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Tales Of The Industry - The Disastrous Premiere of Tokyo Godfathers


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Gasero



Joined: 24 Jul 2009
Posts: 939
Location: USA
PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 6:29 pm Reply with quote
I think 'Tales of the Industry' is exactly the kind of spicy column that ANN readers would like. I hope not too much information is redacted though. At a certain point it might seem like some stories are made-up.

Quote:
Kon, presented with postcards and DVD covers for Millennium Actress, had refused to sign them. Dreamworks had replaced his artwork with their own, obviously American-drawn, imagery, and he was simply not OK with it.

Sounds like my kind of person. I like that reaction.

Also, it seems odd to me that people didn't do a test run of the reel to make sure everything during the screening went well. I'd never premiere something as the first time it is being tried.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 11:36 pm Reply with quote
Animexcel wrote:
I disagree, American posters have done collage-styled posters too, such as Indiana Jones and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This is no different. They also gave a little taste of what the movie is about.

I don't see how it would be a turn-off. It's basically a promotion of the Pikachu short film in front of the movie.


The Indiana Jones movies are deliberate throwbacks to earlier movie poster styles, which DID have a lot of heads all floating about. The Lord of the Rings movies all have Frodo front and center, though the other characters being there are to indicate that the movies have a lot of important characters. In contrast, the promotion for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, both parts, despite having many characters, features no one at all, but simply Hogwarts on fire.

As for Pikachu's Vacation, kids didn't like Pikachu much even during then. Pokémon appealed, at that time, mainly to boys, for whom cuteness would've been a turnoff. By contrast, Mewtwo was super-popular (and still is), and it'd make sense to feature Mewtwo. I knew some people who walked right out of the theater during Pikachu's Vacation because they could not stand that fluffy material (with some thinking the entire movie was going to be like that).
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enurtsol



Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 14746
PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 12:22 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:

As for why they changed the artwork in the first place, there is a difference in stylers of how Japanese movie posters look and American movie posters look. Notice that Japanese movie posters have a lot of characters scattered about everywhere with a somewhat chaotic look, especially ones aimed at children, with the logo in the middle. American movie posters are more commonly plain, with either an emphasis on the landscapes (most of the Planet of the Apes ones are like this) or one or two characters prominently in the middle (like with Rango or Frozen) with other characters, if they're even present, tiny--just big enough for you to notice them. In other words, American movie promotional artwork uses a general style of minimalism and larger-than-life spectacle.


Here's another point of debate now in Japan:

"Japan’s poster for Academy Award-winning movie 'Birdman' raises eyebrows online"




Guess which one had to be different from the US/European, Korean, and Chinese posters? Laughing

Here's what Japanese have to say about the changes:

  • “Simple is better.”
    “It makes no sense.”
    “At a glance, it looks like a B-movie.”
    “Why’d they put it in color?”
    “Is it a horror movie?”
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EyeOfPain



Joined: 14 May 2013
Posts: 312
PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 8:24 pm Reply with quote
Polycell wrote:
But that does still leave the question of what happened to him; did somebody think he did such a great job he deserved a brand new pair of concrete galoshes? Laughing


I wonder if he was even reprimanded beyond "Don't let it happen again." BAAF most likely rented out the theater space and services, with the con handling attendance. It's not like they would have lost money if customers had decided to leave midway through the movie, so unless the theater had actually damaged the film, I'd imagine they were still paid most, if not all, of what they were supposed to be paid for the use of the venue (if they hadn't been paid before the screening, for some reason).

I do like these kinds of stories. I've noticed the blips in the top-right corner of frames, but beyond the scene in Fight Club, I guess I never put too much thought into them. I was in a group that acted as a second run theater in college, but the 3-platter, single projector system was never actually used while I was there.

Now I can't help but think how a 2-projector system works: are alternating reels spliced together for each projector, or are reels just swapped out after the previous one finishes (I'm guessing this is the case).
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GalicianNightmare



Joined: 16 Dec 2014
Posts: 124
PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 4:33 pm Reply with quote
@leafy sea dragon To say that Pikachu was not popular in the US back then is incorrect. Pikachu is the most popular Pokemon in the US by far.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Game_Boy_video_games

You can see that Pokemon Red sold 4.83 million in the US. The more popular of the two sold 5.02 million in the US. Pokemon Yellow sold 5.1 million. On its own, it is the best selling Pokemon game in the US. Don't act like Pikachu isn't popular in this country, because that is a blatant lie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikachu#Promotion_and_legacy
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Greg Capin



Joined: 24 Aug 2015
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 9:44 pm Reply with quote
I was there at the premiere. Its pretty funny my memory was of the projector only crashing once.

When my friend went up to get Satoshi's signature, he had him sign one of the festival flyers. If I remember right he drew a little something with it.

When we were at the festival I guess we somehow mistakenly ended up hearing through the rumor mill that he wouldn't sign the poster because it was racist. Your guys' explanation makes a lot more sense. But we puzzled over why the poster was racist while there.

Anyway, when the Tokyo Godfathers was finished rolling there were some real dumb audience member questions. After a few, my friend and I were talking to each other and we're like "We could come up with better questions than them!" "Terrible questions" "Why don't we ask him what is so racist about the promotional poster that he wouldn't sign? Yeah that's a good idea" So when the moderator asked "Are there any other audience member questions?" My friend raised his hand up high holding the large Millenium Actress promotional poster rolled up in hand. Needless to say the moderator didn't call on my friend. Smile I guess we had our own ignorant question, though it was good from our perspective.

Our favorite Satoshi Kon statement though was in response to one of the audience member's "questions". This guy starts going on and on about Tokyo Godfathers and gives a long drawn out personal analysis of the film. Our eyes are rolling after awhile as he yammers on and on. After awhile the moderator interrupts the audience member and asks "I'm sorry, do you have a question?" Audience member goes "Yeah, I'd like to hear what Satoshi Kon has to say about what I've been talking about. Now Satoshi doesn't know English so now the translator has to try and communicate what the audience member was trying to say. So after some time of the translator trying to puzzle out some meaning to the audience members talking, Satoshi Kon is ready to speak: Satoshi Kon: "My answer is.... nothing"
The audience had a good laugh.
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