High Concept Cinema

High Concept Cinema: "Pirates Of The Caribbean"
In todays society everything is about making money. One big example for this is Hollywood. It became more and more a business that is still expanding. When everything begun Hollywood movies were more there to present different views, to entertain, and to "teach" but today movies are just there to get money. Hollywood films are working like this: the simpler and visual it gets the more people are watching it through that they can get more money and the product is easier to sell. They do not care if the film has the same concept like thousands of films before as long they can get the appropriate amount of money out of it. Those Blockbusters which pull huge amounts of people into the cinema are High Concept Movies. High Concept Movies are for example "Star Wars", "True Lies", "Terminator", "Jurassic Park", "Die Hard" and probably one of the best example is James Cameron's "Avatar" which has a cross revenue of 2.5 billion dollars at the moment. In this essay I am going to talk about a franchise everybody knows (This is also one characteristic of High Concept Films, everybody knows them. Through what? Mainly through there advertisement or Star Vehicles) I am talking about "Pirates Of The Caribbean".

"POTC" is one of "Walt Disney Pictures" most successful franchise and it has a cross revenue of 2.7 billion dollars. Because "WDP" distributed and promoted it, the film was marketed and promoted really clever and well. 1952 "POTC" started at a wax museum in Disneyland. Disneyland is the biggest area for children adventure and a really good opportunity to promote movies. Also Disney has a huge platform for promotion. They produce Toys, Comics (Marvel Entertainment), they have their own channel (DisneyChannel), Video Games basically everything that is appropriate for children and teenagers. Disney attracts especially young children they start at 3 up to 16 but the range between 3 and 12 is their major business. Why? Because children who are under this age or in this range often go with their parents into the cinema even if they don not want to watch the film. This also the case for "POTC" it is a movie for children and older people because it does not contain strong violent picture or language. In the UK all of the 3 films got 12 as a rating which is the best rating to get as much people in the cinema as possible. The fact that there are 3 movies and there are going to be 4 is also a proof that it is a high concept film. After the big success of the first "Film Pirates of the Caribbean - The Course Of The Black Pearl", approximately 660 million dollar, Disney directly produced a sequel. They are going to produce a huge amount of sequels as long as it brings the amount of money they expect it to bring.

Another big aspect is the quality of the cast. Big names as Johnny Depp (know for excellent acting skills), Orlando Bloom (selected for especially the young female audience) and Keira Knightley (selected for the male audience) are probably also responsible for the big success. Many people just watch a film because their favourite actor is in it or because the main actor or actress convince through other qualities. This is called a "Star Vehicle" which is definitely present in "POTC".


The genres "POTC" belongs to (Action/Fantasy/Comedy) are the biggest genres existing. Basically there is a bit for everything, this is what High Concept Cinema is about it is a product for the mass, with a good story that is created to suite the relatively "low" demands of the majority. Action and Fantasy have usually big special effects this is also the case in "POTC". The visual effects and the look of the film are more important in this product. High Concept Cinema is putting the focused of an audience more on the visual effects then on dialogue. Of course dialogue is also important and is used to keep the audiences' attention. For example Captain Jack Sparrow who has always something funny to say (like Samuel L. Jackson who is famous trough his swearing).

The Director of "POTC" (Gore Verbinski) is not a big name as "Spielberg" or "Cameron" but he had big success with older products like "The Ring" and "The Mexican". In general the Crew just consist out of experienced professionals who have a name in the film business for example the producer "Jerry Bruckheimer" who produced films like "Top Gun", "Bad Boys" and "Armageddon" or Darisz Wolski who is taking the part as a Cinematographers worked with Gore Verbinski together in "The Maxican" and did "The Crow" by Alex Proyas. Also a big name is the composer Klaus Badelt, who recorded the world famous soundtrack. He also recorded the music for films like "Miami Vice" or "16 Blocks" with Bruce Willis. "Academy Award" - Winner Hans Zimmer who is famous for composing the soundtrack of "The Lion King" or " The Dark Knight" and many more productions is also involved in the soundtrack. The rest of the crew are in productions like "Avatar" or "G-Force". This list of the high quality members is also typical for a High Concept Cinema and also one reason why the over all budged of those films is that high. Disney has a very good marketing strategy in terms of horizontal marketing they cover every aspect of it this is called saturation campaign this happens when a film cannot have more advertising because it covers already everything. There are "POTC" action figures, toys, computer-games, assessors there is basically everything. This franchise was and is heavily market (Front Loading). Also the fact that there are several different DvD edition for the film shows that Disney does not forget on single marketing opportunity. There are 6 editions if not more for each movie (Single Edition, Special/Collectors Edition, Extended Edition, Blue-Ray (Blue-Ray Special Edition), and 2 different Box-set. This increases the sale of the DvD and might seduce "Film-Geeks" to buy the movie twice just to have an edition that contains, for example, a tiny bit more special features.

The franchise could be compared to "Die Hard" in terms of its' development. "Die Hard" starts with a building, than goes over to an airport, city and finally involves the whole east coast. "POTC" starts as the name says at "The Course Of The Black Pearl" and ends (temporary) "At The End Of The World. Theoretically you could refer every High Concept Film to another High Concept Film because they all show those characteristics that are mentioned in this essay.