Even before it was purchased by Rupert Murdoch for $580 million last July, MySpace.com was well on its way to becoming the most powerful entertainment marketing resource on the Web.
With the launch of MySpace Film this past spring, MySpace has made the film world its next area of conquest. “I went with music and film on MySpace because I was a musician who went to film school,” MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson told Filmmaker. “It’s both what interested me personally and what seemed to make the most sense within MySpace.”
The growth of the MySpace film channel is happening concurrent with the major studios’ sudden acknowledgement of the site’s power as a marketer to young audiences. The leader here, of course, is the Murdoch-owned Fox, which created an X3 skin on MySpace for the film’s opening week. Other studio films, like Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest, The Hills Have Eyes and Ice Age: The Meltdown, did major buys on the site, and each film blew past expectations during its opening weekend.
Discussing the studio MySpace strategy, Anne Thompson wrote in her “Risky Business” column in the Hollywood Reporter, “Each studio is able to repurpose their ad materials and artwork for a MySpace page, working with MySpace’s interactive team.... The studios create contests, engage MySpace members in downloading wallpaper, AIM icons and screensavers, watching video clips, listening to songs and podcasts, creating do-it-yourself content and learning about the different characters in a movie [who often have their own profiles].”
Moore says not. “The focus of the film channel will continue to stay on the independent filmmaker,” she says, noting that MySpace is launching a new Movies channel that will be separate from the Film channel.
Mortensen sums up the benefits of MySpace like this: “It’s a way to keep something live without having a full-time Web designer at your beck and call, which is outside the budget of most independent films. It’s one more place to let people know about screenings and show them the trailer, and a lot more people wind up learning about the film on MySpace rather than a personal Web site, because it’s easier to stumble across it there.”
So, how do films and filmmakers pop up on the MySpace film channel page? Says Moore, “The process is fairly organic. We are constantly scouring the site for filmmakers with great content who are actively promoting themselves to the community. The films in our Featured Filmmaker section sometimes come from festival associations and/or have been approached to provide exclusive MySpace content. We are also sure to include films of all sizes and genres within the smaller Featured Filmmakers section. As the channel continues to evolve there will be rotating areas that will feature user-generated content through promotions and contests.
Funnily enough, it’s not the studio films or the no-budget films that seem to have an identity crisis when dealing with MySpace. It’s the mainstream indie films — those with distribution and studio affiliation — that find themselves in a tricky spot. How do they best utilize their marketing resources and somehow maintain street cred? While big-budget movies infiltrate MySpace with the usual Madison Avenue game plan, which banks on celebrity appeal and brand recognition, middle-of-the-road indie films often hybridize this mainstream approach with a slow-building grassroots campaign.
