Editor’s note: Dana Loberg is co-founder of MovieLaLa.
Every day, it seems there are new headlines on the strained relationship between technology and entertainment. Variety’s recent “Broken Hollywood”
story was essentially a battle cry from entertainment heavyweights
sounding off on the biggest challenges they’re facing in an industry
undergoing a great deal of turmoil. In 2015, when we’ll see an estimated
1 billion smartphones sold — double the amount of personal computers —
it’s no wonder traditional companies entrenched in a system dating back
to newspaper and television are having a hard time adjusting.
I’ve shuttled between the Bay Area and Los Angeles 46 times over the last two years and have met with many Hollywood
executives. Running a tech startup focused on the entertainment and
pre-theatrical marketing of movies, I’m witnessing all the changes
occurring in the film industry at a macro-level. And even more so, the
shift in how movies are being produced and marketed. It’s fascinating to
see the speed at which things are changing in the technology world, and the difficulty studios are having at keeping pace.
Promising signs
Studio execs are keenly aware of the digital and mobile
revolution. They know all about social layers in mobile apps, and that
big data can be used to understand more about consumer behavior than
ever before.
Hollywood’s DNA is all about spending large sums of money to produce and market movies, taking risks on new technologies is not part of its make up.
Disney’s purchase
of YouTube multichannel network Maker Studios and its thousands of
entertainment channels signaled a potential paradigm shift in the way
studios distribute franchises and look for the stars of tomorrow.
The studio even announced in December that it will enlist Maker to
create short videos with popular teenage YouTubers in order to promote
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” before it opens in December. What better
way to reach young people who weren’t even born when Luke Skywalker, Han
Solo and Darth Vader first blasted their way into America’s hearts?
Others are also discovering new ways to inform target
audiences about when their favorite movies are coming to theaters. As a
result, a greater chunk of theatrical marketing budgets are now being
transferred to the digital realm. Just look at Universal’s promotion of
Ouija on Snapchat, or Lions Gate’s work with Instagram celebrities to
get the word out about Divergent.
At the other end of the consumption cycle, many studios
have sought new ways to combat the problem of Internet piracy by working
with a company called Zefr to identify bootlegged clips of their movies
and TV shows on YouTube and place ads on top of them.
Challenges remain
While studio visionaries are aware of the pace of change,
there is still resistance from executives who are comfortable with the
old system and cling tightly to their antiquated roles. Remember, some
of these studios have been around for more than a century. While new
regimes appear every few years and rebuild things from the ground up,
one key aspect has remained the same: bureaucracy. And as huge
international conglomerates have bought out the studios, even more
layers of red tape have been piled on.
Hollywood’s DNA is all about
spending large sums of money to produce and market movies, taking risks
on new technologies is not part of its make up.
The idea of testing out new products and services, whether free or paid,
proves challenging as those in power hold on to “what works” and what
they know. So, in many instances, that means repeating the same
methodology that’s been around for decades, or relying on a previous
film’s success and repeating those methods already set in place.
When you compare that business model to the lean and nimble
startups in the tech world that can update, revise and pivot their core
product in a few days or weeks depending on how consumers respond, the
differences could not be more striking.
Bringing tech in-house
Even here in Silicon Valley it can be difficult to keep up with the pace of technology.
As a startup, we have to constantly stay abreast of all things new.
That often means taking meetings at Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter,
Google, etc. to stay informed about changes occurring to the API,
algorithm, and other significant updates related to how entertainment is
displayed and consumed on that particular platform.
Despite the many advancements at their disposal, film
studios are still fundamentally traditional in their approaches. The way
to remedy this is to stop relying on third-party companies and bring
the technology innovators under their own roof.
It would be exciting to meet a studio technical team filled
with engineers and data scientists tasked with replacing the
technological gap in their content creation and delivery systems. In a
world where technology is going to continue
infiltrating our lives, film studios are at risk of becoming less
important and less powerful if they don’t make technology a priority.
It would be exciting to meet a studio technical team filled with engineers and data scientists tasked with replacing the technological gap in their content creation and delivery systems.
Just as the introduction of sound and Technicolor changed
the way films were produced and consumed almost 100 years ago, it’s time
for the studios to be leaders once again and find new ways to create,
market and distribute their content in a mobile-centric media landscape.
Outsourcing these solutions is merely a Band-Aid on the very issue
everyone is ignoring.
Technology is meant to improve our
lives and bring added convenience to activities that were once
cumbersome. Once film studios think longer term and adopt new systems
that are both effective and cost-efficient, they will reap the benefits
over the long run. If they don’t, then smaller, more tech-savvy media
companies will level the playing field and take a bigger share of Hollywood’s profits sooner than its bigwigs realize.