Subcultures

Subcultures...

Locations:
Idaho(North America, cold, mountainous, rural and mainly Republican)
English(Caucasian, American and accent)

Actions:
Athlete(Soccer, ball, football, turf and practice)
Church(Chapel, Star, songs and scriptures)
Student(Boise State, high school, books, campus and online)

My locations group includes where I live geographically and how it generally CAN correlate to your race and the language you speak. In my case its Caucasian and English being from Idaho. Our climate is fairly colder but reaches extremes in the summer because technically we are in a desert. So higher highs and lower low temperatures along with mild precipitation yearly. I searched Idaho accents on Google and did not really come up with much as far as our dialect. One fact that I found was that a lot of call centers are located here because we do not have strong accents like in the south or in the eastern U.S. Also, statistically we are a more conservative Republican dominated state as well so that can influence our local government, culture and population.

Marketing of "Green Street Hooligans"

To start my research on the marketing of my film i went to youtube to look up the trailer. I found two different trailers but they both basically created the same image of the film. With upbeat music setting a background to little sneak peaks of the fight scenes I imagine they were looking to target any adrenaline or thrill seeking movie goers. This preview would have automatically eliminated young children or any people that disagree with violence in the cinema. With just over a minute of playtime each they paint a picture of a dirty underworld of gang violence not completely accurate to the entire film but enough so that the right people would come out to watch it. Unfortunately other than the two trailers there was not much more information to be found about the marketing of Green Street Hooligans. I tried googling it but all I came up with were several different versions of the movie poster and DVD covers from the different releases around the world.

Marketing "Superbad"

I dont really remember much advertisements other then the few commercials for Superbad and the trailer. I looked up the trailer and watched it again, I remember that this is the reason I fell in love with the movie. They had me at "The same guy that brought you 40 Year Old Virgin and Talladega Nights." It consists of some extremely stupid and funny stuff from the movie. A lot of comical movie commercials will show only the funniest parts and the movie can be a dud. Not the case here. Other than media advertisements, the theme marketed itself in it's own environment. I was a junior in high school and everyone around school always talks about the funniest movies out and this one was making quite the impression in my classes. It was one of the most talked about movies that I could remember from all of high school. I found myself instantly hooked after I realized the relevance to many students' lives that I personally knew. To me, that is the absolute best marketing and advertising scheme you could use as a movie director. Create a reputation with the trailer and your previous box office hits.

Scholarly Sources

It was sort of difficult to find a scholarly journal entry or source for my film as well (Superbad). I actually searched Judd Apatow and Film and Comedy and finally I recieved a couple of hits. One of which I really enjoyed. The title was "Bromance" Flix and the State of Dudedom. If you are unfamilliar with these topics, it is referring to films like 40 Year Old Virgin, Funny People, I Love You, Man and The Hangover. The topic of dudes and other dudes relationships basically and where their actions and words towards eachother cross that very fine line of being straight to becoming "super gay." (Quoted from Evan in Superbad) I ventured away from the actual film to more of how it relates to our society and comedy to real life, thus how something scholarly and beneficial could be written about my topic. This journal is really interesting to me with how it pertains to my film. It was written by Colin Carman of the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide.
Hmm, possibly a liberal biased company?

Marketing 'Up'

I remember the first ad I saw for 'Up.' There was a clear blue sky with one balloon floating past, then another, then hundreds. Tied to all the balloons was a house with an old man sitting on the front porch. As his house passed by he simply said "Afternoon." And that was the entire ad! I thought it was the weirdest commercial for a movie. Usually ads have all of the best scenes combined with intesnse music so that the images are in your head. You remember the ad and you want to go to the theatre and see it. After I saw this ad I was so confused but that's why I wanted to see it! It left me hanging and I wanted to know what this mysterious movie was all about.
This worked for Disney/Pixar. They are a trusted name and the movie just looked so uniqe. I don't remember a lot of advertising before this movie was released. It had people talking and waiting for it to come to theaters, even though ads and toys and products weren't shoved in our faces. Now that the movie is out they have a whole line of stuffed toys, t-shirts for kids and adults, and books.

Sources for my film

In the lab at the library, I only found one scholarly journal that even remotely related to my topic. I searched the genre and the director and only came up with one article that would work. But after reading the article I realized how relevant it is to my topic. It was full of insights that had never crossed my mind. Now I am thinking in a whole different direction about my film, the directors, and Disney/Pixar in general.
Besides this article, I have only been able to find reviews that are packed with people's opionions. This isn't a bad thing but I really enjoyed how my scholarly article wasn't so much opinionated as factual. Of course there was bias but it did a very good job of reviewing themes in films.
I thought with having such a new movie that there would be tons of new information just waiting for me to find it on google. Finding well-written and valid articles has been a tougher job than I thought.

John Berger Research

I started my research on John Berger at wikipedia.org. I usually start my research here because it is easy to get a complete and concise biography of whoever you are researching. I learned that John Berger is a novelist, art critic and painter from England. He won the Booker Prize for one of his novels and his essays "Ways of Seeing" are commonly used as college texts which makes sense because we are using them for this course. His wikipedia page includes a complete biography of his works. From there, I looked at the section of his page titled "references". It includes articles on Berger published in the Guardian, and his encyclopedia.com page. From all of these resources I was able to learn quite a bit about his life and prepare myself for our class discussion.

John Berger

Previously I had never heard of John Berger or his piece "Ways of Seeing." I did some pretty basic research and got tons of hits in just a few minutes. One research technique that I used was one my high school computer applications instructor showed me. The use of quotation marks and plus/minus signs in search engines can narrow and refine all of the hits and only display exactly what you want. I googled "Ways of Seeing" +"John Berger" so it only included those exact phrases as you see them. John's fame seems to come from this art criticism piece that he wrote in 1972 that's often used as a college text. John was born in London in 1926 and attended 2 art schools in England around the 1940's. His first career was as a painter and had many pieces exhibited at a few galleries throughout London. The book is compiled from 7 essays consisting of pictures and words. It discusses western art and was made into a 4 part television series in 1972. John Berger seems to be a pretty prolific and influential writer and artist in his day. Just from this elementary research technique I was able to find out a good bit of information in just ten minutes or so for this blog.