If You Can Promote The Movie Yourself, What Is The Studio Doing?
from the isn't-that-what-the-studio-is-for? dept
As the movie studios like to complain about how the internet is impacting their business, it seems that they’re (again) not quite getting how it can help their business as well. Reuters has a nice little story about how a first time director used MySpace to drum up buzz about her film. The basic story, by itself, isn’t that interesting. What is interesting is that Walt Disney’s Touchstone Pictures was supposed to be promoting the film. However, since they pretty much had decided it was going to be a small time film, they didn’t put much effort into it. It was only a couple weeks before the movie came out that Touchstone finally realized something was going on and took over the MySpace page. If part of the “benefit” the big movie studios pitch is their ability to promote your movie widely, it’s somewhat damning to find out that the director seemed to do a much better job on her own just using MySpace. It certainly seems to call into question the purpose of going with such a big studio for promotions.
Comments on “If You Can Promote The Movie Yourself, What Is The Studio Doing?”
Hey Mike...
I think you’ve got a gramatical error in that first sentence bud.
Promotion is only a portion; what about financing, venues, etc?
Isn’t this like the trifecta of incompetence? It seems completely obvious that the MPAA or the RIAA has no purpose whatsoever. Outside of taking too much money and ramping up our prices to the point of mass piracy, they appear to have no value at all. They trample artists’ rights, not protect them, they pay radio stations to play music that has no right to be made in the first place while decent artists go hungry, and they try to ‘jack the consumers to the point of rebellion. There have been genocidal tyrants that have more value than these guys.
GDog
Re: Trifecta of incompetence
I’ve not heard that before. It’s catchy.
Re: Re:
I agree
The biggest holdback for independent films right now is distribution, no doubt.
If the theatrer companies weren’t so ginormously huge, small fries might have a chance in hell of getting their movies onto a decent number of screens.
That is not the case.
However, given home theatre rivaling real theatres, and internet distribution… Hey, who knows?
No need for the studios
What is needed for any film AFTER it’s been made is distribution and marketing.
The Internet gives anyone a distribution channel for anything digital. No need for the theaters (unless you really think you’re going to get an academy award) and hence no need for the studios for distribution.
Looks like MySpace, YouTube and Google Video are giving people the marketing arm that was previously unavailable. So, no need for the studios for marketing.
And with studios pushing a lot of the financing down onto the production companies, no need for the studios for financing.
Looks like there’s no need for the studios 😉
Stick-it
~from the article:
“Box Office Mojo forecast that “Stick It” would make $5.7 million, the movie surprised box-office observers by collecting $11 million and a $5,301 per-screen average when it opened last weekend.”
Internet distribution + bandwidth
internet distribution isnt much good if you cant get a server and a nice fat pipe for high bandwidth to support at least a few hundred people downloading it at the same time, and the wallet to support that fat bandwidth bill
Stick it is actually a neat little movie with heavy overtones (how divorce affects girls) that skirted by the usual teen movie cliches. The trailers make it seem like Bring It On (same writer) but in fact the two have nothing in common. I really liked it. I think the low forecast may have been because Stick It is a hard movie to fit in a box, which I guess means they had a hard time matching a demographic to it.
I saw a related article on Yahoo! about the decline of actor’s salaries. Big time actors aren’t bringing in the crowds. Sited was Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy and Nicole Kidman as actors that carry a hefty price tag (20mil range) whose recent films have been financial flops. Also sited is Jake Gyllenhaal (Jarhead, Brokeback) who at $5 mil a movie is considered a steal.
Old business models die hard. Hollywood is changing, hopefully for the better.
internet distribution isnt much good if you cant get a server and a nice fat pipe for high bandwidth to support at least a few hundred people downloading it at the same time, and the wallet to support that fat bandwidth bill
Well you could always make a deal with youtube or google and use them for the distribution. They get all those users and you get your content distributed. Maybe they will barter users for distribution or maybe will ask for a small percentage of the gross, but in any case going this route will probably end up being cheaper and get you more exposure
Don't go out before you get your Mojo!
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