SCOUT

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SUNDANCE 2019 SCOUTING NOW CLOSED!

RESULTS AVAILABLE HERE

WELCOME TO 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 (e.g. Who has the most power in the group? Who is the most vocal?) 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 a distributor looking for films to purchase at a festival. Typically a festival like Sundance will have over 100 movies playing — from encore presentations to worldwide premieres. Many of the films are so new that they don’t even have trailers. The team on the ground will only have the opportunity to watch a handful of these movies. 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. Prior to the festival, we provide a simple interface that allows our community of SCOUTS to rate and evaluate the information available for each film. It’s all done online so ANYONE can participate from anywhere in the world. These ratings, when aggregated across all our scouts, provide valuable data that we can use to focus our efforts and create a “watchlist” for the festival.

Once the festival begins, the process repeats. Legion M SCOUTS at the festival are given a mobile web interface that allows them to provide detailed ratings and reviews for the films they watch. This effectively gives us eyes and ears all over the festival to ensure we don’t miss any hidden gems, and provides invaluable data that can be used for decision making.

YOUR ROLE AS A SCOUT

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 SCOUT team.

JOIN THE SCOUT PROGRAM

We believe scouting is a skill that can be developed over time. If you’re interested in developing yours, 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!

Just fill out the form below, and we’ll contact you when the next SCOUT opportunity comes around. In the meantime, you are welcome to poke around in the Sundance 2019 app—the voting is closed, but it’s a great chance to see firsthand what SCOUT is all about!