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Primary research- this is when information is collected by yourself possibly using the information you have found and putting it into a survey or questionnaires. Primary research is found out by researching into various things like books, magazines and the internet.

Secondary research- is a widely used method that involves collecting different information from already gathered information that could be from others or from the original primary research.

Qualitative research- this is research done on target audiences and percentages on the chosen topic. This gives more of an understanding of what the audience is looking for, helping to research into what is needed.

Quantitative research- includes information collected by surveys and questionnaires, this is to show ways on improvement and comments from the audience which is found helpful from companies and businesses. Having an opinion from people can create statistics for

researching into unbiased results.

Examples of Mainstream films:

Examples of Alternative films:

Research techniques in film

Examples of Niche films:

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Audience profiling:

Gender Age Socio-economic status Psychographic Geodemographic Sexual orientation Regional identity

Primary optical area- you look more at the word Bridget as it stands out in the top left corner.

The colour of the font matches Bridget Jones as it did in the last film making it like a trademark.

The movie poster has the main character directly looking.

This gives you an idea of the narrative of the film as there is a love triangle and also from the facial expression from Bridget Jones, it’s going to be a surprise in the end.

They use this colour scheme to show it is a horror film, the red could mean danger and blood and then black is used to show the darkness of the film.

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When analysing a poster, you should consider the following:

What are the main colours used in the poster? What do they connote?

The main colours used in the movie poster are dark and dull and fit in the horror genre, the red indicates blood and possible danger whereas the grey is quite miserable.

What symbols are used in the poster?

The visible face in the blood symbolizes death and danger and then the girl is shown wearing white which could stand for innocence and not knowing what she is doing as she is a child.

The primary optical area focusses on the title of the film as it is in the centre of the movie poster.

The colour representation used in the movie poster is very dark and dull and this is commonly used in the horror genre which definitely suits the film itself.

The font is very horror like and bold, it also matches the way they have the blood running on the way by the title looks a little like its dripping.The movie poster is indirect as the girl is walking away but then you can see a face in the blood that is looking directly and quite intimating like.

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What are the main figures/objects/background of the poster?

The little girl is a main figure in the movie poster and in the background hidden is also the “villain” who is a main figure. There is also a tape recorder on the floor which is a prop in the film.

Are the messages in the poster primarily visual, verbal, or both?

Underneath the title there is a slogan that says “Once you see him, nothing can save you” this verbally gives you a hint of what’s to come in the film. By looking at the movie poster you can see that there is signs of death or injury shown by blood and also that something evil is going to happen involving the little girl.

Who do you think is the intended audience for the poster? Why?

Fans of the horror genre and also anyone over the age of 15 as it will be found as scary to people so they have an age restriction.

Given that the aim of a film poster is to get audiences to go and see the film - what persuasive techniques are used?

Which genre conventions are referred to?

This film is in the horror genre.

Is a star used as a USP?

N/A

Are there quotes? Whose quotes?

“Once you see him, nothing can save you”- movie poster quote.

What pleasures (gratifications) are promised by the poster?

The movie poster shows that there is going to be blood in the film, the possible main character is on the poster and also that she is an innocent little girl. The face shown in the blood, you know that he is going to appear and be a main part of the horror scenes.

How is attention gained (humour, shock, surprise familiar face of a star)?

The film is a horror which means it will typically include blood, fear when watching and jump scares.

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Trailer analysis on Blair Witch (2016)

Blair Witch is a 2016 horror film that is a sequel to The Blair Witch Project from 1999. The film is connected to the last one as the three people who previously went missing included a teenage girl who is found to be related to the main character in Blair Witch. The narrative of the film is that the now older brother of the missing girl Heather, wants to find some kind of clues to what may have happened to his sister. After discovering some found footage that he thinks could possibly be his sister he decides to go to the forest with a group of friends. The setting of the film shown in the trailer is mostly based in the forest in which they are looking for clues about his sister. During the trailer we see a house which is where the footage was from.

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From what we see in the trailer it has the typical horror genre narrative and with the low key lighting as they are filming the only source of light is their torches in hand in the natural darkness, the scary background music and sound effects make it more of a jump scare film and how the characters react to what is happening shows that the film is anticipated and what most horror films are like. When the first film was released it made a new genre which was called found footage, this is when it is as though the characters are filming it themselves and the footage from that was “found” in the first film. Throughout the film we see each character with their own cameras and equipment, this gives us the feeling that they’re out camping with their own cameras to document what they find. The camera angles are mostly tracking and direct but the trailer also includes some short panning and close up angles.

For the movie poster it includes a main symbol which has five points and a triangle in the centre, this symbol is supposed to resemble a person with arms and legs outstretched as though the person is on a cross which is possibly related to the Blair Witch. This is shown in both films and in the 2016 Blair Witch the wooden voodoo stick people are hung up around where they slept in the forest. From showing this, and also on the movie poster, the darkness and scenes with blood encourages the use of anchorage as the viewers who want to pay to watch the film are going to know that they are seeing horror genre.

The trailer then continues to go downhill and things keep happening to the group of people. It shows a glimpse of anger, confusion and fear from the characters and also a short glimpse of the running through the forest, gory scenes and a main character who is shown stuck in a small space which will make views feel for the character and be on the edge of their seats for what’s to happen next as the intense scene happens.

Exit poll research

For this task, we are analysing a film trailer and then reviewing the film that we saw in the cinema on a class trip. I went to watch Blair Witch and based my survey on this film. For this we created an exit poll with ten questions to find out what people thought of the film and a

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little about their background. After watching the film, I received responses from ten people on the ten questions that I asked.

Firstly, I asked for the age of the people who took my survey and the age range I received the most was 15 to 24 years old. I also received a response for ages 45 to 54. From this I can tell that the targeted audience was for young adults/teenagers but also had an older audience who maybe had watched the original The Blair Witch Project and this made them want to see the sequel to the original film.

The next question I asked was their gender so I had more of an idea who wanted to watch the horror film. I received more male than female responses by 70%. Which these results show that there were more teenage/young adult males watching the horror film. I then continued to ask a bit about the audience of this film and found out the people’s ethnicity and which social class they would describe they would fit in and from my results I

have found out that the people who saw the film fit more into middle and lower class. Half of my responses were either lower or middle classed, I asked this to understand the demographics and this was helpful to know as people who went to watch the film at the cinemas wanted to see the film that they paid to go and see it as it was released. I asked about their current occupation and I received a lot of responses that the viewers were mainly students and some had part-time jobs and some were currently unemployed.

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As the questions were aimed towards people who watched Blair Witch, I wanted to find out if horror was their favourite genre based on the film they watched. From my results the Comedy genre has the most votes followed by Horror and Action. This means that not only horror fans watched the film but people who liked the trailer and the way it looks went to see it. There were also three other people who voted for Animated films, Sc-fi and others that I maybe had not mentioned as I listed the most known and enjoyed genres.

From these results the film did not seem so successful towards the audience I had asked. The higher percentage of people rated the film two stars. And the highest someone voted was four stars by two people.

I asked how people found out about the film giving them examples like they saw the trailer on the TV, it was advertised on a social media site or people were talking

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about the film. The way people mainly found out was on social networking sites, this is probably the best way to advertise as there are so many sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that can have sponsored ads or pop ups and also on YouTube an advertisement will come up before you watch the video you clicked onto it for a there it could show you the trailer for the film. Word of mouth and TV advertisements were equal with responses which means people would have seen the trailer come on between programmes and people had been talking about it good and bad so this made it popular.

For one of my questions I wanted to know if people knew the film was a sequel to an original Blair Witch based film. Most people had heard of it or seen it but there was still a small percentage of votes that people didn’t know about it. It would not affect the film as at the beginning of Blair Witch the main character explains what they are wanting to do and that he has a relation to the main girl character from the original film.

For my last question I wanted to know what the overall thoughts people were thinking as they left the cinema. I wanted to know if they would recommend the film after watching it themselves.

From these responses everyone’s opinion of the

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film is all different, some people said they enjoyed the film and would, would not recommend the film. Some people’s views are that the film that they did not like the film and possibly wont recommend it to others.

Summary of the range of marketing techniques available to media producers

In this report I am going to talk about the range of marketing techniques used for the film Blair Witch. I talked about the types of research techniques used in films with examples of films that fit into different genres. I then looked at audience profiling which gave me an idea of what they look at to create an audience for the film. I then analysed a few different movie posters to understand where people first look which is called the primary optical area and also the way the colours can help decide which genre it fits into e.g. red can symbolise love and lush but can also symbolise blood and danger but with the added darker colours helps to make it a horror genre. I then wrote a trailer analysis for Blair Witch in which I went to watch, firstly I started to talk about the settings shown in the two and a half minute trailer. I then continued to talk about the iconography and style of the movie trailer. For the characters and the narrative story line it doesn’t show so much but gives you the basic idea that the film is a sequel and is about a brother wanted to go back to where his sister went missing and find any clues or anything to kind of ease his mind about what happened that day she went missing.

For marketing techniques for the film, they produced posters that were on sides of buses, billboards, posted on bus stops and at the cinema. The poster was pretty basic in the way it didn’t show much and kind of is as though you should have heard or see the first film. The colours used for the poster included red and black and used a voodoo type of creation as a main object on the poster showing us that is of the horror genre. The advertising for the film used the trailer before other films at the cinema, came up as a sponsor on social media and also as pop ups, the trailer appeared on YouTube when clicking on a video of your choice it would come up as a half a minute advertisement. To promote the film some TV channels and News programmes interviewed main characters and asked questions about the film which gave the film more publicity.

Overall I think that the original film made its own genre in film and the “found footage” idea is very clever and when first released people were not sure if it was based on a true story and that the three actors where missing. Watching Blair Witch, I liked the idea that the way they connected the sequel to the original was based on a relation to the main girl character from The Blair Witch Project. I thought the poster for the film was a good idea as it doesn’t give too much away about the connected film, but my overall opinion of the film is that I didn’t enjoy it as I am not a fan of the filming and camera techniques used like in the first film and I thought it was pretty similar to the original as the same things happen and I don’t enjoy those types of horror films with just a few jump scares near the end.

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