The Production
In lesson one of Shoot Out Online, Peter Guber says it right up front: "Show business isn't a monk writing a poem in Tibet; it's a commercial enterprise. That's the dirty little secret: Every single person in the entire food chain is interested in how much money you make. It is the driving force." So that obviously goes for the site, right? Wrong. Because of the luminaries, including actor Matthew Perry, screenwriter William Goldman, and director Brett Ratner, who gave guest lectures that are streamed on the site, Mandalay could not in good conscience profit from their participation.
So what's the catch? "Everyone is out to make money, but branding and prestige are equally as important," says Dromi. "Doing this site and being forward-thinking and having it be a gift to aspiring filmmakers around the world, brought to you very clearly by Guber, Bart, and Mandalay, has long-term benefits for us that far exceed short-term profit. The site was never intended to make money. It's intended to sell more books, and it did that."
Dromi says he doesn't know how many book sales were spurred by the site, but does note that the book spent four weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Besides driving book sales and generating global goodwill for Bart and Guber, Shoot Out Online has a less well-publicized benefit. In March 2002, Peter Guber announced the formation of Mandalay Branded Entertainment (MBE), which is a joint venture between Mandalay and Dayton, Ohio-based advertising firm Flynn, Sabatino and Day. MBE uses entertainment and communications services to offer advertising, marketing, and branding services for its corporate clients. The company's biggest project to date is the site for Health South Corporation (www.healthsouth.com) and the television show Go For It!, which is sponsored by Health South and promotes education and the benefits of athletics and healthy living. What does this have to do with Shoot Out Online? "The site becomes the ultimate case study [for MBE] in terms of our executional capabilities," says Dromi. So not only does Shoot Out Online promote a book and a partnership, it also promotes MBE.
Picking the right firm to design Shoot Out Online was critical. Dromi has high standards—when he recently decided that Mandalay Entertainment's corporate Web site was "lousy," he simply took it down indefinitely for retooling.
"We had a short list, given that we started this project at the eleventh hour, and we needed people who were really creative and could think outside of the box. I met with three or four companies, and they just didn't pass muster. They had egos. They thought they knew better than I did how to make the ultimate vision work."
Then Dromi met with Lainie Siegel and Michael Walsh, the cofounders of Los Angeles-based Interactive Jungle, a full-service design house that focuses on Internet design, corporate identity and branding, multimedia, music, marketing, and advertising. Siegel and Walsh are business partners and close friends who'd met in 1996 at BoxTop Interactive, during the Wild West days of the Internet. Siegel had more recently been the design principal at SpongeLab, an e-learning site that focused on the creative arts.
Walsh recalls the initial meeting. "When Noam realized he was sitting across from the woman who'd created SpongeLab's art, he said, 'You're hired.'"
"Lainie came in and said, 'You're giving us a less than stellar budget and a less than stellar timetable, but we like you,'" says Dromi. "They were more interested in building a relationship than a transaction. They so exceeded what I knew they were capable of—most of these people are frustrated hack filmmakers." Of course, Interactive Jungle already boasted a rather prestigious client roster, including That '70s Show, Disney, Frito-Lay, and Marilyn Manson.
"We strive to get to the core intention of every project," says Siegel. "We're not into making Web sites for the purpose of making Web sites. There must be a purpose to it." Siegel, Walsh, and their partners had previously worked in e-learning, but not with such Hollywood subject matter. Interactive Jungle's past experience had involved translating courses from stand-up courses or from textbooks. Shoot Out Online, in contrast, would involve a little of both—and more. The task was figuring out how to take that wealth of information and make it accessible and manageable.
