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POST CARD RESEARCH

Mariana and I chose to do a short film for a final project, meaning we would have to do a double sided post card as our physical advertisement. These postcards are typical used as an advertisement to pass around at a film festival. Here are some elements our postcard must contain:

• Title
• Intriguing visuals
• Key art
• Directors name
• The location, as well as its date and time
• Social Media information

All of the components mentioned are ways to connect with and gain more people from the directed target audience. In order to gain more knowledge and useful techniques for these postcards, doing some research would be very beneficial. I decided that I wanted to research postcards of others that have carried out this project for Aice Media A level. This allowed me to visit their past blogs and get context of their film before seeing the postcard with very little information. I was also able to make deeper connections to their postcards development. 

SPLIT

Beginning with the student made short film SPLIT. I skimmed over Kavya Marian, the directors blog page to get a gist of what this short film was about. The short film is about a 16 year old girl who suffers from a personality disorder, where she has various personalities. It was said that this mental illness descended from sexual assault from her father in her childhood. 

-summary of content

Regarding the postcard itself, it does capture elements of the film, however, I would’ve changed a couple of things for my liking. Starting with the conventions, I really liked the title font looking split, like the title. Not only was it clever, but also visually engaging, which is important for these postcards. Under this title, they included the tagline “ENTER THE WORLD OF A GIRL WHO IS NEVER ALONE”. The addition of the tagline is a pleasant factor, as it gives some context, as well as creates assumptions as to what the film may be about. A simple somewhat contextual sentence like this can further lure in the audience. Furthermore, the front of the post card contains a bold picture of what I’m guessing is the main character of the film. It is important to use an engaging picture to ensure the audience will follow all of the other conventions within the post card. If something isn’t visually engaging, the person usually will not look into the rest of the writing or information on it. Just like trailers. If the trailer isn’t interesting or visually appealing, the person viewing usually will not watch the movie. I liked how the director included “A totally UNIQUE and GRIPPING short film.” These two words, especially bolded add emphasis to elements of the film that make it strong. Words like unique and gripping are both words appealing to the targeted audiences awareness, and even later interaction. The inclusion of the main film festival in the front (Pune Short Film Festival) is a major component for the postcard. The film and everything previously mentioned becomes useless without information about a location where this movie can be viewed. The main purpose of a postcard is to get an audience to view your film, so without a location, this cannot be fulfilled. Overall, this was a very well done postcard and a great example for research. 

The only components I would’ve changed that caught my eye, was the back of the postcard. The back of the postcard was not visually intriguing. It was boring in my eyes as there was no picture and the color theme placed as the background was very dull. I did however like how there were more film festival screenings on the back. This can broaden the ability to watch for the audience. Another feature I really liked was the inclusion of the QR code on the back under the contact information. (Also a key component so scouters can reach director and audience can ask questions pertaining to the film)

For our films postcard, I would like to almost every element displayed within this example. My favorite element that I’m so excited to adopt is the bold picture on the front of the card. 

ON TO THE NEXT

Integration

This is another postcard advertisement I researched about a vr sci-fi short film. This post card did a great job at relating to the futuristic and technological theme this short film aims to achieve. I really like the visual elements within this post card it is very visually pleasing in my opinion. The title is big and bold followed by the tagline “YOUR INVITATION TO THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION” below. Under the tagline there’s a piece of text that says, “Your ideal High School experience brought to you by Virtu tech”. This sentence gives further context to the audience as to what the short film may be about. They included important logos, as well as the top film festivals the short film will be screened at which as I said previously, is crucial to obtain ones audience. They even decided to add more film festivals to the back to again, widen their audience. The back of the postcard contained unique elements as well, the loading symbol for instance. This was a clever visual that works great with the purpose of the short film. Furthermore, the logos followed by the contact information was a good guide to allow postcard viewers to quickly locate this information. This is a technique I believe Mari and I should adopt. Something I was not much of a fan of was the staring feature. While watching the short film, there were only really 3 main characters and the protagonist was the main MAIN focus, so I believe the inclusion of who’s staring isn’t that valuable. If the actors were the main marketing scheme, on the other hand, pictures of them could’ve been useful, as opposed to a list of names. I really enjoyed the overall postcard, I believe the student did an exceptional job!