A Short History of Film
Film has a history over a century long, of people trying to tell stories, spark the imagination and inform and every now and then come along movies that push things forward, take the next step and take them well and in doing so drag the film industry into a new era. And Avatar is the latest of these. Inspired by this I decided to look into the
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Once upon a time, in my youth, I was sort of a wannabe film buff. For a number of my early teenage years, I loved the HISTORY of Hollywood. After that, however, my interest waned and as of now, it's very, very rare for me to be able to sit through a movie, much less give a damn about it. I haven't known what's playing in theatres since the last Lord of the Rings film came out.
But I was just talking about one interesting aspect of the film industry with my brother. Like, literally JUST NOW. And I think it would make a spectacular essay for anyone who wished to write it. And that is the effect of advertising.
This all came about as the result of my girlfriend and I purchasing a $7 DVD from a grocery store. When we spotted it, the cover looked pretty, and the back promised us something less torturous than Barney that hopefully our 2-year-old daughter would still like. So we picked it up, and later, put it on.
From the first 5 minutes, we were blown away by the quality of this movie. It's not just quality animation, and it's not just good voice acting -- it's the attention to detail, and more, the AESTHETICS of the film. You can get movies that have good technical qualities but no real art. This... this has art. It's fucking GORGEOUS. Every scene is a visual feast of color and light.
Here's an example.
Now okay, the PLOT is nothing new. I could tell you the whole thing right here and you'd swear you heard it before. And you have. I promise. It's your basic Romeo and Juliet story. But it's still a visual feast and the characters and world concept are absolutely unique, extraordinarily well-conceived and different. And while I'm admittedly out of the loop on current films, I was still kind of stunned that I had never heard of something that was THIS good.
So I googled it.
...this is a movie that had a budget of $40 million. And due to lack of advertising, it made back...
...wait for this, it blows my mind even to type it...
...$500k in the first weekend in theatres, and an additional $200k thereafter.
To be specific, ~$694k. On a $40 mil investment.
BLOWS. MY. FRIGGIN. MIND.
...so yeah. Good college essay right there.
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You'd think with that cast they'd have been able to advertise and spread the word, not to the degree of Batman or Toy Story sure but enough to turn a profit at least! Add in the internet and what a giant resource that is now to marketing it's abysmal that the movie made so little in returns with that cast.
Crickey.
What's worse is it isn't the only movie like that. Probably would make a good college essay though. So would this (and it'd have been great if they'd assigned something like this when I was in Uni supposedly studying this stuff) - I'd have done more research lol. As it was this was a spur of the mind thing.
Someone from that film's studio needs to get on the asses of the marketing department, cause that is a failure of epic proportions. Memetic proportions.
Glad that you liked it though! Wasn't sure if anyone would be interested.
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