CCR - question 2
How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
To begin with, my short film was not created with the intention of making profit or having a great advertisement strategy. Therefore, I did not focus on constructing a brand in that sense, but I wanted to create a powerful image for “Iridescent”. Even most independent films have strong publicity and branding, but less so is true for short films. Many don’t have websites, they rely on social media and posters. I focused more on the artistic side of cinematography, discovering and developing my ideas and style through this project. The three tasks that I had to meet complete each other and follow a specific pattern, image and style, creating a unitary sense of branding.
The film itself is obviously the most powerful medium for creating a sense of image, branding. This is where I came up with a few representative elements, such as the mandalas behind the title and credits, the colorful and bright aesthetics, the large, all caps title and the importance of the cast as a group. I knew that I would include all this in the website and the postcard too.
I used bold, capital letters for the title so that it would have the greatest impact on the audience and have the colors of the mandalas visible. I reproduced this on the postcard, using the background as the filling for the text. Again, the colorful mandala patterns are used to maintain a visual consistency. The opening page of the website also shows a bright pattern and I included the abstract kaleidoscope video which I used in the film. On the website, the video is presented with the tagline: “I stumbled upon paths unknown...” The same tagline is used on the postcard, right above the title, it is Aletta’s first line in the film. This creates continuity between the three elements.
The friendship and unity of the group presented in the film is then detailed on the website. One critic’s remark about the cast cohesion makes reference to the relationship that the friends have both on screen and off. The audience is invited to get to know the cast and relate to them better on one of the pages of the website. There I presented myself, and the three main actors, not using a usual biography, but by describing our main qualities. This is perhaps one of the main ideas of the narrative as well, the audience gets closer to the characters in the film, wanting to be part of the warm and fun atmosphere at the party, and the same idea is true for the website. When studying real media texts, I found the same continuity between the film “American Honey” and its website. The soundtrack of the film played on the website and the same unity between the cast members was emphasised, both in the film and in the presentation on the website. Most of the actors in “American Honey” were teenagers, not professional actors, just as the cast of my film.
I used the same personal way of addressing the audience, for example, the subtitle: “Feel what I feel”, invites the audience to have a closer look at what Aletta is experiencing, through the images and the sound of the video. The about page also offers an insight into the production of the film, which is very similar to the story itself. Afterall, “Iridescent” is to some extent a documentation of real events. The audience can sense that the conversation scene in the small room is not scripted but improvised. All these details are explained clearly on the website for the target audience to understand the vision of the film.
More technical aspects also promote the connection and brand between the film, website and postcard. The link to the website is also visible both on the back and the front of the festival postcard. This invites people to find out more about the story and the production. Similarly, the link to the actual film can be found on the website. The same dates for festival screenings are written on the back of the postcard as they are presented on the website. The festival awards and nominations are both written and suggested through the laurels that are both on the site and the postcard.
