INTRODUCTION

I am the producer of the short psychological thriller “Nihil“ which tells the story of Adam (25),who suddenly wakes up in the middle of a lavender field, cold and lost. Asking for help, Adam seems to be ignored by all the odd people he encounters until he realises that he is not being ignored but unseen.

Throughout Adam’s unfortunate story, we wanted to portray the limits of existence by intensifying a universal feeling of physical and emotional loneliness which allows the audience to identify with our main character and wonder about the limits of their own existence.

As a producer my aim was to build an audience for “Nihil“ in a crowded marketplace on zero budget. I intended to do so by convincing the potential audience to identify with the film already in an early stage (Jones, Zinnes, Jolliffe, 2010) mainly through the use of three main marketing tools which are poster, teaser and trailer. 

Through my research I came to a conclusion that when marketing “Nihil“, it is important to keep in mind its genre, theme and target audience. When designing the traditional tools of marketing I intended to take on a minimalist approach which would let the artwork speak for itself giving the audience a clear understanding of the genre and theme of the film while creating secrecy around the plot. I planned on giving clues to the audience through online puzzles and games which would create interest and connect the story to a wider topic to allow the target audience to identify with the main character. I intended to do the marketing through social media with the help of the film crew’s closest friends and family as well as known personas on social media to reach our target audience and save money.