Will Avatar Spark More Originality?

by Kevin Roberts

Avatar, opening in the US tomorrow, has Hollywood holding its breath. The $350 million spectacle by writer/director James Cameron seems destined to one of only two possible fates: spectacular blockbuster or massive bomb. The middle road never seems open to Cameron, who famously drives Tinsel-town bean-counters bonkers with his uncompromising vision and gargantuan budgets. Sigourney Weaver calls him an "idealistic perfectionist", which is a pretty good aspiration for all of us.

I haven't seen the film yet, but I wish it well for three reasons.

One, Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop in New Zealand has been responsible for the special effects, which are said to take 3-D animation to a different plane. Another hit for Weta would be great for this awesome Wellington Lovemark - and for the city itself.

Second, I love James Cameron's gutsy approach. In an industry teeming with yes-men, corporate cronies and wannabes, Cameron stands apart as a maverick who rises and falls on the size of his talent, not his Rolodex. He put his philosophy this way:


"If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success."


Most importantly, I hope that Avatar succeeds because it represents something that has all but disappeared from mainstream film - a truly original idea. It is not recycled from a TV show or old movie, nor is it based on a book, play, musical or comic book. James Cameron is the sole writing credit, and the story is woven entirely from his imagination.

The rise of innovation in Hollywood (and Wellywood and Bollywood) has been startling, but it has not been matched by the rise of great originality - in fact, the opposite has happened. The graphs below show how the number of films made from an original idea - as opposed to sequels, book or musical adaptations, comic books or earlier films - has declined dramatically in the past decade. Instead, we are saturated by sequels. 15 of the top 20 box office hits of the 2000s were sequels (and some of them were brilliant, but the point is valid).

The last decade will be remembered for awesome innovation we used to help tell stories on screen. Let's hope that the '10s is known more for the creativity and originality we bring to storytelling itself.





Image source: http://www.topnews.in/avatar-will-make-titanic-look-picnic-says-james-cameron-2244474

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Followup - The Future of Broadcast Television

I finally got my password to the beta program for hulu.com and I must say it is what I thought it would be, a site where you can watch advertising-supported Fox and NBC programming for free. This article is a followup on innovation article #75 of November 11, 2007. ABC.com has been doing this for some time, but this marks the first time that two competing networks have gotten together to share development costs on such a venture. The real question is not whether it will be successful or not, but how successful it might be.


The site sounds a near-certain death knell on iTunes future capacity to offer television content profitably. ABC already has their content for free online, and now NBC and Fox do as well. While some people may want to be able to watch content without commercials, I surely doubt that the size of that market segment are going to be large enough to make it worth the investment in servers and development cost, not to mention marketing and other costs. People that are that adamant about not having commercials, and are willing to pay for that privilege, will surely spring for the DVD instead.

From the networks perspective, surely they get more than a dollar or two in advertising revenue per view, so then it becomes a question of the number of views they get and whether that covers the operational costs. The great thing is that the development costs have already been covered by the broadcast division, so the content is ostensibly free to the online division (with the exception of any royalties they must pay).

This calls into question whether iTunes will really be able to ever succeed in video of any kind, including movies. It is in the networks best interests to host their own content or to host it via a platform that they control. By doing so they not only have the opportunity to increase their revenue, but also to cross-promote - to push people from show to show, or sell DVDs and other merchandise.

Finally, if people consume the content on a platform that they control, the networks have a better opportunity to loyalize consumers and even to elevate their interest to involved fan. If they can elevate their interest from casual viewer to involved fan, they may buy merchandise, but more importantly they are likely to then be worth more in terms of advertising revenue (repeat visits, links out to community sites, etc.).

Hulu.com isn't a revolutionary innovation, but it does bring a few new things to the party when it comes to advertising-supported premium content:

1. Ability to embed a program in any other site on the web
   
• Surprisingly without commercials
• Also allows you to resize the timebar to create a custom clip
2. First site to offer movies for free (advertising supported)
3. At the end of the video clip, it gives you either
   
• A link to the show's web site telling you when the show airs
• A link to Amazon Unbox where you can purchase an episode for $1.99
  
• Three formats (computer, TiVo, or portable device)
• Text saying that people can download or purchase a season (but no link)

Hulu does have the ability to revolutionize the industry in a way that YouTube never will, if they have the vision and the organizational capabilities...

Starting with two major networks' content available gives Hulu the chance to at least try to establish itself as a destination for more than Fox and NBC content, potentially stripping YouTube of its best user-generated and premium content at the same time. Hulu has the chance to establish itself as the platform for introducing all kinds of other advertising-supported premium content:

1. Television and Movie Back-catalogs
2. Foreign and independent content (movies, television and shorts)
3. Public television content
4. Music videos
5. Video podcasts
6. Audio podcasts
7. Audiobooks
8. Temporary promotional content (i.e. concert or other live entertainment teasers)
9. The opportunity to create a new style of infomercial

It will be interesting to see if Hulu seizes the opportunity to create an industry platform instead of just a nice little joint venture. It will also be interesting to see what the effect of Hulu and other premium content sites are on shared networks. I guess we will see.

Do you think Hulu will maintain a closed or open network?