Help Legion M SCOUT at Fantastic Fest!
Fantastic Fest is happening NOW, and we’ve put up the Legion M beacon to all of our FANTASTIC FILM SCOUTS!
Legion M’s SCOUT program is free and open to everyone—even if you aren’t at the festival. Just go to www.legionm.com/scout-ff to create an account. Once you’ve logged in, there are two ways to particpate:
Rate and evaluate the trailers for each film. This helps us decide where we should focus our attention at the festival.
Those at the festival can rate and evaluate the movies. This ensures we don’t miss any hidden gems, and gives us real-life data to make decisions.
WHAT IS SCOUT?
For most companies, green-light decisions are made by a very small group of executives. They rely on gut feelings and intuition. When making decisions as a group, they have to contend with politics and social dynamics (i.e. Who has the most power in the group? Who is the most vocal? Who is the most convincing?) which can heavily influence these decisions.
We believe there’s a better way. At Legion M, we use the WISDOM OF THE CROWD whenever possible. We’re constantly developing tools, systems, and strategies that allow us to leverage our largest asset — our community of passionate fans — when making our decisions.
TAPPING THE WISDOM OF THE CROWD
Consider the challenge of scouting films at Fantastic Fest. More than 80 films will screen—many of which could be candidates for Legion M to invest in. These films come from all over the world, and are in all different stages of development — from encore presentations to worldwide premieres. Many of the films are so new that they don’t even have trailers. Our team on the ground will only have the opportunity to watch a handful of these films. How do they determine what to watch? How do you judge a book that doesn’t even have a cover?
For Legion M, we turn to our secret weapon. We provide a simple interface that allows our community to rate and evaluate the trailers available for each film. These ratings, when aggregated across all the scouting reports, provide us with data that we can use to focus our efforts.
The same process repeats for scouts who are AT the festival. By aggregating ratings and reviews from every Legion M scout at the festival, we ensure that we don’t miss any hidden gems, and receive data that we can use to make decisions.
NOT ALL SCOUTS ARE CREATED EQUAL
The first thing we ask each scout to share are their PERSONAL feelings about the movie/trailer. This information is important, as the opinions of our community factor heavily into every decision we make (please see the article How Does Legion M Select Projects). There’s no right or wrong answer here — everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and each is as valid as the next. This is art after all — how boring would it be if we all liked the same thing!
However, in addition to having scouts personally rate each movie/trailer, we also ask them to PREDICT how OTHERS will rate it. That’s because while everyone has an opinion, the true measure of a scout is their ability to predict what others will think. In addition to giving us insight into the opinions of our community, the SCOUT system also helps us identify those in the Legion that truly “have their finger on the pulse”, so we can invite them to join our elite SUPER SCOUT team.
JOIN THE SCOUT PROGRAM
We believe scouting is a skill that can be developed over time. If you’re interested in developing your skills, we want YOU in the SCOUT program, where we’ll help hone your talent and put it to good use for the benefit of Legion M!
Use the links above to join us in scouting Fantastic Fest from September 20-27. If you can’t make join for the festival but are interested in the program, get on the list by singing up at www.legionm.com/scout.