The King's Speech, poster analysis?

The King's Speech, a British that came out on the 7th January 2011, starring Colin Firth the film gained critical in both Britain and America, the film has become the second most successful British Independent after film release, at the rear of Slumdog Millionnaire, although once the film is released there is a high expectant that the film will overtake Slumdog Millionnaire and become the hightest grossing British independent film of all time.

The above image is a promotional poster banner, this was made to advertise the film and has many features that have been purposely done to further advertise the film and also use devices which fit in with the genre of the film.

First of all, the poster bold punchy lines that are in a large font, and also in quote, this is because they are quotes by people that have been made by people who've reviewed the film such as "Majestic", the makers of the poster will be more than willing to express the positve views of people, this is because they hope that these views will influence other people to go and watch the film, because they will have reassurance that the film will hopefully be enjoyable because of trhe postive reviews.

The backing of this image inparticular has Geoffrey Rush in the backdrop, many others have Colin Firth, both of these are award winning actors, who have positive reputations, so fans of these two actors may also be interested in watching films, simply because Rush and Firth are involved.

Also these two actors are both relatively upper class actors, this would make the film appeal to upper class people of Britain. In fact the whole poster has an upper class feeling to it, words such as "Marvellous and Enthralling" this makes the poster feel very  Britsih, and the film is, very British. So the directors of The King's Speech hope the Britishness of the film, will persuade the people to go and watch the film. Also the Britishness of the poster and film is what would appeal to Americans, this is because Americans have a very stereotypical idea of British people, they expect British people to have a upper class, 'posh' manner, and for the country to me more heavily involved with The Royal Family, so The King's Speech would be a typical film that would catch their attention, and a film you'd expect them to watch.

Media-What is Distribution

Vertical Distribution: Where one individual company completes all the distribution for a film.

Horizontal Distrinbuting: Where mulitple companies do the distributing for a film. A local company will often share profits equally with a distributor.

Release Dates: Often come out on Friday, mostly because often people don't work on the following Saturday.

Marketing Campaign: This is the most expensive part, strategies include posters, adverts in newspapers, magazines, bus stops, buses.

Prints: Transportation: 35mm print costs £1000, exhibited, easily damaged.

Digital Distribution: Cheaper, send films as computer files.

The Exhibitors: Odeon, Cine Uk, Vue, Showcase are the biggest exhibitors in the UK, although there are many others.

Tron: Legacy How have national and local audiences have been targeted by Disney in their promotion of TRON.

When Disney invested £170m in Tron: Legacy, it was a very move, since the film does not suit the usual repertoire of a Disney film, therefore some believed the film would not increase viewing figures and make a huge profit. The original Tron was seen as some what of a disappointment, because it only made a £16m profit, though it still made an impact by getting a ride at Disney Land, and also computer games were realised, this showed that Disney wanted to create as much money as possible through marketing Tron, they did by target difference audiences, such as avid video gamers, and people who take their children to Disney Land, which quite often families.

Although Disney realised that since the original, there has been a lot of advancement in Technology and video gaming, so Disney took advantage of this and capitalised by showing some of the advanced that will be used during the film, intriguing potential viewers. Disney released many advertising posters which is still the main source of advertsing a film, and disney made their posters specific to their audience and different countries, such as the UK and Japan. This shows Disney's intent to market he film to all different countries and traget audience.

Another method Disney used to promote Tron: Legacy was targetting the computer crowd and users of 'Facebook' as Disney created a Tron: Leagacy page on the site, this was then advertised on Facebook, making all users of the website aware that Tron: Leagacy was hitting the cinemas soon.

Also during the pre-film adverts for other anticipated and hyped Disney films such as 'Alice in Wonderland' the advert for Tron: Legacy was played, so Disney had now targeted people who were intererested in films such as 'Alice in Wonderland' and by making them aware of Tron: Legacy Disney now hoped these people would also go the cinema and watch Tron: Legacy, and Disney would also show the trailer before a film of a different genre, because of the stereotypical idea that they would not know about a thriller such as Tron: Legacy.

Also Disney created some toy's of the characters from Tron: Legacy, this helped Disney's marketing because it made the film a Four-Quadrant picture, since children wanted to invest in the toy's, and when they saw their toy's on the televison, they wanted to go and watch the film , making it a Four-Quadrant picture, because quite often the childrens parents would take their kids to watch the film.

What it Film4's remit? (it's reason and purpose for being)

Film4 is a British film-making company, in association with channel 4 who license the films made by Film4, one main purpose of Film4 is to create British films that the British people can actually relate, such as how the public could relate to the racial discrimination during the 1980's portrayed by 'This is England'. Unlike some overexaggerated US produced comedy film such as Stepbrothers. Also Film4 give opportunities to young and upcoming actors who're struggling to find work, which would be good because some of these can go on to reach new heights, which was the case for somebody such as Stephen Graham, who played Combo in This is England, and is now in America playing the lead role of Al Capone in drama Boardwalk Empire. Another exanple of this would be Robert Carlyle who starred in Trainspotting and has also appeared in other 'Cult' British and has now become a household name in Britain.

Avatar

The story of success wih Avatar

The 2010 blockbuster film Avatar turned out to be a phenominal success. Although it used some different methods to some other typical blockbusters, such as it wasn't full of massive 'A-List' stars so it didn't have the masive effect where the film people wanted to watch the film just because of the actors and actresses that are involved and starring in the films.

First off the film is based around the planet that is called ‘Pandora’ and the main plot of this that the marine Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington who isn’t actually a massive star himself) and the story is that he must decide whether he part of mankind and the human race or whether he is to stick to his roots and stay and stay on the moon planet Pandora, which he still has strong ties with. Whilst on the subject of actors, virtually the whole cast of the film was unknown was when the film was made, but quite obviously many of them became well known due to the success of the film. This proves why the film used ‘untraditional’ methods to become a success.

It has to be said that one of the major reasons why Avatar had was a great success because of the size of the budget that director James Cameron had been given, which was an estimated $310 million, therefore this gave Cameron the opportunity to use many high quality special effects throughout the duration of the film. Maybe a reason why Cameron was given a enormous budget was because he was the director of the ‘Titanic’ which was a blockbuster film. So Cameron would have been trusted to create a spectacular film. Plus he made the film a four quadrant picture so I could stereotypically appeal to male and female genders who are both young and old, it also had 12A rating and plain 12, this attracted more viewers as now parents would be able to legally take their children to watch the film.

One other gigantic reason why Avatar was a massive economic success was because it was the first major blockbuster film that was available to watch in 3D, this attracted and many intrigued many viewers who wouldn’t use usually watch film like Avatar just so they can experience a film in 3D.

The distributors also managed to give the film a high amount of advertising, using both above and below the line techniques, below the line when they would advertise the film on the side of social network websites such as Facebook, they had been working with google and knew if people had been researching the film, so now they could give the film further advertisement. Above the line advertisement was used in scenarios such as in some specialised cinemas 15 minute previews of  the film were being shown, this worked because it tempted viewers to watch the film as the preview had made readers interested in what would in the whole of the film.

Altogether Avatar was a monstrous success, as it’s expenditure was $310 million, the overall profit that the film made was an astounding $760,505,847, so it’s proven that the film was a massive success and talks of a sequel are in order, so just to repeat one more time, the film was a huge success.

 

The Film-Kick Ass!!

The film Kick Ass is based on the Marvel comic books Kick Ass, it was relased in the United Kingdom in April 2010. The films actual director throughout was Matthew Vaughan, although worldwide famous actors like Brad Pitt played parts in directing the film. To compromise for making the film the producer Michaeal Vaughan had to change the basis of the film, pretty much he was told he wasn't allowed to give the film a sad ending if he was going to make the film. So in one of the final scenes when Dave Lizewski told Katie that he was he in the mood for having sex her, as he'd had a thing for her for many years, in the comic she told him to go away, and never spoke ho him, whereas in the film he was forced to make Katie take Dave up on his offer and said she actually wanted to have sex with, and their relationship built form there. Vaughan was forced making this ending a reality against his will as he actually wanted to give the film a sad enging. which resulted in an issue with producing the film itself.


The film was based on the American Marvel comic books, when they realised they wanted to use one of the characters from the film they were struggling to get the copyright and funds together to be able to pay Marvel to even be able to use one of their lower card characters, they were struggling to even get a 'C-grade' character This eventually led to a problem when financing the film, as distributors etc. weren't sure why this film starring the the lesser known Marvel chracters as it's main faeature would bring the audience and the money in.

Controversy surrounding the film, was the amount of explicit language and voilence used by the films young cast. First off 'Hit Girl' is quoted as saying ok you "c***" when she comes up against some criminals, this was opposed to by some viewers because they didn't young children to be influenced by Hit Girl as she was seen a hero in the film, and people didn't want children to imitate this behaviour.

A big reason why the succeeded is because the films rating did not entirely mean it was intended for that age audience because there were different aspects of the film which appealed to a wide ranges of audience, it wasn't just a film that intruiged violent teenagers, it caught the imagination of many peoples eyes and they saw a difference to other films in Kick Ass, this illustrates that unrealistic feautures in films can still be popular, and it can also convince people that comic books still have a life to lead and can remain successful.

If anything, when talking about about the music used in the film, it seems to be that there was a hint ofb laziness used when composing the music. I mean sometimes there can be nothing wrong with re-using music but sometimes the music has a lasting rememberance with a certain film, so when being reused it could just being linked with a previous, therefore giving Kick Ass less independance. So personally I believe if you get the music right then it can define your film, giving it a lasting legacy, which is one thing Kick Ass could lack.

Identify the audience for 'Moon' by using examples from the film

The film 'Moon' which was created in 2009 was a stereotypical Sci-Fi film which was directed by Duncan Jones. Straight away we can tell that Sci-Fi will take a strong interest in the film as it is set around the moon. The Film predominantly contains one actor throughout the whole sequence of the film so Sam Rockwell who has the biggest part in the film would usually straight away appeal to Sci-Fi fans because his the star in the Sci-Fi comedy film 'Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, this could mean that once again Sci-Fi fans will take an interest in the film but also now some comedy film fans may show an interest in the film and may want to watch it. As throughout the film he has the visable mans role to play (along with a computerised screen) so the viewers might have been interested in how the director Duncan Jones managed to use one actor to play two different roles and what special effects he used and how he portrayed them, most the time I believed he used a split or double screen, where he filmed two seperate shots and then placed them together in the film. The most expensive scene to film was where the two Sam Bell's were playing table tennis, it was the most expensive scene because Jones had place a computerised Sam Rockwell in the scene, and it was also the most expensive part of the filming. Quite often they used body doubles, so when you thought there were two Sam Rockwell's in the scene, you could just not see other of the characters face, so in fact they made his body look just like Rockwell when it was actually another, this was done to keep the costs down, there was an exception on the table tennis though.

The two actor that can be recognised as famous faces in the film are Sam Rockwell who played Sam Bell, and had the majority of acting to do. Other than this, Kevin Spacey who is a worldwide recognised actor, he was payed more than anybody else for his part of the film, even though he only worked for one day, and only did the voice over for the robot Gerty.

Also there wasn't a massive amount of advertisment for the film, and the main reason for this was because they didn't have the funds to do so. The Budget for the film was only £5,000,000 and this was for everything including advertising the film and not just for the filming. Duncan Jones couldn't even let his film be nominated for some awards as to do this he would have to take money out of the budget for the film and send copies of the film out. Which by no means he could not afford to do.

Although the Film 'Moon' was altogether a success, and was given the award of the 'Best Independent British Film of the Past 10 Years' and made a profit of plus £4,000,000 which shows the film was worth creating.