Saturday, February 16, 2019

Case Study: Get Out

If you have been following along with my blog, chances are you have probably noticed that I've referenced the 2016 hit film "Get Out" numerous times. This is partially due to it's brilliance in mise-en-scene, cinematography, and over-all suspense building characteristics, but a major reason is that this film is rather close to what my group and I plan to make with our title sequence. It is a low budget thriller film ($5,000,000) produced through Blumhouse productions, and I have decided to research it as it will help with the remaining steps towards creating our final project.

History/Target Audience: 


Jordan Peele, the director of Get Out, explains in an interview how he wanted to create "a horror-thriller for black audiences that delivered a searing satirical critique of systemic racism." The movie, intended to be a new branch in the thriller genre, was created specifically to show audiences something they have never seen before. Peele explains how he wanted to make a film directed towards black audiences by unearthing horrors even scarier than the supernatural or darkness, which he claims is portrayed too much in Hollywood. Racism, however, is so realistic and common, that the brutality it conveys in the film is scarier than any demon in a movie. Peele also wanted to make a film that made his black target audience happy by having a black lead protagonist who actually makes realistic decisions. Using "The Amityville Horror", he explains how the white family in the film remained in the house even after obvious signs that it was haunted. "A black family would have been long gone at the first sign of spookiness", Peele says. The goal in this film was to make black audiences feel understood and heard in the vast world of Hollywood thriller.

Production:



The film Get Out was shot in a surprising length of 23 days, in the locations of Fairhop, Alabama for 2 weeks followed by being shot in Mobile, Alabama for the remaining time. The filming went great as a whole but, as with any great movie, they did find some difficulties while shooting. One of the first struggles they encountered was with the "Sunken Place" scene. The director Jordan Peele & cinematographer Toby Oliver wanted to make it visually obvious that the sunken place was the working of the characters subconscious without using too many visual effects. To achieve this feeling, they used a technique called "dry for wet", which is what movies can use to make a scene look like it was shot underwater when it's really wasn't. To achieve this, one shoots on a dry stage with lots of smoke while shooting in slow motion. Then you use winds to ripple anything thats moving, to give it that feel of flotation. However, the crew of Get Out didn't use smoke; they wanted to make it seem like it was the characters subconscious, not underwater. The ending of the movie was also originally different than what we saw in theaters. At first, the ending scene consisted of a cop car pulling up, and it actually being a real police officer driving it, and Chris gets arrested for mass murder. This ending, however, did not go well with the test audience. They loved the movie up until the "sad truth" was exposed, and Chris gets thrown in jail, and treated like a criminal. This made the movie feel too generic, especially after all Chris had been through. After much debate amongst the ending of the scene, Peele decided to wipe the ending clean and reshoot it so a cop car pulls up, but instead of it being a real cop, his friend Rod comes to save him, and Chris wins. This ending tested much better with audiences. (The picture below is Cinematographer Toby Oliver's camera-and-lighting plot for the reshooting of Get Out's final scene). 





Distribution:

Originally, Get Out premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2017. Following its premiere, it was wide released by distribution company Universal Studios in the United States on February 24th, 2017, grossing $255 million worldwide. Considering its budget was only $5,000,000, the film made a net profit of $124 million, becoming the 10th most profitable film of 2017.

Marketing:

Trailers for Get Out popped up out of the blue around October of 2016. The trailers appeared brilliant, and really caught onto the suspicion of audiences. They revealed just enough for us to know that Chris gets caught in sinister events, but we as viewers have no idea about the realistic yet horrific racial tidal wave coming our way. It was enough information, however, to make us want to watch it. There were tight-knit, 30-second previews played as TV advertising as well which were aimed at horror fans and got the buzz of the upcoming movie heightened.  Jordan Peele, famous for his writing and acting in the popular comedy duo series "Key & Peele" made it easy for reporting sites such as GQ and The New York Times to interview Peele and gain publicity about his upcoming film. Social media sites such as Instagram and Twitter also made it easy to spread around the hype of the movie and to buy tickets early to guarantee a seat in theaters. 

Above is one of the first trailers released to audiences for Get Out

Cross Media Convergence and Synergy:

For the release of the film, 3 time grammy winner Chance the Rapper bought out a theatre showing Get Out and just asked for peoples ID's before entering. The usage of a celebrity buying out a viewing of Get Out is enough to make people want to watch the film. If they know their favorite rapper loves it enough to buy out the whole theatre, then it will get people to go watch it. The movie also participated in many paid advertisements on popular sites such as Instagram, where many young people resign, to gain attention for the film.




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