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"Route Around"- Rebelution

Welcome To Post-Production

Marketing For Gratifly

Blockbuster films rely on good advertisement to be successful in today's competitive market, and Gratifly is no different. The production team has chose 2 marketing techniques for Gratifly. A website and a film poster. The website is a vital tool to reel in the target audience and make sure they know the in-depth information on Gratifly's environment. The poster is a cheap and effective way to reach a wider range of audiences, whether domestically or internationally.

There are other techniques to market Gratifly to our target audience, such as:

Other Marketing Strategies For Gratifly:

1.Advertisements (Both Online and Offline) such as posters, online ads, trailers or television adverts etc.

2. Giveaways, such as relics from the film or signatures from the actors etc.

3. Guerilla Marketing, such as pamphlet handouts, graffiti, billboards and posters.

4. Social Media, such as having a Facebook Page which would inform the audience of the film and events surrounding the film, promoting the film.

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(CASE STUDY) BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999):

The Blair Witch Project is the best of modern day movie advertising strategies. The project is known for being one of the best viral marketing campaigns in modern film history. At the time the film was made (1999), it was considered to be revolutionary. As it was 1999, the internet was just getting started and marketers weren’t worried about going “viral”

They achieved this by many techniques. A year before the film’s release, the production company made a website that told a story of an urban legend starting from 1785. They say that the families of the missing had asked the production company to make a movie about the story for them.

On the IMDB website even states the actors were presumed dead or missing to distort the audience

The website had police photos, footage of news coverage, interviews with the family members and even parts of a journal from one of the three film-makers. The team also passed out missing persons posters out on the street, making the film have verisimilitude. (Verisimilitude = The appearance of being true or real)

Gratifly's Website

The production team now has a challenging task on their hand, creating a unique website that will draw it audiences which would would generate an immersive experience for them. As usual, the team all sat down and had a meeting. Initially the team was going to go with a regular film website, a conventional approach as many might say. However, we agreed on that a regular website would be too over-used by modern day films and decided to take an unconventional approach, which was to create an government-styled website to support the short film (Gratifly.)

We started the website coming from the Antagonist's perspective to distinguish ourselves from other film websites. The website would be that of a secret government agency, which was the creator of the perfect boy, the fly, and the one spying on the protagonist. This distinctive website would expand on the audience’s perspectives on the film’s setting and narrative.

Replicating a government-styled website would be difficult for many people, however that wasn’t a problem at all. As I am Army ROTC Officer and a military enthusiast myself, using my own knowledge and information gained from the Army, I’ve took it upon myself to provide Richy and Ryu with realistic, yet immense support and background in-sight into the development of the website. The website took inspiration from US Government Agencies websites, which had to do with national security. These agencies we took inspiration from was the DEA, FBI, NSA and CIA. I also came up with the logo and the name which was “MEPA.” MEPA would stand for (Media Enforcement and Protection Agency). Using the NSA logo, I designed the MEPA Logo while Ryu designed the font of the name. Creating the website was underway and spearheaded by Richy who had me as support to make the website seem authentic.

Richy also took inspiration from Umbrella Corps website (A fictional antagonistic medical company in the universe of Resident Evil). He created the website using red, white and yellow which was similar to Umbrella Corps website. The red themed website would make MEPA, The Perfect Boy and The Fly seem more evil and antagonistic than giving a blue theme to the website. According to Plutchik’s color wheel/wheel of emotion, red would give an angry feeling which would promote the organisation being the antagonist. A blue themed website would make MEPA be more of a good organization as blue often associates itself with “Justice” and “Morality”. However, I wanted to retain the vintage layout of the DEA and FBI website to make the MEPA website seem more official and secretive. The layout would consists of a login page and plain tabs. Richy and I took the tab inspirations from the DEA and the news layout from the FBI page, while the login page we took from the CIA and NSA. We also followed the structure of the DEA website, featuring a “Heads Of Department” page and an “Operations” page.

The DEA Website also had a distinctive look to it, with the gold DEA logo cutting against the blue background. This was more eye-catching and menacing than the FBI’s website that had a white logo and black background. As agreed upon by Richy and myself, the FBI and Umbrella Corp website was too packed with information which would reduce the “secretive” feeling of MEPA, so we used the DEA website’s structure which would retain the professional and intimidating feeling of MEPA.

THIS BUTTON WOULD LEAD YOU TO THE MEPA WEBSITE

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The first inspiration.

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The second inspiration. (Please excuse the language)

MEPA: The Perfect Boy's Letter

When I first started writing this letter, I already had a good concept on what this letter should include. Which was Government/Military styled text and a professional approach from an unseen character’s perspective (aka General Homsiri, Director Of Special Operations for MEPA). I took inspiration from military letters in video games, examples of this are HERC’s letters (Homeland Environmental Risk Control) from the web-game called “The Last Stand”. A second video game example is FEDRA’s( Federal Disaster Response Agency) draft letters, from the zombie-drama game called “The Last Of Us”.

The letter includes specific detail on Operation Gratifly, where the “Perfect Boy” with help from “The Fly” must turn the protagonist into a mainstream media person. This mission is shown to be top secret and of the most importance as the language I’ve chose makes it seem serious. Furthermore, technical words such as 1st SFOD-D, HVT, 160th SOAR, Standard 410B and many more only adds to the authenticity to it.

There are explanations for what 1st SFOD-D and 160th SOAR stands for. 1st SFOD-D is a real-life top-notch US Military special force unit operating behind the shadows (hence their nickname of shadow warriors). They often closely work with the CIA who recruits from 1st SFOD-D. The CIA is an intelligence agency much like MEPA, and so therefore MEPA would also work with 1st SFOD-D. 160th SOAR is another special forces unit which flies helicopters, they also work closely with the CIA and would be an important asset for MEPA. I’ve used many technical terms to give the letter more authenticity as it is coming from a high ranking member of a classified government organisation. This would mean that audiences would be more likely to speculate the ideology behind the Gratifly movie and what events they could foreshadow in the movie, giving them a more immersive and eye-opening experience.

MEPA's LOGO

The MEPA Logo was created by me, with inspiration from the NSA. Since MEPA is a worldwide top secret intelligence organization, I looked at various real life agencies to get ideas from. I looked at the NSA, FBI, DEA, and CIA's logo and found that the NSA logo matched MEPA's ideology and objectives the most. The SEAL of the NSA gives a serious and official feeling. The eagle suggests that the organisation is "Hawk-eyed" and is keeping an eye on everyone. The eagle also represents how dangerous the organization is, as eagles are predators who swoops down from the air to snatch their prey with their menacing claws. Which also represents the NSA/MEPA being menacing and threatening.

With that said, I started creating the logo by taking the black letters out of the NSA logo, leaving it blank by using the magic wand tool to highlight the black letters and then get rid of them by the cut tool. Then using the text tool I wrote MEPA in black, inside the light blue seal, giving it a blank yet intimidating look. The program I've used was PAINT.NET which I am familiair with.