Posts Tagged ‘Mdash’
Here’s How ‘Battleship’ Enlisted The Navy
When “Battleship” docks in theaters Thursday evening, it does so with the endorsement and cooperation of the U.S. Navy.
The aliens in the Universal Pictures blockbuster may be CGI creations, but the massive battle cruisers that lend the film its name are the real McCoy.
Likewise, many of the sailors shown launching missiles and barking orders are enlisted servicemen, while destroyers like the John Paul Jones and the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, both featured prominently in the film, get to strut their stuff for the cameras.
Producer Sarah Aubrey told TheWrap that the $209 million film version of the popular board game could not have been made without the participation of the Navy. Although much of the footage of the ship’s bridge was done on a Louisiana soundstage, Aubrey estimates that roughly 50 percent of the shots in the film used real naval locations.
“If the Navy had not been partners in this film, there’s no way we could have pulled this off,” she said. “We made this movie because we wanted to showcase the modern Navy, which is a Navy that has not been seen in a film before. The real people on the ships, you can’t take your eyes off of them, and these enormous ships just look so cinematic on the open ocean.”
Also read: ‘Battleship’ Review: Sheer Adrenaline Keeps Dopey Action Epic Afloat
Getting the Navy’s seal of approval took some doing. The armed forces branch receives about a half dozen requests for participation on Hollywood productions annually but only allows access to productions that it believes represent the Navy in a positive light.
In this case, a movie that showed naval officers heroically taking the battle to villainous extraterrestrials was just the ticket.
The $209 million film version of the popular board game could not have been made without the participation of the Navy. — Producer, Sarah Aubrey
“The Navy is portrayed very well,” Bob Anderson, Director of the Navy Office of Information West, told TheWrap. “Our sailors are shown, not knuckling under, but performing with great mental acuity to fight back against overwhelming odds and laying down their lives when necessary.”
Also read: ‘Prometheus’ Secrets Revealed: 5 Things We Now Know
So happy is the Navy with its starring role in one of the summer’s biggest action films that it has been touting “Battleship” in recruitment ads it runs in cinemas and featuring promotional content from the film on its YouTube channel and Facebook pages.
But an endorsement from the Navy might not have come if the film’s villain hailed from the Middle East or another of the world’s perpetual hotspots.
“By choosing to have the enemy be aliens, that way we didn’t run into any political hurdles about having the U.S. Navy portrayed as fighting another modern navy,” Aubrey said. “When we put ships in a fictionalized situation, we removed that potential problem.”
To get approval, Aubrey says the filmmakers sought input from the Navy on the script, making changes where officers told them that the plot misrepresented procedures. One area of concern, Aubrey said, was that star Taylor Kitsch, who plays a senior weapons officer, not seem too youthful for his position.
They were not shy about telling us that it was important that he be [the] right age for the job that he held,” Aubrey said.
Even the film’s more fantastical elements had to have a veneer of realism to pass muster. When Navy ships encounter an identified object from space in the film, the film depicts the seamen following protocol – a warning horn is sounded, a vessel is sent out to investigate, all before any combat takes place.
Aubrey said that central to enlisting the Navy’s trust was the relationship that director Peter Berg had developed with the armed forces from his work on the 2007 terrorist thriller “The Kingdom” and from research he had done on a proposed film version of “Lone Survivor,” a memoir by ambushed Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell.
It didn’t hurt, Aubrey said, that Berg’s father was an amateur naval historian.
“We were pre-vetted for them,” she said. “We’d already met a large number of people, some of the admirals, and we really got to understand how the Navy works. We had established a comfort level with them.”
Also read: ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Trailer Reactions: Occupy Wall Street Comparisons, Fanboy Euphoria
Beyond ensuring accuracy and conveying the purity of their intentions, the filmmakers had to tailor their shooting schedule around the availability of the aircraft and ships. They were allowed, for instance, to film maritime exercises taking place at the Pacific Rim and take footage of carrier jets being launched, but only because those activities were already taking place.
The filmmakers sought input from the Navy on the script, making changes where officers told them that the plot misrepresented procedures — Producer, Sarah Aubrey
If the filmmakers need something extra and unscheduled, Anderson said that the Navy charges a set rate for any equipment or staged naval activities. Likewise, the servicemen and women are paid for their work in the film, he adds, but they are only allowed to participate during leave or liberty time.
“Battleship” arrives after the Navy has been more or less on cinematic dry dock. Anderson said that even though the Navy has worked with television shows like “NCIS” and “Hawaii Five-O,” requests for access from movie makers have tapered off in recent years.
“With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan most of the movies have been about ground wars,” Anderson said.
That could change if “Battleship” is a hit, and it could even goose recruiting. Anderson said it was difficult to prove statistically if a prominent film role for the Navy encouraged more people to enlist, but did say that there had been a spike after “Top Gun” was released in 1986.
“We just hope that a lot of people see the movie and think that it’s neat and that maybe that inspires them to check us out and see what we’re all about,” Anderson said.
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If Facebook Built An Ad Network, How Much Money Could It Make?
Today on Geekwire, Estately CEO Galen Ward argues that he’d bet his entire retirement fund on Facebook.
He assumes that Facebook will build an ad network, and points out that Google AdSense, which has revenues of $10 billion per year (see Network revenue, chart 1).
He argues that as soon as Facebook’s network offers slightly better ROI than AdSense, advertisers will switch.
There are a number of flaws with this argument. Most notably, as we pointed out in our special report on Facebook’s growth potential, ad networks are a highly competitive and mostly commodity business (there are more ad networks than Google AdSense), and Facebook has plenty of work to do to increase ad sales on its own sites, where margins are higher.
But the main flaw with this argument is that Google reports GROSS revenue for its network sites.
That’s revenue before it pays its ad partners their required cut.
A better measure is NET revenue, which is quite a bit smaller — about $3.1 billion according to our calculations, based on statements in Google’s earnings reports. (see chart 2):
So even if Facebook builds an ad network and takes every single AdSense customer, it won’t really be making $10 billion a year in any meaningful sense.
Google also sells ads on its own sites — mostly search — and made $26 billion in sales last year from those ads. But as Henry Blodget argued late last year, Google’s search ads are a uniquely good business, because Google places them in front of consumers exactly as they’re planning to buy something.
Facebook mainly sells display ads, which are much less effective.
There’s also another Facebook business which everybody seems to be ignoring: Payments. As we argued yesterday, this could be a multibillion dollar business by the end of 2013, if Facebook expands the types of goods it offers.
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REPORT: David Cameron Is Excellent At ‘Chillaxing’
British newspaper the Times of London has an exclusive story on the private pastimes of UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
The story — running at the top of the site right now, over other big stuff like Greece and the Facebook IPO — is an excerpt of a book “Cameron: Practically a Conservative” by Francis Elliot and James Hanning (the same book that revealed Cameron’s dodgy texts to Rebekah Brooks).
With lines like “If there was an Olympic gold medal for ‘chillaxing’, the Prime Minister would win it”, you know it’s going to be good, and it’s a somewhat nicer portrait of a man who has been called (by a member of his own party) “an arrogant, out of touch, posh boy” — though not necessarily conflicting, we should note.
You can read more from the excerpt at the Times, though it is behind a paywall >
Here’s tomorrows front page:
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The Era Of Privatized Space Exploration Starts Tomorrow
While NASA may no longer be sending astronauts into orbit, private industry is just getting started.
Tomorrow, SpaceX, the brainchild of Tesla founder Elon Musk, will be sending supplies to the International Space Station from Cape Canveral, FL.
This is the first time that a commercial craft will dock with the station.
The two-day mission will see the launch capsule dock with the space station. It is supposed to be totally autonomous, which will be an interesting feat in itself.
At the end of the mission, the Dragon — that’s what the capsule portion is called —will disconnect and return to Earth with a payload on hand.
Here’s where it gets tricky.
The Dragon has to survive reentry into the atmosphere and splashdown into the Pacific Ocean. The intention is to then reuse it for future missions. If it succeeds, it will be huge news for the future of private space exploration.
The launch is scheduled to occur at 4:55 AM EST tomorrow, exactly. If it doesn’t occur then, the launch will need to be delayed until May 22. That is because the space station will be in the wrong position to pair with the Dragon.
It is that precise. Best of luck to SpaceX, we sincerely hope they succeed.
Check out the other side of Elon’s business >
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What Everyone On Madison Avenue Is Saying About Facebook (FB)
As the markets react to Facebook’s IPO, the big question for Madison Avenue is whether paid advertising is effective on the social network.
The New York Times declared that advertisers are underwhelmed by, and skeptical of, Facebook’s IPO.
Other advertising bigwigs say Facebook’s advertising potential is too big too ignore. GM spoke by pulling $10 million ad budget.
Here’s a round-up of what anybody who’s anybody is saying about Facebook ads.
On why Facebook is too big for advertisers too ignore:
- “Facebook’s audience is too big too ignore,” said Lucy Jacobs, COO of Spruce Media, whose clients include LivingSocial. “Brands need to be on FB. The key is building a presence & content that resonates & then once you understanding the content fans are resonating with then you choose to amplify this content.” She believes that Facebook is all about world of mouth marketing.
- “We are only just beginning to understand the potential for brands and the return on investment on ads there too,” said David Jones, CEO of ad agency Euro RSCG Worldwide, told Reuters. “TV has been going on for 50 years so everyone has it down pat. Many of the advertising platforms on Facebook are only a year old. This will take some time.”When asked about GM pulling its Facebook ads,
- Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow told CNBC that “It’s a silly story, because it’s like saying you’re not advertising on TV ever again in 1950—of course you’ll advertise at some point.”
- Peter Kim, chief strategy officer at Dachis Group, told Fox Business that GM pulling out of Facebook “will make people rethink how well their investments are working on Facebook, but I can’t see a bunch of people following suit.”
- “FACEBOOK IS NOT A PUBLISHER. FACEBOOK IS A PLATFORM,” Deep Focus CEO, Ian Schafer, emphatically wrote in Ad Age.
On why Facebook and advertisers are not a great match:
- “It’s one of the most powerful branding mechanisms in the world, but it’s not an advertising mechanism,” Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, told the New York Times. “There’s a lot of potential but it’s not a slam-dunk,” he told Reuters.
- “Facebook’s popularity doesn’t come as a surprise,” said Hannah Kimuyu, director of paid media content at Greenlight, said in a statement. “However, with over 30 percent of respondents saying they ‘strongly distrust’ Facebook with their personal data, Facebook’s advertising program has an upward struggle.”
- “My colleagues and I have spoken with several other advertisers who were already thinking of putting their dollars elsewhere,” Melissa Parrish, an analyst at Forrester, told the New York Times. “Now that G.M. has done so in such a large and public way, many of the fence-sitters will know that they’re not alone.”
On why paying for Facebook ads is a waste:
- John Coleman, CEO of small shop powerhouse The VIA Agency, told BI that while Facebook free brand pages are important, it’s unnecessary to pay for advertising on the site. “We’ll use Facebook for apps and other engagement but we’re using other [paid] media to drive that.”
- “Most brands who advertise there advertise just one thing: ‘Like us’,” Jack Hollis, vice president of Scion, told Forbes. “Our ads aren’t about liking us. We’re putting out content. We don’t see a need to be [on Facebook] in a major advertising way because it kind of gets lost among all the brands that want to be ‘liked.’ If you ‘like’ us, have a relationship with us”
- While Steve Goldner, senior director of social media at digital strategy agency MediaWhiz, told BI that GM’s problem with social media has nothing to do with Facebook ads, he had some negative comments about Facebook, too. “The reality is that Facebook advertisement, by itself, is not a great use of precious marketing dollars,” Goldner said. “Facebook has done a poor job positioning and describing how their platform drives quantifiable business results. Facebook is not the equivalent of having a social media strategy and it is time for Facebook to communicate how they are part of a winning solution and stop making ill-advised marketers believe they are the social media solution.”
On Facebook mobile:
- Paul Sundue, director of digital strategy and production at DDB New York, noted that “the Facebook mobile experience is lacking right now,” at a Mobile Marketing event during Internet Week. “The mobile experience doesn’t support the tabs [that advertisers create for the normal site] at all.”
On what the future holds:
- “I think brands are still trying to get their arms around what Facebook means to them,” Chris Copeland, CEO of WPP’s GroupM Next, told Ad Age. “Is it a click play? Is it an exposure or impression play? Will it be measured in digital GRPs? There are still a lot of unknowns.”
- “Facebook’s future is really with SMB display advertisers,” Victor Wong, CEO of local display advertising firm PaperG, told BI. “Facebook, like Google, runs ads in a 2nd price auction format. If it had more bidding volume from the millions of SMB advertisers (rather than the limited five hundred Fortune 500 companies), it could drive up the clearing price of ads even if the winning bidder is the same.”
And then there’s Donny Deutsch:
- Although Donny Deutsch, chairman of Deutsch Inc., had nothing to say about how Facebook relates to the advertising world, he told Jay Leno that he has beef with the social networking site. “Before they collect their hundred billion, make this thing safer,” he said, referring to how kids are often bullied on Facebook.
Did we miss anyone? If so, email lstampler@businessinsider.com.
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