Creative Critical Reflection task 2

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

The primary audience for our opening title sequence is gay women between the ages of 15 and 25, however we want our film to be enjoyed by everyone so that the impact of the film affects a large audience demographic, spreading the message of how hate affects the live of people in the LGBT community.

This scene is right at the beggining of our title sequence because we wanted to spend time establishing the relationship between the two girls. Gay women know how it feels to be in the early stages of a first love and many have experienced the need to hide relationships. The casting of two teenage girls helps target our young adult and teenage audience, the nervousness of their behaviour will help our target audience connect with the characters because of their own experiences with a new first love and the feelings that come with it. The theme of having to hide is shown in the location of where we filmed: in a blanket fort that is closed off and intimate allowing the girls to be themselves when their parents can't easily find them. Audiences are engaged when they are able to relate to the story on screen and queer women use lesbian films to build an identity foundation, allowing them to relate with their own experiences as well as those of others in life and film and build their idea of sexualtiy off of these experiences. This is why it is so important to me to ensure the community is presented differently to gay films in the past that follow the stereotypical ending for gay characters where they die or are made to be extremely mentally unstable or the villain in the film to 'deter' people from being gay. That is why we made ours as realistic as possible, showing the precious moments of just being yourself with someone you love. Not just our target demographic but audiences everywhere will be able to understand the freedom and comfort of being with that one person that allows you to be completely yourself which increases their investment in the film and makes them watch on.

With our genre being a romance drama we begin to build the tension with the low exposure shots with the parents showing the confusion on the girls face. The cross on the wall and the rosary clearly shows the parents are religious and so our LGBT audience will immediatley feel the dread building because they know that something bad is going to happen this foreboding will help engross them in the narrative keeping them invested. The enigma codes such as what the parents relationship with their daughter is like, the extent of their devotion to religion, whether they actually love their daughter, what has happened to the other girl and what is about to happen allows the audience to constantly question what is going on subsequently keeping them engaged. The hard expresion of the father is a narrative point that links to the later film where he is shown to be extremely hateful and truly beilieves that his daughter has the devil inside her and the mother while clearly supporting what is happening has a slightly concerned expression which again links to the later narrative of how even though the mother loves her daughter so much religion has clouded her vision and perception. 

The continuity of the previous shot flowing into the shot of the priest walking in will make the audience gasp as they start putting the pieces into place. As our film is based on real life experiences our audience will be deeply affected knowing that people just like them have experienced the trauma that is shown in our title sequence. The distress of the girl will build the suspense engaging the audience even more and simultaniously break their hearts because you can see her reaching for her mother who doesn't even look at her. The themes of religion, gay people, absent or unaccepting parents are all covered in just this short scene which not only will lots of people be able to connect with but those same people might be able to relate to multiple themes at a time. This increases their interest in the film and queer people will be able to notice the trope of how in films gay people are often 'punished for their sins' and they will hopefully understand that we are actively fighting that trope with the girls fighting for their love with the theme of hope running throughout the film and title sequence. Because this makes us different from many other main stream films portayal of gay people it should result in a large interest from the LGBT community because it offers something that is more realistic and relatable.

This moment shows the characters getting more confident in themselves with the brown haired girl lifting the other girls head and them holding hands. We have portrayed the shots in way that is authentic and bridges the gap between the audience and the characters so the audience members almost feel what they are feeling. So the nervous touching of hands adds to nervous feeling within the audience. With this scene coming straight after the reveal of the priest the audience are captivated because the enigma of what might happen is swirling around in their minds. We have presented all of the shots of the girls together as happy and uplifting because for LGBT viewers who have experienced hate and the criminalisation of gay people, we wanted to express how it doesn't mean they have to hide forever and that actually there is nothing wrong with them and that you are allowed to love whoever you want even when everyone around you says otherwise.

Queer women and teenagers get engaged in films when they are able to see themselves represented on screen specifically in love stories just as every heterosexual person has been able to see themselves in love stories. This moment is right at the end of our title sequence and as mentioned in my previous CCR task we did this to build the character audience relationship and show the progression of the girls' relationship. The intimate close ups are a commonly used romance drama convention that connects the audience with the characters so that the chemistry between the characters is felt through the screen. We wanted to present their rlationship as something playful, new and full of hope which is the driving force throughout the film. They know their parents will never accept them and yet they still dare to hope of a day that they can openly love each other. This is something that every queer person can identify with and will help build an emotional attachment between them and the storyline.

                                                                                      

Romantic dramas explore the complexity of love and ours is no different. Because the film is set in the 80s there was of course going to be some form of discrimination and we decided use true events meaning we will definatley reach a certain amount of people who might have experienced the same thing, as well as this group of people we also explore the complexity of teenage/young adult emotions and conflict while dealing with heavier issues such as religion and politics. Because this is such a wide range of themes I am confident that anyone who did watch our film would find some way of identifying with it or at the very least be engaged with the story line from start to finish. Our title sequence combines shots of scenes that would come later in the film so that the rest of the story is revealed as it goes on. This helps create curiosuty which in turn drives the audience members to stay engaged because of the questions it creates. The music in this moment has just reached its climax and comes to a stop just after the girl is seen hyperventilating this adds to the effect of the cliffhanger which keeps the audience engrossed especially because it is such a dramatic scene. 

All in all I think we were very successful in engaging our audience. Our opening title sequence has recieved the most views reaching 1.5K with the majority of the audience being queer young women as expected. This is due to the fact that our group marketed it in our social circles and extended family, all of which have a large queer communiy. I think if I could do things differently I would want to spend more time in the filming process of both the tent and exorcism scenes just to allow us to have more material to work with as well as spending more time trying to achieve the realism in the exorcism scene - it is still fairly realistic but I would have liked to push it even more because audiences like to feel entirely immersed in a film to be engaged and this can be achieved when the film is as relaistic as possible making it as though they are living through it themselves.

The poster that I have created for our opening title sequence uses a picture taken from pinterest that I have then editied in Canva. The girl in the picture is wearing 80s style clothes and the meadow they are lying on links to later in the film when they run away together and symbolyses the freedom they experience when it is just the two of them, this sense of freedom that the poster connotes is what will engage the audience because freedom rarely comes without a fight which suggests there must be some sort of dramatic conflict which further intruiges the audience.

 (232) Pinterest

The style of my poster is fairly simplistic because I didn't want to overload it with information because I think people would be less likely to spend time taking in large amounts of information so I decided to keep it to the point which also leaves the audience wanting more making them more likely to further research the film and watch it. The theme is light and hopeful, as mentioned before, is a theme I wanted to run throughout the whole film because it is so important that an LGBT audience feel hopeful that they can be themselves without any obstacles or fear of discrimination. Our age certificate is clearly shown and is a 15 to fit out demographic of an audience between 15 and 25. The majority of young adults and teenagers are likely to watch 15s because there is an unspoken idea that 12s don't have mature enough dramatic scenes that 15 are able to include but are equally balanced because they aren't as graphic as 18s, this will help our film sell because we know the target audience is the same age as us and so we understand aspects that older producers and directors wouldn't be able to. The release date is exactly one month before pride and four days before pride month allowing the film build up a following and will reach our exact target audience because of it. Our film would be like a pre-celebration of pride with the positivity of the two girls fighting through all of the trouble and hate they face and come out of it able to start a new life where they are free to be themselves and escape the toxicity of their families. The design using the 80s style lettering matches the font of the title in the opening sequence - it is captivating and draws the attention to the title and is the dont of old 80s films in the theatre. 

If our film was to be distributed as a real life media text I would chose vertigo films as our distributer. They are an independent British TV and film production company that have now grown large enough to distribute films. They have distributed small independent films before such as Host in 2020. 

• Vertigo Film was founded in 2002 by Allan Niblo and James Richardson and grew into one of the most successful independent film production companies in the UK. 
• Jane Moore, the CEO of the comapny and the founders decided to focus on tv but distrubute many films along side such as 'Bronson', 'Sweeny' and 'Ajami'. 
• They have big contacts such as sky and amazon prime meaning they would be able to market and distribute our film to large platforms that have wide audiences. 

Our marketing campaign would include spreading the posters in as many places as we are physically able - around local areas and all over our social media platforms such as instagram, tiktok and even pinterest. We decided that we would first do a cinema release in as many places as possible for a month to avoid piracy and then a streaming release on the 28th of June on pride which should encourage an influx of people due to the excitment that would have built up additionally this influx of people will be mostly people from the LGBT community and because this is our target audience it should mean our film will have the highest chances of success because it will appeal and be enjoyed by this audience demographic. Our aim is to market and distribute our film as wide as possible despite the fact that it is a low budget we would have high aspirations and do whatever we could to get it to be as successful as possible.

 I have researched various film festivals that we could enter such as:

• The British Film Festival which is one of the best festivals for networking providing a good opportunity to spread the word of our film and possibly even get it picked up by bigger organisations. 
• We would also enter the Raindance Festival becuase it is one of the biggest independant film festivals in the UK - even though this means there would be a possibility of our film getting lost in the large amount of other films there is still an equal chance that we would make it through and win an award, plus because we will enter as many as possible we will be giving ourselves the best chance we can. 
• The BFI Flare London Film Festival as well as Rainbow Film Festival are some of the msot well know gay film festivals and because this is our target audience we can be confident that our film will go down well. It is very important to us to not only distribute out Film in the UK but also Europe and the US. 
• The Connecticut LGBTQ Film Festival, LA Outfest, New York LGBT Film Festival, Toronto's inside out Film and Video Festival and San Francisco's Frameline Film Festival which is partnered to launch the North American Queer Alliance which is aimed to promote and publicise LGBT films.
• In Europe the most visited and successful film festivals include FIRE!! in Barcelona who say they have proudly spent "25 years burning down closets", Queer Lisboa in Lisbon Portugal which is the only LGBT film festival and the longest running in Lisbon. France has been know for releasing gay films such as blue is the warmest colour and portait of a lady on fire so we are would enter the Paris Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival and Chéries-Chéries.

For the streaming release we would definatley release our film on YouTube and Vertigo Films would hopefully be able to get us onto Sky and Amazon Prime because they have strong contancts with them and Amazon Prime have released British independant films before like Tucked from Belstone Pictures. We would also try our luck with Netflix and hope for the best. This would give us the best opportunity to sell and distribute our film as wide as possible.