Matt Schulte

Cinetic launching a global vod system

Lots of interesting stuff coming out of the Los Angeles Film Festival panels. One item, that I think qualifies as big news, is the headline above....cinetic launching a global vod system.

This comes via twitter, on a solitary tweet by @zakforsman

No other details yet (not even sure who said it...I assume it's from a panel run by @ScottKirsner).

But this is the kind of applecart-turning that will have to happen for any project to survive that isn't a major studio tentpole.

This is bigger news than John Lesher getting the boot, but I wonder how much mainstream media (even the trades) will make of it.

UPDATE: doing a little research I find this LA Times article from CANNES that I somehow missed:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/12/entertainment/et-cannesvod12

Excellent overview of the state and current thinking of/on VOD.

Hollywood-Filmmaking-The Web - links for June 12, 2009

Here's a few of the interesting links I came across this week related to Hollywood, filmmaking, and/or the web.

CinemaTech: All Your Questions, Answered

Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily » Indie Filmmaking: 35 Tips From Experts

50 Best Websites for Moviemakers 2009 | MovieMaker Magazine

Cisco Says The Web of The Future Is All About Video

Truly Free Film: 52 Reasons Why American Indie Film Will Flourish

Digital Power 2009

This Is The Right Time To Make Movies « The 401st Blow :: Thoughts On Media

Agencies and what now - Endeavor, WMA, CAA, etc.

Consolidation in the agenting business has resulted in, (and will continue to) massive lay-offs at the agencies...

All those agents and support staff who'd been hoping to become agents are out on the street, some of course will get picked up by other agencies..others will drop out of the game, and others will wonder, well what now....

What is the new new for the agenting business? I mean besides being part of the mega-agencies. There are so many more outlets for talent now...but of course, very few of these new outlets pay.

Like in every other part of the world of show biz, will a DIY breed of agent arise? Already, talent are taking control of their careers like never before. Felicia Day anyone? But....of course she has a real agent, George Ruiz. (I think.)

This new breed of agent needs to be multi-platform conversant, they need to know where Web 3.0 is headed, they need to acknowledge that everything is broken and up for grabs, they will need to be way way way more involved in strategies that didn't exist just a few years ago...they need to be able to find and spot talent that aren't necessarily looking to get found, and then be able to craft a strategy that exists and is relevant to that moment.

Felicia Day couldn't have become who she is 5 years ago...and next year her career paradigm will be old news. Maybe it already is. Like I've said before, business models (and by extension...careers) have to become incredibly granular...each PROJECT needs it's own business model, that's a whole new way of thinking...there will always be a "Twilight" that can/will blow a hole in the fabric of popular culture...but the rest of the show biz world is in flux...and adaptability, technical facility and creativity are going to have to be part of the new world of "agenting" in a way they never have before. Hey....who's your agent?

Relativity Media - Land of the Lost - Community Managers

So, Will Ferrell's Land of the Lost has opened to very poor Box Office, bad reviews, and lots and lots of twittering about how awful it is.

In the world of Social Media/Social Web, this would be a crisis that required/demanded action. If this were a web services release, or a software release, or even a physical product, there would be, very likely, a Community Manager springing into action. The Social Web is on fire with BAD NEWS for the future of Relativity Media and Universal's new product, Land of the Lost!

What is their strategy to turn this lemon into lemonade? My guess is there is absolutely no plan. Marketing, in Hollywood, is what happens before a product release, you hope it goes well, and then you move onto the next "product release".

Like everything else digital or web related, Hollywood is so woefully behind the curve it is alarming, but not surprising.

Does it make sense for the companies that have invested in these projects to try treat them more like a software release? to maybe try to establish relationships with the customers who actually LOVED the movie? to reach out to those that didn't?

According to Twendz, and checking search.twitter.com periodically, the sentiment about the film is running equally between negative and positive. However, the only thing you'll see in MSM is the negative. Guaranteed.

A Community Manager is, as Dave Allen @pampelmoose points out, not a "salary", but an insurance policy.  If Relativity/Universal had a CM working on this, what would they do? Is post-release too late?

I would say the world of media has evolved to a point where post-release CAN'T be too late. You have to adapt, or...uh, die?

A CM would reach out to both supporters and detractors, to try to get supporters to evangelize a bit, or simply to thank them, and detractors, to see if they had feedback that would be helpful, or to try to start a conversation that could be helpful in the future...or to start a relationship that could evolve over time.

In this specific case...a typical tweet today was "Forget what critics are saying; Land of the Lost was fun!"...that's a gift....so doing a quick search on twitter, finding 100 people who really loved the movie, and sending them a tweet, saying...hey, thanks so much for the positive tweet, here's 2 free tix to send to a couple of friends to see it too...

That's quick work. Easily done.

It's also potentially a MSM story...hey, look, a movie is doing post-release follow-up...

And how about those that didn't like it? Could you follow up with them and say, " we are sorry you didn't find it funny...but you know, we think it's funny, of course...what would you think about sending a couple of tix to friends to see it, and by the way, here's lunch on us at Subway?". (Subway is doing a tie-in with Land of the Lost.) Or...sorry you didn't like it...here's two tix to The Ugly Truth, it opens in July, we think you'll like it.

And hey, here's lunch at Subway. Yum.

Or...a lot of the complaints on twitter have to do with the fact that it seems to be marketed as a family friendly movie, so people took their kids, and then were pretty pissed about the level of inappropriate humor.

That doesn't bode well for a DVD release I would think. Maybe they should find some of those tweeters and find out...well, what were those parts that offended? Maybe those are obvious, maybe they are not. But isn't that good info? And wouldn't those people be pretty stoked that they were being listened to? Maybe the DVD release should be re-edited to make it more family friendly. And maybe they should let everyone know that. Maybe that Mom that complained, would love to rent/buy that DVD if some of the inappropriateness was trimmed. It was funny, EXCEPT for the inappropriate parts.

Maybe week 2 of the marketing plan should lean more heavily on the raunchier aspects of the movie...is there a red-band trailer lurking waiting for a release? Or should there be?

Can the twitter/facebook data be parsed to determine who it's playing best with?  Nothing wrong with marketing your product to the people who you think might like it best....pre-release of a movie like this is marketing to everyone...

When all releases are digital, we might be seeing a different version in the theaters the week following a soft opening. That will be interesting.

What else would a Community Manager do at this point?

Is Will Ferrell the new Chevy Chase? or the new Bill Murray.

Chevy Chase and Bill Murray - both huge stars...both crushed it on SNL...both left to pursue movies...

Chevy left after one short season, and did in fact become a huge star.

Foul Play (not as fondly remembered as some of his others, but grossed 46 million domestic...which is 107 million in today's dollars...I asked Wolfram Alpha...)

and then of course Vacation (145 million domestic, inflation adjusted.)

Fletch (106 million...etc.) 

European Vacation (100 million)

Spies Like Us (142 million)

Three Amigos (80 million)

Christmas Vacation (121 million)...That's an enviable winning streak there!

then,

Nothing but Trouble (14 million), and....

Memoirs of the Invisible Man (21 million)....

Cops and Robbersons (what? anyway...15 million)....

slight reprieve with Vegas Vacation (47 million)....

Not only did he never get back to stardom, he pretty much dropped off the cultural radar. Why?

Murray stepped away from SNL, and immediately had a giant hit...

Meatballs 143 million

followed by

Caddyshack (with Chevy Chase of course) 100 million

Stripes 200 million 

and then, the megahit:

Ghostbusters 470 million

to be sure, Bill Murray then had a long string of mis-fires after that...but one thing he did, that Chevy Chase did not, and I believe opened the door to the kind of career he has vs. the one Chevy Chase...

After Meatballs, Caddyshack, and Stripes...an incredible trifecta of comedy that pretty much created the entire smart/juvenile comedy genre...and just before the monster hit of Ghostbusters...he took a supporting part in Tootsie.

Playing against one of the all-time comedic greats, in one of the all-time great comedies, Bill Murray was perfect. He was his funny smart deadpan wiseass self...but it was within the context of a much different type of movie than he'd been in yet. A comedy built on character, directed by a master.

While Chevy kept going back to the same well, or making movies like Dirty Work (directed by Bob Saget?)...Murray had Tootsie under his belt, Murray had a Harold Ramis in his corner - cranking up Groundhog Day.

It wouldn't be for another 15 years that he was cast in Rushmore, leading to the next phase of his career...the elder statesman of comedy (not that he's old)...all that sublety and nuance that was overlayed with the smirk, is still there, but the smirk is mostly gone, replaced by a world weary ennui that resonates with contemporary audiences.

And so Bill Murray keeps getting cast in some wonderful movies.

Chevy Chase struggles for a relevant career.

So, which path is Will on?

I think he is at that point in his career. He's had his hits, a few mis-fires, but, essentially, everybody knows the act now. Smart of him to go to Broadway, smart of him to try things like Stranger than Fiction...but he hasn't found that layer, or that project, like Tootsie was for Bill Murray. Taking the best of his persona, and presenting it in an entirely different context, laying the groundwork for evolution. 

Land of the Lost opened to what are being called disappointing numbers. The reviews have been pretty brutal. And he puts out a lot of movies! In the last 6 years, he has appeared in 18 movies, 15 of which he was the featured star. Those are like John Wayne, studio-system numbers. So who is making the kind of movie these days that could capture the essence of Will Ferrell, but put a spin on it, make it seem like...hey, here's a guy that is going to be around for-EVER. Because he is getting close to having a career that is running on auto-churn.

Also...twitter sentiment seems to be running, I'm guessing...60% liking Land of the Lost, 40%, not so much. Which is a much higher pct of "liking" than the critics (rottentomatoes.com = 26%).

Which brings me to my next post, for tomorrow...what should the studio do to follow up the soft opening of Land of the Lost? Generally speaking, they usually do nothing. It opens big, has legs, everyone's happy or opens big, doesn't have legs, less happy, but whatever, or opens soft...everybody steps away. Those are the usual possible scenarios. However! I have ideas. Next post, what should Relativity/Universal do to get the movie the legs it needs?

#landofthelost

Hollywood in the Age of Twitter

Used to be in the entertainment business you had a ubiquity/scarcity model that went something like:

product - scarcity
distribution - scarcity
"talent" - controlled scarcity (false ubiquity)
advertising/marketing - ubiquity

you've got a movie, band, whatever...you create the "product", your appearances are stage-managed, the distribution is closed,and advertising tries to pummel a public into caring. Of course some, heck, A LOT, of great art has come out of that paradigm...but that is all going away, and the entertainment biz is struggling, like every other business, with how to navigate this paradigm shift.

Ashton, (the fella married to Demi Moore, you know?)....is of course grabbing the bull by the horns...amassing a following on Twitter, but also....really interacting with his fans on twitter...not just getting some intern to get a bunch of followers for him.

Distribution is become ubiquitous due to the web...and that will only get more wide-spread and permanent...the "talent" is getting out in front of their own publicity machine...if you are on twitter all day, and you post your own videos of yourself, etc., what can People magazine and the paparazzi do? You're already doing their job. But what's the product now? Will Ashton's new movie open huge? I would say conventional wisdom says not necessarily. It will be interesting to see...but he is amassing a following, that is far different from his previous tv/movie following. So what will he do with it? He is certainly trying to do "good"...publicizing causes he believes in.

Is the product now....Ashton's life? A mediated reality show-thing? And where to go from there?

I am hitting "publish" on this now...but will be adding to it as I think further on it.