Monday, 29 September 2014

Why do we need marketing for film?



It’s impossible to simply put out a great product and expect to get financial rewards. Marketing exposes people to your product and your brand. Marketing is an almost subliminal way for film studios to make customers aware of their films. It’s not just small studios giving themselves awareness, even the biggest and most mainstream of studios need marketing. Also it helps the audience understand what tone the film is, it creates an image.

Film marketing comes in different forms, for example trailers, posters and adverts in magazines. From trailers and posters producers receive a bigger understanding on how an audience feels about the product. Theatrical trailers, the ones shown at the cinema, usually last around 2 minutes. Some films have teaser trailers which last around 30 seconds. The job of a trailer is to generate hype for a film, they will do this by showing the story through the use of certain scenes. The theatrical trailers give the audience a larger knowledge of the narrative of the film. Having a theatrical trailer gives the filmmakers a chance to advertise the film to a bigger target audience (cinema-goers).


Studios also promote through interviews and press junkets. This gives the actors and directors a chance to sell the film directly to the audience. They can create a buzz by revealing tidbits of information on the story. And in the case of the actors the can advertise their own characters.


Magazine advertising includes content that isn't produced by the studios and filmmakers. They can have reviews written by employees of the magazine to give their opinion on upcoming films. However the reviewer won't always give the film positive recognition, meaning that films can receive negative advertisement from magazines.


The best pieces of marketing create a connection with the audience. Such connection can be implemented through humour, iconography, information, plus other different ways. For example the Ghostbusters poster is extremely effective marketing because it is very iconic. The poster makes use of the Ghostbuster's logo, a very original looking image, and places it centrally, against a black background.

Outline of the Brief

For the A2 Media coursework, candidates will produce:
- A media portfolio, comprising main task and ancillary texts.
- A presentation of their research, planning and evaluation in electronic format.


I have chosen brief no. 2 which is the film marketing brief. This involves creating a trailer for a film, as well as 2 out of 3 of the following: a poster for the film, a cover for a magazine or a webpage for the film. I have chosen to create the poster and the film magazine cover.

The reason why I have selected this brief is because of my great interest in film, I prefer the film medium over music, newsprint and TV. I also believe that I will produce the greatest quality coursework and have the most amount of fun with this brief.

I have decided to create a thriller film trailer, I feel that the thriller genre is the area I would create the strongest texts.