'The Shining' - Minimalistic Poster

'The Shining' - Trailer

'The Shining' Teaser Trailer

'The Shining' Theatrical Trailer

MERCHANDISING - How are films promoted?

Films are promoted via merchandise. The type of merchandise gives the audience an idea about the target age range of the film, for example, action figures and stuffed toys represent a film for children. This is an effective method of promotion as children become obsessed with toys and so the movie would gain exposure.

Toy Story 3 is a good example of creating merchandise for a film, the already popular Toy Story sequel created a new toy for their upcoming Toy Story 3, and thus they brought out the Toy Story 3 version of the same Toy Story 1 and 2 characters. Children would buy this because it is the "latest" toy.

SOCIAL MEDIA - How are films promoted?

Films are promoted via social media advertisements and people who have large followings on twitter, instagram, facebook and vine post a spoiler for the movie (a teaser poster). The internet is a great tool for film promotion as posts can go viral within hours. As well as this, social media marketing is very cost effective as you can get thousands of views for a few dollars on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Jerome Jarre is a popular viner with 8.5 million followers. He featured Ben Stiller on his vine and snapchat account with the tag #Zoolander2, this then lead to a mass attraction and many people posted on their social media #Zoolander2, which was a great source of promotion.

Shortly after the Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 release, a remix of the popular song "The Hanging Tree," was created featuring a short animation of the hunger games symbolisms. The original version was at number 12 on the Billboard charts and therefore the directors of the Hunger Games used this to gain more popularity. Both versions of the song have gotten over 20 million views on their YouTube page. The song created enigma around the Hunger Games and people went online to search for more information.

POSTERS - How are films promoted?

One way in which films are promoted are by promotional posters. Posters usually include a picture of the protagonist or antagonist, and suggest the genre of the film to the audiences. Directors rely on the pre-existing understanding of colour, lighting and facial expression to attract their target audience.

This is the promotion poster for Shutter Island. Leonardo DiCaprio is a world famous actor and features on the front of the poster, the darkness surrounding his face suggests that the film contains genres of danger, secrecy and mystery. As well as this, the picture of the island suggests isolation and crime and this matches up to the blood-coloured title "Shutter Island". The poster creates enigma and therefore is an effective method of promotion. 

This is the promotional poster for Avatar. The blue overlay and the starlight in the top half of the poster suggests the audience is about space travel and other planets. We also see the main character and the words "From the director of Terminator 2 and Titanic". This would gain attention as both are popular films and so the expectation is that this film is also very high quality. On the bottom half, the orange overlay, dragon and hovering mountains suggest that this is a science fiction film. Another selling point is that audiences can view it in 3D.