Fast Forward

Since I first heard about it, I've been a fan: TED — Technology, Entertainment, and Design — is a conference about spreading ideas and so much more. Their annual event in Monterey, California is their founding epicenter, where in 18 minutes apiece, "a group of remarkable people … gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value." (Tickets are over $4,000 and only 1,000 people are invited; fortunately for us, most "TED Talks" can be viewed in five formats for free, sponsored by BMW.)

Today, day two of the 2008 TED conference included a new teaser for Pangea Day:

"What if…"

The teaser brings us back to 1989's Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where the PLA's advancing tanks met an unarmed civilian protestor. The video is called "What if…" and recreates the point-of-view of the tank driver. It intercuts the historical footage and ends with the message: "On May 10, 2008 see the world through someone else's eyes."

Coming Together with Film

Good Magazine calls it "a powerful collective action … when people around the world will come together to view films as a demonstration of global solidarity." The history and goal are elaborated in one of today's posts at the TEDBlog:

TED is also trying to do something to change the conversation. Actress Goldie Hawn is one of the many public figures around the world supporting Pangea Day, a project that was voiced as a "wish" by 2006 TED Prize winner [and filmmaker] Jehane Noujaim, when she wondered if it would be possible to create a "day when you have everyone coming together from around the world and sharing a communal experience of watching a film all together, all at the same time, from Times Square to Ramallah to the side of the Great Wall of China". That day is going to happen, on May 10, when four hours of programming — films, user-generated videos, speakers, music, hosted by CNN's Christiane Amanpour — will take place in several locations and broadcast by TV channels, shown on theatres, distributed over cell phones, streamed online, screened in village places and private homes all over the world. That's Pangea Day. Movies alone can't change the world: but the people who watch them can.

An earlier teaser, posted in September 2007, elegantly explains the call for entries, which can be sent in until February 15:

And back in February 2006, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) spoke at TED, and her talk is available online:

For more coverage of TED 2008, which goes until March 1, see TEDBlog, Wired Magazine, and Public Radio International.

Today, social networking leviathan Facebook introduced "Film on Facebook," along with "Music on Facebook." Both are a hyped-up "Page," their term for a profile about your brands or businesses, which has been around for a while. However, both efforts have a few adjustments relevant to each crowd.

Adding Your Film

When you log into Facebook, you can create a Page. Under "Brand or Product," select "Film." There, you'll have a "Page Manager" or "Ads and Pages" application. This "Page" you're creating on Facebook for your film will be a way to now visualize, message, post to, and push over updates to your audience.

Specific to the Film page, basic information collects the release date, genre, and studio. A detailed view asks for the website, stars, screenwriter, director, producer, awards, and plot outline. "Discussion Boards" and "Reviews" are other applications immediately available for your Film page, along with "Music Player" and "Movie Tickets and Times" (powered by Fandando).

You can also pimp the film's profile with everything else familiar on Facebook today: videos, photos, events, notes, wall postings, and any third-party application like "Movie Theater," where fans can also "favorite" films or "gift" them to their friends.

Examples

Toted examples of films using Pages, says the Film On Facebook page:

• Cloverfield (21,730 fans)
• Sweeny Todd (13,240 fans)
• Walk Hard (904 fans)
• Hairspray (11,493 fans)

…and studios:

• Paramount Pictures (1,924 fans)

…and Sundance 2008 films:

• American Teen (605 fans)
• Anvil! The Story of Anvil (167 fans)
• August (15 fans)
• Bottle Shock (65 fans)
• Goliath (208 fans)
• The Great Buck Howland (9 fans)
• Hamlet 2 (45 fans)
• Kicking It (178 fans)
• The Merry Gentleman (29 fans)
• U2 3D (2,413 fans)
• The Wackness (163 fans)

Coverage on ReadWriteWeb goes into further detail about how movie marketing is already commonplace on MySpace. Mint Communications blogged about how MySpace often previews film clips for new releases; this doesn't appear to compete with Facebook's approach. And VentureBeat noted Facebook's broader move as a media platform and mentioned the upcoming talk at SXSW — a huge festival for film and music — with the "head of market development in entertainment," Matt Jacobsen.

Social Promotion

Pages are tied hand-in-hand with Facebook's Social Ads network, as a reminder of one way to drive click-traffic to the page. Buying ads is per click or per impression, and targeted to specific demographics. For example, if the demo for your film was women under thirty in Los Angeles, your ad will show up on the side of some of their Facebook visits. You set a price per day, pay by credit card, and bid on the click-through value of your audience from a penny on up.

An alternative D.I.Y. approach to finding your Facebook Film page is when you search Facebook.com. Aside from searching people's profiles, it searches Pages. When you click to the Film of choice, you can comment on the page's "wall" or "fan" it. Being a fan of a film adds a box to your profile, and pushes fresh "mini-feed" content from the film's page to the subscribed user when you log in. Your film's fans are passively evangelizing your film, in exchange for subscribing to updates and showing support.

Unlike normal Facebook profiles, Pages have graphs of pageviews and counts of fans over time, so you can audit the effectiveness of marketing.

"Please don't interrupt our movies" punctuates the new public service announcement featuring Martin Scorsese, now running in movie theaters. The 60-second ad — from AT&T and BBDO New York — features the director interrupting a mother and son during a bedtime call with his traveling father. "The plot of this phone call is just not working for me. I've seen it a million times," warns the Academy Award-winning director.

In response to the ad, the press release on February 11 notes that "[i]n a recent survey of moviegoers throughout the United States, an overwhelming 93 percent reported that they either silenced their wireless phone, put it on vibrate or turned it off as a result of AT&T's Be Sensible public service announcements." Scott Marks of the Emulsion Compulsion blog jokingly noted, "[n]ot since his cameo in Taxi Driver has a camera lens channeled the true force of Scorsese on screen."

The ad is featured today on the home page of Creativity Online, which hosts a larger-format embed with full list of credits. On February 20, the ad was ADWEEK's Ad of the Day. It can also be seen and requested in AT&T's own corporate multimedia gallery.

The "Be Sensible" campaign has included similar ads with other Academy Award winners: director Sydney Pollack and actor Forest Whitaker.

Love at first sight? Hulu, the industry's response to the user's demand for video, looks good even if you don't show up again for seconds. There's a surprisingly deep selection of old and new programming, void of anything "user generated." The video is big — as film and television should be — and it's way easier to search than the Google-owned YouTube.

Chances are you are yet to know this Hulu site. It's been closed off as a "private beta" since October, not yet ready for the masses. If anyone wants to take a look, I have 5 invites up for grabs.

Above: Hulu.com embed of The Simpsons - "Joy of Discovery" (Excerpt, 00:39)

On the flip side, Stage6 just gave 72 hours notice: it's closing up shop this Thursday. Maybe it was all of the pirated content and the competitiveness of streaming video, but the official word is cost — as much as $1 million a month. A project of DivX, makers of the high-definition codec for video (and competitor to Joost and Flash), the product blog noted that last year they were "explor(ing) strategic alternatives, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down." Today's post on the product's blog had over 4,000 comments from distressed Stagers, some saying they would pay up to keep their videos up.

(For more coverage on the Stage6 closure, see NewTeeVee, 3by9.com, The Business of Online Video, and Webware.)

Footnote: Hulu is a collaborative project of NBC Universal and News Corp. Earlier this month, NBC waved goodbye to the annual Upfronts, as part of a strategy to debut pilot shows online and let them fight it out all year round. No other studio joined with them. Real Pop has a post about this year-round season and a chart that shows why NBC's on to something. We also posted last May about the upfronts and quality content succeeding online.

For more alternatives to YouTube, see our directory of social video networks.

These are the picks for best films of 2008: fiction juxtaposed with non-fiction, side-by-side alphabetically.

Nominees for Best Picture

Enlarge | Credits for Best Picture Nominees: "Atonement" poster by Mojo LLC, "Juno" poster by BLT & Associates, "Michael Clayton" poster by Pulse Advertising, "No Country for Old Men" poster by BLT & Associates, "There Will Be Blood" poster by Concept Arts

Nominees for Best Documentary

Enlarge | Credits for Best Documentary Nominees: "No End in Sight" (credit unknown), "Operation Homecoming" (credit unknown), "Sicko" poster by Bemis Balkind, "Taxi to the Dark Side" poster by cold open, "War Dance" poster by cold open

With the Oscars coming this Sunday, February 14, which films would win if it was just up to their poster? Would you watch a film based on its cover?

On a related note, posters can actually win awards. In June, the Hollywood Reporter has its annual Key Art Awards. Categories include action-adventure, animation, comedy, drama, horror, teaser, and international; the awards also include trailers and other marketing collateral. In January, movie poster weblog Posterwire.com had its annual awards, while recapping industry trends and linking to every print you can imagine. This year, they decided on "The Savages," which was illustrated by Chris Ware.

Reference: Internet Movie Poster Awards

P.S. If you're a new reader to this blog, see how we covered Juno, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood.