walk_ver2We all have different things that get our adrenaline pumping. I, for instance, get no kick from champagne. Mere alcohol doesn’t, you know, thrill me at all. But I get really excited as a roller coaster hits the top of the peak and the ride is suspended in zero gravity for a split second. I get no kick in a plane. But you present me with a blank page and a topic to opine about and my heart gets to racing. My sources of excitement may not be everyone’s but they’re mine and yours are yours and hey, whatever floats your boat, right?

For some people that thrill is found in death-defying stunts. That’s the subject of The Walk. The movie tells the true story of thrill-seeker Philippe Petit (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his 1974 attempt to walk a high wire between the two towers of The World Trade Center, then pretty new to the New York City skyline. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, this is the same story that was covered in documentary form a few years ago in the widely-acclaimed Man on Wire. So with many people having seen the real story, the challenge here is to sell a feature film that may take certain licenses with reality in the name of storytelling. Let’s see how it’s being sold.

The Posters

walkThere’s kind of an Ocean’s Eleven vibe coming off the teaser poster, which features a Saul Bass-like design. The two WTC towers are presented as perspective-based lines against a bright blue background, five silhouettes walking along one of them as if they were walking along a sidewalk. This one certainly wants to sell an atmospheric, stylized movie that’s high on attitude and charisma since it looks very much like a heist movie of some kind. Which it kind of is. Or at least it’s a “scheme” movie. Either way, this poster gets points for creativity.

The theatrical one-sheet takes quite literally the opposite perspective. Instead of looking up at the ascending towers we’re now looking down from above them toward the streets of New York City with Gordon-Levitt as Petit walking across his highwire that’s strung between the towers.

This one is every bit as effective but for different reasons. Instead of selling an attitude like the first one, this poster is all about selling the spectacle. It’s telling the audience that the movie will have a certain size and scope, despite being about a single individual. That’s underscored by the “Every dream begins with a single step” tagline at the top and the bright, bold call to see it in IMAX 3D, which in and of itself screams “large scale visual action.”

The Trailers

The first teaser trailer starts off by zooming up the side of one of the WTC towers while we get Zemeckis’ credits including Forrest Gump, Cast Away and other movies, all of which are meant to remind us that he’s big on spectacle and amazing visuals. When the camera reaches the roof we see Levitt as Petit step out onto a girder that’s extended over the side of the building and take the measure of the distance between the buildings, finally finding his balance and looking like he’s fearless there at the top of the world. The camera then pans out and up through the clouds while still looking down, trying to give some perspective on how big and yet how small this achievement would be.

It’s a good trailer that certainly is big on setting the scale of the movie, something that, like the posters, is underscored by the final call-to-action to see it in IMAX. It’s not concerned with the details of the story since everything you really need to know is right there: This guy is going to do something most of us would never ever consider doing.

The next trailer starts off the same way but consolidates the whole “seeing him step out on the girder” sequence and skips giving us Zemeckis’ credentials. What we get more of here is the story. We see Petit arrive in New York and announce his plans to a random customs agent at the airport, at which point we meet the gang of people who will help him pull off his seemingly impossible stunt. Along the same lines I talked about above, this plays very much like a heist movie, with a ragtag group cobbling together a plan to pull off a scheme under the nose of the authorities.

What this trailer makes me think is that it will be interesting to see how Zemeckis pulls the movie off. Usually these kinds of stories have a looser, jazzier feel than the director is usually known for. So if the push pull of the the styles comes off as discordant the movie could be a mess. But if Zemeckis is able to still create a sense of fun along with the tension while still staying true to his own brand of visuals it looks like it will be an enjoyable movie.

An IMAX trailer was also released that was pretty similar to the theatrical one above but with a longer running time – about 4:30 – that included a couple of extended scenes not shown in the other trailers.

Online and Social

Like many such sites, the movie’s official web presence is built on Tumblr, with the theatrical trailer playing as soon as the site loads. Unlike other recent sites, though, this one isn’t designed to look like a traditional website. So there are no content sections like “Video” and so on. Instead you just scroll down through the posts that have been published, including promotional artwork, trailers and TV spots, GIFs, images and more.

walk gif 1

There are two sort-of sections. One of which shows dates and locations where you can partake in a virtual reality experience based on the movie. The other is about “The Impossible Dream,” a tie-in with Levitt’s hitrecord project that encourages people to declare what their impossible dream is, an effort that was inspired by Petit’s own impossible dream, which was to walk across the World Trade Center towers.

The Facebook page for the film is filled with the same sort of promotional art and videos that are on Tumblr. There are some more photos from premieres and other events along with occasional links to press stories but it’s most just about pull quotes from early reviews and encouragement to buy tickets. Same goes for Twitter, though there are more Retweets of fans talking about how excited they were for the movie and of the cast talking about it coming out soon. Instagram has the same images along with reposts from the cast as they made press appearances and shares of images from fans who partook in a photo tool that made it look like they were suspended between the WTC towers.

Advertising and Social

A number of TV spots were created that all hit the same “You have to see this amazing spectacle…and do it in IMAX” beat that the latter trailers did, only in 30 seconds.

I’ve also seen plenty of Promoted Posts on Twitter and saw news that billboards were being run that took the perspective of looking up at Levitt on his wire between the towers, both of which were visible on either side of the image, giving a real sense of the scale of the movie.

Media and Publicity

Because of the talent involved, the movie has received a steady stream of publicity and media coverage. That ramped up during festival season as it screened at the New York Film Festival to mostly positive reviews and where the cast participated in a press conference (THR, 9/26/15) to talk about turning the story into a movie and so on. Coming out of those early screenings there was buzz (Variety, 9/26/15) that the movie was a viable awards contender based on the sheer spectacle of it.

walk pic 1

Levitt was featured in Gotham in an interview conducted by Channing Tatum since apparently the two of them are good friends and it provided a nice hook for the story.

Overall

There are two things that jump out at me from the campaign:

First, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly above, there’s a pretty consistent theme of “spectacle” here that runs across the different elements. The studio *really* wants you to be blown away by the visuals and especially wants you to see it in IMAX. This is hit even more heavily here than it is in some super hero movies or animated kids movies. The extent to which they hammer this home over and over again reminds me of how studios used to sell movies as being in widescreen format back in the 50s when they were competing fiercely against TV. Which is kind of the case now as well, even more than it has been. They are selling this as a unique theatrical experience.

Second, in lieu of a larger franchise to tie this into the studio is using Zemeckis as a franchise in and of himself. “No, this isn’t part of a comic book shared universe, but hey you like these other movies from this director so you’ll probably like this one.” That’s the same tactic Warner Bros. has used for movies like Inception and Interstellar from Christopher Nolan, where Nolan’s previous work has been heavily incorporated into the campaigns, particularly his work on the Batman movies. Movie nerds are going to know about the Zemeckis connection already, but the campaign wants to create feelings of familiarity with *something* about the movie here and the director’s previous work is the most readily available string to pull.

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