Hollywood heavyweights reject top French films in an Ogilvy & Mather Singapore experiment
An aspiring French filmmaker sits down with Hollywood’s top producers of big budget blockbusters to pitch his seemingly eccentric movie ideas. It doesn’t go well. Unbeknownst to them, the scripts he describes have already been created and released to critical acclaim, even winning The Palme d’Or, the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film
Festival.
This is the crux of new short films released by Alliance Française de Singapour, part of the leading global network promoting French language and culture, in support of their efforts to promote French cinema to audiences in Singapore and around the world and grow its popularity.
“We are very excited by this campaign as we feel it conveys French cinema’s depth of script writing in a fresh and humorous way. The intention is not to be, obviously, in competition with Hollywood but to broaden audience’s horizons. We’re eager to see how this film will help to promote French cinema in Singapore and abroad and attract larger, more diverse audiences,” said Anne-Garance Primel, Executive Director, Alliance Française de Singapour.
What the experiment showed is that even the very best French cinematic masterpieces wouldn’t have had a chance in Hollywood as they don’t fit the traditional formula.
Alliance Française de Singapour will use the assets from this campaign to promote French films and cultural activities such as Ciné-Club which hosts weekly screenings of French cinema every Tuesday, Ciné-Plus which presents special screenings of French films and Ciné-Kids that promotes French movies for children in Singapore. The global Alliance Française network may also use the films to promote additional activities through its 812 establishments in 135 countries.
6 Comments
Taken in isolation, it’s a nice idea and execution, might be the best work I’ve seen from the big O in years.
Having said that, I doubt these are going to make french cinema more popular. Well, at least the kind of french cinema represented by these online films.
The kind of french films referenced here are not mainstream cinema…they’re art house efforts. Good story but limited in appeal. They will always have few takers…so the hollywood producers are right in saying that the scripts will not be financially successful.
There’s another type of french mainstream cinema which rivals hollywood in terms of storyline and commercial appeal…..the films of luc besson, olivier marchal etc…everyone I know loves those films….many don’t know about them which is the only thing holding such french films back.
Brilliant!
Experiment experiment experiment, nothing new isn’t it? These are just horrible. Isn’t Ogilvy about “Sell or else”? What are they selling here? Nothing much.
If Ogilvy invested as much effort on defending the Singtel account as they clearly did on creating this ‘pet project’, 23 staffers wouldn’t have been ‘resigned’.
Fake news
Since when do O&M do good work?
@nonmerci
Experiment is the perfect headline CBA, nice one mate. More scam, initiative, pro bono, fake award fodder that frankly nobody will see outside of the award entry circuit. They are now gunning for their Cannes Lions while they agency is shrinking. How can anybody in management sign off this kind of work when BMW and SingTel are both walking out the door and even more agency staffers are let go. Does this even matter to creative management? Time for some serious moral reflection on what you’re really doing for a living. You can’t just let the suits land you biz with all their back door government dealings. You do realise that you just cut a bunch of good people with families from your ranks? Does this mean anything to you? If you keep downsizing, you’ll be forced to team up with JWT and Y&R just to keep yourselves viable. Then that Lou over at Publicis will come over and head your place too. The Alliance Française de Singapour, may sound like a serious press release, but I think anybody on this website knows this faux account won’t pay the salaries of the boys on their staff roster. Speaking of which, where is the credit list? Which poor production house was conned to do this for free this time?