Goldfish

OUR ATTENTION SPAN IS DROWNING

Cannes

I had no idea what I was doing when I first started in the film distribution business. 

See, I had fallen in love with the movies back in 1991, when I was living Paris. One day, as I was wandering around the city, I saw a poster announcing the upcoming 44th Cannes Film

Festival. Cut to, I ended up interning for a film distributor at the Palais des Festivals. And falling in love with the industry.

VHS

The first thing I learned was that films were sold based on posters, and who was attached to it. Not really the quality of the movie. Sounds familiar?

In our distribution booths at the Palais, we had an old VHS attached to a 13- inch television to play the trailers. Funny enough, most people would watch it until the end – unlike today, when humans have a shorter span than that of a goldfish (8.25 seconds x 9 seconds), as stated in a notorious 2015 Time Magazine article.

Thirty Years Ago

So much has changed in the past 30 years! According to Box Office Mojo, we basically doubled our theatrical releases in the US from 244 to 406 films (but keep in mind that the world population went from 5 to 8 billion people). Nevertheless, sadly for our business, the average box office revenue declined from $17 to $11 million (not factoring money devaluation). 

On the other hand, alongside with our attention span contracting, a recent research published by the Newsweek shows that film and TV shot lengths have declined to four seconds. Advertisements went down from 60 to six seconds.

BFF

Well, apparently Tik Tok really changed the world (interesting article on BBC), which, in a way, has trained us to choosing faster. Therefore, marketing communication (posters, trailers, reels, pictures) and packaging (stars, IP adaptations, talents, referrals) are even more crucial now than before.

At the end of the day, the streamers' catalogues are endless libraries of small posters controlled by some strange algorithm who pretends to be our BFF. 

Eight Seconds

People, you have up to 8 seconds to get someone hooked up so they will click on your film or TV project!

Pretty stressful, right? But with the correct techniques, you can maximize the possibilities of your content meeting its audience's psychological needs to relax, escape, and connect with their emotions. 

We can help you there, just shoot us an email.

Cheers,

Laura