Slumdog Millionaire UK Trailer - Distribution and Marketing

Analysis

USP: I think one of the most poignant selling points of this film and it's trailer is it's synergy with the UK game show "Who wants to be a Millionaire", Celador Productions.

Also, Danny Boyle as director means that as an audience we will recognize him and he is also highlighted for his past UK productions such as Trainspotting. 

The music used is very emotive and this helps to create a tense atmosphere, so that an audience would see/hear the trailer and WANT to find out what happens.

Finally, the fact that the film is set in India and it's a UK production is very unique. It's not set in the typical London or American settings, it's set in an exotic, often unknown country. Not many people have seen the harsh conditions of the slums in India, and therefore seeing them featuring and playing an important part in a film is quite interesting for a contemporary British audience. 

 

Which elements in the film's genre is the distributor highlighting which sets the film aside from other films in it's genre: The fact that the film is a mixture of different genres. There's an underlying love story throughout the film between the 2 main protagonist. There's also themes of money, violence, gangs and abuse. 

Slumdog Millionaire Poster Analysis - Distribution and marketing

Movie Poster

Title: Slumdog Millionaire

Title Graphics: The font is quite bold, and has an irregular ‘broken’ effect. It seems torn and shattered perhaps reflecting the characters in the film. The colour changes from a deep red with connotations of passion, romance or on a different note violence, to a light yellow with connotations of new life, freshness and new beginnings. This could we a reflection of the narrative of the film, the film starts of violent and passionate, but ends calmly, with new beginnings, perhaps a happy ending.

Who is starring in the film: The majority of the cast are mainly unknown, Dev Patel and Freida Pinto are the protagonists and both were new to film acting. However Danny Boyle the director is well known and therefore is recognizable to a modern audience.

Where are the stars’ names placed on the poster and why: The protagonists are not actually placed at all on the poster, only their faces are displayed, this could perhaps be because there so unknown that the designers thought it was necessary to include them. However, be the title graphics it reads “ A Danny Boyle film” in a bright yellow, this time to make it stand out.

Mise - en - scene: There are two characters displayed on the poster. The main characters. Jamal’s head is displayed largely, it’s a profile of his face and the back of his head fades into the background. His love interest is superimposed on Jamal’s head, she’s running. This could perhaps signify she’s trying to get away from him as they are facing in opposite directions, however because she is superimposed, it gives them a sense of closeness, that perhaps maybe their it two different places and she’s running towards him, which if you’ve ever seen the film, is very true.
The background is blurry and only the characters are in focus. This could perhaps reflect that their backgrounds don’t matter, the confusion and disorientation of the characters and their focus on one another. Everything else to them is out of focus and unimportant except each other.

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General Distribution


"A triumphant Danny Boyle recalled yesterday how Slumdog Millionaire came within a whisker of never making it to cinemas - after the economic downturn forced his film’s original distributors out of business.

Six months ago, the director was suddenly informed that Warner Independent was being closed down and that Slumdog, to which he’d devoted a year of his life, would be condemned to the obscurity of a straight-to-DVD release.
That was before Fox Searchlight heard of Boyle's feel-good fable about contemporary Mumbai. They bought rights to the film for a song, and quietly went about turning it into a word of mouth smash hit."
(The Independent)


The film started off as art house targeting Danny Boyle fans, but after being nominated for a a number of Oscars AND winning, it become a world wide phenomenon. 
The majority of the time Danny Boyle did the TV,radio and magazine interviews. I think he was probably used because he's the most recognizable member of the cast and crew and therefore the most likely person an audience could relate with.

Slumdog Millionaire was released on the 9th January 2008 in the UK, and the 23rd of January in the USA.

I think the USP of Slumdog Millionaire would be it's recreation of 'Who wants to be a millionaire'. The film used their synergy with Celador productions as a way of creating an authentic Indian version of the show.

Target Audience

46% of the audience were age 15-25.

The other highest percentage was age 45+ with 27%.

Research also shows that 56% of the audience were female.

The film has a wide demographic. It's a 15 certificate which is quite appropriate. Some of the scenes include violence and adult issues that children under 15 wouldn't fully be able to understand and it might distress them.

Marketing

Slumdog Millionaire, though quite low budget is a mainstream film, due to Film 4 and Danny Boyle.

They used Danny Boyle in most of their interviews. This could be because he is the most widely known member of the cast and crew. He is someone that knows a lot about this film and many others and therefore was able to offer interviewers his knowledge and opinions on why Slumdog Millionaire is a good film.

The television trailer presents the film as almost being in the action genre. The music is very fast paced, and creates a sense of chaos and excitement.

The voiceover describes it as "an unforgettable story". This tells us that there is a deep, underlying story and therefore not simply an action film.

The images show both the slums and the city and help to create the scene.

They use a popular song "The sun always shines on TV" (a-ha), to get an audiences notice and to perhaps give an indication of the narrative.

Danny Boyle decided to dub his movie in Hindi and Tamil so that he could appeal to a bigger audience, the audiences in India as well as the UK.

The film also got unprecedented media coverage, as it was nominated for a number of Oscars, and this meant that the public were desperate to see it.

This is England

Recent Film 4 production
Directed by Shane Meadows
Written by: Shane Meadows

Happy Go Lucky

A recent film by Film 4
Directed by Mike Leigh
Written by: John Kaylin
Mike Leigh

Production Problems in Film 4

Production Problems

Film 4s biggest problem was competing for cinema space with multinational film companies.

In 2001, the company suffered a major box office flop, after Charlotte Gray lost them a massive £5.7 million.  In the same year Film 4 put out 14 films, yet only accounted for 0.7% of the UK box office market, they were struggling.

A complete relaunch took place in 2006. Around a quarter of all films shown were british and they were broken up by advertisements for the first time. The company left pay TV and went onto Freeview.

History of Film 4/ Channel 4

History

Channel 4 become the fourth terrestrial channel in 1982. It was known for making and showing a range of “cutting edge” materials that has not been seen before by audiences on any other channel ( the BBC, BBC2, ITV). 

Having british films made for the channel proved very successful and again the films generally appealed to very different 

audiences. This is proved due to the companies 25 years in running.  

Having a synergy between Film 4 and channel 4 was hugely successful, the companies didn’t have to depend on films alone, they had money from advertising on the channel coming in as well. 

The synergy came in handy for Film 4, in knowing that they were guaranteed and TV premiere, which meant that they could take more risks in the content of their films than that of the mainstream films. 

Cost wise Channel 4 typically had about £500-£600, this was a lot less than the more mainstream films of the time which usually had up to £4 million. 

Important people

David Rose the commissioning editor for fiction on channel 4 since the inception. From 1992, David Aukin took over.

Tessa Ross runs the department of drama on channel 4.

Film 4 Slumdog Millionaire

A recent major success from Film 4.
The company also joined up with Celador Productions, the company behind Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, which of course plays a crucial part of the narrative of the film.


Producer:Christian Colson - Produced at least 7 major productions with 2 more in development.

Director : Danny Boyle - Directed another Film 4 production, a very succesful 'Trainspotting', this could perhaps be the reasons he was chosen to direct again.

Writers : Simon Beaufoy - Written up to 14 productions, from TV to Screenplay. Screen wrote Slumdog Millionaire based on original novel Q and A but Vikas Swarup

Vikas Swarup - Hasn't written any other major or minor production. Wrote the original book Q and A.

Composer : A.R Rahman - Composed over 100 productions. Soundtracked up to 47 productions

Casting: There were no major A listers,therefore we can assume the budget was perhaps quite low.
The casting process took Boyle and Colson all over the US, Canada, the UK and India in search of the right actors that could deliver a convincing performance in English and also fit across the three ages of the story – 7, 13, and 18.
It also brought them to an Indian casting director, Loveleen Tandan.


Budget: Around $15 million.

Locations: Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

Juhu, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

ND Studios, Karjat, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

One of the main problems faced by the team was finding locations and being granted access. It was a logistical challenge for the location scouts and support from the team’s Indian connections was vital

Develepment from Book to Film: The idea for Slumdog Millionaire began when head of film and drama at channel 4 Tessa Ross received a call from Film4's book scout Kate Sinclair. Sinclair said that she had read a gripping story and even thought it was yet to be published Ross immediatly optioned it.
Ross then set up meeting with directors, writers and prodcuers, and spoke to Simon Beaufoy whom she was very keen to work with, and he came on board straight away. Ross suggested that, although the book was difficult to convert into a screenplay, she felt Beaufoy had the skill and experience to do it. Beaufoy believed that most Western cinemagoers had not previously experienced the side of India that Swarup’s book explores. The setting and the transformation from rags to riches is very much the hook of the story.
The most difficult thing in converting the book to screen play was the fact that the book was slit into about 12 short stories, it had no real narrative.
When the script was in good enough shape to take to a director, the team’s number one choice was Danny Boyle. “We sat down and asked ourselves who would be the best person in the world to direct this material and just thought ‘Danny Boyle!,” Colson recalls. “We sent it to him, he read it and said ‘Count me in’,” says Colson. “It was that easy.”
Another problem that the crew faced was trying to get control in such a out of control place as Mumbai. Eventually they just had to go with it and luckily it payed off.