How will we attract audiences?

When producing a new film, its important to research into the genre, and to look at how other films attract their audiences. This is because the only way your going to make money, is if people are actually interested in your film and watch it. In order to get people to want to watch it, a good storyline is essential- something people will want to watch. Characters and settings must be well planned- often mainstream films starring well knows actors do well. This is celebrity endorsement. Audiences watch the film because of the people starring in it. Finally marketing is very important- how we are going to sell it to our audiences, how are we going to make them aware that we have released a new film? All these things are key things that we need to take into consideration when trying to attract audiences.

In order to see how we could try and attract audiences, I did some research into similar and existing films in the same genre as mine. From this, I could get ideas about how they attract audiences and whether me and my group could do a similar thing in order to sell our film.

1) The Dark Knight (Crime/Drama)- Released in 2008, this was the first of two for director Christopher Nolan. In order to attract large audiences, they used well known actors, for example Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. By having top quality actors in it, it uses celebrity endorsement to attract audiences. The use of famous people to draw attention of audiences. Also having well known top actors, people instantly think the film must be good, otherwise why would they be in it?

Another clever thing they did to attract audiences was use a customer facing marketing campaign. What I mean by this is that the marketing campaign was aimed directly at the audience, this is because they engaged the audiences using cross media convergence. This helped them design and build this elaborate marketing campaign.
They started by designing a website, based upon the storyline of the film, the website address was www.ibeliveinharveydent.com .

Screenshot of the website.

When people then started visiting this website, if they signed up, they were then sent out promotional packs which included badges, stickers, bookmarks etc. All of these advertising the film and getting people interested. Also they drew attention to the film by getting people to upload images of them wanting 'change' in Gotham City. Again, engaging audiences with the storyline. As well as this, they also used the 'Dentmobile' to make people research further into the website to see if it was coming to their neighbourhood. All of this was a clever way of getting people thinking about the film and increasing awareness of the film.  

Photo of promotional pack.

This carried on, with added audience interactions by the website encouraging people to get involved by uploading photos of themselves online with the Joker face paint on. Also the website got defaced, as Harvey Dent got defaced to look like the Joker, causing suspense among the audience.

Warner Bros then invited fans to follow clues, which they said were the Jokers movements. Eventually, they were given a final time and destination to go to. At this point, hundred on fans arrived in New York, at the destination set, to see a Bat symbol being projected on the side of a skyscraper. Also whilst here, fans were treated to see the first full length trailer. This sort of publicity stunt was used very effectively and helped build up tension and awareness for the film. Its something that I could consider doing for my filming, creating an online website then building up to give the fans something back.

As well as this, the film used a lot of offline advertising too, things such as posters, tokens and magazines. All of the things listed as well as the online promotion helped create a talking point for the film, it got the general public aware and got people interested in the film. This therefore helped people become interested and want to go see the film when it was later released.

It would be beneficial to me and my group to think about how we could maybe incorporate some similar things into our film in order to gain public awareness This would long term, help sell the film and make more money on it. However, you would have to consider your budget, and whether or not you could afford this sort of extensive, marketing campaign.

2) The Wolf of Wall Street (Crime/Drama)- Released in 2013. It is a very up to date film that has recently been released. To help build awareness for this film, they based it on a true story. The storyline was based around a man called Jordan Belfort who lived a very high life, after making his millions on the stock market. He then lost all his money, after crime, drugs and expensive hobbies left him with not much to show. The storyline brings many different views, whether it was right or wrong to be almost promoting the man, who is rumoured to have conned people to make his money, it got people talking, and made people want to watch the film.

It also included well known actors, Leanardo Di'caprio playing the lead role. Also Jonah Hill stars in the film as well. Martin Scorsese, a very famous and successful man directed the film. With these top names involved with the film it was another way to encourage people to want to see the film.

Unlike The Dark Knight, this film didn't use a strategic marketing campaign, instead, used lots of promotion on social media, television and posters. It relied heavily on its big names to help sell the film and based on box office figures.. this obviously worked very well!

Conclusion

In order to help attract audiences, from this research I think the most important thing to aid your film is good characters. If you can get good actors playing your roles, it helps sell your film. This is because not only do people come to see the film, but they also come to see their favourite actors. If you include this, your fan base will grow, purely because of who is playing the role.
After this I would say marketing is very important. This is because in order to make people aware of films, they need to actually know that they are being released. The best way of doing this nowadays is social media. Stats show 73% of people use social media sited, almost 3/4 quarters of the population. Therefore by advertising on social media, it gets the word around very quickly and people become aware of the film. Other than this, promoting on TV, the use of posters and word of mouth are other techniques that will help aware audiences and therefore entice them to want to go and watch the film.

Calum Tween 8282