Blog Post #2: Beyond Finishing the Game: a Look at Asian American Grassroots Outreach
- In Beyond Finishing the Game: a Look at Asian American Grassroots Outreach, by John Fong, he states that the biggest challenge for Asian American cinema is finding a way for people to hear about it so that they will be intrigued to watch it. They have learned a way in which it is possible to do so, while it being affordable as well and this is through reaching out to communities and using them as an approach for marketing and getting the word out about these films.
- An example that Fong gives to us where they used this strategy is in a Filipino American indie movie called The Debut. “Cajayon and producer John Castro spent several weeks in the Bay Area before the opening doing an immense amount of meetings and presentations to the area’s largest Filipino population, the target audience for the film” (6). They wanted to include the particular population in which could have related to the movie the most so that they would be more willing to watch it and this led to them going out of their way to find that population and converse with them about the film. This was related to an email newsletter that would send notifications to people when films would be coming out so they would be aware of when to watch it and their goal with this was to help increase the first weekend box office numbers so that trend would continue in following weekends (5). In the reading, it was explained how this strategy was very effective and they continued to use it along with creating other strategies that were more complex and effective. The complexity showed in the campaign for the film Better Luck Tomorrow, where they created a massive campaign that focused on the controversy the film portrayed. This led to young Asian Americans becoming intrigued due to their interest in being apart of a movement in which they could relate to, which is what the movie was about (8). The campaigns led them to want to be apart of something that stood up for their beliefs and that’s what that movie portrayed so this led to a larger amount of people watching the film.
- In this reading, Fong continuously uses the word grassroots in relation to the campaigns that were being used for the release of these films targeted towards a particular community. In this case, the films’ campaigns targeted the Asian American community because of their representation in these films.
- Crazy Rich Asians is the first film in 25 years to have an all-asian cast and many different people have been seeing it due to the movement it portrays relating to diversity. Similar to the film, Better Luck Tomorrow, this movie had a great turnout relating to the type of movement it portrayed in the film. Crazy Rich Asians was meant to be a movie that was shown on Netflix, and that company offered the makers of Crazy Rich Asians a large profit, but they turned it down because they knew that a movie that portrayed this type of movement had to be shown in theatres and now that it is out, it has been very successful with $25.2 million at theaters in North America in the first weekend alone.
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