Conference Paper: Sony Pictures Entertainment, International Operations, and the Local Language Production Strategy: The Contemporary Case of Brazil Film Co-‐Productions:
Courtney Brannon Donoghue, University of Texas – Austin, cour...@utexas.edu
Abstract
Sony Pictures Entertainment’s systematic localization efforts mark a turning point towards globalization, conglomeration, and convergence in the structures and processes of media institutions worldwide. This paper explores the trans/national nature of SPE beyond the production and distribution of its English-‐language content. Instead, this analysis will illuminate the complexities surrounding Sony’s local language film production strategy and how it operates within one distinctive industry—the Brazilian film market. The first section explores the nature of Sony Pictures Entertainment as a global media company through academic literature on Global Hollywood, convergence, and media localization. The next section outlines SPE’s general local language production strategy by distinguishing it from the more dominant English-‐language production strategy, key LLP locations, and people involved in developing the strategy. The remainder of the paper describes the current market conditions for Brazilian cinema and their LLP unit operates within the industry and its cultures of production. By examining Sony’s LLP strategy from an institutional perspective and then how it operates within one industry, this paper illustrates how important local industry conditions (particularly financing mechanisms) and a willingness to adapt to cultures of production determine the success of these co-‐ productions and the local unit. Based on field research, industry interviews, and trade coverage, the analysis of mid-‐level processes within Sony’s Brazilian LLP unit reveals a more nuanced and translocal view of the conglomerate’s filmed entertainment divisions, local production strategies, and general international operations beyond the English-‐language blockbuster.
Chico Xavier
Theatrical trailer
(2010, dir. Daniel Filho): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blb0CDyPEH8
Filhos De Francisco – A História De Zezé Di Camargo & Luciano
Theatrical trailer (2005, dir. Breno Silveira):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRlGVXuUqYs&feature=fvsr
I found this essay to be an engaging and informative look into the operations and strategies of localization by one of the diversified media giants. It provides a good explanation and rationale for the LLP business strategy, and zooms in quite nicely to show its operation in an important and growing market. The use of in-depth interviews to explore strategies, working relationships, work flows, and other organizational details generates an unusually granular representation of the operation.
The paper also does a nice job of debunking some of the over-generalizations in international communication literature that the major studios from Hollywood, steamroll their way across world markets with offerings of exclusively US popular culture. The focus on local language production provides an opportunity to show how a major must adapt to conditions as it finds them in target markets, and produce in a way that conforms to local culture and local business practices.
Co-production is critical, and could have been highlighted more as a solution to potential productivity problems for Sony. The distinction that emerges between the co-production of local TV and film is surprising – and I think I would have liked to know more details about why Sony backed out of TV in favor of film.
It is also notable that the paper discusses important facts about financing, production, and marketing, so that the reader gets a glimpse at the full circuit of the media economics of the foreign subsidiary. The exploitation of Brazil’s new cultural policies encouraging local production is rightly emphasized; it makes me wonder if Sony’s other LLPs also exploit the same opportunities.
The weaknesses in the paper owe mostly to the fact that it does not pose an explicit research question or thesis statement. Instead, it is a generally descriptive account of a complex, albeit important, localization activity by a media giant. The intro and conclusion set up the study as a corrective to the over-generalizations of Global Hollywood analyses, but the argument is not carried throughout the paper. It seems to me that the author could have provided many opportunities for explicitly calling out how the paper’s findings challenge or undermine the general propositions of the Global Hollywood thesis. Also, the paper does not engage at all with scholarship on dubbing and subtitling– strategies that have, until recently, been the primary means by which the majors expand into foreign markets. It seems that analyizing the pre-history of the turn to local production would be an appropriate and informative way to frame up the LLP strategy, and another means of addressing the “why” question.
I hope to read more popular communication scholarship like this in the future.