Thinkcorps

[Say what you want about Katrina, Bush, FEMA, et al., just make sure you leave your money in the Red Cross tip jar first. Pony up or shut up.]

Like most people, I’ve absorbed about as much as I can take from the sidelines here. Talk is really all it is. But there’s a few things that should be set straight(er).

Looters or Finders? Truth is, there is latent racism or at least ignorance underneath the media’s characterization of NOLA scavengers. I don’t really care what it is they were carrying out of the stores.

These people are poor—they started this tragedy with next to nothing. Now, they have absolutely nothing. No food, shelter, clothes, insurance, transportation, medicine, communications, and probably no jobs to return to either. When will these people have homes again? When is this all expected to end? Months from now? A year? Two?

Taking a TV may seem stupid, but when you have nothing—NOTHING —and no prospects in the forseeable future, you’re gonna damn well grab whatever you can. Maybe it’s food and water which you can use now. Maybe it’s clothing you can barter with next week. And maybe it’s a TV set that you can trade for a sandwich in a month while you’re still waiting for the water to drain.

Give me a definitive answer that this is going to end soon and well for these people, and then I’ll consider judging those who chose to “loot” a few TV sets. Otherwise, shut it.

On Kanye West: Far be it for our entertainers, whom we pay to endorse every product imaginable, to express an individual opinion, especially one born of overwhelming emotion. But Kanye, you know what, it’s not that George Bush doesn’t care about black people—America doesn’t care about black people.

See, in America, we like capitalism and capitalism is about profits and losses. It’s also about managing risk, and understanding that eliminating all the risk cuts into the profits. We’re taking this knowledge and we’re putting it to use in our governments, our schools, our healthcare. See, the government says it’s acceptable to let people be really poor, and starving, and sick, and ignorant, and unemployed, and uninsured. Why? Because it’s expensive and difficult to solve these problems—besides, it’s not as fun as defense contracts and you don’t get elected solving the problems of people who don’t vote.

So, you see, it’s not really even racist. America has abandoned blacks because the numbers simply don’t add up. Until we decide that the most pitiful human life is worth saving, then there are always going to be a lot of people who are left behind to linger, wander and die.

Is It George’s Fault? A lot of people are angry with Bush and his administration over the handling of the response to Katrina. I want to ask the Louisiana governor why the poor weren’t evacuated on buses as per the state’s own evacuation plan. I want to see Chertoff fired immediately. The guy is clearly a douchebag. I also find it deeply troubling that in a time of war, a time of supposed preparedness, we can’t coordinate rescues because of flooding. Imagine what it’s going to be like if chemical weapons are released. It’s gonna be a damn sight more difficult to navigate than water, I’ll tell you.

So, the changes the Bush Administration has made to protect us have failed miserably and certain high-level folk should be held accountable. But it is George’s fault?

Yes, you’re damn right it is. He is the President, the Commander In Chief. He leads this country, he controls the budgets, he administers our agencies. The buck stops on his desk and nowhere else. If Clinton were in office, I would expect no less from him. George, these are your people. They needed your help, and you were not there.

For once, ask your President to be the man he is supposed to be. He needs to step up, shoulder the blame, and get to fixing this mess.

Well, here’s what is hopefully the first in a short series of posts on the upcoming movie Serenity. They’re doing another round of preview screenings, this time for bloggers like me. So get over there and sign up. It’s probably going to be a madhouse, but who cares? At the very least I’ll get to see just who shows up at these screenings. (I’ve never been much of an opening night/weekend kind of guy.)

We’re also probably going to the PDX Browncoats Firefly benefit at the Guild Theater in SW PDX on Saturday, 24th. They’re going to be showing 3 episodes of the TV show and tickets benefit Mercy Corps. Plus, there’s costumes!

But back to Serenity.

Universal’s been doing fan screenings all summer, ever since the opening date got pushed back to September. This is an interesting strategy, and one I’m sure contradicts other traditional opening strategies. Which is best? What will work? I guess it all depends.

In Serenity’s case, Universal’s abandoned the idea that the only way to build anticipation and support for a film is by teasing us with graphics and videobytes (?). This is a tried-and-true strategy used by just about everyone, to the point where today, I see previews all the time that I swear I’ve seen several months before. This teasing gets so ahead of the film’s actual release that, in many cases, it seems inevitable that release dates are pushed back and money is wasted as whatever early buzz was generated evaporates. This really just leaves us consumers confused, as everyone’s teasing us with everything. The competitive advantage disappears.

Consensus I’ve read seems to indicate that since Serenity only cost $40M, Universal figured the film to be more or less a gimme profit-wise, giving them a golden opportunity to do some experimenting. Getting fans and bloggers together to support a film is a great idea, but I’ve never heard of so many advance screenings being held. These happened throughout the summer all across the US. They essentially popped that anticipation balloon and gave the product away—or did they?

Because we, as consumers, are bombarded by teasers, commercials, etc. begging for our attention dollars, there is a threshold a movie has to cross before you can consider it our “watch list”. We can’t see every film that comes out. This watch list is different for every person, but also includes levels—things we “must” see, things we “will” see, and “might” see.

Let’s face it, Hollywood makes its money on “will/might see” consumers. This is the majority of moviegoers, who want some entertainment but don’t care so much how they get it. The “must sees” are the fans, always a niche group.

So what Universal did was use the extra time they got from the later release date to marshall their “must see” audience into the theaters. This does one simple thing: it gives them word of mouth. You can’t get word of mouth from someone who hasn’t seen the film. If you expect that your film is good, then you should do whatever you can to generate your word of mouth before opening weekend.

This opening weekend is SO important, we know, and yet studios are still relying on a handful of reviewers, movie clips and TV appearances over the course of maybe 2 weeks beforehand to make that weekend opening a hit.

There’s just too much competition (read: media noise) for that to work anymore.

I don’t think that this strategy is in any way unique to Serenity. Every film has some franchise value to it. Serenity had its TV fans, but there’s all kinds of fans—movie star fans, indie film fans, genre fans, etc.

I think you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a film for which you couldn’t find fans. And if you did, then you should probably reconsider whether that film’s worth making.

Official Serenity Synopsis:

Joss Whedon, the Oscar® – and Emmy – nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.

Oh yes. Oh yes. Monday, Monday, we will be braving the madhouse that will be the Serenity preview screening slash “Blogger Bonanza” (apologies to Lorne Greene)!

Today (Saturday) we go to the Guild Theater at 1pm for the Firefly/Mercy Corps Benefit to watch selected TV episodes on the bg screen. Thank you PDX Browncoats!

Well, Universal kept their end of the bargain. I was chosen as a blogger-attendee to the Serenity screening here in Portland, I arrived and was on the list, got my tickets, waited in line, and ended up with great seats in a packed house. All in all, it was great. Hats off to Universal/Grace Hill Media for getting us bloggers in the door, which as it turns out was not as magnanimous as it was cunningly strategic, but I’ll get to that later. First, the review, or rather, the reviewing.

I haven’t been to a preview screening since I was a film reviewer in college. Once, I was lucky enough to see Wes Craven’s Shocker in a packed house in downtown Philly on a Friday night, which was probably the best time (the audience participation was brilliant) I’ve even spent in a theater. So, upon finding a pair of seats and watching the theater fill, I recalled bits of this past and what to expect.

Upon getting up to pick up some snackable goodies, Patricia discovered a keychain taped to the arm of her chair. It was emblazoned with the name of a local radio station, and since there didn’t seem to be anyone else around with one, I figured Patricia just won something. But what? During her snackbar absence, I had nothing to do but conjure up possible winnings this little keychain might unlock. Perhaps it was the big grand prize? But the keychain was silver. Did that signify second place? Or some other rank in the winner’s circle? Would we be able to fit her spoils in the car for the ride home? Would we want to?

Alas, as it turned out, there is inherent value in an embossed keychain—it can hold keys. And that, apparently, was more than enough of a prize for the radio station folk, who deemed the slightly more useless stickers they had also hidden out in the audience as more worthy—and those winners got a T-shirt. One hapless teen, followed by his younger brother/sidekick did walk down to the front of the theater to attempt a keychain/T-shirt trade-in, but was rebuffed by radio DJ man, much to the delight of the audience. If there was ever a kid who didn’t need emotional scars, this was him.

Now, as the film began, I realized I had a problem. I always walked into film prepared (i.e., with pen and large notebook for scrawling huge illegible notes in the dark) and with mind open. In this case, however, I was as biased as biased come. Patricia indoctrinated me to Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer years ago. We watched Firefly’s (Whedon’s TV show which Serenity is based on) run on TV and bought the Firefly DVD set before it was released. We’ve seen ever episode of the TV series at least twice, finishing our latest viewing only a few weeks ago. In addition, I am a big fan of Cowboy Bebop, a recent anime series set on a very similar sci-fi western backdrop. I like old Kurosawa films and the spaghetti westerns he spawned, though most proper American westerns I can do without. In short, I am 100% unsure how to review this film. I deeply need this film. I want it to succeed.

Back in 2002 and most unsurprisingly, Fox screwed Whedon right out of the gate when it decided that his 2-hour Firefly pilot was “too slow”, and insisted that he give them something peppier. What can you say about that? He entered into an agreement in good faith with a network known as much for Animals Attack as it was for the X-files and The Simpsons. Who didn’t know that Firefly, a sci-fi series of one-hour episodes, was going to need time and nurturing to find its footing? I’m sure Joss knew it, and probably reiterated it to studio execs at every turn. Firefly aired during the peak of “reality” TV fever, however, and before the implications of the war on terror really began to sink in.

I , like others, am especially glad Universal is going to make money off the franchise, and hope that along with sequels, there may be some Sci Fi Channel (owned by NBC Universal) magic in our futures. Fox, for its part, must be extremely happy now that its running Bones. (Ack!)

Despite its original bad timing, Serenity/Firefly is about as American as you get. It swathes itself in the themes of freedom, frontier spirit and self-determination. It talks in “period” dialogue and numerous gun battles. The crew’s Firefly-class spaceship is not especially fast, pretty or armed. They travel the frontiers of populated space looking for jobs that will bring the money that will keep them in the air and moving. They are sexily dirty, crude and dangerous. Everything a good American should be.

I admit having trouble with the first few minutes of the 2-hour long film. Here Whedon introduces our characters, our universe and the major forces involved. Necessary for everyone else, boring for me. Even the actors seemed to be going through the motions here, reciting the straight-laced dialog needed to set up the rest of the story. Once passed, however, the tale begins to accelerate and you find yourself rocketing around Serenity’s universe. Whedon maintains good pacing throughout the film, and introduces a few more twists and turns in the plot than you expect from similar Hollywood fare.

What will be most glaringly obvious for fans of the TV show is how (necessarily) uneven the character development is. Even with his 2-hours, Whedon stuck to his guns to tell his story, which will leave some fans feeling short-changed when their favorite character doesn’t get as much screen time as they would have liked. Unless of course your favorites include captain Malcom Reynolds and damaged psychic River, who dominate the storyline.

Serenity is primarily character-driven, meaning it doesn’t go too far out of its way to show off its CG effects, though they are plentiful. There’s some very nice martial arts work by balleria Summer Glau (River), and plenty of gunfire. All in all, a balanced effort, which is difficult to find anymore, and some viewers might find strange (talking AND shooting?) in a movie.

Reynolds has already been described as Han Solo, and I think I’d go one further and throw in a bit of Indiana Jones, though I suppose any Harrison Ford antihero will do in a pinch. In fact, when you add it up, Serenity is replete with a wonderful array of cinematic DNA, a fantastic cast, and a loving creator. This is all summed up in a nail-biting climax that pushes you much further than any Star Trek movie ever dared.

No intended spoilers here, but Whedon clearly takes some chances that will dismay hard-core fans, though I think it makes for a better, more suspensful film. What it means for the future of the franchise, I don’t know. I’m excited to find out, however.

Let’s give it 8 out of 10 straight out, and tack on another point for the promise of more to come.

The folks at Universal/Grace Hill Media are getting some props for the fan screenings of Serenity that ran frequently during the summer and the blogger screenings they just completed. I am going to echo these props here, but with an explanatory note for the curious.

These blogger screenings were not special, inspired, or genius—they were simply smart marketing. What Universal did was simply skim off a tiny percentage of the preview tickets they would normally give to local papers and radio stations. Yup, that’s all they did. Instead of winning a contest, you simply entered a first-come, first-serve signup for which you promised to write a review.

So, the studio really did nothing extra beyond suffering through a deluge of emails. There was a nice Universal rep at the theater, he crossed my name off a list, and I was soon waiting in line with everyone else.

This is just really smart Web marketing. They get tons of exposure online in search-engine friendly blogs, for the price of a ticket they were going to give away anyway. You can’t game Google, but you can game the bloggers that feed Google. And in a fair exchange too, I might add.

The best part is that my girlfriend, not an especially rabid fan, has already committed to seeing the movie again, because she wants to support the film and Whedon. So, Universal, you’re getting boku blog love from me, and on top of it all, you’re gonna get my money too.

And that, my friend, is the smartest marketing of all.