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Campaign Analysis

Frankie-Jo Filtness

Director – Bryan Singer

Year – 2014

Narrative Context – The X-men travel back in time to attempt to change a major event that could eventually make an impact globally impact on all man kind and mutant kind alike.

What are movie campaigns?Movie campaigns are a series of media aspects in which try to analyse and portray a particular film or one that is popular during that specific time. A campaign is a series of products that help to promote a film, i.e. a poster, teaser trailer, official trailer, website, Facebook and twitter pages, magazine covers etc. These all help to gain a bigger audience, mainly to those interested in films. Whereby there are Facebook and twitter pages, they are highly likely to be viewed as they are the most popular social media. A campaign is usually done for the top end films, ones that are going to have an audience anyway but to reinforce it a little further. The magazine covers and films posters are the ones that come out first, to give the readers and audience a small insight to the film. The trailers and social media websites give you more of a depth into the film, which is usually what broadens the audience. It takes a lot of products in able to produce a good campaign, depending on how things are presented is what draws the audience in more. For example, the teaser poster and trailers are what allow the audience to want to find out more.  

Magazine CoversIn these magazine covers, we can see they are very similar when it comes to producing this big time film. I chose the film ‘X-Men Days of Future Past’ because it was a big hit movie and these magazine covers portray many ways in which it is selling the film as much as it can. They both use puffs about this particular film, i.e. Total film tells us it is ‘our biggest review ever’ and Empire tells us it is ‘Still the worlds biggest movie magazine .’ These are both telling their readers that this film is an exclusive, and it is a must see. The mast head’s in these movie magazines are trying to resemble the film it is portraying. For example, Empire’s title is a different font and has a different look to it. This masthead looks familiar to the wolverine’s (main character) weapons on his hands. Both of these magazine covers have a main image, Empire only has the one man, the main character and the Total Film one has five men. This is really affective because in both you can see who the main character actually is, whereas in Total Film you get more of an insight into the characters which allow the audience to become familiar with them.

Teaser PostersTeaser posters do not usually have much to them, it only has elements to it that leaves its viewers wondering. It only usually has a main image, which is normally the main character, and only the title of the film. It can sometimes have a release month or season, but never a date. This is so it allows its audience to want to see when it comes out or it the full theatrical poster looks any different or even better. The teaser poster’s usually have a layout that resembles the film to an extent, for example in these X-men posters, the colours are very dull and dark, which can resemble the context of the film it is portraying. The top image contains a billing block, which is very unusual for a teaser poster, but it gives a little extra detail of the actors etc. but doesn’t give away to much information. Both of these ‘X-men : Days of Future Past’ posters have different layouts but contain the same context, for example they both have different colours, but we can see they both have the city background which could resemble this is where most of the action scenes happens. These teaser posters only really give away the setting of the film, but not any information.

Full Theatrical Posters

As part of its campaign, X-men Days of Future Past released many different full theatrical posters which give away more information, i.e. release date, billing block, more characters etc. I chose to pick two completely different posters in order to explore the different ways in which full theatrical posters are established. In the first one, it contains more than the other one. This one has many different characters in it with the main at front, with and ‘X’ shadowed across them. The billing block is rather large in this one, its because it gives you as much detail as much you would need about the film. As a campaign, it allows the audience to feel satisfied with everything they see by the poster. Both poster contain the exact date of the film release, which tells us straight away this is the final poster about the film, as there is nothing else that would need to be shown. There are many full theatrical posters with the same layout but different characters, this is because they are trying to portray as many characters as possible in order to get the audience familiar with. The colours within the posters are more or less the same and the font of the writing, this is to conclude the campaign and make it recognisable, this to prove the campaign as a continuous thing.

Example of teaser & Full theatrical poster conventions:

• Dull Colour• Minimal writing• Title only• Only two characters• Very action based• Facial expressions portrayed

• All characters• Same colour scheme• Title• Release date • Billing block• More X-men related format• Character names

Official Teaser Trailerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlbsDt5whsc

Teaser trailers are part of the campaign where it is showing the audience small glimpses of the film, that only introduce. For example, it shows quick shots of the characters, settings, etc. which outline the story line and who the audience should be familiar with. Teaser trailers usually do not have much sound, i.e. dialogue because it doesn’t want to give too much away, it usually bases its contents on facial expressions, props, and scenery in order to portray the film as an enigma, for the audience to want to see more. There usually isn’t any symbolism within teaser trailers, which concludes the idea of it officially being a teaser and not having to much of the context of the film.

Official Trailerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK2zYHWDZKo

The official trailers are what usually come last in a movie campaign. These are what show the audience in full detail all the main aspects in the film, these are never usually in scene order, sometimes they can be mixed up. This is to purposely not give away too much in chronological order, so when it comes to watching the film you never usually get everything in the same order as you have seen in the trailer. This trailer follows particular trailer conventions, i.e. they have a peak within the trailer that shows us as much action as possible, this is between 1:25 and 1:58. This allows the audience to get a feel of action and suspense within the trailer before watching the film. Another convention that trailers follow are they try to get the audience familiar with specific elements, i.e. in this trailer they have the ‘X’ lighten on someone's face, to symbolise their actions and what they do. One of the main conventions that trailers follow are close ups and mid shots of the characters to introduce them to us, this usually happens closer to the beginning.

Extras. [Social Media]Website - http://www.x-menmovies.com/

- https://www.facebook.com/xmenmovies

- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1877832/

All the links to social media and websites about the film are what help the campaign get the word out more. For example, if there are people who would rather research films, the links here are what allow them to get the information they want before watching the film. This helps the brand get their films across as much as possible, which provide everyone with the information in any way they chose to look for it. They always have specific links for each film, their own Facebook and twitter pages etc. all based around that one film.

This is the IMDB page of X-Men Days of Future Past, this is to inform and explain the outline of the film, the staring cast and the narrative context. This is a website for people who find it pleasurable researching a film before or after watching it.

This is the X-Men’s official website, which concludes everything about their sequel films, including the context of the films as a whole, and the interesting facts for people who are fans of the films.