The website How Stuff Works helped me in my research of how film distribution works.
The highest average budget for film marketing is 'other media' which is radio, TV and billboards and the lowest is theatrical trailers and the internet. I have learnt from the data from Motion Pictures Association of America that a marketing campaign can cost up to half of the budget of the entrie film. For example if an American film costs $80 million to make. The distributor could spend up to $40 on an advertising and promotion.
The two points I am surprised at are:
- The fact that Internet is the lowest budget at 4%, I think this may be because this data is from 2007 and as we are now in 2014 things have changed and technology has grown and become easier to access where as then maybe newspapers, which have a higher 10% of the budget where more popular due to computers being harder to access.
- That theatrical trailers are also the lowest at 4%, now I think they are seen as a very important part of film marketing and it seems to be most commonly what people watch to decide whether they want to see a film. Therefore I would think a lot of money would go in to perfecting this.
Above I have created a pie chart to show the different marketing strategies used to promote films. I have found this information from the website How Stuff Works and the source of this is Motion Picture Association of America.
I also learned about different types of advertising that aid a marketing campaign, below is my mood-board. I have made this to help show the different marketing strategies for films.
In my opinion the most important is film trailers, this is because they show parts of the film for you to see, they give you a clear understanding of what it entails and can really captivate the audience; therefore think getting the trailer right is key to promoting a successful film.
Another important part for me is posters, as these can be found on billboards and buses etc, These are important because they catch peoples eyes, they can then remember the film if they thought the poster was memorable and it can tell you the genre and give a good idea of the film just from an image and some text. In addition to this I have learned about different marketing tactics. I have shown one in my mood-board and this is something called a 'publicity stunt' which is an orchestrated media event where someone does something incredibly silly, dangerous or spectacular to draw further attention to the opening of the movie. In my example it is one from the film UP where they have remade the house and balloons in the animated movie, into a real life object. I have also learned about 3 other marketing strategies;
- Press junket- journalist, entertainment reporters and movie critics are flown out to a special location for a day or weekend of interviews with the stars and creators of the film. The actors, directors and screenwriters sit in separate rooms and the reporters are brought in one by one to ask their questions. Press junkets are highly controlled environments where interviews are often attended by a publicist, who makes sure interviews never veer from positive topics.
- Publicity blitz- is the idea is to bombard the public with so many images and promos for the movie that it becomes a "can't miss" event. Movie marketers will plaster the sides of buses with huge ads, place billboards all around the city, run tons of teaser trailers on TV, place full-page ads in major newspapers and magazines, and the movie's stars will show up on all of the major talk shows.
- Viral videos- they can also release behind-the-scenes clips, bloopers and othe on video-sharing sites like YouTube. Or they can release different media clips and let the fans create their own trailers.
