In this essay the Question I will be answering is to compare
the impact and effectiveness of two promotional methods used by one film. To
answer this is I’m going to analysis the Poster and Trailer of the film “47
Ronin” and compare them and the impact it has created.
The
companies that created and distributed the film are H2f Entertainment, Mid
Atlantic films but the most important one is the Moving Picture Company. Not
only that it’s well known across the world film studios of Special effects but
is created other highly successful film such as Skyfall, World war Z, Man of Steel.
The Director of the film Carl Rinsch, not a well-known Director but can make a
good one. There are no well-known stars in the film but played a good part in
this film that are: Keenu Reeves; Hiroyuki Sanada; Ko Shibashaki. This film
Belong to the Genre of Action with elements of Adventure and Fantasy.
The Film Poster of the film “47 Ronin” shows the main
character Kai (Played by Keenu Reeves) holding a sword and he’s the main
character by inference of that he’s the biggest in size in the poster but the
relatively small compared the biggest one which could separate the heroes and
Villains and the way they look especially the one on the far right, he wouldn’t
be a hero just by looking him. The USP is all sorts of things are that this is
new take on an historical event as it was based on a true story. Full of action
of different martial arts and samurais related to Fighting films so Action fans
would be the target audience and they use this to an advantage by including
weapons that would be related to samurais but to none samurai fans. They also
include guns and that would attract all action fans.
The Film trailer of “47 Ronin”. One key moment in the
trailer is when the main character Kai his voice over saying” Whatever happens,
whatever you see, there’s no coming back.” This creates an atmosphere that
makes you feel that there are only one possibility which means in the end they
would have to die but we don’t know what for and audience would be curious of
why they would have to die or maybe the trailer wants you to watch it then you
would be in for a surprise twist in the end maybe but you would have to watch
it to find out. This scene also supports the Barthes theories because it makes
the audience wonder about why he was enslaved? Why was there land taken? Did
they beat the infinite army? Etc. Links to the poster as all of the characters
and the scene at the bottom are all in the trailer this remains consistent so
they don’t give away that much of the film but there are more scenes in the
trailer than the poster shows but whatever the poster has the trailer has it
too even the dates and the small logos at the bottom so there are no
differences in the poster and the trailer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1335975/?ref_=ttmd_md_nm
The representation of people is relatively positive as it
only focuses on one ethnic race which is Japanese and it shows a lot of the
religious side of Japan as the film is based on Buddhist beliefs including the
Buddha so it’s all positive but it also shows the good side of the belief and
the bad side as it shows if you have the power from the belief then you could
either choose to do good things with it and bad things with it and one side
chooses to be bad and the good side would have to fight to reclaim what was
stolen from them. There are stereotypes that not only Japanese people but Asian
people they won’t be main characters in film and we would rather have an
English main character and use the foreign people as the people who are less
important but 47 Ronin challenged the stereotype and made most of the cast
foreign if not all. This can encourage other films to create films like this
given the success of the film and could completely get rid of the stereotype
and more films like 47 Ronin would be worldwide and more of a success.
The Overall
Effectiveness of the film wasn’t the best a film can get but it was a start to
create more foreign culture based films. The estimated film budget this film
was given was $175,000,000 but it wasn’t the most successful film in the world
with receiving the amount of $9,869,000 (USA) (27 December 2013) on the opening
weekend a huge drop in the business but this could have been influenced as the
film was release on Christmas day and it’s time to spend with the family. The
reason why this film was a huge flop is because of marketing. Most people would
have heard about the film because they were browsing the cinemas comparing this
to a film that was a huge success if the hunger games the reason why that was a
huge success because they had billboards, magazines and subway synergy and advertising on buses with the huge budget
given into this film most of it should have been spent on marketing not only
paid marketing also free advertising including Facebook pages and twitter
account and YouTube to spread your trailer worldwide as anyone in the world can
search it up.
v
My
poster creates an effect on the audience making them think about who they are
and why they are looking at eachother like that, this also supports the barthes
theory because this poster makes you ask question and why is there only one
girl and two boys also the words around the poster gives you a point of view
from top websites including IMDb and a trusted newspaper company in the form of
the daily mirror giving good reviews of the film. This gives us free adverising
and its not all positive but I was lucky and that it was a good review. My
trailer has most of the things in the poster including the picture but in a
clip and the title and tag line but I don’t have the other things as in the
quotes. I challenged the stereotype that foreign characters are less important
than the american/british main character and I tried to even it out and make it
equal.
