PVR Pictures created an out-of-the-box format for the premiere screening for ‘Hereditary’. The midnight screening gathered film enthusiasts of this captivating genre to step out late-night and catch a glimpse of this riveting content before India gets a taste of it. Keeping pace with Ari Aster’s disruptive filmmaking, the marketing initiatives married audience behaviour metrics with technology for the first time.

For fans, influencers and celebrities alike the premise of late-night screening, which ended at an eerily odd hour, left everyone with gripping memories of what they just witnessed. Innovation and technology is the forefront of all modern-day insights. Selected patrons were fitted with heart-rate monitors to capture live data on the ‘peaks’ of horror experienced throughout the duration of the film.

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Patrons were slotted with go-pro cameras to understand further behavioural catharsis which they experienced during the film. These data inputs provided an in-depth understanding of how many times, what exact time during the film and by how much were they engaged. Never before has this activity been done in India, even scarce are case studies on this initiative, yet the vision to execute this lies solely with team PVR at the helm of this marketing innovation.

The average pulse per minute extracted from patrons, by observing 7-8 peaks of as high as 127bpm, helped PVR Pictures understand sentiments and the emotional well being of our patrons while they immersed themselves in the film. Even the toughest of us show vulnerability when faced with an epic thriller and an emotionally vested film like Hereditary. The go-pro cameras captured these moments and further asserted the data extrapolated by the ‘heart rate monitors’ and ‘ fit-bits’ . In fact, the audience reviews pre and post the film have re-asserted, thanks to this disruptive innovation, what the core ‘scare quotient’ of the film Hereditary is.

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A new dawn is on the horizon, one which binds film-makers, film enthusiast and film marketers alike. An experience is what we all want from our mundane lives. PVR Cinemas provides the premise, Ari Aster gave us thrilling content and disruption brought everyone to the forefront of this midnight. Could this be the beginning of a new IP called ‘ Scare meter ‘ telling audiences exactly how gripping/scary a film would be? Can audience metrics and sentiment analysis drive better innovations and footfalls for an even more unique cinema experience? On to the next film , the next wave of path breaking innovations & cool insights!

Published by Kanika Saini on 23 Jun 2018