The marketing, distribution, and promotion of Film
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The marketing, distribution, and promotion of films has changed within the last decade as the result of changes in ancillary markets, notably the continuing development of sales to cable and other television outlets and the growth of the home video industry both as a rental market and as a sales market. In addition, there have been changes in the structure of exhibition which has contributed to new methods of distribution and promotion. Costs have also been a factor and are becoming even more so today, and the expense of promoting a film has risen greatly, just as has the average cost of film production. The film business has become more expensive and more risky, but at the same time the potential for high returns has continued as an incentive for producers. Indeed, this potential has itself contributed to the increase in costs because it has created a blockbuster mentality that causes studios and producers to throw everything into a few large movies in the hopes of producing high grosses at the box office. This has always been a risky venture, but it appears to be getting even riskier as costs rise so high that grosses have to be extremely high in order to reach break-even. Traditional methods of promotion and marketing are still widely used, but television has become the centerpiece of every campaign, with the advertising blitz in the week or so before a film opens being the determining factor in the success or failure of the effort. Much marketing e
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the public with stories and images from a given film to subtler campaigns that try to target specific audiences or audience segments. The system today is based on testing, surveying, and analysis of the audience, its likes and dislikes, and imagery that will attract the customer into buying a ticket.
Audience testing can include everything from the contents of the film to the trailers and television ads and print advertising campaigns. The main objectives behind sneak previews are to identify creative problems, test audience satisfaction, and suggest ways in which the film might be improved. These tests also suggest what elements in a film might be more marketable to the public based on audience reactions. Sneak previews are undertaken well in advance of a film's scheduled release date to allow for any editing or changes. This may result in a changed ending for a film, since research has shown that, if the viewers do not like the movie's ending, they forget they ever liked anything in the film. Paramount spent $1.3 million for a new ending to the movie Fatal Attraction after test audiences gave the original ending a "thumbsdown," for instance. Advertising campaigns may similarly be shown to be ineffective, at which point
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2684
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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