Creative Critical Reflection

 How do your products represent social groups or issues?

The film is a very serious topic of drunk driving and its impact upon a number of people and families around the globe. The film shows the different social circles; these mainly involve young adults and working-class parents and the struggles they are in. Tom is one of the fathers in the movie and embodies a worker who sacrifices his personal time for his job and is deprived of family life. It's the ordinary case of modern life where so many have to find the balance between work and family. In this film, the role of Tom emphasizes work as a very important part of life, but, as a result of sacrificing personal relationships, one might never recover the damage caused. This was a good idea to represent such a character to adult audiences because some might be able to relate to the situation. Meanwhile, the protagonist Ben a young adult subjected to peer pressure and acting impulsively. Drinking among minors is a big problem, and our film portrays the dangerous consequences. Ben starts drinking under the pressure of Nicolas and subsequently gets in the car while under the influence, leading to catastrophic consequences. This mirrors a more pervasive challenge that teens and other societal elements are dealing with as teens sometimes take unnecessary chances not knowing what they have to do later. In this regard, young audiences will have the opportunity to see just what happens when they make a certain decision in real life. It is an informative cautionary tale in its essence, highlighting the consequences of irresponsible decisions and drawing attention to the dangers of drunk driving. It is in the characters that both the pressures of working parents' life and dangerous things the young adults engage in are portrayed, making the film a better fit for a wider audience.

How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of branding?

Branding is an approach used to identify a movie and offer a meaningful insight into it. It means a combination of common identities based on various and sundry elements put together with everything else in it. This goes from the visual style of the film to the marketing materials: it was from this very core concept and the cause. A vital aspect of our film branding is visual palette-the mood. We applied darker, muted colors that served to set a more serious mood and focus on the message the film was communicating. All promotional items, like posters and social media graphic design, should present a consistent approach reflecting this visual palette and font. The poster is one of the most important in terms of branding. It showed a moment before the crash, in addition to eerie lettering. This imagery enhanced the themes that our film was representing. The tagline stated, "Driving while under the influence can be deadly"; one side is a strong message for our cause and on the other side will solidify our film's identity. Also, social media was utilized as a support to branding. Promotional themes in our film were communicated through social media promotions, keeping the audience focused and informed about what we were doing in the film. We have created a site, like we did on this project, but with additional background information, in order to stay serious and informative throughout our branding.This is only one among many ingredients of the combined identity that allows recognition and the film to impact on its audience. Consistency of design, tone, and messaging across multiple platforms supports the movie's overall branding, which then enables the audience to relate it to the powerful message it has to communicate.

How do your products engage with the audience?

To keep the audience engaged is one of the most important functions in a film that has a big message to convey. We devised many techniques with the objective that the audience would always have an emotional investment in the story and the characters and their plight. One of the ways we get the audience to engage is through emotional storytelling. Some scenarios in the movie include a father who works long hours, balancing between work and family; and adolescents making wrong decisions due to peer pressure. This reflection of their struggles enables the audience to see someone they know or themselves in the characters, thus adding to the story's impact. Suspense and dramatic tension keep audiences engaged in various ways. An example — the tension builds up to the eventual car crash before suddenly turning unbearably tense there and then. With Tom driving home obliviously toward the crash, and Ben speeding toward it, the whole audience is left to await the terrible accident . This tension keeps the audience emotionally alive until the very end.The promotional materials also keep the audience engaged. We built a platform for film goers to communicate and discuss the film even after watching through social media pages and a website. This platform provides the ability for audiences to interact with the film, talk through their sensations, and, after all, create more awareness about the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol.On the whole, through this, we take the audience into account by telling a relatable and emotionally touching story, while extending our reach through interactive promotional materials.

How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Prior to the production of our film, we conducted some serious research both about drunk driving and about filmmaking techniques that communicate serious messages. This research played a crucial role in how we shaped our story and conveyed it. One major finding from our research was that emotional storytelling is often employed in public service announcements and films about drunk driving to elicit some kind of reliable reaction and leave a lasting impact on viewers. Hence, we based our film on an emotional and tragic event rather than merely stating the facts about drunk driving. This should make the message more personal and haunting to the audience. From speculative studies, we also looked into common film conventions of dramas and cautionary tales. Foreshadowing is one convention we followed. For example, the discussion that takes place between Ben and his friend about being careful gives a slight hint of the consequences he was going to face if he wasn’t home soon. These techniques of storytelling are frequently shown in films that try to make strong statements. However, where we break with some conventions is that, unlike most cautionary films that graphically depict driving and crashing, we have approached the subject quite subtly. Rather than showing just the physical wreckage of the crash, we chose to highlight its emotional impact: Tom is shown laying still on the wheel, and the picture cuts to black with a warning displayed. In this way, people could get to understand very clearly the intensity of the situation without being distracted by gratuitous and sensational violence. Further, our promotional materials were influenced by research on effective branding approaches. Research into film marketing deduces that a memorable, credible brand personality helps a film to stand out and strike people more effectively. By drawing from this insight, we were able to create promotional posters, social media material, and a website consistent with the thematic and tonal aspects of the film.