RESEARCH: HOW IS THE CAMPAIGN COSTED

ABOVE THE LINE COSTS 

the costs for producing marketing material e.g. trailers and buying media advertising e.g. website banners, radio and tv spots, newspaper and creating an online source for the film.

BELOW THE LINE COSTS

publicity creates more awareness and interest In a film. This may include articles or interviews which are seen as 'more trusted' than display advertising. Premieres are included as they are the cost of getting stars and directors to attend which will generate more coverage from the press. These kinds of events offer fans opportunities to interact with the stars more at the red carpet to get selfies, autographs and more. 

Cross promotion: set up with different companies outside film industry e.g. food brands, drinks, clothing etc, to help promote the film to a different environment with hope of a wider audience.

in short video Williams explains that brand partnership important part of blockbuster marketing campaign and the promotions and messages that can be achieved. Every film will have the trailers and the assets that speak about the specific film, this is extremely single minded in how they communicate with an audience. 

She talks about brand partnerships and how they allow you to extend out to other target audiences and other areas that you usually may not be able to reach, this may allow the film to add synergy. 

Distributors look at many factors when it comes to the campaign release, they also must discuss who the potential brand partners may be, this may depend on the connection between: 

• themes in a film
• storyline
• background
• talent

The distributors brainstorm and identify who the brand partners may be and then leads to them going out and having the conversations with:

• established partners
• industry partners
• agencies 

DIGITAL PRINT AND ADVERTISING (P&A)

Once the distributor has seen the film and decided on both the hook and target audience, the distributor can now decide on a way to market the film. They must figure out how much money should be spent on publicity and advertising and on digital prints to send to the cinemas. 

Deciding how much to spend:

• predict how much film will make at box office

(using own specialist knowledge as well as comparing film with others of similar traits)

• how big the potential audience will be, the more the film makes 
• ticket sales

If the film has a wide appeal it can be released in multiple big cinemas (SATURATION RELEASE), although if the audience is smaller it can have a limited release.

When a film is given to cinemas to play in their screens they are given a digital file with the film, it's soundtrack, synchronised subtitles and audio description tracks. 

TYPES OF RELEASE

Most UK films are are launched on fewer than 100 digital copies, limited release is not massively supported by large sums of advertising spend. 

In 2014, roughly £350 million was spent on advertising films. Of this around £190 million was invested in above the line media advertising and the remainder on advertising production, cutting trailers, publicity junkets, materials, premieres and producing and delivering DCP's (digital cinema print) to be projected on cinema screens. 

When releasing a blockbuster film it is important to start the planning early as there is lots of pressure for the film to perform well and to ensure it achieves its maximum capacity of sales. To do so the distributor must understand the:

• audience
• hook
• theme
• how marketing and publicity may impact sales

Although Chris Besseling expands more on non-blockbuster films, the distributor must  find its selling point in the film, it has to offer something different, unique but also extremely powerful similar to Blockbuster films. For the smaller films they do not have the same marketing budgets to reach a wider target audience, this means that the distributor must be confident in knowing their audience and defining who that is early on, once they know who their audience is they must be committed to them. 

ADVERTISING 

The largest spend of P&A budget is on advertising the film, the main advertising methods used are:

• Posters
• Trailers
• Press advertising
• T.V. advertising
• Websites
• Outdoor
• Radio advertising
• Merchandise/Cross-promotion
• Online social media

If a film is fortunate enough to have a big film and huge talent and faces associated with the film, they will get them to the UK and use them as a press junket, and publicise with them whether thats:

• print interviews
• newspapers 
• magazines
• photoshoots
• covers
• talk shows
• radio 

If they have this talent they will try get them on as guests for example on Graham Norton Show which is seen as the biggest talk show in the UK and with 2/3 weeks until release they will appear as guests on these shows having the well known faces talk about the film to a larger audience that radio/tv shows provide. 

Social media is also an important way of advertising now, with twitter and instagram, the talent of the films may have a big following, if they tweet they are in London for release and talk about the film they are connecting directly to the fans and may attract a larger audience. Traditional media is also used still however social media is now integrated more with traditional media to help reach those audiences. 

THE POSTER

The film poster is to make the audience aware of the films existence and release.It is to help attract an audience and make them want to see the film and give an idea of what the film is about. It includes:

• stars
• credits
• tagline

'KEY ART', is the iconic image on the film poster, it is usually scene as the film's identity and essential feature. A good film poster catches the eye, tempts the mind and touches the heart. Triggering viewers interests to see it and see what the experience really is.

If a film is part of a sequel, the poster must immediately show this and show that is part of a continuing saga. If it's a new and original film, the poster must be bold enough to make an impact, and be able to stand out from the competing designs, messages and branding which will be seen everywhere. 

In our modern digital age, posters are produced using sophisticated software e.g. Illustrator and Photoshop. If a film poster becomes well established as a genre of commercial 'pop art' in their own right they will have copyrighted designs. 

The poster gets is message across by:

• image used on poster
• star (talent) names/faces
• sizing of specific words
• colour 
• certificate

POSTER ANALYSIS

TYPES OF TRAILER 

Film trailer is the most cost effective way of advertising in the film industry, they are shown in cinemas to a captive audience and on website, TV. A trailer will reflect what people can expect to see at the cinema, by using parts of the finished film, the trailer can be used to excite and grab the audiences attention, creating awareness and a 'must see' attitude from the audiences.

a trailer can give an audience:

• sense of genre
• what the story is about
• who is in the film
• when the film will be released

Trailers can be classified in three ways:

• The teaser trailer
• The full trailer
• The T.V. spot 
• On-set blogs posted by key cast or crew

Teaser trailers may start to show anything up to a whole year before a film opens, a full trailer may be released 1 - 2 months before release, TV spots 1 - 2 weeks before release.

TRAILER ANALYSIS 

The trailer for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is an extremely effective trailer, it shows that the film is worth going to see because of the use of edits and sound as well as the genre of the film. The film starts off with orchestral classical music with the stereotypical vision of women in this time, however it changes to an action pact film with upbeat fast pace music, showing women as strong figures and superior. This makes it different as it is set in an older time however is action pact. The hook of this film is how they strongly portray women, with Lily James being one of the main characters who is well known talent. 

The sound and use of composition is important in this trailer, as with the orchestral music at the beginning it portrays all girls to be innocent sweet girls, however with the use of guitar music growing louder as the girls walk towards the camera as a unit with weapons, it shows that they are fighting the fight rather than the stereotype of a damsel in distress. The film is also based on a book written by the famous writer Jane Austin, she will already have a huge fan base who will be excited to see the written book turn into live action. 

The sound used within the trailer for In the Heart of the Sea is extremely simple however very effective as it creates tension as the trailer goes on, it starts off relatively quiet with a faint echo, and the natural sounds of the sea and the boat moving. The lighting is dark, creating the sense of fear and danger, with low angle shots as the actors look up and look around to find out what the noise is. The hook of this trailer is the story of men at sea when they are faced with this myth of Moby Dick. There are multiple famous actors in this film, with these faces being apart of the film it will attract an audience as they will associate them with good high quality films, with Chris Hemsworth and Tom Holland.

The fast pace editing and use of incredible CGI, excites the viewer to see the film as it looks realistic with an intense storyline. 'COMES ONE OF THE GREATEST TRUE STORIES' this is a unique selling point for the film as the action pact adventure film is based on a true story, making people want to see how it ends and how and who survive this journey. 

The33 is an inspiring, heart warming true story of the struggles in Chile when 33 men get trapped under ground after working in a gold mine. This trailer is would attract an audience who may be able to relate to the film, people who speak Spanish or come from a Spanish heritage as they may feel strongly on this subject, the subject on how the government act like they care but do very little to help. 

Within the trailer they use music with lyrics in it using well known songs, these songs heighten emotion and make the audience sympathetic and care more about what will happen and how It will be resolved. The lighting is dark when underground with only very little unnatural yellow lighting, this creates fear and unease for the audience. The fast pace editing and loud screaming and crashing sound, shows the hook of the film when the distastes strikes. 

THE TRAILER MAKER

using the FDA website I did the task of the trailer maker, this task was fun and enabled me to use my creativity skills more. They offered me clips from the Suffragette film trailer, however I could put them into my own sequence and add in my own sound. I enjoyed doing this although was difficult to get smooth cuts because I could not edit the length of the clips or add in transitions.  MY FINISHED TRAILER: 

ONLINE MARKETING 

Besseling talks about the importance of digital media and how it has become increasingly important in distribution, as distributors cannot create a marketing and publicity campaign without a digital strategy at the forefront of thinking. Distributors must ensure they maintain desired positioning, digital gives publicists fantastic opportunity to engage further with the target audience/consumers on a more targeted and personal level, and make sure they really have the films narrative and elements of campaign and use it to interact and talk about current affairs and current situations, a relevant example to current affairs now that has huge coverage online from many brands and people is the Black Lives Matter movement that sparked because of police brutality against George Floyd when huge actors such as John Boyega spoke out about it publicly at protests. 

It pushes users to engage and interact with the digital content. Digital is good because it allows users and fans to create their own content to support release. Although digital use to have an incredibly small budget of about 0.5% but over the years has increased up to 12/15% on digital spend, whether that's social media, pre-roles, display adds. 

16-24 year olds are the wide majority of target audiences and are an important part of the market group as they use mostly mobile devices and online to listen to music, play games, use multiple of apps and engage with their friends and family online through speaking with them on social media platforms. This audience moves seamlessly from on thing to the next quickly and can get bored easily, so being online is so important to them. They may choose to ignore or pay less attention to the more traditional methods of advertising e.g. TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. 

Kezia Williams also touches on the importance of digital as it is an element of everything we do in our day to day lives. She states how it is hard to distinguish boundaries between digital activity and non digital as it crosses over everything, publicity, magazines, newspapers but this will also live online as well. Digital media, digital promotion, social media can reach audience through digital. The first place an audience sees a trailer in the modern day is on mobile devices, online rather than in cinema unlike 20 years ago. 

Big film franchises such as Star Wars and the Bond films are shared hugely through social media, the power of online is so potent because of the conversation that happens there is so much buzz around the trailers, this means they go viral and trend on twitter, instagram etc, people will tag each other and spread even more awareness on it. At this point marketing can be drawn in as well and put money behind it to push it a bit further to enhance the natural launch that has already happened through social media and fans. 

It is important to tailer the message for digital environment, the traditional method is adapted for this new modern environment. For an active audience who are scrolling through there social media pages there is only a few seconds to capture that audiences attention before they scroll on and move onto the next thing, within the trailer it is important to rather than start with a logo or establishing shot they must start by put in the most compelling messages of the film, who's in it, why they should see it, capture their attention before they get into the main trailer. 

Example of how traditional and digital media overlaps. 

(from the FDA Yearbook 2020)

RESEARCH: WHO IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE

Reaching Me

Every film has to be carefully planned by positioning it through the selling points by understanding of different 

• gender
• lifestyles
• activities 
• ages

of audiences available. This results in the decision on how and where a film is promoted, the film industry is a very competitive market and has to compete for audiences' time as well and income. 

Genre and Audience 

Keiza Williams from eOne, explains the importance of understanding your target audience In order to market the film.     

• what motivates them?
• interests them?
• what drives them to going to the cinema?

The distributors will examine comparable films, films that are similar to one the distributor is working with. They then create a set that they can look back at data and research to identify who the audience was for those films. 

Looking at demographic data

• male
• female
• age group

Box office data

• regionality 
• how each cinema performs 
• was there a specific cinema chain people went to?

They must also do this research to understand their target audience 

• bespoke research
• focus groups
• go out and talk to potential audiences 
• film may be an established book/game, this will have data on who is already interested
• is there certain talent that appeals to certain demographic/group
• understand core audience and persuadable audience 
• if the film is a 4 quadrant film (Film with multiple target audiences)

Chris Bessling talks about how distributors need to research to support the release strategy, as the film industry is massively high risk, there are anomaly at box office weekly as it is unpredictable. This is why the mostly rely on historical data.

The historical data helps them get an idea of makeup of the audience who saw the films, age demographics, socio economical standing, who should they be target? how comparable titles performed at box office? This will allow the distributors to forecast potential taking. 

The hook and the audience 

When completing this task I thought about what Kezia Williams and Chris Besseling said, thinking about demographics and socio-groups as well as the type of films I believe I would like thinking about my own age demographic. 

Some films I thought would be dependant on a specific person and their hobbies and interests rather than just an age group.

Reaching the Target Audience 

 

I thought about how I would market a film using the information I learnt from Williams and Besseling in the short videos. 

Marketability and Playability

Marketability is the ability for a product or service to be sold or marketed. Marketability for film is extremely important otherwise people may not have awareness of the film and pay much attention to it. 

Playability is the quality of the product or service, it is how the audience react to the film and if they are satisfied, if the audience are satisfied this will mean there will be good word of mouth and they may encourage peers to see the film. It is about the outcome of the film and how many people continue to watch the film after using DVD, streaming.

RESEARCH: WHAT SETS A FILM APART

When distributing a film, the distributors need to figure out what sets this specific film apart from the competition that are on release at the same time, to do so they look for unique selling points and hooks. 

I watched interviews of Kezia Williams Head of Theatrical Distribution at eOne and Chris Besseling Director of Marketing from Pathe UK. Kezia states that to start the distribution process they must pick out the key themes and hooks and choose what will excite and interest an audience, what are the engaging motivating aspects of the story? This could be seen during production or later when the final film is finished. This develops the film and the hooks which can be shown through publicity and marketing.












Besseling talks more into depth about the USP's and how the distributors will use them, unique selling points may include the cast, director, quality performance, reviews, awards that will be show cased to the target audience, as well as the film being an adaptation of a book or being part of a sequel or franchise this will mean that the film will already have a built in audience that the distributors can build upon. They will look for the key strengths to exploite over the course of the campaign, as well making sure they identify any challenges that the film release may face such as Roma, with the release of Roma there were issues such as the film is in a different language, it was black and white and had no famous talent within it, this meant that some people were not willing to see the film, however in the trailer they exploited the film directors name Cuaron, as he had done many famous movies and he was the unique selling point of this film. Once the distributors have figured out all these aspects they can position the film as something special and unique. 

RESEARCH: ROLE OF THE DISTRIBUTOR

I used the FDA site The Film Space to research the role of the distributor. Distribution is about connecting the films to the audiences it is the heart of the film enterprise.

WHAT?

From what I learnt from the FDA site all films must be looked at as individuals and must be handled at its own value with an individual plan being made up and not just be planned just based on numbers and statistics. The must get this right so they can ensure they distribute it to the right target audience and in a way, it will reach them. This is dependent on whether the film is a sequel, based on a play/book or part of a movie franchise. This is also dependent on who is in the film, how famous they believe the film will be if they have old established talent for example Tom Cruise or they draw attention to new talent, talent that has just been seen in a recent successful film. The distributor must look at what is the particular film genre, how similar films have performed. 

EXAMPLE: CAPTAIN MARVEL 

Captain Marvel for example had to focus on WHAT the film was about and WHAT they were trying to achieve, Marvel were trying to achieve a strong female image, so they can distribute their film to a wider target audience.

As Batey says each film has its own individual distribution plan as there are so many different genres. I looked at the distributor Working Title and looked at the different films they produce and how they distribute them with posters, trailers and more. 

The High Note is a new romantic comedy about a musician set in the glamorous world of LA. 

Johnny English Strikes Again is a comedic spy parody.

Mary Queen of Scots is a historical film adaptation.

Yesterday is a musical romcom biopic.

These are all film trailers that grabbed my attention and I myself am interested in, this is only a handful of the films that Working Title distribute and make distribution plans for, it shows the wide variety of films they deal with and how they target the right audience. 

WHEN?

Acquire film for release, it is about when the distributor is going to release the film, this is an important decision as shown in the videos Batey states that this in the UK 700 feature films are released every year, this shows the competitiveness in the film industry, and when you distribute is very important as it will determine which film is doing better, each film wants to be the best. Different types of films will be released at specific times in the year dependant on the genre of the film and when they think they are most likely going to reach their target audience, for example horror movies are most likely going to be released at Halloween, Family movies will be released in the summer as families have more time to go together and Art House movies will jostle in the market place as they want to be released well in advance to be considered for a big film award such as Cannes, Oscars etc.

Stephen King’s IT, was released In September

 a month before Halloween, giving it time to grow

 and be heard about before Halloween season.

Grown Ups, a family friendly film was released in summer so families could see this film together.

The FDA yearbook shows us films that came out in the Christmas period, these included the animated Grinch and the Nutcracker, these are both remakes of famous Christmas films that have already been produced and are newer versions or for the Nutcracker it is a remake of the ballet that is performed yearly around the seasonal time. These films are clearly relevant to release at Christmas as they have always been marketed as Christmas films or ballet. 

Often other factors that the distributors cannot control will effect the release and the box office figures, for example football matches or a change in weather because cinemas are product driven, distributors are trying to widen their target audience. In 2018 the FIFA World Cup took some audience members away from cinema for multiple weekends to watch the football. Weather can also impact as if the weather has been bad and there is a sudden change with hot sunny weather audience members are less likely to attend the cinema. 

Genre can affect timing of the film release compared to trailer as shown in the graph above by the FDA. Animated films usually will have a longer period between the release of the trailer and the cinematic release, this is to excite the audience more and drip feed them sneak peeks of the film to heighten excitement and anticipation this is done by lots of live action films such as the Avengers films. 

WHO?

Key consideration has to be made to this point. The most frequent cinema goers tend to be young adults (20’s), however in our modern world the audience Is becoming even more varied and now varies between 8-80-year olds. The largest audience sector for cinema is between the ages of 16-32, 91% of this age bracket attended the cinema In 2018, this resulted in 77 million visits. The FDA researched a growing change on viewing, by age, TV audiences are getting older whilst OFCOM found that 48% of 12-15 year olds say that YouTube is their favourite online platform for entertainment and 19% picked Netflix. This will impact distributors greatly on how they market and distribute their films. 

Audiences contain a complex pattern of consumer segments, which varies substantially film by film, week by week. Different movies can have different appeals to people at different times for example, family outings, a girls night for example seeing Mama Mia Here we go again.

HOW?

This is about what the best distribution plan is for the specific film, how is it going to be marketed? What the distributor thinks they can achieve at the box office? How much can they afford to spend on the release of the film? An example of really good distribution method is Ken Loach’s, Sorry We Missed You. eOne the distributors of this film offered the opportunity for global screenings to be made local so they could reach their specific target audience, and the people the film is really about, by offering local screenings at schools, community halls and local pubs. 

The FDA talks about the different kinds of marketing strategies. They estimate that the UK's film distributors' investment in accompanying 916 new films to the market in 2018 surpass expectations with an astonishing £350m. Half this of this is paid for advertising, using digital platforms such as social media and physical media around the UK. The rest of the money goes towards advertising in more cinematic ways such as film posters, trailer productions, publicity and premieres, digital cinema packages. The UK is a large territory for box office figures although the high costs of marketing and distribution results in the distributor gains low returns. The film industry is an extremely competitive congested marketplace this means that it makes decision making more difficult and makes planning release dates hard.

RESEARCH: MOVIE TRAILER WEBSITES

When looking for film trailers I mostly use online sources to do so, or cinema. My favourite way to access film trailers is at the cinema as the film trailers are fitted to me and my needs based on the film I am going to see. However I find that going online is a very quick and efficient way to access movie trailers, I tend to use social media platforms, youtube and other sites for example the ones below ...

iTunes Movie Trailers

iTunes Movie Trailers are one of my favourite ways to watch trailers as they offer lots of variety and option to fit the needs of a large target audience, they are easily accessible as I use mostly apple products however they are also online for anyone to use. I find that apple have a very wide range of films and often have high end production films with some of my favourite talents. Apple are very good as they don't have any online ad's which I like as I find they get in the way and the movie trailers they offer are of high standard and quality.

Youtube 

The other most common way for me to access movie trailers is through youtube, I use youtube daily as a source of entertainment watching content creators videos. I like youtube as although it has many ads between vides sometimes the ad's they show are movie trailers, this offers me the opportunity to watch a new film trailer I may have not come across if it wasn't for youtube. Youtube is a quick and easy way to watch film trailers as you can easily search in the search engine and it will come up. 

IMDb

I have used IMDb for a long time now however, usually I would use it to access extra information on a film after I have watched it such as the actors/actresses within the film, the awards the film may have received, the directors etc. Although I have recently discovered that IMDb offers a way for viewers to watch film trailers, this is a really efficient way to access movie trailers as it is very quick and gives lots of database on each film.

 

IMDb is extremely useful as it allows you to not only watch film trailers but also TV trailers, this allows a wide range of audiences to use it as some people may prefer to watch TV series' instead of film all the time. I have recently myself watched the film trailer for Black Widow on IMDb, I found that I really enjoyed this way of watching trailers as it also offers you trending trailers or trailers related, fitting to my needs of film genre.

The FDA Yearbook of 2020 has new updated information on audiences and how they use online sources such as websites like Youtube and social media platforms, Twitter, Instagram etc. The FDA show us facts about IMDB, it shows that our opinion on it being more like a database but can also be used as a website that audiences use to watch trailers as well.