Digital technologies have an important role in the marketing and consumption of films as it make films such as Star wars The Force Awakens available to everyone and create awareness of the product. They can be used in standard ways such as mass promotion over social media or online media and can also be used through TV and radio to gain a large audience, Whereas a niche film such as Ex-Machina had to use innovative and clever marketing strategies through Social media to gain wide mainstream media attention in order for people to watch the film.
In today's society. We live in a digital age where it's crucial that film companies engage and interact with their audience. With this. Ex-Machina took full advantage of this and used Below the Line media to get attention to the film and use Above the Line media to advertise it for them instead. to do this. They used the dating app Tinder and set up a fake account of the films female protagonist Ava, they did so by using Alicia Vikander face. It was set up to advertise the film During the South by South West Film festival. It was a Bot that when it found Matches would ask them a series of questions which would be about what makes people human, where they would meet and what they found attractive about Ava. Afterwards the users would be directed to an Instagram account which promoted the film. This was done as their wasn't much promotion for the film. They didn't have any big posters on the side of buses or on billboards, nor did they have a Conglomerate help produce the film. only distribute it. Also there was only 1 or 2 trailers on YouTube showcasing the film. So what they did to promote the film was out of necessity in order to get people to watch the film and stir up mainstream media attention. which it did. Once it had been uncovered. Newspapers covered the story, internet blogs post were all over the place talking about it and it made it onto some news stations.
Ex-Machina was rated 15 meaning it had less of a audience to watch it and was a niche meaning some people would like it while others don't making it target audience smaller. making their marketing campaign with Tinder all the more important.
Meanwhile, Star Wars the Force Awakens had mass media promotion due to it being produced by a Conglomerate In Walt Disney. This is turn allowed for a lot of ways to market the film which turned out to be one of the largest media marketing campaigns for any film ever created. They were able to get several teaser trailers 3 full length trailers onto YouTube alone. Furthermore, it received widespread media attention through social media especially on google where you could search "Google Star wars" and if u clicked on i'm feeling lucky. It would allow you to change your Google+ avatar to be on the light side or the dark side. The Force Awakens also had Huge venues such as the 2015 Comic-Con where it held a special panel discussing the film along with some behind-the-scenes footage and a sneak peak at the film itself. Another way of marketing The Force Awakens was through TV interviews which talk shows such as Graham Norton or Jimmy Kimmel and magazine interview in almost every type of magazine from Rolling Stone to Empire which created more mainstream media attention. Another important note is that The force awakens was rated 12 meaning it more widely available to audiences as a mainstream film and that kids could watch if with an adult as most 12 films are actually 12A making them largely accessible to people.
Consumption of Film is also really important as the film needs to be available in different formats in order to be able to watched by as many people as possible. For The Force Awakens. It was released onto every single format that it used in Modern society. this includes: Seeing it in cinema; DVD and Blu-Ray; Streaming services such as Netflix and Downloading films onto a Portable device such as iPad or Phone. However there is also Piracy which happens to all films however The Force Awakens got hit badly by Piracy, With people downloading the Pirated version approximately 250,000 times before it was released onto DVD and Blu-Ray. Despite this. It still sold over 1.18 million copies of DVD/Blu-Ray in the first 7 days of being available. along with The Force Awakens making over $2 billion at the box office. Piracy seems like it didn't matter much but it would have still taken a huge chunk of money away from them.
For Ex-Machina, It Was Distributed on all the same formats as The Force Awakens however, it did not have as huge as a Piracy problem as The Force Awakens did. Despite this, Ex-Machina only made a fraction to what The Force Awakens did. Grossing around $36 million from the Box office. Ex-Machina made roughly $8.7 million from DVD/Blu-Ray sales, meaning that despite having less of an audience to branch out into. Implying that the wide areas of consumption helped make the film more money than they could've predicted.
However Not everything is done To marketing and Consumption Digitally. While Ex-Machina Solely relied on digital Marketing. The Force Awakens had Merchandise that it was able to sell in order to promote the film. All of the official The Force Awakens merchandise was released on the 4th September 2015 which was dubbed by fans to be called "Force Friday". The merchandise included many things including: Comic Books; Figure's; Lego sets; BB-8 Drones; Costumes and more. Coupled with that The Force Awakens was one of, if the, highest grossing films of 2015, it would sugget that the huge marketing campaign behind it helped it reach younger audiences get interested in the film and watch it with their parents. Moreover, merchandise is still being released for The Force Awakens, with a recent Lego Star Wars game being made based on the film and that there is still a lot of The Force Awakens still being sold after a year of the film being released. it proves that marketing doesn't have to be restricted to just one area.
Overall, Digital Technologies Play a Huge in the marketing and consumption of films as they're what creates hype for the films by being shown through Popular online media, social media, and digital to showcase the films and are what we Ultimately watch films on. However it should be noted that marketing also has to rely on other Methods other than Digital as Being restricted to 1 way, despite how innovative can still cause the film to lose money.
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