Two Premieres In One Week...Did I Mention They Were Media Firsts!

This week has made me feel extremely proud to work in the Paramount Theatrical team at MEC as we planned and implemented two UK media firsts for the releases of two big films.

Big Brother Paranormal Activity 3 premiere event

The first being the unique and exciting campaign which launched Paramount’s Paranormal Activity 3 in the Big Brother House.
MEC negotiated a partnership with Channel 5 and Endemol to host the premiere of the film. The partnership with Big Brother started with contestants competing in a selection of intriguing Paranormal Activity tasks within the house. The winning housemates were rewarded with the opportunity to attend the premiere, which was hosted in the main Big Brother arena.
In addition Big Brother fans were given the opportunity to win tickets to join the contestants in the VIP area at the premiere. MEC developed a social media campaign using promoted tweets and Facebook to increase word-of-mouth and drive traffic to the competition page. This was a great demonstration of social media's role in generating mass awareness and huge buzz around film releases.


The winning contestants and fans joined a host of celebrities on the red carpet and watched Paranormal Activity 3 on a giant screen installed especially for the event.
Supporting this unique idea, we built a 360 media campaign to promote the Paranormal Activity 3 launch, which ran across TV, print, radio and online, as well product placement spots within Big Brother. Following the premiere, footage from the event is going to be used across all media to continue promoting the new movie over the Halloween period.
Big Brother is an iconic show and offered the perfect platform for us to launch Paranormal Activity 3, especially as the film's theme and content is centred around activities which happen inside a house documented through video cameras.


Sean Cannon, Communications Director for Paramount at MEC said, “We are always looking to push the boundaries with our campaigns for Paramount. Hosting the premiere of Paranormal Activity 3 in the Big Brother house is the perfect fit for this launch and we are very excited to see the campaign kick-off.”


The second Premiere was for Steven Speilberg and Peter Jackson's The Adventures of Tintin. On Sunday 23rd October from 5.30pm Tweeters were able to click on our promoted Twitter trend #TintinPremiereLive and view the live stream direct from the right hand panel of their Twitter account. Click on this link to see the live streamed content including exclusive interviews with the cast http://www.livestream.com/tintinpremierelive .


London Premiere of Tintin at Odeon West End 23.10.11


The live streaming enabled Tweeters and fans to gain direct access to the red carpet where Alex Zane and Robyn Bright hosted the event for us! Guests sitting in the cinema were also able to see the action on the red carpet as the live streaming was also shown on the cinema screen. The film’s stars including Simon Pegg, Jamie Bell and Nick Frost are big Tweeters so they created initial buzz on the micro blogging platform before the day of the premiere. As part of our media communication strategy we created a Twitter campaign to ensure there was a build up of anticipation and excitement in the run up to the big event. Normally film premieres are a magnet for celebrities and this one was no exception. I managed to walk past the lovely Jamie Bell (who played Tintin) on the red carpet and spotted the gorgeous Daniel Craig! Other than the film's cast who were obviously going to be at their own premiere, I also bumped into a couple of cast members of my favourite Sunday night drama Downton Abbey!
The film itself was an action-packed and fun filled adventure which the whole family would enjoy and although I may be biased as I worked on the release, I would recommend watching Tintin on the big screen as the cinematography and 3D animation is outstanding!

Overall this has been an exciting and rewarding film-filled week and I look forward to blogging about our next big film release Puss In Boots!

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Red Carpet Glory

The anticipation I felt for my first film premier definitely lived up to it's expectations. As I approached the red carpet for the premier of 'Morning Glory' I could hear fans screaming names of the celebs that had turned up to be snapped by the paps. Although I was no celeb I walked down the carpet feeling a million dollars, brushing shoulders with the likes of Rachel McAdams and Harrison Ford...Ok well not quite, although they did make an appearance at the London premier. The closest I got to to any kind of celeb was Peter Andre and Stacey Solomon! All the cameras were flashing and the paps were directing the celebs to get their picture for the next morning's paper. For a split second I felt like I was one of the stars of the film as I faced a wall of camera men and photographers before entering the cinema. Once inside I had my celeb radar turned on full in the hope of spotting any guestlist worthy celebs. I had kind of hoped that Beckham would have made an appearance since he was actually on London soil but instead I only really spotted a handful of Z listers including Gillian McKeith and Kerry Katona who are both clearly trying to enhance their public profiles.

Before the film started the two main stars of the film came on stage to give the usual thank you speech.
The actual film proved to be lighthearted and enjoyable to watch and although not much depth, it's comical undertones scored it a few extra brownie points. Ford had seen better movie days and McAdams' role was quirky and cute. Overall the film was a hit but it is definitely a film that could be rented rather than seen on the big screen.
See the trailer below:

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"I want to play a game"

The title of this post relates to two separate work instances. The first reflects a series of chilling, gruesome and downright disturbing films. First clue is there have been 6 released so far and the 7th is about to be released in 3D? Any guesses?
I'm talking about SAW!

Saw 3D is due to be screening in our cinemas in a couple of weeks before Halloween and I have been (un)lucky enough to be working on Lionsgate Films which is one of our film distributor clients. Part of the perks of working on a film client is that you get to go to previews and premieres of the film releases you are planning and buying the media for for the advertising campaign, although in this case I was having nightmares of the film before I had even seen it. I went to a special preview screening of Saw 3D and I have to say it wasn't as gruesome as I had built it up to be, although I did spend most of the time watching the film through squinted vision.

The second instance that my post title reflects is that I actually did play a game...a cinema/film quiz game as part of our cinema immersion day at MEC. Two cinema media owners DCM and Pearl & Dean came to our offices to give our agency a series of presentations on how to best target audiences through the cinema medium including families and 15-34's and to introduce a range of new cinema innovations for engaging with audiences pre and post screening. The day finished with a film related quiz night. I had high hopes for my team coming first until we had one too many glasses of vino however the night was a great bonding session and I got to know people in my office who I hadn't previously met or been introduced to and not forgetting the added bonus of free wine and nibbles!

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