Friday 7 June 2013

I GIVE IT A YEAR - How to sell a romantic comedy to foreign audiences

Did you know that studio marketing departments often have to make major cosmetic changes to a film's poster in order to promote it effectively in other countries? Take I Give It A Year, for example...

Did you know that Jason Flemyng was removed from the Australian version of the poster due to an incident at a party in Sydney where he went around making everyone tell him that he was their favourite Jason to appear in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels?

Or that Belgian audiences find an abundance of unused white space to be more entertaining than Stephen Merchant's gangly frame and have always had a dislike of Minnie Driver ever since they found out that she actually prefers to drive a Volvo?

How about the fact that audiences in Germany also carry a dislike of Jason Flemyng stemming from a different incident, but are big fans of exclamation points and anachronistic, poorly hidden sofa bombs?

Well now you know. Or maybe some international marketing departments like messing about with posters just for the sake of it.

Saturday 1 June 2013

I hope you're paying attention, Kevin Bacon. This is how pre-film announcements should be made.



Starring Before Midnight's Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, this new public service announcement for the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas sees the delightfully snooty pair (notice Hawke name-dropping Tolstoy with great ease) lambast a member of the audience for using their phone while they are talking.

It's a fun little short that serves as a nice warm up for Before Midnight, and as a reminder that The Alamo Drafthouse knows how to expertly belittle people into behaving in their screens. Seriously, imagine how peaceful it would be if a major cinema chain was brave enough to show a video like the following one before each film? The campaign starts here.