AL: "Hey, have you looked up how many other movies are called The Chameleon*?"
EB: "Nah, I haven't"
AL: "I checked to see if your blog is registering in the search engines and all these other movies came up - so I had a look at IMDB - there's like five or six, and one coming out this year - did you know that?"
EB: "Oh shit - what's it about? Who's in it - anyone massive??"
AL: "Hang on, I'll have a quick look"
My heart is in my mouth. I can see it now... The Chameleon - the story of a man searching for his con man brother starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, coming soon to a multiplex near you!
AL: "You there?"
EB: "Yeah"
AL: "No one that big - ah, Famke Janssen... Ellen Barkin"
Crap.
AL: "...Nick Stahl"
Double crap.
EB: "What's the synopsis?"
I sit down and brace myself for the worst. A year's work is potentially down the drain.
AL: "An FBI agent is hot on the tracks of Frederic Boud - Bourdin? Some French sounding name.. He's taken the identity of a woman's long lost son completely convincing the police and the boy's family of his identity"
EB: "Oh... okay"
Phew. At least it's not the same storyline or anything.
What's in a title? Everything. I imagine it's a bit like naming a child. It shouldn't be too long and it has to look good in print. A film can go some distance with a good title, a great poster or photographic still and a well written synopsis.
Case in point, Snakes on a Plane. I heard that Samuel L. Jackson threatened to quit when he heard the powers-that-be were going to change the title to Pacific Flight 121.
Pacific Flight 121? What were they (momentarily) thinking?? That sounds like a TV movie of the week where a passenger jet has to make an emergency landing because it lost cabin pressure...
Pacific Flight 121 doesn't encapsulate that movie at all. The best part of the movie Snakes on a Plane IS the title!
So, even in a dire worst case scenario where the only people who end up seeing my film are my family and the cinema's janitor, it looks like I need to change the title.
I'm sure something will come to me.
*Title has since changed to FINDING HONK.
.
I've got it... What about 'Oh brother where art thou'??... Oh snap!
ReplyDeleteHow many times does someone say "What's the name of that movie?... you know the one with that guy and that girl?"...
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing, although movies are a form of art the industry does have an underlying necessity to turn a profit. This means that there does need to be a commercial aspect to a production. As most marketers will tell you 'word of mouth' is the most powerful marketing tool. To create this compliment/endorsement from one person to another who trusts their opinion is essential, and to do that it needs to be indexed in the memory, retained and then easily repeated and transferred in a social situation...
And for this to happen... it needs a name with a high cognition factor...
Please don't call it something vague like "The Road Less Travelled"!
Keep thinking old chap, it will come!
PS: Also see http://filmmaking-101.suite101.com/article.cfm/forgettable_movie_titles
Does it HAVE to be THE CHAMELEON?
ReplyDeleteCould you not give the title some extra embellishment?
Maybe "The Travelling Chameleon"
or
"Chameleon Lost"
or
"Looking for the Chameleon"
or maybe something that is a trueism?
"The invisible Chameleon"
yeah man, names are important.
ReplyDeleteHow about this: (this is weird, but it might be worthwhile): look in the thesaurus for words you'd use to describe the movie. You'll get a bunch of cool words. Mix and match, it might bring something up and lead you on a different tangent...
Cam