Film Marketing

The film I am looking at is Miss Potter (Chris Noonan, 2007) I am going to look at the advertisement of this film.

There are three websites especially set up for this film to advertise it. They are http://www.misspotter-themovie.com/site/ (USA website), http://www.misspottermovie.co.uk/ (UK website) and http://www.bacfilms.com/site/misspotter/.

They also advised this film via posters on buses and trailers on televisions.

There is also merchandise from this film that you can buy which include:

• the soundtrack (from iTunes and Amazon)
• the film released on DVD

There have also been many different types of posters used in the advertisement of this film.

Film Reviews

The film I am looking at is Mamma Mia (Phyllida Lloyd, 2008) for my case study. I am firstly going to look at reviews by both critics and fans.



There is a review of Mamma Mia in the September 2008 issue of Sight and Sound magazine. The review is good saying that it will "leave you dancing (in the best sense of the word) out of the cinema."

There are reviews on the website imdb.com.
Two of them are newsgroup reviews.One of them is by Tom Elce, who gave the film a scathing review. After having just watched The Dark Knight he said he was sujected to a "A poorly choreographed movie musical-cum-tribute to ABBA helmed by a director whose previous body of work is contained entirely in the theatre, the film is an ineptly staged genre film to begin with". He says that the storyline was flimsey and that the actora acted like idiots. The other review was by Homer Yen who made his opinion short and sweet "Sharp songs, flat story."
The other reviews on the website are external reviews. there are lots. A few include, Black Sheep Review by Joseph Belanger (bad review), Cine Visiones by Miguel Canes (good review) and DVD Talk (good review). IMDB has also put on it's website "user comments" which are both negative and positive.

The Guardian newspaper gave the film a OK review. The writer says that it has lots of charm but it lacks cynicism.
The Times says that it is wonderful, sharp and hilarious.

"Firewall"

Director: Richard Loncraine
Year: 2006

• fast shots used- in this clip 29 shots were used
• music- fast and dramatic
• use of sound- the phone
• the editing includes the spectator
• costumes- the baddies are wearing black
• "star vehicles"- when a film is made around a particular star

other notes from lesson:

• whop is making and controlling the film/
• producers are the people with the money
• if a film is adapted from a book the author sometimes talks to the director and/or goes down to the set, eg: The Harry Potter series and Sim City.
• "conglomeration"- means
• audience empathy
• I can use my borrowed shots for high tech shots if i want to.

The website where I found some information about cult films (Donnie Darko in particular) was:

http://independentfilms.suite101.com/article.cfm/cult_films_donnie_darko

2nd attempt at summary of group work

In our group work we researched a US film ("The Dark Knight") and a UK film ("Cashback"). The amount we found out varied greatly between the films. "The Dark Knight" is a huge Hollywood blockbuster film so we expected a huge amount of information about it including advertising, gross intake and production companies used which we found out. Their marketing went as far as setting up a website (WhySoSerious.com) which slowly revealed elemnets of the film. Being a UK film we didn't expect much information about "Cashback" and we were right. The budget was low as was the marketing and the production companies used. The production companies in the "Dark Knight" were Warner Bros, Legdendary Pictures, DC Comics and Syncopy. The production companies with "Cashback" included Left Turn Films, Lipsync Productions and Ugly Duckling Films. Compared to a huge production company like Warner Bros., Ugly Duckling Productions are relatively uknown as they have less money and therefore can't support as many films. "Cashback" was shown at several film festivals while "Dark Knight" was shown at hardly any. This is unusual as you would think that the high budget film would have been shown at more film feastivals than the low budget ones. In conclusion we compared a high budget USA film and low budget UK film and saw great comparisons.