3D Magazine Cover A 'Unique Storytelling Device'

Whatever happens to The Hollywood Reporter, the venerable, beleaguered entertainment trade monthly sold by the Nielsen Company to e5 Global Media last December, there can be no doubt the magazine made a bang—or, perhaps more accurately, a juicy splat—with its November 3D cover "tip on" promoting the animated feature "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs." A spaghetti tornado appears to fling spherical beefy morsels right off the page; funky tweaks of perspective tilt the movie title and swell a movie character's nose; even the humble UPC symbol is given the depth treatment. Viewmaster this aint—and no glasses are required.The company behind this bit of Hollywood marketing magic is Virtual Images, a Redlands, Calif.-based creative firm owned by IGH Solutions, and The Hollywood Reporter project is its first foray into magazine covers. Inbox asked company President Dave Corey about the print possibilities of his proprietary technology—and whether a multi-dimensional Sports Illustrated cover might not be too far down the road. INBOX: What's been the reaction to the cover from readers and advertisers? DAVE COREY: Phenomenal. I kind of live in this entertainment industry ecosphere and was friends with the publisher at the time, Eric Mika, and he got numerous calls from executives at the studios saying how great the cover was ... [Sony Pictures Animation] was thrilled with it, and according to the number of calls they got and we got about it, it's all good stuff. INBOX: Do you think the continuing emergence of more 3D films bodes well for this kind of print marketing? COREY: It has to, just because it is a unique storytelling device. It's a way in print to say a lot more about a 3D product than you can say with [traditional] paper. We have lots of different forms of what we do, from packaging to posters to signage, and all of those businesses are healthy right now in this environment. INBOX: Did you work directly with The Hollywood Reporter (THR) or with the film companies behind "Cloudy With A Chance..." to produce this cover? How did the revenue model work for the publisher? COREY: The actual transaction took place between Sony and THR. I was the pitch guy working with the publisher in the background, and Sony was the one who signed up and said, 'Yeah we want to do this.' And I'm sure they paid THR to have [the cover "tip"]. INBOX: How did you work with THR's normal printer to pull this off? Were there any special challenges? COREY: [The covers] were sent off to two different print facilities that THR had, one on the East Coast and one in the West, and they did the gluing [of the lenticular cover onto a blank front page]. The one complaint, if there was any, was that on a few of the issues there was a little too much glue, and a little bit of the back of the cover page [was] sticking to the next page; but considering it was an initial run where people were learning how to do that and flying at the speed of light [in order to meet] deadlines, it was considered pretty normal production stuff. INBOX: Did the project require you to work with THR's production team? COREY: No, we did not have to. Only in the sense that we sent them trial pieces ahead of time to test and things like that, but the complexity of it was not significant.INBOX: In an article accompanying the cover in the November issue of THR, you mentioned more 3D pages to come through an "exclusive relationship" with the magazine. Can you say anything more about this?COREY: My 'exclusive' with THR was based on a time frame that has since expired. I am doing additional collaborating with THR on other things [though]. You should expect to see other forms of our printing grace their publication. INBOX: You also said the cover only added 15 percent to the manufacturing cost. Do you think this can be a cost-effective model for an eye-catching non-advertorial cover? (E.g. will we be treated to a Virtual Images Sports Illustrated cover anytime soon?) COREY: You'd have to look at each individual magazine. I think the quote was referencing packaging specifically, so the percentage of increased cost by medium may vary quite a bit. But it's a unique storytelling device, [and] consumers are in love with 3D, so to the degree that we bring additional value that consumers or advertisers are willing to pay for, there is a [desirable] feature there. A unique idea—to use your Sports Illustrated example—would be that we would do four different versions of the same magazine with four different 3D covers. There are a lot of collectors out there who would probably want to buy all four copies, and thus circulation goes up quite a bit for that issue. Those kind of plays are definitely out there for us. INBOX: Have you done any other 3D magazine covers, or are there any in the works?COREY: It has yet to lead to an additional cover. There have been numerous additional jobs quoted, but, as you know, the economic environment is sort of on pause, so we have yet to do another, but that one was seemingly very meaningful and well executed.We are certainly chatting with other groups, including other members of the [e5 Global Media Group]. ... We have done various forms of magazine inserts for a lot of different publications—Entertainment Weekly and others.INBOX: Do you envision multiplatform 3D ad (or editorial) campaigns in the near future? Is this a technology that could migrate to, say, an e-reader or tablet device?COREY: Absolutely. As a company, we are playing in that space; in fact, we decided a couple of years ago we really want to be not just the world's leading 3D printer, but really the leading 3D marketer, so we have expanded our skill sets quite a bit. There's lots of glasses-free 3D that's starting to emerge out there—the new Nintendo 3DS that was announced at E3 [Electronic Entertainment Expo] a couple weeks ago now has a glasses-free display. So we're working on content creation for all kinds of mediums like that. We believe that these 3D print ads should drive people online, and they should be able to continue their 3D experience. ... We have some other things in the works that will allow those other [experiences] to happen.

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3D Magazine Cover A 'Unique Storytelling Device'

James Sturdivant

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