Can someone explain promotional photos for TV shows and movies?
Asked by
tom_g (
16638
)
November 17th, 2011
This is what I am referring to.
How and why did this type of thing start? I don’t understand it at all. Don’t tv shows want viewers to buy into the show? When we watch a fictional tv series, we have to suspend our disbelief and completely buy into the characters. These types of photos, where everyone is posing and looking right into the camera, seem to be designed to shake you from your immersion in the series and remind you that it’s just a product. They’re a bunch of actors, and they look like complete jackasses when our corporate marketing department forces them to pose for these overly-shopped photos.
I don’t get it. Maybe there is some reason why it is done.
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11 Answers
The link says I’m forbidden from viewing.
They are for use to build an audience for the show before it starts. They are to be used by media. They are designed to entice you into viewing.
I suspect they see it as more of a “this is our world you’re in now”, “look you in the eye and personalize it”, “here’s a glimpse of our reality” kind of thing, there’s a whole psychology behind advertising. Or maybe it just tested the best of the images they had. Either way I agree with you, it doesn’t inspire me.
Here is what I thought when I saw that image.
1. Ohhh.. It is Breaking Bad. I love that show.
2. Googled to see when the next season starts.
@johnpowell – Great show. But that photo drives me crazy. If I had seen that before I had seen an episode, I would probably have not.
I think @wonderingwhy might be onto something. But when/where did it start? It seems that there is one or more of those asinine photos for every tv series. I just did a search for Six Feet Under (probably my favorite show of all time) and there are tons of this crap for that show too. Same super-glossy style.
A photograph tells a story. If everyone thought as logically as you have, since you have your opinion of this is a dumb ass photograph, art would be dead, because art exist to emit an emotion in a human. The corporations intentions are to hook a viewer with the intensity of this photo. Have you ever been to a live theatre? We all know they are actors before and after the curtain call. Some people understand there’s a job for people who like to portray themselves as story tellers through acting. On the other hand I’m trying to get where you are coming from. Aesthetically the photograph does not appeal to me, as I have seen glimpses of the show. It kind of reminds me of the board game, “Clue.” I’m totally with you in your stance, I don’t even like bands that stare into the camera. But for a majority of people, its gripping, because perhaps they themselves would never venture into this territory of confidence of being an actor because ironically they themselves could never stare into a camera.
@XOIIO Haha, ask the photographer who got paid multiple thousands to shoot it if he considers it art.
I definitely see your point. Promo pictures are almost always embarrassingly bad.
I appreciate them when I already love the show because to me it’s just something I (usually) haven’t seen before since they’re not just screenshots from the show (that I could eventually take myself), and since there are often a lot that they don’t actually use after they take them.
But they’re pretty much always sort of awful. However with shows I really love (like Torchwood) I’m just like “oh look at this! pictures i haven’t seen!” /right-click save/ while simultaneously acknowledging that they are downright awful.
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