Posted on February 17, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

A look at social media and the future of the film industry: Joshua, Napoleon, Hill & Jane Fonda

I’m sure by now you know how the music industry is doing and it’s need to embrace the internet for more direct one to one relationships between the artist and the customer.  But what about the film industry? How will the film industry use social media to market  movies and continue to sell out theaters.  Here’s a look at three examples of using social media, online video and the film industry.

I recently attended BarCampCharlotte and met Joshua J. Mills @JoshuaJMills who’s the founder of Filmblazer @filmblazer. Joshua will be starting the Two-week Turnaround Tour or T3, that’s a community filmmaking project where he’ll travel to 14 cities over 7 months and write, shot and screen a short film in two-weeks. Joshua stated at BarCampCLT that in the future you’re going to be able to make a movie for $100,000 vs millions and compete with Hollywood. I posted the message on twitter and it seems that others agree.

stephenTiano: @waynesutton I guess. If you don’t have any high-priced movie stars in it. Or perhaps there won’t be moie stars anymore?

mattcheney: @waynesutton you might be able to pit a 100k movie vs 65M movie as long as it’s not an action type movie. Maybe. #BarCampCLT

vancouverderek: @waynesutton the diff between a 100,000 movie and a 10KK movie …? two lead actors….. watch as Hollywood real estate prices plummet…..

This brings me to Napoleon Wright, Napoleon is a Filmmaker, director, producer and founder of Becauseus. Napoleon recently filmed and produced a Raleigh-Durham Hip-Hop documentary called: “One Day, Introducing Kooley High” .  The documentary is a 40-minuted film that chronicles a day in the life of Triangle-based rap group Kooley High and their desire to be heard. It was filmed throughout Raleigh-Durham, N.C and is produced in association with M.E.C.C.A. Records.

Napoleon released a few trailers on youtube and vimeo and the film was premiered at the Galaxy Theater in Cary, NC on January 24, and it  was sold out . Here you have a guy with a passion, time and skills to produce a movie way less than $100,000 and sell out a movie theater. I won’t say that he only used social media marketing to promote the movie because having a strong offline local community played a strong roll in the success of the premier, but using social media help spread the buzz about the premier to make it successful.

I had a chance to interview Napoleon early this year about the film, how he got started and what next, now that he’s produce a successful movie project. Take a look.

If you want to watch the movie “One Day, Introducing Kooley High” . here’s a link to the trailer here and the movie here.

What about current Hollywood actors; what are they doing while we’re seeing a trend of great independent films being produced and doing well on the internet? I’m not sure about everyone else but Hill Harper @hillharper and Tom Arnold partnered with upcoming producer Christopher Angel to make a film called “This is Not a Test” . While on a live chat with Hill and Chris they were talking about how they used social media marketing to promote the movie.

For more about “This is Not a Test” check out the movie website here or watch the trailer on youtube here.

As I’m closing out this blog post, I took a quick look at James Andrews @keyinfluencer facebook profile and I see that he helped legendary actress Jane Fonda to launch her blog and twitter account: @Janefonda . Hollywood is going social, get ready.

What are your thoughts on the future of the movie industry using social media marketing?

Do you think we’ll see more actors using social media to produce and market their own films?

Are you working on any video projects?

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About the Author

Written by Wayne Sutton

Wayne is the business development/marketing strategist for TriOut and partner at OurHashtag. For more, follow SocialWayne.com on Twitter, Buzz, and Facebook. Also check out the SocialWayne Podcast in iTunes. See all posts by Wayne Sutton.