MARKETING MOVIES

Marketing movies is another mixed documentary expect this time with an educational underline. It has archived footage to support and be used as evidence, interviews of important people, narration throughout, observation and cutaways to anchor meaning in the interviews. This documentary looked at the marketing involved and the run up of advertising in connection with how successful a film is.

The themes of this documentary were marketing as this was what the documentary was about, persuasion of marketing in succession to the film, merchandise and how this affects film ratings and income, and production/publishing of films.

At the beginning of this documentary we are presented with the question, why is marketing important to the ratings of the film? This sets up the documentary to respond to this question as it does during the middle of the documentary. Here is were we are told about all the different marketing tools and why each one is important. And finally the documentary presents us with the finished product and leaves the audience to decide whether it was all worth the effort.

The camera work in this documentary seems to follow the same codes as many documentaries and uses close-ups that are static in the interviews to allow the audience to pay attention to what is being said by usually important people. Close ups are also used on the money and the tickets as these are important and relevant to the marketing within the documentary. A deep to shallow focus is used during one of the interviews instead of a cutaway to draw attention to the relevant poster behind the interviewee. High angle shots are used in the premiere to fully show the amount of people at the premier and give the sense that we (the audience) are above the stars and fans. Zooms where also used on the important people to draw the audience in to the stars and how they are used as a marketing tool.

Backgrounds in the interviews are relevant to the dialogue in the interviews and this means that mise-en-scene has been used effectively, as this anchors meaning. The settings vary in this documentary from cinema to premiers and London as these places are all relevant to the marketing process, yet no filming is done in America which suggests that there was no American input for the marketing of films during the time the documentary was filmed.

Natural sounds/diagetic sound of the interview is used in the documentary as this in a convention for most mixed documentaries. A music bed is used throughout the documentary to make the information coming from it seem more exciting as it is an educational documentary. The upbeat music was also played at the start and end of the documentary. Sound was much underused in this documentary as the sound used anchored very diminutive meaning and was used ineffectively.

The cuts and editing at the beginning of this documentary were very fast paced and used to create meaning and make it seem exciting. The cutaways used in the interviews created meaning and where relevant to the experts dialogue. Fades where used in the interviews to make joins in the interview and skip irrelevant dialogue. This was very amateur and showed that there were mistakes in the documentary, superimpositions were used, as well as dissolves in these interviews.

Archived material in this documentary included film footage form the film they were marketing, which was Mouse hunt, the little mermaid and used to support the argument. And footage of premiers to show how stars and important people are used as marketing implements. The graphics used were very driven and relevant to the target audience as at the introduction of each segment of marketing tools there played a animation, indicating that this documentary was set for school children for educational purposes.