To follow up on what I said, Netflix has secured the rights to a new TV series. Regardless of whether the series succeeds, it heralds a long-term trend towards moving home entertainment to the web.

?url? http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9M1P8EO2.htm?/url?

The other related trend is that, if tablets and iphones continue to take off, they may be the place for playing video games and watching movies. That will lead to further changes in the film industry, and, where that will go, no one really knows.

According to the NYT, Glenn Beck has a web channel which already has a subscriber service, and, apparently, makes $4 million a year. I can live with that.

?url? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/business/media/23beck.html?_r=1&hp?/url?

I am seriously thinking of starting a website to do some shorts, just to get exposure and test the market. CI, your thoughts?

Anything you can do to get exposure and test the market is an excellent
move forward. Rather than read about a huge media personality with a
top rated cable show you should check into the web channels that contain
some shorts. There are few "web series" that have some following - there
are far more that can't find a hundred subscribers. The public is clearly
interested in subscribing to a Glenn Beck (to the tune of 4 million a year)
or even Kevin Smith. Are they interested in watching short films? Or a web
series?

I hope so, because I would love to find them and start making some money
making a web series or short films.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

Jay Leno said that, before he did anything on the Tonight Show, he had to hit the road and test his material. I understand many studios do the same thing. So there's an idea - do some shorts about your feature to be made, and see how the audience reacts.

There is a big difference between stand up comedy and short films.
I'm not sure there is a comparison there. Studios test market finished
films. And they pay a LOT of money to get audiences into the theaters
for those test screenings. While there is a track record of short films
that have garnered enough attention to attract financing for a feature,
I have never heard of your method.

If you do it, you'll be the first. I'd love to see it work. I would wonder who
the audience would be. It seems very difficult to find an audience for short
films.

=============================================
The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

I was thinking of a few shorts, just to gain experience and see how the audience reacts. So, to give an example, Francis Ford Coppola would do a series of short takes on "The Godfather", just to see how the audience would react to various scenes of a family of Italian-speaking mobsters. So the idea is not to do a series of shorts, but more like a series of experiments. That said, the audience is a moving target, with fickle tastes, so the data from one year may not be comparable to the data from the next.

I understand. No one has ever done that before. If you do it, you will be the first.
But many people have made short films just to gain experience. It's a great way
to learn how to make movies. I just don't know of any examples of a director
making a series of short takes on a feature to see how the audience will react
to various scenes.

How an audience will react to a series of short takes is likely to be very different
than how they would react to a feature. Very few people watch short films. I'd
say that the vast majority of people who saw "Napoleon Dynamite" had never
even heard of "Peluca"

But it's an interesting way to test the market.

Then how do you test the market?

Are you asking how does a studio with a completed film test market? Or how
do comedians work out new material? Or how an independent producer with
an idea but no script or finished movie might test the market?

quote:

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Originally posted by certified instigator

Or how an independent producer with
an idea but no script or finished movie might test the market?

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This one. But I'd also like to know how a major studio would test market the storyline for the next, say, James Bond movie.

Studios do not test market story lines. They hire writers who
write the stories. The audience is never part of that process. The
audience either accepts the story line or they don't and they
don't really know much about it until the first trailer is
released. That's the challenge of making a movie. It's the exec's
and producer and writer who work out the story and then it's
changed by the director and the actors hired and very often by new
writers hired. The story line is never tested with audiences.

In my experience that's pretty much what independent producers do,
too. A producer with a story idea will interview and then hire a
writer to write it. At no time do they test market the story line
with an audience. Most often a producer will find a completed
screenplay they love and buy it.

Frankly the audience would be a terrible judge of a story line in
the writing process. Most people cannot write entertaining
stories. They know what they like but they don't know why they
like it or why they don't like it. Personally, I don't like
writing with a partner - two heads are not better than one in the
writing process - I can't imagine writing a story line then
showing it to a hundred people and then taking their notes and
rewriting to satisfy even one quarter of them.

A producer (and mogul) needs to trust their instinct when it come
to the script they want to produce. The greatest movies ever made
were made by people who didn't test market the story line - they
were made by people who deeply believe in the story. On the other
side, the most terrible films ever made were made exactly the same
way - by people who deeply believed in the story.

The NYT has an interesting comment about the relationship between comics and comic-book hero movies. It's far less expensive to produce a comic than to produce a movie, so Marvel likes to produce comics to see what catches on. As someone said, comics is the cheapest R&D there is.

?url? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/movies/marvel-faces-a-mighty-foe-publishing-world-uncertainties.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=arts?/url?

The article also noted that readers tend to get tired of the same story arcs and crises that are always besetting the comics universe, and I've seen quite a bit of that too.

If you want to try something similar when it comes to a feature
film I think you should go for it. Make several short films to see
what story line catches on. It's an interesting concept that as far
as I know, no one has tried before.

I have the feeling that comic books and short films are very different
but you could be on to something.

Thought you might like to read what Mike Fleming posted today:

quote:

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Lionsgate set the first three films under a new initiative to generate films with budgets under $2 million. The goal for the micro-budget venture is to generate up to 10 films per year, according to Joe Drake, Lionsgate's Motion Picture Group president.

The first three films are:

Rapturepalooza, with Craig Robinson starring as the Anti-Christ. Chris Matheson wrote the script and Paul Middleditch will direct. Mosaic and Ed Solomon are producing, with production to begin in the spring.

Gay Dude, a Superbad-style coming of age raunchy comedy. Two best friends vow to lose their virginity before graduating high school. Then one confesses he's gay. Script's by Parks and Recreation writer Alan Yang, and it made The Black List. Laurence Mark produces with Jai Stefan.

6 Miranda Drive, a supernatural thriller from Wolf Creek writer/director Greg Mclean. Purported to be fact-based, the tale focuses on a family that unwittingly brings a supernatural force home with them from vacation. The evil presence feeds off their fears and secrets. Mosaic is producing with Mclean.

Lionsgate joins a growing interest in micro-budget films. It started with sleeper hits like Paranormal Activity, and there are a number of "found footage"-driven films forthcoming, including the Timur Bekmambetov-produced Apollo 18 from The Weinstein Company. These are low risk propositions. They have a genre focus and not built on stars, providing low risk and breakout potential.

"Microbudget films involved minimal overhead and very little risk, but a potentially high reward," Drake said in a statement. "This initiative allows us to add another layer to our slate of movies that work both financially and creatively." Lionsgate's Matt Kaplan will oversee the small productions.

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Could be something an Aspiring mogul could try....