I was doing some research on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) last week and came across this interesting form of advertisement for the Universe as a whole, but more specifically Ant-Man and Captain America: Civil War.
The video below is one of a series of 10 which are on YouTube and suggest to the audience that it's a real news channel. In fact, it's a 'fake' channel which had uploaded a few videos about the events in the MCU, including an interview with Scott Lang (protagonist in Ant-Man) and the President in the Marvel Universe, Matthew Ellis.
This is a great example of film companies creating interesting and engaging content to advertise their films without actually advertising it in a direct way (notice that there's no mention of a new film coming out!) and also building the 'world' of the MCU to make it seem more believable and generally 'bigger' than just the films. It's also interesting to note the presenter, Christine Eberhart featured as a reported in the Iron Man films and that WHIH is also seen in the Marvel TV series Daredevil, possibly suggesting that the MCU could be joined by the characters from the TV shows, given that the news channel is combining the two together.
Have a watch below-this is a great example that can be used in your Paper 1 GCSE exam, especially for questions 3 and 4 but also potentially for an AS Film Studies exam. I've also added the videos to the school YouTube channel under the playlist Superhero Films.
