Genre Analysis - Marketing Movies

Marketing Movies

Marketing Movies is a mixed documentary, as it has a combination of voiceover, interviews and archive footage. The voiceover leads the narrative, while the archive footage serves as important during cutaways. The interviews structure the whole documentary, while also using graphics to separate chapters.

Themes within this documentary included marketing, merchandising and target audiences. The documentary focused on the overall marketing of a film, as this was the exposition – ‘Why Is Marketing Important?’ Merchandising footage was used a lot throughout the documentary, through cutaways and archive footage. This is because merchandise was said to be a central theme through marketing, and ironically, advertised products to the viewers while we watched the documentary. Target audiences were also stipulated as very important within the documentary; filming is worthless if the audience is not targeted correctly, as with documentaries.



The narrative structure of this documentary was simplistic and linear. The beginning posed the exposition question – ‘Why is Marketing important?’ The audience then watches on to see how films are made successfully. The middle then includes information which represents conflict; how to overcome bad reviews in the film industry. We are also introduced to a case study of Mouse Hunt, which follows as a theme in the documentary right until the end. The end then uses an open ended narrative – was or wasn’t Mouse Hunt successful as of appropriate marketing? This is clever, as during the time the documentary was made and released, this answer was yet to be found, as Mouse Hunt was still in the process of being marketed and sold; however, now we can see that it was a very successful children’s film.




Within Marketing Movies, camera work was relatively simple. During interviews, there was a static camera and medium close ups, filming only the interviewee. These interviews were fractured, and on some, sound was continued over a new set of visuals when using cutaways. Cutaways always used content which related to what the interviewee was saying; close ups of money, panning shots of merchandise and high angle shots looking over London. During some interviews, the camera sometimes altered between deep and shallow focus, between the interviewee and the poster. This literally means that the audience focuses on what the documentary makers want them to.

In terms of mise-en-scene within the documentary, within interviews, subject matter was left to lead, and the background images related to the speech within interviews; film posters were used in the background, which not only remarkets the film to the viewer, but also makes sure content is kept relevant. In other areas of the documentary, there are shots of London – this is where most of the documentary’s action is set and is appropriate, as London is said to be the capital of UK filmmaking. Contributing to this, in cutaways, we see many people gathering around premieres, around film sets and even outside the cinema box office. This not only shows exhibition and distribution, two key factors of filmmaking, but also reinforces the whole theme of the documentary and backs up what experts are saying in their interviews.



Sound wasn’t really used to anchor meaning within Marketing Movies, like in The Devil Made Me Do It, but music was instead used to compliment the theme; a music bed of an upbeat tune was used in the background throughout, and sound was continued over new sets of visuals. All other sound was relatively naturalistic – the sound that was used in interviews was not dubbed, and was instead used accordingly.

Editing within the documentary was also relatively simplistic; cuts were used between action, and fades were used as a quick fix when editing did not make sense. There were also fades to the graphics that were used to mark the chapters, which was again, unusual for a documentary as graphics are usually minimally to allow the action within the documentary to speak for itself. In terms of cutaways, many different shots of related scenes were used to anchor meaning to the words of the interviewers; they complimented things well, e.g. when talking about cinema sales, shots of people purchasing tickets at a box office.

Archive material was used continuously throughout the documentary, as the theme allowed footage to be used from past award ceremonies and film premieres, and footage was even used from trailers from films which the interviewees were talking about. Trailers were used as evidence to support successful/unsuccessful marketing, as were clips from films and footage from premieres. The main case study in Marketing Movies was the popular film, Mouse Hunt. This was a new, modern film at the time of the documentary’s release, and therefore was very popular to fans of the film and those wanting a ‘behind the scenes look’ at the films success or failure.




Graphics were used continuously throughout the documentary; there was a cartoon man which announced the titles of new scenes/chapters within the documentary, which alerted the audience what the theme of the next scene would be. This made the documentary very simplistic, and the content was self explanatory through colourful graphics. This is unusual for documentaries, as they usually manage to keep the audience wanting more, and therefore hook the audience’s attention by offering a simple exposition at the beginning of the documentary, and the audience then expect an answer to this by the end of the film.