Insights, Marketing & Data: Secrets of Success from Industry Leaders
Insights, Marketing & Data: Secrets of Success from Industry Leaders
FOCUS FEATURES - David Gilison (SVP, Research & Strategy). The research process for movies, the truth about test screenings, opportunities for future data strands.
Understanding the research process bringing great movies to new audiences.
Brought to you by Horizon, the #1 Market Validation Software https://www.gethorizon.net/
In this episode we cover:
- David's secret life at college (he may have to kill you)
- Pathway into the industry & current role
- How the greenlight process works
- Use of test screenings and working with film-makers
- Creative strategy & testing
- Tracking & in-flight marketing optimization
- Theatrical release, PVOD & Streaming
As well as David’s forthcoming film recommendations, check them out (in cinemas first!):
TAR
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14444726/
HONK FOR JESUS, SAVE YOUR SOUL
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12655436/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
ARMAGEDDON TIME
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10343028/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
SPOILER ALERT: THE HERO DIES
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7775720/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Suggestions, thoughts etc to futureviewpod@gmail.com
FUTUREVIEW PODCAST – SEASON 1/ EPISODE 2
INTERVIEW WITH DAVID GILISON, FOCUS FEATURES. SVP, RESEARCH & STRATEGY. SPORTS.
[00:09] Henry Piney: Welcome to Future View. This week, we're taking a deep dive into how consumer insight and data is used in the film industry. In order to do so, I'm delighted to have on David Gelatin as a guest. David is now SVP of Research and strategy at Focus Features, part of Universal Pictures Before that, David was the leading companies in the space, such as JD. Power and Nielsen NRG, focusing on their 20th anniversary this year. They're the film producer and distributor that have been responsible for bringing so many great movies to market, such as, just to name a few, brokeback Mountain, The Darkest Hour, The Theory of Everything, more recently, a Promising Young Woman, the list could go on.
In this interview, David tells us what movies to look out for later this year. Guess a fascinating summary of how research in the film industry really works, the truth about test screenings, marketing challenges, opportunities for the future, and his secret history while at college. But just for a moment, before we get going, I'd like to introduce our sponsor for this episode, Horizon.
Horizon is a pioneering, SaaS company in consumer insights. They're taking a new approach to consumer research to help support strategic product and pricing decisions. They do this by moving beyond the written concepts and the open basic stimulus that used to be used in this type of research and introducing a new approach called preto typing.
The really cool thing about preto typing is that it gives consumers the chance to interact with new products and pricing options and concepts in real environments from a client's perspective. They're then able to make consumer centric decisions based on real behavioral data, in addition to traditional metrics like stated intent. Leading global companies such as Bosch, Siemens and beauty brands like Essence are already using Horizon to make better product decisions. Check them out@gethorizon.net.
And now on to the interview with David. I should also say upfront that these are David's personal views rather than necessarily those of Focus or Universal.
[01:55] Henry Piney: So, David, pleasure to have you on the podcast.
[01:58] David Gilison: Thank you. Good to see you.
[01:59] Henry Piney: David and I have known each other a long time in all sorts of different circumstances, but I wanted to see if you could surprise me in some way. Is there something about you that's a bit surprising? Most people wouldn't know? I don't mean your teeth is darkest secret, but just something I wouldn't find through looking in or LinkedIn or if I was to Google you.
[02:17] David Gilison: I don't know if everyone knows that when I was in college, I worked for CIA.
[02:20] Henry Piney: No way. I didn't know that.
[02:22] David Gilison: I I see. There you go.
[02:24] Henry Piney: Okay. You're going to have to kill me if you tell me what you did.
[02:27] David Gilison: Right, yeah. There's definitely a point at which if I gave too much information, I'd have to use that thing that erases your memory. But other than that, I'm pretty safe in talking about it. My father worked for the CIA, and he had top secret clearance. And there's a program where college students are invited to work during the summer there because it's so hard for them to get employees who have to go through an extraordinary background check. And so you're a child or someone who already has gone through this check, so you have a little bit of extra background they have to do on you. They came to my university and they interviewed my roommates. But other than that, it was pretty much like, okay, you can go work there. And I work in an incredibly secret place, like inside a CIA building, inside a safe.
[03:12] Henry Piney: They put you inside of safe. And let me get this right. The references were from your college roommates, and your dad survived?
[03:24] David Gilison: When my father found out what part of the CIA I was working for, he went, Wait, they have summer interns there, which I think I should have fade into a sitcom. But anyway, it was fascinating, and it taught me a lot about also about government service and people who spend their entire lives who are working for something they get no credit for. It's not an easy life, but I met some fascinating people. I got to do some interesting stuff. It was a really interesting summer job. When you're in college, let's just say.
[03:52] Henry Piney: That that's a great icebreaker, David. I wasn't expecting that one in the least. Okay, so then what happened? What was your sort of path into the world? Research and data and insight.
[04:01] David Gilison: And I tell this to young people. I didn't know my job existed when I was in college. I knew I wanted to be in movies. I was fascinated by movies as a young person, a kid, and then I came out to Los Angeles to work in the movies. I thought I wanted to be a writer, but I realized quickly on that it wasn't something that spoke to me in the context of being by myself in front of a computer, just sort of like this empty page. I needed much more, like, social interaction. And I worked in a bunch of other things, including JD. Power, helping them with their.com spin off. But in doing that, I learned about market research.
And then a friend of mine said, hey, you love movies. You've worked in the movies, and you've done this.com thing with a market research company. There's a company called NRG that does that puts these two things together. And I interviewed there, and it just spoke to me immediately.
[04:50] Henry Piney: Firstly, I love the fact that you dated yourself was about the same age as me because we remember the.com spin off when it was 56K dial up or whatever, we would nowhere near three. But what was it that drew you to it? I mean, I don't necessarily mean about energy as a corporate culture or anything like that, because I'm sure that was good, but about the role itself.
[05:11] David Gilison: There's this beautiful blend, analytical brain and creative brain. And I like to think that I have those elements. I come to movies from a love of movies and watching lots of movies and wanting to be in the movie industry. There's a basis by which we're creating what we always talk about, the core element being actionable insights, right?
We're looking for how can we help either the filmmakers or the studio do whatever they're doing better, right, to be more effective? And there was something really interesting in this audience feedback loop to me. I also got to watch movies for a living and talk about them and have really interesting conversations around them. The people I worked with were fascinating, a lot like me. They came in it from a love of movies and then found this place, this sort of odd side place of the movie industry. But that was kind of hard. It was both on the sideline, but at the heart of what was going on across the entire industry.
[06:06] Henry Piney: We'll get to that in a little bit more detail. I think people listening would be fascinated to know what the kind of process is and actually what that intersection of data and insight and high art or popular arts where everyone wants to describe it, like moviegoing kind of is, but just move to where you are now to give a little bit of context. Could you describe your current position, but also what Focus Features concentrates on? Because not everybody may know that.
[06:33] David Gilison: We hope one day that everyone will, and we do some work on that. But Focus Features? I moved to Focus Features five years ago. Senior Vice President of Research and Strategy for Focus Features. So I oversee all of our research work and I also help along with what we call the strategic framework of how we're approaching our movies. And I'll explain that too.
So Focus Features is the what we might call the art house specialty indie. There's a lot of words for this, but sort of brand division of Universal, universal Studios, which is NBC Universal Focus. We are on our 20th anniversary this year.
And so Focus really is dedicated to the idea of a kind of filmmaker driven cinema experience. And that doesn't mean that Universal or for that matter, Sony or Warners also don't do those things too. Don't make those kinds of movies. But we are really kind of this very laser focused on the world, filmmaker driven movies.
Movies that aren't necessarily what you would say broadly demographic movies, but more psychographic movies. Movies in which you love a certain kind of movie and it speaks to you in a way that's different than maybe the spectacle of the big, big movies. Oftentimes they're performance driven, oftentimes they are what we call arty, or more risky in a certain kind of artist artistic way, because we allow for that. And that's part of our whole philosophy about film and how we want to be part of what's that kind of leading edge of the cinematic world.
[08:09] Henry Piney: When a movie is just an idea or it's a pitch. Does research come into play? Research and data usage come into play at that stage for focus?
[08:18] David Gilison: Well, I'm involved in the conversation at the earliest stages. I would say green light, which is the process by which something gets into the thumbs up to be made. Is there's not data in the traditional sort of survey audience feedback data? It's a little bit of the third rail of movie making. The idea that you're going to take a script and put it into some machine and output, whether you should make it or not. It's not something that, generally speaking, the studio system wants to do okay.
[08:49] Henry Piney: Which is interesting because that's part of why I was asking. It because I think that's an idea that's been around for a long time. And I'm not saying it's a good idea or a bad idea necessarily, but I was just interested in whether it's part of your process at the moment. But it doesn't seem like it is.
[09:04] David Gilison: No, but I do talk about audience in that conversation. We do talk about it because ultimately we're trying to say, like, here's this proposed budget for a movie, and then there's a conversation around, well, what do we think is the likely outcome on the revenue side? Right? Each one of these movies on some level is a business case, but it's also obviously an artistic case. It's a taste case.
It's all these different things coming together and also thinking about what we would call like a strategic slate. So there's the idea of how many movies we making in a year and who are those movies for and are we looking at our audience? Are we covering all of that, and are we looking for new audiences? Right. Let's say young people who might not think of arthouse movies as their kind of movies, but when we talk about titles, they realize that they are there are certain titles that did speak to them and got them into the theater, or maybe they caught them later on in streaming or at home.
And I think that's a key thing of what we're trying to think about when we think about what we're doing. It's also like making movies for everyone, but not in one movie, the other as a tapestry of the movie going population.
[10:14] Henry Piney: That's a lovely way to put it, I think. So you're sort of picking out these potentially niche kind of audiences, or very specific audiences, but putting it together in kind of like a patchwork when you look at a slate of whatever you're releasing over, say, a year or a two year period, and then you've decided to make the movie. So from a research and data perspective, what happens then?
[10:34] David Gilison: Generally speaking, not much other than a conversation with the filmmakers about at the end of that filming process about test screenings. So we do have this conversation with them now, again, at Focus, because we're filmmaker driven. We believe very much in that this is a kind of feedback loop that's offered to them, to filmmakers.
Again, big studio movies with big budgets might have a more, I would say, like demanding screening schedule built into it because of the risk that's being taken at those very large budgets. But again, Focus, it's really offered there as another part of a tool that they can use that we can help understand, where the audience is. Once again, they have this we call it's not a rough cut, rough cuts, really. I first cut, but it's really an early cut, one in which the filmmaker is still working on the movie.
[11:30] Henry Piney: So you sort of offer it almost like as another pair of eyes, which just happens to be the audience's eyes, rather than professional editors or people working kind of within the studio. And how does the actual process of the screening work? I don't mean in lots of detail, but can you paint a picture for people listening as to what happens initially?
[11:50] David Gilison: So there are some vendors in the world of movie market research. There's not a lot, actually. And we work with a couple of them and we will say, okay, we want to do this screening, talk to them about it, and they handle the kind of nitty gritty, operational side of it. In other words, they are handling recruiting the audience and getting them in.
And the questionnaire itself, I am in charge of making sure that I set the specs, and the specs are what's the demographic look of the audience we want? Because I'm trying to mirror what we would think of as being the audience for opening weekend. Right. I want feedback from the people who would be most excited to see the movie. Right. I don't really want feedback from people who would not like this movie anyway. Right. That doesn't necessarily get you that actionable insight I was talking about earlier. You're looking to shape that audience, to be the people who should, if everything's working the movie, really love it and be enthusiastic about it. They come, they watch the movie, and they take a survey afterwards.
[12:53] Henry Piney: And that's just it just a survey. Or focus groups as well?
[12:56] David Gilison: Yeah, there's a focus group also, but the survey is a couple. I'm a big believer in what we may call quantitative versus qualitative, in that we're doing 250 people. All of those people together are going to give me responses in aggregate that I can sort of rely on in a way that means if I did it in five days, I get very similar responses.
Focus groups are really interesting in the context of hearing human beings speak about something in a way that might be more nuanced than what they wrote on a card. Nowadays, it's all digital cards. We don't actually use the old pen and paper anymore. But with that being said, you have to be careful there. Right. Because you're now talking about a subgroup of ten people, 20 people talking about this movie in a way that can easily be shifted. It can make things seem that they are much more serious, like in a negative way or much more positive in a way than they actually are in its aggregate. And you have to sort of take that as being like, this is an added layer. That's interesting. But isn't the actual findings of the screenings why? We just asked 300 people about this in detail on the card. So the focus group is informative, but can't be the foundation of what your findings in the movie are.
[14:22] Henry Piney: And so you take the survey results and the focus groups are a little bit of color and then what do you do with those results? And then what comes next? Usually in the research and marketing process, production process.
[14:34] David Gilison: So if I focus, we generally will have a conversation about the findings the next day with the filmmaking team. And that's my job, is to translate these findings into something that's meaningful and to understand that there are some things that people are going to maybe have quibbles about that are not necessarily the kind of thing that you would present as a concern. Right. You have to look at that data and you have to interpret that data really well to get to the point where you can talk to somebody that's meaningful to them and actionable to them.
[15:06] Henry Piney: It must be really difficult in certain situations. I mean, these movies are Labours of Love and I imagine potentially you're getting feedback from early stage screenings that in some cases it's not entirely positive. How do you deal with that type of scenario?
[15:21] David Gilison: That is a key thing here. I would say to you that one of the things that defines my role is to be someone who has empathy. Right. I think sometimes people think researchers are like math nerds who sit around and do statistical analysis for fun. There are some right? And I'm math literate. You're math literate. But neither of us are statistical. We are not PhDs and stats and we understand what's going on there.
But we're really much more consultants in that we're taking this and we're saying, what can we learn from this that we can do with this? I think one of the key things that I have this conversation with people because, like you said, this is their baby. This is their heart and soul they've been working on for years. And what I try to think about is what is their intent in this, let's say, moment or in the arc of the story? And are there things that are getting in the way of that intent coming through to that audience? Because ultimately, if I can help the filmmaker get rid of the blockages, then the movie shines through in a way that they always imagined it would.
[16:34] Henry Piney: Yeah, I see. That's a really interesting analogy. I remember Simon Hewlett, who you would have known from the international side. He used to describe it as trying to find a bridge. There's a storyline, there's a theme, there's a character here, and we're trying to bring that vision, take audiences across the bridge.
[16:52] David Gilison: Yes, absolutely.
[16:53] Henry Piney: One way or another. Once you've reached almost a final cut, what comes next?
[16:58] David Gilison: The creative team, the team that the AV team is like at screenings, right. And it is in this conversation with filmmakers early on about their vision, about how we're going to now take something that's 2 hours, whatever, and condense it. Right. We have to find a way to condense this into two and a half minutes for a trailer and then eventually into 32nd TV spots, down to six second digital spots. Right. We have to make sense of the experience of the movie in these shorter forms. And in that experience, we have to then condense that hour and a half into two and a half minutes.
And so what happens at that point is that creative teams who are in charge of creating the materials, as we call them, for the marketing, we have this conversation early on, and it's one of the things I'm in charge of. It's called, like, the marketing strategy guide. And what that is, is really a kind of blueprint for the campaign that we're going to do that cuts across all of the different ways we think about marketing, which would be, again, linear, which is in theater trailers, online trailers, and then TV spots, then there's digital and there's publicity. We're all then talking about the movie in a consistent way so that the campaign works as a holistic way of thinking about the movie and the same language. And so therefore, this ship of the movie is moving forward in all the different ways that all our efforts are kind of ordinated that way.
[18:23] Henry Piney: What role does the testing process play?
[18:25] David Gilison: Right. So this is the key insight. Again, I would go back to Joe Farrell and NRG. MarketCast is another competitor that really dominates the space of material testing. Now, you may have heard of them.
[18:39] Henry Piney: I'm aware of them to something like that.
[18:42] David Gilison: The key insight that I think that Joe had in this context was that the movies are unique in the way they can do market research. Right. There's no other product that can do it. It was called this iterative market research process. And why is that? Because you have hours of footage for the movie which can be infinitely manipulated, changed, and tuned to create different stories, different positionings, different tonalities to them. The focusing on this character, in that character. So what happens is we create different positioning, kind of I would call them branches of a tree and out of that, and then we test them.
What does that mean? We take these trailers that are in a rough state. They are not finished trailers, but they are a full arc of the movie. And let's say we have a movie that is both comedic and dramatic, okay? And so one positioning might be really comedy focused and with this little threat of drama, the other one might be a much more dramatic take on it, but with the sort of moments of levity that help it. And just in that, you can see that you can take those two pieces and you can send them again to vendors.
Again, in this case, like Energy or Mr. Cash for us. And they will then recruit online. We do only online testing. Back in the day, this was done in malls, but now for us, it's all online. These are qualified moviegoers and there's a qualification which means they've gone to see movies in the theater recently during COVID, they had to change some of those rules. But generally speaking, you want to be talking to Active Moviegoers. Why? Because, again, just like I talked about earlier in the screens process, about wanting people who would be there opening weekend, I want Active Moviegoers because they're actively making these decisions all the time.
[20:26] Henry Piney: And again, it's an iterative kind of process. So you keep on taking bindings, you cut more materials, that type of thing. Now, slightly kind of cheeky question around there, but I hear a lot from people saying, I saw the trailer, it looked great, I went to see the movie. It wasn't anything like that. What's your response to that type of audience feedback?
[20:46] David Gilison: Well, our job is to get you to see the movie.
[20:50] Henry Piney: Very diplomatic, David. Very diplomatic. The other thing actually, I hadn't asked, but I wanted to just think about the screening process. So I think in the popular mindset, there's this idea that screenings are about choosing the ending of the movie. Is that true or are you going to disappoint?
[21:07] David Gilison: No, not at all. Not at all. I think that there is a kind of legendary stories about endings changing. And if you think about it, right, endings are the easiest thing to change. You don't have to worry then about the chain of things after that that somehow would the domino effect of changing the middle of a movie. But also endings are the most important. The last 15 minutes of a movie are oftentimes the most important in that experiential relationship with the movie. The two things that generally are working on the most are pacing and confusion.
So pacing is just like it's a process of editing. All movies start larger and come down. I don't care if it's a three hour movie, it probably started as a four hour movie. And that process of that feedback and then confusion, people just didn't understand where A got the B or that bridge you talked about. And that really is an essential element of it. Endings are the fun kind of legendary changes that have happened in research. Because when it worked, all of a sudden, a movie maybe went from being troubled to being a huge success. But that's not really the idea of it, and it's not why we do it.
[22:19] Henry Piney: Just moving through the kind of the process again. So you've got your trailer. I believe there's a similar process for TV ads, in some cases for digital as well, where you're testing out different angles. What happens when you're say, I don't know, kind of eight weeks out from release and everybody is on tenterhooks? Is this thing going to work or not?
[22:37] David Gilison: Right? So now we have all of this data that we're getting, all this feedback loops that we're getting about audience and who's a handraiser, who's enthusiastic, who's not. This all feeds into the campaign, right? We're creating a holistic campaign. We're trying to think about what spots work for what people. Our trailer has data now. We put it out there in the world so we have actual real responses to that trailer.
We can look at digital metrics and understand who was watching it all the way through, who maybe shared it. Like, movies are like incredibly condensed campaigns. You're talking about three, four weeks for most of the money you're going to spend. So you're looking at that campaign, you're looking at where you're going to spend, who you're spending towards the kind of people we're looking to like, who are core audience. Again, for At Focus, it's more psychographics than it is demographics, or looking at, let's say, art house fans or fans of people who go into art gallery openings or these are things that you can kind of identify, especially digitally, but also you can do on TV. So we're looking at that.
And then when we start getting closer to the actual opening of a movie, we started getting more feedback loops. There's a thing called tracking, which is really just a way of interviewing moviegoers across the United States and internationally. It's done everywhere. It's done in a lot of countries across the globe, which is just a feedback loop about awareness and interest. You're spending money, you're putting your message out there. Is it actually creating awareness? Like, do people have people seen it now? They know this movie exists. And on top of that, are you converting people into seeing it? And that process is happening for weeks.
There are also ways of looking at your advertising and seeing if it's been effective in different kinds of metrics. Yeah. So we have a company here in Los Angeles called EEO that does inflight metrics on search engagement based on TV, so they can look at the baseline search and look at the spike you're getting from the actual at the minute advertising. And you can look at that by creative. You can see, like, this spot versus this spot, how effective it was. Search in this context is a predicate for engagement and therefore in potentially purchasing it.
[24:42] Henry Piney: So you've got that side of it, which is kind of real digital kind of I say real digital metrics. Those are digital metrics. And then you've got survey based tracking, but maybe just clarify for people. This isn't like brand tracking in the way in which some people may think of, within other kind of research sectors, specific movies by weak the awareness and the interest. What do you do about it, though, if the numbers are really good or if they're really bad?
[25:07] David Gilison: Well, I mean, the movie marketing is very agile. One way to think about it would be, look, we're doing really well with our core audiences here, all this feedback loop. So maybe we actually now start thinking about spending for possible potentials. Another 1 may say we're not getting even our core audience at a level that we're comfortable with. So either we're going to usually what it means is we're going to turn up the volume even more, we're going to increase spend, we're going to or also, in that context, this creative that we thought was going to work, and it worked. The test environment in the live environment, for whatever reason, isn't as effective as we were hoping it would be. So therefore, we'll switch that out, and we have a lot of creatives that we've finished. So we can say, okay, this one, pull this one out, put this one in, and see if that one actually ends up being more effective in converting audience members into audience.
[26:01] Henry Piney: Got you. That's really interesting. It's almost like you're thinking about audiences in some ways. I don't know if this is a good analogy, but filling up buckets like, I filled up my core bucket. These are people that I really need to get. I've got them. If you're not at the level you should be, I'll pour some more into that bucket, and then I'll go to the next one. And the next one, right?
[26:20] David Gilison: Yeah. The bad PowerPoint is usually a bullseye. It's usually like a darts. So you've got that sender, you filled it. Now you've got your secondary, tertiary audiences, and you're looking at that. I'll give you an example from Downton Abbey. At some point, we had sort of saturated the core audience, but we were thinking, well, we could actually expand this. There's a 25 to 34 year old who's only watched this movie, this TV show on streaming. Let's go after them. And so we spent some money in that final week in the first movie on them, and we got people to show up. We're younger than we might have thought, because we did spend time on that, because we felt comfortable where we were.
[26:57] Henry Piney: Yeah, that's a good example. And I assume you would have used slightly different creative for that 25 to 34 year old audience, but you'd have identified them as an audience that has shown engagement with downstairs before. Because they're on streaming. And then how do you know if the movie has been successful or who went you just mentioned that component of it.
[27:17] David Gilison: I tell you, that's the one big gap in the world of movie research or just in the movie business. We do have an in theater exit survey process that can be done even though there's one company, rent Track, that does it with screen engine that does a thing called PostTrack that allows you to have a syndicated way of doing this exit. These exit. It's still not a true national, I mean, like a sample that you can feel really comfortable that you have exactly who like from a demographic point of view and even a psychographic point of view who showed up. But it is consistent in the way it's doing it. And they're using kiosks in about 30 theaters across the United States. And that gives you some insight. But also there has to be a wide release for that. And now our movies are wide release.
So in that scenario, we may have to pick a couple of theaters just to get and that's really more for the qualitative side of it. Like, how do people in these theaters respond just to ratings? Which is like, do they love it and would they recommend to other people? And again, that helps us think about the next week. And the next week is this movie going to have what they call legs, which means it's going to last in the Peters and it's week to week box office is going to have very little degradation over time? Or is it like this is a one week and we're done because audience response wasn't great and that's possible too. So that feedback is there. We do get that first party data. That a really great insight into who our consumers are at that like moment of the opening weekend is just not there in a way that I wish it was really a big thing that we wish we had more of does the process.
[28:58] Henry Piney: So let's assume the movies now come out, it's been a success, you've identified, you hit the box office figures you wanted to, you've achieved the audiences that you expected to, but you just the process then stop as it moves into keyboard and streaming windows and that type of thing. Or are you still involved?
[29:15] David Gilison: No, I think about research. Also had a focus on Universal. I have a very interesting and deep conversation with our home entertainment team about what our learnings are and how we can leverage that for the next window. So at Universal Focus, we have a 17 day exclusive theatrical window at which point it goes to something we call Pivot, which is that premium video and demand a window which home entertainment runs from operational and creative point of view.
So we hand off all our learnings, we have a conversation around it. What did we learn? What advertising worked, what maybe didn't work, it might be different for the home audience versus the theatrical audience. There's lots of best practices in that. And then that actually then even has a conversation that essentially goes on to Peacock because 45 days after opening, our movies now go to Peacock Premium. And so understanding again more about the home entertainment side will now have some learnings. We have learnings. All this comes together to create a seamless sense of how this movie works or doesn't work for audiences across all the different ways you could possibly see it.
[30:22] Henry Piney: So that raises another question. Which is you've got indications as to who went to see it in theaters or cinemas in proper English. British English. But are you able to tie things together in terms of identifying. For instance. Audiences who didn't go and see it in theaters but were interested amount may now be in the window for Pivot or when it reaches Peacock or other streaming services.
[30:45] David Gilison: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Because we can look at there is data on who is purchased and there's household data and all sorts of feedback again there and each title is different. There is no one way of thinking about any of these movies that way. There are certain trends. Peevo Window has been more male skewing than female skewing. But some of that has to do with the way the data is collected and whether or not, like your Amazon accounts in the male person's name, things like that.
But ultimately there is a feedback loop that's happening there too. And we can look at that audience and say, well, what was the title kind of total picture of it all? We're still trying to, at the end of the day, say, put together a really coherent sense of that. It's not always so clear, but we definitely have findings there that help our understanding of who came to see it and you saw it more than once, which, by the way, is tied to that emotional experience of seeing the theater is much more likely than to generate multiple viewings than just watching a movie at home for the first time.
[31:43] Henry Piney: So it's that analogy. The theatrical release is kind of the engine at the front of the train that still sort of pulls it along. You still think that's the case, do you?
[31:51] David Gilison: Absolutely. And I think the case is clear every day that the idea of this connection to the movie is much deeper. If you were motivated to go out and see it in the theater and there's also that experience of it all, then reliving that experience at home in a different way is actually additive. But if you just thought at home, to watch it at home again might not seem as interesting to people. And I think there's a lot of data that indicates that that's true.
[32:21] Henry Piney: How many movies a year are you releasing?
[32:23] David Gilison: Focus is trying to think about twelve to 15. We did a little less before, but now we're trying to go to twelve to 15.
[32:29] Henry Piney: It's a lot. They should pay you more, I reckon.
[32:34] David Gilison: Anyway, if you can talk to Brian Roberts, that'd be great.
[32:38] Henry Piney: He'll be on the next podcast for sure. So you alluded maybe kind of one kind of gap you could think about in terms of search sort of process. But are there any particular issues that you think incumbents or insurgent companies should be addressing?
[32:54] David Gilison: I think there's still work to be done in the world of what we might call like, big data, which is right. We're AI, which is an idea that computers could find linkages to things that humans might have a hard time sifting through millions of dots of data, some certain kinds of heuristics. I think that the things would be that like, if you think about tracking and you look at it like that, which is this feedback loop of awareness, interest.
I've always wanted the computer to tell me what this looks like versus me interpreting what that looks like. I can do it, and I have 20 something years of experience doing it. But the computer might say, well, this is interesting because I'm seeing a pattern here that looks just like this other movie. And I think that so this is like the idea of comps, reverse comps and things like that. I think that I would like more of that kind of analysis. Somebody thinking about how to look at data in a way that says, you might think this movie is this, but this patterning looks more like this. And even if it's not in genre, it could be fascinating and interesting for us.
[34:01] Henry Piney: Yeah. So you'd use the power of machine learning or the AI, depending on how you want to define it, find patterns that humans wouldn't necessarily look for. Does that put humans out of a job? Does that put you out of a job?
[34:12] David Gilison: No, because still interpreting that, what does that pattern ultimately? What does it mean? What does it mean? I'm answering not what, but why. I mean, what happened is important. It's the foundation. But why is an inherently human thing. And talking to creative people, whether they're people making the trailer or making the movie, it's why.
[34:33] Henry Piney: So it just gives you more information that you can better interpret, a much more efficient than you could probably get.
[34:39] David Gilison: And it can give you an insight that you might not have had the other way, but that doesn't ultimately mean that it's going to be important. Right. It could tell you a pattern and be like, okay, great, it was that, but that's not really that interesting. But it could be something that's insightful, I think.
Yeah, there's always going to be a human component in understanding what this means. It's an emotional experience. We're talking about the emotional brain. We're not talking about the rational brain. Really talking about the part of your brain that makes decisions because of things that aren't essential, that are just things that make you pleasure, whatever that might mean. It might mean getting scared at the theater. Right? That is a human thing. It's a human desire, and that's what we're tapping into, and that's what makes you, like, interesting. If you're talking about research.
[35:18] Henry Piney: Got you now, Ted. I'm conscious we're coming up on time. I got to jump on to what genuinely will be a very quick fire round on this with a few kind of questions. So is that all right if I fire some questions at you and you answers? Sure. First one, what advice would you give to young people, or even younger agencies making their way in the industry?
[35:36] David Gilison: I think there's a couple of things. One thing I always tell young people is that if you want to be in this space, you have to love the space in a way that says that on your spare time, you're watching movies. And movies are different than TV, right? If you come in and you tell me that you love TV and yeah, movies are great, too, well, then there's a lot of work to be done in TV, and TV is amazing, but it's just a different thing. I'd say being interested in the industry itself, right, and also just knowing what's going on, having category experts who love the space is a key thing.
[36:04] Henry Piney: Yeah, I see. So that leads on to another quick five question, which is you're watching movies a lot of the time because it's part of your work. How do you maintain work life balance? You've got a family, you put a young son.
[36:14] David Gilison: I only have one child, which makes it a lot easier. And my wife and I are very good about protecting each other's space in that way. Right. And so, in other words, we clear out time for the other person to go and be able to have their own time to do whatever they love to do in a way that allows for this sense of, like, balance in life. But I think also I'm working very hard on this idea of present in that when you're doing something, it should be about what you're doing right now, and that's it. We have a world of distraction.
What I love about movies in the theater, right, is it forces you into this lovely moment of presence, and I try to bring that to whatever I'm doing. And so that I'm not trying to do eight things at once. I'm trying to do this thing. And with my son, I spend when I'm with him, I'm with him.
[37:05] Henry Piney: I think that's great advice in terms of carving out time, but then really focusing on what you've got that time out for and not letting yourself kind of become distracted. Okay, so slightly cheeky question. What of your characteristics would you like him to inherit or perpetuate and anything he should avoid?
[37:21] David Gilison: I would say I have a high capacity for curiosity. I'm fascinated in learning all the time and reading and investigating the world and thinking right in that way. I believe in curiosity as a driver of human experience and I hope he stays curious about things. You don't get ossified in certain ways of thinking or certain ways of believing. I'd say on the flip side to it this goes back to also presence which is the idea of this idea of response versus reacting. I can sometimes react and I would like to be more like take a second respond and so those are things that I think about with him.
[38:08] Henry Piney: I won't ask your wife what habits he should avoid because I'm sure that maybe a slightly we may get some different responses then.
[38:13] David Gilison: Yeah, for sure.
[38:15] Henry Piney: Okay David, final question, just a quickie what movie should we be looking forward to?
[38:20] David Gilison: I think ours fall slate is awesome.
[38:23] Henry Piney: It doesn’t have to be your movies by the way.
[38:26] David Gilison: But I'm super excited about ours. And so our next movie out is Honk for Jesus Save Your Soul which is this lovely amazing movie with Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall about a pastor in a megachurch who has fallen on hard times and it's got this documentary element to it. Tar from Todd Field with Kate Blanchett and Armageddon Time which is from James Gray. And at the end of the year we have a movie called Spoiler Alert and that's with Jim Parsons. They're just like they are what we do. Those movies are together are all kind of like they're really lovely correlates for what it means to work at Focus and those are the movies I'm most excited about to be honest.
[39:16] Henry Piney: Your enthusiasm for the movies and also kind of the research process and the way it sort of went into woven it gives infectious and kind of quite inspiring. Thank you so much. I think we could probably do this with for hours. I may try to get you back on if I kind of can do so. Lots of other questions I'd love to ask and we'll see if people have any other issues they raise that they want to kind of get into. In the meantime, thank you so much.
[39:37] David Gilison: Always a pleasure Henry.
[39:43] Henry Piney: I loved so many David's point in particular around how to translate consumer insight for both creators and business strategists. Of course, that's not to say it’s mutually exclusive by any means. I also thought the questions around opportunities to integrate more first party data and general use of big data are very pertinent to a lot of companies and sectors. We'll explore those issues more in future episodes.
As always, please send questions, suggestions and thoughts to futureviewpod@gmail.com.
Hopefully see next week when we will be taking a different angle looking at the industry from the agency and tech platform side focus on how to build a super fast growing business and maintain data quality and before we go, let me take a moment to remind you about our sponsor.
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