Found footage horror films are a genuinely modern phenomenon. We can attempt to trace roots to Cannibal Holocaust in 1980, tie origins to the aesthetic and stylistic techniques in the even older cinéma vérité genre, or, if we really want to go back, we can look at Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both novels were written in the epistolary format, i.e. with their fictional narratives created through letters, diary entries, and newspaper cuttings. Just like modern found footage films, they sold fiction as fact and the audience lapped it up. But these examples are only close approximations to what the found footage genre actually is; really, it’s something that’s unique to the internet generation. But with the reviews of Paranormal Activity 3 I read, I seem to be constantly told that the genre has already run its course, there’s no new ideas, it’s dying. But what are the characteristics of the genre? That they’re cheap handheld horror mockumentaries? Or is there more to it than that? The Blair Witch Project really kicked off what we think of as the genre. It wasn’t the first film to attempt the style, but it was the first to create a successful holistic experience, where the film’s web marketing, posters, trailers and the movie formed one distinct object. But before we get onto that, I’ll start with my first experience of the found footage genre.

Ghostwatch was shown on BBC 1 on the 31^st of October 1992. It was promoted as a live investigation featuring real British broadcasters and presenters, of a house in England haunted by “Pipes”—a cross-dressing, paedophilic ghost that spent his nights scaring children and tapping on the family’s water heater. Due to the number of complaints from the public, a bashing in the tabloid media, and allegedly causing one man to commit suicide due to a psychological reaction to the program, the BBC was forced to ban any airings of Ghostwatch for a decade. I was ten when Ghostwatch aired and it was terrifying. If you haven’t seen it, the concept of a transvestite child-catcher might sound a bit stupid, but it was complete nightmare fuel. You can keep your Michael Myers—Pipes will forever be the worst thing in the world to me. Ghostwatch worked; it sold me and thousands of other viewers fiction as fact. It told us a bizarre and terrifying paranormal tale with a straight face and a large group of the population believed it. According to IMDb, the directors of The Blair Witch Project also got a chance to see Ghostwatch, and when they made their movie they had one trick up their sleeve that was unavailable in 1992: the internet.

It’s easy to forget that The Blair Witch Project wasn’t released as only a simply well made horror film; it was also a pretty successful hoax. A pirated copy was leaked on the internet prior to its release. The copy, a workprint, had key scenes missing that created a disjointed narrative that made it appear even more real, so when people torrented it they thought they had stumbled upon real footage. Prior to the release of the actual movie, the entire marketing campaign maintained this spirit. The principle actors were listed as “missing, presumed dead” on IMDb, missing posters were put up in festivals, even the official soundtrack was sold as a mixtape found in one of the character’s abandoned car. The campaign was everywhere: people were in chat rooms discussing its authenticity, a “real” documentary of the mystery The Curse of the Blair Witch was shown on TV, the website contained “official” details of the disappearances, and all the while everybody involved in the movie stayed tightlipped.

Even now, when a vast majority of the audience is too knowledgeable and cynical of viral marketing to ever believe the content is real, found footage films are still reliant on social media and internet campaigns as a way of promoting their film to the public. Before the release of Paranormal Activity, the film’s website claimed that if over 1 million viewers clicked the “demand it” button at the top of the screen, the film would be shown theatrically across the country. So the average Joe had a say—“Who cares what the studio execs want, the people will decide the fate of this film!”—but really this was the execs’ plan all along. As Douglas Rushkoff, one of the first people to ever write about viral marketing,  explains:

“This isn’t some piece of propaganda that’s so dangerous that movie theaters are refusing to show it, or even so potentially unpopular that theaters don’t want to show it. This is a movie distributor looking for some way to create publicity about itself. . . . They’re pretending there is some distribution obstacle that people’s popular demand is going to overcome.”

As you can probably guess, the 1 million target was smashed and we got a controversial movie too dangerous for cinema…well, not really. Instead, we were treated to watching Micah’s smug face as he condescendingly talks about his camera and his Ouija board for the duration; even in the sequel, when I’ve already seen him die, his smug face reappears. I’ve not seen Paranormal Activity 3 yet and even with it being set in 1988, I’m waiting on Micah appearing out of some kind of portal and beginning to smugly explain quantum string theory.

The thing is, the Paranormal Activity films are neither controversial nor unsafe products. They’re generic horror films that the public goes to see during Halloween. But just as Blair Witch played the hoax angle, Paranormal Activity played one too, by directly pandering to the audience. It all started with the “demand it” button, and added to this was a huge Twitter campaign that spread and trended massively. Even the trailer spent more time watching the audience than actually showing the film.

(Cont.)

I’ve become pretty addicted to Rotten Tomatoes of late, and have been surprised by the number of films that I think have undeservedly received the dreaded under-60% or “rotten” score. I know the system is criticized for its many inconsistencies and flaws, but a lot of the low ratings kind of bothered me, so I re-watched the films thinking I’d maybe previously missed the point of them.

Dead Man’s Shoes
Tomatometer Score: 56%

One of the major benefits of independent cinema is that it can still surprise you. Unlike Hollywood features that appear on billboards, TV spots and trailers, allowing you to predict the film in its entirety before even stepping foot in a cinema, indie films sometimes can come out of the blue without an invitation and get right under your skin; this is what Dead Man’s Shoes did to me.

It’s a simple tale of revenge. Richard (Paddy Considine) returns from military service to his rural hometown, where he meets his younger, mentally handicapped brother, Antony (Toby Kebbell). He then subsequently sets about getting even on the small gang of criminals that have abused Antony in his absence.

Dead Man’s Shoes is a revenge film. It’s an uncomplicated premise in an oversaturated genre, but it does have one thing that many modern attempts seem to forget about: an emotional connection. Revenge films for the most part are an easy sell to the audience; you take your main character, usually a male, you have a heinous and unjustified crime happen to them or their loved ones, then you watch the protagonist destroy the villains for the majority of the film and everyone’s happy. Most of the time nobody cares, though; the initial crime isn’t the point, it’s what the protagonist does that keeps us watching and inevitably the villains will pay and the audience receives a cathartic resolution. For instance, I like Taken a lot, but I like it because Liam Neeson punches people in the face. His emotional turmoil isn’t the point of the film. A lot of bad revenge films forget that we should care, that our connection to the protagonist should be the driving force behind our need to see the film’s resolution. Dead Man’s Shoes makes you care. Richard’s journey isn’t particularly easy or even possibly justified, but it’s why it works so well; you don’t watch it to just simply see the villains’ comeuppance, but to understand how messy and ethically confused the entire notion of revenge is in the first place.

I’m not going to add the trailer here, because if you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend you watch it with zero previous knowledge if you can. I think it’s a fantastic genre film that adds much needed heart to what could have been a generic vigilante film.

Running Scared
Tomatometer Score: 40%

About eight years ago, I made a £100 bet that in ten years time Paul Walker would be as bankable a star as Keanu Reeves was when The Matrix Reloaded was released in 2003. Obviously now I’ve only got two years left and Paul Walker’s last film, Fast Five, sounds like a masturbation euphemism, so I’m pretty certain my money is going to be speeding out of my pocket in the not-too-distant future. There was a film released in 2006, though, that I thought would tip the balance in my favor.

Wayne Kramer’s Running Scared has a pretty simple premise: low-level thug Joe Gazelle is told to dispose of a gun that could implicate his boss in the murder of a policeman, but before he gets the chance to ditch it, it’s stolen by Gazelle’s son’s friend Oleg, forcing both Gazelle and Oleg into a fast-paced and dangerous journey throughout the night.

It’s a really solid film. The script is tight, the acting for the most part carries weight, but it’s really Kramer’s direction that’s in charge of the heavy lifting. The film never feels boring. There’s not a scene were Kramer drops the ball; he keeps every action scene fresh and never retreads old ground. He even manages to maintain the film’s straight urban tone while injecting its own unique dark fantastical imagery without it ever feeling out of place.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a popcorn film, it’s not going to the change the world, but on a budget of $15 million, it does a better job at entertaining me than films costing ten times as much.

(Cont.)

A lot of people see ‘product placement’ as a dirty term, where faceless advertising companies diminish all artistic merit from film and instead use them as advertisements to hawk their branded wares to the public. We’ve all seen it; sometimes it can be subtle and sometimes blatant, like Nintendo’s promotion in the 1989 film The Wizard, which created my lifelong unfulfilled need for a Power Glove. I never knew one kid who actually owned a Power Glove, but the idea that out there somewhere a child sat at Christmas of 1989 and unwrapped a brand new one still gives me a slight pang of jealousy. This probably says more about my own stilted emotional growth, but I like to think it shows how intoxicating product placement can actually be. Brands and products are shown in movies in such an awe-inspiring and positive light that it’s only natural that we want in on them too, especially as children. On the surface, product placement appears to be a modern invention created by cynical advertising companies attempting to covertly reach our consumer driven society, but it’s really been here for a long, long time.

The first use of product placement was in 1920 with the Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle film The Garage. The film used its setting and its high profile star Arbuckle to advertise Red Crown Gasoline; the movie’s star appeal sold both the film and product to the audience. It was this film that really made the connection between star appeal and the potential for advertising sales, which would grow side-by-side within the development of mainstream cinema. In 1927, Wings, the first film to ever win the Academy Award for best picture, featured a scene with a Hershey’s chocolate bar. Wings wasn’t just an award winner, but also one of the highest grossing films of the decade, allowing Hershey’s to advertise to every one of the film’s viewers. However, it really wasn’t until the 1980s when product placement really came into its own with Steven Spielberg’s E.T., and again Hershey’s were leading the charge.

At the beginning of the film, there’s a scene when Elliott coaxes out the alien using Reese’s Pieces as bait. In the script, this was originally written to be M&M’s, but after they pulled out, Hershey’s, paying an estimated $1 million, filled in instead. E.T. went on to become the highest grossing film of the 1980s, and this in turn saw Hershey’s sales of Reese’s Piece’s rise 65% in the year after the films release. E.T. didn’t just promote Hershey’s, it really became a watershed for product placement due to the sheer amount of brands shown throughout the film. Looking at Jaws, released just seven years before E.T. and the second-highest grossing film of the 70s, as well as the film that pretty much created Event cinema, it had nine separate instances of product placement showing seven unique brands. E.T., on the other hand, showed in total 21 different brands that were incorporated within the 29 instances of product placement throughout the film. A Spielberg movie in general is a safe investment for a brand; the film will inevitably gross highly and will commonly be a PG-13, allowing the largest potential amount of consumers. 25% of Minority Report’s $102 million budget was reportedly provided through product placement alone, including Nokia paying $2 million to design the futuristic phones and Lexus with a $5 million investment to design Tom Cruise’s car. Minority Report held the record for the amount of cash earned solely through this form of advertising, but this is soon to be eclipsed by the new Bond film. The producers of the upcoming Bond 23 have recently announced that one-third of its costs would come directly from product advertising, which could be roughly in excess of $45 million. So, it’s safe to say that product placement isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. It’s not just about some greedy executive pawing after a few dollars; it has now really become a viable and secure way of fleshing out a huge chuck of a film’s budget.

The Three Forms of Product Placement

Product placement (or under its recent title of ‘embedded advertising’) is usually seen as a blanket term, but there are specifically three separate ways in which a brand can become embedded within a film.

• Screen placement: when the brand is seen in either the foreground or background of a shot, like the use of Reese’s Pieces in E.T.
• Script placement: when one character openly names the brand in the film’s dialogue, such as Marty McFly ordering a Pepsi in Back to the Future.
• Plot placement (low intensity): the brand has some, usually small, relation with the film’s plot, e.g. in Demolition Man, Taco Bell being named as the only restaurant franchise in future; the main characters go there and eventually there’s a massive fight next to it. Plot placement (high intensity): when the product is frequently associated with the lead character or central storyline—Bond’s watch, car or phone, or the Delorean in Back to the Future.

Getting all three placements in one scene is obviously the coveted holy trinity for any brand; having their product seen, spoken about and intertwined within the film’s characterization and/or narrative development is ultimately the best way for maximum exposure.

Forrest Gump is a master class in product placement. The entire film’s plot revolves around Gump’s involvement with huge cultural events: Gump teaches Elvis to dance, inspires John Lennon to write “Imagine,” uncovers the Watergate scandal, and tons more. So, with the film lending itself to so many cultural significant moments, when Gump is involved with branded products, like his cross-country run for “2 months, 14 days and 16 hours” while wearing his trusty footwear (Nike) or his investment in a “fruit company” (Apple), it feels natural to the tone of movie. With the film dealing 100% in nostalgia, the products fit seamlessly in both grounding the film in the time period and allowing them to be a part of Gump’s story. However, when a film attempts to use this type of high intensity product placement without it feeling organic to the setting, tone or plot, it becomes too apparent to the audience and fails. In I, Robot, Will Smith’s character is a technophobe—he hates all modern appliances, especially the robots. The makers of the film choose to highlight this with Smith buying a pair of Converse All Stars at the beginning of the film. So Smith’s character’s a Luddite, but it’s not like everyone else in the film is wearing rocketboots or anything; they’ve just got really normal non-futuristic shoes on, and Smith wearing Converse isn’t a succinct way to highlight the character’s technophobia. Converse just paid the most. Whereas the products in Forrest Gump maintain consistency with the nostalgic tone of the narrative and interact naturally with the central character’s journey, the ones in I, Robot don’t; it just looks like Will Smith is taking timeouts throughout to appear in a Converse advertising campaign, which essentially he is.

(Cont.)

Predator is one of the best action films ever made. It’s got Schwarzenegger in his prime, a young and ambitious John McTeirnan at the helm, Carl Weathers, Jesse Ventura and a seven-foot invisible monster. Boy, they don’t make them like that anymore…

Firstly, you should know I wrote Predators when I was 13. Like every kid, after the first time I sat and was blown away by the original, I made it better (or, in the teenage parlance, “cooler”). Sure, one Predator is cool, but what about four? There should definitely be a fight between them, too, and honestly, the female character is so boring, it would be so much cooler if she was a sniper! The difference between my vision and that of the eventual makers of Predators was that I wasn’t given the keys to sci-fi horror royalty and millions of dollars to spend, and I still required a legal guardian. In this article, I’m going to look at the narrative structure of Predators and how it functions as a sequel. But before that, let’s look at what it’s actually about.

It’s a simple premise, essentially a retelling of the original with extra Predators and “badass” appearing as a more prominent adjective in the screenplay. A group of highly trained armed combatants is dropped on an alien planet and subsequently stalked by a group of deadly aliens. In the first article in this series, I spoke a bit about the three-act structure. Predator is one of the best examples I can think of that uses the structure perfectly, so I’m going to do a side-by-side act breakdown of both Predator and Predators, so we can see what actually happens in both.

ACT 1.

Predator: A ragtag group of gruff and stereotypical soldiers enters a jungle and is involved in a skirmish; it’s then revealed to the audience that an invisible hunter with thermal vision is stalking the group—one of the gang senses there’s a problem.

Predators: A ragtag group of gruff and stereotypical soldiers enters a forest and is involved in a skirmish; it’s then revealed to the audience that an invisible hunter with thermal vision is stalking the group—one of the gang senses there’s a problem.

In Predators, they also find out they’re on an alien planet.

ACT 2.

Predator: The team begins to be hunted and is picked off one-by-one; the remaining members attempt to make a run to the location of the rescue helicopter; the Predator appears, then kills everyone, until only the male and female leads remain. The female lead is then taken out of the narrative, leaving Arnie covered in mud on his own, but now with an advantage.

Predators: The team begins to be hunted and is picked off one-by-one; the remaining members attempt to make a run to the location of the spaceship; the Predators appear, then kill everyone, until only the male and female lead remain. The female lead is then taken out of the narrative, leaving Adrien Brody covered in mud and on his own, but now with an advantage. There’s another couple of differences: Lawrence Fishburne has a pointless and immersion-breaking cameo, and Adrien Brody’s character Royce has an established character arc where he moves away from self-centered origins to an ultimately heroic return, which in turn sets up the third act.

I didn’t get off on the best foot with Daredevil. I went to see it over the Valentine’s Day weekend of 2003. I thought two things: firstly that it would be good film, and secondly, that it would be seen as a suitable romantic gesture. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’m going to use the theatrical release as the basis for this article, as it’s the version most people will have seen. There’s a lot of comment that the director’s cut is far superior, but since I’m going to focus on characterisation I think most points will be applicable to both anyway. Daredevil has a pretty big cast and suffers like a lot of other superhero comic adaptations that overpopulate the narrative so that the producers can say they stayed faithful to the source material. Because of this, I’m going to just focus on the hero Daredevil, and the main villain, The Kingpin, because really in these types of films they’re the only characters that are completely integral—especially the villain. Take Die Hard. Imagine if Hans Gruber didn’t attempt to take over Nakatomi towers, and think how shit that film would be, as just John McClane making awkward small talk with his wife’s co-workers for an hour and a half. In these kind of films, the villain rules the roost; it’s their actions that bring the narrative and the film to life. But before I move onto The Kingpin, I’m going to give a brief overview of the comic in general.

Daredevil was first published in 1964. The story follows Matt Murdock, who as a child is blinded in a freak radioactive chemical spill while rescuing an elderly man. The accident takes Murdock’s sight, but the radiation ramps up his other four senses to a superhuman degree. After local gangsters murder his dad, Murdock chooses to become an attorney who also fights crime in his spare time under the moniker Daredevil—The Man Without Fear. The character suffered for being a cheap version of the far more successful Spider-Man. The characters were really similar: they were both based in New York, and they were mostly light fantastical stories were the heroes didn’t kill people and used crazy acrobatics to foil crime. But everything about Daredevil was poorer in comparison. His stories were worse, his banter was worse, and he had a terrible rogues gallery, including Stilt-Man—the man with the power to walk on stilts. Basically, Daredevil was cheap, derivative and pretty rubbish. In the late 70s, Frank Miller, who had previously drawn the comic, took over the writing duties and pushed the character in a new direction. Knowing that competing with Spider-Man was a pointless venture, Miller changed the nature of the comic, toning down the fantastical premises and pushing Daredevil towards darker and more intimate street-level based crimes. Muggers and the mob were favoured over supervillains, and Murdock was presented as a tortured character because of his conflicted position as both lawyer and vigilante, with a ton of Catholic guilt thrown in for good measure. Miller took second-string Spider-Man villain Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. The Kingpin, and made him the main antagonist in Daredevil. The Kingpin was presented as a smart and ruthless mob boss, a shadowy Machiavellian figure who attempted to control all of the criminals in New York. (He didn’t, however, possess any stilt-walking-based power, which was a shame.)

The Kingpin has a fairly simple origin story; he was raised by a poor family and was heavily bullied at school due to being overweight. Unlike most people in this situation, who grow up to criticise superhero movies on the Internet, The Kingpin instead decides to not take this lying down. So he hits the gym hard, then proceeds to kick the shit out of everyone until he transcends to being the king of the bullies. The character’s foundation is in overcompensation. He doesn’t want to run a criminal gang, he wants to run them all; he rebels against his underprivileged childhood by surrounding himself in extravagant trappings of wealth and sophistication; he’s both physically imposing but also a genius strategist and manipulator. The Kingpin, in every shape and form, is the personification of excess. When the film was in pre-production, one of the biggest talking points was that Michael Clarke Duncan, an African American actor, was in line to play The Kingpin. In 99% of Hollywood casting, race shouldn’t really play a huge significance, as the characters usually aren’t defined by it and there’s very rarely a subtextual agenda or commentary on the topic. The only thing that really should matter is that they’re the best actor to bring the character to life; Daredevil director Mark Steven Johnson said on the casting of Duncan that:

“I just thought: if you just look at him, he’s got the shaved head, he’s got the incredible physique, he’s got the imposing presence, he’s got the great voice Kingpin should have, he’s got the muscle. He’s literally got everything Kingpin should have except he’s the wrong color. Then you just say, ‘The hell with it. What are you thinking?’ You’re so much more true to the spirit of the comic if you cast this guy, then you would some other guy just because he’s white but doesn’t have any of those other attributes.”

Fair enough. It is quite telling that Johnson only views the character from a completely physical perspective, though. What about the actual character? What about his motivations and perspective? As I said before, The Kingpin in the comics functions on excess; he’s desperately attempting to distance himself from his deprived childhood by surrounding himself in wealth, power and sophistication. He wears a white suit and a sky blue cravat without a hint of irony. So how would you introduce this character in the movie adaptation? What music would you use? A predictable classical piece would make sense, something that screams of contrived sophistication, Mozart, Beethoven maybe…

Right…do you think if they cast a white guy they’d use “Lapdance” by N.E.R.D to establish him? Johnson isn’t too subtle with his choice of music while introducing a character—when the IRISH villain Bullseye is first shown, played by the IRISH actor Colin Farrell, the IRISH American band House of Pain is used for his introductory theme. So why was a hip hop song used to introduce a character who would never ever listen to it? It’s cynical, but I’d say the makers of Daredevil got a high profile African American actor for the part, which was a massive coup, so they thought they could channel some ‘urban market’ cash from it. The urban demographic is essentially a politically correct marketing term that refers to African Americans and their interest, and, more importantly, their willingness to pay to see certain movies. Comics are mostly written by dorky white guys, read by dorky white guys and star the most awesome white guys ever. So the casting of Michael Clarke Duncan, a successful black actor in a predominantly white genre, was exploited in an attempt to cash in on a statistically less prominent and represented demographic. This might be a sound marketing strategy, but it does nothing to flesh out the character that was being adapted in the first place.

(Cont).

I’ve got a small confession; I cheated before compiling this list. I thought describing my usual viewing habits (“saw Die Hard for the 1,534th time—still awesome”) would become pretty tedious, so I’ve tried to find a few things that I’ve wanted to watch for a while but never got around to.

Altitude (2010)

As far as recent ridiculous horror high-concepts go, Altitude sits just behind Burning Bright, but that’s always going to be a hard one to top. Basically, a group of cool and sassy college kids charter a plane and get caught in a storm with a killer flying space octopus. It’s a fairly ambitious premise, but you can tell how far the budget has been stretched to accommodate it. The whole way through the film I wanted to see a lot more of the space octopus, so spent most of my time willing it to appear, but every time it did I had forgotten how poor the CGI was, then cringed and hoped it would go away. I really like the concept and thought it was a pretty bold attempt, and in the ‘killer space octopus’ genre it ranks pretty high. The real problem with Altitude isn’t in the direction or the CGI, but with characters; they’re all so predictably written you want to punch every one of them in the face. Even in the midst of unspeakable danger, the obvious jock character chooses to get drunk; the girl who you’d expect to panic and cry a lot, panics and cries a lot. I know the teen horror genre doesn’t particularly lend itself to pragmatic characters, but Altitude chooses to isolate these teenagers: the radio’s broken, so there’s no local sheriff or a Sam Loomis-type to come to the rescue. The teens are all on their own, and the fact that they’re all written as idiots becomes increasingly frustrating to watch. There’s a scene when one character decides to go outside of the airborne plane to fix a problem on the tail, so the gang tie a rope around him and basically throw him out. I think this is the film trying to show the quarreling characters coming together and making a responsible attempt to save their own lives, but it looks more like assisted suicide. First time director Kaare Andrews does a really solid job and I’m looking forward to whatever he does next, ideally with a bigger budget and a much better script.

The Lady in the Lake (1946)

The almost encyclopedic film knowledge of some of the writers at the MacGuffin has made me feel guilty for hardly watching any film made before 1970, but being a sucker for gimmick-laden Hollywood, there’s not much to choose from. Luckily, I found a film made in 1946 that fitted the bill.

The Lady in the Lake was both directed by and starred Robert Montgomery, as the hardboiled private investigator Philip Marlowe. Adapted from the Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, it’s got every noir trope that you’d expect: missing women, femme fatales, gangsters, crooked cops, and Marlowe stuck right in the middle, punching and shooting his way to the truth. The film does, however, have one unique trick up its sleeve—the entire film is shot from Marlowe’s perspective.

Noir fiction is commonly written in the first person, and sits firmly in the subjective male gaze, so it makes a lot of sense for the film to be shot from Marlowe’s POV. But I’m probably over intellectualising the reason it’s there; it’s just good fun and a quirky way of promoting the movie. Obviously with the film predating steady-cam technology, the POV sometimes suffers from being too static, but it has it moments, notably the ending, when it becomes a fluid and captivating way of viewing the film. It made me think that other genres, besides the recent wave of horror “found footage” attempts, should try it more. The only other film I can really think of is Kathryn Bigelow’s use of first person in Strange Days. I’m not sure if I’d enjoy another film shot entirely like this, but I’d like to give it a go.

(Cont.)

Recently, when I was walking down the street, a bus passed me. It was plastered with advertisements for the Martin Lawrence integrity-stripping franchise entry Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son. The poster looked terrible, and I’m sure that’s a pretty accurate description of the film, too. It did nothing to interest me or make me want to spend money on the film, but it did make me think about film posters and how terrible they’ve become. Movie posters surround us; when we walk down the street they’re plastered everywhere; they cover the walls of cinemas and can take up a page in a newspaper; even when we get home the images have a habit of popping up on our computer screens. The advent of television and the internet changed movie marketing. Trailers now not only precede films in the cinema but TV spots litter scheduling, and any trailer can be streamed online with a click of a button. From an advertising perspective, a trailer is surely a better way to communicate to the audience, as it shows the potential consumer the actual product—how the film looks and sounds. A poster, on the other hand, can only ever be a representation of the film. But is that such a bad thing?

Saul Bass is one of the most famed and celebrated designers to ever work in cinema. His designs, notably his collaborations with Hitchcock, have been widely imitated and have influenced many modern concepts; The MacGuffin’s own masthead is a perfect example of this type of homage. On his designs, Bass said:

“I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or that the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.”

Bass’s artistic vision and sparse design legitimised the films he was promoting, granting them subtly, dignity and tone. His images have become some of the most instantly recognisable in film history. However, as money has grown in Hollywood, the concept of sole artistic vision has been replaced with an expansive marketing department, and unlike Bass, they want everyone to care.

The Motion Picture Association of America’s annual report used to include a breakdown of studio marketing expenses; however, from 2007 this subsequently ended, the assumption being that in a time of recession, studio execs didn’t want to show the vast amount of money that was being spent on their overblown advertising campaigns. If we look at the figures from 2007, we begin to see how much of an investment film marketing actually is. In 2007, the average advertising budget for a movie made by a major studio was $32 million. 43.9% of that money covered all the TV spots, trailers and internet advertising, leaving 56.1% for all other marketing expenses. This includes market research, radio, exhibitor services and posters, magazines and billboards. A poster (or its industry term, a one-sheet), “is a single document that summarizes a product for publicity and sales.” It has a pretty straightforward job: to present the movie to the audience. It’s tricky, though, as a film has quite a lot of information that needs to be illustrated in a relatively small space. Because of this, marketing companies have reused many trends within a lot of their designs, which they use as shorthand so the consumer is given as much information as possible within the one-sheet. For instance, the ‘red text on a white background’ trait tells the audience that the film advertised is a comedy (and I use that term loosely). American Pie seemed to start this modern trend, and a lot of comedies followed suit. It’s especially a favourite for the films with Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy dressed as women in fat suits; if you look closely, you can see their dignity dissipate into the negative space.

(Cont.)

What makes a film cool? And what does “cool” mean, anyway? It feels like a word that means a million things and nothing at the same time, but it’s a concept that’s constantly used to promote, review and defend a huge amount of Hollywood mainstream cinema. If you ever watch a Michael Bay interview, you’ll probably notice he doesn’t really talk about the basics that much—he’ll mention the script a bit, say the actors have done a good job, but you know he’ll tell you Optimus Prime doing The Ram Jam on Megatron will be the most awesome thing anyone will ever see. So why does “awesome” become so important? What does it even really mean? Is it just a more fan accessible and media appropriate way of describing spectacle? In a sense, it probably is, but how many big budget action/adventure films have you seen that supersede this type of spectacle over every other part of the production—the films that think looking and being “cool” is a perfectly suitable substitute for any attempts at characterization, narrative coherency or originality? And the worst thing is, they get away with it.

This isn’t a particularly new thing. Exploitation cinema and B-movies of the 1930s and beyond relied on spectacle in lieu of financial capital. The filmmakers couldn’t afford a decent marketing budget, so the films were sold on their shocking and extreme premises. In recent years, it seems like Hollywood has sold films on the abstract notion of them being cool, or, after the financial and critical success of Jaws in 1975, an Event. So, for the rest of this article, I’m going to try and discuss the two key themes that I think are quickly becoming absent in Hollywood cinema: characterisation and narrative structure. Then, over the next couple of weeks, I’ll attempt to apply them to two films that use “cool” as a crutch. These films weren’t the biggest productions, but were still hugely costly, massively hyped, and somehow escaped real scrutiny, even with mediocre reviews. Next week I’m going to look at Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil and attempt to understand why huge changes were made from the characterisation in the source material and why. I’ll then attempt to analyse Nimrod Antal’s Predators and examine its place as a sequel, its narrative structure and how it functions to promote and advance the Predator franchise. I’ve chosen these two films because I think they wasted a huge amount of potential, with both relying on spectacle over any attempts to tell a well-told and structured story, and I hope to attempt to find out why. Spoiler: I suspect it will have something to do with money. But first, here’s a quick question: who is the coolest fictional person you can think of?

If you’ve thought of anyone other than Arthur Fonzarelli, then we’re all in for a long day. So who is The Fonz? Well, he was the leader of two biker gangs but also has a strong moral code; he has the Midas touch—when he hits the jukebox his favourite song will magically come on; he’s a ladies man and rebel but also really respectful to Mrs. C., and he doesn’t give Tom Bosley too much shit. So, to examine why the Fonz is cool and where his longevity comes from, for what is first seen as a two-dimensional sitcom character, there’s quite a lot of contrasting facets to take into account. Unless you work in Hollywood, that is—you probably think it mostly comes down to the jacket.

It’s unfair to call Mutt Williams a cheap version of the Fonz; with that hat he’s obviously a cheap Marlon Brando in The Wild One, but it all comes from the same place. Who is Mutt Williams? He’s a greaser, a rebel, essentially a James Dean clone, but what do we learn about him? Well, he says he’s handy with a blade, which sets up his later sword fight; he’s really good at fixing engines, which plays no part in the narrative at all; and to further establish his counterculture persona he tells Indy that he’s quit a ton of schools—pretty cool, eh? Really though, he’s probably just made his widowed single mother’s life a complete nightmare and cost her a small fortune. Mutt Williams is about as two-dimensional a character as you can get, with all the cracks papered over with hair gel and leather. His costume and demeanour invoke a personality that has no substance, but when you attempt to delve deeper into the character, you find there’s nothing there. Everybody involved in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull thinks the jacket will do the hard work for him; it’s like dressing up like a chicken and being upset when you don’t lay an egg. But it’s unfair to compare Mutt and the Fonz, really. The Fonz had ten years to establish himself (and we all know he jumped the shark first), but in film you don’t have that long to establish the character. It has to be direct and in shorthand. So, since we’re already on the subject, let’s look at Indiana Jones.

George Lucas created Indiana Jones to be an American equivalent to James Bond. The opening to Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the most memorable beginnings to any film I can think of: the golden idol, the boulder, Alfred Molina with a spike through the face, and all the while Indy appearing as the unflappable, flawless hero. We then meet the villain and rival treasure hunter Belloq, who has exploited the local tribe for his own nefarious gain, and then Indy is chased to the awaiting plane. The character’s instantly humanised by showing his fear of snakes when he sees the pilot’s pet boa constrictor. Immediately our opinion of the character is shifted again, when the scene cuts to Jones in a suit and glasses as we learn that he’s also a professor of archaeology. Within the first fifteen minutes of the film, the audience is shown all of the main conflicting characteristics and qualities of the lead character. The everyman and the academic, the uncompromising hero with a completely relatable phobia, and the treasure hunter who chooses to preserve instead of exploit. Unlike Mutt Williams, Indiana Jones has depth and conflicting personality traits that create a rounded and relatable character. But how does he progress? A character arc should really show the ups and downs of the protagonist’s journey; the main character will start with one agenda and eventually reach a climatic point nearing the end of the film, when they will have to make a choice. This can be sometimes be handled extremely well and can become a memorable and poignant scene, like Wikus making the decision to return and save Christopher in District 9.

Or it can be like this.

(Cont.)

Who really enjoys school? I wasn’t a particularly good pupil, and it really shows the determination of the Scottish education system that I can I perform any type of mental arithmetic or have the ability to spell. School always felt like a static, sterile environment, void of imagination. The point of interest during my formative years was the school’s desperate attempt to inject life into their teaching by using the television programme Ghostwriter.

If you’re unfamiliar with the premise of Ghostwriter, it was basically a live-action Scooby-Doo rip-off, when the world was an innocent place and no one had actually thought of making a real live-action Scooby-Doo yet. A bunch of kids, aided by a benevolent and invisible ghost that can only communicate through writing, solve mysteries and foil crimes. The show attempted to promote cognitive thinking while making letters and words fun, interesting and relatable. I don’t really think it worked. I do remember thinking the entire concept was creepy: Ghostwriter, this omnipresent spectre, seemed to get his kicks by teasing kids with anagrams on signage. It was just a little bit weird, but I understand what it was going for: a passive and non-threatening way of teaching literacy to children.

Around about the same period as Ghostwriter was the first time I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It was fun, exciting, and even now I can’t think of a better example of escapist fiction. The Last Crusade was everything school wasn’t. The film blew me away, but one scene stuck in my head more than the rest. As Indy and his Dad travel to Berlin to recover the Grail diary, they stumble upon and become involved in a Nazi rally where Hitler is present. At the time, I had a half idea of who Hitler was. He was a real person that didn’t have a very good reputation; what I didn’t understand was why he was surrounded by piles of burning books. It was a surreal image—I didn’t know if it was an invention for the film or as real as Hitler was. What I did know was that its nuanced threat really got under my skin. So I asked my family what it was all about, and they carefully explained what book burning was and why it had happened. I was shocked; it sounded like one of the most abhorrent crimes I’d ever heard of (you should have seen my face when I later found out what else the Nazis had been up to). But Indiana Jones, for all its silliness and over-the-top action, planted a seed in my head, one that led me to ask my family and learn something that I didn’t even know existed beforehand.

Cinema has always been an excellent way of presenting complicated thoughts and philosophies in a condensed and coherent way. But let’s not think about that at the moment—not about how Stand By Me teaches you that “you have to cherish your childhood cause it won’t be there forever”—none of that stuff, just the cold hard facts, pieces of history and information that slip into your mind and stay there. The biggest problem with looking at cinema this way is that film walks the line between fact and fiction. Films will usually choose to ground their narratives in some degree of reality, so the audience will instinctively understand the plot’s context and the characters’ motivations. But that’s not why people go to the cinema. People want drama and spectacle that’s beyond their own existence and understanding. So how do you rationalise the fact from the fiction? For a child this is even harder, a case in point being that a few years before I saw The Last Crusade I asked my dad if lightsabers were real. A filmmaker’s focus should be on entertainment before education, but that doesn’t mean sometimes there can’t be a cross-pollination between both.

The premise of Shane Carruth’s 2004 film Primer is that two engineers accidentally invent a time machine in their garage. Carruth chose to ground his fantastical premise in real science: he researched physics, interviewed graduates in the subject, and made what many reviewers claimed was the most realistic depiction of time travel in cinema history. In one scene, the two men, strapped for cash and in need of palladium, strip the catalytic converter from their car and use it, as it contains the element. Now, I can’t for the life of me think of an impromptu situation where I will need palladium at short notice, but Primer taught me that, and now it’s in my brain forever. This is just one example of what the film does so well, peppering the narrative with real facts and theories that transcend the film’s quirky science-fiction premise.

I don’t think any film has an obligation to be educational, and I’m not saying film is a guaranteed way of conveying facts and information to the viewer. But it does feel like an interesting counterpoint to the age-old belief that TV and cinema rots your brain. So what has film taught you lately?