Are companies targeting children's TV with "mega-adverts"?

I’ll admit that a guilty pleasure of mine is to go on Netflix and watch some of the worst movies and tv shows that I can find. Direct-to-DVD films like Arena provide little entertainment value but they do allow me to see the merits of better films much clearer. When it comes to TV shows, however, it’s sometimes difficult to find bad ones unless you look in the children’s section.

I wanted to find something that I couldn’t watch the whole of, and there were plenty of opportunities – but something that I noticed with almost every one of the selections was that they were all based around a toy or game. There was other ones like Spongebob which was original when it came out, but the LEGO Ninjago and Beyblade shows raised a bit more suspicion. I watched a few episodes from both of these shows, as well as the Super Mario Bros. Super Show (which I never remember being so awful) and it’s safe to say that these are just overblown ads, or as I'll refer to them, "mega-adverts".

What’s even funnier is that these were both very successful. The LEGO series has a third season in production as well as a feature-length film, and the Beyblade series ran for 3 seasons before dying out, then being revived over the past two years. The subliminal messaging in Beyblade is also laid on very thick – characters saying “Wow, I’d sure love to get my hands on THAT beyblade!” at least once or twice an episode, and even a sequence in which an announcer points into the ‘camera’ to address a large stadium and shouts something along the lines of “and YOU could be here too with your own beyblade!” .

As I scrolled through the other TV shows on offer, I only found more and more reasons to believe that companies are choosing children as the easiest way to get tons of money. Adverts during breaks in programs normally are only shown once every 15 or so minutes. By the time the children see the advert again, their attention span would have lapsed enough to forget it or ignore it. By making the entire program an advert the childrens’ attention will be entirely on the show – I remember always ignoring the adverts when watching some Tom and Jerry.

Unlike Beyblade, however, the Ninjago series has a running storyline which spans the entirety of 13 episodes and cleverly finishes on cliffhangers each time – to make sure they see how the story ends, children will tune in each week. And the fact that this happens means that children will be discussing the week’s episode at school, similar to how I remember always discussing the week’s Doctor Who or how the girls would talk about X Factor or I’m A Celebrity. This only reinforces their need to watch the next episode and their love of the show overall – and should a company put an advert for their product during the advert break for the show of that product, then children will notice it, go “Oh look, it’s Beyblade!” and pester their parents until they buy £50’s worth of toys which they can play with while the show is on.

But is it wrong to exploit children in this way? I believe not. In watching some of the shows, I admit that I actually enjoyed the LEGO show, as clichéd and simple as it was. The Beyblade show and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show were idiotic and rubbish (although the latter had the wrestler Lou Albano playing Mario, which was hilarious), but as I stated in my The Last Airbender ‘appreciation’ I absolutely love the Sonic the Hedgehog SatAM show (which is actually advertising a comic series rather than the games) for its excellent characters and surprisingly deep and emotional plot with themes of death and challenging the definition of freedom.

I think that these “mega-adverts” are the future of children’s broadcasting – it’s the most sensible option for making large profits, but with a rising crowd of decent-quality mega-adverts it’s possible that originality could overtake them at some point. Even if this doesn’t happen, mega-adverts have, in essence, no power – it’s up to the parent what the child does or doesn’t get, so unless adults get hooked on the shows there shouldn’t be much of a problem here.

But then comes the bronies...

The Cat in the Hat

When I was in my mum’s womb, my mum played Dr. Seuss audiobook tapes into her belly to stop me kicking. Because of this, I know One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Fox in Socks and Green Eggs in Ham almost off by heart. Growing up, I was consistently read these books as well but my least favourite of these was The Cat in the Hat – mostly because my mum named me Thing 1 and my sister Thing 2.

I loved the film adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, even if the Whos’ noses creeped me out. So, when I heard there was a The Cat in the Hat movie being made, I begged my mum to let me go (I was 7). It turns out that there were 2 The Cat in the Hat movies: one of them was a hand-drawn animated TV show which I never saw, but the one that haunted my young nightmares was the 2003 live-action adaptation with Mike Myers, Dakota Fanning and Spencer Breslin. I revisited this movie yesterday and found that it hasn’t lost any of its horror.

The world of the film is very colourful and lively, which appeals a lot to younger audiences, but very early on into the film the boss (‘Hank Humberfloom’) of the children’s mother (‘Joan’) literally screams in Joan’s face, which doesn’t fit into a children’s film at all – one would expect more of a lighthearted tone so early on in the film.

Joan has to leave her kids (Fanning and Breslin) with a terrible babysitter who makes them watch political television (in a kid’s film?) so when the children dispose of her The Cat (Mike Myers) appears at their door. Myers’ ability to make fun of himself infinitely is a point in favour of the movie but when he sees a picture hidden from the view of the audience and his hat springs up erect, I couldn’t help but think “In a kid’s film?”

The Fish was another character which I absolutely despised. In the book, I didn’t mind him, but the film’s CGI render of him frightened me hugely. His buggy eyes and lack of a nose meant that I never watched the film again (until yesterday). In fact, his design overall wasn’t appealing to children in the slightest nor was it representative of his character – in the book the Fish was plain and boring in conjunction with his ideas to stop the Cat’s lunacy. In the film it looks like the designers wanted to make a ‘cute’ Fish but it didn’t work – he only looked creepy.

The movie only gets worse from thebeginning. Thing 1 and Thing 2 just looked like blue-haired midgets and nothing more, there was a scene involving PARIS HILTON where the Cat takes the children through an underground club playing loud rock music (in a kids’ film?), and when complete chaos is released onto the world, there’s a short sequence where the Cat and the children are sliding down a slide when the action suddenly stops, the Cat turns to the camera, holds up a leaflet for Universal Studios (a theme park in Orlando, Florida) and says that there’s a Cat in the Hat ride that children can go on there. Mike pulls one of his trademark cheeky grins seen in the likes of Austin Powers, then the action un-pauses and continues.

It’s quite literally the most blatant and cheap form of advertising I’ve ever seen in a movie – and I thought Transformers was bad! I can’t begin to desicribe how utterly shocked I was when I saw this scene. I can perfectly well understand making a movie and maybe subliminally putting some adverts on a billboard which someone drives past – something which doesn’t stop the action – but pausing the action, confusing the viewers, then just shoving this advert down their throat is almost inexcusable.

Come to think of it, there are plenty of ‘pulp fiction’ (not the excellent movie, the literary term) movies and TV shows that rely on blatant advertising to make profits. In fact, lots of TV shows – especially kids’ shows – ARE just huge adverts. Take the recent Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated show that ran on Cartoon Network – or maybe the LEGO shows which have been running recently – or for girls, the My Little Pony or Care Bears shows. Compared to some old Nickelodeon shows like Ren and Stimpy or Hey Arnold! or The Wild Thornberries...

Even shows for adults could be seen as giant adverts. One that springs to mind is Game of Thrones, which just begs people to buy the books to read on and find out more with the year-long gaps between seasons. And hilariously, the enormous The Walking Dead has action figures despite being aimed at adults – in an adult’s show?

Is everything nowadays an easy way to get money?

Avatar - The Last Disappointment

In our Media Studies lesson today Max commented on the heavy use of medium shots in Doctor Who being because 'that's what Hollywood does'.

Not Shyamalan.

Also known as Shyamalamdingdong and 'How do you even say that?', Shyamalan delivered plenty of nightmares in The Sixth Sense, so when I heard he was behind the film adaptation of Avatar: The Legend of Aang I was thoroughly pleased, hoping that his masterfully terrifying understanding of when viewers were least expecting fear would translate well to create a faithful recreation of one of the most beloved cartoons of all time.

Now for a history lesson. When I was very young, around 5 or 6, every Thursday my mum would take me up to my Aunt's house. Every Christmas, she would throw our letters to Santa into the fire then throw some powder in after, turning the fire a brilliant blue colour. But that was not my favourite reason for going to my Aunt's - in fact, it was Tom and Jerry, which she had 6 VHS tapes of. Quickly it became my favourite cartoon and it remains as such today because of the nostalgic value each cartoon gives me. Second place is a draw between the Sonic the Hedgehog SatAM cartoons, a surprisingly dark and at some times disturbing depiction of the battle for control of the planet, and Avatar: The Legend of Aang.

Avatar was a rare breed - a drama for children that had some pretty mature themes in - war, love, and balance, not to mention family -  which still succeeded in captivating its audience with each oncoming episode whether they were children or adults: it was a show that it was hard to dislike. The series even had a dubious sense of historical reference with the Fire Nation's attack representing Japan's aggression towards China prior to WWII. And if you were a follower, it was impossible not to lip-sync the series' intro every time.

The series got a sequel in The Legend of Korra, but people still think The Legend of Aang is far superior because of its infinitely loveable characters, the individual episodes being so unique, and of course the epic fight sequences involving fast-paced elemental bending.

Then Shyamalan came along and suggested the idea of a live-action adaptation of the first season with a possibility for a sequel, and nickelodeon wet their pants with anticipation of a reception as large as The Spongebob Movie's. And so did the audiences when they saw the movie's opening sequence - faithful to the original, with the four elements being displayed by four benders in precisely the same way the show presented it. I remember how excited I was to see these four short clips that so accurately followed the show and I couldn't wait for more. Little did I know that this would be the exact opposite I would want to wait for.

Then appears a bunch of text explaining the basics of the world of this film with a handy voiceover to make it less of a chore - but already I noticed that it wasn't following the intro like it could have done for a much more concise and interesting way to show this information. After this, the camera fades down from black to reveal the South Pole, the home of a surprising amount of wood considering there are no trees. Oh wait! Those are the actors?

Just two lines in and the actors have already told us too much. Firstly, Sokka, the comic relief character from the show who's always strived to prove to his Dad his maturity, is now not only a brick wall but also has the attitude of one. Sokka is the complete opposite of what he was in the show - in the show, Katara, his sister, drops water on him, leading to him yelling at her in a sarcastic and silly way, but here he stands up, walks over to Katara, grabs her hands, and tells her to 'Stop doing that stuff around me' in what is now the completely characteristic monotone of the comic relief character. Katara, on the other hand, is also the complete opposite of her TV counterpart - she drops water on Sokka in the show and he yells, and she just giggles. Here, she apologizes multiple times almost sounding as if it's out of fear of Sokka. In the show, she's typically represented as an independent and mentally strong young lady who can kick some butt if she feels the need to, including that of her brother, but here she's shown as weak and vulnerable.

Things only go downhill. Now we have more exposition from Katara in the form of a voiceover before they discover Aang on a greenscreen set (the greenscreen is so badly done for a big-budget film like this that you have to wonder what editing software they used - probably Windows Movie Maker). Along with Aang is his Sky Bison, Appa, who in the show is a hugely important character, where his capture leads to one of the most touching side-stories in the entire series. To build up to this immense moment the entirety of Season 1, which this film covers, is spent with Appa in every episode to help the audience get a strong and positive liking of him. And this point brings me onto one of the biggest complaints of the entire movie.

The movie skips out some of the best and most important parts of the first season. The biggest of these is entirely focused on what a lot of people consider is the best episode of the series in The Storm - an episode where Aang and his pursuer/enemy Zuko's backstories are juxtaposed to show viewers how similar they are, which leads up to Aang's rescue from a Fire Nation prison by a mysterious masked figure called the Blue Demon. Although this rescue is shown in the film, not included is one of the best and most important fight sequences in the entire series which involves a spectacular crossing from one prison wall to another using three enormous ladders. In the film, there is a fight sequence, although as I'll talk about these are massively underwhelming. After the pair's escape, the Blue Demon's mask is knocked off, revealing that he is actually Zuko in a classic Shyamalan "what a twist!" moment. Yet the emotional impact is nowhere near as powerful as the show where the astonishing similarities between them had been revealed and the power of their teamwork been accentuated so massively - especially when the show includes a short scene when Zuko awakens to realize that Aang has saved him too and a short reflection by Aang that the two aren't really as different as they make themselves. In the movie, this scene is cut out and Zuko is left in the woods.

The best part about this short sequence where Aang is rescued is the obligatory Shyamalan cameo, and hilariously it's because he's the best actor in the film. Admittedly the actor from Slumdog Millionaire as Zuko was nowhere near as bad as the others but it still felt like he didn't try.

Another sequence that got changed a bit too much is a small part involving an Earth Nation village which has been taken over by Firebenders. Haru is presented as a love interest for Katara which makes Aang jealous, but he helps Haru to rescue his earthbending father who is being held prisoner in a huge metal ship - as far from any earth to bend as possible. Of course, this is in the TV show and the film gives us the typical lack-of-effort approach by not thinking and imprisoning earthbenders in a camp SURROUNDED BY EARTH. Not only was this a weird change but Haru is now a small child, making any potential for romantic thoughts about him quite illegal.

Then it comes to the fight scene where Aang tells all the earthbenders (who, according to Toph, Aang's earthbending teacher in the show, are stubborn and solid like the earth) to stop laying around when there's earth to bend in what might be the most sensible line of dialogue in the movie, aside from the thousand or so lines of exposition that everybody watching the film already knew because they watched the show too. Anyway, the fight begins in quite possibly the funniest synchronised dance routine ever where a large group of benders stomp a bit which makes a medium-sized rock float in the air before another punches it to send it flying at a single soldier. Meanwhile, the firebenders stand around and pick their noses.

Shyamalan spent too much time worrying about how things would work out because the bending in the show had the endless capacity to be fluid because of the animation medium yet the CGI, in places, works out fantastically well - if only it looked authentic. Shyamalan thought that by having huge-scale choreography he would appeal to fans by making the fights look more epic than they already were. Unfortunately this decision was bad and it makes the film's action sequences (of which there are far too little) look more like a bunch of people flailing around and another bunch doing nothing at all.

Going into detail about the rest of the film will do nothing except appear to be the angry rants of a disillusioned fanboy and while it's true that I am by far an Avatar fanboy I am anything but disillusioned about this film and its horrific mutilation of a fantastic show. All that I have left to say about the movie is that its casting director Douglas Aibel needs to have chosen actors which can at least understand the characters they represent instead of just picking people off the street that look vaguely like the characters from the show.

If there was one thing I had to credit this film for, it's that it ended.

What did I learn from this film?
1) Don't give a beloved series to a director on an imdb list called "Please do us all a favour and quit your job"
2) Don't make a TV series into a film - it doesn't work
3) Don't hire actors with no acting experience at all when you have $150 million to spend
4) Don't deviate from the source material if you want to keep fans happy
5) Don't make any more Avatar films please

Luther

Yesterday evening at 5pm I started watching the TV drama Luther on Netflix and found to my surprise that it was 00:15 when I stopped. I thoroughly enjoyed the show and it's sick and twisted cast of characters in the roles of the villains, not to mention the police forces and Luther himself. The drama is a lot more serious than other BBC dramas I have previously watched like Doctor Who and Merlin, for the obvious reason that this is catered for a much more mature audience.

In the first episode the character of Luther is introduced and summarized in just one short sequence, and already the viewer gets the feeling that they know enough about the character to feel acquainted with them, unlike Game of Thrones where (possibly because of the huge number of major characters) it takes a very long time, in some cases even more than one season, to get a similar knowledge of any particular character. Luther is seen as caring more about the job and the lives of innocents more than the lives or dignity of criminals, in one case deliberately resulting in the death of a criminal. In a Sherlock Holmes-esque way Luther appears to be one step ahead of all of his colleagues, but unlike Holmes he has vulnerabilities that his enemies sometimes exploit, such as his wife with whom he has marital problems, leading to him exposing another weakness in his anger outbursts.

But the more interesting characters are the criminals, with each oncoming one presenting a different and often deadly challenge to Luther - find a woman before her blood is drained or release a killer's father from prison or else policemen will die by the masses. The most interesting, though, is a woman called Alice whom Luther has a bitter relationship with - he has plenty of evidence to know that she killed her parents but her knowledge of his vulnerabilities allows her to exploit him into not arresting her. She spends her time investigating as to why Luther allowed a criminal to die, but her methods often lead Luther to get increasingly frustrated with her.

What I didn't like, however, is the seemingly isolated episodes. Like Doctor Who, there is a persistent theme that shows in each episode - in this case being Alice - but each story seems to be detached and this, in my opinion, detaches the viewer from the world of the series. Although the location is well-known and understood both the large gaps between episodes and the constantly changing locations of murders it's harder to absorb yourself in the world than with The Walking Dead, where the location remains the same even across multiple series (Series 3 and the trailer for Series 4 both mostly take place in the prison). In Doctor Who, the isolated stories are less reliant on immersing the viewers into their worlds usually because they take place on alien worlds or exotic locations, with the exception of some on Earth (although some of these episodes, like The Empty Child which gave me many a nightmare as a kid, are two-parters, or are set in one persistent location like Blink, where the characters remain almost exclusively in an abandoned house).

From Luther I think that I have learned that immersion can only be achieved with consistent flow, so keeping a familiar or repeated location will help to absorb viewers into the world of a piece. Also, I learned that first impressions can be very important in constructing a character's representation for the entirety of a piece so to allow the characters to be able to be sympathised with by an audience they should remain the same as they have done from the beginning, because of how important early judgments can be.

Late Bloomers

While I was on holiday in Holland and wasn’t snowboarding or biking everywhere, I found a couple of English-language channels on my villa’s TV and spent a good deal of time watching various TV shows and movies on it. I watched Perfect Sense, a film with a good concept which ironically made no sense at all; Friends with Kids, a very slow-paced romcom about having a child and not being married; and Late Bloomers, a 2011 comedy drama film by French director Julie Gavras.

Late Bloomers is the film I remember most about, which is odd as I felt like not paying attention to most of the film would not have made any difference to understanding the plot. The film is about a married couple reaching their sixties and worrying about becoming old, or ‘zombies’ as the male protagonist, Adam (played by William Hurt), describes it. His wife Mary (played by Isabella Rossellini) accepts the change and begins to make reforms to their lifestyles, much to the displeasure of her husband.

The film has some ingeniously funny moments in it. Mary worries that she is getting Alzheimer’s but her doctor tells her she is not and to stay active, making her take part in aqua-aerobics. Compared to the ridiculously over-the-top male instructor and the mid-to-late-20s women in the pool with her, attempts to keep up with everything leads to a hilarious scene of aimlessly flailing foam tubes around. This scene is mostly focused on the facial expressions of Mary, however, which are very funny – the acting is definitely very strong and scenes like this benefit from it. Another memorable scene involves the couple in bath together. While Adam appears to be unaware, Mary has installed wall bars.

The film stands out as very different from typical movies with very long shots usually encompassing the entirety of the scene – in the bath scene that I detailed above, the entire scene is one shot. Not only is this style not usually used in popular films (the publisher was the Gaumont Film Company who have housed directors such as Hitchcock previously and are responsible for the highest-grossing film in France, Intouchables), but the soundtrack is also very atypical. As most of the film is focused around the drama aspects and there is less focus on the comedy, the light-hearted soundtrack feels out of place, especially during a funeral which Mary is late to get to.

Like I just said, the film is more focused on the drama aspect, making it more like a chore to watch than anything else. One scene that stood out as too long and too boring (and almost entirely pointless) was a scene in which Mary invites a social group of elderly men and women into her house, taking Adam by surprise. The intention of the scene was presumably to make Adam understand more about old age life and make him more amiable to the concept but most of what the old people said was anecdotal and offered nothing to the story at all. The scene was almost 10 minutes of people exchanging stories, followed by a laugh and a bad attempt at a smile by Adam, before it ended suddenly and these people aren’t seen again in the movie save one very short scene.

In conclusion, the movie was a bit too boring for my tastes, but I did enjoy the comedy scenes, as the acting was good. Yet still, in my opinion the music didn’t fit and there was too many pointless scenes, which overall gives me mixed feelings about it.

By watching this movie I reinforced the same idea that I learned from Sinister – that plot progression needs to happen at a consistent pace so that viewers can enjoy it more. Secondly, I discovered that strong acting can really benefit in a movie in which most of the comedy is visual. Lastly, I found that sometimes the subtleties of mise-en-scene (like the wall bars in the bathroom) can also be helpful for adding certain effects to the scene or putting a message through to the audience that the characters in the film are deliberately unaware of, similar to the ‘it’s behind you’ pantomime cliché that I noticed in Sinister, although to a different effect.

My First Post

Here we are! My first post and first piece of individual study regarding Media for this year will be focused around the 2012 horror movie Sinister, directed by Scott Derrickson, also known for directing the critically panned 2008 remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. I watched this film this evening and, as a fan of other horror movies such as The Blair Witch Project, Hostel and The Sixth Sense I found that Sinister was a bit boring.

The plot revolves around an author discovering some Super 8 films in his new house that depict various murders by an unseen antagonist. As the film progresses the author becomes more and more paranoid. He then discovers a mysterious message, pointing the finger for these murders at Mr. Boogie, an unknown and malevolent figure that appears in the backgrounds of photos and seems very similar to the Slender Man myth, which in some incarnations is better done than this movie, in my opinion (for example the Marble Hornets YouTube channel, an ongoing series of short videos documenting the journey of a young director whose friend vanishes and his search to discover the truth behind it).

Despite being boring the film relied on traditional methods such as super-low lighting to add suspense, and the although the murder tapes aren't Tokyo Gore Police disgusting they still feel unnerving to watch. Even while the author is talking on the telephone one of the images of Mr. Boogie is displayed on his laptop screen, adding an unsettling feeling to such a normal day-to-day activity. The suspense helps you to empathise with the author. Another technique that I feel always makes the watcher feel scared is the use of slow panning, especially in a 180 degree radius. In one shot, the author is leading a police officer out of his house but as he turns around to face his front door the camera pans around too, which definitely made me scared of what might be behind him, as the fear of the unseen ghosts was what gave me nightmares after watching The Sixth Sense when I was younger.

However as the movie reaches the half-way point jump scares begin to get used to get some cheap screams from the viewers, like after watching a silent film where an unknown cameraman moves a lawnmower out onto the back garden, then walks it for half a minute, then a sudden screaming noise is heard when the cameraman moves the lawnmover onto a bound woman's face. Another cliché which gets massively overused is the "it's behind you" pantomime-style cliché where the author is focused on a dog facing him where some of the murdered victims stand behind him.

But the film spends too much time in between the scary sequences. One example of this is the 5 minutes of exposition with a local professor about a symbol seen in each tape. And although the scenes involving the author's family are necessary for making the impact of these tapes feel more significant, I believe that because the family of the author are more like supporting cast rather than main characters these scenes drag on a bit, and horror movie watches don't always want to see it. For example, The Blair Witch Project has plenty of moments where there is a lot of character development between the three central characters and I believe that because each of these three characters have been focused on equally since the start of the movie the characters are therefore more interesting to learn about, especially when one of the characters mysteriously vanishes, followed by horrifying screams in the darkness, then the discovery of his ear in a bundle. In this film, because the author is the only central character, there cannot be any shocking revelation like this.

The last half-hour of the film is even more boring as the conclusion takes far too long to get to. Bizarre cross cuts to a scene of a ladder along with a loud scratching sound effect seems a little clichéd, and a scene in the attic where a group of supposedly dead children look at the author then place their fingers on their lips is almost laughably cheesy. Then the horror ends again, and some more time is wasted watching the author research the mysterious symbol he'd seen before and talk to the professor again, then more time is spent watching the tapes. Finally, with 10 minutes left until the end of the film, there's a small but predictable twist, then the film ends with a shot of the tapes in the attic where they were originally found, then a jumpscare before the credits roll.

Overall, I think my experience with other suspense horrors like The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project and The Thing has allowed me to see the flaws in this movie, but I would still recommend it to someone interested in horror movies or similar myths like the Slender Man myth, although The Blair Witch Project would be first in my mind when considering good suspenseful horror movies.

From the movie I think I learned that in order to keep viewers interested there has to be consistent plot progression in some way or another. Another thing I learned is the potential use of panning shots in unusual situations which can add suspense. Finally, I also learned that although ending the movie with a jumpscare does lead to a few laughs, it's not a very good way to end a movie.