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When I first played Kingdom Hearts, I was still in uni. I wasn’t expecting much. It’s a game where you play a kid with huge shoes, big spiky hair, and unrealistic clothing called Sora. Sora wields a “keyblade”, and goes on adventures with Donald Duck and Goofy through different “Disney/Square Enix worlds” such as the world of Hercules etc. Which you fly to on a gummi ship. I know — it sounds ridiculous to me even as I’m typing it. Despite all odds, though, Kingdom Hearts turned out to be an unexpectedly entertaining game. The combat system was fluid and challenging without being annoyingly difficult, the storyline was extremely earnest (read: for kids) but coherent enough to tie the weird storyline together, and most of all — I kid you not — the gummi ship system was incredibly fun. The ship you build is fully customisable, and gummi ship space was fun to navigate.
That was in 2002.
As the game got bigger and more complex, Disney began to add in more and more of the franchises it owned.
In this year’s game, there was Toy Story and Monster’s Inc, on top of the wildly popular franchises of Frozen and Pirates of the Caribbean. I’m surprised they didn’t add worlds like Coco, Finding Nemo, and Moana. Or Star Wars, or Marvel. Playing through Toy Story beside Woody was a strange feeling, in between “I still can’t believe they own Toy Story” to “Why Toy Story 1 and not some newer Pixar property?” By far the biggest Disney flex in popular media so far, however, is probably that one scene in the second Wreck-it Ralph:
This was meant to be a funny/triumphant moment in the film, but I mostly just found it scary. How much popular culture does Disney now own? What would this mean for entertainment in general in the future? Needless to say, this wariness isn’t exactly a popularly held opinion. When Disney finally ate 20th Century Fox for $71.3 billion, the news was greeted with joy from fans — despite the mass job losses that ensued and the inherent problems in creating a monopoly this big. X-men was now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe! Magneto could meet Captain America! Nevermind the implications of Disney now owning the lion (king)’s share of pop culture. Star Wars, Pixar, X-Men, MCU, hell, even the Simpsons. The Mouse just needs to buy DCEU and Harry Potter to consolidate its dominance.
And it will. Maybe someday it will.
I Will Show You The World
This year, the Lion King’s live-action remake became the highest-grossing animation of all time, along with being the ninth highest-grossing film of all time. It was pretty much the same as the original, except with Beyoncé and some slight changes to the cast. Despite the uncanny valley part at the beginning, I actually rather enjoyed it. Just like how I enjoyed the mediocre Avengers: Endgame film, or the very average Aladdin live-action, or the kinda eh Spiderman: Far from Home. That’s the thing about empire. Sooner or later you get used to it. Isn’t it better to have some content than no content?
The problem is in the type of content that gets produced, now that Disney is the Master of the Universe. Via the Guardian:
It’s an almost cartoon-like demonstration of alpha-capitalism: diversity and differentness mushed together into a great big monopolistic blob. With each acquisition, the stakes get higher, as do the profit-opportunities – and, I predict, the numbers of ass-covering executives who will feel less and less inclined to take risky chances on new and different types of film from new and different types of film-maker.
It also has an impact in the way films are now experienced. Via the Atlantic:
The merger essentially confirms that a new age of entertainment has dawned in Hollywood, one where simply releasing blockbusters in theaters isn’t enough to give a company a healthy profit margin. As my colleague Derek Thompson wrote in 2017, Disney’s acquisition of Fox is its first shot in the ongoing streaming wars—a sign that the company is building an arsenal to take on Netflix and any other tech giant that’s muscling into the entertainment business. Disney is getting ready to launch its own subscription streaming service, Disney+, and the Fox assets will pad out that library nicely.
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Disney and Netflix offer the two clearest visions of Hollywood’s future. The former is a media company that’s as old-fashioned as they come, trying to make movies that will pull audiences en masse to the theater. The latter is a tech company that’s largely uninterested in the theater business but has won subscriber loyalty by offering a wealth of viewing options. As the cinema business continues to evolve, perhaps only the biggest films will survive as in-theater experiences, with streaming becoming an equally profitable venue. By adding Fox, Disney has gained ground in that second sphere, but other studios could get left behind in the race.
It’s not so bad yet. At MIFF this year there was a host of diverse, interesting, small-budget films that were screened to mostly booked/packed film theatres. Festivals like Cannes and Tribeca still celebrate creative filmmaking. But it’s often hard for people to see small films unless they’ve caught them at a festival. Not even the number of hipster cinemas in Melbourne screen everything, only the most acclaimed indie films. Films that won the Palme d’Or and such still do get screened at mainstream cinemas, but for everything else, you can either catch the film at MIFF or wait for it to come out on Netflix.
It’s only going to get worse. R-rated films, for example, don’t fit into the Disney brand. And it’s already having trouble spacing out its content, as now it’s just competing with itself:
Disney is already having trouble spacing out their plethora of films and franchises across the calendar in a manner that will give each of them a fair shot at financial success; Dumbo will release in late March despite being completed in time for a late 2018 spot – it was only pushed back to avoid clashing with Nutcracker & The Four Realms and Mary Poppins Returns. And, generally speaking, Disney doesn’t release all that many movies. In 2019, they’ll only have around nine titles in theaters with major releases (not including Fox properties soon to fall under their umbrella). Compare that to Universal Pictures, who will have 15 titles come out this year, while 20th Century Fox has 13 titles scheduled for release in 2019, including the repeatedly-delayed X-Men: Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants. With that studio about to be consumed by Disney, the release schedule as we know it will be completely revamped. And that probably won’t be a good thing.
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If Disney only has to compete with themselves for box office supremacy, then they have far less incentive to produce more or varied content. The Disney model of content is already one with surprising limitations. After all, this is the studio that has built a decades-long sustainable brand without releasing R-rated movies. These historically came under a different studio name like Touchstone, and so it’s unlikely they will entirely kill such Fox films post-merger, but they perhaps won’t be a priority, particularly if they’re bigger budget efforts such as the Alien movies. James Mangold, director of Logan, was one of many to express concern that the merger would limit such storytelling opportunities since they don’t fit with Disney’s brand.
With a huge share of the market, Disney can now enforce its already unprecedented demands on cinemas:
One way the schedule will be completely changed is in how it will affect movie theaters. Unlike most studios, Disney demands a far larger cut of ticket sales for their films and are also the strictest in terms of the conditions they impose on theaters, both independent and multiplex. For example, Disney demanded a massive 65% cut of domestic ticket sales from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Typically, studios ask for between 50 – 60%.
Other than new films, Disney has also started block Fox’s backlog of films from second run theatres:
Not a surprise, but Disney's blocking of Fox's backlog of films from second-run/indie theatrical showings has begun. No more Aliens, Die Hard, Planet of the Apes, Butch Cassidy, Big Trouble in Little China, etc. at your local revival house. https://t.co/dt2RQr8i8x
— Bill Mudron (@mudron) August 27, 2019
Looks like the future’s in streaming, a handful of indies, or blockbuster fare — watched in huge cinema chains. Fun.
The Empire Strikes Back
When the Copyright Act was enacted in the USA in 1790, copyright duration was only 14 years, renewable for another term of 14 years if the author was still alive at the end of the first term. The law changed gradually over time, allowing for longer and longer terms, but it was only when copyright on the Mickey Mouse character was set to expire in 1984 that Disney started seriously lobbying in the 70s to have the Copyright Act changed. As such, when I was studying copyright law, we used to not-so-jokingly call it the Mickey Mouse Law — because it worked. According to the Art Law Journal:
In 1976, Congress authorized a major overhaul of the copyright system assuring Disney extended protection. Instead of the maximum of 56 years with extensions, individual authors were granted protection for their life plus an additional 50 years, (which was the norm in Europe). For works authored by corporations, the 1976 legislation also granted a retroactive extension for works published before the new system took effect. The maximum term for already-published works was lengthened from 56 years to 75 years pushing Mickey protection out to 2003. Anything published in 1922 or before was in the public domain. Anything after that may still be under copyright.
With only 5 years left on Mickey Mouse’s copyright term, Congress again changed the duration with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This legislation lengthens copyrights for works created on or after January 1, 1978, to “life of the author plus 70 years,” and extends copyrights for corporate works to 95 years from the year of first publication, or 120 years from the year of creation, whichever expires first. That pushed Mickey’s copyright protection out to 2023.
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Not everybody has been happy about these changes due to our inability to use old work to create new artistic works. One author noted that we are “the first generation to deny our own culture to ourselves” since “no work created during your lifetime will, without conscious action by its creator, become available for you to build upon.”
The Empire has until 2023 to figure out how to change the law again — but even if it doesn’t, the copyright that expires is on the original black and white, gloveless iteration of Mickey Mouse as seen in Steamboat Willie. The modern version with the gloves and the red pants expires in 2025 — and Disney will probably still contest the matter with litigation. Disney’s aggressive use of litigation to protect its copyright and its repeated tendency to change American copyright law to suit its own purposes has a damning effect on popular culture and creativity. As the biggest juggernaut remaining in entertainment, its clout has only gotten bigger.
I still look forward to Disney/Pixar/LucasArts/MCU films. I watch many of them on premiere days. I buy the merch, play the games. Yet the more ascendant the company gets, the more depressing the outlook for film and popular culture in general. Massive monopolies like this will only get bigger, more hungry, play safer: we can only hope that something will change. All hail the Mouse.
The Cave is a documentary about an underground Syrian hospital led by a woman, by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Feras Fayyad.
The Look is P&G’s latest ad about diversity, highlighting the problems that a black man faces with regards to unconscious bias.
Spot every easter egg in this delightful Mario Kart mobile ad! Nintendo is really attempting to break into the mobile market with this one.
The Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker trailer is out… with what looks like Dark Rey wielding a very unfortunate-looking Swiss Army lightsaber. Already this has attracted ridicule on the internet, but apparently it’s a well-known part of the Star Wars universe. Welp.
Telling Lies is an upcoming game about searching through fictional leaked NSA footage in order to solve an investigation puzzle.
Ask people what they think about advertising, and chances are, if they’re not in the industry they’d probably answer in the negative. Which, okay, can be well-deserved. Television messaging can be annoying. There’s a reason why adblockers are catching on, why some people prefer to record free-to-air TV so they can fast-forward through ads, why people pay for Spotify Premium to listen to music ad-free. Ads can be incredibly annoying. Worse, Australian TV ads can be extremely strident: there’s nothing that makes me reach more quickly for a TV remote than someone yelling at me through the screen that their carpets are super cheap. Or that annoying Coles jingle about prices being down. Cthulhu curse whoever wrote that jingle — it’s probably stuck in my brain forevermore. Which might be what they were looking for.
The Good
Annoying as ads are to people in general, ask anyone what their favourite ad is and they can probably name something offhand — probably faster than they can name their favourite movie, song, or book — and can probably tell you exactly why it’s their fave as well. That’s because ads are really very short films that can be cut down into 15, 30, or 60 second versions, and as with any short film, they can be extremely effective if they convey the right story, with the right script, in the right way. Think of a tv ad not as a piece of moving newspaper print, but as a very small film that must convey a certain message to your preferred audience, in a way that will stick in their mind, and that hopefully won’t put them off your brand.
It doesn’t have to follow basic story structures, and given the time constraints, it likely won’t. With that in mind, conceptual ads with no traditional storylines, no traditionally spoken scripts, but with a great song and imagery will also work. This is my all-time favourite ad, Discovery Channel’s “I Love the Whole World”:
As a piece of advertising, it works. The song is catchy, the imagery is amazing. Running at a minute long, the ad doesn’t cut down that well (though it’s possible), and only a channel like Discovery could make an ad like this without running into massive costs. That being said, it’s a perfect message — in this case, a great song — that runs through the whole ad, tying every popular Discovery show at the time together. It’s extremely shareable, people will watch it through to the end, and possibly rewatch it again on their own.
One great piece of advertising last year was Tourism Australia’s Superbowl ad, which ran originally as a “film trailer” for a new Crocodile Dundee movie:
Whoever had this genius idea in the pitch should be given all the awards. The cat was quickly out of the bag after wild speculation on the internet (also, isn’t Russell Crowe a New Zealander?). The actual, self-aware commercial:
The cost of using Australia’s most popular stars aside, the ad worked. It was a hilarious piece of guerilla marketing that showed off what it was meant to show off — the Australian landscape — and promoted it as a holiday destination. Even the “real” ad worked, if only because of Chris Hemsworth’s gift for comedic timing. Even the cringey salesy thing Chris says about how there’s cheap flights to Australia. Comedy tends to stick in the brain, which is why this low (not counting Ricky Gervais’ fee) budget ad for Optus/Netflix works so well:
Optus could’ve shelled out for a flashy ad using film clips, but this — this was so much better. It’s funny. People shared it, often calling it the greatest commercial they’d ever seen. Follow-ons were quickly filmed once Optus saw how well it worked. I do hope Ricky did get paid a “shedload” of money — him and whoever thought of this ad. It’s a prime example of how great “television messaging” often just needs to be a fantastic concept brought across to the audience with great execution. It does not need to be salesy (and if it does, get Chris Hemsworth to do it.)
Or a dog, with this great “Unskippable” GEICO ad that shows you don’t need star power to make an incredible ad:
Made specifically for YouTube pre-roll, the whole point of the GEICO ad was to stop people from skipping past it: with the whole message of the ad in the first 15 seconds and a payoff being an entire minute of the huge dog eating spaghetti. It’s a hilarious ad that quickly went viral, with some people saying they’d intentionally watched it over ten times (see the comments in that video). Again, the concept was the key to people liking and watching the ad to the end, a concept that was translated across a series of different ads.
There was also this hilarious “Your Man” Canadian breast cancer exam awareness ad, which quickly went viral:
Designed by agency john st., the ad, which features a variety of attractive topless men in the hopes of raising more awareness about self-conducted breast examinations, quickly went viral. The Your Man health app was downloaded over 38,000 times. Again, this app had the right message, with the right context, with the right production for the right audience.
For a simple message that just works, there’s also this incredible American gun-control ad:
The ad asks its salient question at the end: “Guns have changed, why shouldn’t your gun laws?” The delivery was fantastic, the concept great, the message simple and powerful. It’s memorable. It works. That’s television messaging at its simplest and finest.
The Bad, and the Ugly
Sometimes an ad annoys me so much that I make a mental note to never buy from it again. There have been a few over the years. Remember that terrible “beach-ready” controversial weight-loss ad by Protein World? Or the racist Dolce & Gabbana campaign? Brands often apologise afterwards, but the damage would’ve been done — particularly for D&G, which lost a huge part of its target market. Bad messaging no longer works. It’s no longer true in this day and age that any attention is good attention. At worst, it can permanently damage your brand.
Terrible messaging aside, there have been ads which weren’t controversial but which still annoyed me enough to add it to my mental blacklist. Like this one, by Clemenger for Perfect Italiano:
My Gods, it’s so annoying. I think this ad was what got me into the habit of muting ads on Australian broadcast tv. The brand bought a lot of ad space Channel Ten in between Masterchef Australia. I used to buy Perfect Italiano cheese before the ad, but now I stick to its competitors wherever possible. There was nothing particularly wrong with the messaging, but the sheer smarminess of the ad rubbed me the wrong way. There was just something weirdly offputting and condescending to me about the so-called “perfect man” in the ad. In comparison, Perfect Italiano’s Gordon Ramsay ad was hilarious:
A more empowering ad that focused on the number of chores that are often designated “women’s work” around the house, it also had a simpler message: perfect Italian meals, no celebrity chef required. It’s too late, though. The one bad ad from 2010 has already moved me to Mil Lel.
Television Messaging — Best Practices
Making TV ads is an expensive endeavour: if only because of the media buy. If you don’t have good television messaging, then you might have just wasted your money. Any message is going to have to have a great concept, fit into your brand’s overarching strategy, and preferably conform to meeting your pre-designated key performance indicators (KPIs). Some things to keep in mind:
- Be respectful. Nowadays bad controversy that leans into racism/sexism/ablelism/etc will not help your brand.
- Have a strategy. That includes having clear KPIs. What are you trying to get out of the ad?
- Be realistic. Unless you’re very lucky, an ad will not push your brand to the forefront of your market overnight.
- Spread your media buy. Don’t just blow it all on TV — there’s also YouTube pre-rolls, Instagram ads and more, all of which might be relevant to your target audience and product.
- Be inclusive. It’s not the 90s anymore.
- Have a good concept. A mere tagline won’t work. Great ads are memorable the way great short films are memorable: they’re punchy, resonate in some way with people, and are well-made.
Any questions? Get in touch.
Michael Lukk Litwak’s Alpha Squadron is a short film about a fighter pilot trying to keep his friends together as they drift apart.
The World According to Jeff Goldblum is a weird new documentary for National Geographic (?) or Disney+? where Goldblum just explores random topics like sneakers or ice-cream. We don’t know why, but we’re probably going to watch it. Via Slashfilm:
Does Jeff Goldblum need a whole documentary series dedicated to his particular off-kilter persona? Is he qualified to talk about anything other than acting and, perhaps, jazz piano? Who cares! We’re ready to find out what The World According to Jeff Goldblum is like, because it has to be something way more fascinating, exciting, and magical than how we experience the world. The series follows Goldblum as he learns about everything from ice cream, denim, tattoos, and Korean food, and occasionally breaks into song.
“I’m not here to be didactic or professorial in any way,” Goldblum croons in his perfect honeyed voice. “I know nothing, that’s the premise. I’m a humble student and in fact, I’m kind of a late bloomer… A late Gold-bloomer.”
The Mandalorian trailer is out! Set to launch with Disney+ on around mid November, it features Pedro Pascal and has an ep by Taika Waititi.