Guo Degang explained "art" in this way, art is the skill of the hand, and the skill is to sell the skill.
The same applies to small companies like Hollywood's A24, even if it wins by [Instantaneous Universe].
Like crosstalk, A24 is also trying to bring the film more directly to the audience, and on the basis of delving into the Internet communication model, find a way to sell itself.
A different boutique
From the perspective of the company's operation, the understanding of the product is an effective function for consumers, which can be practical or spiritual, and the movie is undoubtedly the latter.
The peculiarity of this type of product is that the quality of the product is not entirely in the hands of the company.
A24's business strategy is more like the back-end of the product line that I am responsible for building in the production part, and the specific product control is more entrusted to the main creator.
But as a company that started as a distributor, they knew that selling a movie on a small to medium budget was never an easy task, and when their character became a seller, their strategy was to actually "sell themselves."
On the surface, this is very similar to the "Shaw production, must be a boutique" and "HBO production, must be a boutique" of the year.
However, one of these two representative brands is in the era when traditional studios are still alive and well, and the other is in the reign of cable TV, and the market environment is different from that faced by A24.
On the other hand, no matter which production is produced, the focus is on the back boutique, and the emphasis is already on top of the "movie" itself. But for the A24, that alone is no longer enough.
As mentioned earlier, even if they have done a rigorous actuarial calculation of the film budget, the return on the film itself often does not immediately cover its production.
Therefore, A24 must provide added value. No one wears the cultural shirt of Focus Pictures and declares it a believer in the company.
But over the past decade, A24 has managed to cultivate a group of the company's fans.
In a sense, it became the other end of Disney.
On the famous Reddit site in the United States, it has nearly one million subscribers.
Its cultural T can often mark more than a hundred prices in the second-hand market.
And in some North American young people who play INS and TIKTOK, in addition to those well-known IP images:
The street skateboarder [of the mid-'90s], the sheet man in [Ghostly Floating], the starring character of [The Last Black in San Francisco], may all be recognizable images that they are happy to dress up and easy to identify.
To achieve this, A24 is also the most enthusiastic embracing of social networks among many studios.
While promoting Ex Machina, it created a Tinder account to make Alicia Vikander's Ava a "character" living in reality;
And when promoting the dark, weird [witch], they even opened a Twitter account for the Satan Goat, and fans of Good Things jokingly claimed to support the Black Goat's competition for the Oscar.
It's not enough to find marketing points after the movie is finished.
A24's vision is not so much good at discovering new directors as at discovering "marketing points" in those peculiar movies, the most typical of which may be the [Swiss Army Knife Man] starring Daniel Radcliffe.
When the concept was proposed, A24 realized that it would become a hit on social networks, and no one could resist the quirky charm of this "corpse".
A24 has long understood that the battlefield of film marketing has transcended the industry, it is in a field of attention, it not only has to capture the attention of audiences, fans, but also to attract those curious consumers.
But Daniel's body is not often, A24 also needs to tie itself to the network G-spot through all kinds of marketing, and complete its own branding.
Not going through awards season
[Moonlight Boy] is a node in the A24's transition from distribution to production. To be honest, the film is, as Cummore said at the awards that year, "Although we haven't seen it, it's still a good work."
Similar Oscars for Best Picture are not unique in recent years.
It wasn't until [Instantaneous Universe], when it exploded at the South by Southwest Film Festival and paid off handsomely in the market (relative to cost), that it really joined the pace of awards season.
Even if its work wins the 2023 Oscars, it cannot simply be considered that it has become an awards season company.
This is the fundamental difference between it and traditional award-winning studios such as Miramax (the company run by the Harvey Stein brothers), Searchlight, and Focus.
Thematically, focusing on the realities of American society — racial issues, gender wars, immigration and the bottom — is one path for the A24 to break through, and it's just easier to find a common pulse with awards season.
In addition to these movies, it also has a large number of horror films, youth films, and sci-fi films that are not interested in the awards season at all, which is the main battlefield of A24.
Rather than reviews and awards, which of course no one would turn down to reviews and trophies, it is more important to effectively convey the film's message to audiences who may be interested in it.
Win with thinness
Derivative sales are the most common component of contemporary film marketing.
As its meaning suggests, derivation has an origin, and in a market full of competing products, the identification of what is behind derivatives is the basis for its existence.
It is not the first link of marketing, on the contrary, it is the last link.
When A24 establishes a way of life, a concept of taste, an image, derivatives are the materialization of this abstraction.
[Shell Marcel in shoes] heavy metal statue
Of course, in order to comply with the focus on scarcity in the Internet era, its derivatives are often sold in limited quantities.
These scarcity reversals bring concern, because the social networking generation's desire to find uniqueness is unusually strong, and in the previous content transmission process, they found this uniqueness, and now, they can pay to own it.
If movie derivatives strengthen the connection between users and the company through replicas, then the props and objects in those movies will allow the audience to establish a deeper connection with the A24 brand itself.
[Miss Bird] Mini Puzzle: Cast and Miss Bird's broken hand due to jumping out of the car
This is another strategy to strengthen the A24 itself.
Because it is very difficult for a single work to become an explosive IP - [Instantaneous Universe] is only an explosion based on cost, and its own box office energy is still not comparable to those blockbusters, so "bee colony" has become the best way to operate ecology.
Auction is equivalent to finding the most powerful worker bee among them.
Since 2020, A24 has organized three charity auctions with high response, involving films such as "Lighthouse", "Rough Diamond", "Midsummer Night's Horror", "Instantaneous Universe", and other A24's most successful works.
From the sweatshirt of "Hyper" to the skateboard A24-style auction of [mid-90s], make the most of the props
In the process of organizing the auction, they will also carefully select the entry point and beneficiary object.
During the most difficult coronavirus period in the film industry, the auction money was used to conduct ongoing research on the new crown;
After the "Instantaneous Universe" slaughter, director Kwan Jiayong was granted exclusive rights to designate benefits, choosing to serve in Asian psychological help centers, laundry service centers, and transgender legal aid.
In the specific lots, there are often classic props that get highly topical offers, such as the flower-clustered skirt in [Midsummer Night's Horror], which sold for a high price of $65,000;
The 43 props of [Instantaneous Universe] received a total of 500,000 US dollars, of which the raccoon props that were very stealing were auctioned for a sky-high price of 90,000 US dollars.
[Instantaneous Universe] Auction Items: Raccoon, Stone, Sausage Hand
Considering that A24's films, even horror and sci-fi films, are more everyday themes, this kind of auction requires careful selection and advance planning.
Because, even in Hollywood, not all the legacy of classic movies is well protected, and recent examples such as "Scream" in the sixth installment had to be remastered when the "Scream Museum" was made.
A24, with the help of auction, has completed the production cycle, such as the diamond-set "little monster doll" in [Rough Diamond], which has collectible value in itself and is easy to become a hot spot for auction.
And to maximize the effect of the auction, you can't be too frequent, and the annual plan will bring these mostly real-life objects back to life - of course, some will go to the museum.