The balance sheet of a Hollywood blockbuster must swell tears in the eyes of creative get ups that aren’t afforded the same financial indulgences. Of the total budget bucket, the funds that are allocated to the creation of a Hollywood film versus the proportion which influences media reviews and general marketing would be telling. Especially so in today’s ‘consumer becomes publisher’ environment which allows for the spread of opinion by those not on the payroll of the Hollywood blockbuster.
Our use of an unfiltered internet is marked by the ability to find and discover content without the institutional intermediaries of mainstream media limiting choice. That which we discover and find appeal in can as easily be networked, circumventing marketing bias. From the movie makers perspective, Hollywood politics which would have once been an obstacle in bringing a story to the screen can now be negated. These dual abilities are made all the more powerful with online networking tools that can herald a thing of obscurity: ‘Social contagion… is a highly contingent process, the impact of a particular person’s opinion depending, possibly dramatically, on the other opinions solicited.’ (Watts 2003, p.224).
While the opulent movie houses may consider the unfathomed appeal-come-fame of a low budget start up as an irregular occurrence, network theories see it is a natural and somewhat predictable movement. Online networking tools have facilitated the spread of social information beyond the confines of the geographical location of an opinion leader. The strength of weak ties in online networking has seen the opinions of amateurs develop mass following. This alone is possibly suggestive of a social fatigue of the institutions that have been at liberty for too long to influence mass opinion.
‘Half Nelson’ is one example of a small budget film that employed social networking tools to announce its arrival. A digital strategy achieved through MySpace and Facebook positioning (in the early years of Facebook i.e. 2007) did nothing short of assist in a following for the movie.
That ‘…a successful cascade has far less to do with the actual characteristics of the innovation, or even the innovator, than we tend to think.’ (Watts 2003, p.243) indicates that it is more important for a product to be socialised, in and appeal to multiple networks: ‘Networks of social information…allow things that have caught on in one setting to spill over into another. Since this kind of spillover is critical to the dynamics of a cascade, social networks are central to the notion of a little thing becoming big.’ (Watts 2003, p.229). Of course, Hollywood has undertaken saturation techniques for decades to ensure a return on film making investment. However the nature of networks shows that successful planting of concepts, products, or films in this case can also be achieved by the amateur.
Resources
References
Watts, D (2003) ‘Thresholds, cascades and predictability’ in Six Degrees: the science of a connected age, New York and London: W.W. Norton p. 224, 243, 229
