Just like what John Fong states in his article, “Having a film in a theater doesn’t necessarily mean people will be sitting there watching it”, one of the hardest parts for the Asian American filmmakers is to earn more audiences. In this article, Fong mainly argues the methods did/do the Asian American filmmakers used for getting more potential audiences, which are mainly the Asian American grassroots community, how these brought Asian American films to where it is today, and the reason of why the filmmakers are doing it in these ways which is mainly because of the limited resources and money they have.
Fong uses many Asian American films as his support evidence, the most impressive one to me is how the film The Debut using a good timing at the “Closing Night of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as a kick off (Fong 6)”, the immense meetings presentations to the target audiences (the Filipinos), the massive email advertising, film stars meeting with audiences…and so on. It’s not hard to imagine how these were like when Fong listing the specific methods the filmmakers used for letting more target audiences know about their film before it released. Fong indicates:”Amidst calls to rally around the historic moment of a Filipino American film being released in the US, and a genuine interest in individuals wanting to be a part of something, something special did happen, and the rest is history (Fong 6)”. After giving all the examples, this analysis strongly persuades readers why and how the advertising methods worked so successfully which brought filmmakers “over $1 million in the box office”.
The key term Fong uses in his article is the “big first weekend”, derived from another key term — “APA First Weekend Club”, email newsletters inform target audiences about the releasing time of Asian American films. “Big first weekend” means to earn a huge box office on the film’s first weekend of release, so that it can ensure they have enough money to hold more releases of this movie in the future.
The strategies Fong argues remind me a recent movie — “Crazy Rich Asians”. The method the “Crazy-Rich-Asian” filmmakers used to reach the target audiences is very similar to what Fong writes in his article. For example, the actress Michelle Yeoh who participate in one of the main roles in this film is a Chinese Malaysian who is very well-known in Chinese film markets while other actors/actresses are not. As the growth of globalization, films are not only earning box office from one country but to all the courses where it could earn a lot. China as a country with a large population, most people in China have money and time to watch movies as many as they like to. So the movie was introduced by many famous bloggers on Weibo, which is a very popular Chinese social media like the Twitter to the U.S. a long time ago before it’s going to release. The bloggers mainly mentioned the participant of Michelle Yeoh to gain people’s attention. I’m a Chinese and I knew this film from Weibo since the end of the April.
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