Before the movie’s release both Japan and the United States did some fun promotion to create interest in the film. In the United States Sony ran design a poster contest fir the movie with Japan had a themed haunted house and maid cafe.

USA

In promotion for Silent Hill’s American release Tristar and Sony held a nationwide poster contest inviting fans and amateur artists to design the official poster for the movie. The winner received a cash prize of $2,500 and saw their design in various movie theaters across the country.

On December 5, 2005 Sony provided movie stills, photos and title treatments for download on the official Silent Hill movie website and participants had until January 3, 2006 to summit their poster entry. Between January 4th – 17th 185,000 fans voted and the fifty posters with the most votes by the end of the preliminary round were shown to the Columbia TriStar Marketing Group. On a 40 point scale the five finalists were chosen based on the poster’s 1) Marketability ( 10 points), 2) Creativity ( 10 points), 3) Originality (10 points) and 4) Effective use of content ( 10 points).

On January 22, 2006 the semi-finalists were presented side by side on the front page of the Silent Hill Movie website and fans were asked once again to vote for their favorite. On February 17, 2006 Chuck Waite’s design was declared the winner with a total of 32,000 votes.

Semi Finalists

Fans and participates voiced their displeasure all over the net on how Sony handled the poster contest. During the submission period it was wrongly believed that during the preliminary round Sony’s website would provide some sort of gallery to showcase all the poster entries for fans to easily browse through and cast their vote. On the start of the voting period however participants were disheartened to learn that Sony would only provide a url to their poster design and it was up to the participant to generate traffic to view their design through word of mouth. This lead to many spamming their poster design url all over the internet and forced fans to manually change the numbers in the poster urls to review all the entries.

To make matters worse many participants didn’t receive poster urls and have their design uploaded to the Sony’s site until January 9, 2006. This delay was due to Sony needing extra time to review the “exceptionally large number of submissions” and make sure they all fit the contest guidelines. Participants whose entries were delayed in getting up were upset at losing five days of potential voting and many were wondering if any or all votes casted before the 9th would be discarded to make the preliminary voting round fair.

When the contest semi-finalists were revealed fans and participants alike voiced their disappointment in the results. Across the internet forums and Silent Hill communities filled with comments that meanly criticized the artist merit of all the semi-finalist designs and expressed utter amazement that some of the few fan favorites did not make it into the finals to condemning the whole contest as a sham orchestrated by Sony. When the winner was announced in February the contest quickly faded from the public’s mind as the release date grew nearer and nearer.

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Five Finalists

Poster Contest Site Screens

Japan

Silent Hill Shocking House

In promotion for Silent Hill’s July 8th premire in Japan Konami opened a Silent Hill themed haunted house from June 18-July 2, 2006 in Kabukicho Shinjuku, known as the entertainment and red light district of Tokyo. Admission was free and inside visitors got a change to experience a visit in Silent Hill through viewing promotional images and make shift sets from the movie and having various encounters with deadly nurses and a terrifying Pyramid Head throughout the house.
Source (Dengeki Online)

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Maid In Japan Silent Hill Promotion

From June 20 to July 9, 2006 Maid In Japan in Akihabara Tokyo decided to get in on the promotion of Silent Hill by enticing otakus to see the film by after visiting their café. Maid in Japan offered a Silent Hill themed curry dish appropriately named the Red Pyramid Curry and dressed up their female maids in sexy nurse costumes. To complete the atmosphere the café’s entrance and walls were adorned with Silent Hill movie posters and images and a tv screen played various Silent Hill game related videos. Source (Akiba Blog, Famitsu)

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