Tim Palen

Palen's first campaign at Lionsgate was for Monster's Ball.[14] Focus was placed on controversial subjects, such as the interracial love story between two characters played by Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton, with TV ads showing the couple in bed that even ran in the American South.[25][14]

The first Lionsgate campaign poster Palen photographed himself was for the 2003 movie, Wonderland. He wanted the poster to look like a Rolling Stone cover, so he and a friend bought some props and took a picture as a starting concept. The director liked the image and used it as the promotional poster for the film.[26]

A long-running promotional campaign for the Saw franchise started with a suggestion by marketing vice president Erica Schimick, who jokingly suggested a blood drive to increase visibility of the film.[27] Palen and Sarah Greenberg (then the vice president of publicity) thought it was a good idea, and Palen photographed Schimick posing as a nurse with blood-smeared cleavage for the poster.[28][29] In preparation for the release of Saw II Palen expanded the blood drive to ten states.[29] For Saw III Palen expanded the blood drive even further, and asked the film's star Tobin Bell to donate his own blood to mix with the ink for the poster.[30] Although Lionsgate had advertised the 2010 installment of the Saw franchise as the final chapter, the studio revived the series in 2017 with the October release of Jigsaw. Palen revisited the Saw blood drives as well, but this time challenging the American Red Cross over its long-standing and controversial restrictions requiring men who have sex with other men to abstain from sexual relations for at least a year before giving blood, rules arising from concerns about Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The campaign was called "All Types Welcome", and featured social media celebrities with large LGBTQ fanbases.[28]

Palen was nearly censored by the Motion Picture Association (MPAA), the body responsible for regulating promotional materials for motion pictures in North America, for the promotional posters of Hostel: Part II. For this poster, Palen had taken photographs of boar meat, which when viewed zoomed in looked like human intestines; he would later have to send the MPAA receipts from the butcher shop to prove that the "intestines" were not human.[31] Many of Palen's most provocative campaign materials were released online to avoid sanctions by the MPAA.[32] One such image, Saw: Severed Hand won the Hollywood Reporter's 34th annual Key Art award in the international film poster category.[33]

Despite the successes and association with gore, Palen said he enjoyed working on a diverse range of films, as work at a big studio "can be a little redundant."[34]

To promote Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls, Palen shot eight 35mm portraits of the film's ensemble: Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington, Loretta Devine, Whoopi Goldberg, Anika Noni Rose, Kimberly Elise, and Phylicia Rashad. Palen used the portraits in the poster campaign and trailer.[35][36] A gallery exhibition of the photos, Living Portraits, opened at the Lehman Maupin Gallery in New York City for a week in October 2010, with Janet Jackson hosting. Palen had previously directed Jackson's music video for her song "Nothing" from Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too?.[37]

In initial marketing for The Hunger Games, Palen focused on encouraging more people to read the books in order to increase turnout at the box office.[38] Palen also proposed not including any scenes from the games in the marketing campaign, despite those scenes comprised more than half of the movie, to avoid potential perception issues.[22] For the 2012 release of the sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the campaign created a mock online fashion magazine called Capitol Couture, alluding to the capitol city of the fictional nation Panem, and featuring Palen's own photographs of the film's characters, modeling what Variety calls "elaborate" looks, alongside colorful, stylized advertisements for fictional products from Panem.[39] The final two films were treated as one film in order to avoid a new campaign for each half of the story.[40] Palen and his team developed another portal to the fictional world with CapitolTV, a faux state media outlet for the government of Panem streamed on YouTube and other platforms, and featuring YouTube stars Justine Ezarik, Rob Czar, and Corinne Leigh among others. The team also launched "District Heroes", an outdoor and online promotion that featured an amputee underwear model and the reigning Mr. L.A. Leather. [5]