Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are excellent ways to promote our performance, and creating a trailer would increase our advertisement even further. A trailer needs to attract an audience’s attention and appeal to the performances target audience, whilst communicating information about the upcoming production. “Advertising is the means by which goods or services are promoted to the public. The advertiser’s goal is to increase sales of these goods or services by drawing people’s attention to them and showing them in a favourable light” (Petley, 2002, p. 4). Early on in the process of creating 130,000 as a group myself, Kelly Bramall, Julia Curry, Chelsey Loveday and the marketing team, Jessica Crosby and Leanne McKettrick, as a team effort helped create an original trailer for our production. At this stage of the module the performance had not yet been scripted and completely decided so our chosen images were not original, and the information had elements missing such as the time and date of our performance. Elements of the trailer suited the themes within 130,000 such as the music from a British film Kidaulthood, but we felt that a new trailer with primary images, accurate information and current music would be beneficial.
Our original trailer represented our Theatre Company more than it did our upcoming performance and generally didn’t feel personal enough.
Aspects such as music, content and style will reflect on our company’s forthcoming performance, so it is important that the trailer is correctly advertised matching the themes within 130,000 as these elements set an expectation. The new trailer that I created for 130,000 displays only dark colours such as black, grey and white which represent the dark themes of knife crime, murder and ‘gang related culture’ that 130,000 is based on. The trailer presents specific information to our targeted audience which is important to advertise. This information included the name of our company and forthcoming production, the date and time of the performance, the fact that 130,000 is based on Roy Williams’ Fallout, and our unique selling point that we are using real words from real people. This information is used to attract audiences and aims to provide an insight into our upcoming performance. “Today we live in an image-saturated society, and advertisements account for a significant proportion of this media barrage” (Petley, 2002, p. 5). By including pictures within the trailer, the audience can get a better understanding of the type of theatre WAKEUP produce. As these pictures are of adolescents dressed in branded wear standing in a gang, they represent the culture and themes we wish to address within 130,000. As music is also a major element to a trailer, the music that I choose reflected the gang related themes within the play by including a song by a current rapper and musician called Macklemore. The combination between the music, pictures and information within the trailer ensure that the production is being advertised properly and appropriately setting a high-quality expectation to audiences. My aim was to create a simple but informative trailer, which would leave an audience feeling, intrigued about the content of the performance without ruining the impact and emotion the audience will gain.
Work Cited
Petley, Julian (2002) Advertising. Hodder Wayland. London.