EVALUATION - How does your product engage with audiences? / How would it be distributed as a real media text?

The theme of my film is not quite the style that lay bombs on the cinema (in terms of the amount of tickets sold and the amount of viewers).

By the way it is at the moment, 'Ace of Spades' seems like more of a crime series. If I could develop it further into an actual mainstream blockbuster film, the plot needs to be very suspensing and mysterious (strong core and plot) like 'Inception'. However, 'Solace', 'Mercury Rising', and 'Safe' with the main protagonist as a child with extraordinary powers does not make it that successful. When I ask regular people on the streets whether they know them or not, not one said they have heard of them.

Therefore, what I think will determine my film between being a blockbuster film and a smaller type of film is how differently I present my plot. If the psychic boy is presented to the audiences the way the X-Men has been presented, meaning that he has his own way of thinking, his own "strong" origin story, his own times to come of age and upgrade his power, instead of acting like a side-kick for the action man as in 'Safe' and 'Mercury Rising', it will make this film into a coming of age themed thriller instead of an action crime thriller. 

The action man doesn't have to save him all the time, let the boy be presented a a genius of his own. Let the story focus on his life more than Victor's life; how he acts at school, how he fights his own chaotic mind to find a solution by himself. Let him prove in the end that he had grown up by himself.

                                     

However, this means that the audience group would consequently follow the trend of younger people who are also experiencing the time where they too, come of age. This widens the audience age group as older men are still there for the psychic action and the thrill of the crime, as well as younger people who are there to watch people their age make a difference.

Below are some of the results from my research on the audiences of movies with similar theme to mine:

The main audience group are men. From the YouGov survey, people who like Inception also like mainstream blockbuster-action movies such as 'The Dark Knight', 'The Matrix', 'Star Wars', and 'Iron Man'. Therefore, to attract these type of audiences, I need to add in particular elements to make my film similar to them.

One tiny problem, though, is that I need to be very careful not to drift the film too far away from the genre of 'Thriller'. With this worry in mind, I researched 'thriller movies for family' on the internet. This is a list I have found:

The results show that there are still quite a lot of audience base for kid/family-suitable thrillers. The movies listed are also well known.

These are the details and conventions in my film opening that may appeal to the mass audience group that may be watching this film:

Then how should this movie be distributed?

In my opinion, to get audiences' attention, this film should be getting awards from film festivals. I think that instead of presenting it directly onto the cinema screen, gaining positive critiques from experts will at least psychologically make audiences believe that the film is a must see. Since my production house is new to the field, not many people know about it, and not many people will give it enough attention too.

By launching it directly onto cinema screen, my 'possible' audience group might not be as eager to watch something that has been shown before and somewhat failed to reach their expectation such as 'Safe' - without knowing that it is different, that is.

Below are some of the most prestigious film awards:

1. Oscars - Academy Awards
2. Palme d'Or - The Cannes International Film Festival
3. BAFTA Awards
4. The Golden Bear - The Berlin International Film Festival
5. Filmfare Awards
6. Film of the Year - European Film Awards
7. Golden Leopard - Locarno International Film Festival
8. Grand Jury Prize - Sundance Film Festival
9. Golden Globes
10. Golden Lion
(credit: http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/most-popular/top-10-most-prestigious-movie-awards-in-the-world/ )

So, how should I promote my film?

Personally, I develop the 'want to see it' feeling from trailers and film pages on Facebook. For Sci-Fi, mainstream blockbusters, and Fantasy movies, I often get attracted to them only by seeing a release on some of their teaser concept arts (This is my case with 'Dr. Strange', The new 'StarWars'(Rogue One), and Ender Game.).

Therefore, instead of advertising my film on posters and television advertisements, it is considerably cheaper and more effective to do so in social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. This way, people who are interested in it can easily share the information to their friends and family.

(iamag.com - the place I dwell in for inspiration apart from Pinterest.)

Release date? The release date would probably be around July and August where most students are out of school. This way, families have more time to spend together at the theatre, and there are just higher chances of getting more audiences. However, releasing the film in summer also means that there will certainly be more competitors. It is very likely that well known studios such as Disney, Universal, Warner Bros, or Marvel will launch some of their films around the time too. Instead of choosing the 'Ace of Spades', most audiences might choose to see other movies which they think are more preferable. To prevent this but keeping a large base of audiences at the same time, the Ace of Spades would be released in late August before the opening of a brand new term.