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.