Marketing Of Films

I researched some successful ways to market films as this is the starting point as to whether a film will become well known before it's release. In the preliminary stages of producing a film, the film company will undertake a large amount of audience research in order to find a potential gap in the market, or just discover what the consumer wants. Once the company has conducted this research, collated and combined the results, they can then start on the product. However, in order for a product to sell, it must be marketed well, so that everyone inside and outside their desired audience pool know about the upcoming production and will put money into it when it is released. If you a film is marketed well, this could be by; advertising the teaser and full-length trailers on television and before films are played at the cinema, create movie posters and have them strategically located where a a lot of people will see them (roadside bus stops, on the side of buses, busy shopping centres etc.), create a website which would be advertised on both the trailers and posters for the audience to visit to get a further in depth look at what the production will be about. This can all however, be influenced by the audience research conducted at the beginning, as it may turn out that only a small percentage watch television or go to the cinema to see films regularly so they may have to consider some other ways to market their production.

In order for my production to be a success, I must too use what I discovered in my audience research discover the best way to market films for my particular target audience.

The use of Facebook to market films Conventions - Display photos - User Information; Friends General Public - Administrators - Advertising Companies - Privacy settings~ user can control visible information - Free for users - Pay per advert - Instant messaging - Global community - Levi Strauss- binary opposites - Isolating activity but part of a global community (social) - Elements of blogging - Games - Can personalise homepage (MySpace) - Add music - Interaction via music The MySpace and Cloverfield Epidemic Before the film and before even the trailers had been created and released to the public the production company, Paramount Pictures, set up individual MySpace pages for the characters of the film. After making their profiles public and adding thousands of people all of whom believed that these people were real, they started making posts about some of the events that could have happened leading up to the beginning of the film. The effect of doing that, was so that the public and their followers on MySpace believe that they are real. This had the snowball effect of; when the public watch the film, and see their 'friends' from MySpace in it, with similar events happening in the film to the posts on MySpace, they would believe that these events were really happening- along with the use of a handheld camera used throughout the whole film created a huge sense of realism for the audience. Strengths of marketing this way; -It's cheap for the production company; No cost to establish/set it up No cost for employing a specialist to do it, as it's also fairly easy to use - As it's on the Internet, it's easily accessible for both the audience and the user/creator (for changes etc) Weaknesses of marketing this way; - Easy to lose all information - Can be time consuming if a lot of editing is required