C.R. Blog

  1.  How do your products represent social groups or issues?

The escape from the movie means a lot to us. The film talks about something that, in today's days, is undoubtedly a concern, bullying. Our main character Mason is faced with many problems in the film, not only at home, but also in school. Despite his disability, he is mistreated by his dad, peers and even principals. Mason is autistic and it can be very difficult, because it can go very wrong without anyone to continuously warn you and keep an eye on your stuff. In the short film, that happens and it also happens in real life. Most kids get tired of their daily lives and just can't bear it anymore, they either take their rage on other people or themselves. That's more than you can think of every year, and we tried to demonstrate in our short film how horrible the consequences of these actions can be. We want to raise awareness and help minimize the number of people who, because of bullying, harm themselves or injure others. You may think it's never going to happen to you or your close friend, but this is more normal than you might think.

2. How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

Our short film has a very popular subject that can be fascinating for many individuals. This type of bullying occurs more frequently than you would expect, and so it draws attention from a lot of people who want to raise awareness of the problem by making a movie like this. In particular, teachers are our primary focus because most of them are there, where everything occurs in school, and we want them to know how to react to a situation like that. Since our subject is very popular, I think it will draw the attention of many colleges to build some kind of brand for it. Schools may be eager to show our film to their students so that they can avoid anything similar from happening at their school.

3. How do your products engage with the audience?

This short movie is more about the viewer and who's watching it. The primary aim of our short film is to raise public awareness of this major problem that we have, particularly with children with disabilities such as autism, and their issues with bullying. After the viewer views our movie, we hope they will understand how unfair it is to do anything like that to a child or even an adult. We hope that people will start supporting each other after watching our film, instead of making fun of one another because of their differences. We want to communicate with the viewer in such a way that they want to do better and be better people after watching the film. We want them to know that there are many individuals around them who struggle at home or at school and that a simple action such as a smile can alter their entire day or deter the, from choices that may be detrimental to others. From the first minute to the last, we want to grab the audience's attention so that they don't have any little details they can get. We want to get them on the edge of their seats and make them feel mad that the movie is over.

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

We've done extensive research on this subject because it's a very sensitive topic to speak about and we didn't want to do anything wrong in some shape or form and be insensitive. We made sure that we had done as much testing as possible, so that no conventions were questioned. For a few reasons, we challenged conventions in past work, but this year we felt that this subject was unique and we might mess up and be able to express the message we want to convey in the first place by challenging conventions. We didn't want to add something that was so out of context so the whole emphasis of our movie would be taken away. We want to focus on the child and the challenges that he has been going through. Particularly from the main character, we didn't have much dialogue because we don't want to take the audience's attention from what's happening at the moment. We were willing not to question norms because of the research we did and the film turned out even better than we expected it to be.