TV, films attempt to weave stickier Web – USA Today
By Oliver Ludwig, Reuters
The Internet — dot-com meltdown notwithstanding — is racing ahead and the idea of it as a one-way medium to gather information and little else is becoming more dated every day.
Film studio and broadcast network Web sites touting TV shows and movies are a case in point. Armed with better technology and an increasingly game public, such sites these days are beginning to be more than a marketing conceit.
Some sites suggest the blurring of lines between TV and the Web is just around the corner, and some aspects, such as online casting, could be downright revolutionary in the entertainment industry.
Consider The-Revengers.com, a Web site for a television show that doesn’t even exist yet — The Revengers. At the site, Web surfers are already able to audition for the show, cast it and submit story lines. They could even be paid if an idea finds its way into one of the half-hour episodes.
The show will combine elements of Seinfeld, Charlie’s Angels and The A-Team, and is about five young New York women — temps by day, mercenaries by night — who are hired to exact lighthearted revenge on annoying people.
Some Hollywood sources reckon that while something as provocative as The Revengers idea was inevitable — and it or something like it will inevitably succeed — the entertainment industry is, for now, as circumspect as it is interested.
“Everybody’s kind of reaching in the dark to find ways for entertainment properties — like music, like television, like film — to work in conjunction with the Internet,” said Johnny Boston, a New York filmmaker and creator of The Revengers.
“What we’ve done is engaged an audience before we’ve launched our show, which means that by the time we go to launch our show, we’re going to have a inbuilt audience,” he added.
Soliciting votes, plots and reactions
Even more modest innovations, like viewers voting online for their favorite soap opera stars on Sony’s site SoapCity.com, represent a clear departure from strictly information sites with photos, bios and gossip.
Newer technologies, like high-speed Net access, make it more likely that TV networks and their audiences interact with each other in ways that weren’t possible before the Internet, and weren’t really worth the bother before high-speed became a reality.
Armed with a DSL line, for example, it really is just a few clicks away to go hit a spot in cyberspace like FearFactor.com, the Web site of Fear Factor, NBC’s hit reality TV show, and submit your own suggestion for a dangerous or disgusting stunt you would like to see air on the program.
The film industry has also started to use the Internet in new ways.
Two years ago, cable TV network HBO invited viewers who had seen the HBO documentary Hate.com: Extremists on the Internet, to submit their own tales of hate on its Web site.
More recently, Miramax, Disney’s independent film studio, with its Project Greenlight, invited aspiring screenwriters to submit scripts to the project’s Web site. The winning experimental film, Stolen Summer, started screening this month at select theaters around the United States.
Hollywood is nibbling, but will it bite?
It’s easy to enjoy the The Revengers Web site. It’s mod style and simple, logical and thorough navigation does justice to the idea of surfing the Web.
The site is getting 3 million hits a month. While that does not mean that 3 million people have looked at the site — some visitors may go back many times — it’s not bad for one that is only 3 months old.
But the underlying thrust of the site: That all those faces, some without any acting experience are “auditioning” online to be one of those five young revengers and will be chosen by consumers online is bound to be a hard sell in an industry most everyone can agree is rather risk averse.
Entertainment industry sources say casting in Hollywood is largely in the hands of Breakdown Services, which has been around for 40 years. Breakdown’s migration to the Web is the newest thing people are turning to, industry sources say.
The failure of IAM.com, a site that showcased unknown talent and was backed by big film industry names like Spike Lee, should also serve as a cautionary tale.
“I think the networks would be intrigued (by The Revengers) if A: It saves them money; and B: Can discover some new talent that’s pretty much handed to them,” said Glenn Rigberg, a Los Angeles talent manager and TV and film producer with Rigberg-Roberts-Rugolo.
“Whether it’s on this project or something else, there will be someone who figures out how to do (online casting). And that person will become very famous,” Rigberg said.
“On the other hand, if it’s just handed to them and they don’t have as much of a say they may not be as interested.”
Johnny Boston says that in his efforts to seal a deal with a major network, he may end up submitting a short-list of finalists who survive the online balloting to bonafide casting directors.
But he’s adamant about the validity of Internet-style democracy as a means to deliver to a studio an audience of devotees.
“Some people say this is a terrible thing. But television programming is ultimately judged by the public,” he said.