Yesterday, courtesy of IndieGoGo, I attended a summit on how technology is changing the face of Hollywood. In particular, my interest was focused on a panel of film and television producers, game designers, and social media innovators discussing the creative realities behind traditional media content that lives and breathes in places ranging from toys to twitter.
As I listened to each of the panelists break down their plan for social and multimedia, what I came to realize is that there's a huge difference between how big public companies and small fans or entrepreneurs approach new media.
Take the show Heroes as an example. When he was talking about the development of a new Heroes web-series to be distributed on cell phones, the producer of Heroes (Adam Armus) mentioned that the opportunity came about because the phone company supporting the web-series was a heavy advertiser on the show.
That's when it hit me. Ever wonder why executives with big companies like Disney don't keep Blogger accounts? Basically, Disney needs to support the subsidiaries and affiliate companies with which it does business, in order to reinforce the company's infrastructure and drive the stock price up.
In other words, a big corporation like Disney can't afford to be seen accepting help from companies like Google (who owns Blogger).
On the other hand, the recent purchase of Marvel makes it very good business for Disney to release titles like Pirates of the Caribbean in the comics sphere. When Marvel gets stronger off the title, Disney gets stronger. So does the Pirates brand.
Basically, corporations and social media aren't compatible. Because a big corporation can't use tools that fail to reinforce their interests, they're not free to mix and match social media tools to reach the people they want to reach.
As social media becomes more and more a part of how people define their culture, these companies will be less and less able to release films that don't have the broadest possible audience. In a few years, superhero movies will be all they make. All the major comics companies have already been purchased by major film companies.
On the other hand, somebody like me doesn't loose anything by being seen on Twitter. (See me on twitter @therealarchive!) My goal isn't to make the stock go up and build shareholder trust, my goal is to make successful films, movie by movie. Whatever it takes to do that is fine by my investors, so I'm free to discover the social media tools that work best for my audience and the film I'm making. I'm not limited to cutting deals with cellphone companies, in other words.
Social media is actually what's driving the studio knee-jerk refusal to make movies that weren't comic books or video games first. On the other hand, it's also the force that makes independent, original content like Sam Bailey possible.
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