Motion picture academy gets a digital makeover with redesigned website
IF only Humphrey Bogart had known how hot he'd be on YouTube.
Since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences posted a home video of Bogart and Lauren Bacall sailing on their yacht in 1949, the one minute, 42-second clip of the glamorous couple has been viewed more than 36,000 times on the academy's YouTube channel.
The academy's archive is a trove of such Hollywood heirlooms, but until recently they've been available only to visitors to its Margaret Herrick Library on La Cienega Boulevard or attendees at academy events.
On Thursday, the organization will launch a redesigned Web page at Oscars.org that opens the academy's archive to Internet users, allowing them to share its content via social media, contribute to its collections and immerse themselves in pages about artists and films.
The digital makeover is part of the academy's overall effort to reach out to general audiences, a mandate of increasing urgency as the industry group prepares to open its ambitious new film museum in Los Angeles in 2017.
"The Oscar and the academy has always stood for excellence," said Josh Spector, the group's managing director of digital media and marketing, whom academy chief marketing officer Christina Kounelias enlisted three years ago to expand its digital reach. "I think we're more accessible now… letting people touch, feel and interact with what we stand for."
Created in-house, with the help of Burbank marketing agency Trailer Park, the new site has a clean, minimalist design, with simpler navigation than its predecessor.
Now that the site is up, the next step for the academy will be helping people find it. To help drive traffic there on Thursday, it will launch a contest on the site to win tickets to the Oscars.
rebecca.keegan@latimes.com
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
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