Movie Virals - My Obsession with the Blockbuster Ad Campaign
We are in the midst of Blockbuster season, and with only half of the 2013 tentpoles having screened, studios are already gearing up for their major players in 2014.
Fresh off the back of Comic-Con plugging, studios such as Fox have already started marketing campaigns for two of their big releases next year: X-Men: Days of Future Past and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
No trailers have even been released as yet, but the studio has kick-started some smart viral campaigns teasing certain elements of the above.
More specifically, in the case of X-Men: Days of Future Past, a video campaign has been created and a website launched for the fictional company Trask Industries. The tech company is responsible for the creation and manufacture of The Sentinels, which will pose a real threat to mutant-kind come 2014. Prepare to be dazzled.
Meanwhile, for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Fox has published this deeply chilling PSA for Simian Flu:
What particularly excites me about campaigns such as these, are the expansion upon a movie’s narrative universe, the blurring of lines between fiction and reality, and the resulting immersive experience created for audiences.
I have been heavily engaged in the movie virals of recent years. For the release of 2012’s The Hunger Games, a website was set up for the film’s Capitol, featuring an online magazine named Capitol Couture. Elsewhere on the website, there was an opportunity for visitors to create their very own physical Capitol ID badge.
Some of my absolute favourites campaigns though, have first of all been The Dark Knight (2008). Warner Bros, the studio behind this movie, got their creative direction spot on with this one. One strand of the viral featured a staged political campaign entitled ‘Harvey Dent for District Attorney’. The campaign poster can be seen below. A campaign car toured various US locations, distributing campaign material. One of TDK’s stars, Maggie Gyllenhaal, even recorded a public statement in character endorsing Dent (see below). A website was set up for fictional news network GCN (Gotham City News) which documented the Dent campaign.
When it came to launching the trailers for the movie, a series of random websites were created. The names of them were cleverly worded to tie in with the film’s supervillain, The Joker. Some of these included: www.atasteforthetheatrical.com (below) and www.whysoserious.com
The viral also included a website for The Gotham Times as well as a Joker-fied version The Ha Ha Ha Times.
Another one of my favourite virals was for Cloverfield (2008). With director Matt Reeves, and J.J. Abrams serving as producer, this project was bound to be shrouded in secrecy. It absolutely was, even down to the film’s title, which in its lead up, was known as 1-18-08. The monstrous flick’s publicity material was completely creature-free. The 1-18-08 website only featured a handful of photographs from what appeared to be a house party. However, when the following viral video surfaced online, much speculation began. The video is of a news report on an Oil Rig collapse in the Atlantic Ocean. The report, and handheld footage accompanying it, added a great deal of realism and sparked huge interest in what could have caused this disaster.
In addition to this, other virals were made, including a video series entitled ‘Jamie and Teddy’. The series related to the character Jamie who was attending the house party. It was discovered that the party was a going away one, being held for Rob, who had just accepted a job at a fictional drinks company called Slusho. A website was created for this company, along with a commercial for the drink. Slusho features prominently across all of J.J. Abrams’s projects. How’s that for an Easter Egg!?! Will it make it into Star Wars though? Other virals included MySpace pages set up for the lead characters in the movie. An effective way to give audiences an insight into their personalities/interests.
