Individual Marketing Campaign Research for Amelie

style="font-size:14;">Investigation marketing Campaign for Film

Case Study: Amelie (Original title: La fabuleux destin d’Amélie Pulain)

• Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
• Release date: 5 October 2001
• Cast: Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz
• UK Distributor: Momentum Pictures.
• Genre: Romantic, Comedy, Foreign film, Quirky, Art-house

“Amélie is a young woman who had a decidedly unusual childhood; misdiagnosed with an unusual heart condition, Amélie didn't attend school with other children, but spent most of her time in her room, where she developed a keen imagination and an active fantasy life. Despite all this, Amélie has grown into a healthy and beautiful young woman who works in a cafe and has a whimsical, romantic nature. She decides to step into the lives of others around her to help them out.”-Worldcat-

In 2001 Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie generated a huge buzz among the film world. After its début in Paris and France, its fame quickly stepped beyond the borders of France. It was nominated for 46 awards and it had 51 win; these include an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, won Best Movie audience award, won a Czech Lion Best Foreign Film Award, Golden Trailer, Best Production design and Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases award and lots more. This quirky romantic-comedy appeared on lots of international film festivals like Cannes and Edinburgh Film Festival. The director’s previous successful films for example Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children also helped to create word of mouth for the film. All these recognition by the public media had a big impact on the marketing and distribution of the film.

Mostly every well known newspaper had several review and critics on Amelie. These are for example Times, The mail, Guardian. All of them had interviews with the director who is very proudly talks about his film: “I love critics when they are good and with this movie I've been very lucky because I have had 400 very good critics and six bad. One bad critic was amazing, he wanted to kill me.”

The film also appeared on TV and became a “box office smash in its native France”. It has also appeared on TV in the UK on BBC and Film4.

These successes contributed to the marketing in the after life of the film.

In 2001 online marketing was not as common as today, but it has been marketed online; the film has an official film website. Online marketing mainly includes the afterlife of this film. The DVD is marketed on several previously mentioned websites and the film’s reviews and critics are up on the internet giving a huge amount of information and advertisement to the target audience.

Mobile marketing is not available.

Marketing under complementary media means advertising and promoting the film on online social websites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc. Also this kind of marketing was not widely used at the time of the film, obviously a minimal amount might have been, but it can’t be mentioned as a form of marketing of this film. The other problem would be that the target audience of this film is not necessarily a part of this online community, therefore this kind is not suitable for the genre of the film. On the other hand, nowadays there are lots of fan clubs for the film on most of these social websites.

There is four different posters promoting Jeunet’s film; Amelie.

This one is a main poster for marketing. There are several quirky aspects on it that all suggests the art-house genre of the film. These are the strong colours of red and green, the quirky face expression of the main character. The strong colour contrast on the face, the stars on the background suggesting a dream-world kind of setting. Also having nothing else but the main actress on the poster has a big impact on the audience, it is eye-catching and gives the impression that the whole film revolves around the main character.

The second poster suggests the same quirky atmosphere. This effect is achieved with the same techniques which is colour and light and again Audrey Tautou’s main image. The same picture is used as on the other poster. Her look is trying to attract the viewer to watch the film; it is quirky, flirty and suggests a secret. Her picture is emphasized with a circle around the picture, which reminds the audience to a full moon. The main difference between the two posters is that this one has the café where Amelie works as the location of los of scenes in the film. The café’s warm colours, in the dark surrounding give an inviting contrast. The sky has been digitally changed. Digitally changed sky often appears in the film, to give an ideal picture of suburban Paris.- said the director to Empire magazine.

This is the official UK poster. It has the same features as the other European posters; Audrey, the café, the warm, dream world like colours, starry background. It aslo puts attention on the titles, a brief comment of the movie, and a clever tagline. All these aspects attract the audience to the cinema.

This is an official Japanese poster for Amelie. It is very interesting because it doesn’t put as much attention on the names and titles. It just gives a very art-house style picture from the film. Amelie reading at the evening with the cat on the bed and her surrounding; pictures, wallpaper, colours, lights give a very quirky impression. The centre of this poster is not as obviously the main actress but her life.

All these posters are sold in a variety of sizes in different shops, online shops and countries. There are some limited edition posters on blogs and forums where people shear it.

Teaser trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ULQA0jRCo&feature=related

This teaser trailer is in French. It shows a variety of pictures from the film. Most of these shot are of Amelie. In the film after each character introduced, the film lists the things the character does and doesn’t like. In this teaser trailer it first introduces her character, saying that she likes “dipping her hand into sacks of grain, cracking crème brute with a teaspoon and skipping stones at St. Martin’s Canal.” All of these pictures are shown; the most interesting shot is when she is skipping stones at the Canal. It starts from behind her showing the waterfall, and it goes over her head and finishes showing her from a distance, as in the foreground the stones skip. The director’s comment on the bits when introducing the character’s likes and dislikes are all a bit of him; “A lot of stories have come from my life. Everything, in fact. I am Amelie. A confession. I am Amelie!” For example: Amelie’s dad dislikes peeing next to someone else, he like peeling large strips of wallpaper. Amelie’s mum dislikes having her hand touched by strangers, and likes polishing the parquet. The end of the trailer just credits listing the starts in the film.

This teaser trailer is very different than other genre’s ones. Usually they have much more shots in them, than this one, it has about ten. The reason for that is because the award winning voiceover tells information so not as many pictures are needed and the main reason for such dramatic difference is that it is an art house genre.

Official Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sECzJY07oK4&feature=related

The official trailer is much longer and contains more shots. Basically it introduces the characters and shows interesting images for the film, and some of the special effects they used.

There are more various length and language trailers on the internet, which shows the verity of the marketing. It has been shown in different countries creating a big buzz around the film, in its own style Aemelie has been very well marketed this way.

Film magazines, which target only film and this kind of media had reviews about the film, and interviews with the director and main characters. All these had fantastic comments on the film, which added more to the marketing campaign. Examples of these magazines are Empire, Sight and Sound, Film maker magazine, Observer and others. “Amélie doesn't just get under your skin, it climbs right inside you and wraps itself about your heart.”- Dan Jolin, Total Film. Ray Pride talks to Jeunet about making one of the most successful French films of all time. The magazines also gave information about the shooting, the attention that the film got on film festivals, more comments from the filmmakers and lots more interesting detail.

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/fall2001/features/magnificent_obsession.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/dec/20/news1

http://www.empireonline.com/interviews/interview.asp?IID=101

http://www.premiere.com/Review/Movies/Amelie

The premier of the film was in Paris and later on they had premier screening on film festivals and cinemas worldwide. It had a huge success everywhere. “Celebrity guests at the screening were expected to include Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, Glasgow band Belle and Sebastian and Ricky Ross of Deacon Blue. “ Celebreties on premiers generate great publicity.

Award winning soundtrack of the film was released soon after the film release, the soundtrack is still sold on the internet on websites like Amazon and it is also available for download. The music, the music editing and the voiceover all won several awards.

Overall Amelie’s marketing campaing was very sucsesfull, the most effective was propably the word of mouth and that’s how most people know about the film. The buzz around the film was mostly generated by the awards and the worldwide huge success as most film critics consider it to be the “best French film ever made.”