What do the Harry Potter series, The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games, and Silence of the Lambs all have in common? They were all successful novels before they were massive box office successes. In just 2014 alone 14 books were adapted to the big screen, ranging from classic novels such as Lois Lowery’s The Giver to new releases as illustrated by The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. On March 21, 2014 Divergent, the first novel in the young adult trilogy by Veronica Roth, took the number one spot in the box office on its premiere weekend earning $56 million. The book was published in April of 2011 and two years later Summit Entertainment purchased media rights to the book before the final book in the trilogy, Allegiant was even published. Why is making a film adaptation of a book so brilliant, you may ask; well, the answer to that lies within the fans. The majority of these new films are adapted from young adult thrillers, such as the Hunger Games and Divergent trilogies. There was already a prominent fan base there. So how does the PR team reach out to those young and dedicated fans? By utilizing teen and young adult methods such as social media. The Divergent movie’s Twitter page has 208 thousand followers. The page encouraged interaction between fans by asking fans to tweet a review of the film using the hashtag #DivergentReview. The film also used stores frequented by youth, such as Hot Topic to sell merchandise and paraphernalia. The items being sold ranged from various t-shirts to coffee mugs and even iPhone cases. By selling the products at Hot Topic a certain audience was targeted and reached: young adults and teenagers. What else do all of these book-to-movie successes have in common? Beautiful people in them, of course! Even though in the many of the aforementioned books the main characters are described as “average,” “large nosed” and “plain,” all of the actors casted are generally attractive. Movies with a predominately female audience are guaranteed to cast sought-after young men for male roles in order to boost word-of-mouth advertising and viewings. Post-filming, the cover of the books are changed to match the movie cover, selling books with the familiar faces of famous movie stars. Edited by Melanie Ford, Webmaster and Editor-in-Chief 2013-2014
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In the last decade, if not longer, blogs have become a huge part of multimedia communication. They provide an easy and flexible way to share information and are just plain fun. Running a successful blog takes some work, but if you use these tricks, then you shouldn’t have any trouble. These tips can be applied to a professional or a personal blog and I can personally attest to their success! 1. Give them the punch line at the beginning. There is a lot of information on the internet and, if you want someone to commit to read your whole article, your reader needs to know EXACTLY what they are reading about pronto. 2. You’ve caught their attention with the title…now keep their attention. Your blog needs to be appealing and engaging, both visually and verbally. When it comes to design, avoid being overly flashy by sticking to two or three colors at the most. Four is sometimes okay, depending on how you play it. I tend to find that three colors are about as much as I can handle from a reader’s viewpoint. 3. Your tone and voice is important. Blogs are not research papers, so a formal tone is not necessary. Keep it light and pretend like you’re having a conversation with your readers. 4. Be concise. It’s very easy to ramble and stray from your original topic, so if you catch yourself going off track, work your way back. Avoiding long, wordy sentences helps to keep your blog posts focused. Think sweet and simple. 5. Link back to older pieces in your posts. I do this on my personal blog a lot. For example, if I’m writing a new blog post and I want to reference a point I made in an earlier post, I might write, “As I stated in my previous post about Virginia Tech Football…” and “previous post” would be a hyperlink to that post. This is a great way to refresh your readers’ memories, and to direct them to a post they might have missed before. 6. Pictures, pictures, pictures! No one likes reading a giant wall of text because it strains the eyes. Break it up with some related images. I wouldn’t use more than five images, depending on how long your blog post is. Two to three is ideal.
7. Headings are another great way to break up text. If you can, use bolded headings to separate different parts of your blog post. 8. Have a reason to blog. Don’t blog just for the sake of blogging. Blogging once a week, or even once every couple of weeks, is okay if your posts are focused and about specific topics. Otherwise, it comes across as if you’re blogging just to take up space on the Internet. Write with a purpose. Lastly, have fun with your blogging. If it’s fun for you, it will definitely be fun for your readers. Edited by Melanie Ford, Webmaster and Editor-in-Chief 2013-2014 |
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