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Fourth Workshop Report — 16 – 18 September 2014 — Štiřín (Czech Republic)
Module 5 – Finding and Addressing Audiences
Introduction
Films are made to be seen and to find their target audience. Today, this represents a real challenge, given the market’s fragmentation and the changes in consumer behavior. Indeed, nowadays the choice of both a film’s content and its support is up to the consumer.
Or, in other words:
- What tools are required for funds and the film industry to gain better knowledge of the audience and the market?
- The funds can choose between being a player or a pawn - to be proactive or passive. In which areas do the funds need to step up and become more of a player? What is stopping them from becoming players? Do they need a different attitude, more courage, more collaborators or more skills?
- Should the public funds adapt themselves more to the market needs, or should they try to interfere in the way the market works?
- In the film industry, you need to stipulate who your audience is (acquisition), where they are in demographic terms (development), how to address and interest them (marketing & promotion) and how to keep them (retention). How do film funds envisage the management of different audiences, and their relationship with them?
Outcome of group discussions
1. How to gain better knowledge of the audience and the market
Access data on cinema audiences
Two examples:
- French Model: In France, there is a CineCards system, which enables cinemas to gather the profiles of their clients and promote films that correspond to client- demand.
- Danish Model: In Denmark, there are cinema clubs. These establish a real relation of trust with their audience, helping members develop a taste for films that normally would not be that popular with them. Cinema clubs significantly rely on word-of-mouth, because their members spread news about the films outside their circle.
Challenges
- Data about CineCards buyers and cinema club members do not represent the market:
- It is just data on a small group of loyal cinephiles.
- The CineCards scheme is not reliable. People very often cheat, scanning the card without seeing the films.
Access data on non-cinema audience
Non-cinema audience data does not exist for the following reasons:
- Film funds conduct research only on films released in theaters.
- Gathering demographic data from the new platforms is a real challenge. Some of the platforms are based in countries where it is impossible to ask for and access their data, e.g. iTunes is based in Luxembourg, Google in Dublin, Netflix in The Netherlands.
- Some films, supported by film funds, are seen by almost every teenager in the country thanks to school screenings, but those figures cannot be accessed.
- If the Funds could collect that data, it would provide them with arguments to talk the matter over with politicians and plead for more (or stable) funding.
- They cannot build a direct relationship with the audience nor gain a clear vision of the real audience for the films they supported.
2. The role of a film fund: a player, a pawn or a catalyst?
- It is difficult to be a player in an inflexible playfield dominated by big theater-owners. To challenge the big players and become players themselves, the funds need to use the fact that they do not depend on theater-owners, at least in the short term, and to challenge the status quo.
- To become a player, a fund would have to overcome two main barriers:
- EU regulations stipulating that film funds cannot interfere with the market.
- Fear and pressure exerted by the big theater owners who understand such actions as war, and would use everything in their power to see the heads of film institutes fired.
- Film funds could find a balance between the role of a player and that of a catalyst by:
- Gathering all industry players in the same discussion room. Funds can give them clear affirmative signals and support their projects and ideas. However, they should not take up the fight on their behalf.
- Developing new schemes and incentives to facilitate alternative forms of distribution. However, it is the producers who should step up against the big players.
- Supporting the launching of new cinemas and new kinds of networks.
- Inciting producers to experiment with releases on their own.
- In Europe, film funds are players because without their support, producers cannot make films and survive existentially.
3. The relation of the funds with the market: marriage or war?
- Up to now, public funds have only thought about supply, without considering demand. They support films exclusively on the basis of the quality of a script. Their decision-making is driven by passion and subjectivity.
- In order to reach a larger audience, albeit not necessarily on a blockbuster scale they should:
- Change their way of choosing projects.
- Consider how the producer defines the audience and plans to reach the market.
- Encourage producers to start audience design at a very early stage of development, as part of the production process. Producers are too focused on a film's quality and e making, its director, its budget: too little effort is invested in reaching the market.
- Look at alternative release strategies that fit the free market, like in the US. However, in small national markets where films are mostly cultural products, this seems impossible. Could funds change anything?
4. Actions that could be taken by the funds
- Lobby for changing the law in order to include different release windows in their support schemes (like Austria, Germany, etc.).
- Support arthouse VOD platforms that would make difficult films more attractive and more available to the audience, and that would offer alternative content to big players like HBO, Netflix and also the public broadcasters’ networks.
- Intervene in the education and training programs for producers to include classes on film distribution, promotion and market evaluation. Presently, students are unable to recognize new possibilities for targeting and reaching the audience.
- Evaluate whether the role of the funds is limited to looking for national effects and sticking to rigid national film policies, or to consider European transnational cinemas and audiences.
- authors, producers and exhibitors would earn more money;
- it would improve the box office results, giving producers more recognition but also ensuring more automatic funding;
- it would put a stop to the illegal downloading of films made by the teachers
- To take charge of school screenings of national films, and include those screenings when calculating the box office results. This can bring multiple benefits:
- To think about improving movie theater facilities in order to gain new audiences. In Switzerland, for example, there are big co-operatives consisting of 250 apartments with indoor cinemas and offering a bar, a restaurant and cultural events as extra content. They have seven screens with 15-20 seats in order to satisfy diverse niche audiences. This model could be exported to other countries and supported by the film funds.
Promotion, Distribution and Success Evaluation
- Module 1 – The Role of Public Funds in Promotion
- Module 2 – Distribution – Who and What to Support
- Module 3 – Vod Platforms as Potential Friends of the EU Cinema
- Module 4 – Release Windows
- Module 5 – Finding and Addressing Audiences
- Module 6 – How to Evaluate Success
Illustrations by Mišo Duha
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