《金刚狼》导演的高科技生活

    现在，福克斯家庭娱乐公司(Fox Home Entertainment)已经在所有平台上发布了尚未评级的导演剪辑版《金刚狼》(The Wolverine)，导演詹姆斯•曼高德也推出了这部超级大片的终极版本。这部电影在全球各地赚取的4.14亿美元票房收入的确令人印象深刻，但曼高德今年初还执导了另一部大片——他为美国动视公司(Activision)的视频游戏巨制《使命召唤：幽灵》( Call of Duty: Ghosts)拍摄了一部广告。在这部广告中，著名影星梅根•福克斯与一群游戏玩家在拉斯维加斯击落了数架无人机。进入零售市场仅24小时后，《使命召唤：幽灵》就斩获了超过10亿美元的收入。

    “我不是经常拍广告，但我非常想跟制作团队的好几位朋友重新团聚，”曼高德说。“对于如何制作一部讲述生活在游戏中的普通玩家（而不是名人）的广告，他们构思出了一个绝佳创意。他们非常希望这则90秒钟的广告片能够展示出他们心目中的场面和人物。”

    曼高德一直密切关注不断变化的娱乐业格局，其中就包括视频游戏领域。为了让更多影迷看到自己的电影，他也以非常开放的心态探索全新的社交网络机会。比如，曼高德使用微视频服务Vine发布了一段时长6秒的《金刚狼》预告片。他说，这段预告片的下载量在上线头3天就达到了2.5亿次。

    “电影公司正在非常努力地尝试使用和利用新技术接触影迷，我认为这种做法值得鼓励，”他说。“电影的推广方式不能停留在刊登整版报纸广告，也不能光靠几个热门电视节目发布30秒的广告片。现实情况是，电影现在可以通过多种途径抵达受众。”

    11月19日，在发布蓝光和DVD版本两周之前，福克斯公司率先在iTunes、亚马逊(Amazon)、谷歌电子市场(Google Play)、Xbox和Target Ticket等多家数码卖场发行了《金刚狼》的数字高清版本，从而让这部影片能够更早地抵达更多消费者。这种发行方式已经成为家庭娱乐行业的一大发展趋势。

    “许多消费者把电影视作数字财产，而不仅仅是光盘，所以电影业做出改变（其中也开始包括提供额外材料和更多额外材料来源的链接）以适应这种理念，具有增加价值的巨大作用，”曼高德说。“电脑旁边那些更加精明的观众对以往只埋藏在光盘上的大量背景材料很感兴趣。所以，为在线观众提供这些材料和评判这些材料的方式是一个巨大且非常重要的改变。”  

    The unrated, extended director's cut of The Wolverine is now available across all platforms from Fox Home Entertainment, and director James Mangold has unveiled his ultimate vision of the blockbuster film. The $414 million the movie made at the global box office was impressive, but Mangold had his hand in a different blockbuster earlier this year. Mangold directed the commercial for Activision's (ATVI) Call of Duty: Ghosts, which featured Megan Fox shooting down drones in Las Vegas with a group of gamers. Ghosts made more than $1 billion in its first 24 hours at retail.

    "I don't do ads that often, but I got to work with several crew members who I wanted to reunite with," said Mangold. "They had a really wonderful concept for how to create a piece about regular gamers, instead of celebrities, that were living inside the game. They had a lot of ambition about the spectacle and the characters they wanted to put on screen for 90 seconds."

    Mangold keeps a close eye on the evolving entertainment landscape, which includes the video game business. He's also open to exploring new social networking opportunities when it comes to connecting fans with his films, such as using microvideo service Vine to release a six-second trailer for Wolverine, which Mangold said was downloaded 250 million times in the first three days.

    "Movie studios are trying to be really progressive about using and utilizing new technology to reach fans, and I think that should be encouraged," he said. "Movies can't exist on just the old full-page ads in the papers and on 30-second spots on a couple of hit TV shows. The reality is that there's a lot of ways to reach people now."

    Fox was able to reach more consumers earlier by releasing The Wolverine on Digital HD across digital stores like iTunes (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Google Play (GOOG), Xbox (MSFT), and Target Ticket (TGT) on November 19, two weeks before the Blu-ray and DVD release. It's part of a growing trend in the home entertainment industry.

    "A lot of people are consuming pictures as digital property, not only as discs, so the adaptation of the business to embrace that -- and also to begin including the extras and links to sources with more extra material -- is a huge function in adding value," said Mangold. "The more savvy audience that is on computers is really interested in a lot of the background material that has historically been buried only on discs, so offering that material and offering ways of accessing that material to audiences online is a huge change -- and an important one."