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EntertainmentIndustry.name
Once coverage is submitted, it is entered into the infamous “tracking boards.”
Tracking is an online system that allows entertainment professionals to exchange information about new spec scripts (and actors and directors — virtually any commodity on the radar in the entertainment industry).
What started out as an informal bulletin board system launched by Roy Lee has grown into a pervasive business called Baseline-FilmTracker.com helmed by Rafi Gordon and Alex Amin. With information and access ranging from $15 - $300 a month, readers and assistants to development executives and studio heads pop in and out of high-security chat rooms and over 200 strictly-controlled invite-only message boards where admittance of the over 10,000 members is based upon a democratic vote and/or administrative review of the applicant’s qualifications.
These Internet communities provide a forum for sharing workload (if a friend of yours is a reader at another company and you respect their opinion and they tell you a script you’ve just been assigned to read is weak, they might share the synopsis so you can breeze guilt-free through your almost identical analysis). They are a tremendous networking resource and one of the fastest ways information is exchanged in the entertainment industry.
Yes, information is leaked — like wildfire. Yes, lies are perpetuated and arbitrary blackballing occurs. Yes, the boards can be manipulated to force a bidding war or and drive prices up or vindictively kill deals for personal vendettas. Hollywood has been characterized — with some truth — as high school all over again — only with better clothes and cars. Some rage against the herd mentality having gone digital, that these boards simply accelerate the chess game of the politics and strategy that is Hollywood. I daresay, most other industries attempt to do the same via their efforts at spin control, viral marketing, gossip and word of mouth — it’s just less organized — and much less effective or pin-pointed. Everything about Hollywood is personal — and none of it is. It’s the land of dichotomies and Catch-22’s.
There is some truth to all of this but the flip side is perhaps more relevant, that if you had a community of people doing much the same job as you were, wouldn’t you turn to them for advice and help and a heads up to help you lessen your workload? To be fair, it should be acknowledged how many careers have been launched or at least nudged by the benefits of tracking boards — not just the drawbacks. Message Board posters share great scripts that are outside the parameters of their company’s tastes, genres or budget that they know would be perfect for their cyber-buddies at other firms — so it does indeed go both ways. It’s networking at light speed: access to information — and the ability to disseminate it. It’s just a fact of modern Hollywood that must be contended with.
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