United Artists and Lake Shore Entertainment Launch Fame Movie Contest
Fame the remake of the 1980 performing arts school movie is hitting theaters later on this month (September 25th), and while moviegoers will be able to attend a prestigious performing arts school through, United Artists and Lake Shore Entertainment want movie fans to get on some sweepstake action too.
They’ve launched the Fame Us! Contest with tech giant LG Electronics.
The game’s rules are simple: users can submit videos of themselves, showcasing their own interpretation of the Fame song, and vye for a $50,000 prize as voted by other users. The video submission may be up to 2 minutes and as little as 30 seconds in length.
As an incentive for voters, Lake Shore, United Artists and LG are offering the opportunity for non-performing voters to win daily prizes (an LG model phone and in some cases shiny new home theatre systems).
Oh, and there’s a do-gooder aspect to the contest too: each vote counts as a donation to the Save the Music Foundation, although neither LG Electronics and Lake Shore Entertainment indicated how much the indicated donation would be.
Users also have the opportunity to download the new version of the Fame movie theme song.
Movie still via:
Movie Marketing and PR Spotlight: Extract
Miramax Films’ Extract opens nation wide on Labor weekend. The Los Angeles premiere went on without a hitch, and the movie’s marketing campaign was full-blown even before then.
Its website really left a lot to be desired. Firstly the domain has too many hyphens than any movie fan cares to type. Extract-the-Movie.com. Are you pretty much exhausted by the time you type the second hyphen?
The domain name isn’t the only problem with the website. The site itself looks like Krayola Crayons art project…and uses twice as many colors. One would expect this from a Disney kid’s film, not a movie that purports to be the sequel of Office Space, an adult comedy.
If you’re still in Internet Browsing Antiquity, forget about it! You won’t even be able to peruse the site comfortably (you will be greeted with a nice, “You are using an outdated browser. For a better experience using this site, please upgrade to a modern web browser” message).
You can easily download the latest version of Firefox, however. You’re also given the choice of Safari 4 or Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer 8.
The site ought to be given at least a B+ for its features. You can become acquainted with the characters as well as the actors who play them via a mini biography.
Character posters, wallpapers, are available as downloads, and screensavers for both the PC and Mac are also dowloadable.
Movie Marketing and PR News
Movie Marketing
I bet you’re curious to see how they put together the Terminator: Salvation robot. Come see the T-900 anatomy here.
Web Marketing
Could you be committing some serious social network marketing trangressions in your misuse of Twitter?
Movie Viewing
Get a load of Hollywood before The Code tamed it. For a time.
Movie News
A MLK biopic may be nixed before it starts.
Production has started on All the Best Fun Begins, the latest Bollywood opus.
Photo Credit: One India
Movie Marketing and PR Notebook
Movie Marketing
Imax has declared that it’s not planning on rebranding its screens after getting some serious verbal blastings like this from Aziz Ansari, an actor on the NBC show “Parks and Recreation” after seeing Star Trek:
“These new ‘Imax’ theaters are really just nice digital screens with good sound, but they are not Imax, in that they don’t have the huge 72-foot (22-metre) gigantic screen which people would expect.”
Pixar goes to Cannes.
Movie Merchandising
Speaking of Star Trek, it’s actually inspiring iphone applications.
Riding on the success of the Star Trek movie, the Star Trek: D-A-C on Xbox LIVE Arcade game is being released.
Digital TV
The deadline for the transition to high definition is near, and the FCC wants to make sure that no viewer is left behind. Roger Goldblatt, the Federal Communications Commission outreach adviser told the Washington Post:
“We’re going to schools, we’re going to barbeques, we’re going to picnics. We’re going to where they are to spread the word.”
Video Rental
From launching DVD vending machines in its stores to trimming expenses, Blockbuster Video is doing its utmost to stay afloat, in the face of staunch competition from rivals.
Netflix is improving the way its recommendations system works.
More people would rather insert a DVD in their players than watch a movie online. This should make a lot of people in the DVD movie industry feel better.
Movie Industry
Now that movie industry uberproducer Jerry Bruckheimer has given video games a sprinkle of his holy water, will more video games be turned into movies?
Bollywood’s Ghajini Reaping Savvy Marketing Success
Bollywood film Ghajini is enjoying the fruits of a rather agressive campaign. Madhu Mantena, one of the film’s producers pulled all the stops in the movie’s publicity campaign, even going as far as enlisting the movie’s leading actor famed Bollywood star in peddling a new image to the public.
Matena told Sify.com that their strategy included doing tie-in fitness video, released in the early stages of the movie’s marketing efforts. In Hollywood, this wouldn’t get much bite, but in Bollywood where movie fans live vicariously through stars, even more so than their Tinseltown brethren, it’s a PR triumph concocted in heaven.
Movie Marketing News and PR Roundup
Marketing and PR people have one less magazine to pitch too. Arena Magazine a 22-year old men’s luxury and style magazine is throwing in the towel. [Sky News]
Are you anticipating a Watchmen II? A sequel isn’t likely. [AP]
Fresh off his Slum Dog Millionaire Oscar tour de force, Danny Boyle just might be the man for the next movie in the 007 franchise. [AP]
Think twice before posting something on a social network, say like Facebook. Indiscreet postings have been known to lead to lead to divorces, murder, and the occasional red slip.
Movie Marketing News: Jonas Brothers 3D Movie+
The Jonas Brothers 3D movie the on-the-nose titled Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience is going to be released this weekend. All pre-release observations are pointing to the fact that the film will smash the box office. This will be a first for a concert film from the past 20 years or so. But that’s to be expected: Jonas Brothers + 3D! A winning combination, indeed. [Pop and Hiss]
And wait! There’s more! (more…)
Movie Marketing Trends: Trip Contests
Canada-based Mongrel Media, the movie company behind the upcoming Michael McGowan movie starring Joshua Jackson One Week is adopting a similar strategy as the marketers for the Woody Allen Oscar winning movie Vicky Christina Barcelona: they’re sending contestants on a vacation.
Visitors who hop on the movie’s website have a chance to win a two tickets for a trip to the rockies, as well as chance to be one of 10 winners to win customized leather bags from leather goods and active wear company Roots and books and DVDs prize packs.
In orchrestrating the contest, Mongrel is partnering with AirCanada and luxury hotel chain Fairmont.
And they’re not stopping there. Mongrel Media is actually offering free screenings on a first-come-first-served basis to the movie website’s visitors. Movie fans will get a chance to sign themselves and a friend up for the free screening in major Canadian cities like Halifax, Caligary, Ottawa, Vancouver and Edmonton. And they get automatically opted in for other screenings and the company’s movie alerts newsletter.
The Rockies trip contest certainly correlates with the movie’s actual plot which centers on an about-to-be wed twenty-something whose impending marriage propels him to do some soul searching via a border-crossing road trip.
Expect to see more movie contests in this vein as more and more studios join forces with companies in cross-branding efforts such as this one.
Sony Screen Gems Faces Chris Brown Dilemma
When Sony Screen Gems announced the casting of singer and teen idol Chris Brown as part of the cast for the urban action/thriller movie Bone Deep, it was no doubt seen as a casting coup. Brown was known as a clean-cut teen idol, with a burgeoning and promising career as a singer-actor-songwriter.
Fast forward to the present: Brown admittedly has beat up his fellow teen idol girlfriend pop star Rihanna.
And now with the planned release date of Bone Deep looming, Sony is faced with somewhat of an issue, probably wondering if it should follow National Milk Mustache/got Milk? organization and Wrigley and give the now-controversial singer the boot in its ads and publicity campaign for the film.
Other options include ignoring the situation, and hope that by the January 2010 date, (an eternity away it may seem, but court cases are known to drag on for years) the scandal will have died down, or that another celebrity scandal will have eclipsed it. As sang froid as this sounds, this is Hollywood after all.
But what about pre-release marketing and PR plans, which of course begin ahead of the movie’s actual release? It’s been said that all publicity is good publicity, but the singer is clearly in a PR quagmire and while he wasn’t exactly carrying the movie, his presence in the movie was no doubt being counted on to help bring flocks of teen fans to theatres. But with Paul Walker, T.I., and Hayden Christensen, not being no-names in the least, Sony marketing and PR execs could easily conclude that they can do without Brown, and edit his scenes out of the movie. But more undesired publicity could ensue from this action.
A third option would be to conclude that the singer’s personal life has no bearings on his career. But such nonchalance would only bring about a backlash.
Another option would be to push back the release of the movie. But Screen Gems, Sony’s specialty label only has a handful of projects each year, and that would certainly affect its annual output.
According to the site Wooha, the advertising fate of the movie has already been decided and Sony Screen Gems has opted for Choice 2:
“Unofficial word has it that Chris will be “erased” from marketing material such as the movie poster, trailer and TV ads to avoid any controversy. The movie has already finished filming in Los Angeles so Chris will still be in the movie but just don’t expect to see much of him in the advertising.”
Could this leak of “unofficial word” be just Sony’s way of testing the airwaves for public reaction towards ejecting Brown out of the movie?
There hasn’t been much of a precedent for a movie marketing and PR situation such as this one—at least to that degree—and it’ll be interesting to see how Sony officially handles it.
Still Credit: Photo Agency
Movie Marketing and PR Watch: Fired Up
Fired Up placed in this weekend’s Box office Top 10, in spite of critical review headlines like “Fired Up! Cheerleading farce falls flat” from the Boston Globe and ‘Fired Up’: Not much to cheer | 1 ½ stars” from the Kansas City Star, and the more pathetic-sounding “‘Fired Up’: Give It an ‘F’” from the Washington Post.
Positioning
The movie, which apparently was inspired by the early 2000s hit Bring it On, depended heavily on its marketers’ ability to reach the teen and college crowd. 
Star Press/Interviews
Screen Gems, like a lot of studios in these recession-plagued times are putting a lot of emphasis on star interviews.
Prior to opening weekend, Eric Christian Olsen, who plays one of the popular jocks in the movie, obligingly gave an interview with the Los Angeles Times which appeared in the publication’s print section.
One of the most largely unleveraged aspects of movie publicity is (more…)