Poster Research - 1

I looked and researched in to the different sizes of poster, where they are positioned and what is the best way to "sell" my film to the public.

Standard Billboard Poster Sizes are as followed:

Taken from this website.

The 6 sheet poster is often found at bus stops which is a popular place to advertise both for films and for products. In comparison, the 64 sheet would be placed on a large billboard, and would be seen from cars and pedestrians passing by. It would be more expensive but possibly more worth the money.

If I had to choose where to advertise my film poster, I would use both a bus stop (6 sheet) and billboard poster (48 sheet) as I believe these would be the most effective locations for the poster to go. People standing at the bus stop, waiting for a bus, would look at the advertisement which shows that they are exposed to the poster for quite a long time (pending of course how long the bus takes); cars passing would also catch glimpses of the poster, however, if stuck at the traffic lights, a billboard poster may be more effective as they would have more time to look at it.

Another way to advertise my poster would be over the internet. I've noticed that on popular websites (such as facebook, msn and myspace) they all advertise films (and other products / holidays etc...) and sometimes have polls which involve the audience with the film. I think this would be a good way of advertising my short film as my target audience of young, students of both genders use these websites and talk about them over their pages.
Examples include:

This is the front page for myspace. Though it mainly advertises music (as this is the most popular with young people from 13 and over) it still does the same thing as film posters and advertises latest bands and the newest releases appealing to the audience to join. There is also an advertisement for the most recent game release on the Xbox called "Kinect" which has an advertisement also. The prices for internet adverts can vary depending on how popular the site is, who the target audience is, how long the ad will be placed there and how big the ad will be.

This is the homepage of msn. It is popular for people of all ages to communicate with friends and family. They also advertise at the bottom of their instant messenger pages, (where you can talk live and instantly) but I was unable to get an example of this. Advertising on homepages such as this can attract potential viewers as this is a widely used networking site and also has latest news and weather updates which will be very popular. However, this site would probably be less effective to advertise on for my short film, as my target audience is young students between 13 and 19 years old, and I believe that the audience for this homepage is too wide. Again, to advertise on this homepage, the costs would vary on how long you want the ad to be advertising for and how big the advertisement would be.