By James Ball
Image 1
Our lecture for this week was on the subject of Social
Media & Our Careers. So to keep with recent trends, I’m going to talk about
how I feel David Sandberg’s short film “Kung
Fury” became such a massive hit on this thing we call the interwebs.
They knew there target audience.
Kung Fury is about a Kung Fu cop from 1985 who goes back
in time to find Thor who then helps him go forward in time to fight Hitler and
the Nazis. Now mix in street fighter, Lazar Raptors and so many one liner’s
that you could make a drinking game. Does that make any sense? NO?! Good, now
you're starting to get it. This is a collection of 80's clichés and culture but
the dial was turned up to 11 and just broke.
Marketing campaign
Kung Fury was funded through Kickstarter and because of
this, its creation seems to have followed the same logic as a band in high
school: make cool T-shirts first, then worry about music later. Only in this
case the T-shirt was the completely insane trailer used to promote the short's
Kickstarter campaign
With Kung Fury shot
and ready for release, Sandberg wanted to inject new energy into the project
and raise awareness. Back in April, (still going with the high school band
theme here) Sandberg made the equivalent of some really amazing stickers. He
decided to make a music video to promote the film. And who better to star in it
than '80s TV star David Hasselhoff
Next, to really get the crowds riled up and exited, Sandburg
made the equivalent soda pop and free T-shirts to through out to the audience
before the main show. This was in the form of “HACKERMAN'S HACKING TUTORIALS -
How to Hack Time” a short Video on how to hack time 80’s style with a Power
glove and all. At the end of the video Hacker Man gets hacked back in time by
mistake and the video directs you to a competition page. The competition which
is now over was the following. Using the stock images of Hack Man provided, hack
Hacker man back in time using Photoshop and your imagination. The best images
received a Kung Fury T-shirt.
Finally they had the equivalent of an after party with
the release of their side scrolling 2D 8-Bit platformer game with releases on
Both Apple, Android and Steam.
The trailer was enough to help the film's Kickstarter campaign
rack up over $630,000, which let David Sandberg, finish his shoot and hire
visual effects artists to build the virtual locations for nearly every shot in
the movie. The finished product made it into this year's Cannes Film Festival,
and Sandberg is currently shopping a feature-length version of the project as
well. So without further due, if you haven’t seen it yet . . . KUNG FURY.
As always, this is Ballzy247 Signing out
References
Image 1 - Retrieved on 13/07/2015 from - http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/2015/06/03/kung-fury.jpg
Hacker Man Competition - Retrieved on 13/07/2015 from - https://www.vhx.tv/kungfury/packages/kung-fury-official-short-film
General Infomation - Retrieved on 13/07/2015 from - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3472226/?ref_=tttr_tr_tt
History of Kung Fury - Retrieved on 13/07/2015 from - http://www.fastcocreate.com/3045812/how-kung-fury-went-from-a-career-hail-mary-to-kickstarter-sensation-cannes-entry-and-hollywo
General infomation - Retrieved on 13/07/2015 from - http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/21/8636195/kung-fury-movie-robert-rodriguez-tv-release-date
The High School Band Analogy - Retrieved on 13/07/2015
from - http://www.vox.com/2015/6/2/8712471/kung-fury
