Thursday 21 March 2013

The Institutions Involved With Paranormal Activity 4

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures was the distributor for the movie. It is a major distributor for television and film and is one of the top grossing production studios in the world having made a profit of $2.1 billion in 2011. Paramount Pictures is also a unit of the media conglomerate Viacom which is the fourth largest media conglomerate in the world. Paranormal Activity 4 is somewhat of an anomoly in Paramount Pictures works since most of the studios movies have been blockbuster action movies and dramas such as Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart as well as family friendly movies such as Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda. It is very unusual for Paramount Pictures to distribute a horror movie, especially a movie like Paranormal Activity that has such an incredible simple premise. One can only assume that the distribution company was attracted to the movie due to the franchises reputation for grossing a lot at the box office and not for the content of the movie itself. The movie itself benefits from having the Paramount Pictures brand applied to it as Paramount has been distributing movies since 1912 and it's logo (a snowcapped mountain with the word 'Paramount' encircled by stars) is an instantly recognisable piece of iconography for many people as it has appeared in the credits to countless movies for over a century.

Henry Joost

Henry Joost is a little known name in Hollywood having directed just four movies. However he is making a name for himself as a capable director, his work on Paranormal Activity 3 and 4 has earned him a reputation as a man who knows how to make a good profit and his most recent film, Catfish, is now making him recognised as a good quality film maker as Catfish recieved positive reviews from most critics.

Product Placement

Paranormal Activity 4 featured an explicit amount of product placement. Entire scenes of the movie seem tailored to show off products including the Macbook, Canon XA10 and multiple smart phones. One 5 minute scene of the movie consists almost entirely of an actor discussing the Kinect add-on to the Xbox 360, the actor practically gives a full tech demo to the product showing off its many functions. While these products do play important roles in advancig the plot of the movie it is definitely possible that the film makers were at least encouraged to give these products significant portions of screen time.

Release

The film was released on Blu-Ray and DVD and was released in IMAX theatres, Paranormal Activity 4 is a movie that relies a lot on impacting the audience with shocking imagery and crescendo moments so it makes good business sense to release the movie in formats such as Blu-Ray which has the highest visual qaulity of any home movie viewing experiece, therefore getting the audience more worked up and scared by the scary moments of the movie. IMAX theatres have the highest quality and most realistic looking 3D currently available and 3D is now practically essential in marketing a blockbuster movie such as Paranormal Activty 4 because 3D enhances the viewing experiece for a lot of movie goers.

The film lived up to the franchises reputation for featuring blockbuster movies as Paranormal Activty 4 grossed a worldwide total of $140,706,358. However the movie did gross considerably less than its two predecessors indicating a drop in the interest of the Paranormal Activity franchise or a growing disinterest in this style of "hidden camera" film.

Critical Response

The film recieved mostly mediocre and negative reviews and is considere by most critics and fans to be the most dissapointing movie in the franchise.

Rotten Tomatoes - 26% approval rating based on 94 reviews."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 out of 100 based on 22 reviews.