Unit 26 Assignment 3

The Harry Potter Franchise

Harry Potter Target Audience: Children and Teenagers


















Marketing and Success
Harry Potter targets its psychographic labels (Aspirers and Mainstreamers) because young girls and boys want to be like the characters in the Harry Potter. Even more so in these films because they are fantasy films and unrealistic and this will be a unique selling point for the films as people sometimes like to stray away from real life.
The film posters for Harry Potter are highly effective as they are very dark and mysterious they give connotations of something sinister going on within the films. Also the background behind the characters on the posters fit in with the fantasy genre because there are abnormal images on them for example, on the Harry Potter and The Prisoner Of Askaban we can see a hand/claw that isn't human and also doesn't look like and animal either so this is where the fantasy comes into play. It leaves you wondering what this hand/claw could be, which then means you want to watch the film and find out.
These marketing techniques are cleverly used to draw people in because they want to know what the images on the posters represent or why a character has a certain facial expression.

In the opening weekend in america of the release of each film they made:

• The Philosophers Stone - $ 90,294,621
• The Chamber of Secrets - $88,357,488
• The Prisoners of Azkaban - $93,687,367
• The Goblet of Fire - $102,685,961
• The Order of the Phoenix - $77,108,414 
• The Half Blood Prince - $77,835,727
• The Deathly Hallows Part 1 - $125,017,372
• The Deathly Hallows Part 2 - $169,189,427

 Worldwide in the Box Office the films made: 

• The Philosophers Stone - $ 974,755,371
• The Chamber of Secrets - $878,979,634
• The Prisoners of Azkaban - $796,688,549
• The Goblet of Fire - $896,911,078
• The Order of the Phoenix - $942,943,935
• The Half Blood Prince - $934,416,487
• The Deathly Hallows Part 1 - $956,399,711
• The Deathly Hallows Part 2 - $1,328,111,219

Top 20 Harry Potter Sountracks

All Eight Harry Potter Trailers
The harry potter and the deathly hallows part 11 trailer starts off very sinister, they slow down the harry potter theme tune and use each note in the tune to sync up with a snippet from the film. This is effective because it gives dramatic effect and an eerie feel. The trailer has a very dark colour wash which tells us that this film is going to be a lot about the darkness about the harry potter films and its not all about the fantasy side of the films as seen previously. The camera has a lot of point of view shots for example, when we see the mine cart ride and it seems like you are there in the film which keeps the audience drawn in. The overall sound in the trailer is quite disturbing in a way as we here the theme tune that we know and love being turned into something more sinister. I think that this trailer is very appealing to the target phsycographic as it  doesn't give too much away about the film but it also has a very different feel to the previous films because of how dark it is. I think this could also be a u.s.p to people who may not fit the description of the target audience because it's so different from before.

Official Harry Potter Website

The Potter More Website

Universal Studios Website - Harry Potter Merchandise


Comparison

Comparison to twilight

Twilight and Harry Potter have a lot of things in common. They are both fantasy films, they both appeal to the same psychographic labels ( mainstreamers and aspirers) and they have very similar marketing campaigns. They both have large merchandise collections, you can buy almost anything with harry potter or twilight on. Also they both use similar advertising techniques on their film posters by creating a series of posters, each with a different character on. For example..
                                                




The characters are airbrushed a lot to make them look more desirable and attractive. If people like the characters they want to see the film more because they want to stare aimlessly at how beautiful they are so they will watch the films to do so.

Both films also used long press junkets, big statement film premiers, competitions, behind the scenes programmes online etc. In the opening weekends of these film francizes, some cinemas would play the previous films one after the other and then at midnight would release the new film. This brought in a substantial amount of the profit made in the opening weekends for these films.


Audience Reactions:

Reviews

 Audience responses

Fan review of the philosophers stone

Fan review of the chamber of secrets

Fan review of prisoners of Azkaban

Fan review of the goblet of fire

Fan review of the order of the phoenix

Fan review of the half blood prince

Fan review of the deathly hallows part 1&2


Audience Theory

A very potter musical

Universal studios have created the Harry Potter Theme Park - https://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/


There are also fan conventions such as -
http://harrypotterconference.com/

The harry potter fans have definitely made themselves known, there are millions and millions of harry potter fans all over the world and they have shown their love for harry potter in many different ways. 



This picture is from a harry potter convention in London. Every year thousands of British fans come to this annual event to dress up as the characters, meet other fans and share there love with each other. 



Some of the stars of the films go to the convention too.

Creating a fan base for this kind of film is important because without the fans a film can't be successful and well known. You can't make that much money from a film if nobody goes to see it. Fans have engaged so much in this film i think, because of the fantasy theme it has. The target pyscographics that like the harry potter films like to be able to have an imagination and this is exactly what the films give them because magic isn't real and especially for younger people, this is a big thing because they like to believe in things such as magic, wizards etc.