How effective is the combination of your product and ancillary texts?

When producing and distributing a film, the film distributor which is usually a company that has experience in organising many different elements to the film they’re promoting at a time has a very important role of marketing the film to the general public.  They not only organise all the advertising and make sure it’s sent out to the theatres and companies; they also can set the release date of the film, be responsible for dubbing and subtitling a film if it is being distributing to a non-English speaking country and legal issues such as censorship.

Advertising and promoting a film to its audience can be extremely broad as a number of tools and platforms are used to achieve its target. Although they use traditional formats of television adverts and posters, distributors also utilise public space such as the sides of public transport and bus shelters to reach a mass amount that the distributor wouldn’t be able to reach through normal media. With the evolution of digital media and social networking, web ads have been very popular recently with distributors who are looking to reach a younger audience as well as films that have a very large target audience that can be individually targeted through a number of different websites. Letting the audience become interactive with the media through competitions and rewards before the film is released is also a key tool used by promoters so the films sticks with the audience and they are highly likely to go and see the film when its released in cinemas. 

An example of this is how TheWoman in Black held many competitions for its target audience and also made the actor, Daniel Radcliffe promote directly to its audience through Youtube videos. A more formal way of advertising is interviews on TV shows and the red carpet release that use the actors/actress as a main selling tool.

The marketing of a film is individually based on the audience the film is aimed at through the types of advertisements used and the amount is distributed. Younger audiences are aimed on more digital mediums as this is where they are more likely to spend their time, especially with adverts on social networking sites and Youtube while older audiences are more likely to be aimed on more traditional, paper mediums and television/radio adverts which can also help with the promotion of merchandise later on. Audience research is extremely important to distribution companies as it gives them a key idea to what their audiences feel about the film and how much they are aware of the film while confirming the target audience and the estimate figures that would go and see the film. An example of a horror film which had a broad target audience was The 

Conjuring which had a lot of television adverts and social networking adverts on Facebook and Twitter.

The main elements of the film that need to be clearly portrayed to the audience are important as it creates an identity that the audience can remember and become interested in. This ties in all the different promotional material such as the adverts and marketing in addition to merchandise and competitions as the companies often link all of the material together to create the set identity. Everyone working on the film and all relevant material have to be clearly aware of the main theme and the identity that needs to come across as normally on a big project like a film, many different companies are assigned work to create the best quality and most effective material possible.

Saw is aimed towards a more adult market with the 18 certificate 
and the use of extreme gore and violence. Even through the look of 
the poster, you can instantly recognise it isn't suitable for young teenagers and people who don't watch many horror films.

The Shaun of the Dead has a more open range of audiences due to the film being a comedy horror. The use of actors such as Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Dylan Moran already hint to the audience that the film will have comedy elements to it before they even watch the trailer. The tagline and the image on the poster is quite humorous as well with the use of irony that is very suited to the feel of the film.

Dracula is a more family-friendly film which many horror films don't cater for as it doesn't show much gore or frights. The poster is quite traditional and plays up to the traditional Dracula-look.

The viral campaign for ‘The Last Exorcism’ was extremely successfully and innovative through the use of an online chat room, Chatroulette. Scaring the viewer was done slowly a video of a woman would appear while unbuttoning her shirt before she became possessed and peered at the screen to which the URL of the film’s website popped up.  The film would be advertised further by people filming reaction videos which helped the film reach a wider audience.