Matt's Task 4 Report

When talking about how to identify the audience for ‘Bowling for Columbine’ and ‘Lift’, we decide whether the film is mainstream (open to everyone), niche (targeted towards a smaller audience) or alternative (a documentary that takes an unusual approach to a particular subject). With Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary about gun control, ‘Bowling for Columbine’, I think that it is made very clear that this film was made and distributed for a mainstream audience, this is because the film revolves mainly around a World wide issue that a lot of people and Countries can closely identify with; what causes acts of violence with guns? and most importantly, what was the cause for the Columbine High School Massacre? The film was written and directed by Michael Moore, who’s films’ always discuss World wide problems such as health care, Capitalism and the horrific attack of the Twin Towers, as seen in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’.

Marc Isaacs’ ‘Lift’ is completely different, it isn’t a feature length documentary, a well- known director didn’t make it, and it doesn’t even tackle any topic that thousands of people would be interested in. Instead, the film takes a completely different albeit, very bizarre film where everything is set in one place; a lift. The director stands in the middle of it and films the British public walk in and out, and asks them personal, but harmless questions. I consider this film to be a hybrid of alternative and niche. I think this because it sounds like the sort of documentary that you would only see once on Channel 4, and a lot of television viewers are always into those, and therefore quite many people would view it, however, it is a very risky documentary and it is probably the first of its kind, so you can’t decide whether or not it would be successful in the public eye, but maybe critics would favour the film a lot more, as they are always after something different and audiences usually go for “familiar territory”, so to speak.

For both films, the techniques used to target each audience are done very uniquely. For example, ‘Bowling for Columbine’, being quite a mainstream film, uses the very common documentary technique of humour, although the film is very serious when it comes to the films’ principal agenda, it includes various different degrees of satire that acts as a conflict to the films’ serious nature. There are two instances in the film that stick out to me like a sore thumb; the first one is an animated sequence within the film titled ‘A Brief History of the United States of America’, the sequence is styled in a similar way to that of the animated television series ‘South Park’, and even shares the same form of humour, voices and the quickly paced writing style, clearly parodying the earlier seasons of the series. The second instance is a montage of American foreign policy decisions, showing news clips and examples of why America is an aggressive nation, the montage is to the tune of ‘What a Wonderful World’, one can’t help but think that this particular sequence was very dark satire, whilst watching this sequence, I could help but think of its similarities to the 1964 black comedy, ‘Dr. Strangelove’, where towards the end of that film, there is a montage of several nuclear detonations accompanied by Vera Lynn’s recording of ‘We’ll Meet Again’. It’s scenes like this where I think that humour is a good away to attract a great number of audience members to see your film. Like many films, the marketing campaign for ‘Bowling for Columbine’ mainly consisted of many different posters and trailers, playing up the laughs to obviously bring in bigger numbers at the box office all up until it was released in cinemas in the United States. While the film did happen to break records, it didn’t do so well in America, but it did do very well in the UK, and Australia, etc. It’s a common known fact that most films’ bring in a lot more money with International releases, rather than its Country of origin.

‘Lift’, however, is a different matter, with the film being merely a short 25 minutes long (most short documentaries are about an hour long) it did not get its audience with a wide cinema release, instead, this very independent film was first shown on the internet, afterwards, it was entered and shown at various different Film Festivals, where it garnered attention from Channel 4 executives, where it was then played there, before finally making its way to DVD, along with Marc Isaacs’ other films. The Internet is also a great way to show off your work and introduce your talent in order to find your audience. Some independent film- makers also find it to be a good way to get noticed in order to move onto much bigger, more ambitious projects.

I think that the audience has been targeted in different ways because they are very obviously different films. Everybody expects a film that is made by an acclaimed documentarian to get the “Hollywood treatment” when searching for an audience, and usually films like ‘Bowling for Columbine’ find their target audience very quickly. I think that ‘Bowling for Columbine’s’ audience was picked up because there are a lot of cinemagoers out there that love feature length documentaries about important issues and have a clear passion for them, especially those made by Michael Moore, who is treated like a King when it comes to these films. That is why these films generate so much revenue, and, if they don’t, they at least get a lot of Universal critical acclaim.

‘Lift’, again, is another issue. Marc Isaacs was not known when he released and showed off ‘Lift’, it was simply an experimental documentary, with an extremely risky formula that is replicated in many of his other films. Isaacs had little to no assistance in creating this film and finding an audience for it, he didn’t have any Hollywood producers back the film up for him in case it didn’t do very well, he just had to make what felt he needed and hope for the best. But, in the end, it all worked out, and Marc Isaacs is highly regarded as one of Britain’s best independent documentary film- makers, with this latest short film, ‘The Road: A Story of Life and Death’ due for release sometime in 2013 in selected cinemas Nationwide.