In what way do the institutions involved in your films try to connect with and empower their audience?

I think that to an extent the institutions connect and try to empower the audience. IN my case study I am looking at the three following films: Life As We Know It, The Back-Up PLan and I Give It A Year. All of which follow the Romantic Comedy genre and have three different platforms for the film; E-Media, Print and Broadcast in which the institutions promotes and interacts with their audience.

E-Media is the largest and most popular platform for my films, they have social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in which they connect with the audience. Life As We Know It has over 630,000 likes, The Back-Up Plan has over 290,000 and I Give It A Year has around 15,000 likes. The sites all show exclusive information, trailers, interviews/clips and images for surveillance and diversion under Uses & Gratifications theory. These allow the audience to comment and put their views across plus socially interact with other people who enjoy the film, with this style the audience feel their opinion affects how successful a film is meaning they feel empowered by this knowledge. For example on the I Give It A Year film page there was recently a competition to win the film and soundtrack and the audience had to give their funniest caption to an image of two of the actors from a film screen grab, this format gives the audience an opportunity to connect with the institution to the where they can win something from it, possibly attracting more people to the page and therefore the film. Life As We Know It offer similar things with the chance to caption images, competitions and also have a lot of information about the actors/actresses outside of that film, despite the film being 2+ years old now. The Back-Up Plan connected with their audience by giving them the opportunity to tell them similar stories to the film such as how they fell in love, married life ect. this connection with the institution will make the audience feel empowered.

Broadcast media is mainly used for trailers, my three films all had a 30 second teaser trailer a few months before the official trailer was released, the teaser trailer had a positive effect in which the audience who knew of this felt they had an exclusive insight into the film and then later when the official trailer was released a wider audience were attracted to the film. A successful trailer is completed when the audience are left with enigma codes such as wanting to know the relationship between the characters, what role they will play and how the film will conclude. Often this leads to the audience creating fan sites to talk about the trailer or even creating fan stories for how they believe the film may evolve. The institution connects with the audience by giving them this trailer and allowing the audience to get an idea of the characters and the story, this gives them the opportunity to personally identify with them and may influence them to watch the film.

The final platform which is Print is becoming less common due to the increasing popularity of E-Media and institutions being able to promote their films solely on this. Life As We Know It and I Give It A Year both had magazine articles with Empire & Totalfilm, both being respected and influential companies. For I Give It A Year, Totalfilm said that  it had a "winning blend of bittersweet relationship angst and bloke-friendly humour, suggesting this could be one of 2013's most promising date movies" this quote suggests that it was set up to be a typical romantic comedy however it appears it may not just be aiming at women but also men, meaning the institution is promoting to an even wider audience. 

In conclusion, the various platforms, technology and increasing popularity of E-Media, the audience are able to connect with the institutions much more easily and on a more personal level. This gives them the chance to feel empowered by what they are seeing and interacting with. My three films have connected with the audience mainly through E-Media such as social networking, I believe this has had a impact on how successful the film was as the audience can access all information through this including broadcast and print meaning they have full opportunity to be empowered and feel influenced to watch the film.