1. Demographic scale
A-Upper middle class-Doctors/Professionals
B-Middle class-managers/Intermediate
C1-Lower middle class-Supervisors
C2-Skilled working class-skilled manualworkers
D-Working class-Semiand unskilled manual workers
E-Thoseat the lowest-Pensioners/Students
Quantitative data – Is numericaldata that can be implemented into graphs and
charts.
Qualitative data – is data that is harder to interpret it usually includes facts or
people’s opinions.
MainstreamFilm
Star Wars is a very popular mainstream
film. Itwas recently broughtback after
many years for a new modern day film. The
oldest Star Wars film came out in 1977 and
the newestbeing 2016. This shows just
how successfulmainstreamfilms can be
due to it still being very popular to this day.
A Star Wars film always does well at the
box office and usually is given a large budget to work with.
Alternative
An alternative film is something that is different
fromthe common media of conventional topics
and forms. Its aimis to stand out of the norm
and providefor a different group and audience
frommainstream media entirely. An example of
this is Scott Pilgrim vs the world. This has a very
different take on a film wherethe story isn’tso
easy to follow and there are lots of different
random things throughout.
2. Niche
Rather than aiming towards a large audience like
mainstreamfilms, Niche aims towards a small
audience with a particular interest. They don’t
usually have a large budget as they usually don’t
earn a lot at the box office. However sometimes
a niche film does performreally well and earns a
lot of money. An example of this is Slumdog
millionaire wherethey earned a huge$377.9
million world-wide.
Audience Profiling
Gender – being male or female.
Age – how long someonehas been alive
Socio-economic data – such as GDP, life expectancy, literacy and levels of
employment.
3. Psychographics –the study of people according to their aspirations and
attitudes
Geodemographic – section of people in a geographical location.
Sexual orientation – someone’s sexual preferences to which they are attracted
Regional identity – this depending on whereyou live, such as the UK and it
being split up like the North East, North West, South and
Blair Witch exit poll : https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WDTXMKF
Exit poll analysis
When leaving the cinema, I gathered some email addresses of people who also
watched the film “Blair Witch”. I noticed that the majority of people who were
leaving were young adults, however this may have justbeen due to the time of
day and most adults would havebeen in work etc.
As you can see by this
pie chart, the large
majority of the
audience that were
watching the film were
male. This reflects how
the film was marketed
and isn’tdirectly aimed
towards a mainstream
female audience.
The way in which
people found out about
the film is also very
interesting. Italso
correlates with the age
range of the audience in
which I asked to
complete my survey.
The age rangeof those who answered the exit poll were17-24 and this is a
fairly young age bracketand it reflects on how they found out about the film.
Just over 60% of the audience said that they found out aboutthe film via
4. YouTube trailers. This is due to YouTube being commonly used amongstyoung
people and it would be very easy to advertise a film to people of a certain age
bracket.
As seen fromthe answers below, the advertising campaign is responsiblefor
57% of the audience’s desire to watch the film, this goes to show how effective
correctadvertising can be on certain audiences. Meaning that having the
trailer be shown on YouTube allowed the targeted audience to easily view the
trailer and want to watch the film.
5. Poster Analysis
In the strong follow area
we can see the actor’s
names that are starring in
the film, this is used to
draw attention to the
audience as they may like
the specific actors in the
film.
The first thing that you
notice when looking at
this poster is the name of
the film, it is at the top of
the poster and is in large
bold text. This is due to it
being in the primary
optical area
The colour scheme used is
pinks and purples, this
resembles the target
audience as these colours
socially resembling
females. It also enhances
the strong female lead.
The weak follow area has been
pretty much negated due to
there just being an image of the
cast for the bottom half of the
poster. This isn’t very common
as most film posters would
have detailed information at
the bottom rather than the top.
6. The Blair Witch poster is
very bold and bright, it
has contrast of red and
black and both of these
colours resemble
danger/death. There isn’t
anything notable in the
primary optical area
The poster is very symbolic and it
almost looks as though there is a
person/human looking figure being
discreetly shown. The thick black lines
somewhat resemble 4 limbs, a head
and a chest. This figure as well as being
surrounded by red could be
foreshadowing the death of a person
in the film
The weak following area has the name of the film in it.
This is very common with most film posters as usually the
main attraction is either the actors in it or the director
and not the name of the film, that is why there is usually
pictures of famous actors in the primary optical area.
However, in this poster it doesn’t have any actors or
famous names pasted all over it and this is due to it have
a famous symbol used which was from the first movie.
7. Trailer analysis
Genre Theory
Steve Neil – “genre constitutes elements in repetition and difference. “
Nick Lacey – 5 key areas
Setting
Character
Narrative
Iconography
Style
James Bond – Spectre
The setting of a classic James Bond film is all over the world, they are action
spy movies and due to this nature they take us to lots of exotic locations. They
show us a famous event called the day of the dead which takes place in
Mexico, then a cut to show us back in London. These fastcuts from country to
country shows us how quickly action spy films take place. The character of
bond is shown to be the same as always, he is handsome, fit and always in a
suit. This is the stereotypicalidea for a spy he also has access to lots of gadgets
which we see in the trailer and all of these are common conventions used in
spy films. The story is pretty simple there is a protagonistand an antagonist
and the whole narrativeis that good triumphs evil.
The iconography used in the trailer sticks to the spy/action genre. In this image
we can see the protagonists name “James Bond” wrotein red on the wall
memorial, symbolizing his death in the war he is currently battling. This is used
to create suspension and leave it open to the viewer’s interpretation and make
8. them believe that James is going to die. The style of the film is very similar to
all other James Bond films in regard to there being a bad guy, a love interest
and lots of spy action.
Blair Witch
The setting for Blair Witch is in a forestwhich seems to have a supernatural
spirit haunting them. There is also a building which seems to appear and must
have a link to the supernaturalsideof the film. Itis a heavy forestso the
canopy makes it consistently dark there to keep with the theme of a horror.
The characters in the trailer look keen and eager for adventure. They have a
hope of finding someone and they say so in the trailer, this gives them a good
character basis and allows the audience to understand them and their decision
making.
As this is a follow on fromone of the first found footage films, the story would
be fairly similar. When watching the trailer, the story for the film is basically
said out loud. One of the characters is talking about how someone found
footage of his sister and they want to go and find her, even though shehas
been missing for many years.
There are many symbols thatare used within the trailer and this is
due to it being a supernaturalhorror. Thesymbolthat they use for
Blair Witch which is shown atthe end of the trailer was in
medieval times for the suppositious.
As mentioned before, this film is a found-footagehorror. The originalBlair
Witch was one of the first to create a horror film like this so they wanted to
pay homage to it by doing it again. Itworks by having POV shots whereit looks
like the characters are filming etc.
9. Conclusion
media producers have lots of research methods at their
disposal. For example, AudienceProfiling can be used to
directly aim their trailer/advertising campaignat a certain
audiencesuch as students, elderly etc. They can also look at
gender and geodemographic to really pin point a targeted
audience.I believe this was used for BlairWitch’s advertising
campaign due to the results I found on survey monkey. The
results I found showed a significant audienceof ages from
17-24, it also showed that the greatest way in which people
found out about the film was through a YouTubetrailer. This
shows that using platforms such as YouTubewhich targets
younger audienceallowsyou to advertise media to that
audiencewith little effort. The promotion campaign in this
regard would have been very successful as they weren’t
targeting elderly who may otherwise wouldn’t have heard of
the film due to them not using YouTube.
