This was a mixed documentary as it contained a mixture of interviews, archive footage and a voice over. Interviews were of marketing experts; these experts were used so that the audience could feel that they could trust the information that was being given to them. Archive footage such as people being filmed in the cinema and footage of film merchandise were to keep the audiences attention and it was used to visually explain what the voice over was talking about. A voice over was also used throughout the interview to lead the narrative.
The major themes in this documentary was about how marketing is a key element in promoting and selling a movie. It shows how merchandise greatly affects how successful a movie is as this is shown when they explain how the merchandise of Lion King made the film extremely more popular than before the merchandise came out. It showed a variety of merchandise to appeal to both children and adults as it’s shown with the Jurassic Park merchandise as they had lunch boxes for children yet mugs for an older audience. Another theme was the importance of the target audience and how different strategies such as different trailers can appeal to not only the target audience but also reach out to new viewers; this is shown at the end of the documentary as they show two trailers for “Mousehunt” one aimed at children and one aimed at adults, and it shows the differences in appealing to these audiences.
The narrative structure is consistently clear throughout the documentary as the beginning explains why marketing is important to every film in wanting a successful movie, so straight away the meaning of the documentary is apparent. The beginning shows a variety of clips to coincide with the subject matter such as footage of merchandise, interviews with experts and clips of people going to a cinema theatre. The middle shows a conflict as it discusses a problem with bad reviews and questions posed such as when films doesn’t hit right with the audience. The case study “Mousehunt” shows evidence of a marketing scheme in process to show how marketers develop their advertising. At the end of the documentary it shows “Mousehunt” two trailers to show how to appeal to different audiences however this could be seen as a manipulative way to go and see the film and because “Mousehunt” was a then recent film, it is leaving the film opened ended as the audience doesn’t know whether “Mousehunt” will be a successful film or not.
Due to the fact that this documentary was strictly informative not emotive, basic camerawork was used and there wasn’t a variety of camera angles in the way they filmed. Close ups of the interviewee were used to show their importance. When filming merchandise, many pan shots were used to show the extent of how many products are involved in one particular film. During one of the interviews, the interviewee talks about a certain film and as this is happening, the camera slowly shifts from deep focus to shallow focus on the relevant poster in the background to show visually what the interviewee was talking about. There were close ups of money being handed over in the cinema, this is to emphasise that the successfulness of a film relies on the public.
They use a variety of cutaway shots such as footage of the box office, people gathering outside a premiere & film sets to show how the visuals and the information relate to each other. One of the main obvious uses of Mise-en-scene was during the interviews as they placed relevant posters behind the experts whilst talking, to show that the background explained the subject matter for every different interviewee. It also shows a variety of shots of London and the majority of the footage is mainly British as the documentary was placed on BBC 2 therefore only British viewers would be watching.
They had a constant music bed throughout the documentary and it included upbeat music at various points to keep the viewers attention to show the documentary as light hearted instead of dull. Once again because the documentary was informative and educational, they didn’t need to use sound to evoke emotion, they just used the sound which was there like the movies clips or what was necessary to cover blank audio however they did use the sound of the interviewee over a new set of visuals to keep the audiences concentration.
Editing is slightly overused in this documentary and they also used a number of unnecessary fades and dissolves in between shots and at various points in an interview which looks amateur because instead of this, the film makers could have easily put cutaways in to make it look more appealing to the audience. There were several cuts between the action of interviews and the footage of the premiere, these cuts were used to anchor meaning on what the experts was trying to say.
This documentary used a variety of archive footage for different purposes; they used trailers to provide evidence of successful movies in the past. When talking about the film “Mousehunt” actual scenes from the film were used to support what the interviewer was saying e.g. a certain technique which was used or conversation about the film in general. Footage from previous premieres was used to show the importance of marketing schemes and to coincide with the subject matter.
Graphics were used appropriately throughout and it also helped with the structure of the documentary because they split it into different chapters which made it easier for the target audience to understand as it became self explanatory. The documentaries graphics were very colourful however they only used white graphics to introduce the experts.
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