A film distributor is a company or individual who is responsible for the marketing a film, including things such as advertising. Their aim is to make as much profit from the film as possible and so will increase the chances of the film being successful. They will make a campaign to make the film as well known to the public as possible to then increase the chances of success. This would include advertising; they may choose to advertise in a specific area to target a certain target audience, they will also decide in what media platforms they will advertise for example billboards. The media platforms which they chose to use are very important as that is the way they can appeal to their chosen target audience. Using different media platforms allows a larger audience to be accessed normally resulting in the film being more successful. The reason a large use of different media platforms is a good way of advertising is because it allows the film to be viewed by many different people whatever their lifestyle. Knowing their chosen target audience is important as marketing will differ depending on the demographics of the target audience. For example, with the trailer I have produced I would not advertise this on the T.V on a children's channel as clearly they are too young to view the trailer on the big screen and therefore the trailer will not appeal to them, in fact it could scare them. Examples of targeting the correct audience and how marketing has differed; The top two posters are aimed at young children and are considered family movies. We know this because the top two posters are full of colour and action, these posters give the viewer the main characters which is effective because children recognise characters and allow the film to be easily identified. The choice of bright colours gives the posters a fun, innocent feel which will attract the young audience. But the bottom two posters are clearly aimed at an older audience who enjoy horror movies. We know this because of the dark and dull colours used, and the little information we are given, these posters give us a small tagline to entice the viewer alongside a small image. Distributors work alongside marketing plans which can start working before the official release date of the film in question. This is so they are able to build their target audience by releasing media products such as teaser trailers and posters. A recent ad campaign that has been effective is the 2015 Avengers sequel age of Ultron. This movie clearly already had a target audience in place, people who were willing to go and watch it on the big screen, any superhero fan would obviously be a big part of the target audience. This makes it easier to understand and grow the knowledge of the target audience. The film had the budget of $250 million however in the opening weekend it made a gross of $191,271,109. This I believe was mainly down to the large use of media platforms allowing there to be teaser trailers released. When merging promotional material with the products it is very important that a theme is kept, allowing the products to link well enough to create an identity. When creating my own media products, I tried to stick to the same colours and atmosphere in relation to the images shown on my poster and magazine cover.
The top two posters are clearly aimed at a young child audience. We know this because of the bright family friendly colours used and the way the images of the main characters are popping out of the poster which would grab the child’s attention. The bottom two posters however are aimed at an older male target audience as they are horror movie posters. We know this because of the dark colours used and how the main image is saturated meaning the world is dull and fearful.