New Moon - Opens November 20th, 2009

Marisa – On Tuesday, August 11^th, Summit Entertainment released a teaser trailer for the next installment in the Twilight series, New Moon.  Let me rephrase that, what they really did was release a fourteen second teaser trailer for a full-length trailer that was to be released a few days later on Friday the 21^st.  Besides this type of ridiculous publicity manipulation being a sign of the apocalypse, it also indicates something about the importance of an aggressive publicity campaign these days.

While the quality of the nearly $200 million grossing Twilight is up for debate, it’s difficult to debate the strength of the film’s publicity campaign.  The first film may not have been so successful without all the media manipulation leading to its release: the premiere of the trailer during the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, the Comic-Con appearances, the trading cards, all of it.  Summit knows that a good section of its audience will do anything to see a glimpse of the upcoming films.  They even based their ad campaign for Bandslam around the assumption with commercials for the film teasing that anybody who bought a ticket would get a glimpse of New Moon as well.

Within all the media manipulation is a deeper question: how long are fans going to allow themselves to be manipulated before Twilight becomes so ubiquitous that they turn on them?  Really, how much satisfaction can fourteen seconds of footage really give?  Probably not that much, but that didn’t stop Twilight fan sites from posting the video as soon as they could.  But really, satisfaction is not the point, building excitement is and that’s exactly what the teaser for the trailer did.  That’s the goal of the film business now, building excitement.  It’s not about how good the film is, it’s about making people think it’s good, or at least that it might be good.  It worked for Twilight and if the fan fervor is any indication, it’s working for New Moon.

Cliff

There is little point to arguing that media exposure and advertising has much, if not in some cases everything, to do with the commercial success of wide-release films. In the case of 2008′s Twilight, getting publicity at venues such as the MTV Movie Awards makes only too much sense because the target audiences for both the “Twilight” book and movie are girls roughly between ages of 13 and 24, which is the same audience that the MTV channels attract. Actor attendances at places like Comic-Con were slightly less appropriate because the “Twilight” franchise had up until that point not entered the comic book medium (though there are rumors of graphic novels in the works), but the subject matter of vampires fits in very well with the atmosphere at such a gathering because it’s fantastical. All of this is simply a calculated hype campaign that, some might contest, helped legitimize the conception of a major motion picture by increasing the following of the source material it was based on.

Regarding the desperatism that some Twilight fans have towards getting every minuscule glimpse of the movie they await for so anxiously, it is not too dissimilar to the kind that X-Men Origins: Wolverine garnered when an entire copy of the film was leaked and spread on the internet even before a final cut was made. Personally I see no purpose to viewing an unfinished product, let alone judging said product based on its incomplete condition, but the fact presents itself that dedicated audiences are simply extremely excited. The releasing of a teaser trailer only days prior to releasing a full trailer does indeed border on excessiveness, which could possibly be attributed to poor timing within a marketing campaign, however Summit Entertainment’s real goal with such ploys has in fact very little to do with such die-hard fans.

The purpose for such stunts is to keep up interest in less dedicated audiences; i.e., those who enjoyed the first film or follow the novels but for whatever reasons were not utterly smitten. These fringe audiences are what dictate most of the commercial success of such niche films as Twilight and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Snakes on a Plane proved that an enthusiastic internet following is not enough to garner adequate revenue to justify the production costs of such films, even though the films are relatively cheap to make (given, Snakes on a Plane was not a best-selling book prior to the film’s release). Plus, when studios push the exposure of their films by advertising for just their trailers (like Warner Brothers did with the Matrix sequels and The Dark Knight), history contests that such ploys are actually effective. Die-hard fans get material to talk about on blogs and message boards, and fringe audiences are reminded of their mostly positive experiences with the previous installment of the series and therefore have higher interest in seeing the newest one. It is essential for such marketing tricks to succeed for most films because typically more than half of the overall gross is earned during just the opening weekend, and New Moon will be no different. So, not only are Summit’s attempts to expose their product early and often sensible from both a commercial and cultural standpoint, they are downright critical. Now, the correlation between such media hype and the quality of the films that carry it is a separate issue. We will have to wait to see how New Moon fits into that conversation.

Marisa –

Certainly publicity and hype are essential to the film business today.  That is undeniable. Slumdog Millionaire might not have won Best Picture at the Academy Awards without the rave reviews of critics and a publicity campaign that exploited those reviews.  However, when it comes to something like the Twilight franchise, the most important element of the audience is the obsessive section of fans.

The cast’s appearance at Comic-Con would seem an odd decision considering the source material is all novel and no graphic, but consider the type of fans that could be attracted at such an event.  Supposedly, a person attending Comic-Con would be a relatively dedicated fan of some aspect of comics or at the very least a casual member of some cult following that gathers at Comic-Con.  Summit Entertainment would see the event as a possible means of attracting new fans to the series since the fantastical vampire element would likely appeal to the average Comic-Con attendee.  Moreover, garnering those fans would be a very attractive prospect for Summit since it would not only present the possibility of expanding fan demographics, but those fans would also likely be willing to spend money on Twilight merchandise.  And that’s the goal really, finding fans that are willing to spend money on every aspect of a film, to be willing to do just about anything to know and have everything about a beloved work.

This idea is precisely the guiding factor behind releasing a teaser trailer of a full-length trailer.  The teaser was not shown on television where members of Twilight’s fringe audience would see it, but was released online with the specific goal of making hardcore fans pay for a ticket to see the full-length trailer in front of Summit’s new film Bandslam.  A casual fan of the series would not see the Bandslam trailer on television, which simply included a voice over stating that the New Moon trailer would precede the film and suddenly be overtaken by the urge to see the film for that reason alone.  Only fans desperate for a glimpse of the film would be convinced to see a film they previously had no intention of seeing just so they can see a trailer in front of it.

Finally, there is the question of the fringe audience. With rumors of a relationship between Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, cast appearances at award shows and pictures of the Twilight Saga cast on the cover of any number of magazines, that fringe audience would hardly need to be reminded.  In fact, with everything Twilight-related permeating pop culture, Summit would risk turning that audience away from the franchise with overexposure.