VARIETY FILM

Posted: Sat., Mar. 17, 2007, 6:00am PT

Tracking system veers off rails

Research tools could get tweaked

By IAN MOHR, DADE HAYES

New pics "300," "Ghost Rider" and "Wild Hogs" all have one thing in common: They far exceeded their "tracking numbers" -- the predictions of their weekend box office.

Those were the happy cases. But with other recent examples when tracking pumped up expectations, as was the case with "Snakes on a Plane," the studios are wondering just what is going on with one of their primary research tools.

"Studios and tracking services are not in touch with audiences," says one former studio distribution head. "They have always done research the same ways, using the same cities more or less. Tracking has become strictly a tool to give executives an excuse as well as a backup with their filmmakers. I think that the whole system needs to change or this will just happen over and over."

Even some tracking services admit that changes are in the offing, with some coming to the conclusion that the proliferation of entertainment choices and the continuing influence of the Web on word of mouth and movie habits have thrown traditional polling by telephone methods out of whack.

And the stakes are higher, now that the industry's research increasingly makes its way into the public sphere, whether through industry gossip or via media outlets and blogs that report on tracking numbers.

Even Joe Farrell, founder of the National Research Group and godfather of modern movie research, says it has come to the point that he hates when people refer to "the tracking."

He has often noted that there is tracking for men, women, African-Americans, teens and many other groups. "But people insist on referring to one number."

There are now three companies tracking moviegoing and predicting results. Some in the studios, who pay for the results, are troubled by recent discrepancies, when research projections were off by $10 million or more.

Farrell is now a producer at Disney and is no longer running NRG -- and new execs there are more vulnerable than ever to competition. NRG remains the dominant service, with a wide lead over MarketCast (which is owned by Variety's parent company, Reed Elsevier) and OTX. But the prospect of a more refined tool is certainly appealing to the congloms positioning their opening pics.

Tracking services are responding by working on new methodology, says OTX founder and CEO Shelley Zalis: "The marketplace is changing, and we all have to evolve our research methods. The world is changing, and the way people make decisions about their time is changing. We need to get some more ingredients into the cake."

The tenor of exhib-distrib relations was upbeat at last week's ShoWest confab in Vegas (a change from recent years and a reflection of a resurgent B.O. and optimism for the summer).

But the ebullience is shaded with uneasiness about tracking, since no one wants to be "Snakes on a Plane," which underperformed in a hothouse marketing environment last August.

"Everybody has access to the same numbers," says marketing vet Peter Adee, who recently joined Overture Films as prexy of theatrical marketing. "The trick is in the interpretation."

Making predictions of an opening weekend is a relatively inexact procedure, based on calling potential moviegoers at home. Trackers ask questions like, "Do you recognize any of these titles?" or "If you were to see a movie this weekend, which of these would it be?"

Critics of the process have charged that tracking firms only call people with landlines, ignoring many young people who only use cellphones, and that asking parents about their kids' viewing plans isn't always effective.

"Tracking is a tool, and it would be irresponsible for us or anyone else to ignore it, but it has to be used very carefully," Universal's Adam Fogelson says. The danger, he says, is when people who do not understand the nuances of tracking try to interpret it, pointing out his studio has a whole department trained to interpret such data.

Genres such as chick flicks, horror and comedy have been deemed "difficult to track."

Confusingly, studio execs say that B.O. on pics that really take off, such as "300" or "Borat," is also more difficult to predict than figuring tallies on a film that will wind up in the $15 million to $30 million range. And they add that tracking has changed over the years, amid more complicated market conditions, to become more of a tool rather than a hard-and-fast rule.

Just before the March 9 domestic bow of "300," 28% of respondents picked it as their first choice. That suggested a bow of $50 million or so. When the film reached a staggering $70 million, there was immediate scuttlebutt about why, especially when Warner execs swore they expected something in the $30 million range.

Of course, studios like to tamp down expectations, to avoid a film being labeled a "disappointment" even though its figures are huge. But even WB's rivals were expecting a lower bow, due to tracking results. More likely, however, simple momentum caused the "300's" bonanza, with fair weather and weak competish from other openers. Quite often, studio projections will fluctuate wildly during the weekend itself -- a boffo Friday will point to a huge weekend, then a soft Saturday afternoon will deflate projections again.

Aware of the dilemma, tracking companies are evaluating their options. "We are in a very vibrant market right now. We are in constant dialogue with our studio partners about ways to refine our service," said NRG's Howard Ballon and Kevin Yoder in a statement.

Zalis says it's time to step back and look at the bigger picture. "It should be about much more than whether people are going to the movies, and if they're going, what movie will they see. The trouble is, the industry is comfortable with the numbers they know and the measures they know. But then disparities happen and people wonder why.

"We're working toward research that doesn't just predict box office but actually gives a total picture of the consumer. All of their choices influence the other."

Date in print: Mon., Mar. 19, 2007, Weekly

Film reviewers, moviegoers disagree

The Back Lot: Critics critiqued

Box office data this year suggests that filmgoers seem to be having a great time at the multiplexes. The critics, by contrast, may be shopping around for a new line of work.

In reviewing "300" last week, for example, A.O. (Tony) Scott of the New York Times, said the movie was "as violent as 'Apocalypto' and twice as stupid."

That comment reflected the consensus among critics not only on "300" but also on "Ghost Rider," "Wild Hogs," "Norbit" and the other movie miscreants unleashed on the public since Oscar time.

The situation underscores yet again a disconnect between the cinematic appetites of critics vs. those of the popcorn crowd. The kids who storm their multiplexes to catch the opening of "Night at the Museum" don't give a damn what the critics think ("Museum" has passed $525 million worldwide).

The distribution gurus say they prefer "four-quadrant movies," but ‘d suggest that there are only two: One quadrant consists of the hardcore fans who are propelled by "buzz" and the second embraces the rest of the film-going public who wait to learn whether the movie’s any good or not.

So several questions present themselves: If the established media want to stay relevant, should their critics make a passing attempt to tune in to pop culture? In short, should at least someone on the reviewing staff try to be relevant to both quadrants?

The reviews of "300" remind us that the literature of disdain is much more fun to turn out. Scott, the Times critic, for example, predicted that the movie would become "an object of camp derision," and would appeal mainly to "devotees of the pectoral, deltoid and other fine muscle groups."

Kenneth Turan’s review in the Los Angeles Times, basically a prolonged wince, also noted that "300" was ‘Apocalypto’ violent," adding, "There is a limit to how often you can see soldiers speared and hacked to death and still stay involved."

Perhaps, but the first week’s "involvement" totaled some $70 million at the box office.

"Ghost Rider" didn’t register a single positive review on Variety’s Crix Picks chart ("Cheesy Rider" headlined the review in the New York Post) but the movie has passed $156 million worldwide. "Night at the Museum" inspired Stephen Holden of the New York Times to this lumpy metaphor: "The movie is an overstuffed grab bag in which lumps of coal are glued together with melted candy."

There’s always a degree of culture shock when movies this inept produce numbers this ecstatic. Several glib explanations suggest themselves.

From a marketing standpoint, we are reminded that February and March are oddly underrated by the studios. Every "tentpole" movie seemingly has to be released within the eight week May-June corridor of self-destruction. Yet clearly a lot of filmgoers would like to be entertained in the post-Oscar period as well, and they deserve better than they are getting.

As for the critics, they should consider a sabbatical until September, when movies aimed at their quadrant magically reappear. After seeing "Ghost Rider" and "300" back-to-back, battle fatigue has clearly overwhelmed the entire fraternity.

And, by the way, if you've ever met a film critic, you’ll know they're not big on either the pectoral, deltoid or other muscle groups.

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2006 ARTICLES FROM VARIETY
CONCERNING BOX-OFFICE FORECASTING

Posted: Thurs., Mar. 23, 2006, 5:17pm PT

Execs check crystal ball

BY LIZABETH GUIDER

Technology has thrown the movie biz for a loop, what with digital projection, shrinking DVD windows, VOD and Web streaming shifting the financial ground, and viewers' tastes fragmenting and coalescing.

Given the unexpected downturn in box office over the last two years, the temptation to prognosticate is ever harder to resist.

One org that heard the siren song is ScreenVision, a company that creates and books ads in movie theaters, which last week held its second Insiders Ball in New York. Idea of the forum is to be an "upfront" for ad buyers specializing in movie theaters, just the way the networks host their spring shindigs for TV ad buyers.

During the proceedings Wednesday, the most provocative comments were those from producer Joel Stillerman, a force behind MTV's "Unplugged" series as well as "The Chronicles of Narnia."

Noticing perhaps how much media are becoming personalized and customized, he pointed to the emergence of "microbranded studios."

By this he meant players like Participant Films and Walden Media, which each in its own way backs movies that spring from a distinctive mindset.

Stillerman also said the wealthy individuals behind them, Jeff Skoll and Philip Anschutz, respectively, not only want to make money but to pursue filmmaking from a specific personal point of view. (Participant most recently produced "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck"; Walden produced "Chronicles of Narnia" and boasts a family focus.)

None of the major Hollywood studios, other than perhaps Disney, boasts an easily definable film brand. Only Tom Freston at Viacom is steering the conglom's individual labels toward targeting highly definable niche audiences. He may be on to something.

With marketers ever more adept at pinpointing the likes and dislikes of each of us, those companies that most clearly target one group or another may have a leg up in gaining access to their desired core niche auds. In the future, grassroots campaigns and ad buys on MySpace.com, etc., could be more effective in reaching potential auds than print ads or TV spots.

To Stillerman's mind, it could well be more "narrowcast" movies that will be the order of the day in years to come.

Taking a different tack, Focus Features production prexy John Lyons said he foresaw "more money for more movies" as the distribution machinery around the world gets more sophisticated and the best filmmakers manage to straddle cultures and sensibilities. The race will go to those players who develop relationships with the best talent, from whatever culture or country, Lyons said.

Focus is emerging as one of the microbrands that viewers will in the future identify as delivering a specific type of movie. Mel Gibson's Icon could be thought of as a prototype of a completely different brand.

Not that the big studios are folding their tentpoles and stealing away: Fantasy-focused films, which did gangbuster business in 2005, are hardly likely to fade, with more "Harry Potter" and "Chronicles" pics on the way.

And if execution is ever the problem (as it assuredly was for many movies last year), Entertainment Weekly VP Fred Nelson, another predictor on the panel, proffered a solution: "Just stick in a penguin. Or Dakota Fanning."

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117940276.html?categoryid=18&cs=1&query=%22crystal+ball%22

Sorry, wrong number

Screwy tracking scores leave studios vexed

BY GABRIEL SNYDER

Midway through the summer, the studios have become keenly aware of cracks in their crystal ball.

Tracking, the polling data which forecasts what film audiences are most likely to see, has become the key source of studio expectations over B.O. prospects. But the information, once closely guarded, has gone public at the exact moment that serious questions are being raised over its reliability.

Therefore, with the tracking data, studios have mistargeted ad budgets and have been pummeled in the media. Two weeks before its release, Universal's "The Break Up" posted such dismal tracking numbers that some Internet bloggers had all but dismissed the picture's prospects. More recently, tracking addicts were caught off-guard by the success of "The Devil Wears Prada," which managed a strong opening despite the bow of "Superman Returns" on the same weekend.

Studios are raising a handful of issues over the process, including:

Methodology.

Since traditional tracking relies on phone polls, it cannot reach the younger, tech-savvier types who have abandoned their land lines. Other methods, including online surveys meant to get around that problem, are being tried but the newer techniques raise their own reliability issues.

Demographics.

With more movies depending on niche audiences, the old technique of breaking the movie audience into quadrants (male/female, over/under age 25) may be too imprecise a measurement. Studios also complain that movies that appeal to, for instance, ethnic minorities don't track as well as other pics.

Genre.

Romantic comedies and kidpics are notoriously difficult to measure in tracking. Pics like "The Devil Wears Prada" may not win many male fans in tracking polls, but can go on to cross over gender lines.

Personnel.

The audience research firms are going through something of a generational shift since NRG founder Joseph Farrell segued to a production deal at Disney in 2002. Tracking now is in the hands of a new group of execs.

Recently, as the media has begun reporting on tracking data as if it were news, films targeted at femmes, minorities ("Diary of a Mad Black Woman") and horror pics ("Saw," "Hostel") have proven similarly unreliable. It raises the question whether tracking only works on tentpoles.

"You want tracking to be a needle pointing in a direction for you to guide your strategic decision making," says U Pictures chairman Marc Shmuger. "But NRG, MarketCast and OTX were in complete disagreement on how ("The Break-Up") was going to perform along every step of the way. When your information is in such disagreement, you're in complete confusion. It was a classic case where tracking was significantly off from where the performance was. It was the most frustrated I've ever been in my many, many years at a studio."

When research firm NRG began its "Confidential Industry Wide Tracking Program" in the 1980s, it was envisioned primarily as a tool for movie marketers to gauge whether their advertising materials were connecting with auds. Though methods have changed since then, tracking is still a periodic poll that asks people whether they've heard of the movies opening soon and if they want to see them.

"You have to keep in mind what tracking was meant for," says Revolution Studios' Tom Sherak. "It was to determine whether the materials were working."

For instance, if the tracking found that women under 25 aren't cottoning to a certain pic, the studio could cut a new TV spot that highlighted elements to appeal to that demographic "quadrant" and buy air time on shows with a lot of young female viewers.

Early on, exhibitors started to consult the research when they were negotiating film rental terms: If tracking said a picture was going to bomb, they'd press studios to let them keep a bigger share of ticket sales.

Over the years, as startup firms MarketCast and OTX entered the fray, studios found other uses for tracking, including prediction of a film's opening weekend. When media wicket watchers (including Variety) refer to "industry expectations" for how a certain film should open, they're referring to how studio execs think the tracking should translate into ticket sales.

The research firms resist the notion that tracking is primarily a tool for box office forecast. But each Thursday, the companies run a film's current ratings in a tracking poll through an algorithm that produces dollar amounts.

When a movie doesn't hit the number projected by tracking, the studio feels it's blamed for doing something wrong. So, now the studios are starting to ask whether there's something wrong with the tracking.

Sources at the tracking firms say when they go back to check their projections, they come within 15% of the actual opening about 70% of the time.

When tracking is weak, as with Warner Bros.' "Poseidon," studios are forced to do damage control to prevent a film from being labeled a bomb even before it opens. When it's strong, they try to tamp down expectations of shattering records.

In advance of the July 7 bow of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," tracking showed that the pic was the "first choice" of 60% of those surveyed. That was a huge number: Last year's "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" scored a "first choice" number of 45%.

On the day before release, Disney distrib prexy Chuck Viane demurred when asked how big he thought the picture would go. "No matter how you answer that question, it can come back to hurt you." (The pic, of course, hit a record-setting $135.6 million in its bow.)

Just as political polls have come under closer scrutiny, so too have the tracking polls. There are perennial questions about whether the sample size (typically 300 to 400 per poll) adequately reflect the interest of African-Americans and Hispanics. Family films are also notoriously hard to read because the tracking doesn't include kids (most insiders use older females, i.e. moms, as a proxy).

But there are also newer concerns. For instance, both NRG and MarketCast still largely rely on home telephone surveys. That means they can't reach people who only have a cell phone. That's one of the reasons that OTX chooses to do its surveys online.

What particularly bothers some studio heads is that they don't believe tracking is giving them as accurate a picture of the marketplace as it did before. Already the summer season has been littered with tracking surprises.

The most extreme case recently was "The Break-Up." A month before its bow, a blogger for Hollywood-Elsewhere.com got ahold of the raw numbers in the latest tracking polls. Noting that 30% of people polled had a "definite interest" in seeing the film, and only 5% said it was their "first choice" to see that weekend, the blogger asserted "the game is pretty much over" for the pic.

A few days later, the New York Post's Page Six picked up on the blog and predicted that Aniston would have serious career problems after the weak opening. And the impression that "The Break-Up" was "in trouble" quickly spread.

When the pic opened June 2, it earned $39 million, well above the mid-20s range the tracking firms were predicting. Since then, it has taken in more than $112 million domestically.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that as widespread as tracking has become, few people know how it works. That's largely because the actual research is kept under seal. At the bottom of every page of research issued by NRG is a CIA-worthy warning that "Providing tracking to persons who are not authorized studio executives is ill-advised and illegal ... Tracking in the wrong hands could be dangerous and damaging."

The polls are not all that different from presidential approval surveys. NRG and MarketCast each call several hundred people, while OTX's online survey uses recruited respondents. (MarketCast is owned by Variety parent Reed Business Information).

In the surveys, people are first asked, unprompted, to name the films they're aware of. Then they're asked if they've heard of films they couldn't name off the top of their head. The percentage of people who know about a film, unprompted or not, is respectively called "unaided awareness" and "total awareness."

The pollsters then find out whether the people are interested in seeing a film, which they then translate to a percentage of people who have "definite interest" or who are "definitely not interested."

The final question they ask in the poll is a bit more complicated. People are asked to pick the one film among all films currently in release or opening soon (titles tend to go on tracking about three weeks before release) that is their "first choice" to see.

While this "first choice" score is the most closely followed, it is also where interpretation of the numbers goes a bit haywire.

The polls set as many as 15 films against each other, not simply movies opening on a particular weekend.

When pollsters found that only 5% chose "The Break Up" as their first choice, that was two weeks before its release. At that point, "Da Vinci" and "X-Men: The Last Stand" had yet to open, and carried a 32% and 23% first choice rating, respectively. That means that more than half of the audience was more interested in seeing movies that were scheduled to open before "Break-Up." But they were tentpoles, and through their dominance in the tracking surveys, they were in effect making nearly everything else a second-choice.

In fact, once "Da Vinci" and "X Men" opened and audiences had had a chance to see them, "The Break-Up's" tracking numbers picked way up, rising to a 17% rating in the last NRG survey before it opened on June 2.

As for the methodology, "this is something that everyone needs to improve," says Vincent Bruzzese, OTX's senior veep for motion pictures. "It's something that the next generation of movie research will go towards." To that end, OTX is developing a tracking service that defines consumers by what they call "behaviorgraphically" (that is by consumer preferences) rather than the traditional demographic quadrants.

For instance, "Nacho Libre" and "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" both opened successfully on the same weekend even though both targeted males under 25.

"The media consumer has changed so dramatically that to track people just based on demographics misses a large spread of what's going on," Bruzzese says. "You can look at two males under 25 and they'll be completely different. One is into sports and the other is a high school senior into literary things."

In the end, though, tracking audiences will be more art than science. "There's no exact science to any of this," Sherak says. "At one time it may have been more right, but times change."

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117947237.html?categoryid=10&cs=1&query=%22crystal+ball%22

Posted: Sun., Jul. 23, 2006, 6:00am PT

Int'l distribs: crystal-ball busters?

Tracking scant o'seas so studios can be blindsided by homegrown pix

BY IAN MOHR

If you thought it was tricky trying to figure out what people from Orange County, Calif., to South Orange, N.J., will see at the multiplex, try forecasting whether "The Devil Wears Prada" will play in Taipei.

With studios betting increasingly on international B.O. to buoy their bottom lines, the majors are scrutinizing foreign-market research more than ever. Where once a picture's domestic performance could be a barometer of its overseas prospects, that is changing as studios release more pics day-and-date.

But except for major releases, tracking still is scant overseas, and studios can find themselves blindsided by the unexpected performance of homegrown pics.

"International tracking is most useful for tentpoles," says Mark Zoradi, the newly upped prexy of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, whose "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" has hit $124 million from nine markets overseas.

A number of domestic players are jumping into the game to provide far-flung data. OTX is one firm that insiders say has a leg up on international tracking -- collecting the polling data that forecasts what films auds are most likely to see -- with clients including Buena Vista Intl., Fox, UIP and Warner Bros.

Sony handles its own movie tracking abroad.

Nielsen's NRG and Reed Business Information's MarketCast, meanwhile, don't run international tracking polls, but do gather data on specific projects.

Some foreign firms, including Pathe Entertainment, will provide local numbers.

Unlike their domestic counterparts, international studio execs have one major hurdle in tracking pics overseas: Data from abroad is received weekly, rather than daily, which makes 11th-hour tweaks to campaigns nearly impossible.

Zoradi points out that weekly data works only when you have begun a campaign well in advance of a film's release, a tactic reserved for major launches. On smaller pics, studios begin marketing pushes closer to release, so weekly data is interesting, but can be too little, too late -- perhaps only leading to a sleepless night for any antsy international exec.

Tracking data "is actionable (distribution-ese for being able to act upon information) earlier in the process," Zoradi says. "I'm not as interested in information that's just 'nice to know.' "

For sequels, international tracking becomes less important, because studios already have a good indication of how a pic will behave. BVI, for example, used no tracking for its newest "Pirates" foray.

Some numbers junkies at the studios are flirting with getting tracking numbers from abroad more frequently.

"The biggest issue is not with the information," says Fox Intl. co-prexy Tomas Jegeus. "It's how quickly you can take action from it. You need daily to really react quickly, especially for day-and-date releases."

Fox, which is exploring a daily system for tracking numbers, helped its "Kingdom of Heaven" to triple its domestic B.O. perf abroad ($164.2 million).

But the overseas numbers-crunching gets mixed reviews from some Hollywood execs: A few grouse that the services don't give a snapshot of the whole world, because only major territories are considered.

Others see data as worthwhile only when it comes from places where per-capita moviegoing is high. Key markets include the U.K., Germany, France, Australia and Japan, as well as Spain, Italy and Mexico.

With local production booming around the world, execs also say tracking can be particularly helpful when a Hollywood pic is going up against a potential hometown hero. The studios' market research firms try to counter with as much local intelligence as they can.

"You can't sit in Los Angeles and do tracking," says Bruce Friend, exec veep of OTX, whose clients include divisions of Buena Vista, Fox, UIP and Warner Bros., and who helped develop Sony's tracking system. "You need local people who have insights and can track local titles, who are active in the local market."

"There may be some (projects) that we take for granted here that do not play in other parts of the world," points out MarketCast managing director Karen Hermelin.

At a Cinema Expo presentation this year, Warner Bros. Intl. exec veep of European distribution Monique Esclavissat told foreign exhibs that in France last year, local productions had a 39% market share, the highest percentage of any foreign territory. (The studio's own cult franchise "Les Bronzes" had a lot to do with that, garnering 10.4 million admissions, worth $76.5 million.)

In Germany and Spain, Esclavissat said, local pics did 17% of the market's total B.O. biz, while in emerging territory, Russia the number spiked to 30%.

(Numbers crunchers at foreign market research firms say Russia is growing fast enough to soon catch Italy as the fifth biggest international movie market.)

"The trickiest market is Japan, because of the complexity of the marketplace," says Friend. "U.S. titles tend to be star-driven in Japan -- 'Mission: Impossible III' did much better there. But animation titles don't always translate. Also, you can be up against a huge franchise in Japan, (such as a pic) that's based on a TV franchise, and get clobbered."

Experts point to Germany as another problematic territory, where all media has taken a hit in recent years, and say Russia gets the most buzz as a growth opportunity for Hollywood.

Even in Europe, some markets are easier to gauge than others. France -- where moviegoing tastes are inconsistent and TV ads for films aren't allowed -- has been a tough nut to crack, the pros say.

And unlike the U.S., moviegoing is not as frequently at the top of potential audiences' weekend plans. That's why weather plays such a big part in B.O. results: Eyeballs are as likely to be glued on sun, sand and bikinis abroad as on movie screens.

"The real growth area has been to understand moviegoing and wider media consumption, to understand why people go to the cinema as opposed to the pub, how cinema fits within a range of leisure options and how to target different groups," says Henry Piney, veep international, Nielsen NRG.

Just as advances in digital cameras don't make a helmer more talented, execs agree that advances in international data gathering cannot replace local know-how in various territories.

"All market research is directional," says Jegeus. "You analyze it with the variables you know already, and we've used that on quite a few films."

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117947234.html?categoryid=10&cs=1&query=%22crystal+ball%22