Digital Cinema Media is to run a national ad campaign to promote cinema as an advertising medium using 60-second ads created by competition-winning students from the National Film and Television School. The campaign launched last month and runs through February on all DCM screens. It promotes cinema as a unique experience you can’t replicate elsewhere and the power of cinema as an advertising medium. The ads are part of a long term plan to build stronger ties with the film industry while supporting the country’s emerging talent through the NFTS - the internationally recognized school whose alumni include Harry Potter director David Yates and Nick Park creator of Wallace and Gromit. The ad shows members of the public trying to recreate the cinema experience at home at work and while out and about. It opens on a young boy trying unsuccessfully to set up a makeshift screen and projector in an attic before moving onto a young couple watching a drive-thru film before being thwarted by rain. Next up a young women attempts in vain to watch a movie while on a bus before a security guard stacks up several small television in a bid to recreate a large screen. All these efforts are doomed to fail and the ad ends with the young boy from the start of the ad sat awe struck in a cinema seat before a voiceover explains: “For the experience you just can’t replicate. Cinema. Why advertise anywhere else?” Final year students Kurban Kassam the producer Chris Moon the cinematographer and Yasmin Al-Naib the Director jointly won the competition that saw those entering briefed to devise a campaign based on the slogan Cinema – why advertise anywhere else. The second winning team will see their ad featuring Ray Winstone run later in the year. It is the first time that DCM has ever produced a cinema ad or cinema has ever used its own medium to promote itself. The on-screen campaign will be supported by an integrated marketing campaign. Says Martin Bowley managing director at DCM “DCM is proud to be supporting the long-term future of the film industry and being a concerted part of its continued growth. Giving students a leg-up in the commercial world is the very least we can do.” Nik Powell director at the NFTS says “Receiving support from DCM provides a much needed and hugely appreciated lift to the school and particularly to the students giving them a fantastic opportunity to create dramatic and innovative material that will be seen nationally.” The students won the fierce competition that saw over 50 scripts entered and reviewed by a panel made up of DCM National Film and Television School and production company Shaw which is headed up by Nigel Foster Richard Butler and Frank Lieberman. From these entries 10 finalists were invited to pitch to a panel involving NFTS graduate Michael Caton Jones the celebrated director of films including Rob Roy and The Jackal and DCM where two final scripts and teams were selected.
