EXCLUSIVE
Hollywood has found an inventive use for all those unemployed movie critics out there: focus groups.
The online research company OTX and public relations group mPRm have joined forces to create Critical Focus Exchange, a service in which critics and film reporters offer their expertise to producers and studios looking for feedback on niche and arthouse movies.
The service uses the statistics-based methodology that Hollywood has relied on for more than two decades to test movies, trailers and posters in order to predict consumer choices.
Now the idea is to provide independent producers and niche moviemakers with a similar research tool.
“We know that a ‘definite recommend’ score at a screening results in a real multiple at the box office,” said Kevin Goetz, president of OTX Worldwide Motion Picture Group, in an interview with TheWrap. “Why not take the same idea and bring it into the world of critical response?”
It will also provide a small income for a number of out of work, or freelance, critics. (They’ll get $100 per screening.)
Mark Pogachefsky, a veteran indie film publicist, came up with the concept a year ago, when many critics he knew were being laid off. “I thought, ‘How can we take advantage of all that expertise and create a business around it?” he said.
Dozens of the nation’s most prominent movie critics have been laid off or induced to retire in the past few years – their profession killed by the Tomatometer and the armchair blogger.
Among the prominent names that are steadily disappearing are Leah Rozen soon-to-be formerly of People, Michael Wilmington, formerly of The Chicago Tribune, Scott Foundas ex of the LA Weekly, Jack Mathews former N.Y. Daily News, Glenn Kenny ex of Premiere, Stephen Hunter, the Pulitzer-winning ex-critic of The Washington Post. (Update: Rozen writes to say she took a voluntary buy-out, and will be there until the end of the year. People intends to keep a full-time critic, she says.)
“I have no agenda to employ out-of-work critics,” said Goetz. “My motivation is to help our clients.“
Goetz said he grew convinced that he could create a statistically significant sample of critics’ opinions based on groups of 10 to 20 critics in New York and Los Angeles.
They declined to name the critics participating in the panels, but said many of them were well-known freelancers or currently unemployed.
The screenings, which have been tested over the past six months, will be aimed at movies that are seeking distribution. Critics, who remain anonymous in research results, fill out standardized questionnaires similar to those of participants in classic focus groups.
Among the questions they anwer are:
