MANILA – Does this picture look familiar?
Its a tree swing set up during the sneak peak screening of Binhi (The Seed), a new horror indie flick directed by Pedring Lopez, last May 14 and its similarity with the creepy “Girl on a Swing” LED billboard ads that made the rounds on social media earlier this month is no coincidence.
Pedring, also the managing director of Welovepost, confirmed with adobo that the mystery billboard is part of an elaborate marketing campaign for the film, which has been ongoing for around a month.
Even the tickets for the exclusive screening was in character, where a funny but unsettling waiver was attached, warning that Binhi is not for the faint of heart and mind – if you are, avoid at all costs the “white lady” kids that might also make an appearance again during the public reveal.
Welovepost’s creative director Rex Lopez, shared that different versions of trailers for online, TV and movie houses were created, with some already shown in the past weeks, to build interest around Binhi’s premiere tomorrow in 60 theaters, in partnership with Viva Entertainment.
Supporting the movie online is a fairly healthy Facebook page fan base of over 1,700 people it built since starting in April. A hashtag campaign using #binhithemovie and a CTA (call to action) posts with the copy “Share the Scare” are other efforts aimed to whet the appetite of movie goers.
“What can you expect? Its a movie created by veteran commercial directors,” Rex said.
Welovepost and Haunted Tower Pictures, the Philippines’ first production house devoted entirely to making horror movies, are the companies behind Binhi, whose cinematography, development and storytelling reveals the deep advertising roots of its creators.
“This is what sets Binhi apart from other movies,” Rex explained. “Pedring treated the movie like how we would treat a commercial. We did storyboards, extensive research, looked for the right house …. the discipline of doing commercials, we put it into play.”
Rex continued: “Good thing that we have done lots of commercials before. That experience was so helpful that when we saw the shot, its almost perfect.
Rex shares that Binhi almost didn’t happened due to volume of work Pedring was working at any time. The story was on back burner for the last seven years also because of lack of funding, which was remedied by the MFT Group, a budding group of 20-something angel investors formed just last year.
