Maybe they just built it completely backwards… Or rather: the way the world is now compared to the way it was then is so profoundly different that it might as well be the Bizarro world where red is yellow and yellow red. Backwards is forwards, and forwards backwards?
It certainly seems like it is backwards. We spend all our money and effort to get people together AROUND existing content. We try to make them WANT to go to the movies, to make them WANT to watch that specific thing. It would be far easier if people were already gathered, had declared their interest, and then we could simply provide them with the sort of thing they are interested in. Surely, that would work a heck of a lot better than the system we have now.
In some ways, that is how it used to be, right? People went to the movies, not to see something particular, but to just GO to the movies. Then after that, we just fed them programming through the TV. “What’s on?” we’d say. The programming was where the people gathered and they liked that they would get (The White Hare Phenomenon). That made sense in the eras of scarcity.
We will never have that time again. It does not make sense that people will ever gather around content when they truly can have anything anytime anywhere on any device. Now we have grand abundance and we need to shift our practice around that reality.
Should we first gather people together and then program around them? Does it make more sense to look where people gather, why they gather, and THEN program around that phenomenon? We have to recognize that this is a completely different proposition than how the film industry is currently built. We can’t just sit on our hands and think everything okay.
We have to wake up and say “Wait a sec, we are doing it backwards. WE MUST CHANGE!”. Ah, if only information changed people’s behavior. In that world people would not smoke, we would not be overweight, and we’d where face masks when we caught a common cold. We know what we should do. Doing it is the hard part.
And as a result we expend labor and capital in inefficient ways. And we are prone to past habits and unable to take advantage of some wonderful things that are happening.
Imagine if we stopped putting attention to individual film websites and Facebook pages. What if instead we built long lasting robust communities around the common themes in our work? What if you knew you could go to a massive community that would engage around your film? You’d want to go there and bring your film, in person or virtually. All it takes is a shift of focus from the individual to the community.
If we recognized that there is a grand abundance of GOOD work, we’d be forced to find more compelling incentives to trigger engagement. We would move away from thinking everything is just transaction oriented and accept that people want to use their cognitive surplus in creative ways. We would get imaginative with our “calls to action”.
If we started to focus on the people first and not the product, we’d look at their needs and desired earlier. We might start to recognize the true utility of cinema. Film has always been one of the great community organizing tools. How else can you generate an authentic massive shared emotional response? How else can you stimulate people to discuss what is otherwise incredibly difficult to talk about? How else can we have people sympathize with people or actions they other have no experience about.
There are great changes to come. This is just the tip of the tip of the tip. People better get ready.
