Month: February 2016

The pitch for my product is as follows.

‘Currently there isa lot of confusion regarding the 12a film classification. The film’s content is often very vague leading to parents often taking their children to see films that they would ultimately not want them seeing. My system is a solution to help solve this vagueness.

QR codes will be placed on 12a film posters, as well as on the 12a films trailers, parents can then scan this on their smartphone and be redirected to warnings about the content of the film about violence, nudity, language etc. It will also show information for people with epilepsy issues, trigger warnings etc.’

I am beginning to research it may cost to maintain this system, and have thus began my research looking at how much QR codes cost to produce, and how much it would be to host the information on a website.

‘Scanlife’ by Scanbuy offer a service for small business’ that is priced at $49 a month. This service allows the user to have ‘5 codes, 2,500 scans / year’ as well as ‘2 Mobile Sites / 20 Templates’. Although this is a good start, with the amount of QR codes that will need to be placed on film posters alone I will need much more than 5 codes.

The website also offers an ‘enterprise’ package, allowing ’10+ codes’ but it doesn’t disclose how much it is unfortunately.

When it comes to creating the 2d QR codes, there are lots of free services, as well as lots of free apps that can read the QR codes. This means that to do it yourself it could potentially be on the very cheap – however this doesn’t take into account the cost of referring the code to a website, and thus the website will cost money to run.

 

According to ‘Executionists’:

• Domain Name – $10/year
• Hosting – $10 to $100 a year (depending on traffic and hosting services)
• Web Planning, Design and Development Time – 60 hours and up
• Continued Website Maintenance – $500 a year and up (depending on number/type of updates required)
• Marketing Your Website Online – $750 a month and up

This shows that the majority of the budget may be spent on maintaining the website that the QR code redirects the user to.

 

References:

 

Parr, R. (2014) How much does it cost to build A Website in 2014?. Available at: http://www.executionists.com/blog/cost-to-build-websites-2014/ (Accessed: 22 February 2016).

According to the CBBFC, a 12a can contain:

•    Theme – Mature themes are acceptable, but their treatment must be suitable for young teenagers.

•    Language – The use of strong language (eg ‘f***’) must be infrequent. Racist language used as abuse is also a concern.

•    Nudity – Nudity is allowed, but it must be brief and discreet if there is any suggestion of sex.

•    Sex – Sex can be suggested. Sex references may reflect what 12 year olds are likely to have heard about from school, but there should be nothing unsuitable for young teenagers. Frequent rude sex references may not be allowed.

•    Violence – Violence must not dwell on injuries or blood. Sexual violence may only be implied or briefly and discreetly indicated.

•    Imitable techniques – Dangerous techniques (eg combat, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on things which can be copied or appear pain or harm free. Easily accessible weapons should not be shown as glamorous.

•    Horror – There can be some threat and menace, including scary scenes which are intense or last a while. Only occasional gory moments can be shown.

•    Drugs – Any misuse of drugs must be infrequent and should not be shown as glamorous, or attractive, or teach viewers how to take drugs.

•    Discrimination – The film or DVD as a whole must not approve of language or behaviour that would offend a person’s religion, colour, gender, sexuality or disability. Aggressive use of this type of language and behaviour is unacceptable unless it is clearly disapproved of.

In order to be able to market the product I am going to need to know my audience. In this case establishing the primary target demographic is relatively simple – it is parents’ and specifically parents that are unsure of what a ’12a’ movie consists of. Therefore I am going to need to consult parents on what THEY value as important in a film, and what they do not want their children seeing. I can then tailor my film warnings to this audience, for example if parents aren’t too bothered about violence but are very much against nudity of any kind I will focus on nudity rather than violence.

I am going to attempt to use a number of sources to gain information from parents, including contacting parents themselves verbally (including mine) and internet forums for parents, for example mums net. This allows me to get a wider range of parents, from various different countries, meaning I can tailor my service to fit the needs of individual countries.

I could also conduct physical focus groups with parents, however the logistics involved in conducting this would make it difficult to do, and thus I will probably resort do conducting something similar online.

 

In order to develop my system further, I am going to look at similar products that already exist, and how I can implement this research into similar products in order to influence my own product.

The first product, and the main inspiration behind my 12a? system is Common Sense Media. This is a website that claims to ‘rate, educate, and advocate for kids, families, and schools’. They allow users to log on and post reviews of films, rating them for their severity on 7 main categories. The system is very simple and I like the clean interface, as well as the fonts and small graphics to illustrate the categories.

 

 

However, as the website relies on it’s users to upload reviews (as either parents or children) there are a few discrepancies that can occur. For example it allows anyone to pretend to be a parent, and post a review of a very graphic film saying ‘suitable for children’ for example. For my system I will implement this very simple graphic with categories, however I will make sure only a specific team of people can post reviews, and not allow anyone to log on.

 

The second main inspiration is the parent’s guide on IMDB. It is less simple to follow than Common Sense Media, however it is a trusted review, and posts often in more detail, covering warnings that will spoil the plot with spoiler alerts:

The way they cover up major plot points with spoiler alerts I believe to be very effective, however it is not very visually pleasing, and you have to physically read the review to gain information and warnings, which a parent may not have time to do if they are quickly deciding on a film in the cinema. Therefore I will aim to implement a ‘spoiler alert’ system similar to IMDB’s, and I will aim to have the same level of detail but I will aim to make my product much more user friendly, and a more visual product – providing the info as quickly as possible – like in Common Sense Media. Additionally this parent’s guide section isn’t easy to find on the IMDB webpage.

 

The final inspiration in terms of trigger warnings for my product is the tumblr page ‘This Could be Triggering’ in which they show films, and what potential triggers that are present within the film e.g. Suicide, Death of a Parent etc.

 

This could be a useful layout in terms of trigger warnings, and I particularly like the sensitive blue and pink colours used. The way they write the triggers isn’t patronising as well which I like.