Focus Group.

To help us with audience research we set up a focus group. The video can be found on Georgia's blog as due to technical problems she could only upload it to one blog.
http://georgiangusmediastudiesa2.blogspot.com/2010/11/focus-group.html

There are four people in this focus group, three of which are in our target audience. There is also a 17 year old female who brings another perspective. This type of research did not go as well as we previously thought it would have, we thought we would of got a lot more information than what we did. Some people didn't even know what a thriller film is! Overall though, everyone agreed that a thriller film contains, a lot of tension and a surprising plot twist. The focus group did help us get an idea of what our target audience expects from a thriller film, but this was only a small sample size, so if we were to do it again we would do it with more people.

We filmed this on Georgia's Blackberry mobile phone.

Production Schedule

Task:	Deadline:
·         Treatment finished ·         Paper mock-ups finished ·         Initial ideas agreed upon	24th October
·         Digital mock-ups and trailer ideas finalised ·         Individual Secondary Research completed	31st October
·         Agree a production schedule ·         Storyboarding and final location/actors/props organized.	5th November

What is genre?

This is an extract from An Introduction to Film Studies by Jill Nelmes, to know what genre our movie fits into we researched genre and genre theory. This shows that there are a set of rules and that organizing our genre by conventions will make it ‘more coherent and contained’.

Collecting Audience Information,

On Friday the 1^st of October we as a group decided to collect information through a questionnaire. We realised that just asking our friends and family to do it could come out with biased answers and results, also it would not create a big enough sample size so we decided to post it on the internet, firstly we set up a yahoo account and used Yahoo ask to try and collect answers for our questionnaire. So far this has been unsuccessful as we have only has one answer in four days.

  






We also did the same for Facebook with exactly the same questions which came back which similar results of one response in four days.

Due to these so far unsuccessful attempts we decided to, last night (4th of October), post a questionnaire onto the website Survey Monkey which allows anyone to answer our questionnaire, also it means we can also send the link to anyone to collect a wider sample range.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PRV9GWV

Five-Step Market Analysis

The first three steps define your target audience or anticipated heavy users. In other words, where you should be spending your marketing dollars. They are:

1. Segmenting the market

2. Establishing who participates in the purchasing process or buying decision

 3. Determining the relative importance of the individuals involved in the purchasing process

The next two steps define your positioning statement. They are:

4. What features are sought

5. What features are delivered

This is a five step guide to determining your target audience and could be very useful (along with our other audience research) in finding out what kind of market our product is aiming for. I got this of the Stratford-Upon-Avon E-Books which allows you to view library books online as a student and is a quick and easy method of finding out information.

(Luther, William M.. Marketing Plan : How to Prepare and Implement It.

Saranac Lake, NY, USA: AMACOM Books, 2001. p 54.

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/stratford/Doc?id=10120161&ppg=72

Copyright © 2001. AMACOM Books. All rights reserved.)

Cloverfield.

In my previous post I talked about the viral marketing campaign for the movie Cloverfield, this is the first trailer that was released for the movie.



This is the first poster.

Both of these starting of a very successful marketing campaign.

Viral Marketing. Cloverfield.

Viral marketing is a form of marketing that relies on people to pass along a marketing message, it can be highly successful is there is a high pass along rate from person to person. But if there is a low pass along rate the message only reaches a small amount of people, henceforth ruining a viral marketing campaign.


The movie Cloverfield directed by Matt Reeves is a prime example of a well run viral marketing campaign. The first teaser trailer to be released for Cloverfield did not have a name attached to it, just a date 1-18-2008. The only thing known was that it was produceed by JJ Abrams (Lost) and was something to do with Paramount Pictures, as their logo appeared on the trailer, but Paramount denied that such a project existed, also a poster was relased which depicts a decpitated Statue of Liberty, again this had no name attached to it, only a date.


Then a site was found www.1-18-08.com, which at first only had one image on it, the image of two women staring shocked at something. The image had a timestamp of  "01/18/2008 12:36A." If left on this site for long enough you could hear the monsters roar. Also the site had a number on it, which when texted you would receive a ringtone of the monsters roar and a wallpaper of a destroyed Manhattan. Also there were a range of sites to follow and keep the audience interested, there was www.slusho.jp which is a drinks company that the movie mains character is leaving america to work for and also of which a character in the first trailer can be seen wearing a t-shirt of the companies logo. There was www.tagruato.jp which is a deep sea drilling company that is owned by the CEO of Slusho and had one of their drilling rigs destroyed by the monster, also there was a range of myspace pages for the characters where they posted information on what they are doing with there lives.


The makers of Cloverfield even held the party that features in the film in real life, the night before the movies release.


The producers  also kept the audience interested by constantly changing the name of the film,
-1-18-08(USA) (Fake Working Title)
-Cheese (USA) (Fake Working Title)
-Clover(USA) (Fake Working Title)
-Monstrous(USA) (Promotional Title)
-Slusho(USA) ( Fake Working Title)
-Untitled JJ Abrams Project(USA) (Working Title)


This is the full list of the websites associated with the Cloverfield movie.

• 1-18-08
• Slusho
• Tagruato Corp.
• T.I.D.O. Wave
• MySpace Pages: Rob, Hawk, Beth, Hud, Lily, Marlena,Jamie
• JamieAndTeddy.com (password: jllovesth)

Overall I would say that the viral marketing campaign for Cloverfield was very successful managing to keep audiences interested right up to the films release, this shows that even without naming your movie you can keep the audience interested.