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"What we're hoping to do is to sort of use the Internet for what it was originally designed for, which is a tool of communication, access, and information..."
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TriggerStreet.com
By: Jen Muehlbauer
Rating:  
Get that screenplay out of your desk drawer: there are thousands of people waiting to read, rate, and review it at TriggerStreet.com. The website, launched in November 2002 by Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey and his partner, TriggerStreet.com president and co-founder Dana Brunetti, aims to get short films and screenplays out of hiding and into the hands of more than 10,000 enthusiastic readers and viewers.
"Clearly there is a whole community of people who don't have access, who don't have agents, who don't have an ability to get on a plane and fly to New York or Los Angeles and knock on doors," said Spacey. Now, talented screenwriters or filmmakers who don't know how to get exposure have a place to start.
To ensure a proper level of give-and-take and community feeling, users must rate and review two other works before they can submit their own. But otherwise, TriggerStreet.com provides almost instant gratification. Upload a film, and anyone in the world can see it within an hour. TriggerStreet.com even has a feature that allows users to upload an audio file of themselves pitching their short film or screenplay, so get those elevator pitches down to an art form.
TriggerStreet.com isn't Spacey's first attempt to provide exposure to new voices. The first step of the vision was Trigger Street Productions, Inc., founded in 1997 and named after a real street where a young Spacey once dreamed of building a theater. TriggerStreet.com has produced movies that might have otherwise never made it to celluloid, like 1999's "The Big Kahuna," written by Roger Reuff, a self-taught playwright with a PhD in chemical engineering. A more recent TriggerStreet.com project, 2003's "The United States of Leland," was written and directed by first-time filmmaker Matthew Ryan Hoge.
"The goal is that independent and under financed work will find a wider audience and perhaps even gain the attention to be financed," reads the site. However, aspiring movie moguls should be aware that TriggerStreet.com isn't about getting your film made by TriggerStreet Productions. Brunetti and Spacey said they'll look carefully at shorts and scripts that get a lot of attention from the community, but the goal isn't to find and break the next big filmmaker.
"What we're hoping to do is to sort of use the Internet for what it was originally designed for, which is a tool of communication, access, and information," said Spacey, "and to give all of this emerging talent a place to be able to go and display their work, have it reviewed, and have a peer-to-peer ability to hear comments and criticism that might help them take it to the next level. But if along the way a great movie comes out of it...that's a win-win for us," said Spacey.
TriggerStreet.com may generate its own on-site stars, starting with its first short film festival (The last submissions will be accepted on February 28, 2003). Reviews from TriggerStreet.com members will determine who the ten finalists are, then the ten films will be reviewed by a star-studded panel of judges including Bono, Mike Myers, Annette Bening, Cameron Crowe, and Danny Devito. "What the celebrity names will do is bring attention [to the site], and give us the ability to redirect that attention onto the short filmmakers and their talent," said Brunetti. TriggerStreet.com hopes to have three festivals per year, and, at the end of the year, bring all the winners together for an awards ceremony.
Celebrity is a big draw for TriggerStreet.com, but of course, Kevin Spacey isn't doing this alone. The site is sponsored by Anheuser-Busch and partnered with Yahoo! and RealNetworks. "Each of these large, very well-known corporations have seen the value of this site," said Spacey.
St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, Inc. is the world's largest brewer, responsible for ubiquitous brands like Budweiser and Bud Light. It's also TriggerStreet.com's corporate sponsor. One might wonder what Bud has to do with independent film, but the relationship is part of a growing Anheuser-Busch focus on entertainment. Sponsoring sports events "served us very well over very many years, but we want to bring a little balance to it," explained Tony Ponturo, Anheuser-Busch's vice president of global media and sports marketing. The company had previously sponsored the Academy Awards and has been involved in several sponsorship and support efforts connected to Broadway theater. Beer drinkers have varied interests, said Ponturo, not just sports but also the Internet and entertainment.
Talent agency William Morris put Anheuser-Busch in contact with Kevin Spacey and both sides decided it was a good match. Anheuser-Bush's main goal is to make its presence known on TriggerStreet.com, but not in an overbearing way. Brunetti, Spacey, and Anheuser-Busch worked together on decisions like the size, type, and placement of the site's Budweiser logo. In the future, TriggerStreet.com may also feature links to longer-form Budweiser commercials.
Internet old-timers might still think of Yahoo! as a web directory, but when we weren't looking, it became a premier online entertainment destination. Its current CEO, Terry Semel, spent 24 years at Warner Bros. before going over to the Net side. Yahoo! Movies is serious about its mission; it's even headquartered right in L.A.'s 310 area code so it can work closely and conveniently with studios and networks. Being nearby means Yahoo! Movies "can turn around content and joint works with 24 hours," said Doug Hirsch, senior director of Yahoo! Movies and TV.
On November 18, 2002, Yahoo! Movies hosted six weeks' worth of TriggerStreet.com-related content. The Yahoo!/TriggerStreet.com promotion included early shorts from David Lynch, Robert Zemekis, Martin Scorsese, Ted Demme, and other once-obscure filmmakers who went on to Hollywood careers. The site also featured clips of stars talking about their early days in show business, like Bono's admiration for the late 70s punk scene and Mike Myers' gratitude for his early comedy mentors. "Ultimately, [these features] will support TriggerStreet.com and educate viewers as to what TriggerStreet.com is and how it can help them achieve their goals," said Hirsch, "but in the meantime it's just great to be able to hear what those famous celebrities have to say."
The interviews were created exclusively for Yahoo! Movies, legitimizing the Web (and Yahoo!) as a mainstream entertainment destination and a platform for stars of all calibers. Yahoo! continued expanding its relationship with Hollywood in January, when it partnered with Entertainment Tonight.
The partner that makes sure TriggerStreet.com users can upload and view short films is Seattle-based online media company RealNetworks, Inc. Real's flagship audio and video software, RealPlayer, is now called RealOne Player and will be the way to watch film shorts on TriggerStreet.com. There's even a Mac OS X version and RealOne Player can play shorts in both Real and QuickTime format. Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti, incidentally, also use both PCs and Macs.
A free version of RealOne Player will be available on TriggerStreet.com, along with authoring information, a free version of the production software Helix Producer, and documentation for filmmakers. Completed films can be uploaded to RealNetworks' hosting subsidiary, the Real Broadcast Network, which provides the streaming and hosting services for TriggerStreet.com.
That's impressive corporate backing, but "a lot of people are cynical, especially when they hear our business model. Our business model's not to make money," said Brunetti. "We're coming into a dot-com wasteland, but at the same time we're blazing new ground, and I think everyone knows now what the Internet is capable of and what the Internet is not capable of."
Other early cynicism came from a few TriggerStreet.com users complaining about the quality of some of the short films on the site. Noting that plenty of bad films open in movie theaters, too, Spacey said, "You just have to be willing to look at as much material as you can and you will find gems." He added, "I'm too excited about the potential to pay much attention to those people that want to be naysayers."
Not to mention that plenty of TriggerStreet.com's material really does have merit. Even for movie buffs without their own screenplay in a drawer, TriggerStreet is an entertainment destination worth visiting.
For more info visit:
TriggerStreet
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