Case Study: Dredd

Judge Dredd (1995)

Distributed by Guild. This distribution company is in charge of the marketing campgain for the film. They must then distribute the film to cinemas and after releases like DVD/Blu-ray and streaming sites.
This specific company normally works for smaller international films which are more aimed at target audiences instead of the mass public.

The distributors job starts at the script stage of actual developemnt, this gives the distribution company a good amount of time to come up with ideas for marketing the film.

Back in 1995 (pre-internet) the main means of advertising would have been. Posters, Trailers and Magazines. These would have been the most accessible fors available to the majority of the public. 

Here is an example of this. This would have been a teaser poster for the film. This poster is very simple and gives two pieces of information. The first being that the film Judge Dredd is being made and the second that the character is being played by Silvester Stallone.

This was a trailer for the film which would have been played before films in the cinema and shortened versions on TV during the adverts.

Different forms of marketing.

Advertising
This is normally the most expensive form of marketing, this will have the most effort put into it out of the three. This money will be put towards getting trailers shown on TV/ in cinems's and getting posters put up in various places including billboards and in magazines.

Publicity
Normally below the line cost and not as focused on. For Judge Dredd this would have been getting the stars on talk shows, get articles writen in magazines and other various things about the film out in the open. The use of stars especially the lead (Silvester Stallone) to publicise the film by having him appear in the publics eye before the release of the film.

Promotion
Again normally below the line cost, this involves using one company to promote another. This partnership means that one product will promote another. For example some films will use the music from the films to promote the film as well as the artist, one of these being Skyfall using the song by Adele to promote the film along with the song.
Judge Dredd would have used Stallone to promote the film as the actor is renound for action films.


Dredd (2012)

This reboot of the popular comic character Judge Dredd. The film takes a bit of a different approach from the 1995 film which flopped due to many reasons, despite good marketing the film itself didn't live up to expectations and lost a lot of money.

Dredd had the advantage of the internet to help promote the film and keep it in the publics eye for longer than the 1995 film, by using websites like Youtube to show off its trailers it means that the public can access this 24/7 instead of just having the trailer being shown during TV adverts or at cinema's.
The internet also allows for the film to be shared a lot more rapidly by a new form of word of mouth where one simple thing said can be read by thousands of others meaning the message is put across a lot faster and is more effective.

Of course this film had posters which would have been displayed in public places where it would have been observed by many people daily just like on the internet.

This is a teaser poster which includes very little but also quite a lot. Although little actual information is shown off visually what there is can say a lot, by including the badge and part of the helmet it is easily identifiable that this there is going to be a new Judge Dredd film, the term "judgement is coming" simple created anticipation which could also mean keep a look out for more coming soon. The trailer created good hype for the upcoming film.

This poster shows off all the necessary information for the film. It includes a film title, release date and any other necessary information. It also had the same "judgement is coming" caption which was used in the teaser poster to say that it isn't here yet and will be on the way. The main character depicted is placed in the center of the frame and this time shows the whole of the character. When compared to the teaser this seems like the character is emerging from the darkness in this image, returning to a corrupt world where judgement is needed.

Here we have a teaser trail for Dredd, this trailer gives necessary information to create anticipation for the film and also a setting but doesn't go as far as to give away too much of the story.

After the teaser trailer came the actual film trailer which shows off a lot more of the story and information about the film. Again this will be used to create anticipation for the film, hyping up its release.