Marketing campaign

There are many ways how distributors market their films towards the target audience they have chosen: One example of this is through different forms of advertising and marketing.  Often the distributors will advertise their official trailer later on at night- especially if the genre of the film is horror or basically any film over the age of a 15. They do this because a horror genre is meant to be scary and this links into the idea that night time is scary because it gets darker, therefore they believe the audience will remember the trailer because it will frighten them and will want to see it to find out the ending. However it is also due to the reason I stated before: they would not show a horror trailer in the middle of the day, as for one this would be unethical as children are more likely to be watching television, and the target audience who they are aiming for are more likely to be either at work, in college, or t university.

Another form of advertising is through billboards on motorways, main roads or in town centres and bus stop windows, these billboards and posters are usually very large and they have the official poster on it, and it will have a memorable image, which includes the release date and a memorable phrase which will stay in the viewer’s head and will make them want to see it. The image usually includes one of the main characters, if not a lot of them (usually well-known famous people) and some sorts of background were a lot is going on- as well as the memorable information I mentioned earlier.

The final form of advertising I will talk about is through the internet. Bigger studios such as Warner Brothers will be able to put there trailer or poster on popular websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, vivo and YouTube. With horror films the distributors will put their most memorable, often most scary, image on websites so that the viewers will remember that image and will be influences to go and see that film, to find out what it is about.

Another form of how distributors market their film is through popular actors- as I mentioned before with the official film posters.  Bigger Studios (Warner Brothers) will often hire more popular actors/actresses because more audiences will know them and like other films that they have starred in.  For example, the horror film Zombie Land, used two popular young actors; Emma Stone and Jesse Eisenberg, teenage audiences will know this actors because they have starred in many with successful films. Also another film such as this would be Lesbian Vampire Killers, the people starring in this are people such as James Cordon and Mathew Horne who were also the main characters in Gavin and Stacey, which reached out to the audience of 20 onwards, they didn’t really have a specific market, as it appealed to most ages.

The final form of marketing for a horror genre is the release date of the film.  Most studios will release their films at certain months to help fit in with the genre of the film. The most obvious one would be Halloween, most studios release many films around this time, from the horror genre, this is because of the denotations that come from Halloween, it is seemed to be scary, and there are lots of myths people believe around this time: e.g. withes and werewolves.  However horror genres will also  release their film towards the winter because conventions of horror films are dark and cold and the in the winter it tends to be dark and cold, the studios do this to a more fear into the audience and this viewers will get a better effect/trill from the film.

A good example of when a film studio released a film in specific months, is Halloween (the film), and for many years after they released sequels to this, e.g. Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween 3, and so on. They were released around a week before Halloween itself.

The genre of our trailer

The genre of our trailer is going to be horror. We think horror may be hard to portray, but we believe if we get things such as location, camera angles and props right, the trailer will be effective and will represent the genre well. Because we have a small budget we dont have use of good actors or actress's, therefore meaning that to represent are genre well, and to make the trailer look effective; we will have to use mise en scene that is avalible to use as use it well as we dont want the trailer to look as if a child has recorded the footage.

Horror genres are usually stereo typical. By this i mean that most horror films can be stereotyped and have stereotypical scene's that seem to happen in all of them! One of these is when the 'baddy' seems to have been killed by the 'hero' or the 'good' charachter, and then when the good charachter goes, the baddy seems to come 'back to life'. To list a few films like this of the top of my head are: The Orphan, The last house on the left, Texas chainsaw massicre, Friday the 13th, Urban explorers and the excorsist.

Stereotypes to do with horrir films are also so like when the person being 'persued' is scared andlookign around, andthen a hand touches their shoulders. This not only scares them but scqares the audience. This is often used, some scenes more effective than others, this happens in films such as The last house on the left and the Grudge.

There is also another one commonly used with horror films, this is when the tention is built and you know that some thing may happen, and you get anxious, and then a cat makes a scared noise, this is usually used to break the tention, or to build it up even more.

Alhough these stereotypes are used alot, i think that we will use them in our trailer, not all of them but some of them, this is because showing these things will make it look more like ahorror film, we dont want to challenge ideas as it may not pay off and also it seems risky when these things work well, why would we change them?

Most horror films follow a set of conventions consistent through out the genre:

- Dark/shadowy lighting, not revealing much, often can be smokey, mysterious
-Isolated location, small cottage, country, small house, lakes, creeks, isolated roads, forrests
-Female victim, often raped, hurt, murdered
-Disruption of normality, almost like a nightmaare, unreal, delusion
-Sub plot of male/female relationship, either in love, fall in love, family, friends
-Defeat of monster, bad people, gangs, etc.