Studio Campaigns

We discussed key art earlier in relation to independent film sales. In layman’s terms, key art is the photographic (or, in the early days of cinema and drive-in movies, the non-photographic drawings, sketches, or paintings) that were depicted on the poster and/or flyer (also known as a sales sheet or one sheet). Over the years, new key art is often produced for highly successful films. For instance, Star Wars’ first piece of key art featured an artist’s rendering of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, with Darth Vader in the background, whereas subsequent designs included more of the cast members, such as Harrison Ford, as they became better known to audiences.

For an independent film without the luxury of studio dollars, you should aim to create the most saleable key art and flyer as cost-effectively as possible. In the old days, before computers and Photoshop, it was a lot easier to composite multiple images through drawings, sketches, or paintings. For example, the key art for Gone with the Wind—which features a foreground embrace with Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara, while Atlanta burns in the background—is an artist’s rendering. At the time, without artists’ representations, there was no way to composite multiple images with real photographic likenesses. A standard clause in almost every star actor’s contract that has survived over the decades is the “non-photographic likeness” clause, which states that the actor will have just three opportunities (usually) to reject an artist’s rendition of his or her non-photographic likeness.

Styles of posters and key art for movies have evolved over the years, as have the tastes of generations of moviegoers and audiences. Graphic designers are always trying to be innovative and cutting edge. William Shakespeare said that there are only seven basic stories—everything else is a variation on them. Similarly with key art, almost everything is basically a variation on something that has already been seen in some form or another. With the advent of personal computers, color printers, and Photoshop and other design software, coupled with today’s ever-changing technologies, almost anyone with nominal expertise can create quite sophisticated artwork on a home computer. There are also many cost-effective graphic design companies whose prices have declined considerably due to all of the foregoing reasons, as well as consolidation and competition. Printing digitally, which is more cost effective than traditional four-color printing, a thousand two-sided color flyers might cost as little as $800. Key art also needs to be available electronically in high-resolution files, with English text for North America and other English-speaking markets, and textless for the foreign territories, so that each territory may overlay the local language onto the artwork. However, the time is fast approaching when physical flyers will be obsolete; instead, the image will simply be transmitted from the seller’s wireless device to the prospective buyer’s wireless device.

Studios still spend huge amounts on multiple compilations (comps) of key art, posters, flyers, and advertising materials—primarily because they have traditionally publicized their movies in this way and can afford it. But I have seen wonderful, virtually free campaigns by innovative independent producers and filmmakers, and conversely have seen lavish studio campaigns costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that were unadulterated garbage. The key to a successful campaign is not what you spend, but good taste, understanding your product in the context of the market you are catering to, and knowing your core demographic. Bad taste is always bad taste, regardless of what it costs.

A case in point is a Warner Bros. picture I produced in 2001 called 3000 Miles to Graceland, starring Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell. It was an edgy heist/road movie with an impressive ensemble cast, including Courteney Cox (from Friends), David Arquette, Christian Slater, Howie Long, Ice-T, Kevin Pollak, Thomas Haden Church, and Bokeem Woodbine. The diverse cast appealed to a very wide demographic, including African Americans, hip young television viewers, and football fans.

An early artwork comp featured a suitably edgy black-and-white group shot of this terrific cast which perfectly conveyed what the movie was about and would have appealed to the core demographic. But this image was never used. The dilemma for the studio and the production company was that, in addition to Russell having certain likeness approvals, Costner had approval over the key art itself! Obviously, the easiest option for the studio’s venerable art director was to cater to Costner’s ego to get the star to sign off on the key art, which would then be used as the movie’s poster. So the shot he submitted to Costner featured him in the foreground (in a more prominent position than Russell, even though Russell was the main lead), dressed in an Elvis costume, with Russell in a secondary position, also dressed as Elvis. (The movie contains a ten-minute sequence in which Russell, Costner, and their crew infiltrate a Las Vegas casino disguised as Elvis impersonators.) Both actors were enamored of Elvis and Costner approved the key art concept and both actors approved their likenesses.

However, Russell had played Elvis years before in a TV miniseries that was well known among his fans, and in hindsight the image of him playing an Elvis impersonator probably caused considerable confusion among the movie’s potential audience. The public had no idea what the movie was about based on the misguided and misdirected artwork. Yet the studio executives had been wary of using the far better black-and-white group shot because of Costner’s contractual approval and he could have held up the whole process. So once they got his approval for the “two Elvises” key art, they just went with it, despite my objections in numerous creative meetings. The movie should have targeted a young male audience, which at the time was the largest movie-going demographic, but with two quinquagenarians dressed as Elvis on the poster, the studio’s “line of least resistance” resulted in young boys and men staying away from the theaters in droves.

To make matters worse, the trailer also focused almost entirely on the film’s casino heist sequence, in which everyone was dressed as Elvis impersonator, while an incessant loop of “Viva Las Vegas” played in the background. This further branded the film to the public as the “Elvis movie,” which was completely misleading. Audiences had no idea what the movie was about. Fifteen–thirty-year-old males could not have cared less about Elvis Presley, much less Elvis impersonators, and the theatrical release of the picture flopped, due almost entirely to the poor marketing and publicity.

Warner Bros. and the venerable art director probably cost the studio, and my former company, tens of millions of dollars in box-office receipts due to their poor, “easy way out” marketing decisions and negligence. Even crazier is that my company was charged hundreds of thousands of dollars for the awful marketing campaign that killed the movie. A junior high school kid on his or her laptop could have created a better campaign for nothing.

Since then, the picture has appeared on DVD and television, and numerous people have told me how good it is. They never saw it during its theatrical release, though, because the publicity campaign convinced them that it was “just some Elvis film,” rather than the edgy, darkly humorous, heist picture that it actually is.

Key Art in the Independent Film World

For the independent producer or filmmaker, the trick is to come up with one piece of key art that can serve all markets. On an independent budget, you usually don’t want to pay for more than one piece of key art for flyers to hand out to prospective buyers at film markets. The exception to this rule is when you try to pre-sell a movie before locking in a star cast. In such cases it is a good idea to make temporary artwork for the pre-sale process. This can then be replaced with final key art featuring the stars’ names and likenesses after the film completed.

In late 2012, I was in pre-production on a family movie with the American Film Market drawing near. I didn’t have a star cast in place as yet, so I created some cute temporary artwork for pre-sale purposes. The film was going to feature an English sheepdog, so I composited a stock photo of a dog, along with some other images that supported the story line of the film. Later, after shooting, I simply composited shots of the film’s stars onto the original dog photo and background image and layout. Since I salvaged much of the original artwork, the “redo” cost only $600 in total, not including the printing of the second set of flyers.

As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, having key art and a good flyer has always been critical to international sales. Very few buyers ever want to do any additional creative work, other than overlaying text in their own language (over the textless key art). I have seen buyers purchase rights to a film on the basis of nothing more than the marketing materials, if the film concept was saleable for their territory. I have also seen buyers reject a film on the basis of bad key art, since they do not have the time, manpower, desire, or budget to create new publicity material. Never underestimate the importance of good key art and marketing materials which are critical for sales.

Study Current Film Campaigns

As important as it is for the independent producer to understand the marketplace, the market desire for a product, and the market value of a product before the film is made, it is equally important for a producer to understand the marketplace from a marketing standpoint and to be able to guide the marketing materials creatively for successful sales globally. Look at current campaigns for films that are playing in theaters, on VOD or DVD, and on Direct TV or Netflix, and you can educate yourself on the type of key art concepts, including tones and brightness, that are currently successful.

Often a novice producer or sales company will create artwork that is too dark. This is because it is a lot easier for a designer compositing key art to blur lines and add shadows and blackness than it is to do lighter, finer work. Perception is everything when positioning a film in the marketplace, and if the artwork is cheesy, buyers will assume that the film is cheesy.

Still Photography

Production stills are a requirement for any delivery to any territory anywhere in the world. The still photography requirements are spelled out in distribution contracts and sales agency contracts, and they include a minimum number of shots of actors in scenes from the film, portraits of the stars, group shots of stars or key actors who interact in the film, and often shots of key elements in the film, such as a submarine or a dog if they are central to the story line. If a key element is created in post-production, such as a CGI monster or a space ship, still photos must be extracted from still frames of the film or rendered in still frame by the effects house.

In addition to being used in the promotion of the picture, production stills and star portraits are critical in the creation of key art for the film. If there are insufficient photos to create decent key art, or if a unique concept is desired, often a photo shoot will be arranged to photograph actors or a “set piece” concept specifically for the key art.

Log Lines

Almost all key art for movie posters and flyers have “log lines” (sometimes known as sell lines). These are usually concise, catchy lines (one, two, or three is standard) that assist the visual image in “selling” the film. From a sales perspective, the log line lets the buyers know what the film is—thriller, comedy, horror, or action—as well as a sense of what it is about. Look at log lines of recent films to see what styles are currently trending.

Stars

A general rule is to marquee your stars if they are well known and popular. However, as we covered earlier, be aware that some name actors may have oversaturated themselves in both the foreign market and the home entertainment market, so they may actually be a negative factor for buyers in certain territories. If some buyers react negatively to an actor in your movie, they have probably lost money on previous films in which that actor starred. In such cases, it is probably better to feature the actor only in the credit block, not prominently on the key art (unless you are contractually obligated to do so). Your preliminary due diligence should have clarified which actors might be valuable assets to your film’s sales, as well as those who might be detrimental.

Second Level of Sell

In publicity and marketing, another thing that I’ve embraced over many years is the “second level of sell.” A television network executive back in the late 1970s defined this as: “One is the movie you make, and one is the movie you sell.” I illustrated this earlier, when discussing the movie Crash Dive. In Germany, the film was marketed as a single father trying to find his young son while fighting to save the world against a nuclear threat. The second level of sell was the human drama. In Japan, the second level of sell was the submarine, torpedoes, missiles, gadgetry, and technology. In Korea, the second level of sell was the hand-to-hand martial arts.

Trailers

As discussed earlier, the purpose of the trailer is to attract either an audience to a film or a buyer for a film, for instance in a foreign territory. It is the ultimate sales tool for any film.

Trailers generally consist of a series selected shots from the film, edited to give the audience or buyer a sense of the movie, its genre, cast, and production value in two and a half minutes or less. For the foreign market, less is more—around ninety seconds, and certainly no more than two minutes, works best. Rarely is a film as good as its trailer, since the excerpts are invariably from the most exciting, funny, or otherwise noteworthy parts of the film (depending on genre). Trailers are generally nonlinear: shots and sequences are not necessarily in the order in which they appear in the film.

There is a fine line between “selling” and giving a misleading representation of a film. Often, in independent films, a name star is hired in a smaller, “cameo” role, as fewer days worked equals less money paid to the star. But a trailer may give the impression that such an actor is one of leading players. Trailers can also attempt to skew films that are shot to appeal to a specific demographic in order to attract another demographic. For example, the trailer for a “chick flick” which appeals largely to women may prominently feature an action sequence (which is most likely a minuscule part of the full movie) in order to try to appeal to a male audience as well.

Many “trailer houses,” particularly in Los Angeles, specialize in cutting effective trailers that tell, or at least allude to, the story of a film in a highly condensed fashion and generate maximum audience or buyer appeal. As with a picture editor, trailer houses rely on comments from filmmakers and sales agents to hone the creative presentation, best shots, and running time. Film marketing has become a large industry and trailers have become highly polished pieces of advertising, able to present even poor movies in an attractive light. This is one reason why almost all buyers today want to see the finished film, rather than committing to it after seeing only the trailer.

Trailers often begin with a structure similar to the film itself, even if in a nonlinear way, and lay out the premise of the story. Today, they feature numerous editorial devices and effects to enhance the visual montage of the most powerful, funny, or emotional moments of the film, and they usually build to a dramatic climax. Voiceover narration may be used to set up the premise of the film or provide an explanation to enhance the audience’s understanding of the plot. Often title cards are used to help delineate a time or place, and sometimes title cards with key words such as “Gripping,” “Bold,” or “Powerful” may be used to accentuate what the distributor would like the audience to perceive about the film.

Since a trailer is a highly condensed format, music helps set the tone and mood, accentuate key moments, and build to a climax, as in a full feature film. Music used in the trailer may be from the film itself or it could come from a music library, if the score has not been completed by the time the trailer is needed, or if other music supports the montage style of the trailer better than the composed score. In the latter case, you must secure full clearance for worldwide usage in all media for every musical composition contained in the trailer.

As mentioned above, trailers often feature marquee stars or name creators, directors, or producers who may help sell or brand the movie; they also usually feature the contractual credit block for the picture at the end. Finally, for all studio films and many independents, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating will appear, unless the film is not yet rated, in which case this is usually stated in a voiceover.

MPAA Rating

In order for a movie to receive distribution in almost every territory worldwide, films are required to have a rating by the MPAA which views movies and assigns a rating. Many distributors will have a ratings restriction in their distribution contract, generally “No more restrictive than R” if it is an action or exploitation film, or “No more restrictive than PG-13” if it is a television movie. However, the MPAA has a double standard with respect to studio films and independent films. It has historically been much more consistently punitive towards independent films, assigning much harsher ratings to them than it does to studio films, and displaying much more leniency to bigger-budgeted studio pictures that contain equal or even more violent or risqué content. As an example, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, a very violent film, was rated PG-13. If the movie had been made by an independent company the film would undoubtedly have been assessed an R rating. The MPAA has historically been more punitive with ratings on independent films.

I have had numerous fights with the MPAA over seemingly arbitrarily assigned ratings. After trims and negotiations with the “censors” there, I have usually been able to procure a less punitive rating. A harsh MPAA rating can negatively affect box-office and/or ancillary sales, since the more restrictive the rating, the more restrictions there are for exhibition. An R rating restricts young males under eighteen, a huge part of the movie-going audience, from seeing a theatrical film without a parent. Many R-rated films create television versions that eliminate violent or explicit content.

The paradox is that cable network series and miniseries, particularly on Starz, HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax, have pushed the boundaries of explicit sexual and violent content, even during prime time. This would have been unthinkable ten years ago; and, if rated by the MPAA, most of these series would be classified NC-17. Television has its own rating system; however, unless one sets parental restrictions on the TV istelf, anyone can view the programs.

As an example, on The Pledge, starring Jack Nicholson, a film that my company financed and I executive produced, Sean Penn, the director, got into a heated battle with the MPAA over one shot. The movie, which otherwise was a melancholy and lyrical picture, without any nudity or, in my opinion, gratuitous violence, contained a sequence where Benicio del Toro’s character takes a pistol from a policeman’s holster, puts the gun in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. The sequence happens abruptly and unexpectedly, but the MPAA decided that that one shot was too graphic. To avoid the NC-17 rating that the MPAA threatened, one of its representatives negotiated over individual frames with Penn to secure an R rating.

On The Whole Nine Yards, starring Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry, another film that my company and I financed and I executive produced, a choice was made to retain shots in which Amanda Peet exposes her breasts. That decision probably cost the movie $10 million at the box office, since it garnered an R rating rather than the PG-13 that would have been granted if those shots had been cut.

Likewise, on Angel Eyes, starring Jennifer Lopez and Jim Caviezel, yet another film that my company financed and I executive produced, the film received an R rating rather than PG-13 because of the massive amount of gratuitous profanity. We had allowed the director a loose rein, and in post-production we found it impossible to cut the unnecessary expletives without reshoots, which we couldn’t afford. Lopez’s audience at the time was primarily young boys and girls, who couldn’t see the film due to the rating (and shouldn’t have seen it due to the vulgar language).

The fallacy of the MPAA is that films are assessed by staff members who are paid to view them and assign ratings. Their opinions and evaluations are subjective and vary from person to person, under criteria suggested by the MPAA. These individuals impose their judgments on filmmakers with little consistency, except that they are consistently more strict towards independents. I contend that they are censors in every sense of the word, although the MPAA vehemently denies this. But consider this: if the MPAA gives your film a harsh rating, which can completely undermine its success, its representatives will make suggestions and negotiate with producers on cuts that will satisfy and assuage their utterly subjective opinion. Since there is no rival ratings board, the MPAA operates as a monopoly with total autonomy.

Title Search

Prior to finalizing your delivery elements, you should have a title search done on the title under which you plan to distribute your picture. Organizations such as the Law Offices of Dennis Angel (Scarsdale, New York) and Thompson Reuters Corporation (New York City) research your title in every database worldwide to make sure that there are no other competing pictures of the same title. If they determine that no film title specifically conflicts with yours, a title search will suffice for your errors and omissions policy. However, if another picture has the same title, or even a similar title, it may require a legal opinion in order for you to include that title in your E&O policy.

EPK

An electronic press kit (EPK) generally comprises behind-the-scenes footage as you are filming; interviews with key talent, producers, writers, director, and others; and stunts or effects sequences as they are set up and filmed. It is used and often required by distributors as “added value” material for the DVD. Generally, an EPK is a line item in a film budget. On a low-budget film, one person is usually hired to shoot it, if not for the entire production schedule, at least for a number of key days on most locations. Sometimes I get the movie’s still photographer to shoot the EPK as well. And I have hired people to shoot and edit the EPK. Otherwise, I make deals with the picture’s editors to cut the EPK after the final cut of the picture is locked.