1. Charlie Atkinson BTEC Production 14.03.19
Unit 106 Evaluation
As part of our BTEC Production Arts course, we needed to complete Unit 106; Marketing for
the Production Arts. Our main objective for this unit was to market and campaign for the 2019
Ringwood School Production of Anything Goes (a1930s nautical comedy with music and lyrics
by Cole Porter). As a class we had to divide ourselves into four teams to cover the four areas
of marketing – Radio, Print, Video and Online. Myself and two others (James and Harvey)
chose to join the Print teamas our current skills leadus in this direction. I felt I would be more
useful in a team where I could use my artistic skills for things such as the Programme and
Posters to advertise the show inside and outside of the school.
Initially, we split ourselves within the group into different areas. I was put in charge of flyers
and tickets but we decided to all work on the Programme as a group as it is a large task to
complete.
To begin, we started to plan a basicideaof our marketing strategy and came to the conclusion
to make all of our promotions in keeping with traditional 1930’s cruise liner advertisement.
We had the idea to refrain from promoting the actual show, but to promote it as if it were an
actual cruise liner and our audience were the passengers on board. We wanted to make
brochures for the ship (activities, map, voyage plan etc.) and make our tickets boarding
passes. Our customers (the Producer and Director for the show) advised us that a lot of our
promotions would be done online and so we didn’t need to make flyers. Tickets were sold
through an online system that didn’t
require paper tickets and so were also
not needed. They said we should focus
more on the poster and programme.
With this change of events, we decided
to make the programme a brochure as
well as important information about
the show and the production company.
We thought we could make everything
in the programme relative to 1930s
events through 1930s adverts, 1930s
font and 1930s styles. From this, I
researched authentic 1930s cruiseliner
posters to get a sense of what kind of
style we would need to recreate. I took
my research to the Producer and
Director to get a sense of what style
they were looking for and if they had
any colour schemes or specific text they needed for the poster. Both said they wanted a front
2. Charlie Atkinson BTEC Production 14.03.19
on view of the ship with a white and blue theme and bold text. I thought it would look more
traditional to hand paint the poster to get the same kind of style. The painting process only
lasted three double lessons because the design was quite basic and the colours were easy to
work with. We regularly checked in with the producer and director to make sure we were still
creating what they wanted.
Through weeks of planning and preparation, we were able to ensure there were programmes
to sell each at each performance. We ordered around £300 worth of programmes and sold
over 360 by Gala night. After all seven performances, we found we had made around £700
meaning we made a profit from the £300 we spent on our order. Each night, the members of
Front of House would stand along the entrance to the building and the entrance to the
auditorium to push audience members to buy a copy. For a school performance, it is a lot
easier to sell programmes as the audience are family and friends of the cast and so want to
buy a copy to see their child’s name or picture.
As a department, I feel that we worked quite well together, however for various reasons, we
started as a group of four and ended with only two of us. As the deadline was approaching,
we were working hard to get everything up to the standard of the producer. We ended up
having to repeatedly change the page order and small details to make the programme as
perfect as it could be. This process was the most time consuming as we had to continually
change details such as font size, text placement and spacing, pictures and page order. This in
turn meant we had to completely focus on the programme to get it done in time for our order
to arrive on time for the first performance. Originally, we wanted to have the programmes
ready for the dress rehearsal as the castwere performing in front of a live audience but found
that as we came closer to the dress, it wasn’t essential for them, but they were a necessity
for opening night. I feel that we worked well at trying to get everything done in an efficient
manner. We found it to be more time effective if we worked on different things that we could
compile together later. When working on the pages, I found myself editing the front cover
and backgrounds to each page to then add the life ring boarders made my Harvey. We then
split our images between us by year group, so each year was together on a page spread. This
was excluding the members of the cast that belonged on the principals or supporting roles
pages. This meant that we majorly cut down our time and gave us a lot more leeway to alter
things afterwards. We anticipated that we would have to change a few things before it was
ready to be sent off to the printers because we didn’t have some of the information we
needed for the pages (e.g. special thanks page).
For the print team, I feel that I put in a lot of effort to the actual presentation and outcome
of the programme (our main goal). I conducted a lot of research into authentic posters for
1930's cruise liners so I could get a better idea of what we should have as our outcome. I
painted the front cover of the programme (also used for posters) by the guidance of colour
and angle from the director. Although I am relatively unsure of online editing through
photoshop, I was able to tackle the basics and add text to the scanned in poster. We had all
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had spent large amounts of time analysing past production programmes and the layout that
we thought was best suited to our show was inspired by Singing in the Rain 2015 through
their use of framing each page with pictures of the cast. I was heavily involved in the order of
each page in the programme and liaised with the producer to make sure it had all the
information it needed and made sense if you were looking at it with fresh eyes. It took many
days to organise and sort each page and trying to rejig the order for coincide with the double
page spreads. In the final outcome, I feel I brought a more creative approach to the team and
invested a lot of my time into creating the programme.
Radio – The Radio team did well at advertising the show during school hours to a wider
audience through the Ringwood School Radio. Adverts and interviews were broadcast to all
students and staffas they were played during break and lunch when the students are outside.
The Ringwood School Radio can only be played in a certain area of the school, however this
is always the most populated during break and lunch as it is by the student entrance, Sixth
Form and the Kiosk. As well as they did with the advertisement, they may not have been
targeting the right audience in the way that they did. The younger year groups of the school
are especially uninterested by performing arts and may not have been paying a lot of
attention to what was airing.
Video – The Video team did especially well in making the show a more exciting event through
the Promotional Video filmed at the Nuffield Theatre in Southampton. Instead of fully
promoting the show, they thought it would be better to promote it as if the main character,
Reno Sweeney (a famous nightclub singer) was preparing for a live performance. The video
follows her from outside stagedoor, revealing a red dress, prepping in the changing room and
then finally stepping out onto stage. This video was particularly was a crucial part of the
marketing for Anything Goes as it was posted on YouTube, previewed to parents and RSAF
members and promoted through the Online Team.
Online – The online team were in charge of assisting in the YouTube channel and Instagram
account which promoted the show and kept regular updates of the shows progress. They also
ran a website that held information about the show. The website held the dates of each show
and links to buying tickets. In addition to this, they added brief messages from the main cast
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members and from the backstage team explaining what their roles were and what they liked
about the show. This team were especially useful in promoting the video team by
broadcasting the videos online on the various accounts using the hashtag
“#AnythingGoesRS19”.
Overall, I feel that each department within the marketing team helped promote each other
through sharing information of the show, the cast, and the crew involved. The online team
helped promote the video team by uploading short clips onto the Twitter and Instagrampage
of the rehearsal stages and a link to the Promo video that was the main goal of the video
team. I feel that all the departments aided the print team in selling as many programmes as
we did through their advertisement of the general progress of the show. The radio team's
radio broadcasts helped give a further look into what we as a BTEC team were doing to get
the show together and short interviews with cast members that made the programme the
final look into the world of the show. The online team encourage ticket sales by advertising
the dates of the shows and alink to buying tickets which I feel made it so more people wanted
to come and see the show and therefore buy a programme. The online team posted small
messages from the cast and the crew which may have pushed audience members to want to
buy a programme to match the faces to the people they had been learning about in the lead
up to the show. In addition to this, I think that the video team increased programme sales
through the Promo video that was aired on YouTube, and at an RSAF (Ringwood School Arts
Foundation) event that not only urged people to come and see the show, but to be able to
look in more depth at the show. The Promo video's purpose was to entice audiences by only
giving a brief and mysterious sneak preview into the show to make audiences want to come
and find out more.
