It seems that virtually no film trailer or print advert nowadays is complete without something along the lines of http://www.boxofficesmash.com appearing in discreet type at the bottom of the screen. Indeed, it seems almost compulsory now for any major release to have its own website on the Internet. It is, after all, the only completely worldwide marketing tool. And if the movie's in any way successful, it will quite possibly spawn a number of unauthorised fan sites. Unless, of course, it's a sci-fi film or a sub-Tarantino endeavour, in which case it will probably inspire hundreds of cyberfans to test the copyright laws in their own digitally-enhanced way.
Most of the Majors have a presence on the Internet, including Twentieth Century Fox, MGM, Columbia TriStar, Walt Disney, MCA Universal, UIP and Warner Bros, as well as many of the independents. With links built into these sites which lead to other pages on the Internet, anyone who looks at these pages can then be directed towards reviews and online merchandising stores where, with the aid of a credit card, they can not only buy the soundtrack, but also the T-shirt and the commemorative mug. Another click of the mouse and they can find out when it's playing at their local cinema and even the time of the last train home.
Majors spend up to US$100,000 on a site, but a smaller company, just dipping its toes in the water could get away with something simpler, but still perfectly functional, with smaller sound clips and movies for less than US$10,000. In fact, a larger budget can often create its own problems as designs get complicated and more memory intensive, slowing down the connections to many smaller home computers, particularly those outside the US, where most internet users live. As Ian Wrigley of British web designers Wide Area Communications comments, 'As America wakes up, the whole system slows down. You can practically see it happen.'
Increasingly though, studios are starting to set up sites for specific territories. While also allowing faster access for local users, this also allows companies to tie in merchandising and promotional deals appropriate to that area. Most sites, although accessible from all over the world, are geared to the US market, with such extras as competitions, giveaways, and, sometimes even merchandising, limited to US consumers. Twentieth Century Fox's Independence Day UK site is one of the first to be set up specifically for the UK. The site, designed by Foresight New Media, which was also responsible for Disney's Toy Story UK site, boasts two different online games with live sound and graphics as well as competitions and links to the Yellow Pages site, which carries details of where the film is playing around the country.
According to Tomas Jegeus, marketing director, Twentieth Century Fox, UK, the company spent in the region of £15,000 (US$22,500) on the site. 'It's not a major part of our marketing campaign for ID4, but we're looking at it as a perfect way of kickstarting the Fox UK web site,' he says. 'It may be the case at the moment that newspapers and radio reach more people, but, because of the demographics of the Internet, the people who visit the site are more likely to be interested in the material. We're looking at this as an investment in the future.' Fox is currently developing local sites for other territories, including Germany and Spain, both of which should come on line soon.
Miramax has set up the Miramax Cafe to promote its films. The site regularly receives three million hits a month, of which 50,000 are from registered users. Most prominently featured is Trainspotting, but the site carries full coverage of the Miramax catalogue, as well as the opportunity to buy promotional material for Miramax films. David Glickman, manager of interactive media at Miramax, says, 'We're using the internet as an opportunity to brand Miramax nationally and internationally.'
'We're setting up a site in Germany for From Dusk Till Dawn.' The content will largely consist of material from the US site, translated into German, but with a few things more specific to that market. 'It'll be an interesting test. We get a lot of hits on our US web site from Germany, as well as other places like the UK and Australia.
Although it's very difficult to be precise about exactly how many people use the Internet, Price Waterhouse estimates the total number of users as being in the region of 30 to 40 million worldwide. According to research done in the US, the majority of these are aged 30-40, with a significant minority (approximately a third) in the 18-29 age group. What should be of interest to anything thinking of establishing a presence in cyberspace is that use tends to be concentrated among college-educated adults, with higher-than-average incomes. And use is still growing at an exponential rate. The number of adult users of the world wide web tripled between 1994 and 1995 and all the indications are that this trend is set to continue.
JOHN ADAIR
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