Weinstein Company experiments with YouTube

In an interesting marketing ploy, The Weinstein Company has placed the first 8 minutes on "Lucky Number Slevin" on YouTube.

Now, it happens that the first 8 minutes of this particular film are pretty self-contained, like a nice little prologue to the film itself. There's a story, more or less complete in itself, but that implies a lot about the direction and style of the whole film.

It's a unique situation, most films don't have a prologue this self-contained. Honestly, most films don't have a first 8 minutes that are this interesting. They're often setups for for payoffs that come later, without any payoffs in themselves. Sequeneces from the middle of the movie are less desirable for a few reasons, not least because audiences will know it's coming and will be expecting it until they see it, which might blemish their experience of the film.

So this technique might not work for most movies. It might not work for this one, coming as it does sort of late in the release window (though it wil likely help dvd sales).

But if your structure does support it, it's a fantastic idea. If you have something, characters, plot, style, something that pulls people into the movie in the first section, this is a great way to let people get a solid taste of your film. And it's a natural for digitally distributed films, why not? You're reaching the audience that might pay to see the whole thing anyway.

Smart promotional technique, and will probably be widely linked and discussed. And emulated.

And we'll eventually have studio execs asking filmmakers "Great, but what's the youtube sequence?"

Digital Distribution | Filmmaking | The Weinstein Company | Lucky Number Slevin | Movie Promotion