine does, Chris Hemsworth, who plays the main character Thor, is the main subject on both ancillary texts. He is wearing the exact same costume in both and also has the same prop too, his hammer, Mjolnir. Again this helps to make the magazine in particular, easily recognisable amongst fans of Thor.
COLOUR SCHEME: We chose these two examples because the colour schemes are extremely similar to each other. Dark BLUE and a dark RED are two colours that frequently features amongst the poster and magazine. The colour scheme being the same on the magazine as the poster is important especially since the film title font isn't instantly recognisable.
CHARACTERS: Although the poster features four more characters than the magazine does, Chris Hemsworth, who plays the main character Thor, is the main subject on both ancillary texts. He is wearing the exact same costume in both and also has the same prop too, his hammer, Mjolnir. Again this helps to make the magazine in particular, easily recognisable amongst fans of Thor.
Although not particularly visible in the poster, her hairstyle is actually the same as it is on the magazine which helped to keep the continuity. We decided to make her black and white on the magazine in order to heavily emphasise the red of her eyes and the red of the book. We featured Ursula singularly on both the poster and magazine because she is the main character.
FONT: This is a perfect example of perfect continuity between a film poster and the website for that very same film. The font, colour scheme and characters are exactly the same because the images are identical except the poster has a higher contrast level. The Hangover Part III has many different promotional posters and it is the success of their use of synergy that led them to gross over $350 million at box office.
COLOUR SCHEME: The font, colour scheme and characters are exactly the same because the images are identical except the poster has a higher contrast level. The Hangover Part III has many different promotional posters and it is the success of their use of synergy that helped them to gross over $350 million at box office.
CHARACTERS: The font, colour scheme and characters are exactly the same because the images are identical except the poster has a higher contrast level. The Hangover Part III has many different promotional posters and it is the success of their use of synergy that led them to gross over $350 million at box office.
COLOUR SCHEME: The font, colour scheme and characters are exactly the same because the images are identical except the poster has a higher contrast level. The Hangover Part III has many different promotional posters and it is the success of their use of synergy that helped them to gross over $350 million at box office.
CHARACTERS: The font, colour scheme and characters are exactly the same because the images are identical except the poster has a higher contrast level. The Hangover Part III has many different promotional posters and it is the success of their use of synergy that led them to gross over $350 million at box office.
In keeping with the continuity between our main product and ancillary texts, many of the pages on our website, including this one, feature the same font used for the film title on our poster. The font for the title of our film is called An Unfortunate Event and we undertook a lot of research before we came to the decision to use it for our film. The same font is present on our magazine and poster and using the same fonts, with the same colour, effectively keeps the continuity between our ancillary texts.
The colour scheme present throughout our trailer and website is very much black, red and white. The colour scheme is consistently used throughout the whole of the website and this proved to be of use when we created our poster. Previous developments of our poster show it wasn't always black and red but in order to have that air of continuity we felt it'd be best. Black and red are colours almost synonymous with the horror genre. This worked well on our poster and has worked well thus far on our website.
The logo for our production company, Spooky Entertainment, features on our film poster, website and on our main product. Our trailer and website features our original logo with our film poster featuring the alternative logo style. The original logo uses the colours black, white and red - the 3 colours that have become synonymous with Spooky Entertainment and our work. The alternative logo basically gets rid of all the visible colours leaving a white, transparent outline that can change colour depending on the colour scheme of the product it is being placed on. It's important that we featured our logo in our trailer and on our film poster and website because it helps to distinguish brand awareness amongst our audience.
Successful branding of a film or franchise could be the difference between grossing $900 million at box office or grossing well under $100 million so it's important to get it right. Particularly when starting a film franchise or series, branding is everything. In the film industry, there is a fine line between box office sensation and box office flop so getting the basics right is fundamental. Brand identity is a lot to do with three key things; the name of the film, the typography used and the colours used. When we mention the colours used, it's not to say that on every single media platform the name of the film will be the same colour, but rather whether the colours used are synonymous with the film. A strong branded film will be one that is instantly recognisable amongst its audience simply from the film titles typography.
Throughout all of our final products, the film title, Ursula, is written with the same font and also in the same colour. Although consistency is important when creating a strong brand, the colour is something we'd be happy to change in context and in order to fit the colour scheme of which ever media platform it's on. We feel as if the typography we've chosen to depict our film title has the potential to be an extremely strong brand and could easily work for as many sequels as the Paranormal Activity film franchise. We took a lot of inspiration from existing supernatural horror film Carrie (2013) which uses the font Trajan Pro when we decided the font for our film title.
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Brand identity is just as important for production companies themselves as it is for the films they produce, especially the major film studios. All production companies wish to have a strong logo in order to help aid and promote instant public recognition of their company. Logos are either purely graphic or are composed of the name of the organisation. The best logos are those that can interchange to suit the theme of the poster or wherever it may be being placed. There are some logos that are originally in 3D such as 20th Century Fox but can be made to look 2D in order to feature on 2D media platforms such as posters. It is important to have a logo that can adapt in situations such as that so that you can still build on the brand identity of the logo whilst maintaining the theme of the ancillary text.
For media conglomerates, brand identity isn't always emphasised, particularly in this day and age where most media and entertainment companies are acquired or taken over while already boasting a relatively strong brand. A media conglomerate in effect is a company that owns many other companies in several mass media (e.g radio, television, publishing, movies and the Internet). In terms of revenue, currently the largest media conglomerate in America is The Walt Disney Company. News Corp & 21st Century Fox, TimeWarner, CBS Corporation, and Viacom or a few of the other notable media conglomerates. Logos for companies owned by media conglomerates aren't allows instantly recognisable as such unless the company is one that had originally been founded or re-branded by that particular media conglomerate.
In order to further show our understanding of branding amongst media conglomerates, media groups or media institutions, we decided to turn our production company, Spooky Entertainment, into a subsidiary of a large media corporation, Spooky Entertainment Inc. Taking a lot of inspiration from existing multinational media corporation, Time Warner Inc. (stylised as TimeWarner), featured below is a description of our own corporation Spooky Entertainment Inc., as well as all of its subsidiaries and divisions. †
Spooky Entertainment Inc. is a British diversified mass media corporation headquartered in Christ the King Studios, Lewisham. Spooky Entertainment Inc. has several subsidiary companies, including Spooky Entertainment, Spooky Interactive Entertainment, Spooky Entertainment Home Video, Spooky Entertainment Animation, Spooky Entertainment Television, Deadrising Studios, and nWo Comics. It also operates and owns an 80% ownership interest in the record label Spooky Beats Music Group as part of a joint venture, with the remaining 20% interest held by Beats Electronics, LLC.
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Spooky Interactive Entertainment is a division of Spooky Entertainment Inc. It is a publisher, developer, licensor and distributor of video games for both internal and third party titles. Underneath the Spooky Interactive Entertainment umbrella is Spooky Ent. Games (the divisions major publishing unit), which focuses solely on the creation, development and production of first-party titles. Examples of first-party titles that weren't created, developed or produced by Spooky Ent. Games include Ursula and Lego Ursula which were both developed and distributed by Electronic Arts, Inc. with Ursula also developed by Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. Spooky Interactive Entertainment is a significant publisher for both internal and third party game titles and this is due to the distribution, marketing and sales infrastructure of Spooky Ent. Home Video.
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Spooky Entertainment Home Video, commonly referred to as Spooky Ent. Home Video, is the home video distribution division of Spooky Entertainment Inc. The company releases titles from the film library of Spooky Entertainment, as well as programs from other Spooky Entertainment Inc. companies. On it's parent companies store website, SEShop.co.uk, there is a Spooky Archive Collection which allows the public to order custom made DVDs of rarely seen films and TV series from the Spooky Entertainment library. Spooky Archive DVDs and downloads can be ordered online on the Spooky Entertainment Inc. official store website and on Amazon.com.
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Spooky Entertainment Animation, commonly referred to as Spooky Ent. Animation, is the animation division of Spooky Entertainment Inc. Spooky Ent. Animation focuses upon the production of television and feature animation of other properties, including those that are related to Spooky Entertainment Inc.'s nWo Comics publications. Spooky Ent. Animation is also working on producing nWo Showcase, a series of short films featuring lesser known comic book superheroes who normally are unable to have a feature unto themselves, to be released in tandem with direct-to-video films based on nWo Comics properties. Spooky Ent. Animation has also produced TV series' with sister company Spooky Ent. Television.
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Spooky Entertainment Television, commonly referred to as Spooky Ent. Television, is the television production arm of Spooky Entertainment Inc. It has produced many television programmes that are broadcast on basic cable and satellite television channels owned by Spooky Entertainment Inc. itself. The television programmes are primarily broadcast internally on channels: Spooky Television (stylised as SpookyTV), Spooky Xtreme, SpookyTV Junior, Spooky Cinemagic, and in addition, SpookyTV Animation. As well as this, some programmes are also broadcast on third-party television channels such as: E4 and Sky1. Spooky Ent. Television has also produced TV series' with sister company Spooky Ent. Animation, most of which were broadcast on SpookyTV Animation.
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Deadrising Film Productions Inc., often simply referred to as Deadrising Studios, is a British film studio. It is now a subsidiary of Spooky Entertainment Inc. after being acquired by the media company and has since been merged with larger sister studio Spooky Entertainment. The studio continues to operate its financing, producing, marketing, and distributing operations of its own films with the Deadrising Studios logo, but does so as part of Spooky Entertainment and is a smaller studio in comparison, releasing a smaller number of films than it did before the acquisition.
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Nwo Comics, Inc., commonly referred to and stylised as nWo Comics, is a company operating in the market for British comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of nWo Entertainment, a company of Spooky Entertainment Inc. nWo Comics produces material featuring a large number of well-known characters. The initials "NWO" stand for New World Order and there is no real story behind the naming of the company. Random House distributes nWo Comics' books to the book store market, while Diamond Comic Distributors supplies the comics shop speciality market. nWo has since unveiled two new digital comic innovations to enhance interactivity: nWo² and nWo² Multiverse. The latter allows readers to determine a specific story outcome through the selection of individual characters and such whilst reading the comic, meaning one digital comic has multiple developments and outcomes.
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Spooky Beats Music Group is a British record label that operates as a division of Spooky Entertainment Inc. and is owned as part of a joint venture by Spooky Entertainment Inc. (80% Ownership) and Beats Electronics, LLC (20% Ownership). The label is simply named through the combination of the names of the two companies that own it. Originally founded to release movie soundtracks, both companies involved in the joint venture have used the close relationship from the label for other purposes such as marketing. Several characters from films produced by Spooky Entertainment featured in an advert for the Beats Pill portable speaker, including the popular horror film character, Ursula. Beats products are often seen in films produced by Spooky Entertainment with one example being a characters use of the HTC Sensation XE with Beats Audio in the horror film Ursula.
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† - None of the aforementioned subsidiaries or divisions exist and were created with the sole purpose of showing our understanding of branding through Media Conglomerates. Each logo was designed as a visual example and no copyright infringement was intended.
Above is a picture of our film, Ursula, being advertised at a bus stop in London. The picture features a poster design slightly differentiated from the final film poster as it doesn't have the credits at the bottom and the tagline has moved positions. The reason for the change is to eliminate information that may be deemed unnecessary as the poster is only likely to be viewed for a short period each time. All that is really vital is the title of the film, main image and date of release in cinemas. There is still continuity present as the image, typography and colour scheme remain the same from the final film poster.
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Above is a picture of our film being advertised on the Piccadilly Lights in the epicentre of London at Piccadilly Circus. As one of the busiest attractions in London, the Piccadilly Lights attract a 24/7 audience of over 2 million visitors each week and is one of the best places to advertise. The poster design is unlike the final film poster but still has a sense of continuity as the typography for the film title has remained the same as to has the colour scheme; red and black. The image is different but features the same idea with the subjects face in red and the eyes made to stand out.
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Above is a picture of our film being advertised on TV. The advert is from HMV, a British entertainment retailing company operating in the United Kingdom. Advertised is a DVD copy of our film with a Blu-Ray copy also available. Nowadays, it takes an estimated 12-16 weeks after theatrical release before a film is released on DVD or Blu-Ray. The cover of the DVD features the exact same image from the poster but is positioned very differently. The image has been enlarged so that only part of her face is visible. A lot of other conventions have been moved about but the continuity still very much remains.
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Above is a picture of our film being advertised on a billboard somewhere in London. Although a similar design, the poster is different from the one used in the Piccadilly Circus picture. The advert is from Sky, a British satellite broadcasting company, and in particular Sky Movies. Leading up to Christmas, starting in the month of December, Sky begins advertising movies set to be released on their movie channels during the Christmas season. The movies don't necessarily have to be Christmas themed but are often films that are new to Sky Movies. The poster design is similar to the one before but instead also reads "Sky Christmas IS COMING" with the Sky Movies HD logo in the bottom right hand corner.
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Above is a picture of our film being advertised on the home page on YouTube. YouTube is estimated to be the 3rd most viewed website on the Internet, behind Google and Facebook, making it a perfect place to advertise. Prior to release, many blockbuster films will takeover YouTube in order to further hype the films release. The advertising banner design features the same look as the poster used before ad well as the same colour scheme and typography. The clips seen in the thumbnails are in fact actual clips from our final film trailer.
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Above is a picture of our film, Ursula, as a book. Over the years there have been many films released in cinemas that have been based on books, Harry Potter and Carrie are obvious examples. Stephen King is an author who many of his books have been adapted into feature films, most notably in terms of horror, Carrie and The Shining. When films are based on books, or visa-versa, rarely do they share the same typography and our design is no different. We have opted to used the same colour scheme so there is still continuity present.
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Above are two pictures of music album art based around our film, Ursula. Most feature films will release a soundtrack with scores, compositions or songs heard throughout the film. Singles are also often released by famous musicians with lyrics to foil the film's theme. An example of films that had successful singles recorded for them include, The Bodyguard (1992), 8 Mile (2002) and Karate Kid (2010). On the left is a picture of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack featuring a familiar design and continuity. On the right is a single from the Soundtrack called "Devil inside her Heart" sung by Justin Bieber. The colours used on the cover, black, red and gold, are all the colours featured on the final film poster. It's also important to note that whenever the title of the film, Ursula, is written, it's written in the same typography as always.
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Above is a picture of our previously seen Original Motion Picture Soundtrack available on iTunes. Soundtracks are rarely sold at high street stores and are instead often available at online retailers and digital media stores such as iTunes, Amazon and Play. Singles from feature films are more likely to be sold at both high street stores and online retailers. The iTunes Store possesses 575 million active user accounts making it the perfect place to sell our films soundtrack. This iTunes page features the album art from our Original Motion Picture Soundtrack as well as a few of the songs available including the single "Devil inside her Heart".
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Above is a picture of our previously seen single's YouTube page. As the song is sung by Justin Bieber it features on his official YouTube VEVO page 'JustinBieberVEVO' as opposed to our own YouTube page. Often when films have singles written for them, the music videos feature clips of the film as well as clips of the artist singing the song. This however is simply an "(Audio)" video meaning that only the album art is shown throughout the length of the video. As seen in the picture above, it is possibly to link to other similar videos by clicking on a thumbnail available on the right hand side, meaning that the millions viewing Justin Bieber's music videos may be linked to our music video resulting in possible higher viewing numbers.
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Above are two pictures of Xbox 360 video games based around our film, Ursula. Unlike books, whenever video games are based on films, they often do share the same typography for the film title as well as the same actors/actresses. An example of films that do just that include, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Wanted: Weapons of Fate and The Amazing Spiderman. Often, the films that are able to have video games based on them, will have been produced or distributed originally by a major film studio. The reason for this is because the parent companies of those major film studios often have divisions responsible for publishing, developing, licensing and distributing video games for both internal and third party titles. Both game covers feature the same black and red colour scheme, film title typography and conventions of a video game cover.
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Above is a picture our film's game application featured on a list of the Top Free Games available at the Google Play Store. The Play Store is a digital application distribution platform and digital media store for Android. As of July 2013, the Google Play store officially reached over 1 million apps published and over 50 billion downloads. Prior to the release of many films, blockbuster and independent, games will be made available for download on iTunes, Google Play Store, etc... Often the games are made to be available for FREE as the general idea of them isn't to make a lot of revenue but instead to help promote the release of the film. The app design we've gone for is very simplistic but still includes the same continuity and typography as always meaning that the continuity is still present.
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Above is a picture of our films IMDb page. Internet Movie Database (abbreviated IMDb) is an online database of information related to films, television programs and video games. As well as having 49 million registered users, it is listed #47 on the list of most visited websites. The poster used on the website is similar to the final film poster except for the notable exclusion of most of the conventions, the slight enlargement of the main image and the words "You will know her name" across her face. The black and red colour scheme is still there meaning that despite the exclusions there is still a lot of continuity in place.
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Above are two pictures of our film featured on the Cineworld homepage. The chain consists of 81 cinemas and is the second-largest cinema operator in the UK with over 800 screens. On the homepage of the website there are often about 3-4 films featured as part of a visual slideshow with the option to either book tickets or view the trailer. The other visual slides are often either advertising the Cineworld gift card or just promoting some kind of sale. Still on the home page, but slightly below that, is a section of films Now Booking and another Coming Soon. In both pictures the continuity of the film remains intact with the black and red colour scheme present throughout. Also the half red and half white colours used for the words "In Cinemas This Winter" are reminiscent of the same idea used in our final film trailer.
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Above is a picture of our film, Ursula, featured on the Netflix film page under the sub-genre, Horror. Netflix is a subscription-based movie and television show rental service that offers media to subscribers via Internet streaming and via US mail. As of September 2013, Netflix reported global streaming subscribers at 40.4 Million. Similar to the other existing horror movie posters surrounding our own, our poster design is simplistic and only features a main image and the film title, all of which continue to use the same colour scheme and typography helping to maintain the continuity from our final film poster.
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Above are three pictures of our film featured on Google Play Movies & TV and Google Play Newsstand. On Google Play Movies & TV movies can be rented or purchased and watched on the Google Play website or via an application on an Android device. Alternatively, users can download movies and TV shows for offline viewing and view them later using the Google Play Movie app. Google Play Newsstand offers the purchase of magazines in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In all three pictures, our film continues to maintain the same colour scheme and typography throughout.
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Above is a picture of the Official Spooky Entertainment Store Website. The Spooky Entertainment Store is a subsidiary of Spooky Entertainment Inc., similar in style to The Disney Store. Available on the website is merchandise based on Spooky Entertainment films, many of them exclusive. Seeing as the website doesn't just cater to the film Ursula, the overall colour scheme isn't entirely alike to that of the film. However whenever a film is selected, there is a banner that features the film title written in its own typography as well as an image or theme suited to the film. In this case, our film Ursula is the one selected, with the banner reflecting that through the clear film title written in the same typography used throughout all of our final products as well as the prominent use of the colours black and red. The merchandise itself appears to follow the accustomed colour scheme which goes to show a lot of continuity indeed.
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Above are two pictures of our film featured on the website, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a collaboratively edited, free Internet encyclopaedia. It is ranked as the 6th most visited website with an estimated 365 million readers as of December 2013. On the far right of the page is a rectangular space with important information relating to our film such as director, studio, box office revenue and so on. Above that information is our theatrical release poster which is almost identical to our final film poster except that there is no release date mentioned. This is because different countries often have different release dates and these dates are usually listed in the rectangular space next to the title 'Release dates', although in this case there is only one. Also the size of the credited name at the top of the poster was reduced ever so slightly but this doesn't change the fact that there is still lots of continuity present.
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Above are two pictures of possible sequels for our film, Ursula. A sequel, in this context, is a film that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. Sequels are attractive to creators and to publishers because there is less risk involved in returning to a story with known popularity rather than developing new and untested characters and settings. Sequels will commonly have numbers at the end, such as in Saw 2 sequel to Saw. It is also common for a sequel to have a variation of the original title or have a subtitle such as in Resident Evil: Apocalypse sequel to Resident Evil. As well as sequels, some films are involved as part of a fictional crossover. A fiction crossover is the placement of two or more otherwise discrete fictional characters, settings or universes into the context of a single story. Examples of famous crossovers include Freddy vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator and the greatest financially successful crossover of all time The Avengers. In terms of continuity, the sequels for Ursula continue to use the colours black and red with the 2nd sequel almost identical to the original in terms of style. The typography remains the same throughout and as to does the font for the tagline and release date.
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Above is an advertising poster for the pending release of Ursula - The Ride, a custom Euro-Fighter roller coaster in the Thorpe Park theme park in the United Kingdom. It is themed around our horror film franchise Ursula. Saw - The Ride is currently the first and only horror-film themed themed roller coaster in the world and cost an estimated £13.5 million to build. The promotional poster features the same font used for the taglines in previous Ursula posters as well as the well-known typography for the film title although it now has a slight variation. Once again the colour scheme heavily features the colours black and red.
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From top to bottom of our EVALUATION QUESTION 2 page we
looked at all the different factors that could be considered when questioning
how effective the combination of our main product and ancillary texts are. It’s
not enough to say that because a trailer is dark and eerie and the related film
poster is black that the combination is effective, there is so much more to mull
over.
Examples of synergy and ideas of media convergence were good to look at because our own products feature different forms of mass media. Our trailer lies under the digital media umbrella of the mass media with our poster and magazine falling under the outdoor media and print media groups respectively. All in all they are intended to reach a large audience by mass communication, as do many other diversified media technologies, and that is why it was important to establish the many different forms available. There are many different ways in which an audience can be exposed to a particular film, and the success a film has across different media technologies (Cross-Media Convergence) could be used to determine just how effective the combination of their main product, which in this case would be their film, and their ancillary texts really are.
Although originality is highly praised in the media industry, film companies would be foolish not to look at films that have had success in the past and consider where they went right. Even though we had already produced or final products, we felt that looking into the success of existing real media texts would allow us to see what we may have done similarly to films that have managed to gross millions of dollars at the box office. The success of the two film franchises we looked at (Saw and Resident Evil) more than proved the effectiveness of their own combinations of main products and ancillary texts with all 7 Saw films collectively grossing over $873 million at the box office and Resident Evil not doing to badly themselves with the franchise collectively bringing in $915 million worldwide.
Once we had analysed just exactly what it takes to muster a successful film franchise, we began to dissect our own main product and ancillary texts to explore how they all compare with one another. We decided to look at 3 main factors when comparing them all; the fonts used, colour schemes applied and the characters featured. It was soon apparent to us that the colours black and red were important to our films overall manifestation, similar to how we had previously seen that each Saw poster for all 7 films was done with a recurring white background. We also found that throughout each of our final products, main and ancillary, serif fonts was often the norm having used fonts such as Assassin$ and Trajan Pro across all our final pieces. Another cyclical occurrence we found was the dominant featuring of one main character, similar to the Resident Evil posters we had seen prior that featured just Milla Jovovich on each of the 5 film posters (with the exception of the first), which in our case was the titular Ursula (played by Karen Herrera). The consistencies make the combination of our main products and ancillary texts effective because they are recognisable from one another.
Brand identity is vital for all film companies to consider when bracing themselves to being a film franchise of any kind. A strong brand could be the difference between creating a successful franchise or a non starter like John Carter. Prior to the film's release, the film makers reported that John Carter was intended to be the first film of a trilogy. However, the film's poor box office performance put plans for sequels on hold. The numbers tell the story, but it was also a mistake to give the movie such a generic title (one that offered no hint that it was about an earth man caught up in a civil war on Mars). Although the title of our film was similar, being that it was simply just the name of the main character, our plot wasn't as complex as John Carter’s meaning that it didn't come across as generic and instead drew comparisons with successful horror film Carrie instead. We also looked into the logo for our production company, Spooky Entertainment. We showed how the logo could be altered depending on the nature of the media technology it is being presented on and also demonstrated our understanding of branding undertaking by media conglomerates in certain situations. The font An Unfortunate Event used for the title of our film gave it a clean look and made for quite a strong, effective brand that was present throughout our main product and ancillary texts.
Finally we looked at synergy through other media platforms. This involved a combination of everything we had looked at previously in order to visually illustrate how our film could possibly look presented on different media platforms. We tried our best to only consider relevant media platforms and for example not illustrate what Ursula would look like as a McDonald’s toy. Interestingly we did manage to illustrate what Ursula possibly could look like as a trilogy with the idea of a crossover film series also mentioned. This is a testament to the overall effectiveness of the combination of our main products and ancillary texts.