Film Marketing

“2009 marked a watershed year for digital 3D technology in the film industry.”

I bought the book Introduction to Film Studies by Jill Nelmes. It’s a very interesting and extensive book that covers many topics on the film industry. I want to talk about certain parts of the book that relates to my project and topics that also generally interests me.

There was a section in the book on the media and marketing process within the film industry; this is something that I never really thought about but is a very important part of releasing and selling films. It talks about the marketing for Jurassic Park in 1993 where their main methods of marketing were traditional such as billboards, merchandise, posters etc. Whereas modern films today, there is a whole new way of marketing through the web; this includes several teaser trailers, then the actual trailers, online interviews with the cast, online behind the scenes, etc. Through the use of the Internet, it creates a fan base before the film is even released as like-minded people can get together to discuss the film and express their excitement for it.     

Jurassic World (2015) had a very interesting method of marketing; it created a website designed just like a zoo website would. The website includes a park map, plan your visit page, information on all the dinosaurs they have within the park and even a live enclosure camera where you can watch what is happening within the park. There is also a separate website for the parks sponsors, Masrani; which includes information about the company, its investors and even have a careers section.

This created a lot of hype and excitement within the fandom and also helped create new fans who never seen the original films. The website built anticipation for the audience as at certain dates a new part of the Jurassic World website would open up such as the plan your visit section. This creates a new cinematic experience to filmgoers around the globe as they get to know the backstory and information about the film and the park before the film is even out.     

“The web spreads the word, it generates loyalty, and it pinpoints the fan base… It showed us that, for marketing, it can be so much more potent than traditional media.”

-                      -       Stuart Ford

The only thing about new media and marketing is that it is very expensive and most filmmakers planning on creating a blockbuster have set a budget of millions just for marketing alone. For the creation of Avatar, the production costs were budgeted between US$ 280 million – US$ 310million and the budget for marketing the film was US$ 150 million. This is a huge amount of money for a film, and it must be successful, as it needs to create at least US$ 460 million to break even. Fortunately, Avatar made in in worldwide box office gross profit (to 2012) has been US$ 2.75 billion. Other films have not been so profitable, such as Noah (2014), which had an overall budget of US$ 130 million and only created a worldwide gross profit of just over US$ 360 million; which in Hollywood film terms is barely breaking even. There are different reasons why this film wasn’t very successful; there was racial controversy with the film as it was deemed white washed by audiences as well as the film being banned in the countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Indonesia as it is seen to be contradicting to the teachings of Islam and the portrayal of prophets such as Noah is forbidden.

The book towards the end of each chapter asks questions and I’ve written down some below that I think are insightful and will help me on what else to question during my research.

How does the immersive quality of 3D in Avatar change storytelling?

What role does computer graphics technology play in creating a blockbuster?

Will immersive technologies like 3D and multichannel sound become the new standard for all science fiction blockbusters?

Overall, I have learned a lot about marketing from this book, there is plenty to discuss that would be too much for one blog post. Therefore I will continue reading and quoting from this book wherever I feel is appropriate and it will add to my research.