Film marketing – Case study: Straight Outta Compton
Introduction:The music group MWA emerges from the streets of Compton in 1980’s Los Angeles, California and it revolutionizes ‘hip-hop culture with their music and stories of life in the hood.
Director:F. Gary Gray who was born in New York City and directed other mainstream films such as ‘The Fate of the Furious’ (fast and furious 8) and Men in Black: International. This director had worked with Ice Cube before and has also directed some of Dr Dre’s music videos therefore he was familiar with the group.
Box Office/Reception:the budget for the movie was $28,000,000 and on the opening weekend of the film being released they made $56,100,000 – showing the movies success and popularity with its target audiences. The film grossed at $201.6 million worldwide, finishing first at the box office in the opening weekend at $60 million. As of August 27th2015, it was the highest grossing musical biopic of all time – Bohemian Rhapsody only passed it recently.
Production/ Company Credits:the film was produced by universal production and also legendary entertainment. Recently, universal has produced films such as: Glass, Green book, Fast and Furious 8, Split and Bird Box. Legendary Entertainment has made films such as: The Dark Knight, Mamma Mia: Here we go again, Jurassic world and Godzilla.
Cast and Characters:the main cast involve the 3 member of the group – Ice Cube (played by his son in the film), Dr Dre (Played by Corey Hawkins) and Eazy –E (played by Jason Mithcell) – other characters include DJ Yella played by Neil Brown Jr and Mc Ren played by Aldis Hodge.
The members of the group were involved in the production – Ice Cube, Dr Dre and Eazy-E’s widow were producers. DJ Yella and MC Ren served as creative consultants.
Critical response/reviews: On the review website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 87% which is quite a high/good percentage – “SOC is a biopic that is built to last, thanks to the director’s confidence and engaging performances from a solid cast”. The film was given incredible reviews across the board, being described as “energizing” and “the most entertaining” and “surprisingly candid” so overall very positive reviews. People who love the music will love the film, this is because it applies and appeals to a variety of audiences whether that relates to race, music or just generally wanting to watch the film. Some criticism for the film includes someone saying “I wish that the film elaborated more on the group’s troubles involving misogyny, homophobia and the media” – Peter Travers of Rolling Stone (an American magazine that focuses on pop culture).
Target audience: The target audience for Straight Outta Compton varies between different ages and races. Universal Pictures and Facebook teamed up together to create custom trailers for white audiences which focused more on the characters of Ice Cube and Dr Dre. This is because the white audiences see Ice Cube as an actor and relate Dr Dre as the face of beats. They looked at the demographics as certain groups lack the expertise on rap history – to make sure that the trailer can connect to a variety of audiences. Therefore, the multicultural team at Universal paired up with Facebook so they could achieve this – promoting and marketing the film. So, the main target audience for the film are fans of hip-hop, both young and old, who are fans of N.W.A and their music. Other audiences involve Hispanic and African-American as they are the races of those in the film. The age relating to this film is a 15 due to the language and behaviour in the film – it shows the culture of Compton. Also, relating to the age of the film, the logo used on a lot of the marketing for the film is the parental advisory logo for music which shows the film is mainly aimed at adults and older teens. This also relates to their being an all-black cast and in America race is still a big topic; therefore it makes it sound nostalgic yet relevant as it brings up recent events including police brutality and income inequality – someone in an interview said “a lot of the themes echo topics in the headlines every day”.
Campaign: in order to promote and raise awareness of the film, Dr Dre decided to create a campaign – Straight Outta somewhere meme. The aim of the campaign was to engage fans and audiences beyond the hip-hop community. This allowed people to ‘rep their own city’ and then post it on social media sites e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Everyone joined in on the campaign from celebrities to brands and even the White House. There are 5 reasons as to why people made the meme, shared the meme and joined in on this phenomenon.
1. Hometown pride – it represents where people are from and how they seem both cool and relevant.
2. Human factor – some took the more humorous approach – they mocked celebrities.
3. Memes work! – easy/ fun to create, leveraged a trend/competition.
4. Celebrity engagement – once people see celebrities doing it they join in and will hop on board as well.
5. Consumer anticipation – one of the most anticipated movie releases of the year.
Approximately 9 million memes were made and it not only pushed the film to mainstream audiences but it also took over the internet therefore showing how much a marketing campaign can affect audiences.
Trailer:
· There is a woman in the trailer with a young baby to look after showing the life Dr. Dre is living – he can be considered promiscuous.
· Ice cube – wants to write and produce music
· There are clearly problems with the police, in the trailer, one explicitly says “I will ruin your life” – this links to current events in terms of protests and police brutality (use of iconography). Other recent films that include similar themes and ideas is The Hate You Give – 2018.
· Each individual comes together to make music
· In the trailer we are shown a variety of different scenes from cars to racing, girls, concerts, parties, money and riots through the use of iconography. It shows how they live a glamourous lifestyle in the music industry.
· There is a subversion of stereotypes as their producer/manager is a white, middle class, old male – therefore he may have quite stereotypical views on black rap music etc.
· There are several comedic aspects also in the trailer to show some light-hearted humour which takes away from the more serious matters e.g. one of the group members wanted to take a gun on the bus.
· There are also aspects of action in the trailer – drag racing, being chased by the police – this reinforces stereotypes of black rap artists.
· In an interview they said the film was “art is a reflection of our reality” – which shows how their music replicates what happens in their everyday life.
· Other key points from the trailer include people actually getting arrested, the federal government and even the army being brought in.
· They use their real music – N.W.A – which allows people to familiarise themselves with it as it will be easily recognised.
· The location was set through the use of establishing shots e.g. the palm trees = California.
· There is a birds-eye shot of them listening to music which can represent how he was lost in the sound of music.
· The use of dialogue in the trailer shows how they are low class and shows their rags to riches lifestyle – they wear stereotypical clothing for rap artists and people living in that area.
· The universal credits in the trailer show how it is a big budget film and the quality is going to big good – from cameras to the editing of the piece as a whole.
· The fast pace editing builds tensions and mirrors their tension filled lives – it varies from slow to fast through the use of fading and quick cuts.
· Also included in the trailer was a montage of scenes from the film which display the social unrest of intertextual references to real world events such as: race riots/petitions and the Black Lives Matter March.
General notes:
· Songs included on the trailer are directly from N.W.A’s album – one being ‘Fuck da police’ – this references killing police officers which can relate directly to institutionalised racism. Also, the song ‘a bitch is a bitch’ focusing on misogyny and the dismissal of females. The music in the film can be associated with the older audiences of the film because the album came out around 30 years ago – therefore it is unknown to younger audiences.
· Marketing the film was difficult because it has such extreme and controversial ideologies and themes.
· When making the film/trailer they also focused more on the characters names rather than the actors in order to get that star appeal.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/straight-outta-compton-the-surprise-hit-of-the-summer.html/
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