A film distributor's job is to market the film. In order to do this it must create an advertising campaign that wins over viewers and is cost efficient. The role as film distributor is a very competitive market and there are hundreds, if not thousands of film distributing companies all over the world.
This job can be very long and the price of a marketing campaign could be budget busting, but done right, and the film will make a large profit. The advertising campaign must be a very different one to others. It needs to be unique in itself and give the film its own identity on the marketplace. These include, teaser trailers, theatrical trailers, preview screenings, billboard ads, radio ads, film posters, magazine interviews and advertisements etc. There are countless ways to advertise a movie, and the role of the film distributor is to decide which ones are best for that specific movie.
Highly rated blockbuster franchise movies will market their movie in pretty much all of those ways, no matter how expensive. This is because they know that their movie is popular, and they know they will make a profit no matter what. The bigger the hype, the larger amount of people want to see it.
Movies such as Toy Story 3, Harry Potter 7, and Shrek 4 all had big success in theatres due to the amount of hype about the movies. Toy story 3 especially due to its long awaited return.
These films all aim their advertising at families. They show the trailers in the daytime, anytime really, usually when the kids are coming home from school, have billboards put up for long periods of time and have plenty of hype in the newspapers and magazines.
However, there are movies that have to watch the advertising schedule. These are usually violent, action packed movies, and the trailers are pictured after watershed or on selected channels. They also have to be careful where they put the billboards too as they could scare children or offend parents. Horror also falls into this category, as there are barely any billboards ever put out, unless they conceal the scary elements through enigma.
These are movies such as A Nightmare On Elm Street, Or The Ring, or the popular Saw franchise.
Brand identification is an important factor of a campaign. Usually, the more high budget, popular franchise movies would produce merchandise for fans to buy. They would usually only produce this merchandise if they believe that it will generally be bought. For example, the Chucky movies created toys of the doll himself, along with other characters they created for extra advertising, and a bonus for the fans.Thinking of the fans goes along way in advertising, as it makes them feel part of it.
Viral campaigns are deliberately based on exploiting the movies "spoiler" sections to an audience, by the audience. For example, fans of the movie create these 10 second ads that help promote the movie, usually showing the ending in a flash. In one case, Paranormal activity 2 was part of a viral campaign where these tiny ads were created showing the main antagonist, Katie appearing in the camera around the house, when she comes at the end. In another case, people made myspace pages of characters in the movie to help promote the movie and its main characters, being on one of the most popular social networking sites in the world will obviously benefit the movie, creating more fans, and a word of mouth campaign along side it starts up.
My Marketing Campaign -
I have branded our film as a 15.
It contains frightening moments of horror, it is jumpy in places, it's true to life (or so it says), violence and swearing. However, i wouldn't say that it should be anything more than a 15. Movies in the past such as the above mentioned Paranormal activity, have been called "Most frightening movie ever" and such like, and it was only branded a 15.
For the images above, we decided to use two unseen images, not from the trailer for the magazine and the film poster. This brings more of a variety to the marketing campaign, and shows some sort of enigma too, as the audience are clueless as to where the images have come from. The images are also extremely relative to the trailer. This is because they contain the antagonist, and they were shot on filming day, where we were all in the horror mind, focussing on our own piece, not just taking a random shot.
The darkness in the film poster goes exactly parallel with the darkness used in the trailer. The use of enigma is a main part of our film as nobody ever finds out why this guy is here, or even who he is. The darkness helps this fact, as we cannot see who he is, any of his features, or even what he is wearing. The way that the chandelier intrudes the image also gives the mysterious effect, relating to the rest of our marketing campaign. The audience are also seen as clueless on the magazine cover too, as the antagonist isn't pictured, yet his mask is off and his gun is on the table. This could connote that the films conclusion sees his final resting place, or that he has finally escaped, or even that he is making himself at home in the house. More enigma.
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