Questions of Formality
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May
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If you’ve discussed a movie idea with friends, you’ve done market research. If you’ve shown an unfinished film to your Significant Other and asked what they think, you’ve convened a focus group.
haha, okay wise guy. Nice timely quote. :) Who’s the author?
My distaste for marketing/focus groups isn’t wholesale, but I think they inject dirt and impurities into the creative process when they are used as a magic 8-ball for “is this a good idea?” Maybe you’ve got some list which will blow my mind, of magnificent films borne of collectivist thinking, but me personally, I’ll take the hand-wringing passion of one slightly mad author over the carefully plotted film-by-committee any day of the week.
This will be one of those times where my producer hat will come into play. I won’t let a focus group rule the roost, but I do want to know what, in general, people like. I’ve said it a before, but since I’m not a pure-blood artist-type, 90% of the joy I get from making anything comes from the idea that I’ve entertained. If a small focus group will give me ideas for what works and what doesn’t, maybe I can make a more entertaining body of work. Having a message, or making pure-art is great, but I love blowing shit up so much more.
Then again, a quick look at my personal DVD collection will give that much away. You’ll find Die Hard under christmas, and True Lies under family.
Overman, a great example may be right under your nose. The original ending for Army of Darkness pales (IMHO) to the iconic ending they ended up with after focus testing.
All of these Gnomic Utterances, unless otherwise stated, are original Hugh Hancock quotes.
I haven’t got any movie examples yet, but I’ve also not looked.
Although I’ll say right now, BloodSpell would have sucked without my trusty test viewers. And I know (personally) at least one bestselling author who totally changed the ending of a book based on reader feedback, which made it much, much better.
Oh, and I agree with you, Phil.
Focus groups, market research, and all else are wonderful - but whenever I direct, I have one cardinal rule:
I am allowed to ignore anything I like.
I rarely do, and when I do it’s sometimes a very bad idea (see also “man falling through stairs”), but I still feel it’s vital.
I love my public and I really want to know how to make a film they can enjoy, but fundementally, if they want to control the film they can get off their asses and make one themselves.
Buddy: That’s actually a very practical and persuasive way of looking at it. The focus groups just seem like such a small sample on which to base a decision of such momentous importance which, to me, has very little to do with whether or not the piece will be artistic and a lot more to do with whether it will be contrived. Y’know what I mean?
And I’m right with you both on loving our public. Hell, what other reason for what we’re doing is higher than that? I guess what it comes down to for me is this:
If I set out to tell a story or a joke or a message or all of the above, and it’s straight from my heart, and my audience likes it… wow is that fulfilling! And fulfilling in a guilt-free way, because I know I’ve been 100% genuine with them and THAT is what they liked. And if it fails, then I still feel really good about the work because it’s True.
If I set out to tell a story/joke/message/all, and I’ve made my starting point an effort to first determine what they like and then play to that trend - and maybe it’s not the story I’d have told from my heart but it’s one I can tolerate telling in hopes of pulling in a good crowd - I dunno, I feel icky with that. I feel like I’ve been inauthentic with my audience, less than honest, less real. I feel guilty afterward, like I cheated on my homework by getting the answers ahead of time. Yeah, I got that “A”, and maybe will hit the honor roll… but feel awful about it. (and if I fail to get an audience having taken this approach I already feel dishonest about, I’m puking-in-a-bucket sick with myself, because I “cheated” and still got the F.)
Am I just a weirdo to feel that way about it? Or too idealistic? I don’t want to be an idiot and ignore some essential part of our craft by hastily blowing off the practice of market research. I guess I’m just more inclined to create first and find market after (or in some cases, let market find IT). Surely there are successful filmmakers we all admire who do it that way too? (I honestly wouldn’t know for a fact, that’s simply the ideal I’ve held in my head. Maybe I’ve got a blind spot?)
I’m not a focus group fan at all. Call me an asshole, but I’m trying to make MY film, not theirs, that’s part of the reason I’m a Machinima artist rather than some fund hunting trend slave live action filmmaker. Personally when I watch a film I’m looking for the main artists (usually the director’s) vision of an idea, not some kind of general consensus on how it should be presented. It possibly has it’s place were mass sums of money are being spent but for Machinima I think its slight overkill.
Marketting a Machinima film so that lots of people see it is a different matter as that depends a bit less on whats actually IN the film.
And PS, yes almost all of us prefer when lots of people like the films we make. As such we make our films following the conventions of cinematic language rather than presenting some kind of incomprehensible and totally useless stream of un/consciousness, but a small audience actually having a direct hand in possibly big changes just feels weird to me.
Phil - of course, at the end of the day, if it makes you not enjoy the process, don’t do it.
I use focus groups, market research and so on because they help me get closer to the film I want to make. Market research can throw up a load of interesting ideas (paradoxically, one of the reasons BloodSpell had a fair number of interesting concepts behind it was because it was initially based on a multi-person brainstorm) and can also help make a more satisfying film for me, too - sometimes I don’t know what I like, either.
(Example - beefing up the romantic element in BloodSpell a little, which happened at the scripting stage, made it a better film in my eyes as well as in the eyes of the members of the audience who suggested that.)
Likewise, focus groups really help me and my audience see the same film - it’s all too easy in a long-form film to fail to explain things properly, leave gaping plot holes, and other things that are very hard for me to see, but that a test audience will spot immediately.
And yeah, I agree with Buddy. I like entertaining. It’s one of the major reasons I do this (I’ve given up on trying to pin down all the reasons) - to transport people, to give them the same experience that I’ve had from great movies and books myself. Hence, I want to be sure that I’m hitting the mark I’m aiming at.
I would say, strongly, that I’ve never had much fun or done very well telling a story I don’t like. But I find I like a lot of stories.
I’d also add that market research might not be much good for finding a story you like, but it rocks for figuring out which of the stories you like you want to tell next.
Currently, it would take me approximately 35 years to make all the reasonably firm film/series concepts I’m working on. That’s not an exaggeration - I’ve got at least 4 5-year series concepts to start with.
So I pitch ‘em all to people, and see which ones they like most. Because if I’m going to be working on an idea I love anyway, I’d like it to be the one that the most other people will love too.
t’s a humorous metaphor, but comes from a worldview where, in my opinion, chance (luck) is given way too big a role. There’s more science to this thing than we sometimes like to admit to ourselves, and less dice rolls.
thank you
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