Accidental Success

One of the most challenging aspects of filmmaking comes long after the last frame has been shot: finding an audience. Initially, it can seem a little hard to believe that no one wants to sit though your three-hour black and white epic about a starving clown struggling to become a royal jester during the downfall of czarism in 19th century Russia. And yet the cold hard fact remains that your magnum opus will most likely have a short life on the festival circuit – if that – before fading to black for the last time.

Enter the internets, a complex series of tubes that magically occasionally transmits information – typically in the form of porn and online poker – to the masses.

When it comes to giving films a new life, the internet has been invaluable. And if you won’t settle for an intangible dollar amount thanks to the time that nearsighted bank clerk misplaced a decimal point and saddled you with more debt than the Easter Bunny after a month-long faberge egg binge, let’s go ahead and ballpark that value at 1.65 billion dollars, which is the roughly the amount that Google shelled out for YouTube earlier this week.* Say what you will about the quality of its content, YouTube has proven itself as not only a viable means of online film distribution but also a successful one. Case in point the wunderkinds behind lonelygirl15, who used YouTube to create a fictional video diary that’s now being spun into a feature film thanks to their new reps at CAA. And then there’s Neil “the guy who directed that dancing car commercial on YouTube” Blumkamp, who’s just been signed to bring Universal’s live-action adaption of HALO to the big screen for summer ’08. Love it or hate it, YouTube is getting filmmakers – and their work – attention they’ve never before received.

This isn’t to suggest that the publicity is always intentional, or even welcome. One need only look to the cautionary examples of Paris Hilton and Star Wars Kid to realize that YouTube and its kind don’t always result in happy endings (okay, so it’s arguable on a few different levels for the former. Now get your mind out of the gutter.)

Every once in a long while, however, there comes a bizarre fusion of these polarized results: a video that generates a tremendous amount of publicity, with no real positive or negative effects. In other words, a complete – but very public – wash. As luck would have it, frequent collaborator/all-round great guy Avi Youabian, pictured above as we race headlong toward a collision course with destiny, has unwittingly created just such a masterpiece. Shooting about thirty seconds worth of the intersection where his blushing bride Marjan was involved in a very minor fender bender, he uploaded it to YouTube with the title ‘Accident’ for his insurance company’s review. Now, four months later, it’s been viewed over 13,000 times by people who logged on in search of a little auto vehicular carnage. Since the hit count’s still steadily on the rise, head on over and rank the film as high as possible so you can honestly claim to have gotten in on the ground floor.

While it’s a little humbling to discover that footage of a Taco Bell parking lot has, to date, received about fifty times as many hits as one of my spec spots – and more than a little frightening to receive this kind of insight into the YouTube population’s bloodthirst – I think that the success of Avi’s movie sums up everything that’s wonderful and terrible about the brave new world of film distribution.** While sites like YouTube are bringing down the wall between filmmakers and audiences, there’s a growing chance that neither party will like what they find on the other side. Even if they’re only looking by ‘Accident’.

* Second longest sentence ever

** Longest sentence ever