Ramblings About Movie Promotion Etc...

[mrlich]

So my youngest brother "J" went to see I am Legend last night. He said that he enjoyed the movie, but that's not what I'm worried about letting you in on. Another (significant) reason he went was to see the Dark Knight preview that he knew would be in the opening trailers. He shares my love of all things comic book, so I was waiting to hear his response to it with quite a bit of antici-pation.

He said that he thought it 'looks awesome in all ways' but that they showed 'too much' and he was bummed out about the fact that he's going until July of 2008 to see the rest of it. I couldn't help but feel his pain. This got me to thinking, and this was my response:

"Yeah - I have to say that it's an upsetting trend I'm seeing in the blockbusters these days. Promote the movies something like a year or more out from their start date. What's going to make it worse is when some half whit gets it in his head that it's because they're promoting a year out that they are becoming blockbusters. Next thing you know, we're going to be seeing promotions for "Friday the 13th part 884509897232347890459045 - This Time Jason's REALLY REALLY Dead" a year before they start.

Don't want."

It's interesting to me the ideas that this train of thought lead me to. The repercussions of advance marketing like this with movies. I mean - I know that promoting movies costs money - and lots of it - but you have to wonder. If you can keep a preview from 'showing too much', throw in enough 'mystery' to create some buzz, and start the promotions far enough out to get people talking about it wayyyy far in advance, then you're likely to get at least a small handful of zealots speaking to friends and family about the movie off and on for all that time. That gets less interested people to still say things like "Well, so-and-so, my friend, has been waiting for that movie to come out forever." - which is a great form of marketing by word of mouth.

I guess that's the point. Get enough of a spark going so that the next time (maybe 6 months out) your word of mouth network has already got enough folks into the movie that you now have a captivated audience focusing on your latest investment (the new trailer).

This concept seems to be working amazingly well for the upcoming movie Cloverfield. They had the (in my mind brilliant) idea to do a preview which seems part Blair Witch Project and made no mention of the name of the film or a release date. While many folks were commenting on these facts, they were starting this very word of mouth campaign that the producers were doubtless looking for. What's more, there seems to be an almost ARG-esque quality to the rest of the marketing that the makers of Cloverfield are doing. Fictitious 'company' websites and more have fans hyping the hell out of the film with (I'm assuming here) relatively little money laid out in advertising. (I plan on editing this post when I have a chance to look up the links to the fictitious company websites.)

Anyway - this is where my brain is churning today.

As a (I think) comical sidenote: When I was writing my response to J, I glanced at the google text ads on the right side of GMail's interface and noticed something I found hysterical:

"Their suggestions for this email thread based on the subject includes 'Meet Vampire Guys at gothscene.com' Now if I was just gay AND a vampire I would soooo click on that.

Not."

Comments

[xtingu]

Have you read The Tipping Point? If not, remind me to toss it your way.

[mrlich.livejournal.com]

I have not, though the name sounds very familiar.

[secondtino.livejournal.com]

Saw I Am Legend this afternoon. Liked it well enough -- especially the in-joke billboard of (no spoilers!) in the Times Square of 2010.

The Batman trailer left me uneasy. I really liked Batman Begins because it wasn't all explosions and set pieces (at least those aren't the parts I remember) and this trailer was all explosions and set pieces... however, I'm really getting tired of all the fanboys and their hardons for the Joker and why or why not Heath is the answer. Don't they know Cesar Romero was the answer?

[mrlich.livejournal.com]

"this trailer was all explosions and set pieces..."

I just have to hope that this is just a reflection on the fact that this is a 'teaser' to draw folks in. I'll be deeply disappointed if this movie is just a 'flash in the pan' instead of decent writing/acting.

"Don't they know Cesar Romero was the answer?"

While I agree conceptually, I do think that Jack did a rather amazing job. I have faith that Heath will do fine. I think that I've just grown to accept that any industry 'bread and butter' character is going to be played by a great range of people, and we (the fans) will just have to roll with it. Any story that has been constantly evolving for almost 70 years and is showing no signs of slowing down? Well... actors don't stay young enough to play a single character for 70 years. :)

[trotsky-nj.livejournal.com]

I'm interested to see if this follows The Killing Joke at all (It doesn't look like it) - you couldn't really get much of a sense of the plot from the trailer, just lots of quick cuts and potential catchphrases. (Nothing "Wait'll they get a load of me" or "I'm Batman", though.)
I have always enjoyed the grittier elements of the Batman series, and parts of the trailer seem gritty. And I'm on Heath's side here - I think he can make it work.

Idetrorce

[(Anonymous)]

very interesting, but I don't agree with you
Idetrorce

Re: Idetrorce

[mrlich.livejournal.com]

Care to elaborate?