Marketing and campaigning

Marketing and Campaigning

A key element when it comes to the production of our horror trailers, posters and magazine front covers is the way its marketed to its target audience.

The film producers are the distributors, as they sell their films to various different cinemas which they make money off of through the amount of tickets sold. Before identifying the different elements that make a successful marketing campaigning I looked at different types of marketing campaigning already done in some films:

·         The Blair Witch Project (1999) – there marketing campaign play along the movie being in a form of a mockumentory. The posters from The Blair Witch Project was created to look like an actual “missing people” poster, which went up all around America and people are questioning the truth behind this, engaging the audience into going to the cinema to watch it.

·         Psycho 1960 – Director Alfred Hitchcock chose to close the doors as soon as the film began to ensure no disturbance would occur, but also as a smart marketing campaign as people would wonder what the opening of the film would be like, and in general what the film would be about.

·         Halloween (1978) – this film was released on Halloween. Taken by the concept of the film, it “hyped up” the fear of Halloween, as people wondered what would happen on the day, and there was a true murderer as much out on the loose.

Through this I was able to identify the major elements of a film marketing campaign:

·         Having an iconic theme tune/song e.g. Psycho strings

·         Film trailer – not reveal all aspects of the film

·         Posters

·         Merchandise – E.g. having signed actors mugs, or posters of them

·         Social media – E.g. having a movie trailer shown before a YouTube video

·         Having the movie displayed on front covers of magazines

Why do people go to watch movies?

Just by doing a quick ask around the class we came up with a few ideas as to why people may go out to cinema to watch films:

·         Squeals

·         Peer to peer sharing on films E.g. if a really famous/favourite actor was in a particular movie

·         Games turned into films – A form of Synergy used here

·         A favourite genre