Posters
Film posters are an easy way to sell your film. The collection of images on a poster can create a story of how the film will play out. The genre can also be established e.g. if the poster had a space ship in it you would easily guess that the genre is science fiction. There is normally a collection of posters for the same film that come out at the certain points during the build-up to the film. Teasers will provide little information and are used to catch the eye and just let people know it’s coming. Having posters allows for people to be aware of the film without concentrating or having your focus on the film. A good example of a teaser posters that achieve this are the Ironman, Twilight and Harry Potter posters. The reason why I choose these posters is because they all follow the same format of showing half of a familiar characters face which is recognisable to people as they wouldn’t need to focus long on to understand the message, in most cases they don’t even include the title of the film. You can expect these posters to come out around the early stages of promotional campaign but can be used throughout.
Posters can come in all shapes and sizes and it’s important that the presentation of the poster looks individual and can stand out so that people will recognise what film its showing off. As people may only glimpse at or be too far away to actually read it. This means that film poster normally have brighter colours so that they stand out while sticking the colour theme of the whole film so that people can associate it to the actual film. As for information, most of the poster focuses on the title and the date so that people know what it’s about and when they can see it, the rest of the information such as a the credits is normally really small and just to make the posters look professional and they don’t expect people to read. The title operates as a kind of logo and needs to remain consistent over all the posters and other products. The colour palette also should stay the same and the overall look be as consistent as possible.
Trailers
Trailers normally follow a pattern which relates to the genre; for example “romance” may focus on the characters’ everyday lives before they meet for a few of the shots and “action” will normally show shots of explosions a buildings before it shows off the characters.
This link shows the trailer for the film “Avengers”, a widely anticipated action film with huge promotional campaign. In this trailer it begins with shot of buildings and establishing shots before immediately switch to whole streets being destroyed, the trailer builds up for most of this trailer what the problem/ enemy is, before introducing the avengers. This is done in most of these types of actions film trailers that I have observed, They leave the resolution to the film. In action especially they like to throw the viewers in quickly and you can normally guess what the film will be like from the whole trailer.
We get a lot of fast cuts in action trailers normally along to dramatic music where the cuts land on the drum beats, getting faster as you get to the climax of the trailer where you will see the release date and other information. This is occasionally followed by a final most memorable shot or joke, in this case the final shot revealed the appearance of the Hulk as well a shot punch line which can be very good for first impressions.
The score chosen to play under the trailer is important for setting the whole mood of what kind of film this is as well as a template for the trailer to be edited around as the music is chosen before the trailer is created as it would be impossible to create a new piece of music to fit all the cuts and fades etc. in a trailer, although people can edit a few already popular songs together to play on the different emotions in a trailer. This can be seen in the trailer for “(500) days of summer”
As he becomes sad or angry or happy to music cut or fades in to an appropriate song for the shots. This has been used a lot in less heavy going more relax kinds of films where as a full score is normally used for a trailer which almost acts like it the most important thing in the world right now these kinds of trailers don’t take themselves a seriously.
Film Magazine Covers
Film magazines are another vital way in which a film promotes itself. This normally shows an image similar to one you would see on a poster but not all the information on the cover relates to the one film. The magazines are targeted at audiences interested in all films, so the image is less likely to be so focused on making everyone know what the film is about and really just shows off the character that readers are now already aware of. In most cases you will get a full body photo of a character or bunch of characters that are posing; the shots are specially taken and not stills from the film. The magazine company is also trying to attract a wider audience as that one isn’t the only thing there promoting, you can get other images on the front cover as well so films have to share the promotion. Films companies can benefit a lot by having their images on highly respected magazines and this is also true the other way round where people who are less likely to buy that magazine may pick it up just because they are interested in “The Hobbit” for example. So the magazine and film companies are helping each other out in an example of synergy.
Whole Promotional Campaigns
A whole promotional campaign can take a long time up until the film is released. Blockbuster films like “The Avengers” in particular can have campaigns lasting years. But normally promotional campaigns have a span of about year up until release.
I can categorise a whole promotional campaign with my own interest in the upcoming film “Dredd”. I noticed this film while doing media homework on the film company “DNA”. While researching them I found that they listed their next upcoming film to be “Dredd”. This was around February/March time and the only thing they had about the film was that the actor Karl Urban was confirmed for the role, which they announced at a film panel along with saying that they began filming in 2010, while I had started noticing it in 2012. About two or three months later the first teaser poster appeared this was an all-black poster with the helmet and arm of judge Dredd being visible while the rest was black. You would only really see these kinds of posters in cinemas not around in streets yet, I personally found this on the internet on the film site IMDB http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3051727360/tt1343727 which was uploaded on the 11th of June.
From then onwards there was a lot more talk and occasional stills taking from film footage uploaded to social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Not long after the first teaser poster the debut trailer was released:
This was the first trailer where we could see Karl Urban in the role of Judge Dredd. It follows a similar patterns to an action film. By first creating/ showing off an problem then introducing the protagonist, also with a collaboration explosion which syncs to the sound track . The next time I saw any information about Dredd was at the London film con where they had a panel. This was in July but I would assume they did a lot of these near the release date. At this panel they showed a 10 minute clip from the film which they made very sure no one would record so this I assume was to not let it get on the internet, this was so that the people in the hall about 5000 would feel some exclusivity and confirm views. The second trailer was then released as well as a more revealing poster of the character
This trailer is very similar to the first but reveals more of the story and is more like a theatrical trailer as it is longer and more detailed about the narrative.
As the film comes more into the public eye, magazines will begin to be used, they don’t normally involve film magazines until later when there’s more information for them to write about. Empire did an 8 page special on Dredd, categorising its history from comics to film. This shows about an 8 to 9 month promotional campaign that I have witnessed so far building up to the film which is coming out Friday 7th of September 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment