Influencer screenings aren’t going away

网红看片会不会消失

But we can rethink our relationship with entertainment media in the age of parasocial fandoms. 但在准社会关系（parasocial）粉丝文化盛行的时代，我们可以重新思考自己与娱乐媒体的关系。

For a few days, it seemed like Universal decided that there would be no advanced screenings of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey for influencers. But on Monday, influencers sat alongside traditional critics and journalists at special showings of The Odyssey specifically for the associated press junket. Despite what it may have looked like, Universal was not going back on its word. The studio was simply embracing an undeniable reality of the modern entertainment press.

曾有几天，外界似乎认为环球影业决定不再为网红举办克里斯托弗·诺兰新片《奥德赛》（The Odyssey）的提前看片会。但周一，在专门为媒体宣传活动举办的《奥德赛》特别放映会上，网红们与传统影评人和记者并肩而坐。尽管表面看起来有些矛盾，但环球影业并没有食言。这家制片厂只是在拥抱现代娱乐媒体行业一个不可否认的现实。

Much as it may pain some to admit, influencers and content creators have become a significant part of our media ecosystem — one that offers film studios an invaluable way to reach larger, more diverse, and younger audiences. Whether it’s a YouTuber’s video essay, a TikToker’s reaction video, or a glowing review on Instagram, influencers’ content can go viral if it resonates with (or enrages) a rabid fan base. And the way that some influencers build massive followings of their own highly engaged fans makes them useful for studios hoping to engineer the next “Barbenheimer” moment.

尽管有些人可能不愿承认，但网红和内容创作者已经成为我们媒体生态系统中重要的一部分——他们为电影公司提供了一种极其宝贵的方式，以触达更广泛、更多元、更年轻的受众。无论是YouTube上的视频论文、TikTok上的反应视频，还是Instagram上的好评，只要网红的内容能引起狂热粉丝群体的共鸣（或愤怒），就极有可能走红。此外，一些网红能够建立起庞大且高粘性的粉丝群，这对于那些希望制造下一个“芭比海默”（Barbenheimer）现象的制片厂来说，极具利用价值。

People’s reactions to the idea of Universal snubbing creators ahead of The Odyssey’s theatrical premiere highlights another important facet of our media landscape. Influencers have become a big part of how studios promote their films. Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment, digital marketing strategist Gigi Robinson explained that influencer screenings are “one of the smartest moves in entertainment marketing right now” because of how they “create a full content arc.”

人们对于环球影业在《奥德赛》院线上映前“冷落”创作者这一传闻的反应，凸显了我们媒体格局的另一个重要侧面。网红已成为制片厂电影宣发的重要一环。数字营销策略师吉吉·罗宾逊（Gigi Robinson）在接受雅虎娱乐采访时解释说，网红看片会是“目前娱乐营销中最聪明的举措之一”，因为它们能够“创造一个完整的内容传播弧线”。

“It’s not just about showing up and watching a movie,” Robinson said. “Every creator makes it their own. These screenings make people feel like they’re part of something exclusive. And that anticipation? That’s what gets people into theaters.”

“这不仅仅是到场看电影那么简单，”罗宾逊说。“每位创作者都会将其转化为自己的内容。这些看片会让人感觉自己参与了一项独家活动。而那种期待感？正是这种感觉把观众带进了电影院。”

But some people have grown weary of the (often overly enthusiastic or cartoonishly negative) energy that they bring to the table. It’s clear that studios are aware of this on some level, otherwise trades wouldn’t be running stories about who’s getting invited to screenings.

但也有一些人对网红们带来的那种（往往过于热情或夸张负面的）能量感到厌倦。显然，制片厂在某种程度上意识到了这一点，否则行业媒体就不会专门报道谁受邀参加了看片会。

What Universal probably meant when the no-influencers-allowed news broke was that there won’t be any screenings of The Odyssey that are put on solely for content creators. Those types of screenings aren’t unheard of, but it’s far more common for studios to screen their unreleased projects for small audiences that consist of critics, journalists, regular theatergoers (who have usually won a contest of some sort), and a handful of people best known for their social media presences. Having that mix of people from different walks of life makes for a viewing experience that feels much more like what it might be like to see the movie opening night. And that feeling can — but doesn’t always — inform a reviewer/writer/video essayist’s thoughts as they work on pieces about what they’ve just seen.

当“禁止网红参加”的消息传出时，环球影业的意思很可能只是指：不会有专门为内容创作者举办的《奥德赛》看片会。这类专场放映并非没有，但更常见的情况是，制片厂会为由影评人、记者、普通观众（通常是通过比赛获胜）以及少数社交媒体红人组成的小型观众群体放映未上映的作品。这种来自不同背景的人群混合在一起，营造出的观影体验更接近电影首映之夜的氛围。这种感觉有时会——但不总是——影响评论员、撰稿人或视频创作者在撰写影评时的思考。

One of the more frustrating things about these screenings is the way their scheduling tends to leave members of the press with very little to finish their work before embargos (agreements barring journalists from journalists from publishing until a certain time) are up. It can be difficult to put a piece of insightful film criticism together in just a few hours before you have to post it and hope that Google Zero won’t make your work almost impossible to find (it will.) This is particularly challenging for writers who try to hit deadlines in order maximize their chances of catching readers when they’re intentionally looking for news about a movie. And while some studios probably see reviewers having less time to sit with their thoughts about a movie — some of which can be negative — as a good thing, it also creates an environment that discourages people from producing quality criticism.

这些看片会最令人沮丧的一点在于，其日程安排往往让媒体从业者在禁令（禁止记者在特定时间前发布报道的协议）到期前，几乎没有时间完成工作。在短短几个小时内写出一篇深刻的影评并发布，同时还要祈祷谷歌搜索结果不会让你的文章变得难以被发现（实际上往往会），这非常困难。对于那些试图赶在读者主动搜索电影新闻时发布文章以获取最大流量的作者来说，这尤其具有挑战性。虽然一些制片厂可能认为，让评论员没有足够的时间去沉淀对电影的思考（其中一些可能是负面的）是一件好事，但这同时也创造了一种不利于产出高质量评论的环境。

These hurdles aren’t always an issue for influencers whose contributions to the discourse can be as simple as a hyperbolic X post telling their followers that [insert movie] is the best or worst thing they’ve ever seen. The relative speed with which creators are able to broadcast their thoughts to their audiences is part of what makes them so useful to studios. And because there are quite a few movie influencers who have built brands around hyping up movies rather than discussing them thoughtfully, studios have relied on them to generate positive buzz.

对于网红来说，这些障碍往往不是问题，因为他们对舆论的贡献可能仅仅是一条夸张的X（原Twitter）推文，告诉粉丝某部电影是他们看过最好或最烂的作品。创作者能够以相对较快的速度向受众传播观点，这也是他们对制片厂如此有价值的原因之一。而且，由于有不少电影网红是靠炒作电影而非深入探讨来建立个人品牌的，制片厂便依赖他们来制造积极的舆论热度。

Though there are plenty of creators whose work is much more than that, the algorithmically driven social media platforms we use every day often reward content that’s attention-grabbing and short enough to be consumed quickly. This is why you still see a sea of “soyface” thumbnails whenever you search through YouTube for basically anything, and it’s why so many online movie influencers only seem capable of speaking in extremes. These tactics have helped influencers build dedicated followings of people who see them as entertainers and news sources that are more trustworthy than traditional media outlets.

尽管有很多创作者的作品远不止于此，但我们每天使用的算法驱动型社交媒体平台往往奖励那些引人注目且短小精悍、易于快速消费的内容。这就是为什么你在YouTube上搜索任何内容时，总能看到满屏夸张表情缩略图的原因，也是为什么许多在线电影网红似乎只会走极端评价的原因。这些策略帮助网红建立了一批忠实的粉丝，这些粉丝将他们视为比传统媒体更值得信赖的娱乐者和新闻来源。

Influencers have given people an easy way to access content about art in a moment when newsrooms across the board are shrinking. Social media personalities might not be as well-equipped to go deep with a director about their process or influences, but that doesn’t necessarily matter to a subscriber who sees them as a friend who conveniently lives in their phones. Parasocial relationships are also a key part of the creator economy that studios are now trying to capitalize on through things like influencer screenings.

在各大新闻编辑部普遍缩减规模的当下，网红为人们提供了一种获取艺术相关内容的便捷途径。社交媒体红人或许不像专业记者那样有能力与导演深入探讨创作过程或灵感来源，但这对于那些将他们视为“住在手机里的朋友”的订阅者来说，并不一定重要。准社会关系也是创作者经济的关键组成部分，而制片厂现在正试图通过网红看片会等方式来利用这一点。