Monday 27 September 2010

Analysis of The Strangers advertising campaign. . .



I decided to analyse an advertising campaign of a film looking especially at the similarities between them. Looking at this would enable me to grasp an understanding of how to interlink my main task of a teaser trailer alongside my two ancillary tasks. I have chosen to analyse ‘The Strangers’ as this is a recently released film and belongs to the same genre as we desire to use.
The first similarity we notice between the three products is that two of them; the website home page and the poster have the same image. However, the website shows more the setting due to the extent of the width of the page. It consists of a long shot of what the audience would expect as the main character; a young female, with a mysterious masked figure merged into the shadows of the background. The environment of the background suggests that this figure is within the characters house and due to her body positioning and facial expression we would expect although she is alert, she is not aware of the figure being in the background. This creates anxiety in the audience as we associate the home with safety and security and to have a trespasser within the house without there consciousness brings us to believe we are not safe within our homes.  Having the masked figure hidden in the shadows of the room a great distanced away from the female character suggests that he is hiding and merely waiting for the right opportunity to attack. Like a vulture preparing to attack its pray. In all three of the productions the supposed ‘strangers’ are wearing masks. This means that their true identity is wished to be kept hidden; this also proposes that they are experienced in such events due to preparation. On the DVD cover we can see that there are three of these masked characters, outnumbering those seated with the back of their heads to the audience. The fact that the two characters are seated while the ‘strangers’ stand, surrounding them suggest that they have less power as well as chance to escape. Also, on the back of the DVD cover and on the website captions from the film have been used in order to tease the audience of upcoming events.
Although the title of the film is featured on all three of the productions as we would expect, the DVD covers title has different spacing and colour effects. This contradicts what I would expect to see as I would have thought that the title was the most iconic establishment of the film, instantly recognised by the public.
Only the DVD cover features the certificate of the movie, this enables access to both the website and to the poster to all of the population, this maximises potential promotional strategies such as word of mouth. However, still sticking to laws and regulations to who watches the full length film to eighteen. Other similarities between the production are that the poster and DVD cover include a slogan, although they differ in what they say, both bring the audience to fear. Other text featured from these is ‘based on true events’ this has a large impact on the audiences as it brings the events to reality, again causing them to fill vulnerable themselves. The two main actor/ress within the film are also shown; this promotes them as individuals as well as the film, fans of these particular actors may watch the film as the trust their past productions and expect it to the same standard.
The genre of the film is suggested throughout the three products through methods such as font colour and low key lighting. The colour schemes between the three are red, black and white. The red suggests danger, blood, anger; the black proposes death, mystery, and unknown, while white may suggest innocent and purity. The red and black are iconic colours of horror as they connote expected events and emotions to be witnessed within the film, however, the white suggests there may be hope for the innocent, although where white has been used it is always surrounded by low key lighting suggesting there is no escape.
The task has helped me to learn how I will be able to intertwine my main task and ancillary tasks using iconic features and similarities between them. Although, we can see clear differences between the productions, this is mainly due to them sticking to the codes and conventions typically used from product to products. I believe that the strangers have successfully created an advertising campaign as all the products are instantly recognised as the same film.

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