Extended Practice: Promotion Research

So I am currently in the process of producing a promotion pack for my film. This is the first time I've ever really promoted an animation to this extent so I want to get it right.

Smashed Vinyl

I tried to recall if I'd ever promoted my work in a way that was ever like true marketing in the industry and I realised I had with Smashed Vinyl. Smashed Vinyl is a New Music Magazine/platform of which was started by my friend Ewan and for which I am the art director for. I remember back last Summer I was heavily involved with the production of the very first Smashed Vinyl Print Issue in which I created a huge chunk of the artwork for. But once I had created the artwork, obviously I wanted to show it to people. However, Ewan was resilient to me doing this, believing he did not want to give too much away as to the contents of the magazine until it's actual print release. Therefore I was very careful about how I promoted my work.

Instead of posting the above two page spread on my Instagram (a platform I promote most of my work) I went about only giving my followers little snippets of the poster.

I still received a substantial amount of likes per post considering I was never showing more than an inch or two of the actual poster.

The Disney/Pixar animated short Piper

Smashed Vinyl, and the promotional campaign we did for the first print issue inspired me with how I have been promoting my Extended Practice Animation.

These were my final character designs and the first piece of content for my animation I released online with the description being 'Final character designs for an upcoming animation I'm currently developing.' Now I'd love to say that at this time, this was fully intentional film promotion, but it really wasn't, it was just me wanting to show what work I've been creating. However I feel as a piece of promotion it really works. It gives nothing away, not even a title except from the fact that it's an 'upcoming' animation, yet I feel that lack of info was still enough to intrigue people to follow the film's production. Furthermore the studio Blue Zoo liked one of these posts, this showed me how useful Instagram is as a promotional tool and how something can be advertised to anyone within a matter of seconds.

From looking at how other animation studios promote their content, it doesn't matter if they are large or small, they still use Instagram as a very successful tool for Marketing. For example with the Disney/Pixar animated short Piper. 

Further down the production line I posted three stills from the animation. I needed to create these stills anyway so at the time I could figure out if the animation worked in terms of it's visual aesthetic but it was also so I could show my working progress and served to be in my opinion very successful marketing content. 

The way in which I have been promoting the animation, in particular the above stills is similar to how other animation studios promote their films. For example, the Disney/Pixar animated short Piper, before the film or even the trailer for the film was released, they released stills from the film.

I feel the above stills are very successful. They do not give away any of the plot of the film, yet they fully set the tone. The bird is very small and fluffy, with huge eyes, therefore I can assume and the general audience can assume that this film is going to be cute. Furthermore the bird is the centre of focus in every image, there is a bigger bird in the second image, but that bird is slightly out of focus, insinuating that this little bird is the protagonist and as an audience we are already rooting for him.

Comparing the Pixar stills to my own I feel like my stills are not as successful in what I am setting out to promote. Lucy is in every shot so it is evident that she is the main character. However even though I don't want the stills to give away any narrative, there is no evidence that there is a cop in the story or that the story is anything to do with a father's relationship with his daughter.