Viruses through Movie Streaming

As discussed in previous blogs, the amounts of people who participate in online streaming of movies have increased abundantly in the past decade. Many people download movies online, which is known to be illegal, but do it to decrease costs from going to the theatres and buying DVD’s. However, many people have to be aware of the problems associated with streaming movies online. A known issue that people come across is receiving viruses when downloading videos. This is because many hackers take advantage of the fact that they can access other people’s laptops so easily. This way they can take personal information that people would keep on their laptops including banking information, addresses, etc. This makes it easy to impersonate and rob people, which is a growing concern. This is very dangerous because people don’t only lose their personal information, but they also lose their sense of security, and their computers stop working over time. It is important that if you begin streaming videos online, that you protect yourself through anti-virus programs, and by not opening every window that is open on your computer, but also using trust worthy sites.[1] By taking these measures, it can reduce the chances of receiving a virus when online streaming. Ultimately, this shows the interconnectedness of online streaming and receiving viruses, but also shows how vulnerable these people are to hackers.

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[1] White, M. (2009). How to check for viruses on streaming videos. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/how_7471010_check-viruses-streaming-videos.html

A post from Rebecca

Movie Experiences

Very rarely do we come across new movies that have original storylines. I have found that when watching certain movies – such as romantic comedies – the ending becomes very predictable. Even some movies that have come out within the past five years have such similar plot lines and scenarios with just a different cast. A few examples of this are the movies; ‘No Strings Attached’ and ‘Friends with Benefits’, ‘The Notebook’ and ‘The Lucky One’, ‘Mirror Mirror’ and ‘Snow White and the Huntsmen’, etc. This has become evident not only in movies, but also in TV shows as well. The movie development began realizing this and wanted to make a change to the way movies are watched to keep their clients interested. Through this, 3D movies were created and became popular in the 2000’s. 3D movies make the movie experience more realistic and feel as though the actors are ‘within reach’. Many productions have also created movies in relation to paranormal experiences. This was seen through movies such as Avatar, where they received great feedback for their out of world experience.[1] Nonetheless, as movies continue to be produced, there are many aspects that should be considered such as creating new plot lines, and inventing new production strategy’s to attract many lost clients.

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[1] Piazza, J. (2010, January 11). Audiences experience ‘avatar’ blues. Retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-11/entertainment/avatar.movie.blues_1_pandora-depressed-posts?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ

A post from Rebecca

The Three Levels of Social Media Involvement

As business’ evolve their marketing strategies to include the continuously growing social media network, they are faced with deciding their level of involvement in the new trend. As explained through an article by Debra Ellis, there are three levels of social media involvement:

1) Basic: Watching the different duologue exchange between participants and restricting your input to situations that only concern your business. This would include, chatting with fans at times and resolving issues and misinformation.

2) Participating: At this level, the individual involved in the business is starting conversation instead of only replying. The level involvement creates a community of people with the same interests and opens doors for relationships and dedicated participation.

3) Engaged: When business’ are at this stage of involvement with social media they have established an online community with many responsive members. The conversations within this community is actively flowing with or without your input and the fans are very opinionated and supportive of your business. At this level you have reached the level of achievement of your social media campaign and the benefits are clearly reflected from your efforts.
So where does the movie business fit into this? In order to run a successful social media campaign, a movie’s marketing team must make sure that the whole team involved in the production are at the “Engaged” level. This includes all actors of the movie, producers, director, everyone! In order to make sure the audience is aware of the movie, interaction by all is key in order for fans to feel the movie’s participators are equally interested in the individual as the individual is of the movie.

Link to article: http://www.wilsonellisconsulting.com/blog/03/the-three-levels-of-social-media-involvement-which-one-fits-your-company/

A Post from Katrina

Are theatres really losing money?

Even though many theatres are stating that profits are being lost due to piracy, it makes people wonder if they are telling the truth. During weekends, theatres are still packed with families, and when the “must see” movie comes out, it’s still tough to find seats. With that being said, some theatres are beginning to market their company by creating commercials, street/magazine advertisements, etc. A good example is Cineplex Odeon, where they came up with advertising decisions to attract their lost customers by making them think about their “movie moments”. This is a strong brand message because you do receive different experiences when you watch a movie in theatres compared to at home. When watching this video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiOobgoxjPg – its noticeable that the marketers for Cineplex did not try to target a specific demographic, instead they targeted everyone through a favorite genre whether its horror, rom-com, action, family, etc. This is smart advertising because its difficult to focus on one demographic and ignore the rest of the population. Nonetheless, by looking at the box office ticket sales in the US, its noticed that productions are still making a large profit, and it may have not have been as much as they did five years ago, however, they are still doing well. This concludes with a question of – do we trust the information theatres are portraying to society about their hardships with piracy.

IMDb. (2012, October 28). All-time box office: Usa. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross

A post from Rebecca

Copyright Issues

When taking a poll of the amount of students in our previous class who watch movies online, 100% of the class raised their hands. Understanding that some of these people watch online movies through sites such as Netflix and iTunes where you pay a fee, some people also watch movies on other various online sources where you don’t pay any fees. Due to the large quantity of people who participate in this type of online service, many people may wonder about the copyright issues. Is it illegal to watch movies online for free, as it is to download music for free? The answer is no, depending on the source. The government has stopped trying to prevent online users from watching free movies, and they directed their attention to the providers of the movie. If the provider followed the law and has the copyright to a movie, then it is not illegal for someone to watch them for free online. However, it becomes very time consuming to locate the copyrights that a website has to show certain movies. Also, seeing as many sites are not legitimate, some of them may even contain viruses. Therefore, watching online movies can be very tricky, but if people are careful with the sources used (that they are legal), then it can be very beneficial.

Claerr, J. (2009, June 5). Best websites to legally watch movies online for free. Retrieved from http://voices.yahoo.com/best-websites-legally-watch-movies-online-free-3400564.html?cat=15

A post from Rebecca

Avoiding Promotional Adds

A study has been shown that 219,000,000 television sets are found in family homes in the US.[1] A popular use of televisions is to watch movies on stations such as the W network, ShowCase, Much, etc. As enjoyable as it is to watch movies on television for free within the comfort of your own home, it becomes problematic because stations use this as an advantage to show commercials. For many people, commercials are a time where they will go to the bathroom, get something to eat, or work on something. Studies have shown that in one year, an average child sees 20,000 commercials when watching TV.[2] As commercials are shown and seen by our population so frequently, it has become a nuisance to have to sit through. Many people take action to avoid watching commercials when watching movies or TV shows. This includes watching them online, or PVR’ing them in order to fast-forward and get back to the movie. Nonetheless, watching movies online is another benefit to everyone because it allows us to skip commercials that have no meaning to the certain consumer.

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[1] CIA World Factbook. (2003, December). Televisions (most recent) by country. Retrieved from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel-media-televisions

[2] Herr, N. (2007). Television & health. Retrieved from http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html

A post from Rebecca

Marketing The Hunger Games

I found a very interesting article that followed Lionsgate entertainment studio’s social media marketing strategies of the promotion of The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ best selling young-adult novel turned into a film. Lionsgate, a leading global entertainment company associated with the movie, made social media its marketing campaigns’ main focus. In their favor, they had the novel’s already large fan base and used this to their advantage when making the social media campaign a success. Since Lionsgate used a number of different promotional aspects of social media that includes Facebook, Google Plus, YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter and Pintrest, I decided to just post the article and let you read for yourselves. I was very impressed with how many different creative ways were used to reach out to fans and the amount of support that was received through active participation. One of the things that caught my eye that was said by the author of the article was that “thanks to this social media campaign, the world hasn’t just been watching, it’s been actively participating” and I feel as if this should be the main objective for all promotional companies looking to gain interest in their film.

So did all of the marketing pay off? Well, Lionsgate spent around $45 million dollars to advertise the movie (Fritz, 2012) and made a record at the box office by being the third-best debut of all time as well as doing the best for any film that opening outside of the summer months. The Hunger Games raked-in an incredible $155 million dollars at the domestic box office beating past movies such as Spider-Man 3 and The Twilight Saga: New Moon and Breaking Dawn Part 1 (The Hollywood Reporter, 2012). Seems pretty successful to me! Take notes Hollywood.

Link to Article:  http://www.portent.com/blog/social-media/hunger-games-social-media-campaign.htm

References:

Fritz, B. (2012, March 16). Lionsgate spending $45 million to market ‘the hunger games’. Retrieved from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/03/lionsgate-spending-.html

The Hollywood Reporter. (2012, April 3). Box office shocker: ‘hunger games’ third-best opening weekend of all time. Retrieved from http://movies.yahoo.com/news/box-            office-shocker-hunger-games-third-best-opening-154614434.html

A Post from Katrina

A Response to Movies & Internet

In a previous post, Rebecca discussed the shift of moviegoers from the big screen to the convenience of laptops and televisions. What I would like to discuss, from a social perspective, is why I believe our customer base has shifted and how this is affected by the networked world we live in today.

It is important to note that there are a number of possible reasons why consumers are no longer going to movie theatres and buying DVD’s. I would like to highlight one in particular, based on my childhood experiences. My generation, in my opinion, just barely made the cutoff of growing up playing with chalk and skipping ropes. Today’s youth, on the other hand, have grown up with PS3’s, IPad’s, and so many more technologies. Because our world has become so accustomed to the presence of technology in our daily lives, our life is now carried out, socially, educationally, and even professionally via technologies such as laptops and cell phones. In my opinion, this shift, from a social perspective in particular, has resulted in social life being carried out through technologies at home, rather than in movie theatres. The strong presence of technologies in our daily lives today has resulted in sociological processes to be more home and computer based, rather than in physical settings, which has resulted in a decline in movie attendance.

Chloe

“The Golden Age” – Film Production in Time

We have all heard about a distant time in history called The “Golden Age”, in which Hollywood, CA, became “Hollywood”. It was a time when the ladies wore cocktail dresses, sipped on dirty martinis, and going to the theatre was a social affair for which to get dressed up. Between the 1920’s and 60’s, Hollywood style emerged, and film production was dominated by a few major studios (Cooper, 2011). However, over time, new technologies immersed, and people were attracted to the idea of a personal television and the convenience of entertainment in your own home. This discouraged film production in the 60’s, as theatre attendance dropped and producers were no longer generating profits at an accelerating rate (Cooper, 2011). This transition, from the emergence of film in the early 1900’s to the growth of the television in the 60’s presents, what seems like today, to be a “prehistoric” example of the current shifts we are seeing in technology in the film industry.

Today, when we talk about film and the way our society interacts with movies, we discuss the transition from VHS to DVD, from theatre to home theatre, and finally, from Blueray to well… MacBook. It is interesting to take a look at the way the film industry also experienced changes from the early years of production to the invention of the television, because not much has changed. They say history repeats itself, this is no exception to the rule. Cooper’s article discusses the shifts in the film industry due to technology in the 1960’s, and how this has changed the way we perceive film today.

Check out the link below for further reading : )

http://suite101.com/article/hollywood-film-production-how-has-it-changed-a332841

Chloe

Using the Internet as a Primary Marketing Strategy Tool

One of the biggest changes in today’s marketing strategies that are used to promote movies is…the internet (SHOCKER!). An interesting case where the internet was used as the primary marketing tool to the best to its ability was when the movie Paranormal Activity was being promoted. Paramount Pictures Corporation produced the movie for less than $15,000 and it ended up grossing more than $150 million dollars at the box office. How did it become so popular you ask? FACEBOOK. Paramount extensively used Facebook to promote the film by getting fans people to request a screening of the film in their area and had a goal of 1 million fan requests in order for the film to enter wide release. Their goal was met in a very short amount of time and the result was letting fans have a sense of ownership of the film. It also created a level of awareness as well as a connection that might not be felt through commercials or radio advertisements.

Warren, C. (29, November 2010). How social media is changing the way movies are promoted. Retrieved fromhttp://mashable.com/2010/11/29/social-media-movie-marketing/

A post from Katrina