Film Market Research Articles

The French Take Hollywood

While the United States dominates the global film market, strategies are available to non-U.S. filmmakers seeking to make their mark. Sociologist Diane Barthel-Bouchier discusses how the Oscar-winning French film, The Artist, used the strategies of solving the language problem, meeting cultural expectations, building connections with Hollywood insiders, and mounting a media charm offensive to win the 2012 Best Picture Oscar award.

Transforming the global film industries

This article examines the historical development of the global film industries primarily through horizontal integration between the late 20th and the early 21st century. It presents an empirical analysis of the structural change and dynamics of the film industries. It explores the role of US film corporations – considered the key players in the global film market through Hollywood movies – to determine whether the US has achieved a pivotal role in the global M&A market. This leads to the fundamental question of whether film corporations in non-western countries have expanded their influence in the global market so that they can reduce the asymmetrical power balance between the West and the East.

The Hollywood Novelization: Film as Literature or Literature as Film Promotion?

Hollywood movie novelizations are novels based on mainstream films and published about the time these films are released in theaters. The present article explores the ambiguous status of this generally little-esteemed and frequently ignored form of adaptation. On the one hand, novelizations are works of literature that can be enjoyed without knowledge of the film they are based on; on the other, they can be (and often are) seen as mere tools of film advertising. This latter aspect becomes particularly evident when looking at the cover design of a novelization. It invariably features the film’s artwork (the poster image, stills, and/or typography used for promoting the film) and frequently highlights the film’s stars rather than the book’s author. By analyzing a selection of book covers of novelized versions of recent films and comparing the novelization of Terminator Salvation (Foster 2009b) with the film (Terminator Salvation 2009, dir. McG) it is based on, the article traces and examines the frictions between the opposing forces—literature and film marketing—that define the genre.

Developing strategies to promote the Iranian international film market

Article history: Received August 26, 2011 Received in Revised form November, 11, 2011 Accepted 18 November 2011 Available online 22 November 2011 International film market of Iran (IFM) is one of the most important presenters of different films and television programs to be sold in the world market especially in Middle East. The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate different methods to promote this market. The study uses a questionnaire and distributes it among buyers and sales agents of IFM. The results of hypothetic tests prove that the socio-cultural factors are the most important reasons for the participants. Another important criterion promoting sales of movies is different awards from various movie festivals dedicated to moviemakers. The opening date and place of market, publication and publicity are other important criteria influencing sales of movies. The paper illustrates film-marketing mix for film marketers. Indicators, which are important for participants in international film festivals, are also illustrated for international film market holders.

Rebuilding the Angolan body politic: Global and local projections of identity and protest in O Herói/The Hero (Zézé Gamboa, 2004)

This article uses a reading of Zézé Gamboa's award-winning 2004 feature as a basis for an exploration of post-conflict Angolan screen culture and of its impact both at home and internationally. It considers how O Heri's depiction of a war-torn nation, and of the impediments to its reconstruction, negotiates between a socially-engaged film-making practice, informed by local tradition and the tenets of 'Third Cinema', and the demands of a globalised cinema market. The film achieves this compromise by deploying allegorical and symbolic tropes, familiar from the literature, cinema, and political discourse of the era of Angolan liberation (notably, the concept of a socialist 'new man'), to complicate a superficially optimistic story of post-conflict rehabilitation, and to insinuate a critique of the authoritarian practices and neo-liberal policies of the MPLA government. Further to this, the article identifies strategies through which the film advertises the gulf between its fiction of individual triumph over adversity and, on the other hand, the grimmer reality of Angola's post-conflict malaise. Finally, it considers how the film's construction of an encrypted allegory also prompts the question of whether or not film production that depends upon the funding and agendas of international capital and neo-colonial powers can ever foster the resurgence of a genuinely 'popular' and progressive culture in post-conflict Angola.

Ambivalent transnationality: Luso-African co-productions after independence (1988–2010)

In the sequence of its adhesion to the European Community in 1986 and in search for a place in an increasingly globalized film market, Portugal established a vast amount of transnational cinematographic partnerships with the Luso-African countries Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau. The partnerships, which have resulted in twenty co-productions so far, have also had a profound meaning for the discussion of colonialism and post-colonialism that cannot be overemphasized. Since the aim of this article is to give a general overview of the Luso-African feature film landscape, it discusses the films in a resumed fashion within the context of the four co-producing PALOP (Países de Língua Oficial Portuguesa – Countries with Portuguese as Official Language). According to my understanding of transnationality as ambivalent, I will try to comprehend how the co-productions negotiate the elements of national and transnational identity. Are they capable of holding the post-colonial tensions? Are new and multilateral perspectives that confront outdated discourses the exception or the rule?

The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films (review)

Reviewed by: The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films Ian Wojcik-Andrews (bio) The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films By Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 2010. Jack Zipes’s The Enchanted Screen is a welcome addition to the study of children’s cinema and film. In part, the book is a history of fairy tale films from around the world of which few people have ever heard, let alone seen or studied as part of the discipline of children’s cinema and film. But along with revealing this otherwise unknown history of the fairy tale film and the oral tradition from which it originally came, the book also challenges what many people still believe: the idea that Disney was and is the dominant force in the production of fairy tale films. To argue this point, Zipes highlights the “vast international production of fairy-tale films since the 1890s” (xi) that both complements and stands in opposition to Disney. Drawing on the work of Bloch, Freud, Adorno, and other left-leaning critics, The Enchanted Screen finally buries once and for all the notion that Disney rules the fairy tale film market and, in the process, unearths all the other “cinematic gems” from Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand which have been produced since the late nineteenth century. In this context, the book also makes a terrific contribution to discussions about diversity in children’s cinema and film here in the United States. Presented in three parts, its global reach is admirable. Early chapters in part one provide a wide-ranging history of the fairy [End Page 116] tale film. Zipes discusses many of the social and historical conditions from which this genre emerged. This history is also personalized somewhat, as Zipes looks at its foremost pioneers, including Georges Méliès and the early, innovative, pre–Mickey Mouse Walt Disney (before Disney became corporate, in other words). For example, chapter three is an extended review of the life and times of Georges Méliès. Zipes notes how the French filmmaker made over 520 films between 1896 and 1913, many of which were adaptations of the tales of Charles Perrault. In particular, Zipes focuses on Méliès’s versions of Cinderella (1899, 1912), Little Red Riding Hood (1901), and Bluebeard (1901). Other critics, myself included, have written briefly about the contributions of Méliès, who, as Zipes points out, was a “fanatic magician and man of the theatre turned into an obsessed and inspired filmmaker” (32). What is really valuable in The Enchanted Screen, though, is the depth of Zipes’s knowledge about all things fairy tale, including the fairy tale films of Méliès, whose influence, according to Zipes, extended all the way to the “early fairy-tale cartoons and animated films not to mention other live-action films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s” (48). Part one concludes with a discussion of how the fairy tale film influenced and eventually evolved into the animated cartoons and feature-length movies of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Part two continues to reveal a number of fairy tale films from around the world, while critiquing Disney. Zipes looks at such topics as the many representations of Snow White, the legacy of the Cinderella films, and the motif of abuse and abandonment, particularly as it appears in the many versions of Hansel and Gretel. In the case of the latter, Zipes examines animated and fairy tale versions from the United States, Canada, and as far afield as Korea. Writing about the Korean version of Hansel and Gretel by Pil-Sung, he contends that it contains a “brilliant vision and critical exploration of the brutal treatment of innocent children in our contemporary world where barbarity often blends with civility or exists in high tension with civility” (208). In part three, Zipes situates fairy tale films in the context of the human propensity to engage in wars—“Endless wars, big and small, on every continent” (349). Overall, his concluding chapter, “Fairy-Tale Films in Dark Times: Breaking Molds, Seeing the World Anew,” argues that despite the tendency of human beings to slaughter one...

The adoption of social networking technologies in cinema releases

Film marketing plays a growing role in movie release due to the high cost and financial risk of film production, with studios investing in expensive marketing campaigns to maximize revenue early in the release cycle. Marketing for films is a significant part of the budget, with Hollywood spending about $4 billion a year to buy TV and print advertising. Product cycles have accelerated, and studios are increasingly sensitive to criticism and market positioning. Because of its immediacy and ubiquity, Internet social networking is seen as a cost-effective alternative to traditional promotion. The current research investigates the effectiveness of Internet social networking in film success through a novel application of event study methods based on Internet search engine datasets. I find that release directed Internet social networking activities increase film revenues 64% and increase search activity 48%. I also report that increased revenue and search continue after the release period during the time that films appear on DVD, streaming and subscription TV, with revenue 14% higher than it would have been without the social networking campaign. In addition, I observe increased viewer search of around 41% over what it would have been without the Internet social networking campaign. A marginal increase of Internet social networking activity is predicted to result in a threefold increase in search intensity related to a film. The analysis shows that both budgets and the level of Internet search activity are important factors in the revenue generation of films, and Internet social networking campaigns lead to higher revenues.

<i>Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948: The Untold History of the Film Industry</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948: The Untold History of the Film Industry Peter Y. Paik Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948: The Untold History of the Film Industry by Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim. New York: Routledge, 2011 (Routledge Advances in Film Studies). $125 (hardcover) Korea's Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948, by Brian Yecies and Ae-Gyung Shim is a groundbreaking study that examines the early history of films and moving pictures on the Korean peninsula. Ambitious in its scope, the book traces the consumption and spectatorship of moving images on the Korean peninsula back to the late nineteenth century. After electricity had begun to power the lights of the Kyŏngbok Palace and a line of streetcars was running across Seoul, the newly founded Seoul Electric Company found an immediate and steady source of income in the nightly motion picture screenings held at its warehouse in the Tongdaemun district. Eager audiences flocked to view images of European and American cities, in crowds that sometimes numbered over one thousand. Authors Yecies and Shim not only provide a fascinating glimpse into this early period of film spectatorship and image consumption, when toothpaste containers and empty tobacco packets could be redeemed for theater tickets, but also give a compelling and multifaceted account of filmmaking and film spectatorship under the Japanese colonial administration. As Yecies and Shim point out, the appetite of Koreans for viewing motion pictures was already quite developed at the time of Korea's annexation by Japan as a colony. The capacity of the cinema to inculcate certain values and to arouse new desires did not go unrecognized, however, by Japanese colonial authorities, which set about organizing free screenings of films and newsreels to promote their expansionist aims. The colonial government's censorship practices, however, were not centralized until 1925, eight years after Japan had passed into law a domestic system of film censorship. Although Korean movie narrators (pyŏnsa) were subject to harrassment and even beatings for making comments during their performances that were considered hostile or disparaging to the colonial authorities, and Korean filmmakers were subject to government surveillance as well as to censorship regulations, nevertheless the years between 1923-34 proved to be a remarkably productive period for the cinema of colonial Korea. This span saw the release of ninety feature films directed by Korean filmmakers and produced by predominantly Korean film crews, including those with explicitly anticolonial overtones, such as The Story of Chunhyang (Ch'unhyangjŏn, 1923) and Arirang (1926), which was received by audiences as a fierce and impassioned protest against colonial oppression. A film like Arirang, in which the protagonist, a mentally unstable young man, recovers his sanity after killing a colonialist collaborator and would-be rapist, indicates that the hands of the Japanese censors were more lax than would be expected for a colonial authority using culture to foster a spirit of obedience, if not a sense of allegiance, among the colonized people. Yecies and Shim raise [End Page 421] the question of whether the radical content of Arirang might have had more to do with the performances of the pyŏnsa at its screenings than with the film script itself, as no intact reels of the film have survived. But the censorship policies of the Japanese had other unintended consequences that undermined the colonial government's aim of achieving cultural hegemony. Censorship laws forced Japanese films to pass through two boards of censors before they could be screened in Korea, in effect more than doubling the fees levied for the censorship process. Paying the costs for two sets of censors, the one located in Japan and the other based in Korea, amounted to a financial burden that only a handful of major studios could assume. The censorship process thus left the film market in Korea wide open for Hollywood films, which became much more popular than movies from Japan. By 1934, Hollywood films had a market share of over 60 percent. The late 1920s and early 1930s were also a time of cooperation and solidarity between leftist filmmakers of both countries. Members of the Korean Artists Proletarian Federation were allowed to meet with their counterparts in Japan...

Beyond Jidai-geki: Daiei studios and the study of transnational Japanese cinema

ABSTRACTThis article looks at the strategies used by Daiei studios for increasing their share of the international film market during the 1950s and 1960s. Rather than relying on the ‘exoticism’ of Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950) or Gate of Hell (Kinugasa, 1953), Daiei instead had ambitions for a wide variety of productions, few of which were actually jidai-geki. In addition to importing the latest technology, Daiei, under studio head Nagata Masaichi, also attempted to foster mutually beneficial relationships with a range of overseas film companies. From a methodological perspective I argue that it is useful to focus on a specific studio in order to think about individual companies' approaches to domestic and international markets and their power relations with international collaborators.

El tráiler en la industria cinematográfica española: análisis de casos de las décadas de los 50, 60, 70 y 80

La presente investigación es una aproximación a la evolución que ha experimentado el tráiler en la industria cinematográfica española, la cual tiene unas particularidades propias que se manifiestan en la principal pieza de marketing cinematográfico, el tráiler. Para trazar esta evolución se estudian casos particulares de trailers de las décadas de los años 50, 60, 70 Y 80 estableciendo además el marco cinematográfico que caracteriza esa determinada época y los vínculos que se establecen entre el discurso cinematográfico propio de esos años y el discurso del tráiler.

Comparison of SML and GMM estimators for the random coefficient logit model using aggregate data

A simulated maximum likelihood (SML) estimator for the random coefficient logit model using aggregate data is found to be more efficient than the widely used generalized method of moments estimator (GMM) of Berry et al. (Econometrica 63:841–890, 1995). In particular, the SML estimator is better than the GMM estimator in recovery of heterogeneity parameters which are often of central interest in marketing research. With the GMM estimator, the analyst must determine what moment conditions to use for parameter identification, especially the heterogeneity parameters. With the SML estimator, the moment conditions are automatically determined as the gradients of the log-likelihood function, and these are the most efficient ones if the model is correctly specified. Another limitation of the GMM estimator is that the product market shares must be strictly positive while the SML estimator can handle zero market share observations. Properties of the SML and GMM estimators are demonstrated in simulated data and in data from the US photographic film market.

A critical analysis of US cultural policy in the global film market

By emphasizing contextualization between the film industry and government cultural policies in association with FTAs, this article historically examines the set of social relations and the interplay of power between the US and other countries (mainly non-western), as well as between the commercial interests of Hollywood and the critical political ideology of domestic film industries. It analyses whether the US, supported and lobbied by Hollywood, has hampered cultural diversity and sovereignty in other countries, particularly through the use of FTAs in the midst of neoliberal globalization. The article maps out how the US government has intensified its state power in the global cultural market. It articulates the consequences of FTAs in the realm of culture in several countries in order to determine the crucial influence of FTAs on domestic film and cultural markets. It is not an easy task to establish an exact correlation between FTAs and the deleterious consequences of signing FTAs for domestic film industries, therefore, the article discusses the more general, causal relationship between FTAs and consequences in domestic film industries.

Measuring Impact: The Importance of Evaluation for Documentary Film Campaigns

ABSTRACT Most people would agree that films can significantly impact individual attitudes and cultural narratives, but little research has sought to empirically measure these impacts. It is becoming increasingly important for documentary (and other issue-based) films to justify costs by providing data on the social “return on investment”, but care must be taken to ensure that both the questions asked and the methods used to answer them are valid and respectful. This paper introduces an emerging research agenda for the study of documentary film impacts, discussing both why such evaluation is important and key issues relevant to assessing impact. Author Keywords Film, Impact, Evaluation, Social Change INTRODUCTION Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this

Exportability of Films in a Globalizing Market: The Intersection of Nation and Genre

While the dominance of the Hollywood major studios in the global film market is a well-known fact, less is known about the patterns of exportability by film genre and by nation. Here I present data pertaining to cross-national comparisons between France and the United States, as well as relevant global market figures for US films by genre. The findings challenge the assumption that specific genres, notably comedy, do not export. Rather, it appears that most US comedies that are successful in the States, like most other genres of US films, do and are exported. The case for France, however, appears quite different, insofar as the top films, which were overwhelmingly also comedies, did not export. Exports in the French case were more characteristic of niche marketing: namely quality nature films that could be easily translated, and films that fit specific cultural expectations ( Barnier and Moine, 2002 ; Frodon, 1998 ). This research also suggests that the traditional confrontation of theoretical approaches (cultural imperialist, cultural studies, and the economic approach) fits neither the current situation of a globalizing industry nor the cultural complexity of many films, but that a more nuanced approach should focus on strategies available to different players and relationships formed among producers and between producers and specific markets.

영화 마케팅 채널로서 소셜미디어의 가능성: 다큐멘터리 영화 <땅의 여자> 트위터 마케팅 사례를 중심으로

This study aims to consider the effects of the change in communication culture affected by `Social Media` on the film marketing. Particularly, Twitter, a kind of Social Media which shows the most rapid growth recently, is examined for what kind of benefits it`s functional characteristics would provide for film marketing. Twitter, which has distinctive characteristics such as free access, the high level of attention resulting from its simplicity, alarming speed of spreading information and low costs, offers a variety of marketing opportunities not only for general commercial films but for low budget or independent films that do not have sufficient marketing opportunity. In the case of the documentary film (2010, Woo-jung Kwon), starting from the process of the film production through release to the time after the screening, it continued to communicate with potential audiences via Twitter and tried every tool of film marketing like advertising, PR, promotion and word of mouth. By doing so, it provides a model for low budget or independent films about what alternative activities they might be able to conduct for film marketing.

Real Options in the Motion Picture Industry: Evidence from Film Marketing and Sequels*

We examine the application of real options within two contexts of motion picture investment decisions by studio executives. The first is whether to continue marketing a film following its initial release in theaters (an abandonment option). The second centers on the decision to produce a sequel to an original film (a growth option). Few accounting studies have examined the use of real options but they are of considerable importance to companies managing risk through their cost structure and capital investment decisions. Specifically, a real option allows decision makers to postpone further expenditure commitment until a substantial portion of the uncertainty surrounding the investment has been resolved. Our evidence from the motion picture industry indicates that studios leave a portion of their marketing budget uncommitted until its spending is warranted. We also show that studios invest more in original films that they believe will lead to a sequel. Specifically, we find that studios spend higher production and marketing costs on films with sequels than those without, and that sequels generate higher returns on investment than non-sequels. Overall, our results suggest that the real options framework has applications for accounting research and practice by providing a basis for studying and understanding cost commitments in product or project-based settings.

Cinema europeo e memorie autocritiche

One way for debating about the European cultures is the analysis of the market of the cultural products. Among them, one of the most interesting points of view is that of the film market. Obviously, it is not easy to develop a debate on the “European cinema”. More than an half of the European films is an American production. The rest of the films is produced in the national borders. However, there is an interesting number of films produced in Europe that are viewed in other countries. About their stories, the theme of the memory is one of the most frequent in the last years. It is not only the individual memory, but, above all, the collective one. It is not in the sense of an attention for the problems of the disorientation or of the loss of the memory that modernization and de-traditionalization provoke, but in the sense of an attention for the removal process. They present this question in an autocritical point of view. They present stories also about the worrying past. After a recognition of the most famous European films of the last years, the paper stresses some of these films (produced in East and West European countries) and how they promote and present the autocritical memory.

The Indian Film Market

Media economics investigations of the international flow of media such as films reveal the importance of domestic consumer spending on films. Television penetration is seen as a threat to this. In this article, the effect of television penetration on the annual number of theatrical admissions, the annual number of films produced and the number of screens was examined using time series data from the introduction of television until the year 2005. This was examined in the context of the five major film producing countries: US, UK, France, Germany and Japan. Statistically, India fits the international pattern of a significant negative effect of television penetration on aggregate and per capita theatrical film admissions. Further, television penetration had a negative but non-significant effect on the number of films produced and on the number of screens. Descriptive data show that India’s persistent aggregate admissions appear to be more an artifact of the population size rather than a higher frequency in visits to the theatres. Since 74 per cent of Indian film industry revenues come from theatrical admissions, these results may interest policy makers in view of the fact that India is the only country in the world other than the US where domestic films have approximately 93 per cent market share.

Fidelity, Felicity, and Playing Around in Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox

This essay examines the discourse of fidelity in the production and marketing of Wes Anderson's film, Fantastic Mr. Fox . It argues that while Anderson invokes fidelity to Roald Dahl in multiple ways, he appears much more interested in playing around. Using the voice of Dahl's widow to confirm fidelity, Anderson radically revises the character and voice of Mrs. Fox from the supportive character depicted in Dahl's short story. The film's obsessive language of fidelity thus masks Anderson's sly subversion of Dahl's representation of gender, in particular his depiction of adult women.