Techtite.com Editorial : My Two Bits, V2

If you hadn't noticed, QuickTime has been upgraded...again. Now is not the time for an editorial about how this means that in order to see movie trailers online, you have to download QuickTime all over again. Nor is this the time to gripe about how, unlike owning a prior Windows OS, "owning" a prior version of QuickTime Pro doesn't mean jack diddly squat. You have to buy a new QuickTime Pro registration key at full price or you can't save any QuickTime files online. Okay; maybe this is the time for an editorial like that, but not this one. I'm ticked off about something even more unfair than that.

Here's a typical story: you log onto the internet and you see a cool upcoming movie. Trouble is; the trailer for the movie is in QuickTime, and that means that even if you have the the best of broadband connections, you will still have to wait to download a decent-sized video of the trailer. This takes time. Lots of time. We're talking about going to make yourself a sandwich and coming back to watch the trailer. I'm not complaining about how much time it takes per se, but after taking that much time to help promote a movie...you want to keep that 90-second trailer for longer than five minutes. Right?

See, here's the thing: Hollywood is run by people who know how to make a good movie (knock wood), but they have all the paranoia of the truly computer illiterate. To be fair; they want to protect themselves from video pirates, and that's cool. The problem is that some (not all) of these Hollywood guys are so paranoid, they actually believe that to make a film trailer easy to download is the same thing as "protecting their movie." Apparently, they have been told that there's some ancient quasi-super-science-sorcery spell that can magically transform a 90-second trailer into a 90-minute pirated film. Pardon my bluntness, but this is the stupidest piece of conspiracy laden drivel in modern times, and what's more; it's strangling the life out of movies.

Sites like Zathura have the right idea. You may be asking what is the best way to help promote a film with such a perplexing title as Zathura. Two words: downloadable trailer. Don't get me wrong about this film. It looks like a totally cool movie, but come on; "Zathura"...? Who-what-a...? The only way this amusing little movie is going to succeed is if it's promoted enough. So; go to their web site, download the cool trailer, and show it to all your friends. Help promote their movie for them. Make this cool movie sell.

Comparatively, Cheaper By The Dozen 2 has the wrong idea. To say that this piece of holiday season fluff needs more publicity than "Zathura" is putting it mildly. Yet go to their film site and the trailer is protected by so much security, you aren't even given the typical "video" buttons to rewind or replay the video. The message comes off as: "Gosh! Giving too much control over the protected video will allow people to copy the actual film!" There's no other explanation for why someone would go to so much trouble to remove simple rewind, pause, and replay buttons except for paranoia. Does the result protect the actual movie? Of course not. All it does is make anyone who might be interested in the film feel very annoyed and generally irritated.

You may ask what this has to do with "you." Well, if you're in the movie business, this has everything to do with you. Gosh; ticket sales have gone down. Golly; this happened at the same time that simply viewing a film trailer became harder and harder. Gee; just maybe, these two are related, and ticking off consumers actually affects the movies they go to.

Don't argue. For that matter, please: none of this "you'd feel differently if it was your own movie" baloney. Let me tell you something: if I made a movie I'd know better than to snub my nose at free publicity. Look at the box office tallies this year and tell me that they aren't more embarassed by prior year box office surprises...like, say, The Blair Witch Project. Remember that one? Some college-age kids make a silly little low budget film whose box office was all because of free publicity from fans. All a movie needs is the added push of fan publicity. The rest is box office gold. If I made a movie I'd know this and I'd make a lot of money. Movies that don't know this are making crummy business. We don't want to "pirate" Jim Jack diddly squat. We're just trying to promote your film.

Yeah I know; your publicist disagrees. Of course they do. Forget what your hired publicist has to say about this, dudes. They think I'm trying to say their job means nothing, and they're wrong. I'm just saying their cake needs a little icing, as it were. Great publicity campaigns are pivotal, but those campaigns need to allow for publicity from the viewers of said publicity. That, indeed, is just like the icing on the cake. Without fan buzz, it is exactly the opposite: a cake without any icing. Gross.

The point of the matter is: promoting a film isn't simply getting one person to surf over to your web site, but to get them interested enough to bring all their friends. It's the same thing all over. It is one thing to get someone who flips through every page of a magazine to pass by your ad; it's something far better when that person is so interested in the ad, they show it to everyone else in the room. But, consider: what if you suddenly "forbid" that person from showing anyone else the ad? What would that do to the whole value of the ad...and for that matter, magazine sales as a whole? The same thing is happening to Hollywood box office sales. There's an easy solution to all this: let the promotions do what they're supposed to do. You give us free photos and video, and we help promote the movie for you, all for the price of a little humility. I mean, come on. How stupid is it to protect a film trailer from being promoted? People don't wait for half an hour to watch a 90-second video once. That's just not good "publicity," friend.

Mind you; there may even be some remaining people out there who insist that it's not so much a movie being protected as much as the trailer. That's always an interesting concept to me. Trailers need to be protected because...well, actually, I have no idea. They need to be protected because you don't want your film to be promoted? Well then you must like really low box office numbers, eh? Good for you. If you ever want higher box office numbers though, let consumers promote your movie for you. Okay?

Agree? Disagree?

...or perhaps just agree to disagree? Feel free to give your own "two bits," via Techtite's Letters page. Editorial Submissions are also allowed. Editorials do not have to agree with the views of other editorials at Techtite.com, though they must be relevant to entertainment topics of this web site (movies, TV, games).

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My Two Bits
(The Editorial with one-quarter byte!)

Paranoia...Box Office Destroy-a.

My Two Bits (The Editorial with one-quarter byte!)

Paranoia...Box Office Destroy-a.

My Two Bits
(The Editorial with one-quarter byte!)