TH Institutional Context - 'Paranormal Activity'

Production:
-Produced by the independent American company 'Solana Films' before being taken over by Paramount Pictures.
-It was made by Oren Peli, an Israeli-born videogame designer who in fact had no professional film training prior to the production of 'Paranormal Activity'.
-Filmed on a high definition (1080p) SONY camera and printed on 35mm film over digital.
-Astonishingly, he completed all filming in just one week in 2006, for the small budget of $11,000. This mounted to a little over $15,000 after post-production editing and a short period of marketing and exhibition before conglomerate Paramount Pictures focused an interest on the film.

Distribution:
-The movie was noticed over the period of about a year through film festivals.
-Once taken into the hands of Paramount Pictures, the film still essentially stood as independent, as it was independently produced and distributed right up until exhibition when the industrial studio took over to maximise profit.
-The key part of the marketing campaign was so successful due to the genre of the film; paranormal horror.
-This key part of the campaign was a feature screening to a sample of the target audience (core audience - 12-29) that would later be included in the film's trailer. It was so successful because the audience reacted in the best way they could to invite more people to see the film when released and so hype and excitement was developed from an early stage.
-Secondly, the film launched - with the help of Paramount - a website that not only involved what a normal film would include (i.e trailers, information about screenings, actor interviews etc.), but also a revolutionary feature which not only increased anticipation for the film's arrival, but also increased the box office.
-Taking supreme advantage of the viral marketing campaign of web 2.0, this feature was essentially an online voting system used to allow the audience to vote for the film to come to their local city. Once a certain amount of people from an area had selected the "Demand It!" button to screen the film, it would be exhibited in a local cinema.
-This was a highly successful adaptation of the ever-growing inclusive aspect of web 2.0 and it proved massively advantageous for the film's box office, which reached a gross of $107,917,283.

In essence, this film's success came down to the simple yet successful plot often used in paranormal horror. However, accompanied by viral marketing and web 2.0, 'Paranormal Activity' became the first of a current five-part franchise.

TH