R&D

Upon further inspection of my initial logos, and from gaining feedback I realise that the logo’s colours look quite weak from further back. Having said this, I do like the use of the circle and in particular the font. After making a few changes, including changing the circle to black, and the font to white – to connote ideas of professionalism. I also added a small bar of circles below this, that incidentally will be the same design as the categories on the website, making them different colours to represent each category (violence as red, sex/nudity as purple etc).

I believe this will be the final design, as it fits all of my needs, outlined previously.

I have now begun designing logos for my service. I wanted it to be a logo that would stand out on a poster, video, website and primarily an app icon. I took inspiration from the existing 12a certification logo, a red circle with a white ’12a’ in the middle. I wanted it to be as minimal as possible, so it would be recognisable on any format, whether it be large format or scaled down.

These were my initial mockups. I also took inspiration from the common sense media colours, as well as the use of a tick. The green makes the service seem trusted and will reassure my target audience of parents. The use of the pink and blue took inspiration from the design of the trigger warning blog, the blue and pink I believe compliment each other well, and connote a youthful theme to the product.

In order for my project to be fulfilled, I will need to plan my finances effectively – or we will end up running out of money, and the project will be binned, or will be rushed and so the final product will be less effective.

I will divide my project’s budget into 3 different sections; direct costs, indirect costs and other costs.

Direct costs will include things like equipment, software, materials and travel. Indirect costs are the costs of personnel and any services that we use. Finally other costs is anything else, mainly promotional materials.

I will first calculate how much each individual section will cost, then add this altogether to create my overall budget for the project.

Direct Costs:

In order for us to create our product we will need access to web design software. The web design software that I believe would be good to use is Adobe Dreamweaver, currently priced at £329.00 at King of Software, however if I am going to need access to design software as well as video editor software for editing any video promotional material it may be smarter to go with the Adobe Creative Suite, that includes all three softwares and more – priced at £1,199.00 at King of Software, or I could get Adobe CC, which costs £359.00 for a yearly subscription this means I can adjust anything or design anything when I want, rather than having to rely on outsourcing to a freelancer. To use this software I will need at least one computer, for the designer/video editor etc to actually use the software. Currently, an iMac costs £979.00, however if I am going to need a team of people I will need more.

This raised the question of outsourcing to a freelancer, whether it be a web designer or video editor etc. According to the UK Web Design Association the average cost for a day of web design work is around £200 – meaning it would probably be cheaper long term to do the web design work myself, however as I am not confident in my web design skills I will employ a freelancer, and if I am impressed I will hire them full time. When it comes to design and video editing I can do this myself, cutting down on production costs and only needing to buy the software, or a yearly subscription to it.

The majority of the costs in terms of materials will be on promotional material (mainly posters to be put into cinemas). The standard size of movie posters is 40′ by 60′ (portrait). The cost to print one of these (on VistaPrint) is £16, but to print in bulk (25) is £169, and to print 100 is £629. With Odeon alone having over 100 cinemas (according to their website) I will need to print over 100 in order to have a poster in every Odeon cinema.

The cost of a server for the website will be around £2,500.

Indirect Costs:

The majority of the indirect costs will be spent on people’s wages, as well as maintaining our website and domain name, that the user is redirected to via QR Code. There is an opportunity to outsource the QR Codes, and website to a company called Scanlife. They allow you to create the QR codes, as well as a website that the QR Code redirects to. There is an small business option, however this limits the amount of QR Codes you can create, and the amount of websites. There is an ‘enterprise’ option allowing 10+ qr codes and websites, however it doesn’t say how much it costs, but it will definitely be more than £49 – I’m going to estimate it will be over £100 at least.

In terms of wages, I will need to pay myself at least minimum wage, and the average salary for a Creative Director, (according to Payscale) is between £28,000 and £85,000, therefore I’m going to allocate myself about £30,000 annually. Along with this I am going to need a web designer, and the average pay for a web designer is around £22,000 annually (according to Payscale). Therefore I’m going to allocate this amount for the web designer.

Other Costs:

Most of the other costs come from marketing and promotion of the service. In order to have posters in almost every Odeon Cinema in the UK, the printing alone will cost at least £600, as well as this Odeon may charge a cost for the poster to be displayed, however a partnership could be struck and this could work for Odeon as they appear to be helping parents – thus giving them good publicity.

When you add all these costs together to get a rough estimate of total costs it comes up as roughly £57,500 for the year – with various numbers being estimations (for example the costs of the QR Code service).

In order for my project to reach the intended audience I will need to promote it and market it effectively, in order to attract this audience. However before I do this I need to identify my target demographics, and from this I can build my promotional material. As my project revolves around 12a films, the primary target audience is adults with children under the age of 12. This is because children are not allowed into a 12a rated without a responsible adult. Our service is one that provides parents with warnings about 12a films’ content, such as violence and nudity and so they are our primary audience.

However we also have a secondary audience, people that suffer with various health problems such as epilepsy or PTSD that could be triggered by the film. Thus we must consider both target audiences when creating our promotional material.

After researching similar products aimed at a similar audience (Common Sense Media, Mumsnet etc) I am going to take aspects of their designs when considering our promotional material, for example colour. Mumsnet uses the colour blue to make the audience feel safe, and that their service can be trusted, and Common Sense Media does the same thing with the colour green. Both colours appear reassuring to an audience of potentially confused parents and so I will utilise these primary colours in my promotional material, and probably in the final product. I am particularly fond of Common Sense Media’s logo, that features a tick – reinforcing the fact that they can be trusted.

However, in order to market the project to film goers specifically, I will make sure that I incorporate the theme of film in the promotional material, perhaps using a camera logo or maybe even using the same style as the actual 12a logo, featuring a white 12a within a red circle. This would make it instantly recognisable by the audience and so they are more likely to pay attention to it.

I also have an idea of marketing it in the similar way to a film is marketed, perhaps creating a film trailer with the narrative of a young child nearly watching a very explicit film, but the parent saving them at the last minute – however this may be too cheesy. Going along with this idea I am going to make a poster to advertise the project, also in the style of a film poster. This would attract the audience’s attention and could easily be placed next to other film posters at the cinema – and so the service is more likely to be used.

My survey has received much more responses than I originally had planned for, it has received 81 responses, this gives me some very reliable results to take from it in order to develop my product. The results were as follows:

1. ‘How familiar are you with the classification system for 12a films?’

From this question I have confirmed my suspicions, that the majority of people are aware of the 12a age rating and 12a films, however they are unsure of what makes a 12a film 12a. Therefore the guidelines need to be much clearer, and I believe my service can help make these guidelines much clearer, providing clear visuals in order to illustrate how much violence etc is present within the 12a film.

2. ‘What do you want to protect young children from the most in film? (Tick all that apply).’

This was one of the most important questions to me, as I was previously unsure as to what people felt children needed protection from. The results from this question would allow me to tailor my service to prioritise certain characteristics (violence/sex) etc over others. From the results I can see that people feel violence is the top one that needs to be clear when I provide warnings, the next is disturbing imagery, then drugs and then surprisingly fourth is sex/nudity. I have also discovered which characteristics to maybe not focus on, e.g. negative ideals and controversial content – unless it is something particularly extreme.

3. ‘Are health warnings important for films? (E.g. Epilepsy, PTSD etc)’

The answer for this confirms my thoughts that films need health warnings if certain people are going to be at risk from suffering during a movie. I will make sure to include a section for this on my service.

4. ‘Do you believe films should have trigger warnings?’

This was also an important question to me, as trigger warnings are quite a controversial topic when it comes to films, and whether to include them in my service was quite a difficult decision to make given both the good and bad press that trigger warning websites get. However the results from my survey show that the majority of people believe that films should have them, with the next highest percentage being for people saying that they should only be present in extreme cases. Interestingly, only 8% of people said they shouldn’t. This has allowed me to tailor my service, and I shall thus be including trigger warnings within my service.

5. ‘Do you believe the 12a rating should be abolished?’

This last question was to get a feel of people’s feelings towards the current 12a classification system. The highest percentage of people said that 12a should be kept, but the guidelines for it should be made clearer – and interestingly only 4.94% of people said that the 12a rating should be abolished – meaning that there should definitely be a market for my service, as it doesn’t look like people want 12a to disappear any time soon, they just want it changed, and in my opinion my service can help make the guidelines clearer, and could lead to a better understanding of the classification.