The main task in post - production is editing. It also involves the hiring of editors, dubbing engineers, special effect engineers and graphic artists who work on the film titles and the credits.
Once the post - production has been completed, a finished film is ready to move out. The next stage of its life cycle is distribution. This process brings together the finished film and the people who want to sample it - the audience.
Distribution involves the acquiring a film, negotiating the number of prints to be made and released to the exhibition, negotiating when the prints should be released, arranging transport of the prints to the cinemas, providing trailers and publicity material for the exhibitors, providing advertisement and publicity to promote the film, arranging for any promotional or merchandising deal, which may arise (e.g. 'Pocahontas' mugs, dressing gowns etc.), dubbing; sub-titling films that will be in non-English speaking countries.
Once the director has approved the film, the producer will arrange a preview for the distribution company. The distributors will release the film at the best possible time and this will depend on a variety of factors such as the subject matter, the genre and what else is being played at the same time. Some decisions are obvious. For example, the best time to release a Christmas based film is in the Christmas holidays.
The last stage a film goes through is marketing. This stage involves advertising, publicity and promotions.
Advertisement involves, when the distributors have seen the film they organise strategy and a budget. This involves working out who the target audience is, and how to advertise them.
The poster campaign - the primary medium for advertising a film - will occasionally start in the early stages of a film post - production and continue during the weeks building up to the release date.
Publicity is the part when all the public get to know about the film and get to know about all the kind of information about it, e.g. release date, genre, certification etc. They find this out by posters and trailers on television or cinemas.
Stars are bought to the country to give interviews at the distributors expense, the stars tell you that you must go to see the film because it was such a big success so more people go to watch the film.
Promotions take the form of an opening night party, special deals, offers at the concession (food and drink) stands, competitions and so forth. Film goods are being sold like toys, clothes, luggage and items such as pencil cases and lunch boxes. Promotions and merchandising take the marketing of a film into many more areas of peoples lives.
The difference between a film trailer and film poster is that a film trailer shows you parts of the film but a film poster shows you more about all the information like release date, genre etc.
The film X - MEN has a target audience for young adult/teenager males but it's an acceptable film for males. The trailer for X - MEN would be advertised on T.V around 6pm - 10pm because that's the time teenagers/young adults watch T.V, it will also be advertised before any film on in the cinemas certified 15-18, maybe even in film certified 12.
When the opening shots come in X - MEN the first symbol we see is the letter 'X' engraved on it so this immediately shows us that its about X - MEN and shows us that it's a sci-fi film from the blue/greyish colours. As the doors open with 'X' on it, it shows the mutant life is coming, 'X' also means unknown and so we enter the unknown realm.
The entire X - MEN mutants were all clothed up in black leather superhero costumes. The camera then closes up on the character Storm and she says to the characters around her 'hold on to something' clearly trying to say that something dangerous is about to happen and the camera once more closes up to Storm again and her eyes had gone totally silver/greyish making a strong storm showing us that the film has elements of the supernatural.
The music is perfect for the scenes because the music is at a very high tempo and the scenes were being shot at a very fast beat and when the scenes with text came up the tempo lowered but as they put the action back on immediately the tempo raised. As mentioned earlier, the speech of Storm creates a lot of suspense for us because it seems like there's going to be a lot of danger in the film.
I thought the end of the film trailer was really good when Wolverine's blades come out in between his knuckles about to fight Sabertooth on the top of the Statue of Liberty. I thought it was brilliant because the sound the blades made when they shot out of Wolverine's hands sounded like it was cutting through something and the music for the trailer cut off at that exact point and then the trailer finished.
I think it's a really good trailer to persuade people to come and watch the film; I would come to watch the film after watching such an exciting trailer. If you are into sci-fi action, thriller films you would really enjoy this trailer because it has a lot of suspense of danger. All the spectacular special effects, (e.g. blades coming out of Wolverines hand.) If you watch the trailer it will excite you with suspense to go and watch the film.
