Mark It!

An interesting piece of marketing has cropped up recently.

Fox’s animated film Rio, from the creators of Ice Age (1-∞) is doing a tie-in with Angry Birds, the first Appzilla tie-in that I can think of.  This isn’t just creating a mini-game for your film, this is hooking up with the biggest app on the planet to make a 3rd version of their massively successful game that is tailored to your film.  What a coup for Fox.  The app is $1.19 (AUD), so 99c in the US and the gameplay is similar to the main two Angry Birds games (Original and Seasons), the only difference being that you knock down cages to free captive birds, rather than annihilate evil egg-stealing pigs.  There is also a free version, with 6 levels (the paid one has 60) to draw people in just like Angry Birds Lite.

The interesting thing here is the Cui Bono factor, Who Benefits?  Are Angry Birds (Rovio) trying to establish a cinema presence ahead of the film they have in development.  Have Fox realised that most movie tie-in games get played once and then deleted, or, if they are paid Apps, played three times, not deleted and then looked at with hatred and disdain forever because of their extreme level of crappiness.  (Yes, I bought King Kong for XBOX 360.  Yes, it sucked balls.)

Another thing worth noting is the trailers that both companies have produced.  Rather than make one trailer that promotes both products, they have done two separate things.  Rovio have made an Angry Birds RIO trailer (which shows none of the gameplay, a bad decision) while FOX have done a “mashup”, inserting the Angry Birds into the scene from the film that inspired the gameplay of the new game.

Generally speaking, the Super Bowl is the most watched television broadcast on the United States calendar. The advertising spots are the most expensive, and this year, they were confirmed to be around the US$3M for 30 seconds of air time.

Just thing about that. $3 million for half a minute.

Imagine a movie cost that much to make. $6 million dollars a minute. Suddenly those budgets of $150M for a film don’t seem to pricey anymore, right?

Well, where there’s always plenty of room for another movie to hit the multiplexes, the Superbowl has a limited amount of advertising time. It’s targeting a wide range of people, and has for years been there premiere audience to debut a new product, a hot television series, or the biggest films.

This year, we got just that.

The first footage of Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger was released as a “Big Game Spot”. We hadn’t had a teaser or a trailer released to cinemas. The following 30 second spot is all the footage that has been shown outside of some footage shown at the San Diego Comic-Con, four days after principle photography began on the film.

But this got me thinking. You hear Adrian and I refer to the standard trailers and posters in some of the podcasts. Those are used in cinemas to get your attention, to get you back so that you can buy two tickets, a garbage-bag’s worth of popcorn, and a swimming pool sized soda. The cinema (where you’re likely to see the trailer) needs your return business.

But the NFL doesn’t care if you see Captain America: The First Avenger. You’re watching the biggest broadcast of the year, and your eyes are numbers. Captain America was the obvious one to focus on because it’s American, and that’s the people who watch the Super Bowl.

It seems like a gutsy, daring move to premiere your footage from a major film in a television spot instead of a trailer because it’s not standard. But really, it’s no different. There’s television spots for almost every film released. They get hosted online so the target demographic can frame-by-frame analyse the footage, scraping the information off the bone like a Thanksgiving turkey.

We also were giving a 30 second spot for the J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg film “Super 8″. Unlike the teaser trailer from mid-2010 (prior to the shooting of the film), this was (much like Captain America) the first look at the film itself. In addition, there was a 60 second version available on Apple’s website.

Sure, there was also trailers for Transformers: The Dark of the Moon, Pirates of the Carribbean 4, and Limitless. Some were completely cut down versions of the theatrical trailer, others shows glimpses of new footage, but none were as exciting for film fans as either of the two that I’ve focussed on above.

The one thing they all have in common?

$3,000,000.00

While you have a think about that price tag and watch some of the clips we’ve embedded below, I’ll just leave you with one little fact.

The Chrystler ad, featuring Eminem (who I doubt gave up his time for free) ran for 2 whole minutes.

Maybe cinema advertising isn’t an example of spending gone mad, eh?

I’ve added a few of the upcoming releases’ Super Bowl spots below. Watch and enjoy. If you’re still looking for more 30-second pitches on why you should plunk down your $15 for a ticket, hit our YouTube channel for the rest of the Big Game spots.

Okay, so I should have published this one weeks ago, but between a new job, and a whole bunch of other stuff, I’ve been slack.

What I’m going to touch on today are some of the wonderful trailers that use a single song as the music for their trailer. That song has to essentially score the trailer, sell the tone, and not leave an audience disappointed with the score the receive with the finished film. The examples I’m using are primarily from some of my favourite bands, so if you don’t like Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails, you’ll probably be a little bit less interested, but them’s the breaks. Write your own blog, or respond here if there’s some great ones you think I’ve missed out!

Willard

You know someone in the marketing department knew exactly what to put with this one. Or he Googled “rat + lyrics” into Google. But when the bass line to one of the most recognizable rock songs of the 90s kicks in at about 50 seconds, it’s the shit. Sure, the repetition of “despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage” is a bit weak, but it works for the most part. Being a complete fan of Crispin Glover, and having dug The X-Files and Final Destination, I was down for this flick, and it’s still a fun B grade horror movie.

Watchmen

Another Smashing Pumpkins track. However this one has the most fantastic use of intertextuality I’ve come across in a trailer. Back in 1997, Smashing Pumpkins recorded two tracks for the Batman & Robin soundtrack; “The End is the Beginning is the End” and “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning”. TEITBITE (as it’s known among Pumpkinheads) was the lead single for Batman & Robin’s soundtrack, while the alternate version (TBITEITB) is the darker version only on the full soundtrack album. The message? Remember Batman & Robin? This. Ain’t. It. A perfect way to give message that this is a dark comic book movie, gritty, grimy, and with only limited nipples on costumes. It became an iTunes hit, and the band started playing it on tour around the time of Watchmen’s theatrical release.

Terminator: Salvation

Okay, so this film is hardly a great piece of work. In fact, it’s far closer to being a piece of shit. McG can fuck himself, and that’s coming from a guy who likes the first Charlie’s Angels (Crispin Glover owns it). Using a new remix (with live drums) of Nine Inch Nails’ “The Day the World Went Away” (originally released on 1999′s The Fragile double-album), the editing on this trailer is superb. Sells the tone, sells the concept, and has the Terminator theme just at the end. The moment of Bale coming face to face with Worthington is perfectly timed with the titular lyric. Yeah, it suckered me. Insult to injury? It ain’t on the fuckin’ Blu-ray.

Trivia: Terminator: Salvation was one of the films that the group of Xoe, Adrian and myself (along with Sam Winzar) would take in on opening day at an early afternoon session, as none of us were working jobs with regular hours. It became the genesis of Mark It! Movie Reviews.

PS: Apologies for the crappy sound, I’ll endeavour to upload a better quality version at some point.

300

The Social Network

The only song on this list that isn’t performed by the original artist. Covered by Scala & Kolacny Brothers – a Belgian all-girls choir, Radiohead’s paean to awkwardness is perfectly in sync with Fincher and Sorkin’s depiction of Mark Zuckerberg. It’s creepy, haunting, and reaches that crescendo just at the right moment. Sure, it’s not the best cover of the track (Sad Kermit takes that title, with Prince also nailing an incredible version live at Coachella), but it’s damn good and gives you the idea that “the facebook movie” that you’ve heard about might not just be a stupid teen comedy.

For all of you who have ever watched a movie in the last 5 years, would have noticed a new trend in Hollywood films – The over use of bright Orange & Teal.

Firstly, lets go back and look at a quick history of color.  With the use of color in painting for many years, the key to a striking image is the use of contrasting colours (or opposite colours).  If you’ve ever looked at a color wheel  – or even negatives from photos – you would notice that the contrasting color of the orange hues (like skin tones) is blue.

When colour was first introduced, the oranges and blues where so strong that they looked unnatural and jarring.  As colorization and color film progressed colors where made to look more realistic.  History, as it also does, has repeated itself once again with the new age of digital color grading – pushing it to the limit resulting in every person looks like they’ve just come out of a bad stray tan and live in a houses that are lit up like a nightclub bathroom.

You only need to look at the movie posters to see what I’m getting at. So here are a select few.

Tyler Perry (yes, that guy from Star Trek) makes movies for black people who go to church.  Which is perfectly fine.  Unfortunately his movies kinda suck except for the drag character that he plays, Madea.  That bitch is funny as shit!  Anyway, if you haven’t seen his movies just watch the trailers (isn’t that why YouTube was invented?) and you’ve pretty much seen the best bits.  The rest is just sad, mad, black (and beautiful) women moping around until they finally marry (and bone) the horny-as-fuck guy who’s been fixing their car for the last 6 months.

Anyhoo, since TP’s rise to total dominance within the urban filmmaking genre (suck it Spike Lee)…sorry, Urban is the category that Hollywood puts African-Americans in, even if they live in the ‘burbs…his films have basically been more and more about the Madea character and less and less about anything else (except that one about coloured women who want to kill themselves…probably because they were forced to watch a Tyler Perry movie).

The latest one is called Madea’s Big Happy Family and the posters are interesting from a “this is popular right now” perspective.  Interesting in that they’ve reduxed three posters from this years Academy Award nominees as well as one classic and…another film.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it’s genius counterprogramming or villainous bandwagon-jumping.

The Godfather/doGfather/Godmother

The Madea Bunch

True Grits

The King’s/Queen’s Speech

The REAL Black Swan (and Jim Carrey)

So, rather than make any real posters, just steal everyone else’s, ride the bandwagon and see if people will go and see your stupid fucking film.  This is what happens when people with no imagination are given a lot of money.  But, I guess, if Jim Carrey’s doing it it must be ok, right?  Yeah, didn’t think so.