Promotion both includes advertising as well as publicity.
Publicity covers all other promotional activities aside from the advertising itself which consists of paid space, for example advertisement on television, radio or magazines. Publication covers things such as reviews in magazines which do not cost anything, although this publicity may not benefit the promotion of the production for the review may be negative.
Publicity also includes interviews and profiles on a film's stars and, sometimes, the director. This would also be 'free of charge' to the film's distributors. Distribution refers to the marketing and circulation of the films in theatres. Most of this coverage would seem to be positive, for example newspapers, magazines, radio and television programmes may carry stories about the making of the film. Distributors can be confident that coverage will be positive because of the nature of the 'publicity circus'. For instance, film magazines know if they are critical of a film star they are not likely to get to interview them in future. As stars are important selling points for the magazines this would be detrimental to their sales. Hence most non-review coverage accentuates the positive. Similarly stars and celebrities only appear on chat shows if they have an opportunity to plug their new film/song/album/book.
The promotion must be affective in two ways:
- It must give the right impression about the film
- It must give this impression to the appropriate audience
Advertising
banners on Internet
TV
radio
magazines
newspapers
billboards
Publicity
trailers
posters in cinemas
website
press (tabloids & broadsheet)
magazines
tie-ins (including single, music video, script, book, the making of documentary)
previews
broadcast
festivals
premieres
stunts
Various marketing strategies include;
Stills and postcards
Publication by using various still images can be used to represent the film. By using a striking high resolution image in the appropriate way to grab attention from the target audience stills and postcards can be a effective way of publicising the production. A set of stills could include a poster image, images from the film such as actors in important scenes, making of shots and perhaps photographs of the director on and off set. By distributing digitalized versions of these still and images you can send out stills and postcards to the press via email, deliver on CD's or include a press section on the productions website. Depending on how striking and original a single image may come across, the more it may increase general publication that the production it may receive. The more colourful and unique the image, the more likely the image is to appear in festival catalogues, film reviews and general marketing. A outstanding image shown will be memorable and attract the most attention.
Tapes and DVDs
Tapes and DVDs are useful for showing a production to festivals. DVDs are common within storing recorded footage, but depending on which festival a production is sent the format may differ. Common formats include Quicktime, DigiBeta, Beta SP, MiniDV, DVCam, AVI or DVD. Its important to find out which format what exhibitors use to ensure that your production will be on display or viewed. Its considered a good method to produce screeners to hand out to people at festivals and events. A screener is the production in which people can view in advance, generating publicity amongst critics and directors alone. A DVD screener should include;
- the name of your film
- the length
- your name, address and contact details
- the aspect ratio that you want your film to be screened in - especially if the aspect ratio isn't either 16:9 or 4:3
Show reel
To emphasise organisation and professionalism, a well presented show reel including a montage of work is a good idea. Furthermore a full version of the film should be made available if the viewer wants to see a specific piece.
Press kit
An information sheet including a number of details may be necessary for certain exhibitors will require different assets, so it will be easier to obtain the relevant information that they require by simply producing this information sheet. This should include;
- Film title and Directors name
- Cast and crew list
- Duration
- Date of production
- Original format
- Country of origin
- Log line
- Synopsis
- Funding and production details
- Copyright details
- Contact details
Trailers and clips
To promote the film, a short series of clips from the film can be used in sequence to attract audiences, specifically online on social networking sites, the productions website, or any film based website.
A good example of a well publicised marketing campaign is the film East is east. East is east is a BAFTA award winning British comedy drama released in 1999, in relation to distribution and publicity East is east established itself well within its advertising campaign to reach its target audience. East is east reached its audience by promoting the production using synergistic marketing techniques where publicity would appear through a series of media conglomerates.
Various promotional campaigns were portrayed throughout the media for East is east; a notable of example of this was through television advertisement. The East is east advertisement campaign began with tactically placed commercials for the production on national television using the full extent of duration for the commercials. Channel 4 was a targeted television channel for the sake of promoting East is east through advertisement, Channel 4 supposedly contains a vast amount of programmes which are suitable for commercials which furthers the appeal for the East is east target audience, which doesn’t consist of a specific niche audience. It is also known that Channel 4 broadcasts a large range of content within its programming including the advertisements, the preamble of the remit as per the Communications Act 2003 states that Channel 4 demonstrates innovation, experiment and creativity in the form and content of programmes and appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society, this is important for the aim of the productions campaign for East is east was to establish itself about conflict within different cultures in society. The sample programming technique was designed to reach a large amount of views and obviously had a big impact for the campaign respectively.
Further advertisement consisted of radio advertisement, were airtime is purchased from a station or network in exchange for the airing of commercials. Considering advertising takes the majority of budget in terms of pre-production, radio is seen to be quite affordable compared to other media advertising strategies and furthermore are easy to conduct for radio commercials can be delivered to a network of radio stations directly from the recording studio via internet. The majority of radio listeners are those of people driving in which the East is east commercials came onto air on the radio which lasted for 30 seconds, radio advertisement isn’t known to be creative within its commercials for the obvious lack of vision etc so the commercials are direct and straight to the point to attract its audience.
To further extend the advertising campaign as well as publicity, East is east related promotional content was placed in mass selling national popular papers as well as magazines. Newspaper wise, tabloids were chosen to place advertisement in rather than Broadsheets. This is because Broadsheets are supposedly considered to be a more sophisticated text and therefore carrying less sensationalism, but Tabloids are more suited to carry advertisement for it is more popular for its readers although perhaps a lower quality of journalism and text. Advertisements were supported exclusively in The Sun and Mirror. Publicity was displayed throughout articles and reviews in the media texts accordingly, for example interviews with the younger members of the cast would be available in teen magazines whilst more experienced well known actors such as Om Puri would appear in the upmarket broadsheet press.
Marketing Campaign;
- Originally our primary source of marketing was posters. Posters consist of a image with various texts, including credits, tag lines and the film title. Posters are popular within film marketing, however due to various financial reasons our production group decided against creating posters. Instead we have agreed to produce a variety of postcards which could include stills or imagery which relates to the plot from the film. Postcards hold the near to the same properties as a film poster, yet it could be argued that for short film distribution they could be considered more useful. Postcards are smaller in size that posters, therefore for many of them to be produced and handed out at festivals and events would be an easier task. Although small in size, postcards can hold more information than a poster which usually holds, credits to the main cast and producers, an image and the film title, postcards however can hold a central image on the front, whilst holding a variety of information on the back including a credits, a description, a synopsis, URLs of where the site can be viewed further promoting publicity, cast and crew lists or any information that the production sees necessary to have on the back of the postcard.
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