Shoot Out, by Peter Bart and Peter Guber, is not just another book by Hollywood sycophants. Peter Bart is the outspoken editor in chief of Variety. ("It's the worst movie ever made!" Bart recently declared of Jackass: The Movie, which nevertheless did boffo at the box office.) And Peter Guber is the founder and chairman of Mandalay Entertainment, the production company behind films like Enemy at the Gates and The Score, which lured Marlon Brando out for one of his rare cinematic appearances.
Guber is also a full professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, and Bart is a visiting assistant professor. Together, they teach the popular course Shoot Out, which isn't so much about how to make movies as it is about how movies get made. Three years ago, Bart and Guber decided to write a book based on the course material. As they were working on the manuscript, in September 2000, Guber turned to Noam Dromi, Mandalay's executive vice president, and told him that he wanted to do something "out of the box" to promote the book. Since Guber has a strong interest in technology and Dromi is in charge of all the company's Internet properties, that suggested something online and interactive.
 [click for larger image] Angelina Jolie guest-lectures for a Shoot Out Online course. |
"Why don't we do the promotion of the book as an e-learning course?" asked Dromi. Guber agreed, and Shoot Out Online was born (www.shootoutonline.com) (see screenshot at right). It was to be a twenty-week interactive course, based on the book that was based on the real-life course; it would be free; and it would have to be ready for the Putnam book release in May 2002.
It's Who You Know
The site was targeted at those who Dromi calls the "wannabes and wannasees": people who want to be in the entertainment business, and people who just want to know more about it. Guber wanted it to reach the widest audience, and for that he enlisted the support of Yahoo Broadcast, which integrates commerce, communications, and media on a secure, scalable platform, and offers a plethora of on-demand audio and video content. It happens that Guber is a good friend of Yahoo CEO Terry Semel.
"It was a transactional relationship," says Dromi, who explains that Yahoo provided its services essentially at cost. "Utilizing Yahoo's technology and promotional engine, in theory, gave us the ability to reach over 200 million people." In return, Yahoo Broadcast got a branded entertainment case study of its own.
Mandalay also partnered with the online Global Film School, which was founded by the Australian Film Television and Radio School, the UK's National Film and Television School, and UCLA. Another connection: Guber is on the board of GFS.
"There's no remuneration involved," explains Dromi of this partnership. Global Film School had a mailing list of about 8,000 names that were used to promote the site. After Shoot Out Online finishes its run at the current URL at the end of February, its content will be repurposed for the GFS Web site. "It will become part of their archive library," says Dromi. "The reason it's staying up until February is that we're hoping we'll win a Webby."
