1. PR1: Research Techniques
Typesof Research:
Quantitative Research: Research using a range of statistics and numbers, an example of this being is that
60% of people like mint Ice cream, and 40% like strawberry ice cream.
Qualitative Research: This is gaining information of an opinionated basis. An example of this is that 54%
of people thought the film was good, 20% of people thought it was great and 26% of people thought the
movie was bad.
Primary Research: This is when you find out your own information and research everything first hand,
such as being at the place where it happened.
Secondary Research: This is where you use other people’s finding or experiences in order for you to gain
information. Examples of this include reading a book or watching a documentary.
Types of Audience:
Mainstream:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Harry Potter Series
Alternative:
A Clockwork Orange Pans Labrynth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHFPi_3kc1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqYiSlkvRuw
Niche:
2. Pride Michael Jacksons This Is It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsFY0wHpR5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUniG6F_RzY
Audience Profiling:
Gender: Gender is defined as the state of being either a male or a female.
Age: Agecan be defined as how long a person has been alive for.
Ethnicity: The cultural aspects of a person.
Demographics: A particular sector of a population.
Social Status: a person's standing or importance in relation to other people within a society.
Geo-demographics: This is a description of people according to where they live, derived from the study of
spatial information.
Psychographics: This tells us what kind of person we are as well as the type of person we want to be,
examples being mainstreamers who follow the modern trends, explorers who want to go out and try new
things within the world and strugglers who struggle to survive and are often low on money.
Sexuality: Defined as the gender of a being. E.G. Male or Female.
Bridget Jones’ baby Poster:
In the Primary Optimal Area, we have the tagline of the movie, this is to
tell the audience a brief summary of what the following film is going to be
about. We also have the name of the main starin the movie. Renee
Zellweger is playing the role of Bridget Jones so it would make sense to put
her name in this area. We also have the name of the movie as this is what
you would want to see when you look at this poster.
Most of the colours of the typeface of the poster are the colours pink and
purple, these colours tend to show femininity and this also shows that the
movie is aimed towards the female audience.
The mode of address shows Renee Zellweger using a direct mode of
address as she is staring right at the camera. This seems to show that the
audience are going to be alongside Bridget throughout the movie. Colin
3. Firth and Patrick Dempsey arelooking at Bridget, so they have an informal mode of address. This could
show that they areboth in her love life throughout the movie.
Blair Witch Poster:
Within the Primary Optimal Area, there is no information to be
gained here. The entire poster is made up of this black tree with a
red background. These two colours are representing danger and
the idea of death as this is a sequel to the first movie. All of the
characters die within the first movie, so it is only right to show the
idea of death and danger through the colours used within the
poster. You can tell what genre the movie is just by looking at the
poster. You can see that this is a horror movie because it shows
the black tree and the red background.
The only bit of text used is the title and the tagline at the bottom
of the poster. The tagline says “There’s something evil hiding in the
woods” This obviously says that it’s a horror as something will be
watching and hiding. The font is black to add to the idea of danger
and death.
Anchorage Definition:
How the juxtaposition of images and text or sound help to define meaning for the audience.
A Clockwork Orange Poster:
In the Primary Optimal Area, there is the tagline of the movie. This says
“Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape,
ultra-violence and Beethoven” From this tagline we can tell that the film
revolves around this sadistic character who the audience do not know.
The use of colour within the poster has made the film look innocent on
the outside with all the danger in the centre of the poster. It provides a
bit of anchorage to the genre as the genre of the movie often shows lots
of death and darkness, and the use of white suggests innocence and
purity. Within the centre of the poster, you see the protagonist (Alex)
wielding a blood stained dagger in one hand. This tells the audience that
he is living up to the tagline used within the poster as he will use this
blood stained dagger to kill or hurt people. Underneath Alex, there is a
picture of a woman wearing hardly anything who appears to be on her
knees. This shows us that he could be living up to the tagline further by
taking this submissive woman and raping her. Alternatively, he could be
in a higher place of power as Alex is higher up in the poster than the women, the woman looks frightened
whereas Alex looks sadistic and evil, so this could be a sign of things to come.
4. Trailer Analysis:
Genre Theory:
Steve Neil – Genre constitutes elements of repetition and difference.
Nick Lacey – defines genre elements as constituting the 5 key areas below:
- Setting
- Character
- Narrative
- Iconography
- Style
Within the Spectre trailer, we saw plenty of locations used within the trailer. This is typical of a spy
thriller as normally the main protagonist is sent around the world in the quest to stop evil from rising.
Within the Spectre trailer, we saw all the stereotypical characters which one would be able to find in a
spy thriller. We have a protagonist (James Bond), a main villain (unknown), a female companion
(unknown) and a femme fatale (unknown).
The narrative is fairly obvious, there is a good guy in the form of James Bond, we also have a main villain
and the narrative is that James Bond has to stop this villain from spreading evil across the world.
There is various iconography within the trailer. Examples include weapons which areused in every spy
thriller. There are also the fast and flashy cars which are often used by the protagonist. There are also
very upper class people who wear exquisite items of clothing.
The style of this trailer is very typical of James Bond type films as it showcases all the typical things you
expect to see in a James Bond trailer. For example, you see various explosions throughout, you also get to
see the flashy cars and the new gadgetswhich Bond gets to use at his disposal. You also get to see Bond
flirting as well as kissing some kind of femme fatale character within this trailer. If you watch most James
Bond trailers, you will see all of these styles of shots used throughout the trailers.
Blair Witch Trailer (2016)
- Setting
- Character
- Narrative
- Iconography
- Style
The setting used within the trailer is mostly shot within a forest, more specifically in a little place called
Burkettsville which is in Maryland, USA. The fact that this film is set in a forest symbolises horror as most
films that are based in a forest are horrors. This is a typical convention of horror as forests are dark and
forbidden. This then anchors the audience as horror fans will love the claustrophobic feel of the forest
within a horror film. As well as the forest, there is very low key lighting throughout the whole trailer as
well as in the forest. The low key lighting means that the film is going to be dark and dangerous, the
lighting plus the forest means that it will be a horror. You also have an abandoned house, which has no
wallpaper and is clearly unfit to live in. You see a character running throughout the house and they are
obviously being chased by something as you hear them scream throughout. All of these elements come
together to signify that this movie is a horror movie.
5. The characters used within the film also make it clear that this movie is a horror film. You have the
brother of Heather, who died in the first movie. His mission is to search for Heather and to really find out
what happened on that day when they went tracking the Blair Witch. You have the “final girl” of the
movie. This is a character who acts in a certain way in order to portray as the girl who survives/survives
the longest. You also have the people who decide to “go after the noise”. These are stereotypically the
people who die first as they arebrave enough to go after the noise, but never seem to return from what
they set out to do. These characters aretypically male to show masculinity. They usually have a girlfriend
who is really out of their comfort zone and wants to go home, in other words they are not really useful to
the team and they weigh the teamdown with negativity.
Narrative within the trailer is clear. You can see that this movie has a linear narrative as there is a clear
beginning, middle and end. The beginning is shown when you see a boy sitting in his room talking about
his sister. This is a convention of a horror movie as the beginning is often civilized and calm. The middle of
the film is shown when they are in the forest and all sorts of weird things happen around them. This is
again a convention of horror as things normally get very scary very quickly as we have no idea what is
going on around them, and they seem miles away from their objective. The ending is also shown when
they reach the house where Heather died 20 years ago. This is againa convention of horror as the ending
usually shows the audience what was happening or they reach where they wanted to go in the beginning.
Exit Poll Report
In this report, I shall discuss how the marketing techniques are successful for the film BlairWitch (2016)
and also show the overall ratings of the movie.
The purpose of this research is to find out from a live audience who have seen the film, I wanted to know
how they heard of the film and what inspired them go watch this movie. In order to attract allof the
people who went to watch this film, they had to do some market research and try to use anchorage to
attract the audience to the trailer. Market research is when a company createsa certain product and
they have to research the people who the product is designed for. After they have found the target
audience, they then use anchorage (Anchorage is where a company uses colours, cinematography and
mise-en-scene to attract an audience) in order to anchor their audience.
This is a graph of the people who took part in
the survey. As you can see, the movie has hit
the intended target audience as 11/13 people
who surveyed were between the ages of 16-
24. Not only has the target audience was hit,
but this age range is the most popular to go to
the cinema. So the marketing was successful in
hitting the target audience.
The graph on the right is showing the gender of the
people who watched the movie. Within the marketing
campaign, there was no specific genretargeted, but the
male audience has just over 50% which watched the
movie. So you could argue that this is aimed at men as
more men watched the movie.
6. The table of results on the left shows what
genres of film people enjoy watching. The
people who were surveyed were allowed to
pick more than one answer. As you can see
in the table, the horror genre has 50% of the
votes and is joint highest with comedy. This
could be classed as a successful campaign as
the film has hit the correct audience as most
of them enjoy the horror genre.
The table on the right shows if people enjoyed
the film. Only 5 out of the 13 people surveyed
enjoyed the film. You could argue that it
wasn’t successful after all as many people did
not enjoy the film shown. But only 3 people did
not enjoy it all together, so the film was enjoyed by more people, but 5 people thought it was okay, so it
has been sort of successful, but not entirely succeed in the ratings.
This graph on the left shows how many people would
recommend the film to a family member or a friend. 46% of
people who watched the film would recommend this film,
with 30% not sure and the rest who would not. This therefore
is successful as most people will talk about this to a friend or
family member, therefore a positive view of the movie gets
around and more people will watch this on the DVD release.
Summary of the Blair Witch Marketing Campaign
I feel like the marketing campaign for his movie has been successful as the movie hit the correct target
audience as shown in the graph. This movie was aimed for 16-24-year-old audience and the evidence of
the graph showed this was true. The movie also had an appealing trailer as it set the scene and it ticked
all the horror convention boxes. So this made the audience want to watch it as it was a fantastic trailer
with elements of creepiness and suspicious characters. The poster used for the release of this movie also
had a positive effect on the audience. The obvious iconography of the Blair Witch symbol meant that
people who watched the original knew what to expect. It also attractedthem back as they recognised the
symbol and linked it to this film and then knew it was going to be a sequel. All of this was proved in my
exit poll as the responses were mostly positive from the audience who watched the movie and it ticked
all the boxes to a successful campaign.
