Jason E. Squire Lecture

Shanghai Intl Film Festival

Squire takes a break from his work with guide and interpreter Huang Jiayan at Buddhist Temple in Shanghai.

Jason E. Squire was invited to lecture at the 10th Shanghai International Film Festival where his opening presentation addressed the theme "Increasing Film Market Value: Revolution of Marketing and Distribution."

In the speech, Squire re-framed the American motion picture industry as the global English-language movie business and described three types of movies being made today: an expensive, English-language blockbuster which must be popular all over the world in order to recoup costs; a local-language movie that travels, due to intangibles that make it popular; and a local-language movie that does not travel.

Squire was asked to present financial case studies for each type, so he provided performance statistics for Mission: Impossible 3 and Mr. and Mrs. Smith as examples of blockbusters; The Devil Wears Prada as a local-language movie that was surprisingly popular all over the world; and Stranger Than Fiction as a local-language movie not popular outside the U.S. Using totals of U.S. and overseas box-office grosses, he made a global business case that the most popular American movies perform consistently with around 60% of worldwide gross outside the U.S. He then participated in a panel discussion with American and Chinese film executives. (Three of these four movies were the subjects of semester-long case studies in Squire's CTPR 386 class "Art and Industry of Theatrical Film.")

Later, he was invited to a meeting with Ren Zhonglun, President, Shanghai Film Group Corp. and President,

Squire lecturing on "Increasing Film Market Value: Revolution of Marketing and Distribution" at the Shanghai International Film Festival

Shanghai Film Studio.

The Festival also marked a reunion with Jason's former student Dr. Sun Shaoyi, who teaches at Shanghai University (and who brought his own students to the panel) as well as USC. Dr. Sun was coordinator of the day-long International Students' Short Film Competition portion of the Festival.

In addition to learning the history and traditions of the city, Squire could not stop taking photos of the daring and impressive architecture of new skyscrapers in a building boom that is still going on.

Associated Person:

Jason E. Squire