Interest will be made from the ambiguous nature of both my poster and trailer, as they do not quite reveal what is going to happen in the main film. During the discussions with members of our target audience, we found that our trailer perhaps gives a little too much away about the plot that would exist in the film. However, after looking at other horror trailers, some do give away quite a lot, both Paranormal Activity 1 & 2 do this, as do many of the Saw trailers. These films are usually only used to scare the living day lights out of the audience, or completely freak them out with some face scrunching gore. However, the poster and trailer do not represent the film in this way. We stuck to our findings from our audience screening and tried to make the film as much of a psychological thriller as possible, which is how the poster and trailer represent the film to be.
It is very important that the competition is beaten in the film industry, as it means less profit for other films, and more profit for yours. A strong trailer and poster will increase profit. I think that the poster for 'The Spare Room' is more visually appealing than some of the real movie posters I have examined, especially the 'Brainscan' poster, which has been used for research into my ancillary text. What I feel makes TSR poster so attractive, is the simple nature of the image in which its set. The lonely figure simply standing, wielding his weapon waiting for his next victim. This approach is also briefly touched on in the trailer. The same character is seem dragging his fork at the end of the trailer just to remind the audience of himself, his role, and his weapon that they have already seen, and possibly will see again on the poster.
Interesting observations about slightly differing target audiences for your poster and your trailer. Do you think this is a sensible approach to film marketing? Or would it have been better to develop a more coherent campaign in terms of your advertising material? This answer is a good start but what you say needs to be situated in an understanding of movie marketing more generally, and the role of the distributor. What is the difference between advertising and publicity and promotion? How does a distributor try to ensure favourable publicity such as getting on the front cover of a moving magazine? Remember that the magazine itself would not be under the control of the distributor. The distributor would produce press packs, hold press junkets etc to try to achieve this result. Your answer needs to show that you understand this institutional background stuff. Make sure you look the launchingfilms website material and the stuff in the lovely handouts, then redraft this so that your points about your own products have an institutional context.
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