The other night, after working on TripTie for many hours, I stayed up and watched the movie Monsoon Wedding on DVD for a break. It was a great movie, much better than the standard sap-that-only-girls-would-be-interested-in sort of flick that I expected (no offense, I’m just not into it). The premise is an intriguing one: take five separate plots, and wrap them around a single event in time: a wedding. Not only is the “wedding” symbolic in that a wedding brings people together (thus, plots), but also “monsoon” is symbolic of the “storm” that takes place when you bring those plots together. However, the most interesting thing that I thought about after watching the film, was that I had a really strong urge to visit Delhi, India.

That strong urge got me wondering about how films can be an extremely strong form of advertisement. Of course, I knew this all along: in my college film studies class, I learned how on many occasions, films are used to convey political agendas (take Fahrenheit 9/11 for example or the propaganda films of Nazi Germany). And of course, the best films are ones that try to convey a message to the viewer anyways.

But suppose Monsoon Wedding was somehow sponsored by the tourist bureau of India (it isn’t, by the way). The movie really has nothing to do with promoting people to come to India, but by just showing a slice of life in Delhi, it really draws the viewer in; makes the viewer interested in learning more about the culture and geography (perhaps enough to put India on their next-to-go list of countries to travel to).

Want another far-fetched idea? Take the concept of movie-as-advertisement and try to advertise or market a company. Forget in-movie cameos or product placements. Instead, try to create a movie where the spirit of the company (or the mission of the company) is key. If the company is TripTie, how can a plot bring out the spirit of travel; and then more subtly, how to tie it all back together.