The Secret of Hollywood Success - Essay Example

The popularity of Hollywood films simply reflects the tastes of audiences’ Hollywood and the movies that the film industry keeps churning out yearafter year are governed on the basis of a very critical standpoint, namely the reception from the audiences. Besides, the film fraternity lays a lot of emphasis on the views and opinions of the critics. a critical opinion on the various aspects of the movie are highly valued and are known to play a pivotal role in shaping the interest of the movie going audiences to varying extents. However, there has not been comprehensive research aimed at these audiences or the individuals who help shape the opinion prior to a movie being released. Hollywood has gained worldwide popularity and enjoys a monopoly in virtually every part of the world owing to both the quality and quantity of films that it manages to produce. Movies from various genres ranging from action and adventure to drama and fiction are produced time and again. However, not all of them set out to enjoy similar fortunes. While some movies rake in millions of dollars as profit, there are countless of them that vanish without a trace. In this backdrop, it is interesting to discuss the variable reception from the audience to Hollywood’s productions as it remains to be seen as to what determines such a varied acceptance. One also needs to answer whether Hollywood is catering to the tastes and demands of the audiences (Thomas Austin, 2002). Hollywood is always skeptic to how its works would be received by the public and in an effort to maximize this; virtually all productions are engaged in promotion and test screenings at an early stage prior to a movie’s release, so that the potential success of a film can be ascertained. However, all such estimations are mere predictions that take into account past and present trends into consideration. Additionally, the cast of the film is also considered to be a major determinant of such estimation (Richard Butsch, 2000). Going with the vast amounts of money that is pumped into making a Hollywood movie, producers of today’s cinema are constantly pursuing attempts to generate interest in the minds of the audiences. This is primarily achieved through extensive promotion using all possible mediums (Mark Jancovich, Antonio Lazaro Reboli, Julian, 2003). Does this mean that the audiences are being molded towards accepting something that would seem to provide a wonderful viewing experience? The answer to this questions is both yes and no. While on one hand, audiences do tend to intensely follow the direction of the movie through movie promotions such as trailers, the very basic fact that there are countless mammoth and popular productions that have received a cold invitation from the audiences’ points towards numerous flaws. In fact, several mistakes are committed at various aspects of production and promotion. These range from flaws in the plot to failing to deliver as was expected during promotion of the work. There are no hard and fast rules that govern the fortune of a movie and Hollywood as a film industry is no exception to it. In fact, the outcome has been quite deviant and different for movies over the years. For example, there have been numerous instances where a star-studded cast failed to run in movie halls for even a week owing to a poor storyline. There have also been instances where the opinions of the critics and the outcome of the public response to the movie have been totally complementary to each other (Richard Maltby, 2003). such is the complexity of this industry that people sometimes correlate movie production to gambling by reasoning that the outcome of either of them is unpredictable. One would tend to argue that despite all odds the sheer success of Hollywood and the billions of dollars worth hard currency that it has managed to rake in over all the years would be sufficient to ascertain that the industry has by and large succeeded in fulfilling the aspirations of its audiences over a broader scale. in this regard, a noted film historian, Tom Stempel, has performed extensive research on movie audience reception. Using mainstream movies from as far as 1948 to the present, he tried to study the box office performances of these movies in terms of gross revenues as well as the perceived quality of these films. However, a correlation between these two led to the conclusion that the preferences of the masses does not necessarily reflect together with what the movie has to offer (Muriel G. Cantor, 1988). Apart from the opinion that audiences do not get movies with the promised quality, many theorists and researchers have also used the quantitative aspect of Hollywood as a basis for the argument of audiences’ expectations. There have been arguments that the industry produces films that deal with a broad multitude of themes and genres and therefore argue that the industry tries to cover all possible domains that can seemingly be encompassed. Despite this argument, it is quite clear that any two films that deal with the same subject have performed with varying results. This is also obvious with remakes wherein different versions of the same story have experienced different reactions from the audiences (Shyon Baumann, 2007). One of the obvious reasons that has been attributed to these observations is the fact that a film is essentially a blend of the actors, their expressions, the plot and the quality of presentation. A movie may perform well enough even if a few of these primary ingredients work as expected. However, the efficiency in utilizing each of them is leveraged determines the degree to which various sections of the audience (which points to audiences of different ages, cultures, regions etc and critics as well) are satisfied. Missing any of them beyond a minimal threshold leads to poor performance and vice versa. Despite this, Hollywood has been able to attract people from all corners of the world owing to the sheer class with which movie making is associated in this industry, the broad range of subjects that are dealt with as well as due to the effort that goes into film making on the part of the actors as well as the production personnel. All these combined together have collectively proved to be attracting the masses to cinema halls in large numbers. REFERENCES 1. Thomas Austin (2002), Hollywood Hype and Audiences: Selling and Watching Popular Film in the 1990s. Manchester University Press. 2. Muriel G. Cantor (1988), The Hollywood TV Producer: His Work and His Audience. Boston: Transaction Publishers. 3. Richard Maltby (2003), Hollywood Cinema. London: Blackwell. 4. Shyon Baumann (2007), Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art. Princeton University Press. 5. Richard Butsch (2000), The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750-1990. Massachusettes: Cambridge University Press. 6. Mark Jancovich, Antonio Lazaro Reboli, Julian (2003), Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste. Manchester University Press. Read More