Daniel McVicar speaks “From Facebook to Film”
Article from ComunicatoriPubblici
Special guest at CineShow was Daniel Mc Vicar (in the photo by Paolo Lambertini), CEO of MagmaWave an LA based production company with an office in Turin specialized in the creation of video content for websites and web communities operating in English or Italian.
Daniel McVicar is best known to the large audience as an actor and director. He was the familiar face of Garrison in the TV series Beautiful, playing a character as arrogant and ambitious on the set as Daniel is friendly and helpful in real life, answering all the questions posed to him with his fluent Italian delivered with an unmistakable American accent.
At first, it was bizarre to see him in this new business pose, while leading the seminar “From Facebook to Film, use of New Media in Modern Filmaking”, organized within the European Days of Cinema and TV.
His presentation touched the opportunities and the challenges that New Media offer to everybody involved in the creation of a new film. He described the effects of the Internet on the creation, promotion and distribution of a new film project. With a marked Anglo-Saxon style, direct and full of humor, typical of an actor used to the stage, McVicar has given some good clues on how to attract the audience toward your own video product, in order to obtain maximum visibility. “Creating the basis for developing a conversation”, seems to be the key concept of his speech. “Your audience has to be fully engaged” – says McVicar the people in the conference hall – “You need to have them talking about your film. Create a blog, update it, link it, have a conversation built around it. Tools like Facebook and other User Created Content offer new important opportunities.”
Starting from easily available tools that enable the development of in-house projects (from Celtx to other open source editing software) to the promotion and distribution through social media, Web 2.0, videosharing and other dedicated sites.
“Communicate and disseminate” McVicar repeats his mantra “Establishing communication lines is essential even for public institutions” – he says to ComunicatoriPubblici – “the entry barriers are now very low, it’s easy and it’s cheap. Obama understood that, he would not have won without the Internet; the web can improve political communication as well, it can make possible the creation of a supporters’ network financing your campaign and freeing yourself from lobbies. This because thanks to the Internet you can build a net of relationships, creating affinities, dialogue and value sharing. It’s not only a problem of public organizations. Everybody, I think, should aim at improving communication thanks to the opportunities given by New Media.”
Translated by Tom Corradini





