RESEARCH : Why Is A Trailer Made?

A Trailer is commonly made to inform a public audience of the existence, premise and USP's of your film or show. It is commonly stylised to appeal to the audience that the film would be trying to reach, for example a trailer for a horror film would likely follow conventions of dark shadows looming over the monster.

A trailer must :
- inform the viewers of your premise
- show enough information to get your viewers invested in the film or show.
- withhold enough information to make your viewers want to watch the film/show ( it is common for it to be a question that will be answered in the film for example, who is the murderer, will the hero accomplish his/her goal, etc).

alongside the above trailers are often used to inform people of three main things :
-The genre of the story
-The hooks of the story
-The characters in the story.

RESEARCH : Where Would A Film Be Released?

When releasing their films into cinemas a distributor must consider multiple things, firstly they must consider if they want their film to get a saturated or a selected release.

A saturated release would mean that their film would be released in multiple cinemas, and multiple screenings a day. It is common for big films distributed by big companies such as Disney, paramount, etc to receive this kind of release, with examples being the harry potter films, the live action classics owned by Disney (e.g. Aladdin, the lion king, etc). This is because Disney and paramount have the money to give their films such wide and long cinematic releases, therefore they would keep their  films in cinema for a long time to help maximise profits, and sales.

A selected release is more common for films produced by smaller companies and smaller directors. These kind of releases are often short and limited to a few cinemas, often only screening in places their film would be most likely to be successful. For example I, Daniel Blake received very limited screenings 

RESEARCH : When Do Trailers Appear?

Trailers are commonly released during a window that would best maximise sales for that film, for example a seasonal film such as a Christmas film would be released during the Christmas season, leading to more sales as people are looking for that kind of film during that period.

Distributors would keep track of their competitors film's release scheduled to make sure that they don't release films during the same window as them, this is done to maximise sales and make profits as large as they possibly can. Therefore that would mean that their trailers would be posted during a time where there is limited competition to gain public knowledge and interest before their competitors have a chance to do the same.

                           

They look for when the best weekend would be to start screening, this is because films earn most of their money throughout their theatrical run during their opening weekend, so if it failed then they would have to withdraw the film.

Distributors must also consider holding the film back and not have multiple screenings in one day this is primarily done to sell out their screenings and will allow the distributor to argue that the film deserves more screenings as the demand for the film has increased and be able to convince cinemas to keep it playing as long as possible.

RESEARCH : What Is A Film's Selling Points?

A film distributor would need to look at the film and decide what aspects of the film place it apart from the rest. The hooks of a film are what is generally used to grab potential audiences attention. It is common for a distributor to try to capitalise on big name stars that worked on the film or they will talk about previous films that stars have worked on; this gets potential audiences attention.

Chris Besseling stated that a when you put any product into a marketplace, including films, you have to immediately identify two things: the target audience and the unique selling points that sets it apart from other films. This helps the marketers to find a set of people to market their film towards and will help them realise what their film needs to be marketed as to best grab the attention of their target audience.

He tells us to identify the key strengths that you can exploit and use over the course of the film's campaign to help increase the revenue the film will get. It is common that the strengths are a well known actor or a well known director. He then tells us to put them at the forefront of the campaign. Another key strength would be to identify if it's already able to cash in on a pre-existing audience as they could get more revenue if the audience is already aware of the story, for example successive films such as the Star Wars films.

Kezia Williams stated that at any moment during the film campaign distributors will look for key themes, unique selling points and hooks. She also said that emotional aspects of the film can be used to grab the audiences attention and be used as the USP for the film. This means that it is the distributors job to identify these grips and use them to promote and advertise the film/show.