What Happens When People Market a Movie Wrongly

New drawing coming really REALLY soon! It's been crazily hectic these days. What with the Kancil Awards deadline just over yesterday. College picked us (my partner and I) to send our entry in but we had to send it in ourselves (explanation: my college filters through every entry sent by students and shortlisted Kancil Award entries are usually sent in by the college). It's a long story filled with re-do-s, re-printing and a whole lot of shit we had to deal with, but I'm not mentioning this here.

Anyways, I've heard this movie is quite good.



Yeah, Aly Michalka and Vanessa Hudgens. Check out the poster:



Sounds like a High School Musical-ish movie, LOOKS like a High School Musical-ish movie, the only problem - it's not. Summit apparently made a bad choice in marketing it. It Disneyfied the whole thing. Now, I'm no Disney-hater. In fact, I've loved Disney ever since I was a kid. The only problem I've ever had (and still have) with it, is how some movies/shows they have produced were losing the classic Disney touch (not inclusive of the Pixar movies). But I hear that the Disney family (that was fired from Disney, or something to that extent. Yeah sounds stupid I know, it feels weird typing this) is coming back to Disney, hence we have more classic movies to look forward to (like Princess and the Frog).

ANYWAY, back to the movie. The marketers chose to market the movie via Disney Channel's Vanessa Hudgens and Aly Michalka and decided to call the film "Bandslam" instead of "Will" because "Will" was too... Indie, when in fact the film IS indie (well, according to a source it has an indie voice wrapped up in a high concept). I hear it's a very Juno-like film. It's a School of Rock-ish movie caught in a High School Musical-ish skin. Statistics say that most people thought it was another High School Musical-like movie.

Remember Juno's cute trailer?



Compare it to the Bandslam trailer.....

Here's a brief synopsis about the film:

Charlotte Banks (Aly Michalka) has what it takes to be a true rock star, and with the battle of the bands approaching she's determined to win. Her chief opponent in the upcoming competition is none other than her egotistical ex-boyfriend Ben (Scott Porter) . Ben may be cocky, but there's no denying his charisma when he takes the stage. With a little help from new arrival Will Burton (Connell), Charlotte's band begins to develop a unique sound and starts writing some original songs. Meanwhile, as Will and singer/guitarist Sa5m (Hudgens) start to make a love connection, disaster strikes, and the band is forced to choose between conceding the competition or standing tall and finally living up to their true potential.

Apparently, Rob Freidman, the person in charge of this trainwreck of a marketing plan heard Hudgens' singing and thought there was only ONE way to sell this film - High School Musical. The problem here, was that Vanessa isnt playing Gabriella from HSM. Her character here is a monotone, dark, goth character. My source tells me, she's actually pretty good, but I think the bad advertising overshadowed that. Would a dark character be marketed as.... Smiling and happy, I wonder? The poster was already a huge spoiler. And by that, I don't mean for the movie plot.

You can read the full rant (I don't mean it in a bad way) here.

The marketers definitely did not read the movie right, neither did they take the time to know its target audience, which are two VERY important aspects when it comes to marketing. They made a quirky, unique and cool indie film into a tween flick. Mind you, the movie was rated PG. No tween flick could possibly be a PG film.

At first glance, I wouldn't even consider watching Bandslam. I mean, I don't even like High School Musical. But after checking out some info about it, I think I'd really want to watch it.