Is there an audience for Aussie genre flicks ? You betcha ! [taken from Arts Hub] : Babadook: sweet numbers on first weekend DAVID TILEY WEDNESDAY 28 MAY, 2014 Heres a knock down, straight up good news story about box office for an Australian feature film in its domestic market. This story is about The Babadook. Written and directed by Jennifer Kent, produced by Kristina Ceyton and Kristian Moliere, Babadook is best described by its wonderful trailer. Look it up on YouTube. Last weekend it hit the Australian cinemas in a classic boutique release at the hands of Richard Moore of Umbrella Entertainment. So far, on twelve screens, it has taken $86,538 which boils down to $7211/screen. That is an excellent number to take back to exhibitors and he can confirm that the film will get the prime sessions it needs for the next week. “It is right slap bang in the middle of expectations,” Moore said. Kristian Moliere is equally happy. “For a limited release in Australian, these figures are really good,” he said. And Monday and Tuesday have added another fourteen and a bit thousand. We are getting solid feedback – people are emailing and texting to say they couldn’t get into sessions.” We are grimly used to Australian films that can do well in the local market, and almost no business outside the country. Red Dog is the classic example. The Babadook has already avoided that disappointment. With a budget which seems to be something over $2m, producer Kristian Moliere already knows the returns will make substantial inroads on the production investment, once the overseas presales hit the bank. With E1 as sales agent, it did well on the back of the critical and audience success generated by Sundance. The North American rights went to IFC Midnight, Icon has the UK, and Wild Bunch bought France, Germany and Switzerland. In other words, The Babadook is sitting right at that sweet point where a lower budget genre film can create returns to investors from presales, but is also a satisfying, intelligent arthouse film at the same time. Some of the breaks are beyond the control of producers, as no-one can bank on key platforms like Sundance, and success here does not always translate into a breakout. But Moliere credits “the way that Jennifer [Kent] directed the film, and understood her audience and who she was trying to speak to, and making the film feel universal. She made deliberate decisions abut making the actors speak neutrally. The deliberate choice of colour palette and the overall look and feel of the film make it less Australian and more European.” Part of encouraging Australian box office story also turns on an accident. Essie Davis, the central performer, is a Tasmanian. Said Kristian, “After the Logies, she spent a week there with her parents, and did a couple of Q&As with cinemas in Tassie. We got tremendous support from The Mercury which gave it five stars. At Umbrella’s suggestion we opened three weeks earlier than the rest of the country. That one Tasmanian cinema brought in around $16,000 in the first couple of weeks.” That number builds the box office so far to $69,000. What happens if we look at the returns in more detail, and also pull out those cinemas where it did not perform so well? In NSW, with the Dendy Newtown, the Chauvel and the Palace Canberra, the average is $5,286. In Queensland, at the Barracks Palace, it is up to $4500. In Adelaide, in the East End Nova, it took $7500/screen, spot on the average. The Peth figures are the same. In Melbourne – not the film’s home town – the Nova and Kino, with the State in Hobart, delivered a cool $12,500/screen. [That is probably a distortion, including the early release in Tasmania]. This could suggest two completely different scenarios. The Babadook could settle into those key cinemas and run for some time, or its entire audience has already raced out to see it. Either way, Moore admitted that the prints and advertising budget is under six figures. “The poster graphics lend themselves to rock and roll posters, he said. We figure the audience for this is not going to be traditional. We are running a strong social media campaign with some assistance from Screen Australia who have given us a loan, and it seems to be working really well.” Umbrella is kicking the campaign along with another release of street posters. Thousands? No, said Richard, “We are doing a couple of hundred more in each city.” Antonia Olthof is the marketing co-ordinator for Umbrella, for whom social media is a personal passion. “We live in a secular society, but we have an inherent need for community. That is why this film is working so well – it has created that sense of community.” The key to her social media campaign is Google AdWords. They tested the basic terms very carefully, and ended up with key generic words for the category, but restricted to computers which were within ten miles of a cinema. “Over 92% of the visitors to the Babadook website came as a result of that campaign,” she explained. “Phase one was to drive people towards the website and the trailer. Now that the film has been released, the AdWords campaign is directing people specifically to their local cinemas. “ Umbrella has a Facebook page, but that turns out mostly to serve a hard core genre audience, and Babadook has much wider appeal. So they set up a page for the theatrical arm, Umbrella Films. 95% of that traffic is for Babadook, providing reviews, session times, titbits of entertainment and fragments to read. They are sharing the use of the Babadook Facebook page, but almost all the traffic to that comes from overseas, sustaining the audiences for the presold territories. The guesstimate for the Umbrella readership is around 5000, the international site has 3500, of which 800 are Australian. “This did not come by accident,” she said. “We were certainly lucky – it’s a great product, with universal themes and the buzz started at Sundance – but when it came to the actual campaign, every move was carefully planned.” Behind that is her underlying feeling that an intelligent horror film, that reaches into the shared experience of parents and children, creates an emotional space that people want to share. That creates evangelists, to use a buzzword of the craft. Social media can be a cynical space, with fake reviews and inducements to support products. Is that part of her armoury? “Absolutely not,” she said. “I would never do that.” “Besides, there is absolutely no need. We went looking for hostile comments, but there are none. And the only reviews we put up are reputable.”
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 08:58:45 +0000