Methods of Promotion

Films are promoted before their official release date in order to create hype about the film and make people aware of it. Promotional campaigns are done to try and attract an audience or often to try and get the attention of a pre-existing audience that have shown an interest in similar films. The level of promotion depends on the budget the institution owning the film has. For example, Hollywood institutions like Walt Disney and the rest of the Big 6 have the budget to create huge/global promotional campaigns such as a viral campaign asking the audience (a tent-pole audience) to do something, like the campaign for The Dark Knight Rises where fans were asked to locate pieces of graffiti in order to unlock the films full trailer, or heritage promotion e.g. a number of large posters spread globally. However, smaller institutions such as Warp or Microwave films can't afford to create huge promotional campaigns as their budget can only stretch locally, or occassionally nationally.

Nowadays, film companies often use the internet to promote their films because it is cheaper and it allows access to a world-wide audience. However in the past there wasn't this option and heritage marketing was used to promote upcoming films. Examples of heritage marketing are posters, TV adverts or youtube adverts. These methods are often more expensive than digital marketing methods but have proven to be very effective in spreading news about films.

Digital marketing is the spreading of information about a film on the internet to try and create a 'buzz' within an audience. The target audience for these campaigns is always the online community but a lot of the time the institution will go deeper than that and target more niche audiences, such as certain age groups or genders for example. With the increase in the use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, film companies are able to reach their appropriate audience easily or start trends/competitions on these sites to promote the film further.

Les Miserables (2012) film poster on a large billboard. 

Les Miserables (2012) official film poster.

These are both examples of heritage marketing for the 2012 Les Miserables film. The first promotion is done in the form of a large poster on a billboard, most likely located in a busy area of a town/city where lots of people are likely to see it.  The poster is designed to stand out and catch the audiences eye. Immediately we can see that it includes conventions of stereotypical film posters. It has a close up shot of the main characters face on it, the title is at the bottom in clear/bold font so that the audience are immediately drawn to it. The star system has been used to promote the film here as we see that the names of all the successful/well known actors are written along the top. The font is a golden colour throughout which emphasises the theme of the trailer (and sometimes in films of a certain genre, the font hints at the narrative). Below the first picture, is a picture of the Les Miserables official film poster, this is very similar to the Billboard poster and follows all of the same conventions. The same picture has been used to emphasise the character's (protagonists) importance in the film's narrative, the same style font has been used and the same actors names are used representing the link between the two and emphasising these things further in order to gain audience appeal. 

Above is an example of digital marketing as the film company has created an official Facebook page that fans can like and receive updates about the film from. The page includes screenshots from the film and hashtags that the fans can copy and post themselves, thus spreading news about the film and helping to promote it. Social networking sites are a great way to connect with an audience, they're good at creating hype about a film and allowing the audience to pass this excitement on to others. Digital Marketing allows audience interaction in a way that heritage marketing never did, now the film companies/producers can talk directly to their audience, therefore this allows them to gain feedback or opinions on the film. 

This was a viral marketing strategy to promote the new Batman Dark Knight Rises film, Warner Bros created a fake poster before the release of one of the film's trailers before the official film release. This caught the audiences attention because it was unusual so it intrigued the audience and got them wanting to know more. The Dark Knight Rises created a series of successful online campaigns and it eventually paid off when the film was released. Despite many viral campaigns promoting the film in a positive way, some can go very wrong too. For example the viral campaign for the 2012 disaster movie led people to believe that these things were actually happening and that the fake news stories created to promote the film, were actually real. It got so serious that in the end NASA had to reassure people that the world was not actually ending, this had terrible consequences for the film when it was released. 

I aim to use mainly heritage marketing to promote my film in terms of a conventional teaser trailer and poster, because both of these have proven successful in the past. I will also create a magazine cover to promote my film that will include some similar conventions to the above posters I looked at, yet it will include more specific details about the film and maybe some reviews/ratings. I may try and do some social networking promotion to try and draw more attention to my film, however the majority of promotional tools I create will fall under the heritage marketing category.