Bananaz marketing

I originally posted a review of the film Bananaz on the ASIFA-east blog which is below in case you missed it. I wanted to follow up that review with the interesting way in which they were going to market this film. The preview I saw was held at the Apple store in SoHo. Apple’s interest in the project was that they were teaming up with Babelgum.com, a new online music/entertainment platform with a global approach to web-video, to release the film. By downloading the Babelgum player to your iPhone you will be able to see the film before anyone else. It is important to say that Babelgum is an internet and mobile TV platform supported by advertising. Bananaz is going to premier on April 20th and will be exclusively available there for a month. Following the online release, the film will have a theatrical run in select cities, and finally a DVD release in May/June. This is the part I found interesting, that it was going to premier online FIRST. I have not heard of a documentary film marketed in this manner before. Most films seem to start with a festival premier, in the hopes of finding a distributor to market and promote their film. This approach seems to be exactly opposite of that; build an online audience first, then the theater release followed by the DVD sale. I thought this was a very smart approach for the filmmaker. The number of people you can reach at a festival is very small in comparison to the potential number you could reach if it is a success online. The Gorillaz are a proven commodity with a huge fan base; based on that alone the film should drive a lot of views to the Babelgum site, which as mentioned above is supported by advertising. I don’t know that this approach would work for a documentary on “Flowers” for example, but I am very curious to see how it goes for Bananaz.

Bananaz review

Tuesday night I went to sneak preview of the documentary Bananaz, followed with a Q&A with the director Ceri Levy at the Apple store in SoHo. The documentary takes you behind the scenes of the Gorillaz, “the most successful animated band ever.” The Gorillaz as a band have always been surrounded in a bit of mystery. The band is composed of four animated band members: 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel. The band is actually a collaboration between various musicians, created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett back in 1998.

I love the entire idea of the band. The fact that the animated characters are the actually playing and creating the music, that they are marketed as real is fascinating to me. I was really looking forward to learning what went into creating the Gorillaz. Unfortunately the film falls short and is really nothing more than 90min of fly on the wall footage.

The film follows Damon and Jamie from the very beginnings of the band back in 2000 to the concerts in Harlem back in 2006. It starts out with some good footage of the two of them speaking about how they were watching MTV and commented “What’s all this manufactured rubbish…So we thought we could do it a little better.” Next they show a little footage of Jamie flipping through some of his early sketches and talking about how he refined the characters for a minute or two and then leaves it there. From that point on nothing else is said about the artwork. It just gets flashed up on the screen to keep the energy high to hide the fact that there is no real story. The film doesn’t go anywhere. You just go from recording session to back stage at one of their concerts watching the erratic behavior of the band members acting like big kids with out actually learning much about the band itself. The only real moment of drama in the film comes near the end when Damon is confronted by a teacher representing a Harlem children’s choir, questions him about the lyrics the children will be singing on stage. It the first and only time in the film anyone really speaks about what they are trying to accomplish.

The film does do a good job of showcasing the bands music however. You get to see some good footage of them collaborating with various artists to create their albums. The amount of effort Damon puts into his music, and just how talented he is, comes through loud and clear. If you are a big fan of the music, or always wanted to know what it would be like to hang out with the band, you’ll enjoy the film. For me though, I’m going to go back to pretending that 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel are real, put on my headphones and enjoy their music.