Trailers in Film Promotion

Film promotion is the practice of promotion specifically in the film industry. As with all businesses it is an important part of any release because of the inherent high financial risk; film studios will invest in expensive marketing campaigns to maximize revenue early in the release cycle. Marketing budgets tend to equal anywhere between half or three times the production budget. Publicity is generally handled by the distributor and exhibitors.

Trailers are a foundation of film promotion, because they are delivered directly to audiences. They are screened in cinemas before movie showings, and generally, they tell the story of the movie in a highly condensed fashion compressing maximum appeal into two and half minutes.

What makes you interested in a Trailer and/or find interesting or appealing within Trailers? Are there any bad things about Trailers?

Personally, I think the best way to grab somebody’s interest is to get them hooked from the very beginning of the trailer, and for me this is by using non diegetic music, of a song that would attract the same audience as the film would as a whole, such as Scouting for Girls’, She’s so lovely played at the beginning of the Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging trailer. The film is a romantic comedy aimed at young girls from the age of 12, and the music fits perfectly with this genre, as it was a well known pop song of this time, that young girls are more likely to be familiar with than say middle aged women who are less likely to listen to the charts and buy magazines and CD’s of the newest bands.

I think picking the song that plays along with the trailer is a very big decision to make, and it may also help if the song is in the film and was purposefully chosen for the film, such as Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On in the romantic classic, Titanic. The song alone effects the audience in a way that it is associated with the film straight away, and by selling the soundtrack, this also helps to promote the film, similar to the song Ghostbusters by Ray Parker in the film Ghostbusters, and Kenny Loggin’s Footloose in the film Footloose.

The song chosen is the second most important way to interest me in a film trailer; the first is the characters within the film. If there is a film revolving around for example, two elderly men like in The Bucket List, I would be less interested in it, rather than if a film trailer revolves around a young man and a young woman, like in The Notebook, where there is an obvious connection between the two and it is made obvious that the trailer is showing a romantic film. The genre of film is also an important factor in attracting the audience, and this can be seen through typical conventions of that genre shown in the trailer, such as colour schemes, certain camera angles and edits, sound and cast and costumes.

As a drama student as well as a media student, I look at the acting ability and characterisation within film trailers in order to decide whether the film is worth watching or not. Also, if a trailer shows a title similar to ‘based on a true story’, I would be more interested than if it was a fictional story, as films based on factual events are always more powerful and have more meaning, such as The King’s Speech and Shindler’s List.

Another thing that attracts me to a film, is if the trailer shown awards it has won, or that the actors within the film have won, such as Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady or George Clooney in The Descendants. Films trailers that show an all-star cast are also very attractive to me, such as Valentine’s Day and Independence Day.