Unit 20 Advertising (please view unit 20 prep)

P1 AND M1: Analysis of previous existing advertising campaigns

https://shauntomlinson-digitalmedia2021-23.blogspot.com/2022/06/blair-witch-program-advertising-campaign.html

https://www.slideshare.net/shaun201200/unit-20-horror-film-posters

https://www.slideshare.net/shaun201200/my-5-film-posters-inspiration

 P2: The Greg promotional advertising campaign 

P3 (elements of this LO covered)

21 century productions have commissioned me to produce an advertising campaign to increase the ticket sales of their latest film release The Greg, they want a campaign that uses traditional posters sites and digital advertising platforms. 

 

Requirements from brief 

The client has requested that: 

• The campaign be targeted to an audience of 17-25 that is predominately male (70% male) 

• That the genre be either horror, thriller, or both 

• That the campaign utilizes traditional poster sites 

• That the campaign uses digital marketing platforms 

 

Addressing the target audience  

The client has stated the campaign is to be aimed at an audience between 17-25 years so I will have to ensure that the content produced is suitable and engaging for that age range, the client also mentions that the audience is male dominated so in theory the campaign will be more successful if it is aimed to please a male audience specifically. 

 

Addressing the genre 

It is mentioned within the brief that 21 century productions have achieved a reputation for producing horror/thrillers and that this is what they specialize in, so following tradition my product will also be horror and thriller in nature  

 

Addressing print advertising 

21 century productions stated that they want the campaign that uses traditional posters, and these posters will be displayed at bus stops, motorways, service areas and billboard facilities near cinemas to ensure the campaign will reach quite a large audience. 

 

Addressing digital advertising 

The client also mentioned that they also want to take advantage of digital advertising platforms as their research shows that 70% of their audience are more influenced by this kind of advertising. To fully utilize a digital marketing campaign, they can use popular social media services say Facebook, Instagram, twitter etc... to reach a large amount of people; also due to the complex algorithms modern social media sites use your content is pushed and more likely to reach the intended target audience who have shown interest in related products to yours. 

Another social media site they can use is YouTube, a video streaming site where they can post teasers and trailers to gain interest from the users of site, YouTube also utilizes an algorithm that pushes content to viewers that enjoy comparable products. 

Lastly, they can pay for advertising spots on google, which then ads are displayed on various websites. These ads are also once again targeted at specific people by algorithms. 

 

Proposal 

The title for my horror film will be The Greg and I will advertise this through both print products such as posters and billboards and online advertisement such as social media posts, websites, and pop-up advertisements. 

The purpose of my product other than to promote the Greg film is to entertain, excite and scare. 

 

Synopsis of the film 

A journalist begins to investigate the mysterious disappearances of multiple people tracing them all back to run down, long forgotten buildings that lay dormant throughout the city. He documents his journey with a camcorder however his footage is corrupted, often displaying the figure of a man that was never there. 

 

Synopsis of the advertising campaign 

My idea for the promotional campaign is to create a series of posters in Photoshop that can be displayed at bus stops, motorway service areas and billboard facilities close to cinemas. These posters will also be posted to social media sites such as twitter and Instagram utilizing hashtags and the built-in branding tools like paid advertising spots to reach a large audience. 

 

Inspiration 

My film and advertising campaign has been inspired by a lot of other media of the horror thriller genre, for example the found footage theme is influenced heavily by the ring and Blair witch project. My story is also inspired by games like outlast.

P3: Pre Production Planning

 this is all the Photoshop and in design work I created to build the skills I needed to create my product, especially in Photoshop where I used the skills I learnt to produce my posters such as feathering images, applying filters, special pasting images into text and liquefying text

 https://shauntomlinson-digitalmedia2021-23.blogspot.com/2022/05/unit-20-design-and-prep.html

Contact sheet

This is the contact sheet for my project including all the photos I gathered to be used in my campaign, out of the 16 pictures i only used 2 of the photos in the final product.

Mood board

I created this mood board to create a house style for my project, establishing the dark reds I used throughout my project, edgy fonts and the reoccurring presence of the Greg character. The use of abandoned buildings is relevant to the story of the Greg however that didn't play much of a role in the advertising campaign.

My thumbnail sketches and poster designs

Inspired by a DVD cover for the ring I created this thumbnail sketch pretty much following the same layout of the original poster design.

Inspiration

I chose this design mainly because of its simplicity and I also really like the distortion of the face, I think it works really well, however after finishing the design of my own poster in photo shop I decided that it didn't really fit the style so it didn't make it to the final project.

Final design

I also including the VHS aspect of the ring film in my poster just because I thought it would look more interesting than it would without it. 

The poster itself was simple to make however applying the VHS grain was troubling at times, especially creating the gradients from light to dark, the border around the Greg also was difficult to get right as it needed to blend with the background and the overlaying grain.

Going back to the original red and black style I created this thumbnail sketch which is heavily influenced by the shining movie poster from 1980.

This is the first version of this poster I created, I really like the face in the font effect I created by merging the text and background layers, selecting the text with the magic wand and deleting the area essentially created a mask which the Greg would peer through.

The character also has the cut out filter on it and a red gradient. The only thing I do not like about this poster is that the style of font does not match the other poster.

Thumbnail sketch inspired by Malignant movie poster for The Greg billboard staying consistent with red and black colour schemes.

Inspiration 

First version of the Greg billboard sticking to the themes of blood red and having the character as the main focus I first cut out the image using the magnetic lasso tool and added a red colour filter on to the image. 

I then added the black background and blended the character into the background using the gradient tool. I liquefied the text to look like blood gong back to the initial font idea of the mood board.

P4: final poster designs

I actually forgot to put a date on my movie poster so I went back and added it, I also resized my poster enlarging it to A0 which is the standard poster size in the UK.

Also again I just added the date and resized to 40x30 inches which is the standard size for billboards in the UK.

Both posters can and have been resized for different purposes throughout the project, so the dimensions were not that important in long run, other than it being either portrait or landscape.

The Greg mock up posters

Using placeit.net I created these mock ups to show how my posters would look in the places the client requested(bus stops and billboards),

however i did have to resize and crop the images to fit the dimensions of these mock ups.

social media mock ups

The client stated they wanted to take advantage of digital advertising platforms so I created these social media mock ups to show how that would look like, these required some re-sizing of the posters to fit the borders of these sites.

M2: Justifying the choices of components

the targeted media sector as requested by the client is horror thriller and i have created a advertising campaign that is both print and digital as the client stated they wanted both posters displayed at bus stops and billboards close to cinemas and that they wanted to take advantage of digital marketing. The title The Greg refers to the main antagonist/monster in the film, not only that its very short, simple and captures peoples attention for its unusual name. 

The actor chosen to play the role of the Greg is Ben Winship and he was chosen because I thought he would be the perfect fit for the character, and he is the centre piece of each poster to emphasise the importance of this character, the location of the photographs taken being abandoned buildings was to match the narrative of the film. 

The fronts used, especially in the billboard poster where designed to follow the clichés of other horror movie posters, being somewhat edgy but also to look like dripping blood, the main colours of black and red also follow the stereotypes of horror by suggesting danger and blood. I created this house style to create the over all tone of a typical horror film by following the codes and conventions of the genre and I feel like I did this successfully throughout my campaign. 

D1: legal and ethical constraints

The first ethical issue I faced was that I could not uses pictures of Ben without his consent first, however this was quickly resolved when I asked him in person and got his permission, and a legal issue I faced is that the photos of the abandoned building where taken by Ben so I also needed to get permission to use them.

Copyright

As far as I am aware my posters shouldn't infringe copyright laws in anyway, they are not direct copies but rather inspired by other horror movie posters and could be considered parodies in their own right, all assets used either where produced by myself or I have been given permission to use by the original creators.

Data protection act

To comply with the data protection act I will have to insure that all data collected on those involved in the project and audiences is stored with legitimate grounds and to have no negative effect on any person, i must also be fully transparent with how the data will be used, and only use data in a way the person expects.

The data held should be adequate and only what is needed, meaning that excess information that is not beneficial wont be stored, also those involved have the right to access their data and that there data be removed if they opt out; however the bare minimum will be kept to document a former investor.

I will also have to maintain the integrity of data to make it fit for purpose, this is done by making sure data is correct and updating it regularly, and also data will only held as long as it is needed.

The security of the data will also have to be maintained including both physical and logical protection, physical protection being locking server room doors, bars on windows and locating the servers on a higher floor to protect it from floods. Logical protection being firewalls, anti virus and passwords that ensure unauthorized access and tampering of the data is prevented.

Finally data will not be transferred to any other countries that do not have the same level of data protection. 

M3: codes and conventions

I created my product directly inspired by advertising campaigns of all ready existing films following the codes and conventions of the horror thriller genre, which is most evident in my use of colour being black and red which are commonly used in this sector to display aspects of violence, danger and blood.To come to the decision to use this colour scheme I looked at the poster malignant, which uses the same colour scheme and is the direct inspiration for the The Greg billboard poster.