Do you believe that Media Institutions should be allowed gain information through any means possible in order to create news?

- Begin with some back-story on media institutions invading peoples privacy to obtain news stories and briefly outline the two sides to the argument, the people who are in favour of tactics such as phone hacking and those who are against such tactics.

- Introduce the idea that media institutions should be allowed to use any means neccesary to create news and back up the argument with real examples of media institutions using extreme methods to obtain the truth or news stories that are important to the public.

- Then argue against the idea by introducing examples of the media going too far to obtain news stories where they have commited acts that are morally wrong and use those examples as evidence.

- Talk about the benifits of phone hacking.

- Give some background on the media institutions who have used phone hacking.

- State your opinion on the topic.

Link To The RoosterTeeth Store

http://roosterteeth.com/store/cat.php?all=2

The RoosterTeeth Store is a prime xample of branding and merchandising to increase awareness of your products.

Link To The RoosterTeeth Podcast

http://roosterteeth.com/podcast/

This is where you can listen to the RoosterTeeth podcast which is an example of an institution using a popular  and current media form to promote themselves, there are also links to Twitter on the website.

Paranormal Activity 4 Official Website

http://www.paranormalmovie.com/

An example of a movie using Twitter and Facebook to promote itself, links to Twitter and Facebook can be found at the bottom of the home page on the official website.

Identify How Media Products From Your Case Study Make Links With Other Media Platforms. What Are The Reasons For These Links?

1. Building a following through Twitter and Facebook is practically essential in marketing nowadays. It makes sense as it costs literally nothing to start accounts on Facebook and Twitter where as creating a commercial for television or radio can cost a lot of money and may not gain a lot of popularity. Given how incredibly popular and widely used social networking sites are throughout the world, creating an account on one of these sites is a smart marketing tactic as you can quickly and easily gather a large online following when trying to market music, films etc, also given the mobile nature of social networking sites where people will often tweet or post on Facebook from their phones and other mobile devices, this allows your fan base to stay in greater contact with you ensuring brand loyalty and being more convenient for the fans so they will be more inclined to follow a band on Twitter or 'Like' a movie on Facebook. Most movies and music artists have Facebook and Twitter accounts and use them to keep fans informed and communicate with them. Movies such as 'The Final Destination' and 'Paranormal Activity 4' have advertised their Facebook and Twitter accounts on their televised commercials so clearly social networking is an essential factor in hyping up a new product. In conclusion, marketing on social networking sites is beneficial for the institution because it is cheap, effective and relatively stress free and it is beneficial for the audience because of its convenience.

2. Fan made Twitter pages do the marketing for the corporations, they build a cult of personality around a character and increase their notoriety. Sometimes these fan made Twitter accounts are actually parodies of characters, an example being the Roy Cropper Twitter feed where the creator took Roy Cropper, the 'Coronation Street' character known for his innocent and bumbling personality, impersonated him uses the account to tweet vulgar and often offensive statements and jokes as a parody of the genuine Roy Cropper character, the account currently has over 650,000 followers. While this is an unconventional from of fan promotion it is undeniable that the account is very popular and likely gets people discussing both the regular Roy Cropper from the show and the parody Roy Cropper on Twitter, the account may have even encouraged people who don't normally watch 'Coronation Street' to watch the show just to compare the differing natures and personalities of the two different characters.

3.  Official websites can be effective in building brand loyalty particularly if the you can create your own account and become a registered user of the website. Popular internet entertainment production team RoosterTeeth have done exactly this. On the RoosterTeeth website you can sign up for an account on the website which allows you to post comments and communicate with other users, privileges that you can only acquire if you have an account on the website. This adds another level of interactivity to the fan experience as you are all part of a community sharing thoughts and opinions, everyone likes to discuss their passions and interests with like minded people which is the main appeal of this function of the website. Another large component of official websites is online stores, another area that the RoosterTeeth has covered. RoosterTeeth's online store sells all kinds of official merchandise including, t-shirts, posters, comic books, DVD's and much more. Not only does an online store make a modest profit but it is also cheap advertising, having people walk around in your branded merchandise is going to attract more visitors to your website who saw the website advertised on a t-shirt or a hat etc. More people will visit the site, become members, buy merchandise and the cycle continues creating more fans and more revenue.

4. A very popular genre of videos found on YouTube are cover songs, fan made videos where musicians will take the original master track of a song and then cover what one particular instrument is playing in the song. This is actually very effective in introducing people to new music as evidenced by many of the comments on these videos, frequently comments can be seen on these videos where people express delight at having seen the video because without they would never have heard the song or artist. Some of these cover song YouTube channels have grown incredibly popular such as bassist David Caraccio whose YouTube Channel 'DavidSinRocks'  has over 22 million video views. Like official merchandise, cover song videos are cost effective marketing where music can find a larger audience and gain the band and the record company more revenue without the band or the record company even having to do the promotion themselves. 
5. Fan made websites are another producer of the cult of personality, they are cost effective marketing tools that allow a product to gain a larger audience. Almost every videogame and movie has a fan made wikipedia website, not affiliated with the actual Wikipedia website but a mimic of the originial website that focuses exclusively on one product or series, for example, finaldestination.wikia.com is a website dedicated exclusively to the Final Destination movie series where people users of the website go into extreme detail to discuss the Final Destination movies, you can find out a lot of information on the movies such as where they were filmed, what the filming process was like and the actors and the production team, these fan made wikipedia mimic sites allow for much more focus on one singular product or series and are designed for both die-hard fans as well as new-comers who want to find out more about the product, because these websites allow for much greater detail than regular Wikipedia pages they are actually more useful than Wikipedia that can only tell people relatively basic information. If someone wants to get informed on a specific movie or band a fan made wikipedia mimic website is a great place to go for in-depth information.

6. Film reviews are a source of publicity that can generate a lot of potential movie-goers, movie reviewing websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and iMDB as well as proffessional movie critics such as Roger Ebert are respected institutions who people trust to accuratly rate a movie. If a popular critic gives a movie a good review then the critics loyal fans will be more inclined to see the movie because they trust the opinion of the critic.

7. Character profiles are an integral part of fan websites. Again reffering to the Final Destination Wiki, the website has a full page of main and supporting characters from all of the movies. The characters in Final Destination movies are one of the big factors that fans enjoy the series, the characters are usually very stereotypical 'bad guys' and 'good guys' often the most level headed and innocent characters and the stuck up, self important characters are the first characters to die and fans enjoy discussing their death scenes and wether or not certain charcters should have died and what they like and dislike about different characters. Character profiles are practically designed for these die-hard fans who love to 'geek-out' about their favourite franchises similar to videogame or comic book fans, character profiles are another constructor of cult of personality that build a legend and mystique around characters and create more loyal fans who obsess over their favourite characters and continue to visit the fan website and follow the movie series, and of course the makers and distributors of the Fianl Destination movies, having a few copyright laws violaed is a small price to pay for having a loyal fanbase created for you without you even having to invest any time or money into the project, if anything it guarantess the creators more revenue as fans are becoming even more enamoured with the series due to the fan website.

8. Podcasts have become incredibly popular in recent years and are effective in promoting a larger product or insitution, examples of this would be the RoosterTeeth podcast and TheGameStation podcast. These podcasts feature recognisable personalities such as the RoosterTeeth podcast which features RoosterTeeth alumni Gus Sorola and Burnie Burns as regular hosts and TheGameStation podcast features host John "TotalBiscuit" Bain who operates one of the most popular gaming channels on YouTube with over 800,000 subscibers, as well as "Let's Player" Jesse Cox and gaming news presenter Dodger Leigh who also operate popular YouTube channels with 370,000 subscibers and 250,000 subscibers respectively. The panels discuss not only videogame culture but also stories and anecdotes from the panel of guests and hosts. These podcasts are usually very laid back and feel like a group of fans simply discussing their lives, the easy going nature and friendly panels have made these podcasts incredibly popular, the RoosterTeeth podcast is a featured podcast on the iTunes Music Store and was biefly the number 1 most downloaded podcast on iTunes. These podcasts while being their own singular products are also important promotion tools for the companies that own them such as RoosterTeeth and TheGameStation as the podcasts bring in new fans who after listening to the podcasts will want to check out other aspects of these enterprises such as various YouTube channels who belong to TheGameStation or the videos that RoosterTeeth post on the internet which will of course bring in larger profits and bigger fan bases for these companies.

Dave Grohl on Music Piracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LY1WjKG5MM

Dave Grohl gives some reasons why file sharing and piracy is beneficial to the artists.

The comments make some pretty good arguments too.

Deftones Streaming Their New Record on NME.com

Link to the website where Deftones streamed their new record. and an article about the stream: http://www.nme.com/news/deftones/67073

Mirror Articles: Amanda Todd

A couple of news stories about the case of the Amanda Todd suicide: http://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/amanda%20todd

BBC SOPA Article

Link to BBC article on SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16596577

Steve Albini On File Sharing And Piracy

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/td90c/i_am_steve_albini_ask_me_anything/c4lm8cq

Steve Albini:

I reject the term "piracy." It's people listening to music and sharing it with other people, and it's good for musicians because it widens the audience for music. The record industry doesn't like trading music because they see it as lost sales, but that's nonsense. Sales have declined because physical discs are no longer the distribution medium for mass-appeal pop music, and expecting people to treat files as physical objects to be inventoried and bought individually is absurd.

The downtrend in sales has hurt the recording business, obviously, but not us specifically because we never relied on the mainstream record industry for our clientele. Bands are always going to want to record themselves, and there will always be a market among serious music fans for well-made record albums. I'll point to the success of the Chicago label Numero Group as an example.

There won't ever be a mass-market record industry again, and that's fine with me because that industry didn't operate for the benefit of the musicians or the audience, the only classes of people I care about.
Free distribution of music has created a huge growth in the audience for live music performance, where most bands spend most of their time and energy anyway. Ticket prices have risen to the point that even club-level touring bands can earn a middle-class income if they keep their shit together, and every band now has access to a world-wide audience at no cost of acquisition. That's fantastic.

Additionally, places poorly-served by the old-school record business (small or isolate towns, third-world and non-english-speaking countries) now have access to everything instead of a small sampling of music controlled by a hidebound local industry. When my band toured Eastern Europe a couple of years ago we had full houses despite having sold literally no records in most of those countries. Thank you internets.

To summarise:

- File sharing is a very effective and cheap way for bands to get their music heard. In fact it can be more effective than large record companies who demand ridiculous sums of money from the artists.

- Distribution of music has created a huge growth in the attendance of live performances which is where bands work the hardest and make most of their money anyway.

- The reason that the major record companies are experiencing an economic downfall that they will likely never recover from is because of their reluctance to utilise file sharing, they are so afraid of piracy that they pose strict rules and regulations on the sale of music online because they are terrified of losing profits.

- Asking people to treat music files like physical objects to be sold the same way that CD's and vinyl are sold is ridiculous and is simply not going to happen.

- It makes much more sense for an artist to manage their own careear rather than depend on record companies, distributors, promoters etc because those individuals are trying to squeeze as much use and money out of the artist as possible and cares more about making a profit than making music heard and treating their artists fairly. With advances in technology it is perfectly feasible and effective for a band to record and distribute their own music and make a good profit off of it, they can even sell their music for free, something that a major record label would never allow because it wouldn't make them any profits.

- No matter how popular file sharing becomes their will always be a large market of "music nerds" who will want to buy physical records for their collectability and simply because it feels more satisfying to own a record, it feels like your property that you own rather than a file that you downloaded which feels much more artificial and un-organic.

Do You Believe That There Should Be More Control Over Social Media?

• I believe that sharing sites such as Reddit should be better moderated. Sub-Reddits such as Creepshot and Jailbait are a clear invasion of peoples privacy and should be removed by the creators of the website, the creators and moderators of Reddit often claim that monitoring offensive Sub-Reddits is not thier business as Reddit is largly auser created site and moderating Sub-Reddits would be imposing unfair restrictions on the Reddit community. While I understand their argument and don't believe that they should censor their website for profanity or legal forms of pornography I also believe that the creators have a responsibility to remove illegal activity from the site such as Creepshots and child pornography.
• While I sympathise with cases such as Amanda Todd I also believe that people need to realise that cases such as Amanda Todd are isolated incidents, cyber bullying is a serious problem that needs to be addressed but it is extremely rare that people experience depression or even harm themselves due to cyber bullying. The media and tabloid newspapers will often jump at the chance to exploit a story such as Amanda Todd's to appeal to the paranoia of their audience and often an issue such as cyber bullying can be made to look much more damaging and wide spread than it really is.
• I support the idea of exposing trolls to the public, some argue that this method is no better than trolling itself but that is precisely why I think it is a good idea, if you expose the troll to the public and they recieve criticism for their actions they will know how it feels to be abused online and will fully comprehend how much pain online bullying can cause. Also, similar to the "Scared Staright" programs in American prisons, the online outing of trolls will be a warning to others that these are the consequences that you could face if you bully someone online.
• I believe that some people need to realise that online abuse and opinions that they do not agree with are just a feature of free speech that we have to get used to. For example when gay marriage was legalised in the state of New York the Fox News online forums were filled with offensive messages from homophobic users of the website threatening homosexuals,while I fully support gay rights and have absolutely no respect for the homophobic users of the Fox News forums I would not try to censor their beliefs, online or anywhere else as this would essestially be facism; I would be forcing my beliefs on other people, if I have the right to support gay marriage then other people should have just as much right to oppose it. Just because somebody disagrees with someone elses belief that does not mean that that persons beliefs are wrong. Free speech means just that; you are free to say what you want, and the great feature about free speech is that if you disagree with someones opinion you have the right to disagree with them.
• It is important to allow people to express their opinions but also monitor people for offensive statements. The case of Azhar Ahmed is a prime example, I believe that if Ahmed had worded his Facebook message more appropraitely then his case would not have been as controversial. If he had been fair and balanced in his message and stated his reasons and evidence for not supporting British soldiers in a civilised manner, that would have been perfectly acceptable as an opinion. Instead Ahmed merely stated "All soldiers should die and go to hell". The Facebook message that he actually posted was a sweepingly derogatory term where he offered no evidence to back up his argument and generalised all British soldiers, I believe that his actions were very foolish and he has discredited people who have legitimate reasons for not supporting British soldiers. Ahmed's case is a prime example of why society needs to find a comfortable middle groundwith censorship, a lack of censorship would mean that Ahmed would get to voice his opinions in a manner that is offensive as he did, too much censorship would mean that Ahmed would not have been able to voice his opinion at all.
• Reddit moderator Yishan Wong condemed Adrian Chen for outing an online troll saying, "We stand for free speech, we are not going to ban distasteful Sub-Reddits". I fully support free speech but I also support peoples right to privacy, saying that banning a sub-reddit would be a violation of free speech is just a defence for not eliminating popular sections of Reddit that provide the owners of Reddit with revenue. The owners and creators of Reddit seem to be the worst kind of Vulture Capitalists, they allow offensive sections of their website to remain open to the public purely because it generates their revenue, any human being with common decency would remove sections of their website that contain child pornography and unconsensual pornographic photographs. If we allow users of Reddit to post illegal and offensive material with the defence of "it's their right to free speech" the owners of Reddit will continue to make money off of illegal material being postedon their website, everybody has their right to free speech but when people take advantage of that right by using it to post illegal pornography on the internet with no consequences this is when some steps need to be taken to ensure that people are not posting and making profits off of other peoples suffering.

New and digital media offers media institutions different ways of reaching audiences.

Consider how and why media institutions are using these techniques. (48 marks)

• Media can use the internet to you interact with their audience, to promote or improve their film or to get feedback. 
• Can reach a younger audience as there are lots of teenagers on the internet. 
• You can target teens by advertising on facebook, Twitter, youtube.  (EXAMPLE)
• Allows more people to access what institutions want us to see.
• Different platforms can be used to promote a film for example APPS (EXAMPLE) 
• Faster to communicate with audiences.
• Mass promotion between institutions - teaming up to promote something.
• Niche and specific audience. 
• Customers can be made to feel special, like a priority.
• Audience can access the media at any time because of the availability of the internet. 
• E4+1 anmd dejavu - audiences are more up to date.
• Audience have freedom.
• 'The audience narrative has changed as they are able to enjoy a very specific diet of programmes or films that they are interested in.'
• Can access MEdia anytime anywhere and therefore people are able to see new promotions etc immedietly.
• Direct interaction with fanbase eg:  email subscriptions.
• online services  - version online.
• Love Film - promotions offered to entice customers in. 
• Once customers are signed up for something, their details are there for institutions. 
• Websites are becoming more advanced in their ways of interacting with consumers. (EXAMPLE)

Withe new and digital media it is a lot easier for an institution to directly interact with their own fanbase, for example, on the Rolling Stone website you can now listen to the new Deftones record in its entirety before it is even released, this is an effective way of marketing the record, the fans are allowed to sample the record before they even buy it so the fans feel priveledged and have a greater loyalty to the band. In fact, marketing music on the internet in general is a good business strategy, nowadays a bands entire discography is usually located on itunes and other file sharing websites and it is a lot easier to access music, especially obscure muaic with a niche audience, in previous years to listen to a bands full discography you would have no choice but to hunt down the individual records so consumers nowadays have a lot more convenience when trying to access product. The same thinking can be applied to the world of film, Netflix allows you to stream movies directly to your TV which is a lot more convenient than going to the movie theatre or waiting for the movie to be relased in stores on DVD or Blu-Ray. All of this added convenience means that people are more inclined to access media such as movies and music becuase it is easier, this of course means greater profit for the institution that produces the media so these marketing stratef=gies are benificial for the producer and the consumer.

What Opportunities and/or Disadvantages do New and Digital Media have for Audiences

In recent years new and digital media has brought many advantages and disadvantages to regular people. I am going to discuss the pros and cons of new and digital medias effect on modern society.

With new and digital media it is much easier for people to voice their opinions on a subject than in previous years, with online forums on most movie websites and the ability to rate movies and post your own reviews on websites such as iMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, you don't have to be a professional critic for a magazine or a TV show to voice your opinion on a new movie, band, TV show etc. This also allows for much more debate. However debates can easily turn into arguments and often a person will post their opinion online only to be shot down by another user who will employ all manner of brutal tactics such as threats and intimidation to make the other person feel inferior, as if their opinion is wrong or doesn't matter.

The advent of sites such as Wikipedia make it much easier to find out trivia and other facts. Nowadays if you want to find out about a movie and the people who worked on it you don't have to spend much more than a few minutes searching and reading on the internet before you know a variety of details on the movie, its actors, director, where it was filmed, other films that the actors and director have worked on etc. However often the information on these sites is submitted by the users, user maintained sites such as Wikipedia are not monitored regularly by administrators and will only take down articles if they are offensive. The information on these websites is often false and not regualrly checked so often people will repeat the knowledge found on these sites as common truths when in fact the knowledge was fabricated.

Advantages and Disadvantages of New and Digital Media

Advantages
1. Easier for the regular person to voice their opinion.  For example with trailers and comments on youtube.  SPECIFIC EXAMPLE FROM YOUR CASE STUDY.

- Can easily turn into arguments where peoples opinions are devalued and the people themselves can be left feeling as if they don't matter.

2. find out information more easily eg:  views, trivia, information about the films.  For example, wikapedia articles.  IMDB for miscellaneous information. 

- This information is not always accurate, especially on sites such as wikipedia where the users contribute their own knowledge which is not checked by the administrators of the site.

3. You can share your life with people.  For example on Twitter and with photos.  Social interaction and discussion.

- Identity theft and stalkers are a huge problem on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

4. Validation of your existence and self esteem booster.

- Not neccesarily healthy, some people may become so obsessed with this cheap self esteem booster that they spend more time on social networking sites than actually interacting with people in real life.

5. if you want to be famous it's easier.

- This devalues the concept of celebrity, if anyone can become famous that means that websites are filled with people trying to make their opinion heard.

1. You can share your interests and meet other people who have the same passions as you.  youtube posting comments back and forth.  Vital BMX - so people with a similar niche interest can easily find groups of likeminded people. 
2. For some people they may see it  as freedom to act in a way that they want and to be able to say what they want.   Gives people confidence because they can be anyone that they want.
3. Allows another platform to access Media - you can watch things on the internet more easily. 

Case Study - Silent Hill Revelation 3D

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

• Opened at number 5 in the box office.
• Grossed $8 million in its opening weekend.
• Filmed entirely in 3D.
• Plot overview: Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is a 2012 3D horror film directed and written by Michael J. Bassett and a sequel to the horror film Silent Hill. Revelation 3D stars Adelaide Clemens, Kit Harington, Deborah Kara Unger, Martin Donovan, Malcolm McDowell, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Sean Bean, and is based on the survival horror video game Silent Hill 3 by Konami. Revelation 3D's plot follows teenager Heather Mason (Clemens) who discovers on the eve of her eighteenth birthday that her presumed identity is false and as a result is drawn to an alternate dimension existing in the fictitious American town of Silent Hill.

E - Media

• The film has its own Facebook page where people can 'like' the film's page and share it with other Facebook users, increasing the films notoriety.
• Michael Bassett has his own blog where he interacted with fans of the Silent Hill videogame series and even asked for suggestions of who should be cast as the protagonist.
• Online revies gave the movie extremely poor ratings almost universally:

- Rotten Tomatoes - 5% approval rating "Featuring weak characters, an incomprehensible plot, and a decided shortage of scares, Silent Hill: Revelation 3D is a mediocre effort even by the standards of video game adaptations".
- Metacritic - 16/100 "Silent Hill: Revelation fundamentally misunderstands the appeal of its source material".

Broadcast

• Two clips of the film were screened at the 2012 San Diego Comic - Con, this makes sense since the movie is based on a videogame series, an event such as Comic - Con which hosts all kinds of 'nerd' culture including videogames would be a great place to market a movie adapted from a videogame.

Print

• Empire Magazine verdict on Silent Hill Revelation 3D

"The first film was imperfect but solid as game-adaps go and fans revelled in its clammy shocks. No such luck this time out. Director Bassett oversees a vaporous horror sequel that rarely raises the pulse".

Movie Poster


The poster depicts hands emerging from cells attempting to grab the protaginist, this creates a feeling of claustrophobia and vulnerability, aspects that the Silent Hill game series is known for. This piques the interest of both horror fans and videogame fans. The feelings of being trapped and isolated are particularly prevelant in modern horror movies such as Saw, Hostel and Final Destination as well as classic horror movies such as The Thing and Evil Dead, therefore these emotions are staples of horror movies and will entice people. These emotions are also a staple of the Silent Hill series and fans of the videogame series will recognise this as an attempt to re-create the feelings experienced when playing the game and transplating them into the movie. The character in the background of the poster is 'Pyramid Head' a recognisable character from the videogame series and fans will appreciate the addition of this charactrer in the movie.

Case Study - Paranormal Activity 4

Paranormal Activity 4

• Featured numerous incidents of product placement for products and companies such as Macbook, Xbox Kinect, Smart Phones and Canon.
• Grossed over $91 million.
• Notorious for accidentally being screened to minors at a cinema instead of Madagascar 3, this was a popular news story and likely gained the film some more notoriety. 

E - Media

• Multiple trailers for the film are on YouTube, all of them have over a million views.
• Poor online reviews but seems to be building a cult following with some saying that people who liked the previous films will enjoy the fourth.

-  Scott Weinberg gave a positive review, saying that there was "some fun" to be had in the film, however also felt that the film would likely only be enjoyed by fans of the previous films. Fred Topel also gave a positive review, saying that the film included iconography from some classic horror films

- While it does manage to wring a few more screams out of the franchise's surprisingly durable premise, Paranormal Activity 4 provides fans of the series with dismayingly diminishing returns.

- Metacritic - 40/100

- Rotten Tomatoes - 25% approval rating.

Broadcast

• Commercials for the film were regularly screened on TV after 9pm showing when the film could be seen in theatres.
• The editing for the trailer was fast paced and every shot was incredibly short and usually showed a large room with one person in the room, likely to make the viewer feel more vulnerable.
• Dark, drab colours create feelings of unease.
• The ghost that haunts people in the film is never fully shown, the ghost is usually just a dark silhouette of a human which piques the viewers interest as to what exactly the ghost is, where it came from and why it haunts these particular characters.
• Another trailer for the film actually featured footage of people watching the full movie in a theatre, we get to see people getting shocked and scared which ensures the viewer that the movie is genuinely scary.

Print

• Paranormal Activity 4 poster:

This poster makes its narrative very clear from the camera perspective of this shot. We can tell that this movie is a "hidden camera" movie, first popularised by 'The Blair Witch Project', this style has been copied by a number of horror films since then. "Hidden camera" films have become very popular in the last decade, the makers of the Paranormal Activity series know this and market the film in such a way that moviegoers know what to expect, fans of "hidden camera" movies will recognise the format and be interested in the film. Often people enjoy seeing the same film they've seen before but with different characters, setting etc and will prefer to watch a film because they know what to expect rather than to see an original film where they may be dissapointed.

Another example of smart marketing is the way that the ghost is depicted in the poster; an omionus, dark silhouette of a human being. In many ways this is much scarier than depicting a full human being with clear facial features, arms, legs etc because a darkened silhouette inspires curiosity, the poster leaves people wondering who the ghost is, why it haunts this house and these particular characters and what destruction will the ghost cause.

Case Study - The Final Destination

The Final Destination

• According to USA Today and Newsday, Final Destination 4 debuted at the top of the North American box office, beating Rob Zombie's Halloween II, by earning $28.3 million during its first weekend.
• First movie to be filmed in high definition and 3D.
• Box Office earnings - $186,167,139

Broadcast

• The film was marketed specifically towards young adults and teenagers, videogames such as Saint's Row 2 and Skate 2 featured in-game posters advertising the film.
• The HD and 3D capabilities of the film were greatly empasised in trailers, 3D is a huge part of film marketing nowadays, especially when it comes to big budget blockbusters such as The Final Destination. HD and 3D are mostly targeted at casual moviegoers, in the film world many movie aficionados denounce 3D and HD as marketing gimmicks however to the casual moviegoer who is less informed of this debate HD and 3D may well be effective ways of persuasion to watch a movie.
• The theatrical trailer on YouTube has over 1,300,000 views.

Print

• Review of The Final Destination from The Guardian "Time, once again, to set the nail-guns teetering on a high shelf, perhaps in a classroom full of six-year-olds. This, incredibly, is the fifth Final Destination movie, and we might not be finished yet. Never has the first word in a title been more inappropriate. Fans of this franchise know precisely what to expect, and the film delivers it with wit and flair. The Final Destination movies are like inspired Kentucky Fried Movie sketches, but also like deadpan satires of a particular sub-genre they invented in the first place. As ever, the idea is that a bunch of attractive young people, plus one or two hilarious oldies and uglies, somehow escape dying in a spectacular accident and then Death, furious at being cheated of his bounty, picks off the survivors, one by one, in a series of bizarre freak accidents. This being a 3D movie, there are loads of sharp objects flying directly out of the screen. A group of youthful interns are employed at a drab office, presided over by a managerial nerd, adjoining a factory shopfloor. (So to the list of American institutions indirectly influenced by Ricky Gervais we can now add the Final Destination movies.) They go off on a team-building "retreat" on a coach, but just as they drive over a suspension bridge, one of their number has a vision of everyone dying as the bridge collapses. He gets most of them off before it happens, and this collapse scene is quite spectacular. Things progress from there. This film will do nothing for those people intending to have laser surgery for short sight".
• The Final Destination poster

The Final Destination is another movie that knows its audience and markets the film very specifically. The image of the human face being shot at through glass is an accurate representation of the gruesome and graphic ways that people die in Final Destination movies, nobody ever dies of natural causes or an everyday occurence, instead peoples deaths are caused in ridiculous and impossible scenarios, like an incredibly violent variation of the game 'Mouse Trap'. The poster makes it clear that the this will be a typical Final Destination movie with over the top death scenes so fans of the movies will recognise the iconography and want to see the latest installment of a franchise that they enjoy.

E-Media

• Two trailers for the movie are on YouTube, one has 1,300,000 views, the other has nearly 3 million views.
• The film has a fan site: Final Destination Wiki - http://finaldestination.wikia.com/wiki/The_Final_Destination
• The website includes a plot summary, trivia and information on characters and the actors who played them.
• The website also has a large community aspect with links to blogs about the movie, people can also vote on Top Ten Lists such as 'Top 10 Best Death Scenes' and 'Top 10 Characters Who Shouldn't Have Died'.
• Online review sites rated the movie mostly poorly or average.  

-IMDB -5.0
- Rotten Tomatoes - 30% approval rating - "With little of the ingenuity of previous instalments The Final Destination is predictable, disposable horror fare".

Do You Believe That The Media Is Responsible For Continuing To Create Stereotypical Representations Of Class

I believe that the media does create stereotypical representations of class, I believe that one of the reasons they do this is to give people a common enemy, for example it is easy for an upper class person to dislike the characters in the TV show 'Shameless' because the characters play up to the cultural stereotypes of the working class and inner city citizens as uneducated criminals. An upper class person would likely not enjoy 'Shameless' because they would view the characters as unruly and stupid, on the other hand a working class person may look past these characteristics and identify with other aspects of the show such as living in poor/dangerous area and not having much money or material goods and may enjoy the show for being an accurate representation of their surroundings. The creators of 'Shameless' clearly know their target audience (in this case the working class) and appeal to what they know and what their experiences of life are.

Another reason for these stereotypical representations is escapism, a working class person can watch a show such as 'Made In Chelsea' and fantasise about their own lives being similar to the lives of the characters in the show who are rarely shown working and instead often shown socialising and partying. Often people require outlets such as TV shows, movies and videogames to escape the tedium of their own lives which they consider boring and unstimulated, a show such as 'Made In Chelsea' allows people to forget about their regular lives and experience a totally different lifestyle that they find more interesting.

Often class differences are exploited for comedic effect, an older example of this is the cult classic 'The Young Ones'. In this show we are given two characters who are polar opposites, Vyvyan and Rick. Rick is a self obsessed hypocritical member of the middle class, desperately looking for attention and trying to associate himself with left wing political ideology, a topic that he has a very poor grasp of. Vyvyan is a typical working class punk rocker who is constantly wearing denim and has dyed orange hair, much of his behaviour borders on psychopathic as he regularly physically abuses his own friends for minor indiscretions and enjoys annoying people for no apparent reason. Although the class differences in 'The Young Ones' are often greatly exaggerated they still represent a vast cultural, political and social chasm between the two characters. Rick is obsessed with his own image and desperately attempts to study communist politics to be viewed as a 'left-winger', for example in one scene we see Rick asleep and clutching a copy of Karl Marx's 'Das Capital' apparently having fallen asleep while attempting to read it. Rick's actions and personality play up to the stereotypes of an upper/middle class person, an attention seeking yet largely aloof person with little understanding of how society functions.

In conclusion I believe that the media is responsible for creating class stereotypes, the media creates these stereotypes for a number of reasons, escapism, identification, comedic effect and to repulse people with a lifestyle that they are not used to, the reason for this stereotyping is to appeal to certain target audiences and repulse people who are not a member of that target audience.