August 24, 2006
dave chimes in
Hallam Foe director, Dave MacKenzie left the following comment in my last post:
I am very happy that my friends can get into the film (even at this rough stage). And yes relieved too! But the big question for me right now is how to get the rest of the world into it. Yes it is a fucked up coming of age movie of sorts. But I hope it is a lot more than that.
We really need to find a way of expressing what makes the film special and why people should go and see it. I am way too close to it right now to be able to do that. I know the responses to it in the 4 rough cut screenings we have shown so far have been overwhelmingly brilliant, so that is really encouraging. But I really want to find a beautiful, clarified way of communicating what it is that doesn’t rely on cliches and reflects the film accurately.
The proplem is that it is a complex movie about a difficult stage in a young guy’s life and any attempt to reduce it to an easily digestible soundbite/pitch seems to take away the magic of the film. We know we need to find this pitch in order to capture the imagination of our potential viewers, but we don’t yet know what it is.
This search for the film’s identity is the challenge of the next few weeks for us and I hope Hugh is going to engage his readers in our quest . Any help much appreciated.
What important to me at this stage is that there will be some solid form of “alignment” between the production team and the audience i.e. that the conversation the production team is having about the film is the same a the audience is having. This all goes back to The Pourous Membrane etc.
I’m hoping we can get the film out into impromptu test markets, just to see what people who aren’t involved with the project have to say. I was thinking in the next couple of weeks of perhaps holding a private screening in London, followed by a geek dinner. It’s just an idea at this stage, but it’s hard to have a conversation with people, if they haven’t seen the movie yet.
I believe with conversation, the required language will evolve orgnically.
[“Extreme Business Planning”:] Some very good advice from Sigurd. It applies to Hallam Foe as much as any other enterprise:
Build what you think is some valuable stuff, get it out there as early as possible with no limits to who the user might be — listen attentively, find out how it’s used, who uses it — tweak and repeat until it sticks in reality, then crank up, only then. That’s where the funding should go, fund the time you need.
That’s extreme business planning, extremely agile business planning.
[UPDATE:] I made the following remark in the comment section below:
The movie itself is fine. It’s a good movie. We’re not worried about that.
What I’m worried about is the economics involved with people telling their friends about the movie.
Nobody is going to recommend a movie to their friends, Hallam Foe or otherwise, unless there’s something in it for them.
We, as a production team, have to figure out what that “something” is.
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Hugh, I couldn’t agree more with that drawing. Being a college student myself, I’ve to come to the realization that I thank my parents for making me into a fairly self sufficient person who can fend for himself. I didn’t make this realization until I got to college and saw the number of kids (err… young adults?) who seemed to be having such a difficult time making the adjustment in their lives to become self sufficient.
In regards to Dave’s comment, I would worry less about making the movie easy to digest and focus more intently upon making a good film. Based on Hugh’s reaction to viewing the movie it seems as though you’ve got yourself a movie worth seeing. If it’s an engaging movie that perhaps takes a second viewing for someone to wrap their head around, I’d say that’s truly a good film.
Thanks, Matt. The movie itself is fine. It’s a good movie. We’re not worried about that.
What I’m worried about is the economics involved with people telling their friends about the movie.
Nobody is going to recommend a movie to their friends, Hallam Foe or otherwise, unless there’s something in it for them.
We, as a production tream, have to figure out what that “something” is.
Your cartoon is EXACTLY the philoshophy I have taken in how I raised my daughter. But I admit Hugh, I don’t understand what you mean when you say, “the economics involved with people telling their friends about the movie”. What will it COST to get me to tell my friends about this movie? What is in it for me?!? I tell my friends about movies because I got something from the movie — not just pure entertainment but that something that touched me, whether it was my heart, there was that raw intelligence wrapped in there that makes you go “huh”, or pure rapture when you laugh at ingenius humor.
The thing “in it for me” in recommending movies to my friends is the expectation that if THEY find something wonderful that I might miss, they will share their recommendation with me one day and reciprocate the favor.
Recommending a movie, Deannie, is a form of social gesture. Social gestures are a form of currency. Hence the economic angle.
Maybe “dynamics” would be a better word for you than “economics”?
This post is very much on-point to Telefilm Canada’s “From Cinemas to Cell Phones” commentary regarding “multiplatform” and “drawing audience”. You suggest the concept of “what’s in it for them” will govern audience participation and recommending to friends. I suggest that “a good story” might be enough. Thus, what is the story (or stories) relative to pitching the firm and… It must touch the human spirit! When and where is the film going to be distributed in Canada? Also, how about creating a site where people can view highlights of the movie, including via cellphones. Best wishes for success!
It is very unusual to get this perspective on a product. It could be in 3 months this whole conversation looks silly because the movie has completely taken of based on its own quality. I do not think the people involved are expressing themselves well. As deannie and Hugh say, I recommend movies to my friends because I think they will like them and they will appreciate me more because I was the one that recommended it. You can call this social currency if you like, but _you_ can’t pay me for this. As people farther up might have refered, if it deep enough, I also appreciate someone with whom I can discuss it.
So, the content creators have made something they like, and everyone they’ve shown it to likes. They wonder how to get from here to a hit. What you should be worried about is trying how does random person A: 1. hear about it, 2. see it. Then, assuming the movie is good, he will do the work to recommend it to person B.
I know nothing about 2, but my best idea for 1 would be to send copies to bloggers who are well read and respected, trying to extract some guarantee that they will not put the movie all over the internet. You have to have a personal connection with them before you send it so that they take it seriously, and so that you have confidence they won’t put it all over the internet. I started reading Hugh from Scoble, so he pops into my mind as such an example.
You want your blogger to be able to ask you if they can send it along to another blogger they know and respect. You have to be careful so that it doesn’t get too far removed, because then it will get put all over the internet.
And so, my fellow film makers, ask not what your audience can do for you; ask what you can do for your audience.
Hamlet on a Hot Tin Roof
Hugh; most art is about sex or death or both.
I concur with Cherkoff…
There is a school near Washington that is all about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps: children between 5 and 18 are wholly responsible for their own education — choose every day what they will undertake. And all the rules of the schools are democratically voted in the weekly meeting.
Someone has made a movie about this school (called Fairhaven). The catch-phrase of the movie is “this movie is for everyone who ever went to school and imagined something better”. Well, it’s no lie!
here’s the trailer: http://www.newamericanschoolhouse.com/trailer.htm
The something is the possibility of not wasting their time in the future seeing a bad movie, reading a bad book etc.
True word of mouth is not an amorphous thing, it is the aggregation of words of mouth from specific individuals whose opinion is trusted by the recipient. These individuals make the recommendation to you perhaps to boost the esteem in which they’re held but primarily I believe to enhance their social network and receive reciprocated advice in the future so that when they have to make a decision on how to spend their valuable free time, they make a more informed decision than one based on hype.
Mark Cuban uncovered a whole slew of ideas of varying quality when offering a job in exchange for marketing ideas for his cinema chain. There were something like a thousand comments as a result and many covered the idea of “incentivising” the audience to spread the word. I wasn’t convinced that any would actually change people’s behaviour but it might be worth having a read of the suggestions.
»We, as a production team, have to figure out what that “something” is.
Right.. extract the primary audience benefit.
You were a copywriter, right Hugh? You’re good at that.
It doesn’t seem to me that Madison Avenue messed you up in that regard.
Here’s the Cuban link.
Building on Cherkoff’s comment … I think it’s very important to first focus on the effect the film will hopefully have on moviegoers and not focus on the tools (sex, death, weirdness, suspense, etc.) which are employed to evoke the viewer feelings.
At the end of the film will the (target) viewing audience be bemused, happy, agog, hopeful, confused, nostalgic, exhilarated, mystified, sad, …? When this is determined (can be more than one feeling evoked), I would then think of the ‘tone’ of the film (ironic, funny, mystical, atmospheric, irreverant … ?) and then I would bring these two elements (outcome and tone) together to build a representative tagline about the film and its potential impact on the viewer.
have fun
Amen. Good piece.
Hugh — where do I get the larger version of this for my wall. I live in a neighborhood of helicopter parents.
gf
On recommending movies: I never, ever recommend movies. I’m too scared of people trusting my choice and then hating the movie. I’d recommend books, writers, places, anything except movies. I know I’m not the only one; I think people like me think that there’s something particularly horrible in being inflicted two hours of bad cinema, a sort of sensory deprivation torture reminiscence…
I dare you to change this habit of mine
spot on Hugh — we need to see the movie before we can start talking about it. Private screening and geek dinner sounds good (perhaps with some facilitated [but not focus-groupy] discussion) and will result in some blogging and flickr exposure I’m sure.
How about also sending preview copies on DVD to bloggers on request or making the film available for (bittorrent) download?
It’s simple.
1. Create a movie worth talking about.
2. Create it in such a way so the creation itself is worth talking about.
3. Step back and learn and engage in the conversation.
The fact that we are having this conversation right now makes for an unusual creation process and that makes for something worth talking about.
As for a private screening. I’d love to come! I live in Sweden though but maybe you got a spare sofa for me?
André Hedetoft
Movie-geek
Just created a game where you get to play with my real life over at http://www.andrehedetoft.com in the quest to turn me into the obvious geek movie director!