New International Revenue Streams For Black Cinema

In this report we are going to focus on how new cross promotional models will enable Black cinema to bring in new revenue streams as seen in the cross promotion used by The Artist Formally Known as Prince in England and the implications for Black cinema that adopts similar strategies. We will hear an interview that was on the BBC about new forms of cross promotions that can channel large financial wind falls into the media companies that can structure new business options in today's digital world. If you are from America, the news report below is about the free music promotion that netted Prince $millions as a cross promotional strategy. This video illustrates the type of promotional opening that are available in Europe for filmmakers. Please read the entire article and view the additional video references.

When we talk about piracy we have to talk about the world being converted to new business models at the same time. Cinema has gone though many changes in the last100 years. For Black cinema we have seen segregated cinema in America, Race Movies, Josephine Baker moving to France because career openings in America were non existent, Dorothy Dandridge being hailed at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival but getting little else in the way of roles after international press interest and in recent years people like T.D. Jakes putting religion into Black movies. Over the last 100 years of Black cinema times have not changed to the point where Black filmmakers can truly say that they are in a level playing field when compared to their White counterparts. At this point we need to set some new ground rules for looking at the world.

There are many types of film in the independent world, French, German, English, Irish, Italian, Russian, African, Indian/Bollywood, Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and we can go on. All of these nation groups have something in common - America. You can find a cultural group that claims duel heritage in America with another nation also being seen as a mother country. America is the capital city of all global entertainment with Hollywood being the Mecca.

Lucy Liu, Penelope Cruz, Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lopez, Selma Hayek, Russell Crowe, Sean Connery and many other factors in Hollywood have a home outside of America. When we look at African American culture as seen through music and film, we see a cultural export to the planet that could not have gone to the world without America being the launch pad. Motown is now fifty years old and has launched many globally known people through media. In the last fifty years of media we have seen a number of key shifts in the way the international culture works with Black people. Sidney Poitier won the Best Actor Oscar in 1964, Denzel Washington, and Halle Berry followed in 2002 with hopeful approval, Jamie Fox in 2004, followed by Forest Whitteker in 2007 saw more hope as the international community gazed on Hollywood's cosmopolitan dream. The Oscars are broadcast to the whole planet and the world watches in wonder but they know that they are seeing Blacks as minorities working in a system that is statistically against them.

In 1954, Dorothy Dandridge became the first African American to be nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for her role as Carmen Jones in the Otto Preminger production. At the Canne Film Festival in 1955, the world press could not get enough of Dorothy. What we see with the international press coverage that Dorothy had was that while international interest was there, Hollywood simply did not follow up on that interest.

In an interesting TV interview [below], Nia Long spoke about Color Coding and Bias in Hollywood, where she states that women of a darker hue will find it difficult to get ahead in the movie industry.



In the round table conversation below, Cicily Tyson and Ruby Dee, Charlie Rose talks to the veteran actresses about work in Hollywood and the changes that have and haven't taken place in Hollywood in the decades since the death of Dorothy Dandridge [fast forward to 32 minutes]. Inside this insightful conversation we see how hard it was for Dorothy Dandridge and why it may be seen to be difficult for women of color to create their own career success in Hollywood today. In order for us to make sense of where we are with technology and how, direct to the world communications can channel $millions of dollars into the Black film industry we need to look at the following videos which will lead us to ask ourselves a number of questions.

One of the questions we must ask ourselves after looking at the round table talk with Cicily Tyson and Ruby Dee is, do Black actors have to go through the same pains Dorothy Dandridge went through? [Fast Forward to 32 minutes].


In this BBC interview, Colin Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine talks about free media models in the digital age and financial compensation cross subsidies - part 1


In part 2 of the free media models broadcast we see why, in Europe, there are more options for free media than there are in America once we cross reference what we hear with the Prince free music give away.

What many of us fail to remember is that fifty years ago, the television show that introduced Dorothy Dandridge to the world was the Colgate Comedy Hour. The method of visibility in sponsorship may have changed but the end result is still the same, a third party pays for exposure to the planet.

Here is the Prince Free music promotion broadcast which makes what has been heard on the BBC of more relevance.


For the past 70 years, the image of these men in film has been brokered by a financial media industrial complex that Black men have not been a part of to the same extent as White, the same can be said for the women who are known internationally through film as well.

Navarrow Wright is the web master for Russell Simmond's Global Grind web site. As a media platform that focuses on Hip Hop culture, we see that like My Space, Facebook, You Tube or any social media site that exposure on any one or all of these platforms does not make hit records sales register on the Billboard chart or a blockbuster movie performance at the theatre or on DVD. Films are marketed in the same high profile way that the Oscars are and have become part of the mass media industrial complex. Our move into the digital era has not progressed to the point where television, DVDs or cinema is obsolete and so any activity that is promotionally based has to support existing sales models and new ones simultaneously.

Even though I sell manufacturing with encryption for DVDs, the solution to piracy is not really about encryption, especially as illegal downloading turns into online film viewing supported by advertising. As we heard in the BBC report, Chris Anderson has established that the free model is here to stay. Open source is one form of free, the Prince album give away is another form of free of which there are many variables in Europe.

As seen in the BBC report [below] about new forms of television, those in film, whether Black, Irish, German etc, have to ask themselves a key question when what is seen becomes a new from of broadcasting throughout Europe and America. Once, movie studios had to work out how to get all of the media personnel and journalists of the world to a press junket. Then online reviewers like Black Tree and Chuck The Movie Guy came along. When every city in the world has the new forms of television as seen below, no movie studio in the world will be able to gear up to handle this level of media management without adopting some form of digital cross promotion that gets a film's marketing message to the world, which, as a tool puts independent and major filmmakers in the same sand box.



Felicia Day is the creator of the internet series The Guild. Felicia has had a few minor roles in Buffy and House M.D and has a great working relationship with Joss Wheden, creator of Buffy, but The Guild is not a significant enough commodity to get the type of sponsorships that big companies want to support. Imagine millions of people like Harry Knowles or more correctly, like the ones seen in the report above. Imagine international communities with their own Harry Knowles figures with the type of TV access to their community seen in the report, what we are talking about is a media revolution that is not mediated by big media segregation that is governed by money. Big media works on the principle that a few people see and review a film and give a favourable review to millions. TV of the future is a dozens to dozen or communities to communities medium and because of that the mechanics of management of a message to the planet have to change. Dorothy was introduced to the world on the Colgate Comedy Hour but the options that are available today are truly international and have more in common with what we see with Prince.

If we are to take what Nia Long, Ruby Dee and Cicely Tyson said seriously and within the context of modern media options, we need to look at how hard it has been for White actresses like Felicia Day and Madonna who is at the other end of the celebrity spectrum. Madonna has had a very successful music career but as an actress she has not done well at all. Madonna's big role as Evita in 1996 has been her most successful but as a leading actress she has failed to become a modern day Marilyn Monroe or Jean Harlow. Back in the 1960s, Mamie Van Dorian, Jayne Mansfield and Diana Dorrs all tried to be blond sex bombs actresses like Marilyn Monroe and they all failed. In fact Jayne Mansfield did not believe she had to be a good actress to be successful in movies, she believed that T&A was it. Mamie, Jayne and Diana made films but they failed to be taken on board by the public or should I be more specific and say men, but everyone loved Marilyn Monroe.

Finding the great roles that Nia Long, Ruby Dee and Cicely Tyson talked about has a lot to do with two separate issues outside of what they spoke about. As martial artists, it is obvious that there are specific roles that will always be on offer to Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh and like Black Hollywood, Asian martial artists have a market that they can distinguish themselves in outside of mainstream Hollywood.

As a person of color, Bruce Lee, described as a martial arts version of James Dean found it hell to get his career established in the USA but he laid the foundation for those who are with us now. If Bruce Lee found it hard, anyone can. In the piece about Dorothy Dandridge we heard how the actress moved with power players to progress her career but the idea did not work. Dorothy's Faustian pact with Otto Preminger and other men seemed like good ideas at the time but she made some fatally erroneous decisions. In the round table talk we hear that Dorothy's refusal to be involved with Black men after Harold Nicolas came from the belief that Black men could not progress her career and that power existed in the hands of a dominant few. Dorothy's chances of success in the studio era would have been better because a machine was behind the studio's actors. In the newly emerging freelance era that Dorothy was part of, a different type of power was the order of the day. George Clooney said that getting good roles is hard but by looking at two books we can see that getting successful roles is a lot more complicated than we think.

In the book, George Gallup in Hollywood by Susan Ohmer we see how, from the 1930s, Hollywood has tried to create a statistics based crystal ball in order to determine what ideas to back. If, in the segregated era of Hollywood, Gallup used his techniques to poll people, then there could not have been a Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge or any of the Black successes that are here today. The charm offensives of Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge in the 1950s, Motown in the 1960s to Will Smith in the 1990 is something that statistics can't measure or predict the impact of. In fact, the story of Sidney Poitier is the career opposite of Dorothy Dandridge because Sidney had a committed team of social reformers around him who gave him the roles that re-engineered how the public perceived Black men on screen [Listen to the people he thanks in his 2002 Oscar speech].

In the book Starring Roles by Ron Base we see how many of Hollywood's male and female actors became stars through what amounts to being winners of the right time and place awards. Shirley Temple should have been Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Will Smith could have been Neo in the Matrix, not Keanu Reeves, Warren Beatty should have been the lead in West Side Story, Robert Redford could have been in The Graduate not Dustin Hoffman, Tom Selleck should have been Indian Jones, Cary Grant was supposed to be James Bond instead of Sean Connery. With a host of first hand interviews with writers, actors, directors and producers we see that even Julia Roberts was a right time and place winner of the movie star lottery system.

Fame translates into options, Michelle Pfeiffer turned down the agent role in Silence of the Lambs and the part went to Jodie Foster. Fame or the ability to have a high profile in the media gives you options for offers that could not come to you for consideration any other way. In order to always have a fresh stock of new faces an unknown Kevin Costner is offered the part of Eliot Ness when a better known Mel Gibson turns down the role. Madonna's fame in music gave her film options but if a film performance is bad or roles chosen are are not that flattering, damage beyond repair is done and better roles are not offered.

What the web and the free media options like the Prince's give away offers actors in America is the ability to become famous/manage mass communication in a media environment that does not cost money. The Prince TV campaign was paid for by a newspaper, the concerts were promoted by 02 Stadium and Prince was the beneficary. Setting up similar openings for movie makers is what anti piracy should be about as seen in the Prince case study because piracy demands the creation of new business strategies that pay.

To pull us out of the focus on Black and White we can look at a Jet Li and Jackie Chan press junket in Hong Kong for The Forbidden Kingdom and then a Jet Li vlog on You Tube.
Unless you speak Chinese, what we see Jet Li and Jackie Chan do to promote a film means nothing to us. The promotion of Black filmmakers is the same as that seen in Hong Kong because the promotions are aimed at “our own,” where the world outside Black America is not the target. The use of digital cross promotions that are free or cross subsidised is that your intention is to be involved in initiates that get you to the world.

Although Black people in America are a minority, White is the minority outside of the USA because 80% of the planet is made up of people of color. The free world of media outside of America has leverage that can't be attained in America. As seen in the Dorothy at Cannes video, or as echoed in Motown's history and as seen in Hip Hop's international success in the last twenty five years, getting press outside of America in the White and non white world is open to all. The new systems of mass media are not about being separate to Hollywood, they are about leveraging tools that are not about money in the same way that TV is about spending multiple millions to be in front of nations.

As heard in the BBC report, a world of cross promotional activities can be leveraged to take names in Black film to the world where more White people than those in America live and where 80% of the planet is made up of people of color. We have seen Quentin Tarrantino resurrect the careers of actors Hollywood thought were dead, John Travolta and Pam Grier, through Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. What both of these examples show us is that with new media options, the possibility of life time career management where an actor can keep in contact with their fan base is now possible.

As seen from the videos, radio reports and books in this page, a world of cross media openings exist for Black actors. With a higher profile across the globe, Black actors can leverage this exposure for better access to roles and higher interest in their independent movie activities.

For help with the following, email me at the address below:
1 - International P.R Initiatives
2 - Sponsorship Programs
3 - Anti Piracy Software
4 - International Cross Promotions

Derek James
derekworldwide@yahoo.com