Sunday, 6 January 2013

"any publicity is good publicity" right or wrong!?

Marketing is clearly an imperative part of the success of films, we are constantly ambushed by information  about they latest film, film posters everywhere we look and reviews coming at us from all directions. Of course if a film has an bad early review it would seem it's likely that it would tarnish it's overall success. 
This is clearly going to be a worry for any film maker, but when you're a big, famous Hollywood director, creating this years latest blockbuster, with a star studded cast, the last thing you need is a bad review. Although in saying this most Hollywood directors can reply on a 'review emgargos', its a kind of industry (unspoken) rule that film reviewers who are esteemed enough to have early viewings of the film stay pretty silent on their opinion until they movie has hit wider circulation. 
This all worked fine before the phenomenon that is social media. Undoubtedly the world of interlinked spheres, constant communication round the clock, round the globe makes it difficult for these chummy Hollywood types to keep to their little agreement. 
Social media sites such as Twitter allow anyone to air their opinions on anything, it only takes one comment, 160 characters or less to change the entire success of a film. The main example of this in recent films is 'The Hobbit'. A select few were invited to view the film in Peter Jacksons company in his own country, New Zealand, however even during the film a few of his special guests couldn't help but log in to their twitter and reveal what they thought about the film. Its been speculated that a lot of the comments weren't the most decent and because of this its thought that it's tarnished the overall success of the film. I suppose it all depends on what reviews the individual trusts. A half hearted, uneducated opinion of some no-body on twitter, or an intelligently formed, articulately written review in sight and sound magazine, written by a film buff. For most of us we'd say Sight and Sound would have the most reliable opinion. However i'm not entirely sure. 100 people all writing the same thing on a social networking sight cant be wrong, surely? After all the majority of the people watching these films don't have a media degree, and therefore if they hadn't read a snippet of a film buffs review, their opinion maybe completely different. 

Its also been speculated that bad reviews have also been caught spoiling the spoilers of certain films. 'The Cabin In the Woods' released in 2012 was slated from the beginning for being predictable and so on, however after reading a lot of the reviews it seems that actually articles slating the film are the ones revealing the plot twist. Well then surely the film is going to be predictable, because the twist has already been leaked in endless bad reviews. Surely this is just a vicious circle and The Cabin in the Woods was going to be slated from the very beginning. 

The real danger of reviewing anything badly is that you're going to influence people's opinions, even to the point that they will choose not to go and see the film because of the terrible review. But it's like most things, if you don't point it out, half the people wont notice. For example the film 'One Day' staring Anne Hathaway, everyone went on and on about her terrible English accent. Fair enough it wasn't the greatest, but I bet if no one had noticed it, half as many people would have batted an eye lid. We are creatures that want to conform, and the easiest thing to do is follow the crowd. If one person says a bad work, it's just easier to go along with it. 

Unfortunately we're in a place where technology and social media is going to get any less advanced, so the way people review films without a thinking and post their opinions out there to the millions is just going to carry on. 



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