Getting the Right Creative Content in Front of the Right Audience

“Just relax, darlin’. This is the Big Easy. Folks have a certain way o’ doin’ things down here.”  — Remy McSwain, “The Big Easy,” 1987, Kings Road Entertainment

It’s a poorly kept secret that Hollywood is the center of the universe when it comes to movie/show production.

For years, the major studios controlled the films that would be made, which cinemas got which movies and when; and well, you get the picture.

The town liked that image of 100 percent control of entertainment and it still loves to extoll its successes with red carpets, premiers and award events. But this past year, it has reminded us of Gloria Swanson’s famous quote in Sunset Boulevard as a fading silent movie star prepared for her movie comeback.

You know, when Norma Desmond said, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

However, just as with the storyline of Sunset Boulevard, the film and the show industry isn’t fading … it’s just changing.

Yes, fewer projects are actually being made in Hollywood today.

However, the projects – regardless of where they are produced are richer, more diverse and for the most part more entertaining.

In the Americas; studios in Atlanta, New York City, Austin, New Mexico, Vancouver and Toronto as well as south of the border have attracted film and show production.

Challengers was shot in Boston.  Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was produced in Vermont. Civil War was done in Atlanta.  Hit Man was created in New Orleans.  Twisters was filmed in Oklahoma.  Longlegs was shot in Vancouver.   Joker: Folie a Deux was done in Maine, Massachusetts.

Project owners/producers also have a growing number of international production location options.

Maxxine was filmed in Ireland.  The Brutalist was done in Hungary.  Kraven the Hunter was filmed in England. The Substance was created in France. Wicked was filmed in England. Venom: The Last Dance was shot in Spain.  Gladiator II was created in Europe and Africa.  Fall Guy was filmed in Sydney.  The Killers was done in France.  Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was shot in Sydney.

New/expanded studio facilities and virtual production sets enable creatives to duplicate/create any location on or off the planet.

Economical, top-notch gear is available everywhere. Focused, well-trained, experienced production personnel are available everywhere and countries from Croatia to Kenya to Thailand are training people in the latest technology, techniques.

Post-production has almost become a non-issue because the internet puts project owners, producers, directors and DITs (digital imaging technicians) in instant touch with their video/sound editors, VFX and other post specialists no matter where they’re located. 

In addition, project owners and producers have been able to take advantage of city, state, country production financial subsidies and “assistance.”

Once the project is a wrap, studios and project owners now have choices.

Studios and project owners still prefer (actually need) to ensure that their big budget action and superhero movies are shown first in theaters for as long as possible to recover their costs and hopefully produce a profit.

Global Films – New studio facilities, production team training and incentives have opened up opportunities for studios and project owners to develop – and acquire – great video content around the world.

The first “target” for a film (regardless of where it is produced) is the Americas and Europe because the areas represent the largest movie-viewing markets.

While theater ticket sales have been in a downward trend since 2002, box office receipts have continued to slowly rise because of increased ticket costs and concessions.

According to Statista, box office revenues will reach $38.99B this year with revenue slowly rising 6.5 percent to $53.6B by 2029.

Viewer attendance worldwide is expected to be 1.9B and even show slight increases in the years ahead.

Poorly Kept Secret – It is well known throughout the film industry that regular movie house attendance has dropped over the years and the pandemic only reinforced that shift to home entertainment.  Studios have to weigh the benefits of having people in seats in big dark rooms and the marketing value they can provide their streaming services when the project is available online.

With the exception of India, most countries have shown seen overall theater attendance decrease from frequent attendance to infrequently to never as people become more comfortable with the expanding anytime, any screen in-home entertainment viewing opportunities. 

It should also be noted that India also has a very robust film industry with Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood regularly producing more than four times the motion pictures Hollywood produces annually.

The films are usually shown in India and surrounding countries.  It’s interesting to note that Indian titles are slowly becoming of interest to theater attendees in other countries, perhaps because of the exposure their projects have received because of global streaming services.

China’s film industry created about 1,000 films last year with 80 percent of the viewing being in country. 

Major studio executives (Disney, WBD, Paramount) have to make tough calls as to whether their mid to modest projects will get theatrical windows – drastically reduced – or go direct to their streaming services. The new focus is obviously to stimulate and increase subscription numbers to impress wall street.

Independent US studios (Sony, Universal, Legendary, Universal, A24, Neon, Lionsgate) though have real options: create projects for the major studios and streaming video services (Netflix, Amazon, Apple) and set their own theatrical calendars or a mixed combination of distribution.

Most of us – at least in the Americas – think of DTC (direct to consumer) news/entertainment as being the big, unwieldy and expensive cable bundle that everyone is shedding as rapidly as possible.

Thousands of organizations around the globe have their unique vision as to what the consumer wants and needs for their comfortable, affordable home/personal entertainment. All of them are intent on capturing the attention and financial commitment of many of the 1.7B TV households and more than 4.8B smartphone users.

More Options – Studios and project owners increasingly have options on where and how they will release their film to return maximum funds to their bottom lines.

Commercial and public broadcasting and pay TV usage is past its prime but far from its demise.  The services still have a global customer base of about 50M (down from a peak of about 500M in 2009) and is projected to level out at about 40M by 2028, according to Statista.

The precise number of streaming services – subscription, subscription/free ad-supported – hasn’t been tallied yet but there are an estimated 200 in the Americas, more than 900 in SEA, about 300 in Europe and 200+ in MENA. It’s difficult to be precise because the industry is still in its infancy and most of the focus is on the global players. The majority are of the streaming services country/language/genre centric.

While there are about 6,500 languages in the world, 25 are the most widely used; and if you’re passably fluent in four, you can converse with almost everyone on the planet and enjoy the majority of movies/shows without an interpreter.

Since we live in the US – which is one of the few countries without an official language (https://tinyurl.com/bdzed7ft) – we do a decent job of understanding/using the two most widely languages in the country – English and Spanish.

Appeal – Regional and global streaming video services have discovered that English isn’t the only language people want to hear when they relax at home for their entertainment.

But like most folks, we like a good movie/show regardless of where it was produced or the language. 

And thanks largely to the leading OTT video services focus on capturing as many subscribers/viewers as possible, no matter where they live, that’s increasingly easy to do.

Video subscriptions reached nearly 998M this year and the number will continue to grow to an estimated 4.9B by 2029, according to Statista.

Growing Streamers – With dominance in streaming services in the Americas, Netflix and the other tech-driven video delivery services have made a concerted effort to reach home viewers in almost every country on the planet.

Netflix continues to lead the industry with more than 277.65M in 190 countries while Amazon continues its expansion to over 200M in the same countries.  Disney has reported 154.6M subscribers in about 100 countries while Apple TV has slowly grown to 75M in 100 countries.

Initially, as streaming services ventured outside their homeland, governments established a few ground rules – 40 percent of the content shown had to be local and the companies had to produce 30 percent of the content they offered to local subscribers in the country.

That turned out to have been the best “requirements” they ever received.

Overwhelming Demand – Viewers in the Americas haven’t turned away from content produced at home but they also have developed a strong interest in imported projects, almost regardless of where they were shot/produced.

First, the films/shows were less expensive to produce in other countries compared to production in the Americas.

Second, video stories traveled very nicely to other countries in the region.

But the absolutely best thing was that folks back home were very interested in watching content from other countries.

Netflix enjoyed huge success with films from South Korea, anime from Japan and projects from Spain as well as Central/South America.

Amazon, Disney and Apple TV (as well as the others) significantly increased their subscriber loyalty as they increased their international libraries.

Beefing Up – Streaming services have increased the number of projects (films, shows) that have been created in other languages as they become more receptive to subtitles and dubbing.

And the great thing is that people have adapted as they start to watch and get involved in the new, different movies/shows from other countries.

Expanding their non-English slates provides streaming services with a number of benefits:

• Often lower production costs and greater tax incentives
• Reaching a younger audience

According to Ampere, 66 percent of folks 18-34 years old are open to non-English projects, particularly Korean, Japanese.

People in the 45-64 age category are also interested in international content with 41 percent regularly watching non-English titles.

Across Ages – While the younger generation was the first to embrace films/shows in other languages, people from all generations now find the non-English projects fun and interesting to watch.

In addition, while the most commonly used movie/show language is English, people don’t really care what language the actors use as long as they can experience the project in their language.

It just validates what Allan McLennan, head of PADEM Media Group, has told us in recent discussions – many people prefer lip sync audio in their native tongue.

The growing implementation of AI has also lowered the cost of video story localization.

Twenty-eight percent of the English-speaking markets prefer subtitles while 19 percent prefer dubbing.

However, there is a growing number who enjoy the intricacies of the action and hearing the dialogue in the native tongue.

They’ve grown accustomed to multitasking and enjoy the action while reading the dialogue in their local language.  

But as anyone who has been in the video content creation, development, production, post and delivery industry for any time at all, the people in the seats – theater or home – are fickle.

We like sci-fi, thrillers, heavy drama, and action/adventure films/shows.  My wife likes light drama, variety, documentary and romcom projects.

So … yeah!

But because Netflix, Amazon and AppleTV were born out of the technology industry, they have an excellent understanding of how to capture, interpret and use viewer data to carefully select the films/shows that will attract and retain subscribers.

And yes, Disney and the other major and minor streaming services are gaining a subscriber-level understanding of what will keep viewers connected.

Stories Travel – Okay, not every film/show that is created finds an audience in another country but certain genre have better opportunities than others.  Still, viewer success relies on strong storylines that are well produced and professionally post produced as well as creatively/aggressively marketed.

In addition, they are gaining an understanding of which genre has the ability to travel well in various countries. 

They work with local studios/creatives to develop projects around universal themes, relatable characters and captivating stories that transcend country borders and broad audience boundaries. 

The industry is in the midst of significant change – media consolidation, strategic relationships and content readjustment – and everyone is focused on creatively/profitably innovating to grow.

None of them – studios, networks/broadcasters, streamers, theaters – want to face being marginalized.

Studios, networks and streamers have to increasingly spend more time and effort to identify and anticipate the changing tastes of the new global and regional viewer rather than focusing on their image along the Sunset Strip and the folks on Wall Street.

With the depth and breadth of content offerings and the demise of the forever bundle contract, it is increasingly easy for viewers – everywhere – to insist on being able to watch movies/shows from anywhere and on their own schedule.

They’ve begun to realize that it is their entertainment, and they echo to words of Anne Osborne when she explained her position in The Big Easy, “That way I can leave any time I want.” Norma Desmond’s era has faded into the industry’s history.  The changes that are taking place can have a positive effect on everyone in the video story production chain if we focus on the viewer instead of the process.

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