Tag: hollywood

On Piracy and Promotion

Charlie:  Dad, how can you hate The Colonel?

Stuart (Scottish accent):  Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly, Smart Ass!

– So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993) –

As mentioned in much older posts, my father was an advertising professional, principally a creative director but also a manager.  And one lesson he preached to his colleagues, employees, students, and even to his clients was that good advertising can only sell a bad product one time.  In particular, there was one client I remember that probably danced with every agency in Los Angeles at one time or another, convinced that a fresh campaign could sell a particular offering to a certain audience they were simply never going to attract.

I think Dad’s axiom remains sound. If consumers really don’t want something, advertising can’t make them want it—at least not more than once.  In fact, I imagine this principle is more acutely understood in the digital age, given the diffuse nature of all communications; scattered consumer attention; and the capacity of social media to provide rapid-response word-of-mouth that either endorses or criticizes a specific product or service.  This does not mean, of course, that advertising is unnecessary.  Apple, which is arguably in a class by itself as a brand, also had a reported advertising budget of $1 billion as of early 2013.  Anyone who thinks Apple can just turn that spigot off and let social media platforms enable consumers to “market for them” is smoking both ends of his crack pipe.

Interestingly, marketing a theatrical feature film is a bit like selling a product just one time. The production cost of big movies can be so high and the attention span of the market so brief, that opening weekend, box-office revenue has become an even more critical threshold for many films than it was just ten years ago.  Naturally, Hollywood studios did not create the pressures of this market alone; they had help from the same digital technologies that today provide us consumers with myriad other options to entertain ourselves on any given weekend—or even the opportunity to pirate films rather than to see them in theaters.  So, yes, the marketing urgency is fraught with the need to capture the fickle audiences that remain willing to go to the movies. But advertising is still not going to drive consumers to do anything they don’t want to do.

Nevertheless, a strange, complementary sentiment to the trope that piracy is good for promoting movies is one that wants to believe that the official marketing of theatrical features is nothing but a grotesquely expensive effort to “cram lousy entertainment down people’s throats.”* Some readers may immediately notice the contradiction that if the entertainment product itself is assumed to be lousy and unwanted, there’s really no point in discussing its promotion, either by traditional or piratical means. Yet, this rather obvious hypocrisy is overlooked when the pirate user or promoter effectively says,  “I hate Hollywood and its terrible movies, and besides piracy is good for promotion.”

Surely, if both of these statements are true, then one would want to avoid “helping” the industry one hates. But of course both statements are not necessarily true; and in a macro sense, neither statement is true.  If millions of viewers had, for example, no interest in seeing Quentin Tarantino’s Hateful Eight, these same uninterested viewers would surely not be eager to watch ripped versions of the film on little screens. No, the reason the widely reported, pre-release piracy of this movie was a big deal is because the film is already a big deal—and it’s not the piracy that made it big.  Tarantino’s track record and his cast of famous actors were not exactly suffering from obscurity when the group calling itself Hive-CM8 decided to leak the film ahead of its theatrical release. And the suggestion that this kind of blockbuster film needs the pirates to “promote” their movie is adorably silly.

Fueling this rationale, though, it seems it has become more common for consumers—or at least piracy apologists—to feel they have been “ripped off” whenever a film is disappointing.  This trend, if it is a trend, is a strange way to approach the experience of moviegoing.  A film isn’t a fifteen-hundred-dollar appliance you rely on in your home every day; it’s two hours of entertainment shared with family or a date or friends.  It’s an experience that, even if it’s bad, provides a basis for discussion or thought or criticism or ridicule. I say this as someone who likes far less mainstream fare than many viewers; and so I don’t really understand the “consumer protection” attitude being applied to entertainment through the filter of rationalizing piracy.  After all, I would never walk into an Avengers film expecting anything other than spectacle and fight scenes and banter; but I would also never walk into a Spike Jonze movie thinking, “Man if he doesn’t deliver as well as his last film, I’m going to demand my money back.”  That just isn’t how it works.

When I took the family to see the new Star Wars film, I was exactly as entertained and ambivalent as I expected to be because I have never been a big Star Wars fan (cue hate mail). Yet, despite knowing this about my expectations when I entered the theater, I didn’t haggle with the guy at the ticket booth and say, “Look, I’m only half as eager to see this film as that dude wearing the wookie shirt, so I think I should pay half price.” Neither did I go see The Force Awakens against my will because its marketing made me do it. General curiosity and something to do with the kids is ample reason to go to the damn movies.

Cultural experiences, whether high or low-brow, don’t come with warranties. They are, by nature, experimental.  And, it’s very rare to find creators who produce great stuff without also producing not-so-great stuff. Meanwhile, audiences differ on their views about the “best work” anyway. So, as with most advertising, motion picture marketing is largely about letting consumers know the product is out there, while a prospective viewer often knows his/her own interest level the moment a film is announced to be in pre-production or even development.  Beyond that, it’s a huge damn gamble, and when it comes time to release, the marketing professionals are asking themselves, “How do we get a critical mass in the seats on opening weekend?” But they still know that if that first wave of viewers walks out tweeting “This film sucked,” that’s the ballgame.  A $100 million investment that can be DOA in a single night—whether you love or hate the film itself—is a marketing challenge predicated on exactly the opposite logic of “forcing” unwanted products onto the consumer. It’s knowing the consumer will make or break you with the swipe of a thumb and praying you’ve met or exceeded her expectations.

If piracy were really about promotion or exposure, then the pirate sites would ignore Hollywood blockbusters and pre-releases of big films—which are apparently all bad products “forced” onto the public anyway—and the most-pirated films would be independent, small, and obscure works that are simply never going to be hugely popular. (Not that I advocate pirating these works; I’m simply alluding to a hypocrisy in the promotion argument.)  I recognize of course that there are viewers who use pirate sites to access harder-to-find or “out-of-print” titles, but if the piracy market were limited to these audiences alone, the entire ecosystem would shrink by orders of magnitude overnight; and this whole conversation would be very different.  As it stands today, though, there would be no movie piracy without Hollywood blockbusters; and those films really don’t need help with their marketing.

*One finds this theme more often in comments sections than in the body of articles and posts, but it is not an uncommon theme.

Why I Don’t Really Hate Hollywood

P1180231Once again, I maintained my tradition of not making it through the Oscars.  I haven’t cared much about the show itself in years, and I have even less patience for the pre and post-game buzz about everything that’s right or wrong with Hollywood, with the nominees themselves, with the Academy, and most especially with what anyone is wearing. Okay, I’m  a curmudgeon.  But not really.  Because the truth is a love/hate relationship with Hollywood has been part of the American story since before the L-A-N-D came off the famous sign that gives the town its name. Even the word movies was originally a pejorative adopted by the farming community of Southern California to describe those decadent idolaters who made those damn “flickers.”  I really don’t think it’s possible to have an industry built on so much passion, ego, fear, sex, and money without people finding it alternately alluring and repulsive. I also believe it is never quite possible to love cinema without liking Hollywood at least a little.

For one thing, what many people think of as independent cinema isn’t necessarily independent from Hollywood so much as it is codependent on Hollywood.  Big film and little film are more  symbiotic than they are competitive.  For example, the indie producer who needs to pay lower day rates to actors or skilled technicians is able to hire those folks because big movies pay well enough that they can afford to take on low-budget projects between the larger ones.  But the symbiosis is even more intrinsic than that.  For instance, if the production designer of a low-budget, indie feature has also done massively complex, studio projects, he is going to be a huge asset to that smaller film, as will any other experienced member working in another department.  A novice director can live or die by the experience of the people willing to work for him or her.  Additionally, little film benefits from the technological advancements driven by big film. And then, of course, big film looks to little film for new talent and fresh ideas. So, the line between Hollywood and independent cinema isn’t so much bright red as a kind of fuzzy pink.

How “independent” a film is really depends on how much creative control is maintained by the visionary (or visionaries) who want to make the work in the first place.  Naturally, if a filmmaker needs five-hundred thousand dollars from a small group of private investors, she has a better shot of keeping creative control than if she needs a hundred million dollars from a couple of large, corporate financing companies.  On the other hand, an example I often cite is Steven Spielberg, whom few people would describe as “independent” even though he is certainly a director who has full creative control over his films.  So, independent isn’t necessarily about scale or budget; and it certainly isn’t about the style or content of a film.  Plenty of absolute garbage has been produced independently, and plenty of great movies were produced by the old studio system.  But I suspect that because the golden age of indie (from the late 1980s to the early aughts) lost much of its gleam about the same time the Internet began to blossom, and big studios generally transitioned into franchise fare, this helped calcify the “us” and “them” sensibility that assumes a separation between “the creators” and “the industry.”

Make no mistake — Hollywood studios certainly have executives with MBAs who wouldn’t know which end of a camera to blow into.  Such is the nature of large corporations.  Still, the symbiosis between big film and little film exists, and this remains relevant because there is a persistently naive sentiment floating around in cyberspace that digital technology somehow enables truly visionary creators to “bypass the gatekeepers.”  This sounds idyllic, but as you run beyond the cliff edge and hang there Wile-E-Coyote-like, feet treading air a thousand feet above the desert, you have to ask yourself, “Bypass to go where exactly?”

Simply put, digital technology has only lowered the barriers to entry by putting certain tools of production and distribution into everyone’s hands. And this is unquestionably cool.  But entry implies a portal of some kind — we might even call it, well, a gate.  Maybe it’s the literal, iconic gate of Paramount Pictures, or maybe it’s the metaphorical gate of investors willing to back a second film based on the relative success of a first. By the way, finding a distributor for that first film requires passage through another kind of gate, if you will. But it’s really that next project that is the key.  Technology indisputably helps get a first film done, but any experienced filmmaker will tell you that you can only make a movie on favors and Fluffer-Nutters once.  As a general rule, you have to pay people to work on the second film, which means at least some gatekeepers (i.e. investors) are going to get involved, and they’re going to want a distribution plan that involves at least some return on that investment. And there is nothing about digital technology that overturns this basic business model.

With the approach of the Oscars, piracy of the nominated films spiked, and concurrent with reports of this increase came predictable comments that “the industry” must respond by making films available across all platforms simultaneously. This is supposedly the only answer to piracy because “producers need to understand the way consumers want to watch films.”  Perhaps.  But it is interesting that the prevailing faith in the Internet as an expansive, inclusive, incubator of diversity also ignores just how homogenous this demand for universal distribution actually is.  For one thing, there is no “the industry” in this context because there is no one way to market and distribute the broad range of films. Both films and audience trends will continue to shape one another, and we should not assume there is a single strategy that suits all projects.

No matter what, piracy is universally harmful, especially to the small filmmaker most eager to experiment with new platforms. I just met a writer/director who self-financed a small movie and made it modestly profitable by splitting up the rights and negotiating a fairly complex schedule of distribution windows, licensed to various channels from DVD to VOD to streaming. That’s not a new approach to licensing, but what serves both the filmmaker and the audience is the expansion of legal platforms, giving both producer and consumer more than one way to engage in a viable market.  Meanwhile, that same film was also heavily pirated upon its release, and the plus-or-minus x% on a modest film expecting modest returns will surely be the difference between attracting investors to the next project or not.  Meanwhile, how did this filmmaker self-finance his film?  With money he made working on big, Hollywood movies.  See what I mean?

GOOGLE-WOOD-LAND? Maybe not.

Okay, I haven’t seen The Internship yet, and it’ll be a small miracle if I find the time.  Certainly if it were not for this blog, I wouldn’t have any interest. But if the sampling of viewer responses on Rotten Tomatoes is any indication, it’s a safe bet that this particular Vaughn/Wilson vehicle has all the appeal of a driverless Porsche.  Consensus seems to be that the hand of Google’s PR machine is more than a little too heavy. This quote is not only exemplary, but is rich with irony, if you know Google’s position on making free the new price for entertainment:

“The Google logo appears so often you shouldn’t have to pay to see this movie. Google should pay you.”

Considering the amount of Google money that is spent in an effort to vilify Hollywood as the command HQ of all that would destroy the internet, it is funny to watch the web behemoth attempt to use motion pictures in this way and to see it backfire, particularly in the same month when CEO Larry Page has been “invited” to discuss new allegations of illegal activity by his company.  The thing is that even with a talented comic duo like Vaughn and Wilson, the audience can recognize when a motion picture is basically just a two-hour commercial.  Even though it isn’t Google’s picture, the PR department still had a level of approval and believed the film would be good for the company. It’s almost as though we could say these technologists just don’t get moviemaking.