Movie Hype is Starting Earlier than Ever Thanks to Social Media
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Let’s focus on Twitter and Instagram which seem to be the two preferred social media services for celebrity stalking. So you've followed your favourite actor's accounts, now what? Well, first of all you don't expect work stuff all the time. They have lives too and sometimes they're going to want to post about their lives or random things. When they're working though, you can slowly build up an idea what's going on. If you hear an actor is up for a role or if you know the next film in one of their series is coming out soon and suddenly you see they've changed their hair, they've had a makeup test or they mention spending time with a co-star...chances are something has started again. For instance people knew about Guardians of The Galaxy 2 before it officially announced production due to Zoe Saldana announcing a makeup test, Chris Pratt posting a picture on set and, before that, the writer-director James Gunn has been answering questions on Twitter for a while. And the film isn't set to be out for a while yet. So why so early on?
In the past people could only get excited over trailers and exclusives in magazines and on official websites. At first fans were only sharing that stuff on social media and as the cast and crew started talking about their work...the higher ups obviously realised what a positive effect this has because it's thanks to social media hype that some films are getting sequels before they're even out. All this is because the staff knows that people will be on social media, people who might not pay attention to the movie magazines or a film unless they know a certain someone is in it. If people catch these snippets and hints early on then they're going to start talking about it earlier and by the time the film is out, they should have more viewers than they may have had otherwise.
Some movie studios are even asking the stars to use social media to hype the movie up for them. Each of the members of the Suicide Squad film have been asked to tweet things about the movie with their character name in so people will definitely see the tweets, even if they don't follow the actor. This idea is described as a social roadblock and it basically works in the same way as the cast themselves choosing to post snippets. Rather than using the actor's notoriety to boost the film, this time they're using the characters. This will hopefully draw in more hardcore fans but those are also the fans most likely to point out issues, so you have to be careful.
Worst. Heroes. EVER. suicidesquadmovie trailer in 2 days! #HarleyQuinn https://t.co/z4tCppq56M— Margot Robbie (@MargotRobbie) January 17, 2016
But why not stick to the official movie accounts? Films tend to have them and Deadpool's was put to good use recently but most of the time, they don't have the same clout. The only times these accounts stand out is when they do something special. When they do we can't stop talking about it but most of the time we move on once the movie is out. Actor accounts we're not going to grow bored of as we're interested in other things they talk about too. When it comes to a franchise this could be helpful because it means the actor will regularly keep coming back to talking about the film franchise and the hype will grow. Plus celebrity accounts generally tend to have more followers.
Dwayne Johnson was recently posting pictures from the new Baywatch movie on his Instagram, something that probably wouldn't be getting much attention now if it wasn't for him and Zac Efron being in it. I didn't even know they were doing one until these pictures popped up on Instagram and now I'm a little excited even though I'm not sure I want to see it.
You see what social media is allowing stars to do to this film? It's a positive thing but one movie studios might want to get a little more control of. Sometimes actors might accidentally spoil things they shouldn't in the background or they might not be talking about the right things. If the movie studios can pinpoint exactly what social media users want then social media and the movie industry should have a wonderful future together.
Rosina is a Songbird rookie with a degree in Creative Writing. She's trying to focus on her novel on the side but is hoping that Content Writing will turn out to be a good career choice in the mean time! Follow her @RosinaAtSMF
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Movie Hype is Starting Earlier than Ever Thanks to Social Media
Reviewed by Unknown
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Tuesday, March 01, 2016
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Reviewed by Unknown
on
Tuesday, March 01, 2016
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Unknown
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