Sunday, October 3, 2010

ATPS: Chapters 7 & 8

James R. Quirk was ahead of his time! He did a lot for not only the magazine industry but for the film industry as well. He also sought what was best for the magazine, Photoplay, in terms of making a dollar. He contributed to making the film industry more a respectable medium. While he was trying to make Photoplay the dominant magazine, he was reshaping the movie going audience and tried to make the audience sellable. Thus instead of enforcing stereotypes he showed a gender mixed middle class audience, that was recession proof, and open to being influenced by what they saw on screen and in magazines. He was definitely a genius and new how to market. She also mentions that he started the tradition of best film, I mean come on this guy was making huge strides in the magazine industry, but also was helping out the film industry be seen as more legit. It makes me look at marketing now and how people are constantly coming up with new ways to target current audiences and ways to find new audiences. Now audiences are being tracked through Internet clicks and it is becoming a lot easier to target not only an audience but also individuals.

Everything mentioned in these two articles seemed so obvious and simple, however back then it was fresh and new. When Mary Pickford was questioning whether or not to give rights to a cosmetic agency for using her name. For $500 she took the deal even while she thought she could get more! C’mon Ms. Pickford, you could have done better. Also, studios paying actors on how much fan mail they received was something that I was not aware of as old studio salary practices. I think this is pretty cool, but don’t know how they actually got this to work. As I look at these two chapters I think about the way that audiences are viewed now. It strikes me as hard to define because I feel that everyone goes to the movies no matter the race, gender, or economic class. However, when you start thinking about genres, this is when the types of audiences are created. One quick example is the comedy spoof movies. This is definitely associated with a male teenage viewing audience and I bet commercial spots would appear on teenage channels and during male oriented shows.

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