How effective is the combination of your product and ancillary texts?

The film distributor is important when promoting the release of a new film. It is the role of the distributor to determine the potential box office success of a film and then devise an appropriate promotional campaign based on a realistic budget which is about 40% of the predicted income. Campaigns vary depending on the film genre, budget and target audience however, generally they include the following: TV, cinema, radio, billboard, web, magazine and newspaper adverts. All of these must be paid for but the distributor will also seek free publicity such as TV and radio appearances, depending on the film. The timing and media mix of the campaign is carefully planned in order to reach the target audience and avoid colliding with similar films.

The marketing may be altered once thorough research has been completed. Audiences may respond to one idea rather than another and this will help the distributor adjust their plans to best target their audience. For example, they could discover that their target audience don't like to find out too much about the film in question and so this would tell the company that a smaller teaser trailer would be more effective then pretty much telling everyone all about the film.




The three posters above show clearly how different film genres are communicated to reach out to their target audiences. The poster for Shrek is bright, colourful and simple, something which children will enjoy looking at. The poster for Superbad is also simple with just the three main characters showed, their facial expressions are comical and so instantly the viewer clicks that this is advertising a comedy. The last poster is for Saw, the colour scheme is dark and the character is facing away from the viewer, teasing them into wanting to find out more. The colour scheme is very dark with typical 'horror colours' used such as the black and reds. Even the small font which says 'it's a trap' is small and hidden making the reader think more about what the film
could involve.

I think a recent viral advertising campaign which worked very well as shown by its box office success was for the film Paranormal Activity. The film gradually became more apparent through the use of social networking sights such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Information was released gradually making people more and more interested. People tend to respond well to something which they discover and which isn't seen to be a part of the mainstream film industry (even though it may be.)

THE PARANORMAL ACTIVITY VIRAL CAMPAIGN STAGES



ONE
(The first image is released with very little information, this teases the viewer making them want to know more.)



TWO
(more images released with information on the film.)



THREE
(All the information is finally released complete with interactive features allowing interesting viewers to really get involved.)

Once the film had been released they still got through to people on the social networking sights, by encouraging people to 'Tweet Their Screams' which is basically writing short reviews on the film, thus making the movie more and more well known until over half of twitter and Facebook had heard about it and has posted something Paranormal Activity related over the Internet. It was the most talked about topic on twitter for weeks before it had even been released!



Above are two horror movie posters posters that inspired my design for my own poster for our film. The are advertising the films 'Paranormal Activity' and 'REC.' Both posters use grainy, amateur images as both films feature homemade 'camcorder' recordings. They are both dark in colour which fits in well with the look of our film. Also the billboard is at the bottom of the poster just like mine. When designing the layout of my poster I took inspiration from the Paranormal Activity poster, like mine, this poster has been split up with a billing board at the bottom with spacing for the name, tagline and credits.



Above are two magazine covers designed for Total Film. It was covers designed for this film magazine that inspired my design for my own cover. On both of the images shown above and many more Total Film design the theme is very minimal with a large image linked to the feature film accompanied by a small amount of coverlines. 


To design my poster I firstly chose a screen grab from our trailer to use as the main image for the cover. This would then outline the colour theme I would also use. I chose a night vision shot accompanied by a bright pink symbol that features in our film. I wanted to use a symbol as a reference for the film because worked very well in the Blair Witch ad campaign. I also wanted the trailer, poster and magazine cover to share the brand identity for the film, hence I restricted the designs to the iconic night-vision, interlaced image. 

FOR MORE DETAILS OF MY FILM POSTER AND MAGAZINE COVER SEE
B. FINAL PRODUCTS: ANCILLARY TEXTS