BC duo launch film marketing and production portal

With the film industry apparently recovering from its recent slump, two BC entrepreneurs have launched a Web portal that will marry the entire movie-making process with the Internet – something they say hasn’t been done before. "It’s like chocolate and peanut butter – it’s the combination of the two that gives rise to what makes this really special," says Colleen Nystedt, president of Vancouver’s New City Group, a distributor and producer of independent films. Although film studios have used the Internet as a promotional vehicle, most haven’t integrated it into their advertising plans on a large scale – much to their detriment. "We have seen…a wholesale movement from television to the Internet, key demographics, particularly the male 18-to-35 demographic, listing the Internet now as their chief source of entertainment and information," Nystedt says. She adds she was at ShowCanada, the Motion Picture Theatres Association of Canada’s annual conference, several years ago when she started asking industry pundits about their Internet strategies, given that important shift in viewing habits. "They looked at me like deer in headlights," she recounts. The film industry contributed about $4 billion to the Canadian economy last year, a 100% increase from 1994 figures. Given that increase, Nystedt and partner Catherine Warren, president of Fantrust Entertainment Strategies, came up with the idea for MovieSet, a Web-enabled service encompassing marketing and promotion as well as film shoot management, ecommerce, and other facets of the business. With funding from the Telefilm Canada New Media Fund secured in June, work on MovieSet is well underway and the partners expect to field a prototype within the next month, with full functional development and beta testing taking place early next year. Warren says MovieSet can replace or augment several of the marketing functions film production companies currently perform in-house. "One is…front-loading the excitement for the movie," she says. "Fans want information about movies while movies are being made – they don’t want to wait for the ‘making of’ after the fact. So we’re kind of pulling that marketing window forward early in the cycle." Once a film is finished, the portal can also aid in market research and gathering feedback from a pre-release screening to a select audience. "Nowadays if you want to field-test the film you might do it at a university and get students’ input into what ending they liked or what aspects of the film they liked," Warren says. "We’ll be able to gauge that during the movie-making process." Warren’s expertise in creating customer and fan sites is evident throughout the project, but no more so than in the premium behind-the-scenes membership, known as Lot Pass, that MovieSet will offer to dedicated fans. However, the password-protected interface for Lot Pass also doubles as the login for crew members checking production schedules, amending scripts and documents, requisitioning supplies, and performing other shoot management functions. "Lot Pass, if you’re a fan, will give you premium content, and if you’re a crew member will take you through directly to your page" in the shoot management system, Warren says. That dual functionality is key to keeping development costs low, as well as integrating the production management and fan-based marketing aspects of MovieSet. "For example, on the mobile side, the same technology that will blast a message to everybody on the crew if there’s a change in call time…is the same technology that will blast to the subscriber base to tell them ‘We’re going to be blowing something up at 3 o’clock if you want to tune in,’ ‘There’s an interview with the director at 3 o’clock if you want to go online,’" Warren says. Nystedt says the Internet is a perfect tool for allowing real-time transfer of information between departments, which include myriad functions such as camera operators, art direction, set decoration, props, costumes, and transportation, as well as a mix of top-down and bottom-up (starting at the department level) budgeting. Although software for managing movie production processes does exist – the most notable package comes from Burbank CA’s Entertainment Partners – much of the information contained in them is still kept in departmental "silos". "As a long-time line producer I’ve been frustrated by the fact that we have not successfully made the transition to the Web," Nystedt says. "It’s just so much more efficient to have a web-based production management system." MovieSet’s partners hope ecommerce will prove a significant part of the venture’s revenue. As such, they’ve set up links not only to "clicks-and-mortar" affiliates offering film-related merchandise, but also ringtones, truetones and other mobile content through a partnership with Toronto’s Impact Mobile, which will provide its JumpTXT Content Platform for distribution of the premium content. Auctions have also played a big part in recouping funds post-production for film companies, most often taking place in the city or locale where the film was shot. While some in the industry have been using eBay to sell off costumes and props after a movie shoot ends, Warren says MovieSet will prove a superior venue for such auctions because of the constant and pervasive presence throughout the film-making process, while Nystedt adds: " can go and buy the costumes from the Gap or whatever vendor, or they can actually bid on the actual costumes that were worn by the actors." With its application service provider business model, MovieSet will charge a license fee for use of the platform, but will share any revenue derived from ecommerce and advertising with the film production companies, with "the lion’s share to the producers," Nystedt says. With Telefilm’s new media fund providing financing, she hopes it will be relatively easy to attract filmmakers to the service. "We’re hoping that will help us beta test on films in which invest now," she says. The numerous provincial and federal tax credits available to film producers, combined with Telefilm’s pool of money for marketing activity, will likely mean the service will cost filmmakers very little, if anything, Nystedt adds. "If we can render the cost of operating MovieSet neutral during production, it takes the bite out of getting people up and running." Nystedt predicts that this massive integration of online content into the movie production process will mean a marketing-oriented "web team" will become an integral part of any movie crew in the near future, analyzing the shooting schedule, editing excerpts of video footage taken during the shoot, and posting them online, as well as creating links to related content and interaction between crew and cast members on one hand and fans on the other. "I’d start with the obvious stuff like linking through to fan sites for the stars, for example, but you find that there’s a lot of unexpected links," Nystedt says. "I have a project that we’ve been working on that has a Muddy Waters blues soundtrack, for example. Well, if you Google ‘Muddy Waters’ and ‘blues’ you’ll come up with, say, 900,000 potential links . If you work those links, you’re going to people that already are predisposed to what you’re doing."

BC duo launch film marketing and production portal

News | 11/25/2005 5:00 am EST

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