April 28, 2021
It’s not a good sign for the Academy when my wife, and her equally movie-loving work friends all decided to have a watch party on Amazon Prime – of The Heat, no less – instead of watching the awards. Just for more context, these are friends who would meet at the movie theater often, pre-covid, and none of them had any interest in watching the Awards.
But it is a sign of why the Academy Awards don’t work. Without even getting into the big mistakes of this particular year’s show, one of the main reasons this year’s Awards didn’t work was because they forgot about the audience. For a while now, they haven’t been keeping up with the culture, especially not in terms of diversity and inclusion – which many others have covered better than I can do here – but they’ve also missed the ongoing shift to participatory culture. The most participatory thing the Oscars have ever done was Ellen’s selfie, which was the most retweeted picture of all time (at that time) – but that was back in 2014, and it wasn’t even that participatory. In fact, it was self-absorbed to the extreme – look at me, look at us. Here, you can share our photo, but you aren’t part of this. Remember this sentiment.
In fact, this year’s show pretty much pretended the audience didn’t exist beyond the other nominees in the room. Considering that only something like 30% of movie-goers had even heard of the nominated films, shouldn’t you show the audience some clips? If not on the show, then maybe on social media, where anyone watching the show was talking about it? Wasn’t this the night to give us more background on the films, not less? Given that most future movie-goers are mainly hanging out on TikTok, maybe you could have posted a few there?
I was surprised to find that the Oscars actually has a TikTok presence, but not surprised that it appears to have been started in February, and that many of their posts were focused on promoting the show – like an ad – rather than bringing in the audience, or giving them anything to hold onto to make sense of a show full of movies they hadn’t seen. But note what is popular there – the night’s acceptance speeches (notably by Emerald Fennell and Daniel Kaluuya) and former ones (notaby DiCaprio and Bong Joon Ho). There are 603M organic #oscars posts, so maybe there’s an audience that wants to be engaged there?
Instead of telling us cutesy back-stories of Aaron Sorkin popping corn – see, they really are just like us – why not feature some actual kids popping corn, who need a paycheck, which is paid by a theater owner who needs an audience to show up. Bring them into the picture, since this was a night to “promote movies.” (But please don’t ever go to the theater and hand out snacks again). That Questlove quiz show stunt – where they prepped Glenn Close to create a fake viral moment (that contrary to rumor isn’t going all that viral) – why do that late at night instead of throughout the show, on social media for the fans? And let them post their guesses and their dance moves in return?
As others have pointed out, in a year full of loss, wasn’t this the year to extend the tribute section – not just in terms of showing it long enough to read the names, but maybe going back to the practice of tribute reels. Can’t fit them into this slog of a show? Why don’t we have tribute videos for everyone, edited by the best editors in the Academy, and post them online as the segment runs? People are on two devices at once already, acknowledge that in your show.
Something, anything… make the few fans left participants in the show, just a little bit. You could go on forever with these ideas, but unless the Academy gets some, they won’t. ’m not pushing for them to go into the gimmicky zone, but you can’t make the show so intimate that the audience is an after-thought (although, they were pretty absent). Watch Party isn’t even all that advanced in terms of participatory technology, but it’s more fun to watch a movie with your friends there, even an old one, than to watch the Oscars.
That’s one of the problems with movies – they inherently aren’t participatory, unless you get into Bandersnatch land, or similar future experiments. But they’ve always been experienced in a participatory manner, insofar as we watched them in theaters together, laughed or jumped at the same times, whispered about them to our neighbor, or gathered around the (real or virtual) water-cooler later to discuss them.
Society and culture have been moving towards much more participatory art-forms – gaming and social media in particular, for quite some time. If movies are going to survive and thrive going forward, we’ll need to figure out more participatory experiences around the movies, even if we don’t make the films themselves participatory (that too, is part of our future, and can be seen in what’s happening with Unreal Engine, virtual production and virtual worlds, but that’s another article). That’s one reason I’ve been pushing for filmmakers to engage more with #FilmTikTok, just like authors are doing with #BookTok.
This year’s awards were going to be hobbled by the pandemic, and the lack of big films, no matter what. Adding more participatory features into the show wouldn’t have – by itself – done anything to improve upon that bad situation. Doing it in advance of the show, in the right way, might have helped a little bit. But this problem is bigger than this year’s awards or particular films.
It’s an attitude that the film world, especially the Academy, has taken on that it is above and separate from the audience. Films are made by auteurs, and the best of them become Academy members and decide what’s worthy and what’s not. The show is a self-congratulatory exercise that wants to position itself as removed from the hoi polloi, giving you just enough of a peek behind the curtain to be awed by the stars, but not talk to them. They want the audience to show up and buy tickets, but they don’t want to mingle amongst them too much
In fact, those who produce, attend, are members of and are awarded by the Academy Awards have set up an entire eco-system that is separate from the general audience. Studios and platforms spend hundreds of millions on FYC campaigns targeting voters, not audiences. Ostensibly to boost box office, but the Oscar “bump” is much debated. They vote on films that mainly play a festival circuit, where the voters watch the films amongst one another instead of mingling with the general public. Or they watch them on screeners (even in non-covid years), while telling the public they should shell out a lot of money to watch the films in a theater experience completely divorced from how they see the same films. They’ll make and star in mass-entertainment, but only to fund their Oscar ambitions, which let them feel above the work they make for the masses. They’ll invite Tyler Perry to receive a Humanitarian Award, but Madea, not so much.
If the Academy, and by extension the film world, doesn’t figure out a way to re-connect with audiences in a more genuine, and hopefully participatory manner, this is only going to get worse. We’ll be seeing audiences more in the hundreds of thousands instead of low millions, and we’ll become more like opera than mass entertainment. It will be fun to live in our own little bubble a little longer – jetting to Cannes, hiking uphill to the Egyptian to see a premiere, debating the Awards shows and then placing the films in the MoMA archive – but everyone else will be busy having fun somewhere in the metaverse, not even remembering movies helped build the place, or that they once had an awards show.
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Film
Future of Film 2021 Report is Live: The Future of Film annual report is now available online. Containing best practice examples, resources and recommendations, the report features contributions from over 24 industry leaders including: Jason Blum, Effie T Brown, Kim Libreri, John Gaeta, Felix Jorge, Thomas Hoegh, Diana Williams and many more. It's a good look at what's happening and where things might be going. Among the items they discuss: virtual production, sustainability, participatory culture (the audience becoming even more important), and representation (diversity & inclusion). You can download a free copy here (you have to subscribe, but that's pretty close to free).
Hollywood's Anti-Black Bias Costs it $10 Billion a Year: Franklin Leonard of The Black List writes an Opinion piece for the NYT detailing the Blacklight Collective's recent report showing: "The study concluded that America’s film industry is the country’s least diverse business sector and that its systemic anti-Black biases cost it at least $10 billion in annual revenue. Black content is undervalued, underdistributed and underfunded, the analysis found. It also found that Black talent has been systematically shut out of creator, producer, director and writer positions. That is despite the fact that films with two or more Black people working in those roles made 10 percent more at the box office per dollar invested than films with no or only one Black person in those capacities." He goes on to give recommendations for how to fix this problem. This would also help solve the Oscar's problem, FWIW.
Do More Experienced Directors Make Longer Movies? Yes, of course they do, and Stephen Follows has the data to prove it. In fact, he shows that running times have been increasing from an average of 90.7 minutes in the 50s to around 99.3 more recently - just what we don't need as audiences move to other entertainment. And the more movies these directors make, the longer they get. And considering most second/third or more times filmmakers are white guys, I think you can guess some of the reasons.
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Branded Content
Samsung Makes a Reality TV Show to Promote its new Phone: Samsung has a (very pricey) new phone and they're promoting it through a new reality show on Hulu called Exposure. Branding seems minimal, but contestants will be taking photos with the phones - 8 photographers will compete for a $250K contract with Samsung. CNN reports. Or read more on Samsung's site.
 BMW Films 20th Anniversary Take-Aways: April 26th was the 20th anniversary of the BMW Films series launch - and BrandStorytelling pulled together a stellar panel of everyone involved, including a guest appearance by Clive Owen who played "The Driver." The panel is not yet online, but some key takeaways... First, the brand was smart, and wanted to do something different. They not only allowed, but asked their agency (Fallon) to break some of their own brand rules, and gave a lot of control to the producers. Second, as Clive Owen said in the panel - the reason these worked was they were great stories, and they were cool. They were bold and different - and made you think highly of the brand, so you associated BMW with being bold and different. Third, they were a replacement for their Super Bowl ads - they figured that people were going to get snacks, so why not do something different. They figured out a cost per "BMW" minute and estimated how many people would need to watch it for it to be a success, and knew that if that number was similar to the Super Bowl, it would be a win, because people were going to pay attention. And this was in a pre-YouTube time, when you had to download the films and it took awhile, so if someone bothered to do that, they were going to be engaged. Fourth, very few people internally knew about it or were involved, but they had buy-in from the top- the CEO and Chairman, which i've always found to be crucial. Fifth, they did a slow release over time, not just one and done - people could spread them via word of mouth (pre-social media, mind you). And most importantly - they hired some of the best directors in the business, which meant they could get great cast, entice audiences and win awards. Which they did - and they sold cars, too. Now, with more brands moving into the space, let's hope some take this 20th anniversary as a chance to emulate them and make a modernized spin on this series.
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Miscellany:
The Illuminarium is Coming: The Atlanta Biz Chronicle reports that The Illuminarium is raising $118M to expand their immersive experience, which opens in Atlanta this July. As reported elsewhere, the Illuminarium is a no-goggles needed venue where you walk through a virtual world, that's a bit better than 3D, and is more akin to being thrust into the middle of a virtual production like The Mandalorian. Their website has a nice little video that shows what it's like, so check that out. (h/t to my buddy Mark Wynns of TCM).
Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World: A publication of the National Intelligence Council, this isn't light reading (link to PDF), but if you're wondering what the government's brightest minds (I know) are worried about when thinking of the next twenty years, and maybe want to make a film about it, it's a good place to start. Here's a hint from their key themes: Global Challenges (climate, disease, financial crises and tech disruption); Fragmentation (divided people and countries); Disequilibrium (the powers that be, being unprepared); Contestation (fracturing by identity and location); and Adaptation (what they hope we'll do, but doubt we will). Fun stuff, you're welcome.
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