- CAMPAIGN PRESS -
 

Fans Build Oscar Buzz Online

Despite critical praise, the futuristic infertility drama "Children of Men" has grossed only about $14 million. Some worry that Oscar voters will overlook the film as they submit their nominations, due Saturday.

But a five-minute Internet film lobbying for the film's nomination gained quick popularity this week. Made by 28-year-old Los Angeles student Blair Erickson last Saturday, the video has been praised on popular Web sites like Digg and Defamer. "I was blown away that I hadn't heard anything" about the film, he says.

Bolstered by the spread of video-editing software and the emergence of video-sharing sites like YouTube, amateur video editors' work is becoming commonplace. Last fall, fans created tribute videos for candidates for college football's Heisman Trophy.

Universal Pictures, which released the film, heard about the video last week and wasn't involved with making it, says Adam Fogelson, president of marketing.

Says Mr. Erickson: "Getting nominated was not the real goal. Really, I just wanted more people to see it."

HOW TO FIND IT: Search for "children of men nominated" on YouTube.com.
Write to Jamin Warren at jamin.warren@wsj.com
 

 #5 - Most Viewed Video out of All (Today)
Views:

http://reporter.blogs.com/risky/200...start_gras.html



http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2007-01-09/

Children of Men , a film that was apparently held in higher regard by critics and audiences than it was by Universal, the studio that released it, landed in third place at the box office over the weekend, as it raked in $10.2 million at just 1,209 theaters, fewer than a third of those showing the No. 1 film, Fox's Night at the Museum. Children averaged $8,435 per theater versus $6,355 for Museum. J. Hoberman, writing in the Village Voice, recently remarked that Universal had been treating the movie "like a communicable disease." Sheerly Avni, writing on the liberal blog Truthdig Monday, called it "an orphaned masterpiece," and one fan, disgusted with the official trailers for the movie, created one of his/her own and posted it on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lfs1UIKALQ), where it has drawn considerable comment and praise from fans.

http://defamer.com/hollywood/short-...ctor-227196.php
· A fan from the Something Awful forums donates some free Oscar stumping to Universal on behalf of Children of Men. Warning: The video contains some spoilers, so watch at your own peril.

Cinematical:
http://www.cinematical.com/...new-wave-of-fan-made-trailers/

Children of Men -- Part of a New Wave of Fan-Made Trailers
Posted Jan 8th 2007

The Daily Reel:
http://www.thedailyreel.com/...
NOW THAT'S FREE ADVERTISING
By Matthew Ross January 10, 2007

Ads in trade papers and DVD screeners may still be the most effective ammunition for an Oscar campaign, but that hasn't stopped fans from throwing their hats in the ring to help out.

On Sunday, a passionate fan of Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian epic Children of Men decided to post a plea for why the film is the best film of the year. Compared to most DIY tributes, the clip is well made and effective -- clips from the film are interspersed with gushing quotes from film critics, as Jarvis Cocker's "Running the World" plays on the soundtrack. The user, "blairerickson," embedded the clip on the Something Awful forum, along with a long explanation for why the film deserves consideration. I happen to agree with him -- in my opinion, Children of Men is the best studio film of the year, and since I love Jarvis, it was a pleasure to watch. The only question that remains is whether "blairerickson" is a real person or a creation of the Universal marketing department. Either way, something tells me Universal put the clip the Web. Blaire, if you're really out there, let us know.

CHUD.com:
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=8455

BuzzSugar.com:
http://buzzsugar.com/100844

ReelPop:
http://www.reelpopblog.com/
Children of Men meets the children of Digg and YouTube
As my colleagues at the Risky Biz blog point out, the dystopian film "Children of Men" is the subject of a grassroots campaign (or netroots campaign, depending on your geek quotient) to have it nominated for best picture of the year.


Digg:



Others...
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/news.php?id=5037
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/arch...imagination.php
http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/
http://hollywood-jester.com/archives/4723
http://houseofxorn.blogspot.com/200...n-campaign.html
http://www.megite.com/gossip/1168239011/61#item_17
http://www.constantskeptic.com/inde...-at-the-oscars/
http://zalandria.wordpress.com/2007...lm-of-the-year/
http://philip.onetwenty.org/index.p...hildren-of-men/
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?f...logID=215093045
http://everydaydiscoveries.blogspot.com/
http://myfuckingsound.wordpress.com...e-is-no-excuse/
http://yuppa.net/sa-grassroots-nomi...-at-the-oscars/
http://martinepage.com/blog/2007/01...n-une-campagne/
http://www.filmrot.com/main.php
http://www.slashfilm.com/article.ph...ldrenofmenvideo
http://www.spinthicket.com/
http://www.trailerspy.com/
http://indiefilmnation.blogspot.com/...
 

WHY "CHILDREN OF MEN"  SHOULD BE NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lfs1UIKALQ

VIDEO CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS SO WATCH THE FILM FIRST!

 WHY DID THIS CAMPAIGN HAPPEN?

"Children of Men" is a very beloved film on the internet, starting first with the pre-release thread pronouncing it "the best movie I've seen in a couple years." In the SA Film Dump the movie scored a whopping 5.021 average out of 248 votes so far. When TheSwami and I ran a poll at Cinema Discusso for Best Picture of 2006, the movie slowly built into the lead as it went wider in release until scoring the #1 out of 25 movies ranked with over a thousand people voting.

The only problem is that none of this seems to be having any effect on the real world "buzz" behind the movie. Despite its 93% positive at Rotten Tomatoes, the movie opened to lukewarm #3 at the box office this weekend:

1. Night at the Museum $23,743,960
2. The Pursuit of Happyness $12,880,926
3. Children of Men $10,197,775

Don't Believe the (Lack of) Hype:
Despite a nonexistent marketing campaign, Cuaron's latest is not to be missed
by J. Hoberman, Village Voice, December 19th, 2006

History repeats itself: 11 Decembers ago, Universal had the season's strongest movie: a downbeat sci-fi flick freely adapted from a well-known source by a name director. With a bare minimum of advance screenings and a total absence of hype, the studio dumped it. This year, they've done it again.

The 1995 castoff was 12 Monkeys, this year's victim is Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron's dank, hallucinated, shockingly immediate version of P.D. James's novel. Never mind that Cuaron saved the Harry Potter franchise and, with Y Tu Mama Tambien, directed the highest-grossing Spanish-language movie ever released in America (or that Children of Men was respectfully received at the Venice Film Festival and topped the British box office the week that it opened), this superbly crafted action thriller is being treated like a communicable disease.

Ever sensitive to buzz, critics have gotten the message and are steering clear. When the New York Film Critics Circle met last week, Children of Men got only a handful of votes, mainly for Emmanuel Lubezki's sensational cinematography. Earlier this month, The New York Times imagined Academy members in surgical scrubs, with a "news analysis" noting the unusual goriness of the year's Oscar contenders: The Departed, Flags of Our Fathers, Blood Diamond, Apocalypto, and The Last King of Scotland. A more resonant and gripping movie than any of these, Children of Men wasn't even mentioned.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/06...n,75337,20.html

Well with at least another week to go before Oscar nomination ballots are mailed in, I think it would be helpful to do as much as possible to at spread the Best Picture buzz for "Children of Men" across the internet. Though the film is being snubbed by its studio, perhaps a last minute grassroots hype campaign could change the tide. That's exactly how Crash won last year. And believe it or not, big industry players in Hollywood do read internet websites, even this one. After I wrote the Uwe Boll article I got fun email from some pretty big name producers and screenwriters within the first few hours of it going online.

So what can you do? For starters users can all "Children of Men" related stories and threads. If you're posting on other message boards, make a thread telling people to go see the movie. Oh and feel free to spread the YouTube video around, and perhaps that will remind a few academy voters somewhere about the movie or encourage more of them to check it out to see what the buzz is about.

Summary: People really love "Children of Men" and so do the critics, but the film is being dumped by Universal and facing the tragic fate of being ignored by Academy voters, the box office, and eventually cinema history, unless we help generate the buzz behind the movie.