The document discusses and analyzes various marketing techniques used to promote the horror film The Descent, including its trailer, movie poster, billboards, and website. The trailer focuses on trapping the girls and hints at horror without showing gore. Both the poster and trailer depict a girl emerging from blood and darkness. Billboards also use similar dark, isolated themes and emphasize positive reviews. However, the movie poster had to be redesigned after the 7/11 London bombings due to depicting trapped women. The website follows the dark color scheme and hints at a sole survivor like other advertisements.

1. Marketing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mujk825LXk
The trailer of The Descent focuses on the trapping of the girls and hardly shows
the backstory of Sarah and her struggle of losing her daughter. A key and central
focal point of The Descent trailer was the idea of a black shadow and picture
fading. There is very limited exposure of the gruesomeness and goriness, to hide
the excitement and thrill of the movie. On the other hand, there is an obvious
element of action, horror and bloodshed. This is shown through the pictures of
the girls emerging through puddles of blood. The trailer also gives the audience
the incite of it being a survival film and an all female cast. The heart beating in
the background creates a frantic and panicked atmosphere; as the beat grows
faster it represents a chase, and the final beat could imply death to the audience.
Emotions such as claustrophobia and fear are physically added into the trailer by
wording, which is almost telling the audience of how they will be feeling, acting
as a prediction. The cost to see the trailer may vary, depending on where you go
to see it. For example, seeing the trailer in the cinema would mean you have seen
the trailer for a normal cinema ticket price, from around £8.00. Another way you
can see the trailer is through the Internet on YouTube, which would be apart of
your normal Internet bill.
The movie poster is similar to the trailer, where there is a girl who is descending
from the blood and darkness. Quotes are also added as a type of advertising, such
as “The Scariest horror movie of the year”, which entices the audience into
seeing this film that everybody is positively commenting on. The colours of red
and black connote the visual representation of death and blood, along with the
emotions of fear and horror. The fact that the poster has mentioned that The
Descent was created in the same studio as Saw and Hostel, is a way of marketing

2. the idea that it is similar to gruesome, exciting and popular horror movies such
as Saw. The woman also looks zombie like and traumatised by her experience,
referring to the kind of monsters that they will face (crawlers). The cost of seeing
the poster would be the same price as buying a DVD, because the posters can be
put in the insides of DVD’s. They can also be seen online, which again would be
subsidised with your Internet costs.
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The billboard is again very similar to the film poster and trailer, as the common
themes are darkness, death, isolation and horror. The white lettering of the
billboard is successful because it adds focal attention specifically to the title. The
use of the quote is also a good form of advertisement because it appeals to the
audience to know that people have liked this film. A list of three is used in the
quote to emphasise the different positive aspects of The Descent. The white light
represents hope, escape, positivity and a way out. The fact that Sarah is the only
visible face we see and the light is being reflected on her, showing that she is the
survivor and the dominant one. There is not a price range on seeing a billboard
picture because they are seen publically.
Unfortunately, due to the 7/11 bombings, the advertisement for the UK had to
redesign and change the advertising campaign of The Descent. The poster
visually represented the women being trapped underground in a cave, which in
fact mirrored the reality of the 7/11 bombings. A new poster was created which
had no link or relation to the attacks in London. The marketing team of The
Descent withdrew their previous poster because they didn’t want such a
negative event such as the 7/11 attacks to tamper with their film.

3. The descent website is again follows the trend of the other advertisements,
which is the black background and the flickering of the white light, representing
hope. In the picture, Sarah’s face is the only visible face you can see, showing the
audience that she is the only survivor. The girls are all grouped and coupled
together representing how they were a team when entering the cave. On the
other hand, the website came around the time when the internet wasn’t
commonly used. The descents website was not used or visited much when it was
first launch, however when technology advanced it became more popular. The
price of accessing the website would again subsidise with your payments for the
internet, because the only way to access the website is online.