Lost (and gained) in translation
In the tough job of marketing foreign films, sometimes not telling all is the best policy
Getting a French-speaking audience to theaters in the United States to watch a post-World War II-era drama about a reform school isn't going to make a movie distributor much money.
That's part of the reason why "Les Choristes," France's current Academy Award hopeful for best foreign film, is coming out in this country as "The Chorus" and is being advertised as a universal feel-good story about how singing in a choir turns a group of troubled boys around. In Canada, where it was released a few months ago, it was "The Choir." This fall in England it was "The Choirboys," probably the closest to the original title, but perhaps not the most strategic choice for America.
"I've always been a fan of original titles," says Gary Faber, vice president of marketing at Miramax Films, which is releasing the film here. "But this one was a simple decision. People couldn't pronounce it."
The last few years have shown that foreign movies, with the right combination of art, luck, and canny marketing, can make real money. Three years ago "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" made more than $128 million, rather surprising for a movie about a bunch of people fighting over a sword in medieval China. The same year, "Amelie," about a French imp, pulled down $33 million. In 2002, Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding" proved that a film primarily in Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu could still make $14 million. And this fall, "Hero" made $53 million despite being held for two years by its distributor.
To pull in those kind of numbers, you can't rely on just the art-house crowd. You have to seduce viewers who generally stay away from subtitled movies. That means being both good and very careful when it comes to promotion. Depending on a film's subject and its intended audience, trailers and ads play up its familiar or exotic aspects, even while downplaying the fact that viewers will have to read their way through it. This can involve completely wordless trailers, English-language voiceovers that aren't in the films themselves, or print ads that create interest without implying anything too foreign.
It's not so much about trickery -- making the films look American so people won't realize they're going to be seeing a foreign film -- as about getting audiences to long to see a film so much that they'll go even if they have to read what's being said.
The Oscar factorThe main outlet for most foreign-language films is art houses, where reading is not an issue. "This crowd is predisposed to watch subtitles," says Landmark Theaters' Matt Cowal, who programs the chain's Washington, D.C., and Boston cinemas. So advertising, mostly in print and trailers, focuses on story elements, trying to draw out the exotic nature of the film.
The question distributors have to answer is when and how to take a film beyond that initial audience. The first consideration is how loudly the film's subject matter can resonate, and the release in the home country is often the best test ground. "The Chorus," for instance, has made $58 million to date in Europe and Canada, so there's potential. That's why the film is in New York now, working up momentum until Tuesday, when Oscar nominations are announced.
If "The Chorus" gets a ticket to the Oscars, it will go to other major cities with a pedigree, and if it's lucky enough to win on Feb. 27, it will get the oomph needed to make it to smaller cities where it would never have played otherwise. The box-office tally will increase from an opening weekend of just $16,000, but even better, the DVD marketing possibilities will take off. That's where a lot of the money is these days; DVD revenue can account for more than half of a film's profits.
That was the release strategy for Caroline Link's "Nowhere in Africa," winner of the Oscar for best foreign film two years ago. Initially the distributor, Zeitgeist, tried to take this German film about Jewish refugees who flee to Africa to the mainstream. "We tried to appeal to a lot of different audiences at the same time," says Nancy Gerstman, the company's co-president, by telephone. Rather than trying to hide the fact that this was a subtitled film, the marketers cut a trailer and a low-budget commercial for New York-area cable that had spoken German and Hebrew in it, as well as almost all of the movie's English dialogue.
"There was only about five minutes of English, but we wanted to make sure that was in there," says Stephen Garrett, the editor from Kinetic who cut the trailer. "Maybe that's a cheat, but you get the flavor. It's not so much an insult to audiences. Trailers are quick. It's more about making sure they can read the subtitles in time."
The movie ended up taking in $6.2 million at the box office, not bad considering that it was relatively inexpensive to make and that most subtitled films -- even most independent films -- never crack $1 million. What it didn't do was climb to the same rarefied territory as Roberto Benigni's 1997 movie "Life Is Beautiful," another World War II film, which made $57 million. What kept it from going over the top is mostly a matter of marketing muscle. The more you spend, the more you can make.
Zhang Yimou's two faces Only a few foreign films in the past 10 years have had the benefit of a real marketing budget and seen it pay off.
Miramax tried to imitate that success with Chinese director Zhang Yimou's "Hero" in August, but used a different approach. Miramax treated it almost like an American thriller, running its trailers before Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill, Vol. 2" and even slapping his name on it as presenter. The trailers for "Hero" were wordless and beautiful and gave not a hint that the movie was in Chinese. Instead of having a limited release schedule, it opened in 2,000 theaters immediately. The result was $54 million at the box office, great for a foreign film if not up to American blockbuster standards. The film might have been helped along even more if it had been up for some of the key awards, but it was an Oscar nominee two years ago, when the movie was released in China.
"If you don't win, it's moot," says Faber. "We thought we'd go in summer and go wide."
The crowds of video game-playing teens who showed up to watch it may have been a little confused. Clinton McClung, program director at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, says he took in a showing of "Hero" in a local multiplex (his theater wasn't playing it), and there was a sign on the ticket counter warning "Please be aware that this film is subtitled -- you must read it."
Meanwhile, McClung says, Zhang's "House of Flying Daggers" is now bringing that teen audience to his art house, a fish-out-of-water experience that will make him a profit. Sony Pictures Classics didn't take the film to 1,500 mainstream theaters until this month. Now it's in position to pick up a lot of publicity if it gets an Oscar nomination for best foreign film, and especially if it picks up any in other categories.
"You use the awards as a springboard for sure," says Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics. He says the major difference between "Hero" and "Flying Daggers" is that the former is more of an action picture and the latter is more poetic, more like a traditional art-house movie, while also having action. Sony Pictures Classics planned all along to mimic the release pattern of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," a pattern it uses for many of its foreign films, by putting it in theaters late in the year.
The audience so far is a mix of action enthusiasts, youngsters, the art-house crowd, and, surprisingly, women. "What we're finding as the release goes on is that it's much more of a women's film. That's why you won't see any more swords or daggers in the advertising -- although the sleeves are still there." The long sleeves in question are used as weapons in the film, and now the ads focus on their possessor: Zhang Ziyi, star of "Crouching Tiger" and "Hero."
Some studios' "something for everyone" approach can yield mixed or negative results. With the Stephen Chow comedy "Shaolin Soccer" -- a huge hit in Asia, having made $42 million -- Miramax went so far as to release a dubbed version in Canada and a subtitled one in the United States a few months later. The Canadian experiment worked out so poorly that it may just be the English-language industry's last attempt at dubbing, and the US release made only $500,000.
So what was the problem? Faber says the teen audience the film targeted in the United States just didn't take to it, and it wasn't the kind of lyrical film the art-house crowd could latch onto. Also, by the time it actually got into theaters here, many who were interested in seeing it already had a bootlegged DVD copy.
"That was a tough one," says Faber.
Mi casa es su casa For most foreign movies, being able to count on native speakers of a film's language to buy tickets is a given, so there was never much more than grass-roots marketing to these groups -- until "Y Tu Mama Tambien." Because of the film's huge appeal to Spanish-speaking audiences, its distributor, IFC Films, chose to stay with the original title as a part of a larger advertising campaign. Now when marketing to Latino audiences, at least, making Spanish-language movies seem too American is becoming a thing of the past.
"That's all changing," says Marion Koltai-Levine, senior vice president of marketing for Fine Line Features, which used subtitles in trailers for "Maria Full of Grace" and "The Sea Inside," although it stuck to voice-over narration and quotes from critics for its television advertising. "Audiences are becoming more sophisticated," she says, but still it's often impractical to put subtitles on 30-second ads when people are not usually paying attention to the screen.
"Some people might not know these films are Spanish," says Yvette Rodriguez, president of American Entertainment Marketing, a Los Angeles consulting group that has worked on just about every Spanish-language release in the last few years. She worked on an extensive specialty campaign for "Y Tu Mama Tambien," which paid off with a $14 million gross. She's now working on a radio campaign for "The Motorcycle Diaries," which has made $16 million so far.
"The Latino audience won't just go see something because it's in Spanish," says Rodriguez. "The film has to be something that talks to them." And preferably, she notes, it would speak to them directly in Spanish.
That, however, takes cash. And if there's one thing Rodriguez has learned working with small distributors and major studios alike on marketing to specialty audiences, it's that most companies still aren't willing to stake the necessary dollars to make sure they reach all possible groups. The current trailer for "The Motorcycle Diaries" aims right down the middle, with a Spanish-inflected English voice-over, but no indication that the movie's in Spanish.
So studios know more about how to do it now, they just don't do it all the time. When it comes to foreign films, ultimately it's not about romance languages or dialects of Mandarin, but the sweet honeyed tones of money.
Beth Pinsker can be reached at bpinsker@nyc.rr.com.
When it comes to helping a foreign film find its audience, what's downplayed is often as important as what's emphasized. Here are some little tricks studios use to make their overseas acquisitions irresistible to audiences at home.
Change the title English speakers can't pronounce it? Change it! France's "Les Choristes" became "The Chorus."
Forget dialogue in the trailer Draw the potential audience in with lush images. If you have to say what's going on, use an English-language voice-over.
Make sure it's up for an Oscar Nominations for the big awards are priceless promotional tools; winning one can send a movie's appeal through the roof.
Know your audience(s) Marketing only to English-speaking viewers can turn off those who speak a film's language.
