Blog Post 2: Beyond Finishing the Game

(Number represent what paragraph quote was found)

1. In John Fong’s blog, “Beyond Finishing The Game: A Look At Asian Americans Grassroots Outreach”, he discusses the biggest challenge Asian Americans cinema faces, access to the people. He argues how throughout the years Asian American films have had a difficult time in marketing and outreach because of barriers they face, and one of the main reason he believes is because large companies aren’t funding the marketing. After explaining the problem, Fong talks about how they were able to overcome this obstacle and spread the word on their film through grassroots.
2. John Fong backs up his argument on how Asian American films are not able to market their film because of they are”not flush with cash reserves” (Fong 3). The reason behind their low budget for marketing is because large companies are “reluctant to invest dollars in releasing a film in a market that they don’t know much about” (Fong 2). The way films crew grew support was through the community. All Asian American films one way or another “employ an aggressive grassroots strategy” to be able to fund their marketing (Fong 4). He then gives several examples of films that were able to fund their budget and have access to the people’s eyes. An example being the movie “The Debut” in which their crew and staff spent “several weeks in the Bay Area before the opening doing an immense amount of meetings and presentations” (Fong 8).
3. The main term that is brought on by Fong is the term “grassroots”. Grassroots definition is essentially the most basic level of an organization. In terms of grassroots in Asian America cinema, these grassroots were held within the community. The grassroots that the film’s crew and staff practiced are events such as “campus visits, connections with community-based organizations, opening night parties, entire screenings bought out by employee groups” and many more was done in their effort to bring attention to their film (Fong 5).
4. As mentioned before Asian films have had trouble in getting their movie out to the community. The blog post was written in 2007, and truth is I have never heard of many Asian American films either. It was not until recently where the film “Crazy Rich Asians” was coming to many theaters. This shows the progress that these films have made since then. It is also the first all Asian cast film that has been created in Hollywood, so this makes it an even better achievement in cinema.