Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is what it says, advertising a film through digital means such as using social media or web advertising. Digital Marketing can often be used as a tool to get fans to do all the advertisement, for example if a fan saw some film content they saw on Facebook they would likely share it with their friends who in turn would get hyped about the film.
Digital marketing differs from heritage marketing in the way it reaches out to it's audiences, heritage marketing is given to the audience through posters and trailers in ways that audiences view them without having to work (push), digital marketing however is accessed by the audience (pull)
For a good example of digital marketing I am again going to turn to the 2012 Hunger Games film, they created their own form of site Capitol.pn, this contained content and adverts relating to the hunger game film along with other activities that would feature fan work to get them to help advertise their film.

Heritage marketing

Heritage marketing is the original and arguably the more popular of the two main types of marketing; it consists of the more traditional marketing techniques, such as film posters or advertisement in more physical areas of the media such as magazines , and more crucially cinema film teaser trailers which are normally the first indication of a new film coming out and can been shown years before the film is fully released.
A very simple example of heritage is this simple film poster which would have been sold pre the release of the Hunger games in 2012.

Why do film distributors promote ?

Film distributors promote their films through a variety of methods and techniques; they do this for one simple purpose, to attract more people to watch their films and thus increasing their overall profit, it’s quite simple the more people wanting to watch a film the more tickets brought, more merchandise purchased and more DVDs sold this all adds towards the films overall gross profit. In this the film industry is really the same as any production area.

Definition of Genre

Genre the French word for "type" and that's what they are, a genre is a type of film to put it bluntly, genre is used to show what sort of film the audience is viewing and the film makers are presenting, for example if the film features cow boys, sheriffs and saloons and related clichés it is classed into the genre of Western.
To be classed into a genre the film would have to show the fixed elements listed in a genre type, for example most thrillers feature jump scares and such.
Genres have been created originally for profitable purposes, as film companies would produce a highly successful and profitable film and would like to achieve the same success in their next production, so the idea to just create a film using the same principles and ideas that made their last piece so popular to achieve the same success.
This in turn would be useful for the consumer, as they would know what type of genre they would enjoy and would be able to identify this by what genre the film was listed into, so they would be able to view a film they would know contains their pleasures, for example a horror fan could expect dark imagery and scares in a horror genre film.
Sometimes a film can contain elements from other genres and they would be classed into sub-genres, for example a romantic film which has a humorous and comedic plot would be classed as a Romantic-Comedy as it contains elements from both of these genres.

Bear

Bear is an example of a short film with a very shocking simplistic narrative that is quite horrifying to the audience.

Stealing time

This is an example of a Science fiction short film although perhaps more advanced than anything we would have the ability to create it offers up a genre of science fiction that is possible to create without a tremendous budget.

Lights out

This was one of the first short films I watched and I found it rather scary, I was especially impressed with the simplicity of the film and the tension created without the use of major special effects nor narrative.

Research

For my first step on the path to create our own 5 minute short film I will start to view a variety of short films, these will be in a variety of genres and will help inspire me to what sort of short film we will make.

initial thoughts

Out of the possible film ideas available we have decided to create a short film, this can be up to 5 minutes long and my next few posts will be me researching ideas and seeking inspiration to what genre of film I wish to make.