RESEARCH: HOW IS THE CAMPAIGN COSTED?

Above the Line costs: These are known costs for creating marketing material and buying media advertising and creating an online presence for the film 

Below the Line Costs: Publicity builds further awareness and interest in a film- and authored articles or editorial interviews are something more 'trusted' than display advertising, which is paid for. With premiers, the cost of getting the stars and director to attend and hopefully generate press coverage all have to be covered without any guarantee that the press will write about the film. Such events offer special access to film stars for fans waiting alongside the red carpet for selfies, short videos and autographs. 

In the short clip Kezia Williams talks about Brand Partnership and how they are an important part of Blockbuster marketing campaigns and the promotions and the messages that can be achieved. 

 -On any film you have the trailer, you have the assets that purely speak about the film, they don't deviate from that, they're single minded in the communication they have directly with the audience and showcasing how fabulous a film looks. 

- With a brand partner you can extend out in other areas that you wouldn't necessarily get to reach; they might be able to add fantastic synergy.

 - As a distributor it is important to sit down early and discuss who the potential brand partners might be- it might be that their potential connection between: 

• The themes
• The Story lines 
• The background 
• The talent 

- it's about brainstorming and identifying who those potential brand partners might be and then going out there and having those conversations with: 

• Established partners 
• Industry partners 
• Agencies 

 

Digital 'prints and advertising' (P&A)

 After watching the film and having decided on both the hook and the target audience, the distributor is now in a position to decide on a marketing strategy. They must determine how much to spend on publicity and advertising and on digital prints of the film to send to cinemas.

 

How do they decided what they are going to spend? 

 - They have to credit how much they think the film will take at the box office 

- They have to consider how large the potential audience could be

- How much money the film will generate in cinema ticket sales 

 

Today, cinemas booking a film to play in one or more of their screens are supplied by the distributor with a digital file containing: 

• The film 
• The soundtrack 
• Subtitles 
• Audio description tracks 

 

Task 1: Prints and Advertising 

Types of release

Most films release in the UK are launched on fewer than 100 digital copies. Only 5% of films are released with over 500 copies. 

Kezia Williams talks about blockbuster films, she states that marketing a blockbuster film is a unique challenge and a fantastic challenge to have

- Blockbusters are huge films that fill a very important roll so there is a lot of pressure for the title to perform and to ensure it really achieves its maximum capacity at the box office 

- It is important to start early and understand: 

• The audience 
• The hook 
• The theme 
• The roll marketing and publicity will play within 

 -It's about going out and talking about the film to different partners and selling it. For publicity it is about the pitch and similar for marketing. 

 Chris Besseling then goes on to talk about non-blockbuster films 

- You have to find a way in making sure non-blockbuster films find it's place in the must see film for your target audience. It has to be seen to be offering something different, something unique, but equally as powerful experience to the Hollywood blockbusters. 

 - The key thing is about knowing your audience and defining who that is early on, sticking to targeting them in everything you do. 

 - Non-blockbuster films don't have the marketing budgets to be able to reach all the audience segments, they need to know who their audience is and be committed to going after them 

 

Advertising 

The largest 'spend' of any P&A budget will be on advertising a film. In the UK, media advertising is very expensive. The main advertising avenues open to any distributor are:

• Posters 
• Trailers 
• Press advertising 
• TV advertising 
• Websites 
• Outdoor 
• Radio advertising 
• Merchandise/Cross-promotion 
• Online social media 

Mark Jones is the film Distribution and Publicity Consultant; he talks about advertising your film. 

 - If your fortunate enough to have a big film with well-known names and faces attached and can get them to the UK, they tend to do lots of press work and publicity such as print interviews: 

• Talking to newspapers and magazines 
•  Photo shoots- being on the cover 
•  Being on the radio or TV programmes 

- Within 2 or 3 weeks of your film coming out you want to see that your talent associated with your film are guests on radios and tv shows, on magazines talking about the film 

- Social media benefits distributors as if your talent has a large social media platform they can tweet about the film and talk about it to their fans directly. 

- Finally, the premier, distributors have a range of traditional media, digital media outlets in terms of publicity advertising to help market the film. 

The poster

The image on the poster must

• Make us aware of the existence of the film 
• Make us want to see the film 
• Put across ideas of what the film could be about 

 - The iconic image or design in a film's poster- the so-called 'key art'- is central to the film's identity and an essential feature of it's release campaign. What does a great poster do?: 

• Catches the eye 
• Tempts the mind 
• Touches the heart 
• Arouses the viewers interest in the experience promised 

The Avengers film Posters include strong vibrant colours with the main characters the face of the posters 

 - The graphic designers challenge is always to find a focus, a clear distinguishing concept that can faithfully encapsulate- even immortalise- the feeling, atmosphere and promise of the individual film. 

 - If the film is a sequel, its poster must immediately make it recognisable as part of a continuing saga, if its an original work, the poster has to be bold enough to cut through, from scratch, the competing designs, messaging and branding that are increasingly ubiquitous online, in print, on outdoor panels. Whilst evoking a strong sense of what a particular film offers- its genre, key characters and setting- the poster must generate interest, or even excitement, without revealing too much. 

 - It may transport the viewer into a key scene from the film conjuring up the tension felt by the characters involved. Or it may largely be a montage of the principle cast with their consumers giving clues to their particular roles. 

 - Mandatory credits must be incorporated in their due proportions. 

 - Illustrations or paintings were commonplace in film poster artworks up to the 1980s. 

 - In our digital media age, posters are often creating using sophisticated software such as Illustrator or Photoshop. In any event, film posters are well established as a genre of commercial 'pop art; in their own right- copyrighted designs to cherish, savour, remember for a lifetime, collect and even share 

 - Posters get there messages across in a number of ways:

• The image or images used on the poster
• The use of 'star' names/faces 
• The size of specific words on the poster 
• The use of colour 
• The graphic style of any words used on the poster 
• The certificate 

Task 2: Poster Analysis 

The Trailer

The film trailer is probably the most cost-effective advertising technique available to the film distributor. Showing in cinemas to a captive audience and on websites and TV spots, a trailer can reflect, through the medium of moving image, what people might expect to see at the cinema. 

- By using extracts from the finished film, the trailer can excite an audience, create awareness and also develop a 'want to see' attitude amongst cinema and TV audiences 

- The trailer works through a combination of moving images, graphics and voice over to give audiences a sense of the 'narrative image' of the film. It can give audiences a sense of:

• Genre 
• What the story is about 
• Who is in the film
• When it opens 

- Shown in a cinema, and before a film which might be attracting the same target audience, the trailer is a powerful medium which reaches committed cinema goers and persuades them to return to the cinema experience. 

Trailers can be classified in three ways:

• The teaser trailers 
• The full trailer 
• The TV spot 
• On-set blogs posted by key cast or crew 

- Teaser trailers might start to appear in cinemas anything up to a year before a film opens. The full trailer will probably appear between one and two months before a film opens. Tv spots tend to be on screen a week or two before the opening of a film or just after a film has opened. 

Task 3: Types of trailers 

Task 4: Trailer analysis 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 

The trailer for Pride and Prejudice and zombies is a really interesting and well-done trailer, the use of edits and sound as well as the genre of the film would really make people want to go and watch it. The hook of the film is how they strongly portray women- making other women want to go and watch it, with Elizabeth Bennet played by Lily James a well-known actress from previous movies such as Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, Cinderella and Baby Driver. The film begins with orchestral classical music with the stereotypical women, but rapidly changes to an action pact film with upbeat fast pace music, this shows women as being the strong figures. The sound and use of composition are important in this trailer, as it begins it portrays all girls as being very stereotypical with orchestral music over the top. However, with the use of the guitar music gradually becoming louder as the girls walk towards the camera as a group of strong, powerful women.

In the Heart Of The Sea

There are multiple famous actors in the film In The Heart Of The Sea, with these talents being the face of the film camping it will attract an audience as they will associate them with well-known, high quality actors such as Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland. The hook of this film trailer is the story of men at sea when they are faced with this myth of Moby Dick. The sound used within the trailer is extremely simple but very effective as it creates tension. The unique selling point they have used is stating that it is a true story so people will be more interested in it and how its end and who survives the journey ‘comes one of the greatest true stories’.

The 33

The 33 begins with soft orchestral music which really touches the heart, when the disaster begins it uses well-known music with lyrics such as ‘saying something’, The 33 is a true story of the disaster in Chile when 33 men are trapped under ground after working I a gold mind, the tension is high and the audience are feeling sorry for the people involved making them want to watch the film. The Diegetic sound in the trailer is used to allow the audience how the 33 men underground are feeling and emphasises the audience emotions. 

 

Task 5: The Trailer maker 

Using the FDA website I did the task of making the movie trailer using scenes from the movie suffragettes. I found this task fun and allowed me to play around and make it different in my own way. To watch my trailer click here

When making a trailer there is a lot of debate about how much you want to tell and give away about the story. 

What they try and do is capture a feeling or emotion that a film offers within 2 minutes, in the same way a blockbuster would showcase all of its big stunts and visual effects to show that is going to be a massive spectacle on a big screen 

Making a trailer is about trying to create a similar response to the film that people will get when going to watch the film, you don’t have to tell the whole story or put the best bits in, it’s about conveying the same sense that the film does. 

On-line marketing

On-line marketing of a film allows distributors to access an increasingly fragmented audience. 16-24 year-olds have more and more calls on their 'entertainment' time. The majority of this important market group are online using mobile devices to listen to music, play interactive games, using multitude of apps and engaging with their online friends through social media. This is an audience, a generation that moves seamlessly from one thing to the next, and being online and connected is so important to them. They may not pay attention to more traditional methods of advertising- television, radio, newspapers and magazines.  

 

- Digital media has become increasingly important in the film industry, these days you can’t start thinking about marketing and publicity campaign without having a digital strategy at the forefront. 

 

- The perception of the film is very much shaped these days within the digital space and when social media provides a platform for a million different voices and opinions, they have to work really hard and be very careful to make sure they maintain their desired positioning within that space. 

 

- On the flip side digital media gives marketeers and publicists, a really fantastic opportunity to engage with consumers on a more targeted and personal level. To really have the films narrative, the elements of the campaign interact and talk to current affairs and current conversations instantly. It can really push users to engage with their digital content, fan and users generate their own content to support their release. 

 

- Digital advertising has had an increase in budget, whether its spending on:

• Ads 
• Socials 
• Search 

there definitely starting to replace the traditional media platforms: 

• TV
• Press
• Radio

that were used to promote movies. 

- Digital is hugely important as an element of everything they do, it’s hard to distinguish where the boundary is between digital activity and non-digital, its crosses over everything they do. The audience can be reached through digital in a huge amount of ways- it is considered in everything that is done. 

 

- Mobile and tablet devices are so ubiquitous in the audience and they are engaging with content on them on a daily basis so it is most likely the first place the audience sees your trailer rather than in a cinema. 

 

- The consideration of the online debut of the trailer is really important in ensuring its out there. 

 

- Considering:

• Social media 
• Apps 
• Websites 
• Working with exhibitors on their online offering 

is so important. The power of online can be so potent because of the conversations that happens digitally around a piece of content, when a trailer breaks with a certain amount of buzz around it- you’ll see it:

• Trending on twitter 
• All over Facebook 
• People tagging each other on the trailer post 

- Marketing can come in here so they might consider to put a bit of money behind that and work with your partners to really enhance what’s happening naturally in the publicity effect of a certain launch. 

- A digital campaign will look at lots of different ways of engaging this age range- from specific websites to games for mobile devices to special Facebook or instagram pages- feeding on the hunger to find out more and more about movies. 

- There is need to interlink these various digital platforms. Although, on a mobile device there might be a clip or trailer to download, and at the ned of the clip it might say 'To download more of these' or 'to win the chance to do something, visit the website', they are using viral approaches to spread the word about the film 

Social networking platforms include:

• Facebook 
• Twitter 
• WhatsApp
• Snapchat
• Youtube
• Google+
• Pinterest 
• Tumblr
• Instagram

These enable digital campaigns to reach specific audiences. When marketing a film the distributor involved may use the account and bulletin facility to provide information such as:

• Release date 
• Images 
• Trailer 

-It is really important to tailor your message for the digital environment and the traditional message is being adapted to suit that environment better so for an audience potentially scrolling through there Facebook or twitter news feed you only really have a few seconds to capture their attention before they scroll on. 

-When a trailer is in the news feed it’s really important that you start with the compelling messages for that trailer. So perhaps putting a smaller part of the trailer in front of it so the audience knows who’s in it and why they should go and see it and just capture their attention before getting into the main trailer. 

 

-It’s still important to engage with the audience in the real world and traditional media still plays a very important role within a film campaign. Often the very exciting and interesting opportunities and activities that you can work upon are ones that cross over. 

-These platforms allow users to share their experience and share with their friends and connections. A significant multiplier effect for a digital campaign 

-In essence the distributor is trying to build a 'digital world' for the film to exist in, and to create what are called 'digital touch points' with as many different entry doubts for audiences to find out about a film as possible.