But that's not what I'm writing about today. Let's all put our producer's hats on, shall we? Imagine ourselves in pre-pro and then in the booth with the director and finally relaxing with the crew after a (thankless) job well done. After all, over a billion people are watching and as a producer, you have access to the world's greatest movies, the biggest stars and greatest editors available to your bidding. All you need is a great idea.
The Olympics began with James Bond and the Queen parachuting into the stadium. Wow! How did the Oscars begin? Twenty minutes of jokes and a William Shatner bit that was fun...for the first two minutes.
I'm sure Neil Meron and Craig Zadan are nice guys, and the task is daunting, but come on, guys! These two guys produced the movie versions of Chicago and Hairspray. Both of those movies started with a bang and never let up.
Did you feel your clothes going out of style in the first half hour? To learn how to start a show, take a page from The Grammys...or the Tonys. If you're going to salute music, get to it fast...and if you're going to salute 50 years of James Bond, you only have one golden anniversary. You get one shot at this.
Here's how it might have gone:
* Announcer welcomes us to the Oscars
* Opening 2012 movie montage of no more than 60 seconds. It ends with Skyfall clips. Enter Adele
from center stage, singing the Skyfall theme. Don't announce her. She's the hottest singer in the world
(we know who she is). The audience will go crazy.
* Follow her with Shirley Bassey singing "Goldfinger." Don't announce her on, just add a lower-third.
The song (and she) are classics. The audience will go crazy.
* Bring out one or all of the five James Bonds. They intro Seth McFarlane.
* Seth McFarlane enters in a 1964 Aston Martin. The audience will go crazy.
We're ten minutes into the show and we've had a montage, two killer performances everyone will talk about and...we're...off and running. Lots of surprises.
Did the James Bond montage seem a bit...bland? With fifty years of bigger than life stars, explosions, iconic lines ("shaken not stirred," "no, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die") and beautiful women, and theme songs that we all know. It should have lifted us out of our seats.
Check out this masterpiece by Kees van Dijkhuizen, a 19 year-old producer who really gets it:
http://www.etonline.com/movies/131040_James_Bond_50th_Anniversary_Montage/
The In Memoriam montage? How about Andy Griffith, Larry Hagman and Phyllis Diller? They blew it again.
The best thing is that we have a whole year to pick apart what they did wrong. The stars looked great and I loved the set, but the pacing and edited pieces needed to be crisper and more emotional.
They'll no doubt get another shot next year, but for God's sake, this is the Oscars. The whole world is watching, so put a promo person in charge of something. We know how to do it. We do it every day with a lot less.
Put me in coach!
--Rich Brase
redrich24@yahoo.com
If you live by The Promo Code, please share this post with friends, colleagues and groups. You can even use it to show civilians what your profession is really like.
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Not to mention the tasteless and boring sexist tone and jokes! Surely Hollywood can do better than denigrate all the talented women at the show and watching from around the world.
ReplyDeleteSince I watched this in Europe and it was 2am I quite 20 minutes in. It was simply not worth staying up for.
your ideas for the opener are fantastic. memorable, emotional, arousing. i hope someone gives you the gig next year. the awards haven't been any good since the 90s.
ReplyDeletecheers