Jungle Book Marketing and Technology

Explain how films can be marketed to become global brands. Refer to the Jungle Book films in your answer.

 

Films like the Jungle Book can be marketed to become global brands because Disney is both a vertically integrated company (distributing as well as producing films) and a horizontally integrated company (promoting its products across different media and non-media interests including theme parks). Disney is in a powerful position to engage with a global audience using the internet as a distribution platform for its goods. One example of how they become a global brand through marketing is by selling merchandise. Disney granted licenses to other companies to produce merchandise related to The Jungle Book (2016), including some companies that are also Disney subsidiaries, and in so doing created additional non-film revenues and tie-ins. For every product related to Disney that another shop or organisation sells, Disney get 10% of the profits. This makes them a highly successful business as many stores are in high demand to sell Disney merchandise as it is a popular product among children and adults (their target audience) so Disney benefits from all aspects. By working alongside other media companies, the synergistic benefits of cross-promotion are effectively doubled. Disney is able to strike deals to make film and TV spinoffs, from which it gains a substantial share of profits. Disney chose to use its subsidiary companies to distribute the film, effectively meaning this was done at no cost as the money was flowing around inside the conglomerate rather than being paid out to another party. The first version of Jungle Book was released in October 1967 and grossed nearly $24 million on its first worldwide release. The film was produced on a budget of $4 million and was the fourth highest grossing movie in 1967. Disney had decided to rebrand and rerelease a new reboot, live-action film in 2016 as they knew it would be successful as it was a prime example of such a high-cost and top-quality animation and parents would happily watch it and invest in merchandise for their children as it is nostalgic to them so supposedly worth the money. The selection of the Jungle Book made economic sense as it had an established audience and therefore reduced the risk of failure at the box office (previously Disney’s The Lone Ranger [2013] was very unsuccessful and had lost the company an estimated total of $190 million). This therefore adds to the idea that the Jungle Book is a global brand as it made millions of money worldwide.

Another way in which the Jungle Book is marketed as a global brand is due to the fact that by the time The Jungle Book (1967) was released Disney was already a successful film company, and the Disney Corporation was diversifying into theme parks (Disneyland). Disney now has 6 different theme parks and resorts across the world which go as followed: Disneyland Resort (California), Walt Disney World (Florida), Tokyo Disney Resort (Japan), Disneyland Paris (France), Hong Kong Disneyland Resort (Hong Kong, China), Shanghai Disney Resort (Shanghai, China). There is an 8 minute long education Jungle Cruise riverboat ride featuring animals in the jungle book which is very popular among young children and their parents to go and see.

The 1967 film is important to Disney Studios’ history – it is a magical landmark film that is among the best ever written for Disney and includes the Oscar-nominated songs ‘The Bare Necessities’ and ‘I Wanna Be Like You’. The original soundtrack for The Jungle Book was also the first to achieve gold disc status in the USA for an animated feature film. The Jungle Book (1967) itself is premised on an imaginative interpretation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, and the film credits a notable cast and production team that had been in place and had worked together in the studio – at this time still a family-run business – for a number of years. The racialized representations of the 1967 film were not repeated in the 2016 version. Louis Prima was an American singer and actor who played the part of King Louie of the Apes in the Jungle Book (1967) who made his voice sound like a stereotypical deep black man’s voice. This clearly has bad connotations between black men and monkeys/apes and perhaps reflect the institutionalised racism of America at the time where races were segregated. The ‘Bare Necessities’ song written by an American folk singer, Terry Gilkyson, has had nearly 55million views on YouTube as well as the song ‘I Wanna be Like you’, written by the Sherman Brothers (Robert and Richard), having 47million views.

 

Discuss the advances in technology within the film industry referring to the Jungle Book 1967 and 2016 in your answer. Explain how these advances are useful in attracting a wider audience.

Disney’s animation studio had been responsible for developing many of the techniques and ways of working that became standard practices of film technology. They used the following technological techniques for animating their multi-million pound films: traditional cell-animation, pioneering the art of storyboarding and developing the use of the multiplane to create an early 3D-like effect. Cell-animation was used by first writing a script which is then handed over to a storyboard artist. Once the timing of each shot is locked down, a lead animator will draw rough sketches of each key pose and note the timing on a dope sheet. The inker transfers the line work to a transparent film of thin plastic (acetate) using black ink. As soon as the ink is dry the film gets passed off to a ‘colourist’ who colours in the line work using cell paint. They apply the colour on the opposite side to the ink giving each cell a crisp look with clean, consistent line work. While each cell is being inked and coloured, more artists are hard at work creating the backgrounds for each scene.

In 1967, when the Jungle Book was realised, Disney fans could watch it either at the cinema or wait for it to be released on DVD. However in this day and age, for the live action reboot film made in 2016, films usually open in cinemas first. This gives a product commercial value and creates further demand for viewing – especially in high-end technology formats. Following a big-screen run of approximately 16 weeks, films are released on a flexible timescale through other formats such as: home entertainment release, for example DVD, 3D Blu-ray, Blu-ray and digital HD, PPV or subscription television, streaming and broadcast free-to-air TV, or as downloadable movies on Disney Anywhere, iTunes, Google Play and Amazon.

Technology is much more advanced now than it was in the 60s. the live action reboot film made in 2016 used many advanced CGI technologies to make the film look as realistic as possible, making it a spectacle. Disney had a partnership with Moving Pictures Company who helped to bring the film to life. They used a technology called Furtility which is used for creating photorealistic organic fibres like hair, fur, feathers, vegetation, and other fibres like clothing and ropes. Furtility is a procedural tool, sampling the character’s mesh and growing fur at each sample on-demand. This is done by applying a sequence of GOPs (Geometry Operators) to curve geometry spawned at each sample location. MPC would have used this for creating all the animals like Baloo, Bugheera, Shere Khan, Raksha, Kaa, Akela and King Louie. They also have a virtual production platform called Genesis, which allows filmmakers to make better creative choices much earlier in the production process, leading to better quality outcomes. Genesis is a multi-year development project that has been used on some of the biggest movies of the past few years. With the increasing complexity and amount of VFX work done for today’s films, it has become extremely important for the director and the film crew to be able to visualize CG content directly on set, integrated with any live action elements that are being shot. Genesis allows the film makers to see how to film the Jungle Book scenes in relation to where they will need to be edited in the next stage of CGI. This, in comparison to cell-animation in 1967, is much more advanced however it is less of a lengthy process despite its complexity.