There are two different types of research which producers use when creating a film, these two types are Qualitative and Quantitative, these two research types have two different meanings and give two different responses from the research. The way they use these different types of research when creating a product for many different reasons, the main reason they use these two different types of research is if they are asking a large group of people questions they will use Quantative research which is not as detailed and easier to get multiple people to answer but a lot of producers will use Qualitative research so they can find about specific information which will help them mould their film around the answers given.

Qualitative Research – Research that asks specific questions to find detailed answers.

Quantative Research – Research which is done through number’s (Pie Charts) to find basic information.

Also when producers are researching for an audience they categorize their audience using a demographic scale and a Pyschographics graph.The demographic scale is a scale which categorises people by what their income/how wealthy they are, so doctors and high end business owners will be at the top and Students/ Unemployed will be at the bottom, for example.

A- Doctors, CEO’s of big companies, Owners of big organisations.

B- Highest end of businesses, supervising managers in huge multinational companies.

C1- Supervisory in businesses, high up in businesses but not at the top.

C2- More skilled, highly advanced hard working jobs.

D- ‘Unskilled’ easier hard working jobs.

E- Students, unemployed, elderly retired.

The Psychographics graph goes of what people believe in and what they live by, this is how the graph looks, they use this by making certain films which will speak towards some people with these beliefs.

All these different research techniques are used to define the type of film between Mainstream, Alternative and Niche, all of these different types of films have a different audience. Mainstream films are aimed towards a huge audience worldwide and everybody knows about the film and most love the films. (Most mainstream films have multiple sequels, such as, Harry Potter, Star Wars) for example a film like the first Harry Potter film was aimed at a younger audience and an audience of people who read the books, but a lot of older adults loved the film and got hooked onto the series.

Alternative films are aimed towards a smaller audience and have a different story base to it and is a little ‘strange’ to some people. Suicide Squad was a huge alternative film which was aimed toward comic book readers.

Niche films are based on a certain genre and have a very small viewing base, such as films which are about a certain artist or a certain sport team.

The movie’s promotion worked to the target audience as it was aimed towards 16-22 males.

As you can see from this result the marketing campaign across posters and social media was extremely effective and that is how most people found out about the film.

When creating an advertisement poster for their film they use a principle called The Gutenburg Design Principle which is a principle which says when someone looks at a poster their eyes go from the top left of the poster to the bottom right, so when making a poster a producer will have this principle in mind and create the poster accordingly. For example the Bridget Jones’s Baby poster has ‘Bridget’ and ‘Renée Zellweger’ in the top left which is the main actor’s real name and her name in the movie then when your eyes go to the bottom left they pass by the main actress so we can see her then the rest of the poster shows the other two actors, and their names also the rest on the title is in the top right but it isn’t as in your face as the ‘Bridget’ part.

When analyzing the Blair Witch poster I realized a few things, such as, the main colours used in the poster are red and black which are mainly associated with blood and death as the film is aimed towards the horror fans, also there are visual messages in the poster, the poster shows trees in the shape of the original logo for the Blair witch, also the way it is angled and used it makes us feel like we are lost in the middle of woods. The persuasive techniques used in the poster are mainly the colours used as they are a huge indicator of the horror theme.

The setting used in the trailer is a very dark and very scary forest which again tells us the genre of the movie is a horror, the characters used in the trailer are teenagers which aim towards the target audience perfectly because it is aimed toward teenage males, the narrative in the trailer is very generic about teenagers getting lost in the woods late at night and someone scary happens to them and they get trapped in a abandoned building, the style used in the trailer is very weird as they don’t show any materialized form terrorizing the teens but they do show a lot of things happening to the teens and they also show a lot of jumpscares in the trailer for the genre conventions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?index=3&list=PLkal6O6mr0-4rKXEJupr9lntpfbPU2FzX&v=girSv9UH_V8

There are a wide range of marketing techniques available for use by media producers, most of the media producers nowadays only use certain types of techniques depending on the target audience, for example, if the target audience is a younger audience/teenagers they will put the trailer/posters all over social media, where as if the trailer is for a older generation they will put it on social media but not as much but it will be in more newspapers and on posters in cities.