- Bright Colors?
- Fun Songs?
- Playful Characters?
- Important Life Lessons?
Well, if you thought of any of these, you'd obviously be right...
HOWEVER, there is one thing you probably didn't think about: Smart Writing. And not smart writing in terms of intelligence; but smart writing in terms of movie studio goals.
Last week Mary and I went to go see Rio 2 with her family and while watching it I couldn't help but be pulled into the classic storyline about fish out of water (or, more appropriately, birds out of...water). This made me think, "How can movie writers hold the attention of both small children and the adults that take them to see these movies?" The answer, like I've said, is smart writing. I was pleasantly surprised with some of the more "adult jokes" that were carefully designed to fly over children's heads but land successfully with the older crowd.
You see, the goals of writing children's movies are to entertain kids and pull them into the world of the film without the parents/guardians of these kids wanting to shoot themselves out of boredom. Movie studios need to convince parents that taking their little ones to the movies will be beneficial for both parties. If they don't do enough to please the adults, they'll be less willing to take their kids to the movies at all which will hurt profits as a result.
Again, this is just something interesting I thought of after watching Rio 2 (it's a great film, by the way). I mean, it might be easier nowadays for movie studios to fill seats because younger parents feel like it's hip to act young (man-children, for instance). But regardless, it's still something to think about and appreciate, especially if you have kids or younger siblings...
This is actually similar to my last post. It takes a certain skill to write a movie script that entertains both children and grown ups alike. Just because you can write a story doesn't mean that you can keep somebody with short attention span entertained for two hours. Movie writers have to get the sexual innuendos in while keeping it clean so that the kids won't understand whats going on, yet still think the character is cool. Everybody can write stories, but it takes a special talent to write a story to entertain every typer of person.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I find it hard to watch children's movies if they have too many adult jokes. It makes me think how the kids don't get it. Plus, I nanny and sometimes the kids ask me why I am laughing and I don't know how to answer... But it is clever because they don't get it so I guess that is the point right??
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