The Film Experience: An Introduction (PDF)

CHAPTER 1 ENCOUNTERING FILM From Preproduction to Exhibition Description The first still, from Fruitvale Station (2013), shows Michael B. Jordan holding a dog and looking at its eyes on the road. The second still, from Creed (2015), shows Michael B. Jordan running on the street during a fitness training session. The third still, from Black Panther (2018), shows Michael B. Jordan wearing armor along with the chief of the border tribes W’Kabi. Between 2013 and 2018, Ryan Coogler directed three very diﬀerent films: Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), and Black Panther (2018). Although all three feature Michael B. Jordan and share important questions about racial identity and cultural violence, the production, distribution, and exhibition of the three films illustrate how films, even by the same director, can be shaped by extremely diﬀerent institutional histories that in turn shape our understanding of them. Based on actual events that occurred in 2008 in California, Fruitvale Station is a small but intense drama about an African American man mistakenly shot and killed by a transit policeman. When the film’s theatrical release in July 2013 coincided with the acquittal of the police oﬀicer who killed a young, unarmed African American man in Florida, Fruitvale Station became part of larger conversations, still ongoing, about justice in the streets of America. Creed traveled a diﬀerent path. This franchise film inherited the whole history of the Rocky series, which focused on star Sylvester Stallone’s character as a working-class boxer. In Creed, Rocky, an older and wiser man, trains the son of his old rival. A more formulaic film than Fruitvale Station, it appealed to both African American and broader audiences and became a box-oﬀice success. Finally, as part of the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe film series, Black Panther ramped up its production values and its financial and cultural success. The film — about superhero T’Challa’s fight to save the fictional African nation of Wakanda — won three Academy Awards and grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing movie in history with a black director and a majority-black cast. As these three disparate films suggest, film production, distribution, and exhibition shape our encounters with movies, and these aspects of film are in turn shaped by how movies are received by audiences. can help you review. Go to launchpadworks.com Before audiences experience a ﬁlm, an extensive process of preproduction, production, distribution, and promotion has already taken place. Understanding this process deepens our appreciation for ﬁlm form and for the labor and cra of ﬁlmmakers and reveals ways that culture and society inﬂuence ﬁlmmaking itself. This chapter describes the process of production as well as the fate of a ﬁnished ﬁlm as it is distributed, promoted, and exhibited. Such extraﬁlmic processes describe events that precede, surround, or follow the actual images we watch and are inseparable from the ﬁlm experience. As viewers, our response, enjoyment, and understanding are shaped by where and when we see a movie as much as by the ﬁlm’s form and content. The ﬁlm experience now encompasses ever smaller viewing devices (including computers, iPads, and smartphones), changing social environments (from IMAX to home theaters), and cultural activities designed to promote interest in individual ﬁlms (reading about ﬁlms, directors, and stars; playing tie-in video games; watching special editions on DVD or Blu-ray; or connecting to social media that support a ﬁlm franchise). Waiting in line with friends for a Thursday night premiere and half-watching an edited in-ﬂight movie are signiﬁcantly different experiences that lead to different forms of appreciation and understanding. Overall, it is helpful to think of production and reception as a cycle rather than a one-way process: what goes into making and circulating a ﬁlm anticipates the moment of viewing, and viewing tastes and habits inﬂuence ﬁlm production and dissemination. KEY OBJECTIVES List the stages of filmmaking, from preproduction through production to postproduction, and explain how each stage informs what we see on the screen. Describe how the mechanisms of film distribution determine what films we can see as well as when and how we can see them. Analyze how film promotion predisposes us to see certain films and to see them in certain ways. Evaluate the ways in which film exhibition both structures and is influenced by audience reception. Explain the ways in which media convergence and rapid technological advances are aﬀecting all aspects of the film experience, from production to consumption. Production: How Films Are Made The aim at each step of ﬁlmmaking is to create an artistic and commercial product that will engage, please, or provoke viewers. In short, ﬁlm production is a multilayered activity in which industry, art, technology, and imagination intertwine. It describes the different stages — from the ﬁnancing and scripting of a ﬁlm to its ﬁnal edit and the addition of production credits naming the companies and individuals involved — that contribute to the construction of a movie. Does the ﬁlm showcase the work of the director or the screenwriter? The cinematographer or the composer of the musical score? How do the answers to these questions affect viewers’ perspectives on the ﬁlm? Although some ﬁlms highlight certain dimensions of ﬁlmmaking more than others, the production process almost always anticipates an audience and implies a certain kind of viewer. Therefore, understanding the production process allows us to better appreciate and effectively analyze ﬁlms. Preproduction Although the word production describes the entire process of making a ﬁlm, a great deal happens — and o en a long time passes — before a ﬁlm begins to be shot. Preproduction is the phase when a ﬁlm project is in development. In narrative ﬁlmmaking (scripted ﬁlms; see also Chapter 7), the efforts of the screenwriter, producer, and sometimes director — o en in the context of a studio or an independent production company — combine at this stage to conceive and reﬁne an idea for a ﬁlm. Funds are raised, rights are secured, a crew is assembled, casting decisions are made, and key aspects of the ﬁlm’s design (including location scouting and the construction of sets and costumes) are developed during the preproduction phase. Documentary ﬁlmmakers might conduct archival or location research, investigate their subject, and conduct interviews during this period. Screenwriters A screenwriter (or scriptwriter) is o en the individual who generates the idea for a narrative ﬁlm, either as an original concept or as an adaptation of another source (such as a novel, true story, or comic book). The screenwriter presents that early concept or material in a treatment, a short prose description of the action of a ﬁlm and major characters of the story, written before the screenplay. The treatment is then gradually expanded to a complete screenplay (or script) — the text from which a movie is made, including dialogue and information about action, settings, shots, and transitions. This undergoes several versions, from the temporary screenplay submitted by the screenwriter to the ﬁnal shooting script that details exact scenes and camera setups. As these different scripts evolve, one writer may be responsible for every version, or different writers may be employed at each stage, resulting in minor and sometimes major changes along the way. Even with a ﬁnished and approved script, in the studio context an uncredited script doctor may be called in to do rewrites. From Sunset Boulevard (1950), about a struggling screenwriter trapped in the mansion of a fading silent ﬁlm star, to Their Finest (2016), about a female screenwriter’s struggles to script a propaganda ﬁlm about the heroic evacuation of Dunkirk during World War II, numerous ﬁlms have found drama in the process of screenwriting itself [Figure 1.1]. One reason may be the dramatic shi s and instabilities in the process of moving from a concept to a completed screenplay to a produced ﬁlm, a process that highlights the difﬁculties of trying to communicate an individual vision to an audience. 1.1 Their Finest (2016). A story set in World War II during the British evacuation of Dunkirk, France, the film focuses on a young woman screenwriter (Gemma Arterton) whose personal strength and writing skills describe a diﬀerent kind of heroism, one that is particularly associated with the contribution of women during that war. Producers and Studios The key individuals in charge of movie production and ﬁnances are a ﬁlm’s producers. A producer oversees each step of a ﬁlm project, especially the ﬁnancial aspects, from development to postproduction and a distribution deal. At times, a producer may be fully involved with each step of ﬁlm production from the selection and development of a script to the creation of an advertising campaign for the ﬁnished ﬁlm. At other times, a producer may be an almost invisible partner who is responsible principally for ﬁnancing a movie. On some ﬁlms, the director, screenwriter, or actors also serve as producers. Producers are extremely powerful in studio systems, a term that describes the industrial practices of large ﬁlm production companies in Hollywood and in other national ﬁlm industries. The Hollywood studio era extended from the 1920s through the 1950s. During this time, producers o en had signiﬁcant input into creative decisions. For example, production supervisor Irving B. Thalberg and studio mogul Louis B. Mayer strongly inﬂuenced the creative direction of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), one of the largest and most proﬁtable studios. Meanwhile, producer David O. Selznick le MGM and founded his own studio, where he controlled all stages of production, beginning with the identiﬁcation of the primary material for ﬁlms. For instance, he acquired Gone with the Wind as a property even before the novel was published. Selznick supervised every aspect of the 1939 ﬁlm version of the best-seller, even changing directors during production — a process documented in his famous production memos. Since the end of the studio system, producers of Hollywood ﬁlms continue to be heavily involved with ﬁnancing, but in most cases today, they no longer have the same level of creative control. The Hollywood production model is not the only one. For example, producers of independent ﬁlms from the 1990s onward have o en taken a different sort of role and have worked to facilitate the creative freedom of the writer and director, arranging the ﬁnancing for the ﬁlm as well as hiring a cast and crew, scheduling, shooting, postproduction (the period in the ﬁlmmaking process that occurs a er principal photography has been completed, usually consisting of editing, sound, and visual effects work), and distribution. For example, producer James Schamus ﬁrst worked with Ang Lee on the independent ﬁlm Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) and cowrote the screenplays of Sense and Sensibility (1995), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Taking Woodstock (2009). As vice president of Focus Features (a specialty division of Universal), Schamus shepherded Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005) through all stages of production. Regardless of the size or type of ﬁlm being made, distinctions among the tasks and roles of types of producers exist. In recent years, an executive producer may be connected to a ﬁlm primarily in name, playing a role in ﬁnancing or facilitating a ﬁlm deal and having little creative or technical involvement. On a documentary, an executive producer might work with a television channel commissioning the program, a streaming site such as Netﬂix, public funding agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts, or even private donors. A coproducer credit may designate an investor or an executive with a particular production company who helped fund the movie but may have had no role in its actual production. The line producer is in charge of the daily business of tracking costs and maintaining the production schedule of a ﬁlm, while a unit production manager is responsible for reporting and managing the details of receipts and purchases. The budget of a ﬁlm, whether big or minuscule, is handled by the producers. In budgeting, above-the-line expenses are the initial costs of contracting the major personnel, such as directors and stars, as well as administrative and organizational expenses in setting up a ﬁlm production. Below-the-line expenses are the technical and material costs — costumes, sets, transportation, and so on — involved in the actual making of a ﬁlm. Production values demonstrate how the quality of the ﬁlm’s images and sounds reﬂects the extent of these two expenses. In both subtle and not-so-subtle ways, production values o en shape viewers’ expectations about a ﬁlm. High production values suggest a more spectacular or more professionally made movie. Low production values do not necessarily mean a poorly made ﬁlm. In both cases, we need to adjust our expectations to the style associated with the budget. Financing Film Production Financing and managing production expenses is a critical ingredient in making a movie. Traditionally, studios and producers have worked with banks or large ﬁnancial institutions to acquire this ﬁnancing, and the term bankable has emerged as a way of indicating that a ﬁlm has the necessary ingredients — such as a famous star or well-known literary source — to make that investment worth the risk. A mainstream action movie like Suicide Squad (2016), starring Will Smith, might cost well over $100 million to produce — a signiﬁcant investment that assumes a signiﬁcant ﬁnancial return. Developed alongside the conception of a ﬁlm, therefore, is a plan to ﬁnd a large enough audience to return that investment and, ideally, a proﬁt. Some ﬁlms follow a less typical ﬁnancing path. Kevin Smith made Clerks (1994) by charging expenses to various credit cards. The 1990s saw a rise in independent ﬁlm as ﬁnancing strategies changed. Instead of relying on a single source such as a bank or a studio, independent ﬁlmmaking is ﬁnanced by organized groups of individual investors or presales of distribution or broadcast rights in different markets. In the absence of studio backing, an independent ﬁlm must appeal to potential investors with a known quantity, such as the director’s reputation or the star’s box-ofﬁce clout. Even then, fundraising is o en challenging. Although major star Julianne Moore was attached to Lisa Cholodenko’s project The Kids Are All Right (2010) for ﬁve years, raising the ﬁlm’s $4 million budget was difﬁcult [Figure 1.2]. Filmmakers as successful as Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, 1989) and Zach Braff (Garden State, 2004) have turned to the Kickstarter website to raise funding for recent projects. 1.2 The Kids Are All Right (2010). A modestly budgeted independent production usually requires name stars to attract financing. Even with cast members committed, however, Lisa Cholodenko’s comedic drama about lesbian parents took years to produce. Nonﬁction ﬁlms also require ﬁnancing. Documentaries may be sponsored by an organization, produced by a television channel, or funded by a combination of individual donors and public funds. Casting Directors and Agents With the increasing costs of ﬁlms and the necessity of attracting money with a bankable project, the roles of casting directors and agents have become more important. Traditionally the work of a casting director, the practice of identifying the actors who would work best in particular scripted roles emerged during the advent of the star system around 1910. Around this time, Florence Lawrence, the exceedingly popular star of Biograph Studio who was known as the “Biograph Girl,” ﬁrst demanded to be named and given a screen credit. Since then, o en in consultation with directors, producers, and writers, casting directors have become bigger and more widely credited players in determining the look and scale of ﬁlms as they revolve around the cast of stars and actors in those ﬁlms. Agents represent actors, directors, writers, and other major individuals in a ﬁlm production. They negotiate with writers, casting directors, and producers and enlist different personnel for a movie. The signiﬁcance and power of the agent extends back at least to the 1930s, when talent agent Lew Wasserman, working as a publicist for the Music Corporation of America (MCA), began to create independent, multiple-movie deals for Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, James Stewart, and many others. By the mid-1950s, Wasserman and others had established a package-unit approach to ﬁlm production whereby the agent, producer, and casting director determine a script, stars, and other major personnel as a key ﬁrst step in a major production, establishing the production model that would dominate a er the demise of the traditional studio system. From the mid- 1970s through the 1990s, so-called superagents would sometimes predetermine a package of stars and other personnel from which a ﬁlm must be constructed. In the heyday of superagents, Michael Ovitz wielded extraordinary power and control, assembling movie production packages around Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Madonna, and Robert De Niro for ﬁlms such as Jurassic Park (1993), Tootsie (1982), and Goodfellas (1990). Locations, Production Design, Sets, and Costumes In narrative ﬁlms, the interaction between characters and the physical location of the action is o en a central dimension of a ﬁlm; hence, choices about location and set design are critical. Likewise, documentary ﬁlmmaking depends on location as well — from the record of a strike in Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) to nature documentaries like Planet Earth II (2016) — but it also uses sets for interviews. Location scouts became commonplace in the early twentieth century. These individuals determine and secure places that provide the most suitable environment for shooting different movie scenes. Choosing a location is o en determined by a series of pragmatic questions: Does the place ﬁt the requirements of the script, and how expensive would it be to ﬁlm at this location? Many ﬁlms rely on constructed sets that re-create a speciﬁc place, but the desire for movie realism o en results in the use of actual locations to invigorate a scene. Thus the Lord of the Rings (2001–2003) and Hobbit trilogies (2012–2014) take advantage of the lush and wild location ﬁlming in New Zealand, while Only Lovers Le Alive (2013) [Figure 1.3] makes the labyrinthine streets of Tangiers and the ravaged and vacated urban landscape of nighttime Detroit important backdrops for its tale about two emotionally impoverished and disenchanted vampires. In recent decades, the cinematic task of re-creating real- seeming environments has shi ed to computer-graphics technicians. These technicians design the models to be digitally transferred onto ﬁlm, becoming, in a sense, a new kind of location scout. 1.3 Only Lovers Le Alive (2013). Cities like Tangiers and Detroit become distinctive backgrounds for Jim Jarmusch’s moody, mordantly funny vampire story. The production designer determines the ﬁlm’s overall look. Art directors are responsible for supervising the conception and construction of the physical environment in which actors appear, including sets, locations, props, and costumes. The set decorators complete the look of a set with the details. For example, in a movie set in a particular historical period and place, such as Argo (2012), the art department coordinated to create sets and locations that accurately reﬂected Tehran in 1980 and that also highlighted the suspenseful atmosphere surrounding the rescue of six Americans. The role of costume designers, those who plan and prepare how actors will be dressed as their characters, greatly increased as the movie business expanded in the 1930s. Costume designers ensure the splendor, suitability, and sometimes the historical accuracy of the movie characters’ appearances. Indeed, for those ﬁlms in which costumes and settings are central to the story — ﬁlms set in fantasy worlds or historical eras, such as Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), which uses both kinds of settings — one could argue that the achievement of the ﬁlm becomes inseparable from the decisions made about the art and costume design. In the end, successful ﬁlms integrate all levels of the design, from the sets to the costumes, as in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), where the costumes re-create the 1930s in a luxurious hotel in Eastern Europe but have a zany excess and decadence that mirrors the plot and themes. Production Most mythologized of all phases of moviemaking is production itself or principal photography, which is the majority of footage that is ﬁlmed. The weeks or months of actual shooting, on set or on location, are known as a ﬁlm shoot. Countless ﬁlms, from The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Irma Vep (1996) to Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019), dramatize inspired or fraught interactions among cast, crew, and the person in charge of it all, the director [Figure 1.4]. The reality of production varies greatly with the scale of the ﬁlm and its budget, but the director, who has o en been involved in all of the creative phases of preproduction, must now work closely with the actors and production personnel — most notably, the camera units headed by the cinematographer — to realize a collaborative vision. 1.4 Irma Vep (1996). Maggie Cheung stars in a film about making a film — starring Maggie Cheung. The Director The earliest ﬁlms of the twentieth century involved very few people in the process of shooting a ﬁlm, with the assumption that the cameraman was the de facto director. By 1907, however, a division of labor separated production roles, placing the director in charge of all others on the ﬁlm set. Today the director is commonly regarded as the chief creative presence and the primary manager in ﬁlm production, responsible for and overseeing virtually all the work of making a movie — guiding the actors, determining the position of the camera, and selecting which images appear in the ﬁnished ﬁlm. Directors have different methods and degrees of involvement. Alfred Hitchcock claimed he never needed to see the action through the camera viewﬁnder because his script directions were so precise that there would be only one way to compose the shot. Others are comfortable relinquishing important decisions to their assistant director (AD), cinematographer, or sound designer. Still others, like Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand, assume multiple roles (screenwriter, actor, and editor) in addition to that of director. In Hollywood during the studio era, when directors’ visions o en were subordinated to a “house style” or a producer’s vision, directors worked so consistently and honed their cra with such skilled personnel that critics can detect a given director’s signature style across routine assignments. This has elevated directors like Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, 1938, and His Girl Friday, 1940) and Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, 1955) to the status of auteurs — directors who are considered “authors” of ﬁlms in which they express their own individual vision and experiences. Today a company backing a ﬁlm will choose or approve a director for projects that seem to ﬁt with his or her skills and talents. For example, Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón’s success with ﬁlms like A Little Princess (1995) and Great Expectations (1998) led to his early involvement with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Because of the control and assumed authority of the director, contemporary viewers o en look for stylistic and thematic consistencies in ﬁlms by the same director, and ﬁlmmakers like Quentin Tarantino have become celebrities. This follows a model prevalent in art cinema made outside Hollywood in which the vision of a director like Jean-Luc Godard or Tsai Ming-liang (What Time Is It There?, 2001) is supported by the producer and made manifest in virtually every aspect of the ﬁlm. The Cast, Cinematographer, and Other On- Set Personnel The director works with the actors to bring out the desired performance, and these collaborations vary greatly. Because ﬁlm scenes are shot out of order and in a variety of shot scales, the cast’s performance must be delivered in bits and pieces. Some actors prepare a technical performance; others rely on the director’s prompting or other, more spontaneous inspiration. Daniel Day- Lewis, the star of Lincoln (2012), There Will Be Blood (2007), and Phantom Thread (2017), is known for immersing himself in every role to such an extent that he stays in character throughout the entire production, even when the cameras are not rolling. David Fincher’s exacting directorial style requires scores of takes, or different versions of a shot, a grueling experience for Zodiac (2007) actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. Some directors gravitate to particularly sympathetic and dynamic relations with actors — for example, Tim Burton with Johnny Depp, Pedro Almodóvar with Penelope Cruz, and Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. The cinematographer, also known as the director of photography (DP), selects the cameras, ﬁlm stock, lighting, and lenses to be used as well as the camera setup or position. In consultation with the director, the cinematographer determines how the action will be shot, the images composed, and, later, the kind of exposure needed to print the takes. The cinematographer oversees a camera operator (who physically manipulates the camera) and other camera and lighting crew. Many ﬁlms owe more to the cinematographer than to almost any other individual in the production. Days of Heaven (1978) proﬁts as much from the eye of cinematographer Néstor Almendros as from the direction of Terrence Malick. Likewise, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus’s work on ﬁlms such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) arguably displays the artistic singularity and vision that are usually assigned to ﬁlm directors [Figure 1.5]. 1.5 The Departed (2006). Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus suggests interpretations of the characters’ motives through shot composition and lighting. Other personnel are also on the set — including the production sound mixer (who is the sound engineer on the production set) and other sound crew, including the boom operator; the grips who install lighting and dollies; the special effects coordinator; the scenic, hair, and make-up artists; and the catering staff. A production coordinator helps this complex operation run smoothly. During the shoot, the director reviews dailies (footage shot that day) and begins to make selects (takes that are chosen to use in editing a scene). A er principal photography is completed, sets are broken down, and the ﬁlm “wraps,” or completes production. A ﬁlm shoot is an intense, concentrated effort in which the contributions of visionary artists and professional crew mesh with schedule and budget constraints. Postproduction Some of the most important aspects of a ﬁnished ﬁlm — including editing, sound, and visual effects — are achieved a er principal photography is completed and production is over. How deﬁnitive or efﬁcient the process is depends on many factors. A documentary may be constructed almost entirely during this phase, or a commercial feature ﬁlm may have to be recut in response to test screenings or the wishes of a new executive who has assumed authority over the project. Editing and Sound The director works closely with the editor and his or her staff during editing — the process of selecting and joining ﬁlm footage and shots into a ﬁnished ﬁlm with a distinctive style and rhythm. This process now is largely carried out with digital footage and computer-based editing. Editing is anticipated during preproduction of ﬁction ﬁlms with the preparation of a shooting script, and in production it is recognized in the variety and number of takes provided. Only a fraction of the footage that is shot is included in the ﬁnished ﬁlm, making editing crucial to its ﬁnal form. In documentary production, editing may be the most important stage in shaping the ﬁlm. When the editing is completed, the picture is said to be locked. Postproduction also includes complex processes for editing sound and adding special effects. A sound editor oversees the work of sound editing — combining music, dialogue, and effects tracks to interact with the image track. Less apparent than the editing of images, sound editing can create noises that relate directly to the action of the image (such as matching the image of a dog barking), underpin those images and actions with music (such as the pounding beats that follow an army into battle), or insert sounds that counterpoint the images in ways that complicate their meanings (such as using a religious hymn to accompany the ﬂight of a missile). In the sound mixing process, all of the elements of the soundtrack — music, effects, and dialogue — are combined and adjusted to their ﬁnal levels. Special Eﬀects Special effects are techniques that enhance a ﬁlm’s realism or surpass assumptions about realism with spectacle. Whereas some special effects are prepared in preproduction (such as the building of elaborate models of futuristic cities), others can be generated in production (with special camera ﬁlters or setups) or created on set (for example, by using pyrotechnics). Today most special effects are created in postproduction and are distinguished by the term visual effects — imagery combined with live action footage by teams of computer technicians and artists. In the contemporary digital age, computer technicians have virtually boundless postproduction capabilities to enhance and transform an image. Fantastical scenes and characters can be acted out using green-screen technology, in which actors perform in front of a plain green background; and motion-capture technology, which transfers the actors’ physical movements to computer-generated imagery (CGI), such as Andy Serkis as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003). The settings of the Star Wars sequel trilogy (2015–2019) were generated largely in postproduction [Figure 1.6]. All of the personnel who work behind the scenes on these many levels of ﬁlmmaking are acknowledged when the titles and credits are added in the ﬁnal stage of postproduction. 1.6 Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi (2017). Although the original Star Wars films used multiple sets, models, and props, much of the sequel series was generated using state-of- the-art computer technology. Distribution: What We Can See The completed ﬁlm reaches its audience through the process of distribution, in which ﬁlms are provided to venues including theaters and video stores, broadcast and cable television, internet streaming and video on demand (VOD), libraries and classrooms — even hotels and airlines. Despite these many outlets for distribution, many worthy ﬁlms never ﬁnd a distributor and are never seen. As avenues of distribution multiply, new questions about the role of ﬁlm culture in our individual and collective experience arise. Our tastes, choices, and opportunities are shaped by aspects of the industry of which we may be unaware, and we, in turn, inﬂuence the kinds of ﬁlms that distributors choose to release. The discussion that follows, which emphasizes the U.S. feature-ﬁlm distribution system since it o en controls even foreign theaters, explores how viewers are prepared by the social and economic machinery of distribution. Some contemporary companies, such as Netﬂix, Amazon, Hulu, and Disney, occupy dual roles as both distributors and producers of ﬁlms. Thus, the line between the two operations begins to blur — as does the relation between production and exhibition (see also Movie Exhibition: The Where, When, and How of Movie Experiences later in this chapter). Distributors A distributor is a company or an agency that acquires the rights to a movie from the ﬁlmmakers or producers (sometimes by contributing to the costs of producing the ﬁlm) and makes the movie available to audiences by renting, selling, or licensing it to theaters or other exhibition outlets. Top-grossing distributors today include Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Paramount Pictures, and Lionsgate. Smaller companies include A24, Magnolia Pictures, and divisions of both Netﬂix and Amazon. The types of ﬁlms that are produced depend on what Hollywood and other ﬁlm cultures assume can be successfully distributed. Film history has been marked with regular battles and compromises between ﬁlmmakers and distributors about what audiences are willing to watch. Michael Cimino’s 1980 ﬁlm Heaven’s Gate has become an infamous example: with an unprecedented budget of over $40 million, the completed version of the ﬁlm was over four hours long, severely complicating how the ﬁlm could be distributed and provoking harsh reviews from critics and audiences. Decades earlier, Orson Welles’s The Magniﬁcent Ambersons (1942) faced similar problems when studio heads determined that they needed to cut over an hour from the 135-minute movie in order to distribute it successfully. Evolution of the Feature Film Consider the following examples of how the prospects for distributing and exhibiting a ﬁlm can inﬂuence and even determine its content and form, including decisions about its length. From around 1911 to 1915, D. W. Grifﬁth and other ﬁlmmakers struggled to convince movie studios to allow them to expand the length of a movie from roughly ﬁ een minutes to over 100 minutes. Although longer ﬁlms imported from Europe achieved some success, most producers felt that it would be impossible to distribute longer movies because they believed audiences would not sit still for more than twenty minutes. Grifﬁth persisted and continued to stretch the length of his ﬁlms, insisting that new distribution and exhibition patterns would create and attract new audiences — those willing to accept more complex stories and to pay more for them. In the end, Grifﬁth proved to be right: his three-hour epic, The Birth of a Nation (1915), was both an enormous commercial and ﬁnancial success and a major cultural event, comparable to a traditional theatrical or operatic experience. Perhaps because of this success, the ﬁlm also unleashed major debate and protests about its racist representations of African Americans and its depiction of the Ku Klux Klan as heroic saviors [Figure 1.7]. The ﬁlm nonetheless became a benchmark in overturning one distribution formula, which offered a continuous program of numerous short ﬁlms, and establishing a new one, which concentrated on a single feature ﬁlm, a longer narrative movie that is the primary attraction for audiences. 1.7 Advertisement for The Birth of a Nation (1915). The ambitious nature of D. W. Griﬀith’s controversial epic was apparent in its advertisements and unprecedented three-hour running time. Description The advertisement shows John Wilkes Booth armed with a gun, jumping off a balcony. Three men try to stop him as a woman tends to President Lincoln seated in the balcony. The U. S. flag is draped around the railing of the balcony. Text at the right-center reads, “Lincoln’s Assassination. The fatal blow that robbed the South of its best friend.” The text below reads, D. W. Griffith’s Mighty Spectacle, The Birth of a Nation, founded on Thomas Dixon’s ‘The Clansman.’ A er 1915, most ﬁlms were distributed with ninety-to 120-minute running times, and this pattern has proved durable. Sometimes, studios produce epic ﬁlms with unusually long running times — from Gone with the Wind (1939) to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) — which may be perceived by audiences as more important or more serious than the average movie because of their length. In a different manner, serial or sequel ﬁlms can present an extremely long narrative as part of an episodic viewing experience, as with the television distribution of the three Godfather ﬁlms (1972– 1990) or the eight Harry Potter movies (2001–2011), allowing viewers to watch and absorb a lengthy and highly complex story periodically. Our experience of a movie — its length, its choice of stars (over unknown actors, for example), its subject matter, and even its title — is determined by decisions made about distribution before the ﬁlm becomes available to viewers. Most movies are produced to be distributed to certain kinds of audiences. Distribution patterns — whether a movie is available everywhere for everyone at the same time, is released during the holiday season, or is available only in specialty video stores or on speciﬁc streaming sites — bring expectations that a particular ﬁlm either fulﬁlls or frustrates. Release Strategies As one of its primary functions, distribution determines the number of copies of a ﬁlm that will be available and the number of locations at which the movie will be seen. During the heyday of the Hollywood studio system, studios either showed their ﬁlms in their own theater chains or sold them to theaters in packages, a practice known as block booking. Under the block booking model, studios required theaters to show cheaper, less desirable ﬁlms as a condition of booking the star-studded A pictures. This practice was the target of antitrust legislation and ﬁnally was outlawed in the 1948 Supreme Court decision United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., which divorced the studios from their theater chains and required that ﬁlms be sold individually. Before and a er 1948, distribution strategies have sometimes kicked off with a premiere — a red carpet event celebrating the opening night of a movie that is attended by stars and attracts press attention. A ﬁlm’s initial opening in a limited number of ﬁrst-run theaters (theaters that show recently released movies) as exclusive engagements gradually was expanded, allowing for a series of premieres. In 1975, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws introduced the practice of wide release, opening in hundreds of theaters simultaneously. In these cases, a ﬁlm with a mass circulation of premieres — sometimes referred to as saturation booking or a saturated release — is screened in as many locations as possible in the United States (and increasingly abroad) as soon as possible. For a blockbuster such as Avengers: Endgame (2019), the distributors immediately release the movie in a maximum number of locations and theaters to attract large audiences before its novelty wears off. This distribution tactic usually promises audiences a ﬁlm that is easy to understand and appeals to most tastes (for example, offering action sequences, breathtaking special effects, or a light romance rather than controversial topics). A limited release may be distributed only to major cities — the cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer (2001) never played in more than thirty theaters — and then expand its distribution, depending on the ﬁlm’s initial success. Audience expectations for ﬁlms following a limited release pattern are generally less ﬁxed than for wide releases. These ﬁlms usually will be recognized in terms of the previous work of the director or an actor, but they will offer a certain novelty or experimentation (such as a controversial subject or a strange plot twist) that presumably will be better appreciated as the ﬁlm is publicly debated and understood through the reviews and discussions that follow its initial release. The Weinstein Company’s decision to limit the release of Todd Haynes’s experimental biopic of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There (2007), to major cities was a strategic bid to maximize critical attention to the ﬁlm’s daring and the intriguing premise of its star performances, which include Cate Blanchett playing the 1960s Dylan. As part of these general practices, distribution strategies have developed over time to shape or respond to the interests and tastes of intended audiences. Platforming involves releasing a ﬁlm in gradually widening markets and theaters so that it slowly builds its reputation and momentum through reviews and word of mouth. The strategy for expanding a release depends on box-ofﬁce performance: if a ﬁlm does well in its opening weekend, it will open in more cities on more screens. When the low-budget supernatural horror ﬁlm Paranormal Activity (2007) was acquired and released by Paramount, audiences became directly involved in determining where the ﬁlm would open by voting on director Oren Peli’s website. Independent ﬁlms also use platforming as a strategy. For example, Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (2003) — which does not use a conventional screenplay and was edited on a home computer with an alleged production budget of about $200 — screened at the Sundance Film Festival with John Cameron Mitchell and Gus Van Sant as executive producers. This publicity led to other festival invitations, a distribution deal for a limited theatrical release, and considerable critical attention. A movie also can be distributed for special exclusive release, premiering in only one or two locations. A dramatic example of this strategy was the restored version of Abel Gance’s silent classic Napoléon, an epic tale of the life of the French emperor that periodically presents the action simultaneously on three screens. The original ﬁlm premiered in April 1927. In 1981, the exclusive release of the restored ﬁlm toured to one theater at a time, accompanied by a full orchestra; seeing it became a privileged event. Target Audiences Since the late twentieth century, movies have been distributed with an eye toward reaching speciﬁc target audiences — viewers whom producers feel are most likely to want to see a particular ﬁlm. Producers and distributors aimed Sha (1971), an action ﬁlm with a black hero, at African American audiences by distributing it primarily in large urban areas. Distributors positioned T2 Trainspotting (2017), a hip sequel about former heroin users returning to their lives in Edinburgh, to draw art-house and younger audiences in cities, some suburbs, and college and university towns. The original Nightmare on Elm Street movies (1984–2010), a violent slasher series about the horriﬁc Freddy Krueger, were aimed primarily at the male teenage audience who frequented cineplexes and, later, video stores. The various distribution strategies all imply important issues about how movies should be viewed and understood. First, by controlling the scope of distribution, these strategies determine the quality and importance of an audience’s interactions with a ﬁlm. As a saturated release, the 2015 attempt to restart the Fantastic Four series aimed for swi gratiﬁcation with a focus on special effects and action, before disappointed word of mouth could spread. On the other hand, Green Book (2018) was platformed gradually and beneﬁted from critical reﬂections on the relationship it depicts between a black classical pianist touring the U.S. south and his white working- class driver [Figure 1.8]. 1.8 Green Book (2018). Platforming this modestly budgeted film cultivated audiences and critical responses. Second, distribution can identify primary, intended responses to the ﬁlm as well as secondary, unexpected ones. Movies from the Pixar animation studio might resonate the most with children and their parents, with stories like Inside Out (2015), Finding Dory (2016), and Toy Story 4 (2019) [Figure 1.9] that address childhood and the process of parenting, with inside jokes and references for adults. But as Pixar has established itself as a source of high-quality animation, their adult following has grown — including former kids who grew up on the company’s early movies and now continue to see follow- ups with their favorite characters even as they age out of the primary audience but remain part of the target audience. Awareness of these strategies of targeting indicates how our identiﬁcation with and comprehension of ﬁlms are as much a product of our social and cultural locations as they are a product of the ﬁlm’s subject matter and form. 1.9 Toy Story 4 (2019). This computer-animated film is aimed principally at families, but childless audiences may still find plenty to identify with. Ancillary Markets Commercial cinema’s reach has been expanding ever since studios began to take advantage of television’s distribution potential in the mid-1950s. New technologies for watching movies continue to proliferate. In addition to commercial television, ﬁlms have been distributed via home video formats (like VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray) and video on demand (VOD), which includes online streaming services like Netﬂix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus. Today more of a ﬁlm’s revenue is generated by such ancillary markets than by its initial theatrical release. Broadcast and Cable Television Distribution Originally, the motion picture industry competed with broadcasting, which distributed entertainment directly to the home through radio and later television. However, as television became popular in postwar America, ﬁlm studios realized that the new medium provided an unprecedented distribution outlet. Later, with the rise of cable television, studios gained even more lucrative opportunities to sell their vast libraries of ﬁlms. The launch of dedicated movie channels like Turner Classic Movies, for example, were a boon to cinema lovers. As both network and cable channels proliferated, more and more movies began to be presented through television distribution. In an attempt to reach specialized audiences through subscription cable, distributors like IFC Films have made critically acclaimed foreign and U.S. independent ﬁlms available on demand the same day they are released in art-house theaters in major cities, allowing television audiences in markets outside large cities access to such works as the Romanian 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (2007), winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize. Although the traditional wisdom is that such access will hurt the theatrical box ofﬁce, the strategy allows such ﬁlms to reach wider audiences, and positive word of mouth, for both the ﬁlm and the distributor’s “brand,” might enhance overall theatrical revenue. Guaranteed television distribution can also reduce the ﬁnancial risk for producers and ﬁlmmakers and thus, in some situations, allow for more experimentation or ﬁlmmaker control. Starting in the 1990s, (subscription) cable channels such as HBO increasingly began producing their own ﬁlms that included riskier subjects. Even though these ﬁlms are presented on the cable channels, a theatrical window for the ﬁlm to receive reviews and become eligible for awards is sometimes allowed. Was the movie recently screened for class likely to have been shown on television? If so, in what way? How might such distribution have significantly changed its look or feel? Television distribution has both positive and negative implications. In some cases, ﬁlms on television must adjust their style and content to suit constraints of both time and space. For ﬁlms originally made for theatrical distribution, scenes might be cut to ﬁt a time slot or be interrupted with commercial breaks. In other cases, television distribution may expand the ways movies can communicate with audiences and experiment with different visual forms. For example, The Singing Detective (1986) — made explicitly for BBC distribution in the United Kingdom — uses the long length of a television series watched within the home as the means to explore and think about the passage of time, the difﬁculty of memory, and the many levels of reality and consciousness woven into our daily lives. Meanwhile, Ken Burns’s documentary The Vietnam War (2017) uses its episodic ten-part distribution to investigate o en overlooked details and facts of that controversial war from multiple angles, too numerous for a theatrical ﬁlm. Home Video and Video on Demand Each new format for the public or private consumption of media — VHS (video home system), LaserDisc, DVD (digital video disk), Blu- ray, and video on demand (VOD), including today’s streaming services like Netﬂix — has offered a new distribution challenge for media makers and a potential new revenue model for rights holders. Independent producers may ﬁnd it difﬁcult to transfer existing media to new formats or to make enough sales for a particular avenue of distribution to be viable. As with distribution through theaters and through broadcast and cable television, distribution of home video formats and video on demand determines the availability of particular titles to audiences. Viewers may stream a ﬁlm online, rent or purchase it in a store, receive it by mail from companies like Netﬂix, or order it from independent distributors such as Kino Lorber. Historically, there was a speciﬁc lag time between a ﬁlm’s theatrical release in a cinema and its release on home video, but these relationships have changed over time. Some movies are distributed direct to home video, skipping the traditional theatrical release altogether, such as the ongoing series of follow-ups to Bring It On (2000). Whether a movie is released on home video a er its theatrical run or is made expressly for home video, this type of distribution usually aims to reach the largest possible audience and thus to increase revenues. As new technologies emerge, distributors frequently engage in “format wars,” in which different companies offer competing versions of similar products. For example, the home video era began in the 1980s with competition between Sony’s Beta format and VHS. The VHS format won out, and with the widespread use of videocassette recorders (VCRs), studios released ﬁlms on VHS cassettes, ﬁrst for rental and then increasingly for sales. A similar battle took place in the mid-2000s between high-deﬁnition DVD (HD- DVD, backed by Toshiba) and Blu-ray (backed by Sony); in the end, Blu-ray prevailed. Typically, as in these two cases, one format ends up dominating the market and becomes the primary distribution channel through which viewers experience ﬁlms at home during that time period. One of the most signiﬁcant challenges to distributors posed by home video and video on demand is piracy, the unauthorized duplication and circulation of copyrighted material. Despite anticopying so ware, the circulation of pirated ﬁlms is widespread and can bypass social, cultural, and legal controls, bringing banned ﬁlms to viewers in China, for example, or building subcultures and networks around otherwise hard-to-access ﬁlms. Before the closing of many video stores caused by the shi to subscriber and on-demand services in the 2000s, the video store was a signiﬁcant site of ﬁlm culture. Because the selection in rental stores was based on a market perspective on local audiences as well as the tastes of individual proprietors, some ﬁlms were distributed to certain cities or neighborhoods and excluded from other locations. The dominant chains (such as Blockbuster, which ﬁled for bankruptcy in 2010) focused on high-concentration, family-oriented shopping sites, offering numerous copies of current popular mainstream movies, as well as mainstream video games. They typically excluded daring subject matter or older titles. Some local independent video stores specialized in art ﬁlms, cult ﬁlms, or movie classics (such as those released on DVD by the Criterion Collection). Still other local stores depended on X-rated ﬁlms for their primary revenue. Sometimes in-store distribution followed cultural as well as commercial logic. Bollywood ﬁlms, which were available in video and even grocery stores in U.S. neighborhoods with large South Asian populations, provided a tie to cultural traditions and national stars and songs before access to such ﬁlms became widespread. For viewers, there are two clear consequences to these patterns of video distribution. The ﬁrst is that video distribution can control and direct — perhaps more than theatrical distribution does — local responses, tastes, and expectations. The second consequence highlights the sociological and cultural formations of ﬁlm distribution. As community outlets, video stores were part of the social fabric of particular neighborhoods. Viewers are consumers, and video stores were forums in which the interests of a community of viewers — in children’s ﬁlm or art-house cinema, for instance — could determine which ﬁlms were distributed at the store. Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind (2008) shows an urban community coming together around the ﬁlms made available at its locally owned video store a er its employees begin to produce their own versions of rental titles to replace their demagnetized inventory [Figure 1.10]. Such ties are less likely to be forged around recent alternatives to dedicated stores, such as DVD kiosks in grocery stores. 1.10 Be Kind Rewind (2008). The employees at a neighborhood video store attract a loyal local audience with their do-it-yourself inventory, like this re-created scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The innovation in distribution that was probably most responsible for the decline of the local video store is the DVD rental-by-mail model launched by Netﬂix in the early 2000s and followed by other companies. As part of a subscription system that offers viewers a steady stream of DVDs, Netﬂix members can select and return ﬁlms as rapidly or as slowly as they wish. This kind of distribution lacks the kind of social interaction that used to exist in video stores. More recently, high-speed internet has made downloading movies and live streaming the preferred option for many consumers. Online distributors like Netﬂix, Amazon, Hulu, and Disney face their own set of challenges. If a movie is rented on demand, how many times can it be watched? On how many different devices? Unauthorized downloading and sharing have become even more difﬁcult for distributors to regulate. At the same time, new opportunities for viewing have been generated: mobile devices allow us to choose from an enormous selection of ﬁlms to watch at any time from any place with an internet connection. With the success of streaming, viewers may feel that they ﬁnally have overcome the limits set by distribution, even though economic decisions still shape the circulation of ﬁlm. This new ease of online ﬁlm consumption raises different questions about changing viewing patterns and their implications. Do these new paradigms undermine the social and communal formations of the ﬁlm experience? Does increased ease of access to ﬁlm traditions remote in time or location make for a richer ﬁlm culture? Do more platforms actually result in more viewing options, or do many of these services redivide smaller slices of the same pie? Finally, how do these patterns inﬂuence and change the kinds of movies that are made? The answers to these questions are not clear or certain. These new viewing patterns may simply offer different ways for audiences to create different kinds of communities based on their own interests. Similarly, increased access to periods of ﬁlm history or foreign ﬁlm cultures through online services like Kanopy and the Criterion Channel may broaden our sense of both but also may require more work and research into those discovered times and places. How might the distribution of a film that was released in the last year have been timed to emphasize certain responses? Was it a seasonal release? Finally, many other ﬁlms — such as artists’ ﬁlms, activist documentaries, alternative media, and medical or industrial ﬁlms — are made without the intention of showing them for a proﬁt, and they are not available to view either in a traditional theatrical context or via ancillary markets like broadcast television or home video. Some of these works serve a speciﬁc training or promotional purpose and are distributed directly to their intended professional or target audience. Others may ﬁnd television or educational distributors, like PBS or Women Make Movies. Still others may be uploaded to the internet by individuals. Distribution Timing Distribution timing — when a movie is released for public viewing in certain locations or on certain platforms — is another prominent and changing feature of distribution. Adding signiﬁcantly to our experience of movies, timing can take advantage of the social atmosphere, cultural connotations, or critical scrutiny associated with particular seasons and calendar periods. The summer season and the December holidays are the most important release dates in the United States because audiences usually have more free time to see thrill rides like John Wick 3 (2019). Offering a temporary escape from hot weather, a summer release like Jurassic World (2015) offers the visual thrills and fun of rampaging dinosaurs, a bit like an old-fashioned sci-ﬁ movie and a bit like the amusement park that the ﬁlm’s plot depicts. The Memorial Day release of Pearl Harbor (2001) immediately attracted the sentiments and memories that Americans had of World War II and other global conﬂicts. The ﬁlm industry is calculating releases ever more carefully — for example, by holding a promising ﬁlm for a November release so that it can vie for prestigious (and business- generating) award nominations. Mistiming a ﬁlm’s release can prove to be a major problem, as was the case in the summer of 2013, when the DreamWorks cartoon Turbo followed too close on the heels of Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 to gain much traction with the family audience that all three were targeting. Avoiding unwanted competition can be a key part of a distributor’s timing. For example, distributors moved up the opening of The Shallows (2016) to capitalize on positive buzz and to avoid Fourth of July weekend competition [Figure 1.11]. 1.11 The Shallows (2016). Just a few weeks before the scheduled June 2016 release of the shark thriller The Shallows, the studio moved its date up by five days to capitalize on rising excitement over the film. Multiple Releases Of the several other variations on the tactics of timing, movies sometimes follow a ﬁrst release or ﬁrst run with a second release or second run. The ﬁrst describes a movie’s premiere engagement, and the second refers to the redistribution of that ﬁlm months or years later. A er its ﬁrst release in 1982, for example, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner made a notable reappearance in 1992 as a longer director’s cut [Figure 1.12]. Although the ﬁrst release had only modest success, the second (supported by a surprisingly large audience discovered in the home video market) appealed to viewers newly attuned to the visual and narrative complexity of the movie. Audiences wanted to see, think about, and see again oblique and obscure details in order to decide, for instance, whether Deckard, the protagonist, was a replicant or a human. 1.12 Blade Runner (1982, 1992, 2007). Although its initial opening was disappointing, Ridley Scott’s dystopian “future noir” was an early success on home video. Theatrical releases of a director’s cut for its tenth anniversary and a final cut for its twenty-fi h make the question of the film’s definitive identity as interesting as the questions of human versus replicant identity posed by its plot. For Blade Runner’s twenty-ﬁ h anniversary in 2007, a ﬁnal cut was released theatrically but catered primarily to DVD customers. With multiple releases, ﬁnancial reward is no doubt a primary goal, as the trend to reissue ﬁlms in anticipation of or following major awards like the Oscars indicates. With a ﬁlm that may have been unavailable to viewers during its ﬁrst release or that simply may not have been popular, a rerelease can lend it new life and reclaim viewers through a process of rediscovery. When a small movie achieves unexpected popular or critical success or a major award, for example, it can be redistributed with a much wider distribution circuit and to a more eager, sympathetic audience that is already prepared to like the movie. In a version of this practice, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! (1988) was rereleased in 2013 to commemorate the twenty-ﬁ h anniversary of the debut ﬁlm by this now-celebrated Indian ﬁlmmaker. A rerelease also may occur in the attempt to offer audiences a higher-quality picture or a 3-D repackaging of an older ﬁlm or to clarify story lines by restoring cut scenes, as was done in 1989 with Columbia Pictures’ rerelease of the 1962 Academy Award– winning Lawrence of Arabia. Similarly, television distribution can retime the release of a movie to promote certain attitudes toward it. It’s a Wonderful Life did not generate much of an audience when it was ﬁrst released in 1946. Gradually (and especially a er its copyright expired in 1975), network and cable television began to run the ﬁlm regularly, and the ﬁlm became a Christmas classic shown o en and everywhere during that season [Figure 1.13]. In 1997, however, the NBC television network reclaimed the exclusive rights to the ﬁlm’s network broadcast in order to limit its television distribution and to try to make audiences see the movie as a special event. 1.13 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). A box-oﬀice disappointment when it initially was released, Frank Capra’s film became a ubiquitous accompaniment to the holiday season on television. In recent years, NBC’s broadcast restrictions attempted to restore the film’s status as an annual family viewing event. Day-and-Date Release The theatrical release window of a ﬁlm — the period of time before its availability on home video, video on demand, or television platforms, during which it plays in movie theaters — was historically about three to six months to guarantee box-ofﬁce revenue. Recently, this period has become shorter and shorter. Day-and-date release refers to a simultaneous-release strategy across different media and venues, such as a theatrical release and VOD availability. This practice is now routine for many smaller distributors. Sometimes ﬁlms from Magnolia Pictures, like High-Rise (2015), will debut on VOD platforms before their theatrical release. In the future, day-and- date release may go further. Some ﬁlmmakers such as Christopher Nolan and James Cameron have denounced this idea, while others like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese have encouraged it. Whether or not this kind of distribution strategy actually announces a radical change in ﬁlm distribution, it does signal the kinds of experimentation that digital production and distribution allow and the inevitable changes and adjustments that will occur in the future in response to shi ing markets, tastes, and technologies. The division between Nolan and Spielberg also suggests larger concerns about how these changes can affect our responses to ﬁlms and the kinds of ﬁlms that will be made. Marketing and Promotion: What We Want to See Marketing and promotion, which accompany distribution, shape why and how we are attracted to certain movies. A ﬁlm might be advertised online as the work of a great director, for example, or it might be described as a steamy love story and illustrated with a sensational poster. A ﬁlm trailer might emphasize the comedic aspect of an unusual or disturbing ﬁlm like The Lobster (2016). Although these preliminary encounters with a ﬁlm might seem marginally relevant to how we experience the ﬁlm, promotional strategies, like distribution strategies, prepare us in important ways for how we will see and understand a ﬁlm. Name a movie you believe has had a strong cultural and historical influence. Investigate what modes of promotion helped highlight particular themes in and reactions to the film. The terminology used to deﬁne and promote a movie can become a potent force in framing our expectations. In the ﬁrst part of the twentieth century, the Hollywood studios marketed ﬁlms according to a production distinction between an A picture, a feature ﬁlm with a large budget and prestigious source material or actors that has been historically promoted as a main attraction receiving top billing, and a B picture, a low-budget, nonprestigious movie that usually played on the bottom half of a double bill. Today, the term blockbuster (a big-budget ﬁlm intended for wide release, whose large investment in stars, special effects, and advertising attracts large audiences and big proﬁts) prepares us for action, stars, and special effects; and the term art ﬁlm (a ﬁlm produced primarily for aesthetic rather than commercial or entertainment purposes, whose intellectual or formal challenges are o en attributed to the vision of an auteur) suggests a more visually subtle, perhaps slower-paced or more intellectually demanding movie. FILM IN FOCUS Distributing Killer of Sheep (1977) See also: Bless Their Little Hearts (1983); Daughters of the Dust (1991) To watch a clip from Killer of Sheep (1977), go to LaunchPad for The Film Experience at launchpadworks.com Distribution is almost invisible to the public and hence much less glamorous than film production or exhibition, but it determines whether a film will ever reach an audience. Independent filmmakers o en bring new perspectives to mainstream, formulaic filmmaking, but their visions need to be shared. African American filmmakers, who have historically been marginalized within the industrial system of production, o en encounter additional challenges in getting their films distributed. The career of Charles Burnett, considered one of the most significant African American filmmakers despite his relatively small oeuvre, is marked by the vicissitudes of distribution. The successful limited release of his first feature, Killer of Sheep (1977), in 2007 — more than thirty years a er it was made — not only illuminates black American filmmakers’ historically unequal access to movie screens but also illustrates the multiple levels on which current distribution campaigns function. The way the film’s distributor, Milestone Films, handled the film’s theatrical, nontheatrical, and DVD release in order to maximize critical attention and gain significant revenue serves as a model for similar endeavors [Figure 1.14]. 1.14 Killer of Sheep (1977). Charles Burnett’s legendary independent film about an African American family in Los Angeles’s Watts neighborhood infuses its realism with poetic images, like the child wearing a mask. The film was finally distributed theatrically thirty years a er it was made. Produced in the early 1970s as a master’s thesis film, Burnett’s Killer of Sheep emerged amid a flowering of African American filmmaking talent at the University of California, Los Angeles, film school. In place of the two-dimensional stereotypes of past classical Hollywood films, the almost-too-good-to-be-true characters played by Sidney Poitier in the 1960s, or the o en cartoonish, street-wise characters of the low-budget blaxploitation films that Burnett saw on urban screens in the early 1970s, he depicted his protagonist, Stan, as the father of a black family living in the impoverished Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. A decent man whose slaughterhouse job and daily struggles have numbed and depressed him, Stan nevertheless gets by, and his bonds with his family and community, depicted in grainy, beautifully composed black-and-white images, are profoundly moving. In one poignant scene, Stan and his wife slow dance to a song by Dinah Washington, getting through another day. Killer of Sheep was never distributed theatrically before its restoration. Essential to the mood and meaning of the film is its soundtrack, composed of blues and rhythm and blues music by Paul Robeson, Dinah Washington, and Earth, Wind & Fire. Without the resources to clear the music rights for public presentation, Burnett circulated his film over the years in occasional festivals and museum and educational settings. His artistic reputation became firmly established. In 1990, the film was among the first fi y titles named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. But audiences never got to see the film. Only when Burnett was able to complete To Sleep with Anger in 1990, due to the participation of actor Danny Glover and Burnett’s receipt of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, did one of his films receive theatrical distribution. But even To Sleep with Anger, a family drama that lacked violence and clear resolutions, was overlooked amid the media’s attention to more sensationalized depictions of ghetto culture set to hip- hop soundtracks, such as John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991). Eventually, Burnett’s critical reputation helped secure the restoration of Killer of Sheep by the UCLA Film & Television Archive just when its original 16mm elements were in danger of disintegrating beyond repair. The restoration, one of several planned for independent films of historical significance, was funded by Turner Classic Movies and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, whose own debut feature, sex, lies, and videotape (1989), changed the landscape for the distribution of independent film. In March 2007, the specialty, or “boutique,” distributor Milestone Films, whose founders (Dennis Doros and Amy Heller) have long been in the business of releasing important classic and contemporary films theatrically, opened Killer of Sheep in a restored 35mm print in New York. Excellent reviews positioned the film in relation to African American history, to filmmaking movements like Italian neorealism (a film movement that began in Italy during World War II and lasted until about 1952, depicting everyday social realities using location shooting and amateur actors), and to the grassroots support of the Harlem-based organization Imagenation. The film’s opening was a record-breaking success, and it soon opened in art cinemas around the country. The next phase was release on DVD to institutions such as universities that did not have the facilities to show Killer of Sheep on 35mm but wanted the rights to have a public screening. Later, the film was released on DVD for the consumer market, packaged with another unreleased early feature by Burnett, My Brother’s Wedding (1983), along with a commentary track and other features. Thus, an experienced “niche” distributor helped a thirty-year-old film win a place on critics’ top-ten lists, a special prize from the New York Film Critics Circle, and a place in public memory. Generating Interest Marketing and promotion aim to generate and direct interest in a movie. Film marketing identiﬁes an audience for a speciﬁc product (in this case, a movie) and brings the product to its attention for consumption so that buyers will watch the product. Film promotion refers to the aspect of the industry through which audiences are exposed to and encouraged to see a particular ﬁlm. It includes advertisements, trailers, publicity appearances, and product tie-ins. The star system is the most pervasive and potent component of the marketing and promotion of movies around the world. One or more well-known actors who are popular at a speciﬁc time and within a speciﬁc culture act as the advertising vehicle for the movie. The goal of the star system, like that of other marketing and promotional practices, is to create speciﬁc expectations that will draw an audience to a ﬁlm. These marketing and promotional expectations — that Leonardo DiCaprio stars or that indie ﬁlmmaker Debra Granik directs, for example — o en become the viewﬁnders through which an audience sees a movie. The methods of marketing and promotion are many and creative. Viewers ﬁnd themselves bombarded with newspaper and billboard advertisements, previews shown before the main feature, tie-in games featured on the ofﬁcial movie website, and trailers that appear when browsing social media. Stars make public appearances on radio and television talk shows and are proﬁled in fan magazines, and media critics attend early screenings and write reviews that are quoted in the ads for the ﬁlm. All these actions contribute to movie promotion. In addition, although movies have long been promoted through prizes and gi s, modern distributors are especially adept at marketing ﬁlms through tie-ins — ancillary products (such as soundtracks, toys, games, and other gimmicks made available at stores and restaurants) that advertise and promote a movie. Minions (2015), for example, was anticipated with an extensive line of toys and games that generated interest in the movie and vice versa. Marketing campaigns for blockbuster ﬁlms have become more and more extensive since the 1990s, with the promotion budget equaling and o en even exceeding the ﬁlm’s production budget. A marketing blitz of note accompanied Independence Day (1996). Given its carefully timed release to coincide with the Fourth of July holiday, following weeks of advertisements in newspapers and on television, it is difﬁcult to analyze ﬁrst-run viewers’ feelings about this ﬁlm without taking into account the inﬂuence of these promotions. Deﬁning the ﬁlm as a science ﬁction thriller, the advertisements and reviews drew attention to its status as the ﬁlm event of the summer, its suitability for children, and its technological wizardry. Ads also emphasized the ﬁlm’s patriotic American themes [Figure 1.15]. In that light, many posters, advertisements, and publicity stills presented actor Will Smith together with Bill Pullman or Jeff Goldblum, not only to promote the ﬁlm’s stars but also to draw attention to the racial harmony portrayed in the ﬁlm and to maximize its appeal to both African American and white audiences. During the ﬁrst month of its release, when U.S. scientists discovered a meteorite with fossils that suggested early life on Mars, promotion for the movie responded immediately with revised ads: “Last week, scientists found evidence of life on another planet. We’re not going to say we told you so….” In contrast, the 2016 sequel Independence Day: Resurgence never found a strong marketing hook and made far less money twenty years later. 1.15 Independence Day (1996). The film’s massive promotional campaign for its Fourth of July weekend opening drew on blatant and subtle forms of patriotism, such as the multicultural appeal of its cast. Some Hollywood promotions and advertisements emphasize the realism of movies, a strategy that promises audiences more accurate or more expansive reﬂections of the world and human experience. In Silver Linings Playbook (2012), for example, the struggle of Bradley Cooper’s character to cope with his bipolar disorder while living with his Philadelphia family was a reality that the ﬁlm’s marketing claimed had rarely before been presented in movies. A related marketing strategy is to claim textual novelty in a ﬁlm, drawing attention to new features such as technical innovations, a rising star, or the acclaimed book on which the ﬁlm is based. With early sound ﬁlms like The Jazz Singer (1927), The Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), and Innocents of Paris (1929), advertisements directed audiences toward the abundance and quality of the singing and talking that added a dramatic new dimension to cinematic realism [Figure 1.16]. Today, promotions and advertisements frequently exploit new technologies. Avatar’s (2009) marketing campaign emphasized that the ﬁlm was designed to be viewed in theaters with cutting-edge three-dimensional (3-D) technology. Marketers also can take advantage of current political events, as when they advertised the plot of Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit (2017) — which tells the story of the racial riots in Detroit, Michigan, during the summer of 1967 — by evoking its relevance amid contemporary racial tensions in the United States, such as the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 [Figure 1.17]. 1.16 Innocents of Paris (1929). The marquee for the movie promotes the novelty of sound and song and this early musical’s singing star. 1.17 Detroit (2017). As with her other films, Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit addresses topical issues that engage contemporary audiences — in this case, debates about race and police tactics. As ofﬁcial promotion tactics, stars are booked to appear on talk shows and in other venues in conjunction with a ﬁlm’s release, but they may also bring unofﬁcial publicity to a ﬁlm. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie boosted audiences for the ﬁlm Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) when they became a couple during its ﬁlming. Conversely, unwelcome publicity can cause an actor’s contract to be canceled or raise concerns about the publicity’s effect on ticket sales. Mel Gibson, for example, encountered difﬁculty ﬁnding big-studio work in Hollywood a er his well-publicized personal troubles starting in 2006. Independent, art, revival, and foreign-language ﬁlms have less access to the mechanisms of promotion than do current mainstream ﬁlms, but social media have afforded new opportunities for ﬁlmmakers and distributors to spread the word to specialized audiences. In addition, audiences for these ﬁlms are led to some extent by what we might call “cultural promotion” — academic or journalistic accounts that discuss and value ﬁlms as aesthetic objects or as especially important in movie history. A discussion of a movie in a ﬁlm history book or a university ﬁlm course thus could be seen as an act of marketing, which conﬁrms that promotion is about urging viewers not just to see a ﬁlm but also to see it with a particular point of view. Although these more measured kinds of promotion are usually underpinned by intellectual rather than ﬁnancial motives, they also deserve our consideration and analysis. How does a speciﬁc ﬁlm history text, for instance, prepare you to see a ﬁlm such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967)? Some books promote it as a modern gangster ﬁlm. Others pitch it as an incisive reﬂection of the social history of the turbulent 1960s. Still other texts and essays may urge readers to see it because of its place in the oeuvre of a major U.S. director, Arthur Penn [Figure 1.18]. Independent movies promote the artistic power and individuality of the director; associate themselves with big-name ﬁlm festivals in Venice, Toronto, and Cannes; or call attention, through advertising, to what distinguishes them from mainstream Hollywood ﬁlms. For a foreign ﬁlm, a committed publicist who attracts critics’ attention can play a crucial role in attaining distribution. Documentaries can be promoted in relation to topical or controversial subject matter. In short, we do not experience any ﬁlm with innocent eyes; consciously or not, we come prepared to see it in a certain way. 1.18 Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Critical accounts may position this film as an updated gangster film or as social commentary on the turbulent 1960s. Advertising Advertising is a central form of promotion that uses television, billboards, ﬁlm trailers or previews, print ads, images and videos on websites and social media, and other forms of display to bring a ﬁlm to the attention of a potential audience. Advertising o en emphasizes connections with and differences from related or similar ﬁlms or highlights a particularly popular actor or director. The poster for Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921), for example, proudly pronounces that it is “the great Film he has been working on for a whole year” [Figure 1.19]. For different markets, Prometheus (2012) was promoted as a star vehicle for Sweden’s Noomi Rapace or as the latest ﬁlm from Ridley Scott, the director of Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma & Louise (1991), and Black Hawk Down (2001). It is conceivable that these two promotional tactics created different sets of expectations about Prometheus — one more attuned to tough female protagonists and the other to lavish sets and technological landscapes. As this example reveals, promotion tends both to draw us to a movie and to suggest what we will concentrate on as a way of understanding its achievement. 1.19 The Kid (1921). Unlike posters for his well-known slapstick comedies, this poster shows Charlie Chaplin displaying a demeanor that suggests the serious themes of his first feature film. Description The poster shows an illustration of Charlie Chaplin holding a kid in his arms. The text below reads, “Charles Chaplin in ‘The Kid’ Written and directed by Charles Chaplin, 6 reels of joy, This is the great film he has been working on for a whole year, A first national attraction. Trailers One of the most carefully cra ed forms of promotional advertising is the trailer — a short video that previews edited images and scenes from a ﬁlm in theaters before the main feature ﬁlm, in television commercials, or online. In just a few minutes, the trailer provides a compact series of reasons why a viewer should see that movie. A trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is indicative of this form of advertising: it moves quickly to large bold titles announcing separately the names of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and Kubrick, foregrounding the collaboration of a star marriage and a celebrated director of daring ﬁlms. Then, against the refrain from Chris Isaak’s soundtrack song “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing,” a series of images condenses the progress of the ﬁlm, including shots of Kidman undressing, Cruise sauntering with two beautiful women, the two stars sharing a passionate kiss, two ominous-looking men standing at the gate of an estate, and Cruise being enticed by a prostitute. Besides the provocative match of two then-married star sex symbols with a controversial director, the trailer underlines the dark erotic mysteries of the ﬁlm within an opulently decadent setting. It introduces intensely sexual characters and the alternately seedy and glamorous atmosphere of the ﬁlm in a manner meant to draw fans of Cruise, Kidman, Kubrick, and erotic intrigue [Figure 1.20]. That this promotion fails to communicate the stinging irony in the movie’s eroticism may account for some of the disappointed reactions that followed its eager initial reception. The availability of trailers on the internet has increased the novel approaches to this format, and trailers are now rated and scrutinized like theatrical releases. 1.20 Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Advertisements and trailers for Stanley Kubrick’s last film emphasized the film’s director, its stars — Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were married at the time — and its sexual content. TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION The Changing Technologies of Film Promotion The history of cinema is, in part, a history of changing technologies, and the art and business of film promotion and marketing have continually changed over time along with those technologies. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the movies moved rapidly from a vaudevillian novelty to an important institution within the cultural mainstream. Supporting this cultural shi , traditional print media (including newspapers, posters, and fan magazines) began to celebrate new films and stars as a part of a new and exciting literacy, a way of seeing the world in tune with the energies of the emerging twentieth century. Photoplay magazine appeared in 1911, just as the Hollywood star system was beginning to emerge as a major promotional strategy. This magazine attracted passionate readers and moviegoers to stories about upcoming films and about the public and private lives of directors and actors. Such publications broadened the reach of film promotion to the growing middle class and assimilated the new film arts into literary and journalistic media, bridging a cultural past and a cultural present [Figure 1.21a]. 1.21a Photoplay magazine cover (February 1931). Magazines and newspapers welcomed the new art of cinema through traditional journalistic vehicles. Description The cover shows a woman with soft blonde curls, smiling. Text at the top reads, The National Guide to Motion pictures. The magazine title below reads, Photoplay. The month below reads, February, along with price, 25 cents. Text to the left of the woman reads, Earl Christy, and another text to the right of the woman reads, Dorothy Mackaill. Text at the bottom left reads, Garbo versus Dietrich, The battle is on! Text at the bottom right reads, Goofy Genius in Hollywood. As promotional technologies expanded through the mid-twentieth century to include radio and television, film studios immediately took advantage of the broad markets reached by these outlets. As audio and visual media, radio and television allowed potential audiences to see and hear the actors, music, and images being promoted in advance of the films themselves. For instance, a ninety-second radio ad for Superman the Movie (1978) alternated between voiceover narration quoting the praise of critics (“a super hit!”), the film’s musical score, and pieces of lively dialogue (“the problem with men of steel is that there’s never one around when you want one”). Both radio and television became ubiquitous promotional vehicles that integrate sound and (in the case of television ads) images to draw viewers into theaters [Figure 1.21b]. 1.21b Television promotion (1960). Television and radio made stars like Joan Collins (pictured here) come alive as a new form of promotion. More recently, the internet brought another major technological change in film promotion. Today, many marketing campaigns encourage interactivity and direct involvement from potential viewers, teasing mysteries and unexpected surprises intended to boost word-of-mouth engagement. The pioneering example of internet marketing was The Blair Witch Project (1999), a low-budget horror film that generated excitement through an immersive viral campaign. Over several months prior to its release, the film’s distributors released realistic “newsreel” footage online that made the plot of the film seem believable, to the point where potential viewers actually debated whether the film was fiction or documentary. Due to its commercial and critical success, The Blair Witch Project has become a model for subsequent viral marketing campaigns, illustrating the extent to which promotional technologies impact our film experience [Figure 1.21c]. 1.21c The Blair Witch Project (1999). Today the internet o en makes promotion part of an interactive engagement with viewers. Description Text below the woman’s photo reads, Heather Donahue, Age: 22, Height: 5 feet 6 inches, Weight: 127 l b, Eyes: Hazel and Hair: Brown. Text below a man’s photo reads, Joshua Leonard, Age: 23, Height: 5 feet 10 inches, Weight: 152 l b, Eyes: Blue, and Hair: Blonde. Text below another man’s photo reads, Michael Williams, Age: 24, Height: 5 feet 8 inches, Weight: 169 l b, Eyes: Brown and Hair: brown. Text below photo text reads, last seen camping in the Black Hills Forest area, near Burkitsville. Please call Frederick county sheriff’s office with any information you may have! (301) Media Convergence Today, movie advertising and marketing has adapted strategies of media convergence — the process by which formerly distinct media (such as cinema, television, the internet, and video games) and viewing platforms (such as television, computers, and cell phones) have become interdependent. A viewer might ﬁnd and play an online game set in a ﬁlm’s ﬁctional world on the ﬁlm’s website, read a comic-book tie-in, and watch an online promotion with the ﬁlms’ stars, all before viewing the movie in a theater. The enormous sums spent on marketing a ﬁlm’s theatrical release are deemed worthwhile because they relate directly to the promotion of other media elements within the brand or franchise, such as video games, books, toys, music, and DVD releases. Viewers understand these tactics and may participate in this convergence: a viewer who enjoys a ﬁlm and its soundtrack might download a ringtone for her phone and buy the special edition on Blu-ray months later. But viewers may also decide to skip the theatrical release altogether and catch the ﬁlm later on video on demand or DVD. Go to launchpadworks.com to watch a clip of the trailer for Suicide Squad (2016). What kinds of messages does the trailer send about the film and its tone? The enormous popularity of social media has fostered the technique of viral marketing — a process of advertising that relies on existing social networks to spread a marketing message by word of mouth, social media posts, or other means. Because viral marketing works through networks of shared interest, it is less dependent than conventional promotional techniques on market research and can be a highly effective and informative indicator of audience preferences. Yet it is also less easily controlled than deliberately placed ads that are based on target demographics. In many ways, media convergence has allowed today’s viewers to affect how ﬁlms are understood and produced more than viewers did in years past. The Rating System Rating systems, which provide viewers with guidelines for movies (usually based on violent or sexual content), are also used in marketing and promotion. Whether they are wanted or unwanted by viewers, ratings are fundamentally about trying to control the kind of audience that sees a ﬁlm and, in some cases, about advertising the content of that ﬁlm. In the United States, the current Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system classiﬁes movies as G (general audiences), PG (parental guidance suggested), PG-13 (parental guidance suggested and not recommended for audiences under thirteen years old), R (persons under age seventeen must be accompanied by an adult), and NC-17 (persons under age seventeen are not admitted). Films made outside the major studios are not required to obtain MPAA ratings, but exhibition and even advertising opportunities are closely tied to the system. Other countries, as well as some religious organizations, have their own systems for rating ﬁlms. Great Britain, for instance, uses these categories: U (universal), A (parental discretion), AA (persons under age fourteen are not admitted), and X (persons under age eighteen are not admitted). The age limit for X-rated ﬁlms varies from country to country, the lowest being age ﬁ een in Sweden. As a ﬁlm is being produced and then marketed, the studio and producers usually have a speciﬁc desired MPAA rating in mind to maximize the ﬁlm’s audience and revenues. A project like The Peanuts Movie (2015), an animated adaptation of the famous comic strip, depends on its G rating to draw large family audiences, whereas sexually explicit ﬁlms like Steve McQueen’s Shame (2011, rated NC-17) and Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976, not rated and conﬁscated when it ﬁrst came to many countries) can use the notoriety of their ratings to attract curious adult viewers. An NC- 17 rating can damage a ﬁlm’s box-ofﬁce prospects, however, because many outlets will not advertise such ﬁlms. Many mainstream movies eagerly seek out a middle ground. Movies like Ghostbusters (2016) prefer a PG-13 rating because it attracts a young audience of eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds who want movies with some adult language and action, as well as adult audiences who are drawn by the ﬁlm’s cast of well-known comedic actors and who may be fans of the original Ghostbusters (1984) [Figure 1.22]. 1.22 Ghostbusters (2016). A PG-13 rating can suggest a certain edge to a film that makes it attractive to preteens without alienating older viewers. Word of Mouth and Fan Engagement Our experiences when viewing a movie are shaped in advance in less evident and predictable ways as well. Word of mouth — the oral or written exchange of opinions and information sometimes referred to as the “buzz” around a movie — may seem insigniﬁcant or vague, yet our likes and dislikes are formed and given direction by the social groups we move in. Social media, which allow us to list or indicate our likes and dislikes with a click, have expanded these social groups exponentially. We know that our friends like certain kinds of ﬁlms, and we tend to enjoy and promote movies according to the values of our particular age group, cultural background, and other social determinants. When marketing experts promote a movie to a target audience, they do so in ways that will maximize word-of-mouth or “viral” communication, knowing that viewers recommend ﬁlms to people who share their values and tastes [Figure 1.23]. 1.23 Titanic (1997). Word of mouth anticipating the release of James Cameron’s film focused on special eﬀects. A er the film’s release, word of mouth among young female fans was appreciative of its star Leonardo DiCaprio and its romance plot. Consider, for instance, how friends who enjoyed the novel might have discussed the making of the ﬁlm The Hunger Games (2012). Would they be excited about the casting of rising star Jennifer Lawrence as the tough young heroine? About the genre of science ﬁction ﬁlms set in a dystopian future and the potential for interesting visual effects? About other books by Suzanne Collins with which they are familiar? What would each of these word-of- mouth promotions indicate about the social or personal values of the person promoting the movie and the culture of taste inﬂuencing his or her views? Fan magazines were an early extension of word of mouth as a form of movie promotion and have consistently shed light on the sociology of taste. Emerging in the 1910s and widely popular by the 1920s, such “fanzines” brought ﬁlm culture home to audience members. Posing as objective accounts, many stories were actually produced by the studios’ publicity departments. Today, in place of print fanzines, we have social media as well as internet discussion groups, promotional and user-generated websites, conventions, and other fan activities, which have become an even bigger force in ﬁlm promotion and culture. Social media are the most powerful contemporary form of fan engagement, allowing information about and enthusiasm for a movie to be efﬁciently exchanged and spread among potential viewers. Even before the proliferation of social media, online discussion boards allowed ﬁlm fans to discuss upcoming releases. Notoriously, the title Snakes on a Plane (2006) was so resonant with viewers in its very literalness that online activity around the ﬁlm (even before its release) prompted changes to make the ﬁlm more daring and campier. The subsequent box-ofﬁce disappointment may have been a measure of viewers’ reaction to marketing manipulations. Consider a recent film release that you’ve seen, and identify which promotional strategies were eﬀective in persuading you to watch it. Was anything about the promotion misleading? Was there anything about the film you feel was ignored or underplayed in the promotion? Promotional avenues from fanzines to social media deserve attention and analysis to try to determine how they add to or confuse our understanding of a ﬁlm. Our different experiences of the movies take place within a complex cultural terrain where our personal interest in certain ﬁlms intersects with speciﬁc historical and social forces to shape the meaning and value of those experiences. Here, too, the ﬁlm experience extends well beyond the big screen. Movie Exhibition: The Where, When, and How of Movie Experiences Exhibition is the part of the industry that shows ﬁlms to a paying public, traditionally in movie theaters. It may involve promotional elements like movie posters and publicity events in a theater lobby or may be related to distribution through the calendar of ﬁlm releasing. But exhibition, which is closely tied to reception — the process through which individual viewers or groups make sense of a ﬁlm — is at the heart of the traditional ﬁlm experience. Exhibitors own individual theaters or theater chains and make decisions about programming and local promotion. They are responsible for the actual experience of moviegoing, including the concessions that make a night out at the movies different from one spent watching ﬁlms at home and that bring in an estimated 40 percent of theater owners’ revenue. Like distribution and promotion, we may take exhibition for granted, forgetting that the many ways we watch movies contribute a great deal to our feelings about, and our interpretations of, ﬁlm. We watch movies within a cultural range of exhibition venues — in theaters, at home on video monitors, or on a plane or train on portable devices. Not surprisingly, these contexts and technologies anticipate and condition our responses to movies. The Changing Contexts and Practices of Film Exhibition Very different responses can be elicited by seeing the same movie at a cineplex or in a college classroom or by watching it uninterrupted for two hours on a big screen or in thirty-minute segments over four days on a computer. A viewer watching a ﬁlm on an airplane monitor may be completely bored by it, but watching it later at home, he or she may ﬁnd the ﬁlm much more compelling and appreciate its visual surprises and interesting plot twists. Movies have been distributed, exhibited, and seen in many different contexts historically. At the beginning of the twentieth century, movies rarely lasted more than twenty minutes and o en were viewed in small, noisy nickelodeons — storefront theaters or arcade spaces where short ﬁlms were shown continuously for a ﬁve-cent admission price to audiences passing in and out — or in carnival settings that assumed movies were a passing amusement comparable to other attractions. By the 1920s, as movies grew artistically, ﬁnancially, and culturally, the exhibition of ﬁlms moved to lavish movie palaces like Radio City Music Hall in New York City (which opened in 1932),

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