Creative Critical Reflection

Q2: How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

written, directed, and produced by huzaifaa farrukh & abdullah siddiqui

How does your product engage with the audiences?

• Abdullah and I conducted a survey which gave us a good idea as to what types of films and film openings people around us prefer.

• There were 8 questions in the survey.

• The first few questions were about the demographics of the audience of the survey while the rest were more about the content of our syllabus.

Analysing the Survey• There was an equal

split between participants of age groups 15-19 and 19-24.

• 7.69% of the participants were from the 25-31 age group while 15.38% were from the 32 or older group.

Analysing the Survey• 46.15% of the

participants were females and 53.85% were males.

• It is important as it allowed us to understand that the results we were to gather would be skewed towards the male viewpoint more than the female.

Analysing the Survey• Most of the people were

students/ unemployed (most were students). This helped us in realising that the

• It is important as it allowed us to understand that the results we were to gather would be skewed towards the male viewpoint more than the female.

• The other questions were not as important as the ones that have been analysed in terms of us identifying our audience.

• Now that we have identified our audience, it will become a lot easier to engage with them.

• We have found out through the survey and through general observation that people most likely to watch our film are upper-middle/ middle class/ upper class people who do not merely watch films as a means of entertainment but also wish for their films to have some artistic merit…

• And so, such people are more likely to have money to spend on an esoteric piece of art.

• If these people have money, then it is only natural for them to have money to spend on building complicated relationships on social media and using it a lot in their daily life.

• Which is why social media can be of a lot of use to us in helping our film branch out to these people.

Looking at similar examples of such engagement

• Movies nowadays are reliant on social media

• A big example is that of YouTube and the movie trailers uploaded on it.

• Studios take pride in how fast their films’ trailers reach 100 million views

• And constantly update fans via YouTube and other social media sites about the development of their films.

Example of us reaching out to the public via our social media sites to spread the word

Facebook

• More than 2 billion people use Facebook and so it is going to be a great platform to promote such a niche film since we lack the budge to execute a full-fledged marketing campaign.

Example of us reaching out to the public via our social media sites to spread the word

YouTube

• Most media related stuff happens on YouTube which is why it is important for us to promote Insaficiency on this media-saturated platform.

Example of us reaching out to the public via our social media sites to spread the word

Twitter• Most important people use Twitter and almost all

celebrities have Twitter handles. Which is why it is important for us to market Insaficiency on twitter. I even made the #Insaficiency to make it catchy. Also, in order to generate goodwill, I had the team behind Insaficiency take a social stance that would've helped us with getting into our audience’s goodwill.

• Had this been a film targeted at Republicans/ very old-school people, then there is a possibility we might have condemned #MeToo to satiate our backward potentially audience

Twitter

• I even appreciated Robert Eggers’ new film, The Lighthouse, and tagged Robert Pattinson, the film’s star, to tap into his massive star power.

• Since Robert Pattinson is mostly famous amongst young people, it would've helped in reaching out to our core audience since our film is also marketed at young Bohemians.

How would it be distributed as a real media text?

• There are a couple of ways are project could have been distributed.

• One is, through Netflix.

• Another is through film festivals

• Another (and much less likely) is through a direct purchase of our film opening by some distributor.

Netflix• This option seems most likely to occur as Netflix is

famous for making/ buying media like ours.

• To All the Boys I've Loved Before and other Noah Centineo films like Sierra Burgess is a Loser are films with a similar target audience as our film.

• In order to pitch to Netflix, one must get in touch with an agent as Netflix doesn't buy directly.

• After contacting an agent, a meeting would be set up and should Netflix express interest, a deal would be brokered.

Film festivals• While i would've loved to submit our film to bigwigs like

Cannes or Venice, however, given the low-budget nature of the film, it is much likely our film will qualify for a much lesser film festival like the ‘Wes Anderson Free Outdoor Film Festival’ or something of that sort.

• Our film is very much Sundance material but is very unlikely to be selected due to it being made by teenagers and by Pakistanis. No matter how far the world may have come, still, these prejudices are a hinderance which is why a local festival like the Beaconhouse National University’s ‘Bestival’ or are own school’s ‘Grammar Filmfest’ would be better suited.

Direct to Distributors• Film festivals serve the purpose of acting as the

middleman between a producer and distributor e.g Netflix (distributor) bought Alfonso Cuarón’s (producer) Roma at Venice Film Festival.

• It is very unlikely that our film will be selected by any of the international speciality film distributors like A24, Fox Searchlight etc and stands a better chance with local distributors like Hum Films and ARY films. Although the esoteric nature of the film and principle language being English will make it very difficult to sell to even local distributors.