"Drunken Country Folk" was officially screened, announcing that another big player has been added to the awards season competition, although Lan Li is in full swing filming "Interstellar" in Iceland, and completely missed the pre-promotion of "Drunken Country Folk", but this has not affected the movie's screening frenzy at all, and it has made a brilliant debut with the attitude of creating a single box office history!

As an art film, it is destined to be incomparable with commercial films in the North American weekend box office battle, but "Drunken Country Ballad" has successfully occupied a place in the North American weekend box office charts in the second week of December, coupled with the miracle of "gravity" is still on the list, the appeal of Blue Rite in the entire North American film market is needless to say.

In the face of such a good result, Sony Classics not only did not get carried away, but became more and more cautious, which requires an understanding of the release strategy of Sony Classics this year.

As we all know, the awards season is a long process, and every film distribution company will cast a wide net, starting from the Cannes Film Festival in the first half of the year, the seeded players have been included in its portfolio, until the Telluride Film Festival as a temporary comma, although there are still occasional dark horses after this, but after all, there are a minority, and most of the final winners of the Oscars will come from the previous range.

In other words, each distribution company will have multiple productions that will impact the awards season, and the Weinstein brothers are the most popular, and they may even have more than 20 productions in their hands, and then travel to major film festivals, eliminate them step by step based on word-of-mouth and feedback, and finally select their own seeded players before and after the Golden Globes:

Top seed, No. 2 seed. Occasionally, there may be a third seed, but basically two seeded players are selected, and further PR is carried out according to the competition for each award, such as "Iron Lady" all the PR is focused on the heroine, and "Midnight in Paris" all the focus is on the best original screenplay, and only a very small number of works can compete for multiple awards.

This is why people always say that "nomination depends on strength, and winning awards depends on luck", because in the process of college public relations, strength and quality have become secondary factors, and the distribution company and the public relations company will inevitably have a focus after weighing the interests, and some outstanding works may not be the most suitable for public relations marketing, or the parties are not good at public relations marketing, then they will inevitably become outcasts, and the nomination has been capped.

Harvey Weinstein was decisive and collected a large number of works under his banner early, but after the New York Film Festival, he began to abandon his sons, and many of his works were abandoned without even having a chance to enter December for public relations, and Harvey gave up and was completely ignored.

For commercial films, even if no one cares, they are still displayed on the shelves of theaters or video tapes after all, and for art films, once they are abandoned, then they are really dark and no one knows, and even industry professionals may not be able to know the existence of these works, let alone ordinary audiences?

For independent film art creators, being given up by Harvey is basically equivalent to all their previous efforts being nullified. Life is better than death.

Of course, from a business point of view, Xavi's decision is understandable, and this is why he was able to succeed. But without human touch and artistic taste, when everything is reduced to commercial numbers, artistic creation will be useless, and the quality of the finished film will naturally decline.

In recent years, even the Hollywood industry has expressed serious dissatisfaction with Harvey, but Harvey is good at dancing with long sleeves and is exquisite, and he will never easily offend those bigwigs, and those weak people who have been oppressed have no way to complain, so he has become more and more dominant. Now many distribution companies are secretly uniting to help each other and support each other, hoping to break through Harvey's blockade above the Oscars and win a little breathing space.

Back to the Sony classic.

This year's Sony Classics awards season preparations can only be said to be mediocre, with the Weinstein brothers in front of them, and Focus Pictures and Fox Searchlights in the back, Sony Classics since 2010 The awards season work has gradually been in a deadlock, unable to make a breakthrough In 2011, there were two leading works of "A Farewell" and "Midnight in Paris", and in 2012, there were only four works left: "Love in Rome", "Chile Says No", "Love" and "Looking for Little Sugar Man".

Quantitatively, 2012 was better than 2011, but why is it still a step backwards?

In 2012, in addition to Woody Allen, who has always worked with Sony Classics for a long time, the other three works are all foreign language works, and even the "Love" that later shined on the Oscars, the reason why Sony Classics was able to win was also because this work was not favored in the early stage of the Cannes Film Festival, and they took the lead in winning the North American distribution rights in front of their competitors.

Just a year ago, "A Farewell" swept all the most important awards at the Berlin Film Festival, and Sony Classics still easily beat all competitors to win strongly, but now their situation is getting more and more difficult.

It can't be said to be down, but Sony Classics really needs to find a breakthrough: otherwise, how can Sony Classics be willing to cooperate with Sisyphus Pictures, which has no qualifications or any experience, and preemptively win the co-production rights of "Burst Drummer"?

So far, only four seeded players in Sony's classic awards season list are shabby compared to the Weinstein brothers, who easily grabbed the distribution rights of double-digit works, and what is even more bleak is that three of the four seeded works are all related households.

Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine" and 2008's "Midnight in Barcelona" were the final installments of the awards season between Woody and Weinstein Pictures, and since then, starting with 2009's "Anything Goes," all of Woody's productions have been distributed by Sony Classics, and the two sides have signed a long-term partnership agreement.

Asghar Farhadi's "past", two years ago's "A Parting" was the first collaboration between the two parties, and Sony Classics successfully pushed this work to the throne of Best Foreign Language Film, and also received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and the pleasant experience facilitated this time again.

Richard Linklater's "Love Before Midnight", in the past few years, Richard has never had a fixed partner, every time it is a small-budget independent work, and then looking for a distributor after completion, but when Richard made "Love Before Dawn", this work was released by Sony Classics.

Finally, there's the Coen brothers' "Drunken Country Ballad".

It's clear that Sony Classics isn't in a good state right now, but the positive is that as a result, they're focusing all their energy on these four titles, and the Academy's PR resources are more concentrated, which is a good thing for the awards season. What's more, the focus of the four works should be different.

"Blue Jasmine" focuses on Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress, and "Past" focuses on Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actress, but the PR resources of the latter's heroine Bejenice Beccio are clearly behind the former's female number one, Cate Blanchett, and "Love Before Midnight" focuses on the best adapted screenplay.

As for "Drunken Country Ballads", judging from the current reputation and momentum, awards such as Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress can all compete for a look, which is bound to become the highlight of this year's awards season for Sony Classics.

Now, with such an excellent response from the first week of screenings, the PR and publicity departments need to be more cautious, and if the pace of expansion is wrong, it can easily ruin the future of an awards season work. The higher the expectation, the more careful planning and calculation are required.

In the third week of December, after careful consideration, Sony Classics still did not expand in a hurry, and cautiously adjusted the pace, expanding from four theaters to eight, only adding one city in Los Angeles, but the number of theaters is still concentrated in New York, with a full seven theaters, while Los Angeles has only one

Greenwich Village's Folk Tale of Petty Bourgeoisie, Can Los Angeles Accept It?

The East Coast and the West Coast have always had different tastes in art and culture, not to mention the obscure genre like folk, and even the rap and hip-hop that are popular in the United States have an atmosphere of "East Coast" and "West Coast" and have been debated for many years, let alone the preferences of movies.

Adopting such a careful screening strategy is nothing more than hoping that professional and senior fans can enter the theater as soon as possible, and then interpret and evaluate the movie, bringing more praise, so that other ordinary audiences can be psychologically prepared, and even have more in-depth understanding of the movie in advance, paving the way for subsequent expansion.

Sony Classics is obviously worried that the "negative" word-of-mouth will spread too quickly, so it is only then that the number of theaters is tightly controlled.

Veteran movie fans in Los Angeles have expressed strong dissatisfaction, isn't it obvious that they look down on them? Are they not as good as New York? Or do they think they are only suitable for watching popcorn? But after all, there are no further complaints: a theater chain is better than nothing, isn't it?

In contrast, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and other cities still need to be patient, and a small number of avid fans in Los Angeles have been very lucky.

Interestingly, this week, the North American film market began to be lively again, with the official debut of "The Hobbit 2" in terms of commercial blockbusters, and the star-studded "American Hustle" and "Big Dreamer" screenings in terms of artworks.

Judging from the box office of a single museum, Sony's classic screening strategy has obviously achieved results:

For the second week in a row, "Drunken Country Ballads" has once again written history!