For what it’s worth,** James Cameron** said himself on the commentary track for T2 that he filmed the movie intending for the audience to think of Arnold as the bad guy, up until the mall hallway sequence. He also expressed annoyance with the trailers and commercials at the time that ruined the surprise.
If I a may respond as an advertising guy who is the trophy husband of a movie studio trouble shooter. :smack:
If we agree to spend a hundred thousand dollars for a full page ad in *Newsweek *for a client, we must pay for it by contract. If we fail to get out print production materials to Newsweek, we end up paying for a blank page. If that were to happen the ad agency pays for the ad not the client, and there will be hell to pay by someone.
The problem is clients must respond marketing changes, and sometimes at the last minute an entirely new ad is required. This is where the stress comes in. And it is a lot worse with a multi-million dollar motion picture than it is with a less expensive *Newsweek *ad.
One night I personally was on the phone at 6pm to change all our client’s commercials to different one, and the game started at 8pm. Problem was the television control booth did not have the commercial on hand, and our delivery guy was caught in traffic behind an accident with the correct commercial. So, you see often in movies last minute changes are thrown together, and producers do not get the seamless results they hoped for.
When you see a movie premier with red carpet and glamorous stars, the producers are sitting in the back room chewing their finger nails to every audience reaction. These producers, and possibly studio execs have put up millions, certainly their careers, and perhaps even their homes hoping for a box office success.
It is no joke that one bad movie can lead to a homeless shelter. The stakes are too high for me. My wife has to respond to these people. I am convinced the reason she does well is that her training and previous employment was working with the developmentally disabled. She is patient and cool.
I’m a complete outsider to show business but from what I’ve seen and heard at a distance the impression I get is that it’s not an art or a science - nobody really knows what will succeed and what will fail. But the people in show business want to believe they have control over what they’re doing. So you end up with a bunch of people taking the credit or the blame for what are actually mostly random events. You get rewarded if you’re associated with a random good event and you get punished if you’re associated with a random bad event.
I keep hearing people debate “How much is show, how much is art, and how much is business.” Looks to me like it is a lot like advertising using creativity to make money. This is not to say there are not people in the industry whose main purpose is to communicate a meaningful message - frequently political.
More and more the movie business is using audience research and marketing data in scripting and production. I for one think this is a mistake. I take the view of the writers of TV’s Mad Men. A clear basic understanding of who will buy the product or see the movie coupled with a creative approach.
One of the best examples of this from an episode of Mad Men was selling the Kodak Carousel Slide projector. The client wanted to emphasize the wheel mechanism. The agency suggested emotional photos of families and friends describing the Carousel as a ‘time machine.’ Here is the clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuYThe idea came from logic and creative thought, not the result of research by a PhD. I tell you sometimes I see research that takes the simplest idea and makes it complex just to cover some researchers ass.
I believe we have all sat through movies we thought were great and got so-so box office. At the same time we have seen movies that the critics loved and put us to sleep. I believe timing - especially events of the day effect the success of the movie. Escapist material did well in WWII, but failed in the 1960s Viet Nam, drug culture, sexual expression demanded focus on reality. I recall the* Sound of Music* was the last success of this type of escapism.
After I saw this trailer for Mrs. Doubtfire I was shocked to discover that the film is actually a family comedy.
And I thought Parenthood would be a comedy from the trailer.