Our second assignment in the MDA1400 Production Theory and Practice 2 module requires students to direct and produce a campaign film in pairs. As I directed the film in the previous assignment, I shall be producing the film for this assignment. My partner (Jack Marlow) and I have created a fictional campaign entitled “#WeCanFixIt”, for which we shall create a film to influence people in joining the campaign. The #WeCanFixIt Campaign aims to eradicate world hunger by redirecting a small amount of government expenditure towards curing world hunger. It would achieve this by getting a large portion of the population to appeal to the government. This may seem like a difficult goal to accomplish, however it is more simple than you may imagine. Here are the facts:
The UN estimates that an annual cost of $30 billion would be enough to solve the world hunger crisis. This may seem like a lot, but if you compare this to the $1600 billion that the world uses on military expenditure each year, $30 billion isn’t a lot of money at all, and considering that 21,000 people a day die from hunger, this is not an unreasonable request. In fact, my partner and I have calculated that if all 28 NATO countries paid only $1.1 billion annually towards world hunger, it would comfortably cover the annual $30 billion figure it would cost to cure the hunger crisis. To put this figure of $1.1 billion into perspective, here are some interesting statistics:
- In 2012, the company ‘Apple Inc.’ made a net profit of $13.1 billion dollars every 3 months
- The world has recently ordered 157 Airbus A380 passenger planes, spending a total of $65 billion in just the last 3 months.
- The total cost of the 2012 London Olympics was $14.6 billion dollars
- The cost of developing one B-2 Spirit (AKA Stealth Bomber) plane is $2.1 billion. In 2004 the USA spent $44.7 billion dollars on these bombers.
The list could go on.
Target Audience:
The USA annually spends $650 billion on it’s military. This is more than the next 8 countries combined. This is one of the reasons that we shall be targeting the USA in our campaign film. Here is our target audience in detail:
#WeCanFixIt Campaign Video Target Audience:
Nationality: American
Age Range: 30 – 49
Political Leaning: Republican (Right Wing)
Annual Income: $50,000 – $75,000
National Location: South East (TN, SC, GA, AL, MS, AR, OK)
Education: College Educated
Further Information:
Our target audience:
- Donates to human service charities such as ‘Feeding America’
- Uses Twitter
- Are Up to date on current affairs
- Are interested in politics
- Watches/reads the news regularly
Below is a word document with details on our target audience research, with statistics outlining how we decided to target this demographic, and the sources we used:
MDA 1400 Campaign Video Target Audience
Aims:
The main aim of our campaign video is to get viewers to share the video on Twitter, using the hashtag ‘#WeCanFixIt’. We chose twitter because it fits with our target audience; the average age range of human service charity donators is similar to the average age range of Twitter users. Twitter is also used more in the United States than any other country. Furthermore the use of hashtags on Twitter has been proven to be a successful method of distribution when it comes to campaign films.
Another aim of the campaign video is to put government spending figures into perspective, make them common knowledge to the public, and make it a widely known fact that it would not cost a lot of money to cure world hunger. We want a large amount of people to recognise the annual cost to cure the hunger crisis: $30 billion.
Message:
The message of the video is pure and simple: Curing world hunger is easy. The film will make it clear that eradicating world hunger would not be a difficult task, and it is in fact, easily achievable. Our target audience are the most likely, and most capable people to be interested in saving the world from hunger, and this message will hit these people hard. It will make them want to change the world. It gives a practical and simple solution to a large problem that many people are interested in.
Distribution:
The #WeCanFixIt campaign is to be sponsored by ‘The H. J. Heinz Company’ (or Heinz), and links to the website (in which you can find the campaign film) would be printed on Heinz products, and shown at the end of a Heinz advertisement. We chose Heinz because they are already active in the cause for curing world hunger (they build tomato farmers’ skills and contribute to sustainable rural development in Egypt for The United States Agency for International Development). We can also use a Heinz product in our film as symbolism.
If the partnership with Heinz is successful, the film would hopefully be distributed virally through sharing, hashtags and word of mouth.
Once the film gains some popularity on the internet, it would then be shown during the ‘#WeCanFixIt Campaign Tour’ in the following states:
- South Carolina
- Georgia
- Alabama
- Mississippi
- Arkansas
- Oklahoma
- Tennessee
- Utah
- Idaho
The ‘#WeCanFixIt Campaign Tour’ plans to travel to these states to give talks, hold events such as rallies, and show people this film. The reason we chose these states is because these are the states that statistically donate the most towards human service charities (such as world hunger charities). This means that, on average, people in these states would be more interested in this cause than any other state. If the tour were to be successful, a tour throughout the whole of North America would be the next step.
Rudi Leandro 