Revision of Film Industry (1)

Technological Convergence - Curzon Cinemas

Avatar, technology and marketing

Inbetweeners Success

Cineworld revenues lifted by The Inbetweeners Movie

Box office income up 1.4% year on year in 42 weeks to 20 October, while 3D films are rising in popularity

• •  reddit this

• Mark Sweney
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 October 2011 09.53 BST
• Article history

The Inbetweeners Movie: almost matched The King's Speech in terms of revenue at Cineworld

The runaway success of The Inbetweeners Movie has driven a rise in box office sales and total revenues at movie chain Cineworld.

Cineworld, the UK's second largest cinema chain behind Guy Hands's Odeon and UCI, also announced an increase in the number of people watching 3D versions of films over the course of 2011.

The company on Tuesday reported a 0.9% year-on-year increase in total revenues in an interim management statement covering the 42 weeks to 20 October.

Box office revenues were up 1.4% year on year, a solid performance given the "very strong" film releases in the same period last year.

Cineworld said that while The Inbetweeners Movie was not the biggest release of the year it was certainly the "most notable", almost matching The King's Speech, bringing in £44m nationally.

The biggest release of the year to date has been the 3D version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, which along with a number of other 3D releases – including Transformers: Dark of the Moon – has ensured that the fad for 3D films is yet to run out of steam.

Cineworld said that in terms of admission 3D films represented 18% of all revenue, up from 16% when the company reported results for the first half of its year.

However, Cineworld saw its share of the UK box office drop slightly from 26.4% to 26.1% year on year.

Cineworld said the final quarter of the year has a "very promising" film lineup compared with last year including the return of Rowan Atkinson as bumbling spy Johnny English, another addition to the Mission Impossible franchise and a second outing for Sherlock Holmes.

The company added that the strong slate of releases should "more than offset the ongoing weakness in the wider advertising market"

Short Lecture on Convergent Technologies

This is a very short lecture on technological convergence - it's only a few minutes long but it addresses the exam question about “the importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences” really well.

Technological Convergence

This extra normal animation goes a long way to explaining what exactly is technological convergence.

Message for Louisa's class

Hello Louisa's class
Sorry we have had to cancel your Media lesson today.
Please could you study the hardware and content prezi below and make notes on it.
Then please could you prepare a presentation on the research task in the post below that.  You will have to do your presentation during class next week.
thanks

Hardware and Content

Homework Research Task

Louisa's class - you have to prepare your presentation on the research task below ready for class on 16th November.

This is the research task to be completed for Mary's lesson on Monday 7th November - EVEN IF YOU WERE AWAY LAST LESSON!

Research Task Homework

Thinking about revision

Just a reminder about the 7 key areas of investigation listed in the specification.  We have ben working our way through them week by week.  You could be examined about any of them.  Here they are:

• “The ways in which the candidates’ own experience of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour”

• “The issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice”

• “The technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the level of production, distribution, marketing and exchange”

• “The issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically British) by international or global institutions”

• “The significance of hardware and content for institutions and audiences”

• “The importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing”

• “The importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences”

PA3 - a massive success!

It's just over a week since PA3 has been released - here are the latest stats from imdb.

So - the budget is higher still - $2million dollars more than PA2.
But look at those opening weekend takings in the US - $52 and a half million!
This is what MTV.com had to report about it:

"The stats for "Paranormal Activity 3" are staggering. The sequel's $54 million haul is not only the biggest fall opening ever, but the largest ever for a pure horror movie, according to Box Office Mojo. It averaged an impressive $16,266 per screen, a 29 percent rise over "PA3," reports Gitesh Pandya of Box Office Guru, bringing the franchise's worldwide gross to $450 million "while the combined production costs have amounted to a puny $8 million."


I can't wait to see what the UK stats reveal when they are published!

PA3 Facebook stats update

OK - so PA3 has been out for just over a week.  How are those facebook stats looking?

Yep - another half a million people have liked it.
But this is still quite slow - showing the inherited audience from the previous 2 films was so substantial that they liked the site months before the film was actually released.  There was a massive ready and waiting audience for this movie.

Links for Inbetweeners research

As Media_film_the Inbetweeners_resources for Research Sources Pack _ Updated

Prezi - British Film Industry

Paranormal Activity 3 and Big Brother Promotion

Big Brother have teamed up with PA3 to win tickets to the Premier, 2 days before the general release.  Link through here.

PA3 Facebook status update......

Just checking on those PA3 facebook stats as of today 9th Oct 2011.

You know, not many people have joined since last Tuesday if you look at the previous Facebook blog post below. Why do you think that is?

More on PA3 and twitter

Here's a clip from American 'Clevver Movies' about the twitter campaign.

PA3 and Facebook

More viral marketing.....
Just been on the PA3 Facebook site - and of today - 4th October 2011, it has over 8million likes. It would be great if you can follow how many more fans like the site over the coming weeks as the movie is released.

Pa3 and Twitter

I've just found an article about fans being encouraged to tweet about PA3 - apparently if you tweet that you want it to show in your nearest town, the top 20 towns tweeted about will get the movie screened 3 days earlier than the release of 21st October 2011.
Here's a link to wired magazine which tells you how the viral campaign is asking people to use twitter to vote for the premier to be in your town.

Here's the article copied from webpronews.com which, as you'll notice is an American site, so it has an US bias to it.

Paranormal Activity 3 Turns to Twitter to Increase Buzz

Movie marketing is no longer limited to trailers

Chris Richardson | September 29, 2011 @ 11:56am |

Viral marketing for movies has been apart of our consciousness dating back toThe Blair Witch Project. From there, we’ve seen successful ventures from The Dark Knight and Cloverfield, to name a few. Now, Paramount has turned to Twitter for their marketing push for Paranormal Activity 3, a prequel that attempts to shed some light on the history of the family being tormented by a malevolent spirit/demon from the first two installments.

The third part of the series is scheduled for an October 21st release, and to help spread the word and to stoke interest, Paramount — the studio backing the Paranormal Activity series — is turning to Twitter to promote the movie via their “Tweet To See It First” campaign. The concept is simple. Twitter users can pick the city closet to them, tweet about it, and the top 20 cities, which is calculated which ones have the most tweets, will be shown the movie three days before the movie opens for the rest of the world.

Over at the Paranormal Activity 3 website, users can select the city closet to them, which they then tweet about. These posts act as a vote, of which, the site keeps a real-time leader board that displays the cities that are currently winning.

The tweets in question look like the following:

@WebProNews
WebProNewsTweet to see it First! Bring Paranormal Activity 3 to your city early. #ParanormalActivity #Lexington Vote: http://t.co/PJhbyxuE 43 seconds ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto
And here's the latest trailer with the tagline "tweet to see it first

Over at the site, the top 5 cities in the contest include Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Dallas, and Istanbul. Because the contest is open on a worldwide basis, there are a number of foreign cities on the list, including the aforementioned Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Curitiba, Sheffield, Buenos Aries and Caracas. Clearly, the franchise has worldwide appeal, and, not to mention, savvy Twitter users outside of the United States.

If you’re interested in joining in the fun, you’ll need a few friends with Twitter accounts in the local area of choice. Simply navigate to the Paranormal Activity 3 site, pick your city — or the one closet to you — and get to tweeting. The contest ends on October 13th, at 11:59 PST. You can follow the official PA3 Twitter account, as well, @TweetYourScream.

PA3 - the viral release continues

This is an article from Swift Film website about the PA3 marketing release.  Here's the link to the original....link

"Paranormal Activity 3 marketing genius: sending VCRs and creepy tapes to people"

by Husain Sumra on SEPTEMBER 29, 2011 in NEWS

"I love some good viral movie marketing. It can be fun, exciting and genuinely interested in seeing a film. When it’s awesome, that helps.

Yahoo Movies received a package (pictured). It was a videotape with September 1988 written on it in marker. Of course, since it’s 2011 the sender also sent a VCR (how nice!). When they booted up the VCR they put in the tape and watched as static played… then a short clip played. You can watch the clip below. You can also imagine how terrifying it would be if you knew nothing of Paranormal Activity and received this out of the blue. [Yahoo Movies]"

And here's a link I found on imdb - to getthebigpictre.com where it tells more about the viral marketing campaign.
Here's some of it posted below.

Paramount is known for doing a viral marketing campaign for its Paranormal Activityfilms.  The term "viral" means that the advertising media spreads like an epidemic, causing a surge in ticket sales opening weeked.  It worked last year with Paranormal Activity 2 and the year before that with Paranormal Activity.  Now, Shock Till You Drop has released a promotional video sent to them by Paramount for the Henry Joost/ Ariel Schulman directed third film.  Get this -- they recieved the clip on a VHS accompanied with a VCR. Genius.

For the youngsters, a VCR was a device that we used to watch movies on, they were always tough to program and the quality was shitty, though it was great at the time.  I know, how did we ever survive.  Well the clip is about 50 seconds long and features nothing but two little girls sleeping in their bedroom, Katie and Kristi.  Or is it.  If you pay attention closely you can see things move, things shift out of place, and a hell of a lot of white noise and snow.  

Of course - the interesting thing about the VCR campaign above is that it links from the first 'Darren's Timeless Memories' viral which I posted in the blog below.  That began the old home video idea - now Paramount are sending film critics old video tapes and VCRs to play them...... very cunning if you ask me.

Paranormal Activity Film Festival Screening

Fantastic Fest have just screened Paranormal Activity 3 at a midnight screening, and this has already prompted a swathe of blogging on the internet. You can check out a review at Dread Central .com, and also at indieWIRE.com.  Think about how this is creating hype and word of mouth advertising for the movie outside of the official marketing strategy.
Fantastic Fest is a film Festival in America that specialises in Horror and Sci Fi type genre films. You can link through to it here.

Paranormal Activity 3 - the viral release

So - it's 2 months before the PA3 is released - and the viral marketing appears to have started.  The current internet buzz is about a leaflet which appears to have been handed out in America advertising 'Darren's Timeless Memories'.  Although it seemed to be advertising a company that copied VHS video tapes to DVD,  the website also contained teaser material for the film PA3.  At the time of writing the site has 'white noise' fuzz for about 10 seconds then closes down.
Here is a link to an article about the pamphlet.

Here is a fan in America talking about the pamphlet.

And finally here's another link to a review of the site 'Darren's secret memories', showing the photo of the reverse of the flier with the image of the young girls from the movie.

Paranormal Activity 3 - thoughts on the release

I was just looking at the release dates for Paranormal Activity 3 on the imdb Link and I noticed that the movie has pretty much a simultaneous release across the world (21st October), except for Japan, Germany and Finland where it is released just over a week later. You need to consider why movies are beginning to release across the globe at the same time, what technology is allowing this to happen, and why movie companies may see this type of release strategy as fighting the battle against piracy.

Ataque de Panico!

Panic Attack: this amazing short movie was made on a budget of $300!! Just shows what you can do with the latest digital technology! Director Fede Alvarez uploaded this to Youtube, and within 4 days had over 1 million hits.  It was spotted by director Sam Raimi who immediately invited him over to Hollywood and offered Fede $30,000,000 to make his first full length movie.



What the BBC said at the time:

"A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30m (£18.6m) contract to make a Hollywood film.

The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films.

Fede Alvarez's short film "Ataque de Panico!" (Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and was made on a budget of $300 (£186).

So far it has had more than 1.5 million views on YouTube.

"I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios," he told the BBC's Latin American service BBC Mundo.

"It was amazing, we were all shocked."

The movie Mr Alvarez has been asked to produce is a sci-fi film to be shot in Uruguay and Argentina. He says he intends to start from scratch and develop a new story for the project.

"If some director from some country can achieve this just uploading a video to YouTube, it obviously means that anyone could do it," he added."


Link to Fede's youtube channel:
Fede Alvareez's Youtube Channel

Everything Avatar: 22mins

This is a 22 minute 'behind the scenes' documentary about Avatar.
Performance Capture is discussed about 10mins into the clip.
Virtual Camera is at 12.54 mins into the clip.

The Making of Beowulf

Beowulf also used performance capture technologies during the production phase. Watch this clip to see how it was done.

Leona Lewis "I see you" video

Marketing and Distribution is key to the financial success of the film.  Consider why Avatar needed a big budget synergous music release to coincide with the release of the movie.

Jon Landau interview - Avatar

In this clip Jon Landau, producer of Avatar, is interviewed by 3 film students and he talks about the technology used during the production of Avatar.

Avatar camera technology

During the production of Avatar James Cameron developed 3 types of camera.  This meant that a completely new style of editing was adopted.  WAtch this clip to find out about the new technology developed during production.

Avatar and the future of cinema

When you watch this clip, consider how the makers of Avatar see the future of films in cinema.

Avatar and Performance Capture

In this clip James Cameron talks about how the Performance Capture technique used in the Porduction stage of making the film.