VALIDATION...for the Internet, not for me

A report from Variety titled "Internet Influences Film Audiences" is going to rock the shit out of this here movie industry. Straight up, don't tell me, this is gonna change the world. I mean, we've all thought it, but now...someone is finally saying it: People. Use. The. Internet.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammn!!!

Now that's some straight-up reportin'. Was the first draft of the title: "Internet: Will it catch on?" or "How do you turn this durn computer on?" I kid, but only slightly, because the story went on to say that "Moviegoers 2010," a report on moviegoing habits, concluded that film marketers are going to have to leverage social media and other Internet outlets to promote their movies. Hmmm, if this report came in a time machine that could travel back to 2007, it would blow some effin' minds, y'all. However, in 2009, stats like "94% of all moviegoers are all online" and "73% of moviegoers surveyed have profiles on social networking sites" fall outside of the "relevant info" category and straight into the "no f**king shit" category. I suppose this is really just confirmation of what many of us knew, and that's promotion should take the form of viral word-of-mouth. It's not going to help you sell a bad movie because as soon as one person sees a turd, everyone will talk across the interwebs about the smell. However, if you have a quality film, like a Paranormal Activity, then trying to craft a social media buzz is practical. I'm rambling, let me put it this way: There was one sad little fact in the story that caught my eye, "Of those surveyed, 75% said they trust a friend's opinion more than a movie critic; 80% said they were more likely to see a movie after hearing a positive review from other moviegoers, while only 67% said a thumbs up from a professional critic had the same weight." Okay, so what you see here is that (A) nobody listens to me so why do I do this and (B) that what you really need is a way to facilitate getting people who liked your movie talking about your movie. This means if you have a good product that holding screenings early and ENCOURAGING them to tweet, Facebook, etc about it is a must. Also, I think that all of this is pretty superficial and obvious stuff...but that the one thing it CAN tell us is that someone needs to find a way to track how much buzz on something like Twitter correlates into box office success. What I'm saying is, maybe this is more of a measuring stick than a tool to get people seeing the movie. Also, I'm still really hurt that my opinion doesn't matter to anybody, so I'm going to go now.