P: Proposal Poster (final)

Proposal – Poster – Final

Name of film: The Living Past

Tagline of film: “If you see yourself, run”.

Production Name: SFS STUDIOS

Medium: Print Advert

Format: Print

Target Audience: The audience we aim to target are that of the age of 16 – 25 with the demographics of category D (semi-skilled worker) and E (Student). We choose this age range as it is often young people who are into horror movies and that the thrill and frightfulness of the horror genre will appeal to this niche audience. We aim to target both genders as we think horror movies appeal to both genders equally and this was evident considering we have had responses from both male and female for our audience survey. The occupation of our target audience would predominately be a student as well as a semi-skill worker (someone who works part time). We also aim to target those who have the interest in reading mystery genre novels like Sherlock or watching mystery Tv Shows/ Films such as The X Files, or into literature, technology and animation. The psychographics of our audience would fit into the being “Explorers” category as we think this that explorers are likely to seek solving mysteries which is the sub-genre of our movie.

Content of advert: We will use print as our form of medium and it will include various iconography and visual codes for example we will use a pocket watch to give the idea of time travelling or a passage of time going by. This object is iconographic to the 1950s era. We will be using a 1950’s pear boy hat style to also represent the 1950s style. Using various iconography and visual codes would help fit to both horror and mystery genre. In terms of typography, we decided to have a title, credits, and ratings on the poster as these are the conventional texts used in print adverts. We also decided to use san-serif typography with bolder colours to ensure that the typography can be visible. This form of typography was inspiration picked up from when we analysed the posters of the retro horror movie posters as well as the modern movie posters. We also aim to use black vignette and sepia tone on the poster with the main colour scheme being in various dark shades of blue, red, grey and black as this reinforces the conventions of a horror movie. We have the primary image of the male protagonist surrounding in a subtle blue halo to indicate that the character is a protagonist rather than an antagonist and helps distinguish that the character is from the modern era. The secondary image would include the other character who will have a sepia shade and damaged film to represent that the character is from an older era.

Publishing of the advert: We aim to use above and below the line of marketing as this can be effective and cheap. We would upload the poster on the web as pop up and on social media feeds such as on Tumblr, Instagram, twitter and Facebook. These are very common social media used by young people of our target audience. We will also like to put our poster up on busses and train stations as often commuters are of our target non web 2.0 audiences. Using below the line of advertising with target both mass and niche audience as posting content on the internet targets audiences worldwide.

What is your Unique Selling Point? The graphic of the poster is our unique selling point as we will 

be using the same image of the actor twice on the poster which is not conventional. Moreover, the hybrid of using past and modern clothing can be considered unconventional and this will enhance and elevate our storyline and will certainly make the audience question why there difference of clothing on the same actor. We will also include our tagline as hashtags such as #iysyRUN, #ifyouseeyouselfRUN and incorporate this hashtag to be included in our radio advert to make our viral marketing scheme continuous. Lastly, we want to introduce a unique marketing scheme whereby we post a link on our poster, leading the audience to a web page that lets the audience click a link that will then feature a character of a film whispering loudly saying “RUN”. We think this form of viral marketing will hopefully target the audience in a unique way and excite them to watch our film.

Competitive market: Our competition in the film industry would be The Conjuring 2 (TC2), because of the fact that the horror movie is set in the 20th century and our horror movie is also partially set in the 20th century. This is a competitive factor, because it all relies on who makes the better period horror film. Moreover, TC2 also shares the same sub-genre of mystery, thus this means that we need to present the mystery genre in a more effective and likable way for our audience to appreciate our horror film than TC2. Furthermore, we are an independent film company and TC2 was also produced by an independent film company New Line Cinema, but the budget of our horror film is of course a lot lower than the budget of TC2 despite this, it is a competitive factor, because both of our films will be judged on its artistic factor, thus the artistic value of our film must not be outdone by the artistic value of TC2. Lastly, TC2 have used viral marketing as a marketing technique, such as the use of social media. For instance, the producer, Rob Cowan posted a photo of a real live exorcist on the sets of TC2 on his Facebook, apparently blessing the set on the first day of filming. This is a competitive factor, because we want to publish our radio advert on twitter using hashtags, as a form of viral marketing. Perhaps, we should also post something daring as Rob Cowan has as a marketing technique. We are lucky enough to have a target audience that is predominantly active on web 2.0 media thus we will be able to create a viral marketing technique will allow us to interact with our audience.