What’s the point in making something unless people are going to see it?”
Not every actor, filmmaker or artist can be an Internet entrepreneur, but the proliferation of low-cost soft and hardware means content making and distribution outside traditional industry engines is a real option for many.
What arguably sets Hewlett apart from your average band who parlays their MySpace clips into a record contract is the sense that he’s the one wagging Dog's long tail. Duly deferential to the work his “squirrel minions” and MGM are doing for the film, it’s never in doubt that he and his producer remain custodians of their product. For some creators, the end goal is access to the industry gates. The suits who’ll do the selling for you once you’re in the coveted door. For this thinking performer turned auteur, it’s both more interesting and more useful to fuel separate components in aid of a big picture that stays his own. Hewlett understands and respects what these networks can accomplish, and he doesn’t need the marketeers to tell him how the ‘bits’ fit. It’s more innate than a ‘long tail’ – it’s a bunch of like minds spruiking something they think is cool, because it feels like the right, fun thing to do.
“You find your audience, you find out what they’re interested in, then you create product for that audience. Not to make it sound too mercenary, but that’s the reality. You need to know who’s interested in your stuff before you make it so you know how much to spend on it. If you’ve got four people who are going to watch it, you’re not going to spend a million dollars. If you’ve got a million people wanting to watch, you can spend something more.”
Hewlett draws comparisons with his beloved world of science fiction, recalling an early reading of William Gibson’s pioneering ‘cyberpunk’ novel Neuromancer in which citizens plug into a collective consciousness tuned to the desires of the masses. It’s Gibson’s “matrix” v.1 that Hewlett gravitates toward, in life, and art. “There’s something strangely magical about the idea of there being access to this giant brain made up of everyone’s input,” he says. “Take something like Wikipedia. Sure people come in and vandalise it every few seconds, but then someone else arrives to fix it.”
It’s also in step with theatre and filmmaking at its most egalitarian. “It’s like Fringe Festivals in a way,” suggests Hewlett. “The idea of a theatre festival where everyone gets a chance to put on their show, money is relatively no object, and it’s all promoted en’masse. You get some amazing stuff coming out of that. Of course, with the good comes the bad, and I think the real future of the Internet will be in systems that filter.”
While the analysts debate the significance of this paradigm shift in the way we make stuff and talk about it, Hewlett's mind is on how it can serve the stories he wants to tell, and those who might enjoy them.
“There’s a real opportunity in that shared space, to ‘brand’ yourself (for want of a better word), and what you do," he reflects. "I mean, it’s always worked that way to some extent. You go and see a film with Sean Penn in it because you like his work. Or Sam Raimi, or some other director you want to see because you feel you know their stuff and there’s the expectation that you’ll enjoy this too. Is there a massive revolution? Yes, I think so in the long term, but this has been going on for years, it’s just a matter of using it appropriately.”
Hewlett says he’s been particularly thrilled with the response of MGM to his squirrel marketing. In an age where the old-guard of content-producers are fighting to stay relevant it seems one of the oldest is willing to give Hewlett’s giant brain a test drive.
“We sent the film out to a few different places, but from the start we thought, if we have to sell them on the Stargate angle they’re probably not the right distributors for us.”
“When we went into MGM we were totally straight with them. We said, this is a small film, this is the way we think it should be promoted, and they were totally behind it.”
“They’re so interesting to work with, because they’re such an historic studio. They were there at the beginning of this; you walk down their corridors and you see Oscars dating back to the first Oscars. They’re use to dealing with their James Bond's and their Rocky's, which are these giant engines that I can’t even begin to comprehend. And while all that’s going on they were meeting with us about our little movie and were happy to talk about YouTube, fascinated by it even. I’ve been incredibly impressed. If the big studios start acting like little Internet companies then I think everyone’s going to benefit from the stuff we’ll see coming out of it.”
Venessa Paech Venessa Paech - Editor & Founder. Venessa holds a BFA from NYU. She has done the arts to death, and has been in love with the web since she "discovered" it at a CyberCafe in NYC in '93. She wants to be a podcaster when she grows up.
Doctor Who is a long-running award-winning British science fiction television programme (and a 1996 television film) produced by the BBC. The series shows the adventures of a mysterious time-traveller known as "the Doctor", who explores time and space in his TARDIS time ship with his companions, solving problems and righting wrongs.
Perl is a cross-platform scripted programming languge
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Venessa Paech - Editor & Founder. Venessa holds a BFA from NYU. She has done the arts to death, and has been in love with the web since she "discovered" it at a CyberCafe in NYC in '93. She wants to be a podcaster when she grows up.
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