AICE Media Studies

How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?   The genre of the film is presented to be a comedy that also has some elements of a drama.  Like a comedy, the film mainly tries to emphasize humor and amuse the audience. To get this reaction, comedies tend to exaggerate certain characteristics of the action, language, characters, setting, or plot to provide the humorous effect. In a similar way, we follow conventions of a comedy in which our product centers around Santa losing his job. In situational comedies such as Groundhog Day and Happy Gilmore, the humor is centered around the narrative, by which the main-character is found in unfamiliar circumstances. In this case, a Not-So-Merry Christmas follows situational comedies as Santa Claus’s position to get fired after Christmas Day is regarded as unusual.  By placing Santa Claus in a business environment, it provides humor and irony as his situation highly cont...

To revise our film opening, we enhanced and balanced out the audio so it would become more even. For instance, during the takes when the President of the Board addressed Santa Claus, the audio was uneven compared to the other takes. The "Nick Hallisey" title was moved to the previous clip with the respective actor speaking his lines. We also cut down on a few of the takes that ran on longer. For example, the scene where the entire board reacted to Santa Claus's lack of knowledge of that date was slightly trimmed. We also trimmed off a small part of the scene when the board members left the room.

To distribute our film, we plan to find an independent distributor. This can be done through premiering A Not-So-Merry Christmas at an upcoming film festival to find potential distribution companies. We are most likely going to agree to a profit-sharing model, where the distributor would get a percentage of the total profits made from the film. We expect that the distributor receive around 25 percent of the profits, although this can be negotiated between 10 and 50 percent. The distribution company that decides to use our film would likely present screenings to potential buyers, where they can negotiate their percentage of shares from box office ticket sales. As soon as the film is premiered at the festival we expect our film to be distributed to at least 400  theaters, and up to at least 500 the following week. 60 days after the release of our film the distributor is expected to make A Not-So-Merry Christmas available for rental or purchase on iTunes, Amazon, Redbox, and YouTube, ...

To market A Not So Merry Christmas, we decided to consider using social media advertisements to get the attention of the public. Ideas include writing posts about our film or providing images or posters to draw viewers. For an image or poster to advertise, I decided to use an image from the film and edit it using Adobe Photoshop express. The photos were edited by cropping,  altering lighting vibrancy, saturation,and clarity.  The font was added using Phonto. A business partnership with a well-known company is also helpful to market our film. For example, characters or themes from the movie can be printed on soda cans from the Coca Cola company. Because any people drink sodas from this large industry, having our movie advertised with the soda will grab attention from a wider group of people. An image of our poster could be a traditional movie poster or be used for an internet ad or banner. TV commercials incorporating clips or teasers of the film can be broadcasted by popula...

Lady Bird is similar to A Not So Merry Christmas due to its comedic genre, albeit a little more centered around drama. A24 and IAC Films are the production companies to Lady Bird. The film was premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on September 1, 2017, and viewed at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, at which the film was finally released. It was also screened at the New York Film Festival on October 8, 2017. A24 partnered with IAC released the film domestically through the United States as of November 10, 2017, while Focus Features acquired international distribution rights. Lady Bird was released in Canada on November 17. By November 24, the film was released to 724 theaters and expanded to 1,194 theaters by the next week. Lady Bird was published for streaming on YouTube on October 30, 2017 for $3.99. It was available for digital download on Amazon and iTunes on February 13, 2018. Lady Bird was released theatrically in the United Kingdom on February 16 ...

The Interview is similar to our movie in which it is a comedy, but it also contains more elements of the action genre. The Interview was first released on December 11, 2014 in Los Angeles. The film revolves around two journalists attempting an assassination on Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. Seth Rogen and James Franco cancelled publicity appearances after facing threats from hackers on December 16. Sony Pictures, the film's distributor, pulled all advertising on television. Sony cancelled the New York City premiere the day, in addition to having theater chains such as AMC, Cinemark, Cineplex, Regal and Southern Theatres delaying or cancelling screenings. Sony eventually cancelled the wide release of the film, as a result  receiving pressure and criticism from the public as a result. On December 24, Sony released The Interview for rental or purchase in the United States for Google Play, Xbox Video, and YouTube. The cost was $5.99 to rent for 48 hours and $14.99 for purc...