this year LiveMansion.com will make LiveMansion, the Movie, thanks to participation by its online community.
LiveMansion.com is an online, social networking community geared toward people the television and film industry. This year, LiveMansion decided to make a feature film, using the talent from its social network to produce, cast, direct and star.
It’s an ingenious concept for a few reasons. From a website hosting standpoint, having the online community vote on the cast keeps eyeballs on the site, increases page views and provides empirical, statistical site information to show advertisers.
From an advertiser standpoint, the idea keeps current site surfers stuck to LiveMansion while also attracting new site surfers to the site and to become members of the LiveMansion community. Throw in a little cash to sweeten the pot and LiveMansion suddenly has cash bones to splash over the heads of directors vying to helm the LM.com project. Now the demo reels that need being shot (to be webcast for balloting purposes by the community in order to choose the director) get subsidized on the cheap by advertisers, and LiveMansion looks like a prince for funding up-and-coming directors in its community.
From an executive producer�s standpoint, having your community do the casting call, judge the actors, and vote on the finalists relieves them of the burden of a bricks and mortar casting office. It also cynically, relieves them of the expense of a casting agent and associated personnel, as well as allowing saving dinero on the catering.
From a public relations standpoint, every single step of the project becomes newsworthy. One because it is the first online, social networking community to undertake such a project; and two because moviemaking makes news.
From a social networking standpoint, it proves the value of the online community concept to each member. Here they can participate in the project, spectate over the proceedings, speculate about the process, or commiserate when they participate but are not chosen. It�s real life without all the fossil fuel and coffee burning.
LiveMansion the Movie�s ultimate success still depends on factors outside the hands of its community�funding, marketing and distribution, and audience response. That may prove problematic. Ckrush Digital Media, Inc. responsible for such direct-to-DVD feature films as “Beer League, “TV the Movie,” and National Lampoon’s “Pledge This,” starring Paris Hilton. However, if the business plan for the movie is to create cheap movies to distribute cheaply to a wide, non-discriminating viewership, Ckrush Digital may just be the perfect people for the job.
