How the movie industry will use social networks to continue to grow.

The Future Film Summit organized by Screen Daily was taking place in London on July 11th and 12th, and focusing on emerging opportunities for film content, distribution and marketing. I was invited to participate on a panel focusing on HARNESSING SOCIAL NETWORKS.

With young people flocking to join social networks, how best should filmmakers plug into these online communities as an effective and direct way to engage with potential audiences?

As usual in conferences, the right questions are asked but no one fully knows the answer! A few interesting facts however :

– Half of US teenagers (12/17 years old) on the web and 2/3 of young adults aged 18/21 have a prfile on at least one social network and respectively 60% and 70% visit these sites once a day. Forrester July 2007
– Advertsing spendings on social network sites will reach $2.5 billion by 2011 according to eMarketer
– Brands and films create profile on MySpace, Facebook, Eyeka to gain visibility and reach mass or targetted audiences : X-Men2 had more than 2 million users as friends in My Space.
– Studios – Arrdman, Dreamworks – are shooting Short films. Disney is committing to 50 shorts films per year. Georges Lucas “We don’t want to make movies… we’ve moved away from the feature film »
– Mass market is dead. Niche markets are in.
– Social Networking is a Predominant Activity For Most Global Internet Users as shown below (source Ken Radio)

You’ll see many more projects like “A swarm of Angels”
Matt Hanson, author, producer and director, listed by Forbes among ‘Ten People Who Could Change The World’ in 2007 (that’s an easy goal, thank you Forbes) is funding, directing and distributing his new film using internet, social networking and all digital technologies. A Swarm of Angels has gathered 1000 contributors and he is launching Phase 2 to scale it to 5000. Matt calls it :

A groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the Internet and a global community of members.

His blog here.

The long tail offers new opportunities for films.
Newdistribution channels are opening and now generating revenues which can amount to as much as a blockbuster’s sales in theaters. DVD rentals, VOD and in general the internet retail business offer a second life to films which had little exposure in theatres. According to the UK Film Council, 78% of the 521 films released in 2003/2004 could be rented on-line. VOD now accounts for 3% of total revenues and distribution channels do not cannibalize each other. A company like Brash Entertainment, which reently raised $400 million to build video games from movies, will contribute to speed up growth in alternative revenues.