[ 8. The David Lehre Website | MySpace ]

[ The David Lehre MySpace www.myspace.com/davelehre ]

Dave Lehre has been a true internet phenomenon. A college dropout who still lives with his parents, he began his fledgling career with some highly entertaining and extremely popular videos, one of which is called “MySpace: The Movie” which parodied the social networking site, posted primarily onto his website and have made their way swiftly onto YouTube and various other similar sites. He and his self-founded production company Vendetta Studios now have a deal with Fox to produce his own untitled as of yet, late night half-hour show with a $300,000 budget for the pilot episode, self described as “an open-format sketch-variety show with music videos, short videos and comedy skits”. He has also made an appearance in recent parody “Epic Movie” as a look-alike for Ashton Kutcher. His main audience is anyone who is up for a good laugh and mostly, these tend to be the younger generation to late-20’s who are his main fans. He has built up quite a cult following, especially amongst the more technically minded audience, as his career was born from the internet.

[ In Detail ]
Straight from whence his career was born, he still utilises the internet to great extent, and especially both his own site and his MySpace page. They are used to raise awareness for his work and himself and also advertise subscriptions to his work, with plenty of direct hyperlinks [ hyperlink ] to iTunes, his Blog, his YouTube account and his own site. He embeds many of his videos and trailers on his page, and website, which makes it easier for new audience members to find his videos faster and more effortlessly.
Dave uses his blog to inform the fans of what he is doing and what he has scheduled in the coming weeks. He also posts up videos and pictures of things that may be interesting about him, such as his front-page appearance on MySpace or his TV appearances, or even his budding Vendetta Branded Clothing. Unfortunately, he isn’t able to post up the footage he has been filming, as the studio owns the rights, not himself, though he does try to post up as much as he can. This allows his fans to feel integrated and informed in what he is doing, increasing their loyalty and ‘fanship’. The fans can post their comments underneath the main post for him to read and he does read these and replies often. His blog contains an RSS feed to automatically inform his fans when he updates his blog.
His website and blog are good examples of a wide reach, good quality movies, democratisation and vertical integration.

[ 6. The 300 Site | Homepage ]

[ The 300 Website www.300themovie.com ]

The website for the film 300 is a very entertaining, interactive site, which essentially markets the film entirely, and replaces such other media texts such as posters, whilst playing host to extra information leading on from other media texts such as the television trailers and trailers hosted at other websites, such as in promotional sites like filmschoolrejects.com and ropeofsilicon.com and the Warner Bro’s site, who also have distributed the film, so technology such as streamed video is utilised to its fullest. These sites allow awareness to be raised and interest to be gained surrounding the film, which attracts audiences to the website, and ultimately to watch the film. The film is narrowcasted predominantly to males with few, but feisty female characters, blood and gore, etc., and the website reflects this, using dark colour schemes and frequent blood splatters and the theme of war and violence.
The film itself was created using almost all bluescreen technology and this adds a video-game style to the film. This extensive use of new media technology has added greatly to the film, adding both realism and fantasy, and reducing the liability for continuity errors. Adding to this exploitation of new media technologies, most of the website’s features contain NMT’s and thus increase the reach and quality of the film and its marketing.

[ In Detail ]
The website is very interesting and has many aspects and features. It is created with Adobe Flash and has interactive buttons and rollover buttons and many other new and exciting aspects. Such features within the website are film production notes and other related documents, trailers, TV trailers, wallpapers, MySpace details, merchandise, digital audio clips, concept art, free downloads and more. There are free screensavers for download and these use new media technologies both to download them fast enough, broadband, and to create them, Adobe Photoshop, and other similar products.
300: March to Glory, the game is yet another feature that is set in the website, it is designed for the PSP [ PSP ], a very good example of convergence, and it utilises the newest data-storage technology, namely UMD disks [ UMD ] and Memory Stick Pro: Duo [ Memory Stick Pro: Duo ]. This increases the accessibility of 300, and widens the franchise further than simply the film and action figures, etc. Another technology surrounding 300 that does this is the mobile game, the abundance of ringtones and wallpapers for personalisation. The mobile game and the PSP game are linked, with unlockables only available from the mobile game. This urges vertical integration between them and the film itself, and helps to sell both games and film tickets. This not only creates a portable, miniaturised non-linear experience, it also increases the quality of experience.
There is also a video production diary which allows the audience to feel closer to the production process and again exploits the easy ability to use embedded video, and also the production blog, in the same manner.
The website is covered in new media technology, from Adobe Flash technology, to blogging, to digital audio, to blue-screen and 3D modelling technology. This adds emphasis onto the movie, increases hype and anticipation and shows that this movie has a large budget and is a very important movie of the year.

[ 3. The Channel 4 Site | Skins ]

[ The Channel 4 Skins Section www.channel4.com/skins ]

The Skins section of Channel 4’s website is very different to the rest of the website. As it is supposed to be specifically directed at the target audience, the content is very colloquial and often personally addresses the audience, especially in the character profile pages. This makes the audience feel more friendly towards the characters as it seems as though the characters can open up to them.
Although some of the layout is different, the page still retains the menu at the top containing the different section of the website mentioned earlier. Some of the available features within the Skins section include synopses of past episodes, forums, unseen Skins episodes free to download, episodes available on 4oD [ 4 on Demand ] and most strikingly, a competition page to design Skins logos, films, character costumes and music.

[ In Detail ]
As you arrive at the site, you are immediately greeted by a splash page which specifically lists the content of the site and the certain age restrictions [ 18…oops ] and shows any one of about 8 promotional images and still looks stylised to the Skins website content. The age restriction seems innocent enough, although it could be argued that it also acts as a lure inside, as the perverse nature of the target audience, i.e. teenagers, draws them to look around. Inside, there are 9 links to various sections inside the mini-site. In a cunning pun, the skin [ skin ] is always a modified version of a Logo Entry winning design. The competition was held a few weeks before the show went on air. The competition was open to everyone and served to get the audience interested in the show and participating before it went on air, to build up hype and give the audience a sense that they played a small part in the creation of the show. The standard of entry, however, may have put some people off entering as only the few with an esoteric knowledge of image, video and music editing software such as Abobe Photoshop or Adobe (Formerly Macromedia) Flash really stood a good chance of winning, thus cutting out a large proportion, though not all of the target audience. That said, it in turn raises awareness and interest in these sorts of technologies and new technology as a whole, aiding Channel 4 in other senses as those young filmmakers, for example may want to try their hand in another aspect of filmmaking and participate in FourDocs, etc. This is a good example of democratisation, interactivity, vertical integration and personalisation to a small extent. This also serves as online surveillance as Channel 4 can track the habits, taste and likes of their target audience and target them more accurately and with more precision. This incredible display of democratisation explains why Channel 4’s fans are becoming so loyal – they feel included. On top of this, there are forums which allow for fragmentation and online surveillance, links to MySpace which has become largely integral to targeting the younger generation, sign-ups for free stuff such as free new music downloads and unseen skins episodes, which add to the already existing TV-aired storyline.
The Skins site shows that Channel 4 is dedicated to keeping in touch with its loyal fanbase and likes to hear their ideas and take them on board. This lets the fans know that they are valued by Channel 4 and keeps them interested and devoted to Skins, if not the rest of Channel 4.