Research: Methods of promotion

The main aim of promoting a film is to get it seen by as many people as possible in order for the institutions to attain the highest value of capital they can possible achieve. For a short film this is very similarity the case, where it's promoted to gain money but also as a teaser for a feature film; the success off the back of the small film will then act as a guide for how how much success can be predicted for the full length feature film. For example, before Warp Films created Tyrannosaur, they made a short film named Dog Altogether which received a BAFTA for Best Short Film and a Silver Lion for Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival. This showed Warp Films that they could safely invest their money into making Tyrannosaur because there was an audience who would support it.

Film promotion is done in several ways; notably the producers promote through using technology in order to grab the audiences' attention and build hype for the film. Below are some of the ways a film is promoted.

Heritage

Heritage marketing simply means non digital forms of marketing e.g. posters, cinema trailers etc. Due to the rapid growth and development of technology this method however cannot be used on its own to promote a film and get it seen by the right people (target audience), although it was certainly the only way we could promote a film roughly 20-30 years ago.

Digital

Digital marketing is digital forms of marketing e.g. trailers, websites etc. Under this term comes pull marketing and push marketing. As said, the expansion of technology has changed how we promote films but also how the audience can come into contact with it. Push marketing is marketing the distributor/promoter places specifically for the audience to come into contact with e.g trailers, TV adverts. Whereas Pull marketing is marketing the target audience locates and seeks out themselves e.g. source the website, go on YouTube etc.

Advantages 

Digital technology has offered a logistics-light, cost-effective, and efficient dynamic, promotion strategy for institutions to promote their film. It has meant that now all institutions have the power to promote their film globally, because it isn't as expensive as it once was to do this. Digital technology has also meant that a wider audience can be reached and therefore more people will be likely to watch the film, raising a greater degree of profit for the film.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is the spreading of information on the internet, slowly releasing information about the film e.g. social media. Building hype is the central purpose of viral marketing, to keep fans interested and making them feel that they have to 'earn' the knowledge about an upcoming film. Viral marketing has the advantages of low costs, higher credibility and like digital marketing, higher efficiency. 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises created a fictional file for a criminal investigation which was posted online at the film's site, TheDarkKnightRises.com, which included a press release explaining how Batman had left graffiti drawings of bolts around the world. The public had to submit photographic evidence on Twitter or email to gain an exclusive frame of the film's upcoming trailer. This is just one example of how hype was created. However, whilst viral marketing is in many ways, a revolutionary form of marketing it doesn't guarantee a film will 'go viral'.

Fortunately it is just as easy, if not simpler to promote a short film over social media.

Web 2.0

A final way films are promoted is through web 2.0. Web 2.0 is associated with web application that facilitate interactive information sharing e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc. It allows uses to interact with other users or to alter web content.