Guardians of the Galaxy is a 2014 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics superhero team of the same name, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is the tenth installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was directed by James Gunn, who wrote the screenplay with Nicole Perlman, and features anensemble cast including Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Hounsou, John C. Reilly, Glenn Close, and Benicio del Toro. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter Quill forms an uneasy alliance with a group of extraterrestrial misfits who are fleeing after stealing a powerful artifact.

Perlman began working on the screenplay in 2009. Producer Kevin Feige first publicly mentioned Guardians of the Galaxy as a potential film in 2010, and Marvel Studios announced that the film was in active development at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2012. Gunn was hired to write and direct the film that September. In February 2013, Pratt was hired to play Peter Quill/Star-Lord, and the supporting cast members were subsequently confirmed. Principal photography began in July 2013 at Shepperton Studios, England, with filming continuing in London before wrapping up in October 2013. Post-production was finished on July 7, 2014.

Guardians of the Galaxy premiered in Hollywood on July 21, 2014. It was released in theaters August 1, 2014 in the United States in the 3D and IMAX 3D formats. The film became a critical and commercial success, grossing $774.2 million worldwide and becoming the highest-grossing superhero film of 2014, as well as the second highest-grossing film in North America of 2014. The film garnered praise for its humor, soundtrack, visual effects, Gunn's direction, and performances of the cast. A sequel titled Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is scheduled to be released on May 5, 2017.

RELEASE/ DISTRIBUTION

The world premiere of Guardians of the Galaxy was held on July 21, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. The film was released theatrically in the United Kingdom on July 31, 2014, and in the United States on August 1, in 3D and IMAX 3D. The film was released in 4,080 theaters in the United States, making it the widest August release, breaking the five year record held by G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (4,007 theatres). The breakdown of venues was: 354 IMAX screens, 3,200 3D screens, 350 large format screens and 240 D-Box screens. In its sixth weekend, Guardians of the Galaxy was playing in 69 territories, its most.

In June 2014, Gunn stated that the film had always been planned as a 3D film,, making sure it works perfectly for the story and the film, making sure it's spectacular and immersive without being silly, distracting, or overly showy. Gunn also revealed that the IMAX 3D version would include shifting aspect ratios, to make the viewing experience "even fuller and more encompassing. I've personally chosen all the places where the changes occur... The changing aspect ratios in this case are actually a part of the storytelling. In July 2014, Gunn revealed that there were multiple scenes he .had cut from the film, and he was investigating how to release them, either in an extended cut of the film, or as bonus features on the film's home media release. The film was distributed by walt disney studio motion pictures. The distribution is done by independent such as UTV Motion pictures and espn film pictures. such independent distributors help them distribute world wide.

TECHNOLIGICAL USE
different types of technologies were used in order to make the film a perfect match.Director of photography Ben Davis used Arri Alexa XT cameras for the film.During the opening scenes in the 1980s, Davis chose JDC Cooke Xtal (Crystal) Express anamorphic prime lenses because they "had more anamorphic artifacts and aberrations, which [he] felt added. Davis used spherical Panavision Primos for the rest of the film. CGI technology was also used in creating  two characters which were groot and rocket.Dealing with two fully CGI characters forced Davis to shoot scenes multiple times,The film featured 2,750 visual effects shots, which make up approximately 90% of the film. The visual effects were created by:Moving Picture Company (MPC), who worked on creating Groot, as well as Morag, Xandar, the Dark Aster and the final battle on Xandar;Framestore, who worked on creating Rocket, extending the Kyln prison set and constructing Knowhere; Luma Pictures, who worked on Thanos; Method Studios, who worked on creating the Orb opening and revealing its powers, as well as the holographic displays at the Nova Corps command center;Lola VFX; Cantina Creative; Sony Pictures Imageworks, who worked on Howard the Duck and creating theDark Aster shots with MPC. CoSA VFX; Secret Lab; Rise Visual Effects Studios; and Technicolor VFX. Pre- and post-visualizations were done by Proof and The Third Floor, with Proof also contributing to the creation of Rocket and Groot. 

Audience Engagement 

Marvel continues to change up the formula of the super hero film. They allow each film to fit the unique personalities of the character – Thor presented with Shakespearian overtones, Captain America as a political thriller, and Guardians as an action comedy.

None of that matters, however, if the product isn’t good. Marvel has yet to produce a film that was rated “rotten” (indicating that less than 60% of reviews are positive) by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Iron Man (91%), Iron Man 2 (73%), Iron Man 3 (78%), Incredible Hulk (67%), Thor (77%), Thor 2 (65%), Captain America (79%), Captain America 2 (89%), and The Avengers (92%) all averaged good-to-great reviews.

Guardians is the gutsy gamble to prove audiences will turn out for something weird, so long as it’s good.

On the day of the release of  GOTG. It received great attention on the social media. The new characters and their attributes have featured heavily on Facebook and Twitter in videos and graphics to establish familiarity with the audience, who also had the opportunity to explore the new universe through the Galaxy Getaways site. The cast and director James Gunn have also been pushed heavily, featuring in livestream chats such as BuzzfeedBrews and many extensive Q&As with Yahoo! and Tumblr, as well as Twitter using the hashtag #AsktheGuardians.Marvel Entertainment’s YouTube channel subsequently created a new playlist dedicated to the film, featuring the trailer and 30-second clips dedicated to each of the film’s five main characters.“Guardians” also has more trailer views than the “Captain America” sequel with over 100 million to his 77 million and “The Dark World’s” 60.5 million, a total boosted by cosplay featurettes and Lego trailers. Using search as an indicator of wider interest and awareness sees “Guardians” slightly behind the “Thor” and “Captain America” sequels with 365,000 to their 383,000 and 527,000, suggesting the “Guardians” will fall just short of “Winter Soldier,” but they should still fight their way to a total close to “The Dark World,” at around $80 million.For filmgoers now familiar with the Marvel brand, this movie marks a significant departure from the superhero tentpoles they have become accustomed to since 2008’s Iron Man. Star-Lord? Gamora? Rocket? Who are these characters, and where did they come from? Both the new trailer and the short clips on YouTube work to inform this lay audience about the film and its principal figures.Social media response to the trailer was strong, with 88,000 mentions across Twitter,Facebook and various blogs in a 12-hour period. Those numbers were comparable to trailers for other superhero films like Man of Steel and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and noteworthy for the late night time period in which it premiered. The trailer received 22.8 million views in the 24 hours after it debuted.After the debut of the trailer, Blue Swede's version of "Hooked on a Feeling", which was prominently used throughout the trailer, went up 700% in sales the following day. The line from Serafinowicz's character, "What a bunch of A-holes.", was only intended to be featured in the trailers, but due to its positive reception, was included in the final cut of the film.In July 2014, Marvel launched a viral marketing campaign for the film called "Galaxy Getaways", a fictional travel website that allows users to book passage to some of the planets depicted in the film, including Xandar, Morag, and Knowhere.On July 17, 2014, Disney Interactive released an action RPG video game titled Guardians of the Galaxy: The Universal Weapon for iOS, Android and Windows devices. The game's original story was written by Dan Abnett, and was meant to complement the film. On July 21, Pratt, Saldana, Bautista, Diesel and Cooper appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote the film and debut some additional exclusive content.On July 29, Pratt and Saldana rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange as part of the film's marketing strategy.The film is part of the wider Marvel Studios ‘cinematic universe’ and as such, follows on in many ways from previous films in this interconnected web of superhero movies. As such – the performance and audience reaction to previous films within the franchise would serve as excellent research material for the production of Guardians of the Galaxy.

The films are discussed on social media, video reviews are plastered all over YouTube, news sites and film review sites are filled with discussion on Marvel’s superhero films. There is an enormous plethora of information to gather and interpret surrounding audience reception of their films.

The audience response on twitter was positive as a lot of people expected it to be dull and something alien as people weren't aware of these characters however all of this. However there was a positive reaction to all this on twitter 

Advertise to the Right Demographic

Going along with that trailer, it was hard to escape with the amount of play it had in commercials. As usual, Marvel had ads running on television and radio. But they also were targeting audiences through social ads and channels like Spotify and video game consoles. Marvel knows their audience; they know where to find them.

Release plans
Guardians of the Galaxy  changed its release dates moving from May 16th, 2014 to August 1st, 2014, a full three months later (and two weeks after X-Men: First Class ). They did this as they didnt wanna clash with Xmen. They wanted a full month to the movie itself as releasing it earlier would have result in clashing with other films of marvel . It would have made all the marvel films suffer.Guardians of the Galaxy offers another team-up film of characters for Marvel to merchandise and tells the story of a group of aliens (Adam Warlock, Drax The Destroyer, Gamora, Groot, Quasar, Rocket Raccoon and ally Nova) who come together to protect the galaxy from Thanos, the villain teased in the button at the end of The Avengers.On August 14, Marvel released the scene of Groot dancing, which was shortly followed by an announcement from Funko that they were releasing a toy "Dancing Groot"

Digital distributions

The guardians of the galaxy was released on itunes on 26 Novem,ber 2014. It was distributed online but different channels mainly on netflix and itunes. The movie became available on torrents later in the years. 

Blog entry 4

The Long Tail Theory   - Chris Anderson

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (ISBN 1591841380)^[1] is a book by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, first published in December 2006

David Gauntlett – Media studies 2.0 http://theory.org.uk/mediastudies2.htm

Henry Jenkins – Participatory culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_culture http://www.henryjenkins.org/

Chris Anderson – Long Tail theory http://www.longtail.com/about.html

Tapscott and Williams – Wikinomics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikinomics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/ 

Terms

Blog
From ‘web log’, meaning a website updated regularly and chronologically by the author giving their views and opinions. Blogs have now become an important part of online journalism, The Huffington Post blog sold in early 2011 for $315 million.

Casual Gaming

This refers to games played online without a console, either on a PC or phone. Casual gamers do not fit the normal stereotype of gamers, most are female. Despite the name casual games can involve lots of financial and time commitment, Farmville for example.

Citizen Journalism
When members of the public engage in journalism. Examples include providing pictures or film of events to news organisations or reporting events in blogs. A key part of democratic media.

The Cloud

Cloud storage allows users to store data on a company’s servers rather than their own hardrives. This has now evolved into a service where games can be played from the Cloud (Onlive or Steam) or music can be stored and played from the Cloud (Amazon Music, Google Music or iCloud).

Convergence

Devices are no longer used for just one thing, new media technologies are not limited by how they can be consumed or distributed. Convergence means PCs now play music, iPods can play games and phones are internet devices.  Sometimes institutions plan convergence (the iPhone) but sometimes it’s the consumers who start it, Nook readers used as tablets for example.

Democratic media

The media used to be controlled by large institutions that had the money and power to print, publish and broadcast. Home computing and cheap media production means that anyone can be a journalist, film maker or broadcaster, making the media democratic. Blogs, video services, easy app development  and podcasts make it easy to produce user generated content.

Long tail

Chris Anderson defined the Long Tail as an economic state where products have a longer sales pattern when they don’t rely on shop storage because they’re either downloadable (iTunes for example) or they’re sold online (Amazon).  An Amazon employee described the Long Tail as “We sold more books today that didn’t sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday.” The long tail is important for niche items. Anita Elberse criticised the Long Tail by claiming that it’s still mainstream and mass market products that dominate internet sales.

Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is the principle requiring Internet providers to act as common carriers and not discriminate among content or users — for example, by providing degraded service to rich-media sites, by throttling file-sharing services, by penalizing customers who watch or download a lot of videos or by blocking Internet applications and content from competitors

Peer to peer

A system where content is shared between users across a network. Peer to peer can be used for illegal downloads with a central hub like the Pirate Bay linking users to other users’ content.

Social Marketing
Marketing and advertising that reaches potential consumers via social networking website, such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. They appear at the edges of users’ profiles and can be targeted based on keywords in their profiles to match their stated interests or recent activities.

Streaming

Delivery and distribution of media content over an internet connection direct to your device without being saved. Youtube and Spotify are both streaming services. Onlive is an example of a streaming games service.

Synergy

Synergy is the working together of two different institutions, often relying on each other’s expertise and reputation. Synergy has been around for a long time now but in the online age it’s evolved into something more pervasive; Vevo on Youtube, Facebook and Spotify are to work together in Europe and Fifa 12 will feature more affiliates than ever before (Real Madrid and Everton used the trailer to launch their 11/12 season kits).

Top down/bottom up news

Top down news focuses on news that focuses on groups in power; governments and business for example. Twitter and blogs now allow news to be ‘bottom up’. The revolution in Syria is a good example; traditional media has been gagged there so news focuses on individuals because it’s being reported by them.

Trending

Happens when a topic is widely discussed on microblogs like Twitter. Trending allows a subject to become big news without pushing from an established news agency. Think about Ryan Giggs, the traditional media couldn’t discuss him but it was trended on Twitter.

Viral marketing
A marketing strategy that encourages the audience to pass on the marketing material themselves. Examples include short films and clips sent by email.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web development and web design that facilitates interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It is understood to be a democratic forum, a flat arena in which all users may contribute and speak.

Internet
The world of internet as if we know of today wasnt always like this where we are one click away from establishing contact with some who's a thousand miles away or one click away from accessing the historical background of artifacts thousands year old. The internet wasnt created with the aim of making it for public use. It was develop when two super powers of the world were engaged in the race, A race so different, so difficult but both USSR and the US were steadfast on it. They wanted to battle out each other as it was a matter of prestige for both countries.

In 1957 USSR launched its first satellite, Sputnik 1.The soviets were one up against their rivals and had established their name in the history books of being the first nation to enter space. To compete against the USSR's success and in retaliation towards USSR at launching the first satellite, the United States Department of Defense created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). ARPA was responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military.As ARPA was established, NASA also came into being as the space race had finally begun

Developments kept taking place and a study was published in 1963 by Douglas Engelbart, The study focused on The work the outlines multimedia paradigms to be integrated into the Internet. Engelbart was the pioneer of setting up the idea of having a "Network" that would help the world connect.The world had already seen what nuclear bomb could do, All the super powers were coming up with defense mechanisms that would help them evade a future nuclear threat. In the US, Rand Corporation proposed a new information network that would hep the US establish a communication system even after a nuclear war. After the US had successfully launched Apollo 11 to the moon, The first host to host ARPANET connection was made on October 25th 1969 between the University of California, Los Angeles and Stanford university, Menlo Park, ARPANET was the world's first packet network switching. The core network of a project that composed the global internet.In 1972 ARPANET was started being used for emails and the term "Internet" shot to prominence.Comet was the first email software developed by the Computer Corporation of America for 40000$

In 1977 Near Menlo Park, California, SRI scientists demonstrate that a TCP (transmission control protocol) will successfully support seamless end to end transmission over mobile radio. ARCNET (Attached Resource Computer Network) the first commercial network, was developed by Datapoint Corporation. Al Gore, An american politician coined the term for the internet "The Information highway". in 1990 The three www we add before every URL address world wide web is coined by Tim Berners.

Stanford linear Accelerator becomes the first web server on the internet in 1991, The Internet began using registrations  for ".com", ".org" eg. 1993 saw CERN develop the "World Wide Web" .In  1995 the first independent programming language, JAVA, is created by Jim Gosling at Sun Microsystems. "Yahoo!" is founded in Santa Clara, California, and provides a web search engine, email service, mapping and more. Google, The internet site which we visit everyday, founded in Menlo park California. In 1999 the world celebrated the Internet's 30th anniversary, Till now the internet had over 5 million domains registered on the internet, 100 million computers connected, with creating 2.3 jobs and creating $507m billion in revenue