Made in Hollywood

In this awards season, many films for the Olympics will be screened in the form of screenings, which is also a very formal strategy for the Olympics. For Hollywood in the past, the more important meaning of screenings is to guide the release.

As early as decades ago, differentiated screenings of films had been realized among the major theater chains in North America. For the producers, in addition to the necessary steps of marketing promotion and media strategy, point-and-click screening is the most important step in the formulation and implementation of distribution strategies. , It is also of great significance, such as analyzing the data after screenings to determine the target audience of the film, whether it can enter the mainstream market for distribution, how many screens are suitable for screening, distribution cooperation strategies with different theaters, etc.

However, now that the media is highly developed, and there is an extremely fast sharing medium like the Internet, starting from the 1990s, for films released on a large scale, on-screen screenings have not been closely related to the distribution strategy.

Now when it comes to spot screenings, the first thing that comes to mind is literary films and impact awards.

For literary and artistic films, it is very easy to create a super high reputation by controlling the audience of the film through very few screens, and only attracting fans in this field into the theater at the initial stage. This can be said to be a literary and artistic film. An important reason for the generally high reputation.

No one can deny that when the quality of the film is similar, the fewer people who watch it, the higher the evaluation.

Award-winning films and commercial blockbusters are two completely different existences, and the promotion strategies of the two sides are also completely different. Word-of-mouth, various media and even film critics' ratings have an important impact on hedging award-winning films.

On-demand screening also provides opportunities for some films that do not want to be released on a large scale before the New Year to participate in the Oscar competition. Works participating in the current Oscar competition must be released before the New Year, which is one of the most basic conditions for applying for Oscars.

Compared to striving for high word-of-mouth, this can be said to be the most important reason why "Gravity" adopts spot screenings. The time was really tight, and the copies sent by Warner Bros. to all over North America were not yet fully ready, so we had to first release the film in some of the most famous cities in North America.

To put it bluntly, for a film like "Gravity" that will be released on a large scale later, screening does not make much sense.

Screening is now basically reserved for small-budget independent films.

For example, Duke has studied in depth the typical "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tiger". Before the release, through the questionnaire survey, the distributor already knew that this film could not focus on the mainstream market when it was released, but aimed at a small number of genre film lovers, locking them as the first part of the core audience.

The distribution scale of this part is very small, and there are even only a few dozen theaters in the United States, although it is also released at this time. But in fact, it can also be regarded as "pre-screening" for the gradually expanding release scale and finally entering the mainstream market.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was promoted through the high reputation of the first batch of genre film lovers and the impressive single-house box office data, gradually and slowly and orderly expanded the target audience and the number of screens, such as targeting Chinese and Asians in North America Do marketing. The screening theaters are all near the gathering areas of these target groups, and then they will target the mainstream movie-watching groups in North America, and the relevant media will then place advertisements.

In the end, it took hundreds of millions of dollars in box office from North America in the way of super long-term screenings.

This approach is obviously not suitable for "Gravity".

From December 26th. "Gravity" was screened in North America on a scale of 50 theaters, which is for Duke's film. High attendance is almost inevitable. On that day, it earned 1.68 million U.S. dollars, and the box office of a single hall exceeded 30,000 U.S. dollars!

It is not surprising that the film is not only time period. And the screens that are screened are all IMAX screens in super-large cinema halls.

Contrary to the commercial blockbusters in the summer, a film released during the awards season must be marketed to professional word of mouth if it wants to make a difference in the Oscars, but this is just a routine job done every year for Warner Bros. Moreover, the quality of "Gravity" has completely passed the test, and word-of-mouth marketing is not difficult at all.

"'Gravity' depicts outer space in a spectacular way that's as groundbreaking as 'Avatar'." - The New York Times

"Words cannot describe the stunning visual presentation of this space opera, which can only be fully captured in 3D in a movie theater." --Los Angeles Times

Among the 66 media in North America, "Gravity" scored an average of 93 points!

The high score is one aspect, and the film’s screenings are a hit. Since December 27, even on weekdays, many screening theaters in North America have been sold out, and the box office of individual theaters has remained at a high level. run.

As of December 31st, when the Oscar Executive Committee mailed the nomination ballots to nearly 6,000 members, "Gravity" had already taken over 7 million US dollars in box office from North America through screenings. The single-house box office of the screening was as high as 140,000 US dollars.

Also on Friday, December 31st, "Gravity" ended screenings and began to be screened on a large scale in North America, with the number of theaters as high as 4,120.

Due to the previous screenings, the film has accumulated a huge reputation and expectations. On Friday, the film had a blowout explosion, easily taking away 27.65 million US dollars.

More importantly, after the large-scale release, the word-of-mouth of "Gravity" has not declined significantly.

The CinemaScore audience rating is as high as 93%, the average audience score is 'A+', the 38,775 users on the IMDB website scored 9.4 points, the audience favorite popcorn index is 92%, and the average of 77 media reporters on MetaCritic A high score of 91 points was scored.

If the word-of-mouth of the audience is more of a guarantee for the film's box office trend, and it does not help much in terms of winning awards, a related comment by Frank Pearson in the New Year's special issue of "Vanity Fair" shows some trends .

""Gravity" has made great innovations and breakthroughs in both form and content-in the genre of space-themed movies, it is realized with new photography, special effects, and 2D conversion to 3D technology. This is definitely an innovation in film history."

"It gives people a brand-new viewing experience and emotional experience that have never been seen before. It is completely new. This movie has made a further step on the basis of creating a new world. It allows you to be there, and the 3D IMAX effect seems to make you feel like you are in it."

"This kind of experience is obviously different from the experience I had watching "Hubble Telescope 3D" and "International Space Station" in the film museum. First of all, the type is different, because the movement of the virtual camera brings strong subjective feelings, which cannot be provided by documentaries. Experimental, pioneering and inspiring - for me, like seeing Pulp Fiction for the first time, the value of Gravity is in proving that 'it's okay to do this', for that alone One point, judging from its high degree of completion, director Duke Rosenberg can be classified as a film master.”

"This "Gravity" is quite inspiring to all future space films, and even other types of films. The form and content of this film are highly unified-many critics think that the story of the film is thin. In my opinion, It's a stress response to encountering something new."

"A few hours after I watched this movie, I couldn't make any comments because I didn't know how to comment. This is my real reaction. In such a story setting, the current story capacity is appropriate. From the traditional point of view Come on, the story looks simple, but because of the breakthrough in the form of the film, the amount of information contained in the film itself is quite large, and the viewer has to face massive information processing from the audio-visual and brain levels. After the combination of new form and content appears, We should also adjust accordingly to find the angle of how to view and appreciate this movie."

"So, "Gravity" is a 'new' movie from the perspective of film history for me. I can't draw any more conclusions about this movie, because its influence on subsequent movies is only just started."

Although some people who have watched this movie gave negative comments, Duke's appeal is undoubtedly huge in terms of commercial films and the mainstream market. It is constantly expanding, and some media even claim that he is the first director in history to have superstar fans.

The 3D effect of "Gravity" is absolutely outstanding, and this alone is enough to attract a large audience.

On the second day after the film was widely released, that is, on New Year's Day in 2011, the box office in North America rose again, with a single daily income of 28.54 million US dollars.

There is no suspense, "Gravity" easily won the first North American weekend box office championship in 2011, and the result of 81.96 million US dollars is impressive enough.

Combined with the box office obtained from previous screenings, "Gravity" has already taken 89.06 million US dollars from North America.

Another point is that "Gravity" has no rivals of the same magnitude in this schedule. The first-week box office that lived up to expectations and excellent word-of-mouth are enough to ensure that the film's follow-up box office will run at an extremely stable trend.

Whether it is Duke or Warner Bros., they are not too worried about the film's commercial performance. On the basis of maintaining sufficient marketing promotion, their main work has gradually shifted to the Oscar's public relations operation.

Even though Duke, Penny Kelly, Scarlett Johansson, Nancy Josephson, and Warner Bros. had made enough efforts before and won the support of heavyweight members of the academy like Frank Pearson, the situation was Not at all optimistic.

The late release of "Gravity" is a considerable factor that cannot be ignored, and it also increases the difficulty of competing for the Olympics.

"We're absent from a series of Sentinel awards..."

In the reception room of the Eye-shaped villa, Pani Kelisi frowned, the current situation is indeed not optimistic, "This has caused a series of negative effects on word-of-mouth marketing, especially the Best Actress, Natalie Porter Man almost won the Best Actress in all the Outpost awards." (To be continued~^~)

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