Interview: Louis Plamondon, From The Sleepy Skunk

by Mike Reyes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL8uJC1trFA&feature=player_embedded Q: Your year-end mashups have been particularly interesting. Could you explain a little about your process and how you pull that together? A: It's quite easy to create but it will cost you a month of your life. The two key elements are A. really good music and B. beautiful movie clips. The music is the most important because it directs everything. What I like to do is listen to it over and over and think of how it makes me feel. Pruit Igoe from Philip Glass (which I picked for the 2012 mashup) makes me think of George Orwell's 1984. I loved how it sounds very automated in an uncomfortable way. It sounds grim, grey and dystopian. Once you've figured that out, you go watch movie trailers and find shots that resonate with the song and its feeling. Bonus points for clips that combine impressive imagery and camera movement. You gather as many clips as you can, and then you combine them like a puzzle. Each end up fitting with one another and to the music's tempo. It's really just a big 1,000 piece puzzle that is both fun to put together and watch afterwards. Q: Where do you see the movie industry heading in about five years time? Specifically, where do you see movie marketing heading? A: Things will change considerably but it will take more than five years. The current 'social media versus traditional media' battle comes down to a generational change above all else. There is a target group in our population - one that is currently entering the workplace and attending universities - who literally swears by their smart phones and sharing the latest YouTube videos. One day, they will be aged 30 to 45 years old and have kids of their own. They will transition to become the driving segment of our economy and studios will have to adapt to their specific needs. The next revolution could very well be that consumers will no longer restrain themselves to purchasing a product that is provided to them and will rather demand to be consulted before the creation of that product. And how could a company possibly ignore them and expect to survive? We're not that powerless as moviegoers, you know? When we decide that we don't want to see a new release one week-end, it can hurt a studio bottom line pretty bad for an entire fiscal year. Q: What are your plans for The Sleepy Skunk? Anything particularly interesting and/or exciting on the horizon? A: I just assembled a team of creative minds and we're getting ready to make sleepyskunk.com an exclusive source of movie-related original content. Not only mashups and infographics but also opinion pieces that can be easily shared on sites like Imgur, Buzzfeed and Tumblr. The only guiding principle is that our content is aimed at movie studios and that if people share it all over the web, it's because they are in support of it. We already have some very strong ideas on paper. Things that haven't been done online before and that should get people talking. I posted one a few weeks back titled "There are only three ways to design a kids movie poster" which got on the Reddit front page and earned 1.2 million views on Imgur. Let's hope we can get a response like that with the content we plan to put out there in 2013. I have lots of faith in the team I recruited. They are all clever, opinionated and naturally quirky. Q: What€™s your favorite movie, and why? What can the studio system of today learn from that movie and how it was made/marketed/etc? A: It tends to change but lately it's been Alien because it has such a fascinatingly simple setup and every outcome remains uncertain throughout the entire duration of the film. You feel like an extra member of that spaceship crew and you're never miles ahead of the characters. You experience everything at the same time as they do. As for Alien's marketing, I was not born at the time of its release but the trailer can be seen on YouTube and it achieves so much with so little. If studios can learn one thing, it's that one brilliant tagline can have a much bigger retention impact on your audience than an endless stream of exclusive clips. Many thanks to Mr. Plamondon for agreeing to be interviewed. You can find The Sleepy Skunk on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, and at his Official Site.

Contributor
Contributor

Mike Reyes may or may not be a Time Lord, but he's definitely the Doctor Who editor here at What Culture. In addition to his work at What Culture, Mr. Reyes writes for Cocktails and Movies, as well as his own personal blogs Mr. Controversy and The Bookish Kind. On top of that, he's also got a couple Short Stories and Novels in various states of completion, like any good writer worth their salt. He resides in New Jersey, and compiles his work from all publications on his Facebook page.