Running head: INVESTING IN FLORIDAS LOCAL FILM

Investing in Floridas Local Film Angela Kuesha Visual Litary in Busines CGD218 Robert Bergman February 3, 2014

INVESTING IN FLORIDAS LOCAL FILM Investing in Floridas Local Film

Majority of the business initiatives are outcome of a joint venture between the investor and the undertaker. Investors are the people who have the money, i.e., capital, but do not have the experience or the model of the business. On the other hand, the undertaker or the executive is the person who conceives a number of business ideas and models but cannot implement them because he does not have the capital. Therefore, fund collection is the primary activity in any business startup. Although there are a lot of investors out there looking for opportunities to invest their money in a profit making endeavor, almost all of them are very cautious and even paranoid in investing the money without proper briefing from the person having the business plan. Such briefing includes market research, current state of the market, future of the market, estimated profit from the investment, expected social recognition from the involvement with the project and so on. This briefing exercise used to be done through a much unorganized way; people try to get lead from the investor contacting them personally, explaining things over phone or in person. However, with the advancement of the technology things got better. Now-a-days majority of the business planners approach the investor in a well-defined systematic way; through a nicely drafted email with comprehensive information booklet. Paradigm shift in communication technology has made the media and way of communication very competitive in a sense that unorganized approach is no more entertained in business proposals. In this fast paced world, the time is also a capital; therefore, it is very crucial for fund seeking individuals to present their briefing in a very concise and effective way. It is to be noted here, several computer aided presentation making softwares are offering this opportunity with different visual tools to play with.

INVESTING IN FLORIDAS LOCAL FILM 3 Use of visual tools is an integral part of todays business. Visuals help the audience to see facts right away without much explanation from the presenters side. Such visual tools may include properly type-faced text, photograph, poster, leaflet, animations and/or other video accompanied with impressive usage of colors. Visual literacy is a field that deals with these issues and enables the audience or the presenter to receive or convey any message, argument, principle effectively (Ryan, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to talk about a presentation made as a part of an online course titled Visual Literacy in Business. The goal of the presentation is to attract potential investors to invest in a movie related to boxing. The following is the gist of the message that the presentation is aimed at conveying: Even though investing in a film is a high-risk business investment, there are considerable gains from this venue. First, there is always the possibility that a big distributor will buy the movies (IMDB, 2004). Second, if the movie does not sell to a distributor and there is a financial loss due to Florida taxes, there is always an option to deduct that loss making the tax file adroitly. Third, in today's virtual world, other means of distribution are available including YouTube; this will reach millions of prospective clients. Microsoft PowerPoint has been chosen as the medium to deliver this aforementioned message; Microsoft PowerPoint is equipped with multifarious options to make the message engaging and attractive. This program is interactive as well as dynamically demonstrative. PowerPoint makes the idea of dynamically adjusting the visuals with the pace of the word into a reality. It is a tremendous resource for any person trying to sell any idea or product to a specific class of audience. This software has the option to incorporate other visual tools like pictures, charts, graphs, video or animations into it to make the outcome of the presentation favorable. All of these factors dictate the selection of PowerPoint as the principal delivery medium (Pettersson, 2009).

INVESTING IN FLORIDAS LOCAL FILM The movie that the presentation is talking about is entitled 12 Round. As the name suggests, the movie will mainly feature Boxing as a sport and how the sport changes a girl: the protagonist of the movie. To give the audience a flavor of some of the popular boxing movie, a short trailer has been compiled using clips from several movies. This one-minute video is the first visual used in the presentation. Motion picture is an excellent way of storytelling as often expressed as imagery of the reality (Parette, Hourcade, & Blum, 2011). The main purpose of selecting this short clip is to give the audience a kick-start in their thought process regarding

what to expect from the finished product. In a real setting, this could be an animation or cartoon portraying real story. Despite that, for the purpose of this course, that is considered out of the scope and a compilation of scenes from other movies have been done. Proper credits and reference have been given where due (Braddock, 2005; Burgess, 1976; Eastwood., 2004; Scorsese, 1980). The intended message is the emotional involvement of the investors informing that the boxing focused movies are not new and most of the previous movies were starred by popular actor/actress and did great business. The second media element used in the presentation is a number of charts. Constructing bar chart is an excellent way to demonstrate a large number of data visually (Slone, 2009). Nevertheless, in this case, the charts are taken from the annual report and the market research data of motion picture association of America (MPAA). In total, four charts are chosen to display. The first one shows the trend of total revenue earned from movie industry; internationally and in US market (MPAA, 2012). The intended message is to make the point that the global movie market is increasing; it applies to the US movie industry. The data expresses this trend quantitatively and it is expected that the investors will realize the sustainability and growing interest in the movie market. The second chart shows the demography of the people who watched movies in the theatre (MPAA, 2012). The intended message is to inform the investors

INVESTING IN FLORIDAS LOCAL FILM that the demography of my moviegoer and the intended audience of the concerned movie coincide. The data shows that the majority of the moviegoers are from 18-54 years age group.

The intended message of the third chart is to show how prolific the Floridas film market is in US movie business (MPAA, 2012). This chart will better inform the audience about the volume of Floridas market in a quantitative term. The intended message of the last chart is to show the importance of growing digital media in movie industry (ISUPPLI, 2012). This long list of digital media includes but not limited to different social media like YouTube, Google Plus, Facebook and others. The author strongly believes that the data and trend presented through this visual will help the investors better realize the realm of the digital advertising. The third type of media element used in the presentation is several photographs. Two images are used as planned filming location of the movie. One image shows the training center, tentatively where the main character of the movie will be trained. The other image shows the to be home of the character. One might think that the first photograph is not good photography because the rule of third was not followed. However, that non-compliance was intentional, as it was not supposed to be a portrait. On the home image, the focusing was used to make such composition so that everything else except the home becomes insignificant. The presentation also features a poster at the end that utilizes the Bauhaus design concept. The main take away message from Bauhaus concept is to make things simpler avoiding clutter and using three basic colors avoiding the extravaganza. The fade color scheme of the poster was intentional to make the text soon in cinemas stand out. The choice of simple colors like red and white further exemplify the proof of Bauhaus inspired design of the poster. The intended message of the poster is that the movie is not a farfetched dream; it is going to happen and the best time to be a part of it is now.

INVESTING IN FLORIDAS LOCAL FILM In addition to aforementioned media elements, several other visual tools like charts, bulleted text with specific typeface are used in the presentation to make it visually entertaining and engaging. The presentation includes a chart showing the return on investment in movie industry (MPAA, 2013) from the local market of Florida. The intended message is to show the prospective investor that previous economic data indicates their money would be safe and will

produce considerable profit in return even after tax deduction. Other slides consisting of bulleted text with some data in it strengthen the message of the whole presentation encouraging the investors to chip in. Visual merit is an important parameter that determines success of any presentation as well as any investor presentation. If properly used, in a visually aided presentation, the audience finds the presenters message more interesting. Study shows that, not only the content becomes well understood in a well-made presentation; additionally it also remains in the audiences mind longer than the poorly made one. Keeping all of the principles of visual literacy in mind, the presentation was aided with several visual tools like bar chart, table, photographs, and the video. Visual aids are made large enough so that the reader can see it at ease; fonts are used to be appropriate in type and size; limited number of fonts is used to keep the presentation simple. The presentation is kept short enough not to bore the investors and long enough to present the core idea. Newmans concept of advertising is used in selling the idea mentioning the social role of the investors and the profit making potential. Therefore, in light of the above discussion, this author believes that if this presentation is presented well, it has real potential to attract the investors to invest in the movie. However, the veracity of this claim is yet to be tested.

INVESTING IN FLORIDAS LOCAL FILM

References: Braddock, James. (2005). cinderella man. from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYKpdO_HEOQ Burgess, M. (1976). Rocky. Eastwood., Clint. (2004). Million Dollar Baby. from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH7gQqpw7ok ISUPPLI. (2012). US Audiences to Pay for More Online Movies in 2012 than for Physical Videos from http://www.isuppli.com/media-research/news/pages/us-audiences-to-paymore-for-online-movies-in-2012-than-for-physical-videos.aspx IMDB. (2004). Million Dollar Baby. from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405159/ MPAA. (2012). Theatrical Market Statistics. MPAA. (2013). Economic and Social Impacts of the Florida Film and Entertainment Industry Financial Incentive Program. Parette, Jr, Howard P, Hourcade, Jack, & Blum, Craig. (2011). Using Animation in Microsoft PowerPoint to Enhance Engagement and Learning in Young Learners With Developmental Delay. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 43(4), 58-67. Pettersson, Rune. (2009). Visual literacy and message design. TechTrends, 53(2), 38-40. Ryan, William. (2012). Visual literacy: learning to see. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Scorsese, Martin. (1980). Raging Bull. Slone, D. (2009). Visualizing qualitative information. The Qualitative Report, 14(3), 489-497.