Frankie Goes to Hollywood

A question...that no one who reads this blog will probably answer.

Note: After much mulling, I finally decided to go ahead and post this. Don't read it if you get bored easily.

I rarely want much of an audience for my blog, but today the trailer for the film September Dawn appeared on the apple website and I really wish someone at a big blog would talk about it. I'm bursting at the seams, and it's all going to spill out here! Maybe they have and I've missed it? It's a really terrible trailer and a really terrible film poster. This film seems intent on exposing the dark and hidden side of Mormon history to the movie-going world, but lately the Mountain Meadow Massacre has received a lot of airtime, possibly because of the film, but also because there seem to be a lot of people that like to uncover and bring to light little 'gems' of history such as this incident, both those for and against the Mormon faith. All in all, no one really knows what happened, except that a lot of people were murdered by a lot of Mormons. This particular film takes the stance that Brigham Young, a Mormon prophet, commanded the murders and then swore everyone to secrecy. The point of this post is not to deny or defend this theory, what actually happened is of little importance to this post. While everyone loves a chance to make the Mormons look like blind, following crazies...

...I just can't see the movie-going world biting, based on this advertising campaign. First of all, one would have to stop and dedicate a good portion of his/her life to reading this poster to understand what it's about. I mean, the film's title is "September Dawn," which is over-the-top generic. They should've just called the film "Mountain Meadow Massacre" and they could've skipped the three paragraph explanation about the secrecy of the world's great religious leader, innocent people murdered, yadda, yadda, yadda. Massacre kind of gets the point across that it's not so pleasant, but perhaps they didn't want people thinking it was a slasher film? With a story that is this little-known among the public, one can expect a bit of explanation, but a one- or two-line tagline probably would've sufficed. Visually, the poster is extremely boring and doesn't draw in the viewer and make them *want* to read the manifesto on its left side. I stopped when I saw this poster at the theater because I was familiar with the film, but had I not known the film's theme, I probably wouldn't have given it a second glance, especially as I was hurrying to use the ladies' room before missing the first part of my film.

But wait a minute, that trailer had an awful lot of words in it - the same ones that were on the poster - and someone was reading all of them to me? And why all of the fades? Fading words in and out, that someone is reading, mind you, doesn't add dramatic effect. It just distracts. I only watched the trailer once, but Juston asked if I noticed all of the symbols performed by the characters. Uh, I must've missed those, I was too busy trying to read all of those words. Film is a visual medium. If you need that many words to try and justify your film in the trailer alone, perhaps you need to rethink your script and your editing. Or at least leave the heavy-handed moralizing for the film itself. You can hint at that stuff, about portraying a religious leader's alleged twisted mind, in less than three paragraphs, I'm sure.

Perhaps the filmmakers and marketers think that all of these words and explanations will give the MMM film some sort of mythical historical accuracy, as if we are reading a history book and not watching a narrative film that is "based" on real events? (ALWAYS use caution when anything is ever 'based on' or 'inspired by' true events - allow the film to be a springboard for finding out more yourself. Even documentaries cannot be trusted- they are as fictional as traditional fiction films. ) If you want to spend your money making films, at least do a decent job with your marketing.

My question - what is your forecast for this film? It doesn't appear to have a major studio behind it, so does it even stand a chance? Would you see this film, based on the marketing campaign (poster and trailer), especially if you didn't know anything about the MMM?