A couple of years ago, creative director James Verdesoto walked into the marketing department of a major studio and saw stacks of potential ad options for one film's campaign strewn about the room.
"The room was 200 square-feet and filled with a year's worth of mockups like a pile of garbage for just one project," said Verdesoto, who co-owns Indika Entertainment Advertising, which often does campaigns for Warner Bros. films.
"The marketing departments at studios used to spend just to run the gamut with every possible direction -- but with economy the way it is, they no longer have that freedom."
Indeed, once-flush trailer houses and print advertising companies are feeling the ripple effect of studio budget cuts. Movie campaigns and TV spots have shrunk in size, and the rates for creative services are frozen -- if not decreased.
But the biggest change -- and the one that has proved most costly to the trailer houses -- is a drastic cutback in multiple vending.
In the past, studios would pay five or six different firms to offer up a variety of ideas, then pick the ones they liked to do the final work. Sometimes, they would even use "Frankensteining" -- stitching several ideas from several houses together in one campaign, with each house getting a piece of the pie for its contribution.
Now they are sticking with just one or two vendors and formulating more focused ideas from the outset to save money.
"When a film-marketing executive was developing a trailer, he used to have the work spread out over a lot of different outfits around town. There's less of that," said Rick Probst, the executive director of Picture Mill, which recently worked on the "Monsters vs. Aliens" campaign.
"The idea of having multiple looks at different trailers or TV campaigns is a luxury," added John Long, a partner at Buddha Jones, which recently finished the trailers for "17 Again" and "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past." (Watch trailers for the upcoming summer blockbusters.)
Compounding the problem is that the days of multiple trailers for many films are long gone. "Studios are more likely to do more than one trailer only on their huge tentpole movies," said Long.
And they are asking for fewer revisions and incarnations.
The first iteration of a trailer used to cost around $15,000, and the rough cut for a film poster ran anywhere from $15,000 to $18,000 -- plus $5,000 for each revision -- according to one studio marketing executive. Now revisions are a rarity -- and when they are called for, it's at a much reduced rate, the exec said.
The result is less work overall for the industry. And when a company does get a job, it faces a studio that’s holding the line on what it’s willing to pay.
"There hasn't been an increase in fees for several years -- and in some cases, there's some rolling back," said Long. "It's part of the reality of the recession, and as much as the movie industry has held up really well in the downturn, the big media conglomerates are having difficulties.
