Well, this will be my last entry. I kept thinking about what this entry should be about .. so I think I'll just take a minute to write about the class I created this blog for.

Olga mentioned it already, and I'll just agree with her when she says that ''Coming Soon'' was one of her favorite classes so far. And even though I really don't like doing presentations because I just get ridiculously nervous and so on, I totally enjoyed the one I had to give in this class, because the basic topic of it is one of my favorite interests ... so I guess it was easier because of that.

I also enjoyed the other presentations. The topics were very varied, and I heard about films or genres I never really knew about, which was very interesting and fun.


While I was writing the various blog entries, I kept taking notes of trailers, posters, or film bits I really like, and showing you a few of these seemes like a nice ending to this project :)


So, first I'm going to show you a piece of Charlie Chaplin's film ''Modern Times'' (1936). Chaplin himself is just as fascinating as the short video you'll find further below. He was not only an actor, but he also directed his own movies and often also composed the music for them. Chaplin started out making movies when they were still silent, and was at first very critical of the sound film when it was born. ''Modern Times'' is actually a talkie, but you only rarely become aware of that when watching it, as there is practically no sound. However, one particular scene does use sound and is actually Chaplin's demonstration that sound is not needed for movies. Take a look.

For this song, Chaplin did not write lyrics but rather developed an artificial language. It shows how acting, facial expressions, and gestures are simply enough to tell a story to the audience, which is basically what he was trying to tell here by shooting the scene this way. While this is certainly correct to some degree, I think, however, that the whole scene would be totally different (and perhaps not just as funny) without the song ..

What I'm going to show you next is the trailer for ''The Graduate'' (1967) by Mike Nichols. And can I just say - how cute is a young Dustin Hoffman?! Very. Very cute.

I am not entirely sure whether this is actually the original trailer. It spoilers quite a lot of the story, and it appears to me that it basically tells the plot briefly, and in chronological order. However, my first favorite moment would be from about 00:35 to 00:50 which really creates an expressive atmosphere, a sense of aimlessness and purposelessness. And the second favorite moment is certainly this conversation between Ben and Mrs. Robinson:
Mrs. Robinson: I'll get undressed now, is that alright?
Ben: Sure ... shall I - I mean, shall I just stand here? I mean, I don't know what you want me to do.
Mrs. Robinson: Why don't you watch?
Ben: Oh sure! Thank you.

Next, I would just like to briefly mention ''The Usual Suspects'' (1995) by Brian Singer. There's 5 things I love about this film: The story, the title, Kevin Spacey, Kevin Spacey, Kevin Spacey!

I am not exactly wild about the trailer, though, I think there are much better ones out there, since this one does not really bring across the atmosphere and the actual suspense that goes on in the movie. Then again, what makes this movie great and worth rewatching it over and over is the ending ... so perhaps the trailer could not really be any better, except if it were revealing additional info, and that might spoil the film itself. Oh - and if you don't know it yet - WATCH IT!

This may seem a little hypocritical now since I have not seen any other ''James Bond'' movie (except for ''Quantum of Solace'' (2008), directed by Marc Forster who I'm going to write about next), but Martin Campbell's ''Casino Royale'' (2006) just has to be one of my favorite movies. Here's the trailer:

Now that certainly promises a lot of action, huh? What is very present here is Eva Green's character, suggesting an unusually emotional approach to a James Bond movie. But it's still all about the coolness and action, and that works for me, at least here ;)

Now, here's something unusual but incredibly ingenius (and I'm not going to analyze it but rather just tell you how great it is): Marc Forster's ''Stranger Than Fiction'' (2006) - perhaps my favorite movie ever. In case you have never seen this one before DO NOT read anything about it or watch a trailer - you'll just spoil the fun of watching it :) It is a bit surrealistic, funny, a bit romantic .. and just great fun.



There's still a ton of other movies I could advertise .. but I guess that's enough for now ;)

Well .. nothing left than to wish everyone a great summer, and thanks for a great, entertaining class :)

The advertising of Bollywood films is actually not much different from what we get to see over here. Let's have a look at it nonetheless.

Bollywood productions make use of huge billboards, for instance. These used to be painted by artists, like so:

A finished painted billboard would then look like this, for instance:

The reason for that was simply that manual labor was cheaper than having the billboards printed. Nowadays, they are printed, however, as you can see here:


Of course Bollywood executives have discovered the internet, which comes in very handy (talking marketing) because it can combine many different elements of advertising into a small but effective and easily accessible space - the movie website. One example that I grew particularly fond of is the website for ''Om Shanti Om'' (2007).

It is very lovely, even though the tiny piece of music that is repeated over and over (and cannot be turned off) might get a bit annoying after a minute or two. But take the time and check out the website, because it is really nicely done :)
''Om Shanti Om'' Website

What you get here is not only a great amount of material for yourselves, like wallpapers and many film stills, but also a brief summary of the plot, credits for cast and crew (of course including the playback singers), and many trailers and also making-of videos available for download. The design of the website suits the whole theme of the film, which centers around the 1970s. The key art, however, does not focus on this aspect of the story only, though. Looking at the poster I posted above, I would not actually recognize that the story has something to do with the 70s at all. The same goes for these two:



Clearly, we get a good idea of Sharukh Khan's abs - or perhaps the ad agency's photoshop skills -, but these posters do not reveal that much about the film itself. What is made use of here is actually Sharukh Khan's fame and popularity, and that sure helps to advertise the film well.

Let's have a quick look at the trailer now:


This is particularly interesting from a cultural studies point of view. While the audio is 98% spoken in Hindi, the few inserts that actually sound much like tag lines on a film poster are English. I myself do not actually speak Hindi - and I assume you don't either ;) - yet I get an idea of what the film might be about, as far as you can ever tell from a Bollywood trailer. They tend to be very general and not reveal too much about the story, or maybe that is because a typical Bollywood film unites so many different genres in itself.

As I've mentioned above, the two posters with Sharukh Khan clearly use his fame in order to advertise the movie. This does not only happen on posters, though. Many Bollywood film stars actually do commercials for products, and in turn the movies incorporate product placement, which is very widely practiced. So: The film uses ads, and the ads use the film for their purposes. Here are two funny examples of famous actors starring in commercials:



I find them weird, too ;) especially the second one. But that's one way of how advertising works in Bollywood. And you'll probably notice that much like Bollywood itself, the stars in these ads do not take themselves completely seriously ... it's just fun to watch.

In the entry on Indian film history, I already mentioned that Western - esp. US-American films - have always been popular in India. During the past few decades, the number of Western media coming to India has increased drastically, though. Music, movies, and TV spread widely, and the internet had a huge influence here, too, making Western media all the more easily accessible.

With this growing competition, the Indian film industry had to improve. Until the 1990, the whole production was rather cheap, but gradually the means of production changed a lot in terms of quality, more money was also spent on the costumes and settings, and also special effects and animation have been introduced. For the movie ''Krrish'' (2006), for instance, famous action choreographer, director and stuntman Tony Ching was hired to choreograph the action scenes. Have a look at the trailer:


However, this whole process did not happen in one direction only. Bollywood films have also started to influence Hollywood productions. One concrete (and perhaps the first) example would be Baz Luhrman's ''Moulin Rouge'' (2001). The director developed the concept for this movie while he was in India shooting a film. He saw a Bollywood movie there and liked the musical quality about it. Luhrman felt that Western audiences should be attracted more to musicals again, and so he developed ''Moulin Rouge''. Here's a clip from the movie - the scene you should be watching starts at about 0:55mins.


Luhrman also used a song from an Indian movie called ''China Gate'' for this scene. And clearly, you cannot deny there's heavy Bollywood/Indian influence. After ''Moulin Rouge'' was released, there was a wave of musical films in Hollywood: Just think of ''Chicago'' (2002), ''Dreamgirls'' (2006), or ''Sweeney Todd'' (2007).

Dance is another central element of Bollywood films. It typically happens in large groups. Most dances in Bollywood movies are modeled on traditional Indian dance styles, but the Western influence shows itself in various new movies.

Generally, there is much symbolism going on: Gestures and body language are of overall importance. They can symbolize things that are not actually articulated - for whatever reasons. The Bollywood actors are generally great dancers, and they also often use these traditional gestures of the dances in their acting during scenes with dialogue, to give them meaning and significance on another level.

So, much like the songs, the dances have the function of visualizing things that are not dealt with in the dialogues, like dreams or phantasies. Therefore, they often happen in exotic places to show that what happens here is not real.

The example I'm going to show you now is not set in an exotic place, but I like it so much ... I also showed it during the presentation - it's just fun :) This piece of video is from the film ''Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham'' (2001).


As for the song itself, I'm not quite sure which function it has. I do think it is neatly woven into the plot, because it happens during the wedding, many of the other guests are involved, too ... But if you read the German subtitles, I'm not so sure the protagonists would discuss such a topic in front of everybody ... ;)

Anyhow, the dancing itself is just fun to watch, I think. At 2:00mins. you can see how many dancers there actually are, and it seems to be actually more at around 4:00mins. ... I also love how the two actors are stepping up with their ''gangs'' - it all looks a lot like a competition. However, the Indian culture is well represented, I think. The clothes are certainly traditional, and so is the music of course. I'm not exactly familiar with traditional Indian dance styles, but the dances here do not look very Western to me ;)

On the symbolic level things get interesting at around 2:55mins. when her jewellery gets tangled up with his clothes several times ... very subtle ;)

As I've mentioned already, music and songs are extremely important in Bollywood movies. The music is not only a part of the film itself, but also a very powerful marketing tool: It is often released prior to the movie, also along with a music video (this for instance shows the influence from Western TV, music, and cinema).

The songs are sung by professional playback singers, and the actors only lip-sync. What is most important and interesting, too, I think, is the fact that Bollywood does not hide the fact that the actors do not sing themselves - the playback singers are huge stars in India, just like the actors are. Therefore, it might just happen that a ''bad'' film becomes very successful because the viewers just go to hear their favorite playback singers. I think, this is a real testimony of how Bollywood films deal with their audience: They do not try to convince them that everything is totally realistic (like Hollywood does). Quite obviously, Bollywood films are exaggerated, the whole industry just does not take itself so dead seriously.

A song is typically used to transport parts of the film's story, and it can have three potential functions:
[1] It can be an actual part of the plot and coherently woven into it, so that the character has an actual reason to sing it.
[2] The song can predict an event that is about to happen - which is usually two people falling in love.
[3] It may also be used on a different level in order to transport a character's thoughts or feelings, set in an exotic environment which then expresses the surreal quality of the song - that it is just imaginary.

With the industry spending more and more money on its films, the surreal, imaginary scenes are now often shot overseas - in the Swiss Alps, for instance. (And I'm not kidding.)

Here are now two examples to outline a few of these characteristics I've mentioned above.

This video is from the film ''Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham'' (2001).

What you can see here really well are some Indian traditions, which are contrasted with a totally different setting and situation, a little later in the video: The mysterious guy flying in the helicopter, carrying a briefcase.

I haven't found any actual information about the second example, but I'm fairly sure that it is a promotional music video for the film ''Mujhse Dosti Karoge'' (2002). It is rather funny, AND it's set in the Swiss Alps ;) Have a look ...


Yeah .. let's just leave it at that for now ;)

You have probably come across the term already somewhere, especially since Bollywood movies have started to become popular around the world about a decade ago ... This entry will serve as a basic description of the term itself and an overview of Bollywood's features. The following entries will then cover the characteristics in detail, with examples, of course ;)


The term Bollywood is actually a compound of two names: Bombay and Hollywood. Bombay (which is now called Mumbai) is the center of the Bollywood industry, much as Hollywood is for the Western film industry - therefore the connection, which ultimately resulted in the hybrid word ''Bollywood''.

Bollywood is an informal name. It only describes a certain part of the Indian film industry, not all of it. Not each Indian film is a Bollywood film.

Bollywood is the biggest producer of films in India and one of the largest ones in the world. Contrary to Hollywood, though, it is not a physical place. It is merely an umbrella term for a certain genre of Indian movies.

As I've already written about Indian films earlier, especially Bollywood makes use of many different genres in one movie. You often find films that include comedy, romance, melodrama, action, and thriller. Using more genres simultaneously is very common in Bollywood films.

The central elements of any Bollywood movie are music, song, and dance, which will be elaborated on now in separate entries. But to give you a first impression of Bollywood movies (if you have in fact never seen any before) ... here's a trailer for ''Devdas'' (2002).

I've looked at the Indian film history, which of course is the basis for Bollywood movies. Now let's look at some interesting facts about Indian films.

[1]
US films have always been popular in colonial India, but they were often censored heavily by the British authorities if the films showed too explicit sexual or violent content. The colonialists simply did not want to show inadequate behavior by white people which could be interpreted as immoral. So they set up various strict censorship rules - and some of them are actually still common in Indian film production.

Today, the industry deals with these customs in a very interesting way. For example, scenes with erotic content only happen at a very symbolical level. They are sometimes set in an exotic scenery, where the actual content of the scene is expressed through song and dance. The gestures and facial expressions are highly symbolical, deriving from traditional Indian dances, and often the actors use the gestures also in their normal acting in order to express things that are not actually articulated. Culture comes into account here again in a codifying way: If you are not familiar with the Indian culture, these traditional dances are probably alien to you, which then makes understanding the whole content of the scenes rather difficult.

To show you how this symbolical thing might work, here's an example from Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film ''Devdas'' (2002). The guy tries to put the bracelet on the woman's hand over and over, but somehow it just does not work. Perhaps you can guess from watching that this is a sexual metaphor.


Moving on with general facts.

[2]
An Indian film - and especially Bollywood - often combines many different genres in itself. You might watch a movie where violent action scenes follow animate love songs, including slapstick elements, and ending with melodramatic dialogues. What the directors want to do here is trigger all kinds of emotions in the audience. The movies themselves are certainly exaggerated, but they never claim to be realistic or serious. They do make fun of themselves.

[3]
Dramaturgic rules in Indian films are often based on traditional mythologies, ancient Sanskrit drama, and the like. Of course, they are moved to a contemporary setting and are generally updated. The influence from Western cinema, culture, and television is clearly shown here. With more and more Hollywood movies and MTV pouring into India, the plots are often moved from 3 hour weddings and arranged marriages to the young protagonists meeting at a club and dating.

[4]
Indian films generally contain many cultural references. They are often shown through traditional Indian dances, where body language and gestures express things that are not actually said. (as mentioned above)

[5]
Today, the Indian film industry produces about 1.000 films per year, which makes it the largest film market in the world. No other country produces more films a year.

[6]
One movie can cost up to $20 million. The film industry in India does not have a regulated financing system. Often films are financed by private investors or the Indian underworld.

[7]
Copyright infringement is a huge problem. Some movies are already available via bootleg DVDs even before the movies themselves have actually entered cinemas. It is estimated that the industry loses close to $100 million each year through bootleg DVDs, since there is a vast market for them. One particular example should show how drastic this problem actually is:
In 2002, Bollywood movies sold 1 billion more tickets than Hollywood did. Nonetheless, Hollywood made 40 times more money with its movies (tickets, merchandise, DVDs, etc) than Bollywood did ...


And that was already the cue for the next entry ... we're approaching the actual topic of the research project.
Stay tuned ...

I'm guessing that due to the fact that India was still a British colony, when film was born, the Indian film industry developed almost as quickly and was up-to-date with sound and color film, for instance, as Western industries. But let's start at the beginning.

In 1896, the Lumière brothers first showed their short films in India - only one year after they first presented them in a private screening. The Indian audience was of course as much fascinated by this new medium as viewers all around the world. Eventually, some Indian film pioneers started experimenting with film cameras.

One of these early pioneers was Dadasaheb Phalke, who is nowadays considered the ''father of Indian cinema'', and rightly at that, I think.


In 1913 - after quite some time of experimenting - he produced the first Indian silent movie, called ''Raja Harishchandra''. With this movie, Phalke did not only write film history of his homecountry, but he also established what then became a routine in Indian films: He based the plot on an old Indian myth. Culturally speaking, it makes a lot of sense that the movie has only few inserts representing dialogue. If you're Indian and you're watching a movie that is about a popular Indian myth, you will know the story anyway. You are then not dependent on dialogue to elaborate on the events in the film. However, as a person with a different cultural background, the movie sure can be difficult to follow. You can actually watch it online here.

Overall, India produced about 1.300 silent movies, but only 13 of them are left today. Many were destroyed due to wrong storage, bad copying or weather conditions, or by fires, and some were simply lost.

In 1931, the first Indian sound film was produced, by director Ardeshir Irani.

''Alam Ara'' triggered a discussion about which of the many Indian languages should be used in Indian films. It was then decided, that Hindi should be it, for a culturally motivated reason: Hindi has the largest speech community in India. Therefore, most people would understand the movie. Today, there are usually two versions of every Indian movie - one in English, and one in Hindi. Some films are also produced or dubbed in Urdu, which is an Indian variety spoken also in Pakistan.

Only six years later - in 1937 - the first color film was produced, also by Irani, called ''Kisan Kanya''. With movies now featuring sound as well as color, the whole industry saw itself confronted with a real enrichment to the Indian film. Now, Indian culture could be represented truthfully, in all its beauty and variety. Music and dance scenes would now appear much more lively, and overall work a lot better for the audience. The rich Indian culture of song, dance, and colorful clothes could now be aptly represented.

Unfortunately, I could not find any trailers or scenes of these movies ...

My colleague and I, whom I held the presentation with, thought about many possible topics. Characteristics of Austrian cinema, comparing Austrian and Hungarian movies, comparing European movies with Hollywood ... and then somehow we landed on Bollywood and decided to research that. It was absolutely new ground for me, but I quickly got interested in how it all works over there.

Because it does work very different than in Hollywood or Europe. Indian filmmakers focus on totally different aspects in their movies, the whole industry is built differently, and all that (and much more) made me sort of enthusiastic about this project.

So, much as in the presentation itself, I will start off with general and historical facts, and then gradually incorporate examples and so on.

Summing up the Staiger text was sort of exhausting, but this should be fun. For this entry, I read Vinzenz Hediger's text ''Der Trailer, das Schlüsselelement jeder Filmwerbekampagne''.

Trailers are not only a very interesting and emotional piece of advertising - and many claim they are short films themselves, and to some extent art -, but they are also useful and make good economic sense.

There is no other marketing tool that can
- reach more people
- make up for so much of a film's success at the box office
- create a hype (also around itself)
- come at a cheaper price.

Before I'll show you the examples, here are some facts about trailers.

* The average trailer costs only 1 to 4% of the ad budget, but makes up for 25 to 30% of the box-office gross.

* Back in the day, black stripes of film were attatched to the copies as protection. These stripes were called ''trailers''. Around 1912, exhibitors began to use them for ads, telling the audience about movies soon to enter the theater. That is why trailers are called that today.

* From 1919 until the late 1960s, trailers have been produced by the National Screen Service, who had exclusive rights to the production companies' materials. Today, they only distribute the trailers to theaters (for a fee, of course).


First of all, there's the trailer which has a very classic, traditional structure. This consists of 4 parts, namely the intro setting a theme, naming of the title, then the theme is developed, and finally, the title is shown again. Until the mid-1960s, this form was used in the majority of trailers produced. In the classic trailer, the stars and the spectacle or drama of the film are what the audience should focus on. You won't get a lot of information about the plot, though. Now, this may mean that trailers can be utterly misleading - but more on that in a separate entry.

Let's look at an example first - ''Casablanca'' (1942) by Michael Curtiz. Two fun facts: Curtiz is actually Austrian-Hungarian, and he directed the remake of ''The Jazz Singer'' (1927), the first talkie, in 1952.



I don't see a lot of plot here, except ''danger'' (Bogart means danger as much as Casablanca does - so both in a good and in a bad sense), ''love'' (Bogart and Bergman seem to have a relationship that's not so easy), and ''secret'' (what's in those letters Bergman talks about?). The trailer clearly stresses the scenery, and the actors in the film, while not actually telling how they are all involved with each other, what they do there, and so on - but rather getting the audience interested in Casablanca, and the stars, esp. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

Apart from that, gender roles are particularly interesting here, I think. Whereas in the film they are not as traditional as one might assume (after all, the film was released in 1942, which is not exactly the age of emancipation). In the trailer, though, everything seems sort of traditional. Ingrid Bergman is shown as very emotional, confessing her love to Humphrey Bogart, close to tears, and Bogart is clearly the dangerous type, very active and brave. The voice-over and the inserts are additionally emphasizing this.

What also struck me were the many, many, many types of effects when the scenes changed. (Can't think of the right term now.) There must have been at least 20 different kinds. Or 30.



If there are classic trailers, then of course there are the ones with a new kind of structure. As you have read before, the National Screen Service produced trailers until the late 1960s. About a decade after that, the change came into effect: From then on, trailers are basically a summary of the plot, ending with a cliffhanger to give the audience something to think about, AND persuade them to buy tickets, of course. In the new trailers, you rarely get any inserts (which used to be really common pre-1960), and the number of voice-overs in trailers has been reduced, as well. Trailers are no longer emphasizing spectacle or setting, but rather focusing on telling a lot of the story in a short time. Stars are stars, so they are still often used to sell the movie - esp. if a film has an ensemble cast.

Here goes an example for the new structure: Mel Gibson's ''Braveheart'' (1995).



This is certainly much more coherent, and any viewer could summarize what the movie is about without being able to predict the ending (only theoretically, of course, since happy endings are still so common). The voice-over only occurs at the very beginning and at the end, which certainly provides the whole trailer with a sort of framing. In between, there is a lot of Mel Gibson, screaming, and many angry Scots. But seriously, that is really all you need. It shows that the story will be about battles for freedom, a historical context, and also a love story - and after watching the trailer you will not only roughly know what the movie is about, but also whether it is for you.

Since there are so many movies out there today, the producers simply must rely on target audiences, or otherwise the viewers themselves would be simply overwhelmed by this huge range of films offered. And, of course, tailoring a film for a specific audience will most likely keep many of those out that just principally have different appeals and then spread bad word-of-mouth before the film can become successful. However, in my opinion, some films would really deserve that ... although I'm not 100% convinced that it would work. There will always be people spending money on films like ''Epic Movie''. Ugh. But, sure .. do whatever you like, out there ;)