Deborah Sheppard - Interview Transcript
Clip 1: Publicity and promotion
DEBORAH SHEPPARD: Publicity is all about using the talent in the film, so the cast, the crew, themes and different angles like that to pitch out to newspapers and media generally and get them to run articles around the talent or to interview the talent so it’s a much more straight forward dialogue-related piece.
Promotional partners will be partners that we will speak to, either third party brands, media partners etc. If we’re talking to third party brands for instance you might work with a mobile company with Transformers as we’ve done in the past or there may be a chocolate company with a romantic comedy so that you can get on-pack promotions. You can get retail space, you can get their advertising put behind your film so that’s where promotions is different and generally doesn’t involve talent at all. It doesn’t involve any recourse to having the cast involved in any of that promotional activity.
Clip 2: Target audience
DEBORAH SHEPPARD: Instantly when we saw the film we felt it was going to appeal to older females. With all the credentials we have with Nigel Cole having directed Calendar Girls, you know he’s almost got an instant buy-in there as well. But we definitely felt that with the cast, with the freshness of the film and the subject matter, that it would appeal to younger audiences and that’s something we’ve actively been pursuing. So you know when we say younger, we’re not just looking at a 15 to 24 year old crowd, because actually I think the film naturally appeals to a student audience upwards. But then we have to drive the interest amongst that younger audience and make sure that they are engaged with what we’ve got to say. And that’s using some of the younger cast, using the freshness of the campaign, the fun of the trailer to really drive it to a younger audience. So we’re sort of assuming a 20 plus audience, a student-based audience but the natural buy-in will be from 35+ women. But it does appeal to men as well so we don’t want to exclude them in any way because obviously the story is very resonant, it’s just a question of our lowest hanging fruit are going to be the women.
Clip 3: USP
DEBORAH SHEPPARD: A USP is a unique selling point. I think Made in Dagenham has several unique selling points but overall if you were creating a proposition for the movie it would be something like a feel-good British movie. But we’ve got a phrase actually as well that Elizabeth Carlson came up with which I really love which is ‘the mouse that roared’. And that essentially sums up what the story is about and takes it into that, you know sort of gives you that summary but you’ve got the feel-good British nature of the film over the top of that so it’s…somewhere in there is our USP and I think there’s a lot of strength to that. It’s a story which nobody seems to know which is even more incredible and that’s certainly the main stand out for me was wow, this is an amazing story I can’t believe I don’t know it and told in such a great way that despite the gritty context, you come out of it with a really sort of feel-good, wow that was amazing feeling.
Clip 4: Release and exhibition
DEBORAH SHEPPARD: Why are we releasing in October? Well you know it’s a very good date for a lot of these big British movies, The Queen, An Education, you know they were all released around that sort of timing. Quality pictures that will ultimately go on to have awards campaigns and receive those sort of accolades which we do believe the film will have so the film will be on release. It will play through the Autumn season and hopefully people will want to go and see it and see it more because word of mouth is going to be very positive and that’s something we’re actively generating at the moment. Just getting a really positive buzz from screening the movie and that will play all the way through to the Christmas period and then into, you know when we’re looking at BAFTAs and things, we do think it has a very good chance for awards here and in the States and Academy Awards as well. The US distributor feels very positively about its potential.
It is more the potential, it’s the quality nature of the film. You know, this Sally Hawkins will be an Oscar winner approach to the reviews that we might get and that will drive a quality audience in to see the film.
We need the word of mouth to play this film through. It’s going to be a long burn or as long a burn as being out in the market place these days allows because that’s the other thing. Finding the right date competitively so there aren’t too many other things going to really clash with us in terms of the audience that we’re seeking and the type of profile of release that we’re going to be going for so hopefully we will have no problem getting the number of screens that we want, on the days that we want, in the sites that we want and those are also considerations for selecting the appropriate date.