Thursday 10 November 2016

Digital tech used to film deadpool

Camera Arri Alexa XT Plus, Panavision Primo Lenses
Panavision Cameras and Lenses
Laboratory EFilm (digital intermediate)
Negative Format 35 mm (One Shot)
Codex
Cinematographic Process ARRIRAW (3.4K) (source format)
Digital Intermediate (4K) (master format)
Super 35 (source format) (some shots)
Printed Film Format D-Cinema
Digital (Digital Cinema Package DCP)

Tuesday 8 November 2016

What You Can Learn From Deadpool’s Online Marketing Strategies

Full disclosure: I am a complete and total comic book geek.

The content being created to market the upcoming Deadpool movie resonates with me as I’m very familiar with the character.

But with a little bit of explanation from me, I’m sure that I can show you why the content is great, and what you can learn from it for your own content marketing efforts.

The movie has created content and campaigns for Twitter, Facebook, and email that are exceptional. I’ll look at each one separately below.

Deadpool’s Perfect Twitter Marketing: Now with More Influencer Marketing!

What do you do when you want to market a character like Deadpool, who is beloved by comic book fans but not well-known like Spider-Man? Simple. You get another character to promote him!

The “character” they used to push Deadpool has been the film’s star: Ryan Reynolds. You can think of Deadpool’s use of Ryan as influencer marketing.

At first, the movie’s Twitter account had very few followers. Then Ryan started tweeting about it and @mentioning the official @Deadpoolmovie account:

That tweet was from March of last year! Since then he has been retweeting and @mentioning the account repeatedly. It has been one of the primary ways that the account has grown.

Well, there’s also been some help from other X-universe types along the way:

All of this comes down to a new account, @Deadpoolmovie, using other accounts as influencers to build itself up. This was a coordinated influencer marketing effort on the part of all involved to build the new @Deadpoolmovie account.

The other big move that they made was for a coordinated hashtag: #12DaysofDeadpool. The hashtag was built into an event: the debut of the new red band trailer on Christmas day. A hashtag which has a goal, and great content, can go far:

The entire hashtag campaign was a very well organized affair with 12 exciting days for fans. And, more importantly, 12 days of fierce retweeting to build awareness and anticipation for the movie.

To summarize how the movie has built itself on Twitter:

They used Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman for influencer marketing to quickly build the main @Deadpoolmovie account. Retweeting and @mentions were used to quickly build the account.
A well-planned and executed content marketing plan was coupled with a hashtag marketing campaign. The results were pure fun for fans, with retweets being a key way for them to get more Twitter followers.

Influencers, great content, and hashtags are what make Twitter work. @Deadpoolmovie has succeeded greatly in each of these.

Deadpool on Facebook: Where He Brings the Controversy

A successful Facebook account is an essential for any movie, especially those wishing to be big blockbusters.

You can get by with weak Twitter marketing, but Facebook is a must. What’s more, they’ve tapped into what is now the very essence of Facebook marketing: stupid click-bait websites.

Yes, Deadpool has his own “click-bait” style website, Clickpooler.net, which is shared exclusively through Facebook:

Total link-bait title, pure hilarity once you go to the link. Fans are eating this up. You can find comments all over the page with people saying things like:

“Seriously, you guys really should win an award. Even if the movie sucks the PR for it has been excellent.”
“For the record, the Deadpool marketing campaign is perhaps the only time ever that marketing has actually gotten me really excited about an upcoming movie.”
“If the movie is as good as the marketing for it is, then it’ll be one of the highest grossing R rated movies of all time.”

Those were three comments all in a row from one example of their “click-bait” articles! This is some of the best content marketing that I’ve ever seen, too.

But how does it work? It works by being completely and totally committed to what the movie’s about. The comic book is absurd. It’s silly. The true fans know this and it builds their loyalty even further. As we all know, building loyalty through social media marketing is vitally important.

Then, there’s this:

The movie comes out February 12, Valentine’s Day weekend. They must have been sitting around the marketing team’s desk when someone thought, “Hey! Let’s make a joke about our hunky lead-actor and make it so people think this a romantic movie!”

Wade Wilson is the name of Deadpool in the movie, hence the joke inside a joke. Again, fans are salivating at this, and are telling their friends, so the Deadpool Facebook page “likes” are skyrocketing.

Deadpool’s Facebook marketing has shown us some incredibly clever ways to advertise on Facebook. What they’ve done is:

Take advantage of a trend that’s exclusive to the social platform you’re using. Click-bait on Facebook is huge. They tapped into the trend and capitalized on it by applying their own style.
Connect with the deepest part of your fan base. You will always have a hard time getting the attention of casual fans. The core of your fans, the ride or die followers, will only pay you back ten-fold if you give them exactly what they want. That’s why modern superhero movies are so successful now, and Deadpool is taking that to a new extreme.

Deadpool on Facebook has succeeded wildly for being such a niche movie. The marketing team has exceeded everyone’s expectations by delivering perfect content in a perfect way with their click-bait titles and joke movie promotions.

Deadpool Goes Email: Welcome to #DeadpoolCore

Never in my life have I signed up for the email marketing campaign of a movie. But this is Deadpool. I saw the movie’s Facebook account pushing this and I knew what I had to do:

I signed up and was immediately given access to some exclusive content. Since then I have been sent pushes to buy tickets when they were released, and this piece of way too funny content:

The movie’s marketers responded to fans wanting him to jokingly run for president! Not only did they do that, but they stuck with one of the core elements of the character: He’s Canadian! He can’t be president of the USA!

The marketers are once again keeping true to the character and delighting the hardcore fans. If you’re not doing this yet, if you’re not tapping into the full potential of your most fervent brand evangelists and are trying to appeal to everyone, you’re going to fail.

How Deadpool’s Online Marketing Succeeds

Online marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, none of these things are about appealing to a large and faceless audience. They’re about appealing to the core of your fan base and letting them do your marketing for you. The Deadpool movie team has done this, and all of their retweets, shares, comments, praise, and likes are well deserved.

Going forward, you need to think more about that person who is going to see your content, on any platform. You need to think about what will motivate them to comment, share, and tell their friends all about you in a flurry of excitement.

Digital Marketing for Deadpool: How 20th Century Fox Innovated Their Marketing Strategy

Deadpool, AKA the “Merc with a mouth,” is the latest comic character to rise to the big screen from Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Rob Liefeld in the early 90’s during their run on the New Mutants title. Since then, Deadpool has spawned multiple solo titles and crossovers with almost every Marvel character imaginable.

While the character started out as a grim mercenary who mirrored DC’s Deathstroke the Terminator, he eventually became more unique and humorous under the authorship of Joe Kelly in the late '90s. The comedic tone launched Deadpool to mainstream readership, and eventually his fanbase cried out for him to come to cinema. Actor Ryan Reynolds, who campaigned for the role, championed their pleas.

20th Century Fox put together a somewhat non-traditional marketing plan for the movie, one that relied little on film footage, but heavily on film. Viral videos, holiday pieces, regional marketing and social media were all employed in their push for box office success.

Digital marketing pervasiveness coupled with outside-of-the-box strategies mirrored the bizarre nature of the character they were promoting. Ultimately, the marketing team tried to permeate as much of peoples’ lives as possible while exposing a minimum of the film itself.

Holiday Marketing

One thing you can rely on to trend in the news is holidays. Capitalizing on that, the Deadpool camp planned strategies to promote the movie through viral videos and other holiday hijinks. Starting with April Fool’s Day last year, the studio answered their fans’ concerns about whether the movie would be rated PG-13 by having Deadpool show up in character and stage an attack on Mario Lopez on Extra.

Their holiday-themed videos continued with a Halloween video, this time on Ryan Reynolds’s own YouTube channel. The video has since gained over 4.2 million hits. One takeaway here is that a low-budget creative piece like this can get people talking almost as much as a high-budget movie trailer. The studio also had Reynolds act as an ambassador for the film in a much bigger way than most films do, with talk shows and interviews.

The biggest holiday push came with the 12 Days of Deadpool.

From December 14 through December 25, every day had a unique piece of content, leading up to a new trailer for the movie. Partnerships with Entertainment Magazine, People Magazine, Deviant Art, Fandango and others were formed. GIFs, new movie posters, and branded emojis scattered around the Internet kept fans engaged on a daily basis, and kept brand awareness at a peak level, pushing it to trending level for weeks.

Regional Marketing

While most of the marketing for the movie focuses in on broad appeal through sex, violence, and laughter; several of the marketing initiatives focused in on more specific audiences. In particular, there were several videos released specifically to target certain geographic targets.

Deadpool was banned in China over censorship issues, but that didn’t stop the marketing team from acknowledging the fans over there. Like most of their viral videos, Ryan Reynolds got into costume to wish everyone a happy Chinese New Year. Similarly, there was a video released for Australia Day.

The third region-specific video took things a step further by showcasing the partnership between Manchester United and the studio. In it, Deadpool scores a goal with a bunch of football players cheering him on. Cross-promotion between the two entities helped to push the video to over 1.5 million views in less than a week.

Social Media

This one may seem obvious, but the social media campaign for this movie definitely helped to poise it to break out. Not only is there an official Twitter account for the movie (@DeadpoolMovie), but Ryan Reynolds’ account has turned into a huge promotional tool in their arsenal, posting almost exclusively about Deadpool for months

Many of the posts are done in character, with a tongue-in-cheek awareness of the fact that it’s all make believe, as Deadpool breaks the fourth wall. Being a superhero movie gives Deadpool an edge, but another huge takeaway here is the community interaction.

While most businesses don’t have a rabid fanbase who are into cosplay of their main character / mascot, Deadpool’s marketing proves the worth of interacting with your audience and giving them the opportunity to promote you as brand ambassadors.

Marketing Outside of the Box

What sets the marketing efforts of Deadpool apart from most movies is the way the marketing echoes the protagonist of the film. Everything about the promotion for this film is aimed at people with a short attention span with a dark or raunchy sense of humor, and is a little off-kilter. Deadpool embodies the dark comedic sensibilities of a generation desensitized to violence, and too detached for typical super hero stories.

Along with hammering the public with video after video online, marketing efforts were ramped up as the release date drew near. Five TV networks ran custom ads during three-hour blocks, customized to the demographic of the programming being run. “Workaholics,” “Tosh.0,” and “Golden Girls” were all featured in this campaign. In the comic, Deadpool has a strange attachment to Bea Arthur, but since she passed away, Betty White was featured in a gleefully mischievous promotion piece.

20th Century Fox also took advantage of the release date’s proximity to the Super Bowl. Not only did they buy a commercial during the game, but they also ran several live promotions over the course of the weekend.

On Friday, the studio arranged for Ryan Reynolds to take over a taco truck to serve chimichangas, which the character loves. Saturday, Fox transformed a spot near the stadium into Sister Margaret’s Bar, a location from the film, and had Reynolds and co-star T.J. Miller there to socialize. Sunday saw Deadpool “taking over” Fox’s Snapchat account during the big game.

There were several other stunts the marketing team pulled to promote the movie, some of which were just left-of-center. Carl’s Jr., known for unabashedly using sex to sell, are helping to cross-promote with limited edition large Deadpool drink cups, with “Size Matters” written on them. Bizarre billboards and self-referential humor were employed.

There are several lessons to be learned from the marketing efforts of this film:

Know your audience. Promote, promote, promote. And ultimately, try something new with your campaigns.

Deadpool:The Trailer

offical trailer no 2 Red Band No.2 Red Band Trailer No.1

The Most Absurd Deadpool Marketing, From Tinder to Obscene Emoji

If the Deadpool marketing campaign hasn’t crossed at least one of your screens by now, you are a statistical outlier.

As we careen toward the movie’s February 12 release, the team behind our favorite fourth-wall-breaking Marvel hero has waged a relentless marketing siege of every platform you would think of—and some you didn’t. Billboards bearing poop emoji. Ryan Reynolds massaging Conan O’Brien with panda tears. An email newsletter. It’s either a brilliant way to build hype for Deadpool‘s irreverent tone, or the world’s greatest tax write-off. Even if you weren’t a Deadpool fan before, aren’t you intrigued now?

That said, the marketing campaign has officially gotten absurd with the creation of Deadpool Tinder profile. We have reached saturation. If you want to make an informed choice about whether to swipe right or swipe left, though, keep reading: We’ve collected the majority of Deadpool‘s off-the-wall publicity efforts.

Old School Rules

Deadpool has done its part to revitalize age-old advertising platforms, like billboards.

Or this page of the movie’s script, annotated by Deadpool himself.

Risque Business

The Deadpool team has brought impressive levels of sass from day one.

ryan-reynolds-deadpool — 20TH CENTURY FOX

Keep in mind that this is the first time you even saw the guy. But while it assuaged fan fears that Deadpool’s costume wouldn’t live up to expectations, the send-up of Burt Reynolds’ famous nude spread in Cosmopolitan was only a first step toward some much less SFW promotional material.

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Teasers, Trailers, and TV Spots

It obviously wasn’t all just PG-13 posters that got attention. Lest you think that Deadpool was only blasting us with stills and GIFs, here’s some highlights of their video work.

In case you don’t feel trolled enough by that last one, try to make sense of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool as Conan’s mouthy masseur

Social Media

What, you thought we were done? We haven’t even gotten to the custom emoji yet!

If Deadpool trying to make himself into a cat isn’t peak Internet, then we don’t know what is. Then consider this carefully curated “beef” between Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds (or rather, between Wolverine and Deadpool).

And then they moved over to Facebook, and made fake clickbait gags like 43 Secrets the Internet Will Never Tell You About Kittens. Are you overwhelmed yet? Hope not; the most markety marketing this marketing-ass movie ever marketed is yet to come.

Ryan Reynolds Himself

The best weapon in the Deadpool marketing team’s arsenal has been, without question, Ryan Reynolds himself. Where does Ryan end and Deadpool begin? Does Ryan know? Does anyone? Reynolds has been a one-man army of promotional material, and shows no sign of slowing down. In addition to (presumably) being the face of everything we’ve showed you so far, he’s been at things like Deadpool “beauty pageants.”

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Also, as far as we can tell, he’s been tweeting in character for years.

He’s even helpful enough to answer fans’ questions about Deadpool’s costume.

Might the marketing team have overindulged at times? Perhaps.

But as crazy and unrelenting as it all is, isn’t this exactly what we want from Deadpool? If it was Thor doing all this, we’d just pack it all in and move to Antarctica, but when you’re trying to sell a hard-R movie about a relatively little-known hero—and especially when you’re not bound by Marvel Cinematic Universe rules (Deadpool is a 20th Century Fox movie)—carpet-bombing would-be moviegoers with a neverending siege of filthy humor might just be your best bet. Go get ’em, Wade