Princess & The Frog’s B.O. Flop

I’ve been obseassing over Box Office numbers recently. Mostly because I needed a hobby (besides work) and got so angry at Avatar’s success.

What’s really dispointing about these B.O. numbers is one movie that I have been waiting for since it was announced. Disney’s The Princess & The Frog. The return to cell animation. What I’m not so happy about? It’s done terribly in B.O.

It was doing great, then all of a sudden Alvin & The Chipmunks 2: I Refuse To Type The Subtitle hit theatres and killed. Utterly destroying Frog. (Chipmunks are cuter?)

The weekend Chipmunks 2 hit (December 25-27, 2010), Frog got 35% up on that Friday 97% up on that Saturday, then on Sunday, everything began to die.

Most of days in January, it was on a decline: even after the chipmunk hype! Because of all the mass hysteria of Chipmunks 2 everyone forgot Princess & The Frog was there! It played strongly on Fridays and Saturdays, which is interesting.

Don’t get me wrong, it did pretty good, but only increased for a short while, then got on it’s steady decline of daily gross.

You know what really gets me fired up about all this? Disney’s bold move to traditional animation got beaten by a computer-animated star movie.

After Frog, Disney plans to bring us Tangled (formerly Rapunzel) next year (planned to hit on my birthday!) and King of The Elves in 2012. Two COMPUTER ANIMATED films. Frog didn’t flop, but it got beaten, and when your as big as Disney, getting beaten is just as bad as a flop.

You know what I see here? I see Disney leaving behind the feature cells for good. That’s upsetting.

On a side note- This week saw Frog drop out of the top twenty.

Go see Princess and The Frog stop seeing Avatar.

Best Commercials of Super Bowl 44

Laying it down for you!
Please note! This is not “The Funniest Commercials of Super Bowl 44″ because film-making isn’t all laughs, buddy! This is a top 10, counting down to number 1 (The Best).

I think all-in-all this wasn’t the best year for Super Bowl commercials. A lot of people weren’t pleased with them.

But here we go, click on a brand to go to the company’s website, and  click on a commercials name to watch it on YouTube.

10. Coca-Cola with Hard Times featuring The Simpsons.

The Simpsons really have become American icons, with their own postage stamp, and now a testimony commercial in the Super Bowl. I really think it’s a neat concept, having animated characters say “This product is nice,”  but then again, Disney does that a lot… The commercial had a lot of action, and was very well animated. Also, if you notice, it also features a great piece of music. It had a lot of thought put through it, and it was a little funny.

9. Teleflora with Talking Valentine’s Day Flowers.

This one really caught my eye. Cubicle life is always fun to make jokes of.  (Think about Dilbert!) And it was great to see the little mini-moral of seeing the rude lady get the dead flowers. (LESSONS IN COMMERCIALS!?!?! FWOAH! WAVE OF TEH FUTURE!) With this one we see some great computer animation in the flowers, great integration/compositing. Of course Don Rickles voices the wilting bouquet, delivering a fabulous performance. The acting wasn’t second rate either (As you might see in some commercials) And yes, it was funny. (I’m doing a horrible job of proving my “Good commercials don’t HAVE to be funny” point…) This commercial also wins the award for worst title.

8. Snickers with Game.

It has a great thought behind it I suppose, but really, its just funny to watch old people get tackled. Next?

7.  Kia Motors: Untitled.

Great music, but not original. This commercial had a very large budget with so many fursuits and all the things the characters were doing. It was awesome to see someone use fursuits in such a major commercial. Then in the end we get the big reveal, very well thought-out.

6. Dove with The Journey to Comfort.

Probably the most re-written piece of music ever. The lyrics were great. Another large budget (If your going to pay that much  for an ad, make it good!) The Super Bowl played a 30-spot version of the ad, which is really surprising that they’d make two versions of something that is basically a music video.

5. Intel with Lunch Room.

This ad makes me wish my computer could give me lunch… or be that cute. (I actually do have an Intel Quad Core Processor).  Big budget with the computer animation of the robot, the beautiful animation of the flying logos near the end, and the computer model set. Great acting, wonderful writing. And honestly, I just love Intel’s new(-ish) stinger of all the employees saying “Pum. Pum pum pum pum!”

4. The United States Census Bureau with Pre-Production Meeting/Location.

Yay! A large amount of American tax dollars spent to show that our tax dollars will be wasted further by people who are sometimes clueless! YAY BUREAUCRATS! It’s really hard to deliver an ad making fun of yourself, but still have it be effective. The writing was genius–hilarious! I really loved it. The design was really great too. The little model on the table, the man’s glasses, the girl’s depressed voice as she gently touched the magazine ad! And in other news, our national debt raised $3.5 million.

3. Denny’s with Chickens Across America.

We saw three Denny’s ads (I thought this one was the best). The premise of the series (“Great day to be an American, bad day to be a chicken.”) is slightly cliché, but delivered greatly. I’m not gonna comment on the puppetry, but some of the footage in the background was great. It was a great, funny (sigh.) commercial.

2. Frito Lay (Doritos) with House Rules.

This one was hilarious. It was near the beginning of the bowl, I believe the second Doritos ad we saw. The foley isn’t believable if you watch it more then once, (Mostly, the slap) but it adds to the ad. The kid was amazing. True talent. I can honestly see this kid going somewhere. AND NOW: the best Super Bowl Commercial of 2010… wasn’t really a Super Bowl Commercial…

1. Google.com with Parisian Love. Google posted it on their YouTube account before the Super Bowl, but it aired during the Super Bowl so its in the running darn it! And seriously, how many people really saw it before The Super Bowl? But because it wasn’t created specifically for the Bowl, it probably had a lower budget. We don’t see that at all. It has brilliant writing, brilliant music, brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT! It shows us that commercials DON’T have to be funny, and honestly, this commercial could be made with a hyper-cam and a simple video editing software; in other words: any one could do this. Not a big budget, not complex, no big names, (No names at all, really…). This really is just a great commercial. Plus it’s probably the only commercial I have ever watched and said “Awww,” to.

So there  you have it folks! What are you’re favourites? Comment below!

Some  housekeeping news:

This blog has been added to The Blue Squid Productions Blogiverse, meaning links to posts are over on Blue Squid Productions’ Blog page on their new website.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, I’m starting an initiative, inspired by the Bowl, go check out The Saint’s Challenge on BlueSquidProductions.com, click here.

Until next time (Which I hope isn’t very long away) Keep on rolling those Frames of Film! Peace out!

The Future of Film-Making

Sorry I haven’t posted in… well… a long time, but things have been really busy in the world of Doug, between school and work and everything! But I wanted to post this post for quite a while, and so daggummit I’m doing it!

So, let’s discuss the premise of this post, in order to do that we’re going to discuss last weekend’s box office. The top five films are Avatar, Edge of Darkness, When in Rome, Tooth Fairy, and The Book of Eli.

Congratulations Doug: you can read! But stick with me, I’m actually making a point here! Those films came from 3 studios. The three studios that just happen to be some of the biggest: Fox, Warner Brothers, and Buena Vista (AKA Disney).

Big studios dominate the Box Office. Even Fall of 2009′s big Indie success: Paranormal Activity had a major distributor, Paramount.

My point: No one succeeds in B.O. except for Major Motion Pictures. I bet that Disney ALWAYS has something in the top ten.

You can throw out suggestions like “Those are the brands people know” or “It’s the celebrity of film-makers and stars.” But that’s not why.

It’s because the world (Especially America) is run by corporations. As much as the president tells us that America is all about small businesses: it’s not true.

We go to Wal-Mart and drive our Honda’s, and listen to our iPods, which we plug into our HP PC’s! It’s madness!

Before becoming Christian and starting my work for Christ in Blue Squid Productions I was writing a book called A World of Wal-Mart. All about how one corporation was going to rise up and eventually rule the world.

American Dream? Hard not.

But back to film-making.

I pretty much told you that none of us Indie film-makers have any chance out there. But no: I told you we had no chance at the Box Office. But where can we rule? No, not on home video, we can’t release Blu•Ray.

So where can we rule? The internet.

Well, sure, corporations like Disney can throw out an occasional Muppet viral video, but honestly, they aren’t touching the internet.

Think about people like The Brothers Chap, iJustine Ezarik, Rhett & Link, Shane Dawson, or Phil Vischer. These are people that live off of making movies, but they have never touched the Box Office (Well, Phil Vischer has, but that was in his last career.) They make money selling T-Shirts, running ads on their websites (or YouTube videos), etc.

Viral videos are gaining attention: but they don’t generate enough direct capital for a corporation’s time.

The future of film-making? It lies in YouTube, it lies in Podcasts and vlogs, it lies in Creative Commons, it lies in Flash Animation, it lies in me, in you: it lies in the vast amount of space we call The Internet.