Viral Marketing

There are many different ways of viral marketing. The aim of them is to get people talking.

Saw 5

Lionsgate decided to put effort into making a good viral campaign film Saw 5. On the official website people were able to enter a friends name and phone number, as well as their name. The friend would then get a phone call from Jigsaw saying:

"Hello, [Friends name]. Do you want to play a game? You think it's over, but the games has just begun. I'm here with your friend, [Your name]. My work will continue in a way that you never saw coming. You won't believe how it ends."

However, this was soon shut down by the police as people that were unaware of the Saw franchise, began ringing the police. Claiming that their friend had been kidnapped or was going to be killed.

The Last Exorcism

For the film, The Last Exorcism, Lionsgate once again did a viral campaign. At the time of the release 'Chatroulette', a website that allows you to talk to randomly allocated strangers, was a big hit. In order to take advantage of this sudden craze, Lionsgate developed a video which depicted a young woman starting to get undressed, her eyes then roll to the back of her head and screams are heard. After scaring a few people, the website address shows up.

The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project had a few different attempts at viral marketing. One was to have 'found footage'. Another was using 'Missing Persons' posters. This shows three of the characters from the film and claims that they went missing while they were filming a short documentary on a local legend, this being the Blair Witch.


For our film, we could use missing posters similarly to The Blair Witch Project. In this we could have a poster for each character that is murdered, these being Alex, Becky and Charlie. This would be posted on our blog an on some social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, with a link attached to the poster. This would allow us to get the word out about our film.

Improvements after 1st draft

Basic Storyline:

• Meet up with friends
• Watch a film
• Characters disappear
• End of film

Improvements

Points to consider:

There is no twist in the storyline. If we have a twist, what could it be? If there is no twist, how can we make the film end interesting?

Should all the characters die? If yes, how can we make the film end interesting without them all just dying? If no, why do they not all die? What happens?

We need to see that the characters have actually died instead of just implying it. Do they all die in the same way e.g by knife? How can we make the deaths more interesting?

What else can we put in the film? As it seems it all happens very fast, there isn't much of a build up.

Some of the shots are too dark which makes it hard to see what is happening in some shots and lowers the quality of the film, how could we improve the lighting however keeping it relatively dark to make it suitable for a horror film? Could the characters carry torches with them?

When Ashley comes out of the shop a man bumps into her and drops a necklace. She picks the necklace up and walks off. The man who walked into her is the person who kills them later on. The necklace she picks up has no significance in the rest of the film, also the ending to our film isn't great. An idea could be that the man drops the necklace and each time someone finds it, it is them who is the next victim. Because Ashley picks the necklace up it is her and her friends who get murdered. Instead of just ending the film after everyone gets murdered, by using this idea we could then show the murderer picking up the necklace and doing the same again to another set of victims. This would give the film more of an ending, the necklace would have more meaning to it as it symbolises the deaths and it would continue as a cycle instead of the characters dying and the film ending straight after the last one has died.

How to make video look like film

Films look subtly different to raw video footage and a lot more professional. There are various techniques used to make video footage have a 'film' look.

Frames per second 

Shooting 24 frames means that the camera captures 24 new images in one second this is slightly slower than how most HD video cameras shoot as they tend to shoot 30 frames per second, by using 24p the sequence appears less smooth which makes it look more like a film than a documentary.


Depth of focus
 Focus also has a big difference on the look of a shot. Digital video cameras will shoot with everything in the frame in focus which means that the object for example a phone is not the only thing in the frame that has got the audiences attention and so they may be distracted by other objects in the background, by using a shallow focus the phone would be the only object in focus therefore it forces the audience to identify this object. Also by using shallow focus it makes the object in focus appear more clear and gives the film a more professional, 'high definition' look. 

This shows a deep focus where the background is in focus but the tree in the foreground is not



 

Whereas with a shallow focus the tree is in focus but the background is not

Colour correction

Something that can be done in editing to make digital footage look more like film is colour correcting the shots.
Shots are often colour corrected depending on the mood of the scene and the genre of film to create a certain atmosphere. For example in the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland the colours are extremely bright and vivid to create a fantasy feel. Whereas in the TV series The Vampire Diaries a constant dark, yellow correction is used to highlight that it is a dark and sinister theme.
By slightly reducing the brightness and increasing the contrast the shot still look realistic however appears to be a more ideal colour than the real world, this is often used as it makes the audience want to be part of the film.
We plan to change the brightness and contrast in our film particularly towards the end as we want the shots to appear very dark and sinister compared to the earlier bright, vivid shots at the beginning of the film.

By colour correcting this shot it makes the setting appear more ideal to the audience

Framing

How a shot is framed affects how the character is portrayed in a scene.

The amount of head room given to a character determines whether the shot looks like a professional film. The character should have a very small amount of room between the top of their head and the top of the frame like this:

If the character is given too much room above their head this is known as dead space and draws the attention of the audience away from the character as well as making the shot look more like digital video than film.

Also as the character is positioned more towards the left of the frame rather than the centre  suggests that he is diverting his attention and energy towards something or someone else in the room. We plan to use a similar technique in certain shots in our film.

Viral Ad Research

Viral ads are a way of  advertising which uses the internet to get the adverts out due to people sharing them with their friends such as Facebook.

 One example of this is the Pepsi Max Unbelievable Bus Shelter ad:

This is one I have seen because people have shared it on Facebook. This is proof that viral advertising works as it can start anywhere in the world and people all over the world can see it due to viral advertising.

Another example is the Devil Baby Attack viral ad that was circulated for Devil's Due:

This was effective as it created a sense of what the film was about, intriguing audiences, without completely ruining the plot. The ad uses real reactions of  the public, but became viral when it was put on YouTube, and others saw how the public reacted. This sparked interest as it is quite intriguing to watch, and people shared it with their friends, who would share it on and so forth.

Viral adverts can be very effective if done correctly as some can look cheap, and won't be shared as they haven't reached their full potential.

Research into similar films

As our film is of a slasher nature so it is similar to The Tall man as in this film the murderer stalks and gets to know his victims, this is similar to our film as the killer in ours is an old school colleague of the girls, and thus knows them well.

One well known horror film that is similar to ours in style is Halloween as we have hinted in our film that Ben has previously been in an asylum, similar to Michael Myers, and has escaped to kill someone he was close to in his life prior to being admitted, Michael Myers escapes to kill his sister.








Our film is also similar in the murder weapon, (as seen in the poster
 and movie still ) a knife.












There are quite a few similarities between Halloween and our film, as both are stalker slashers and involve knives, and include shots of knives with light shining off them, as demonstrated in the movie still and poster above.

Cast & Crew

Cast:

Ashley Adams - Alex
Abbey Ellison - Becky
Vickie Nott - Charlie
Matthew Oldroyd - Ben


Crew:

Abbey Ellison
Jenna Bramley
Vickie Nott
Ashley Adams

Viral advert idea

For our viral advert we could put together some of the shots that we filmed on the hand-held camera to make a short video of 'found footage' and upload it to Youtube that was found on the camera after the three girls were killed.

The influence for this idea came from The Blair Witch project film as the whole of the film is based on footage that was supposed to have been found on one of the characters camera's.

Handheld shots in the film:

This could be an effective viral advert as it would really catch the public's attention as they would most likely believe that the footage is real at first which would cause them to look further into it and lead them to our film.