In an effort to build buzz for the Robert Redford’s new movie, Lions for Lambs, which bows Nov. 9, the Lion has inked a deal with Google and YouTube to launch a competish for which individuals can produce a 90-second video discussing the social issue they’re most passionate about.

Vids will be featured on a specially designed Google “gadget” — essentially a mini-website within a site — that will enable visitors to watch and vote on their favorite submissions. A winner will be chosen Nov. 9 and awarded $25,000 to go to a charity of their choice. Acceptance of submissions begins today.

A dedicated YouTube channel will screen the shorts as well, and ads for the pic will be targeted across Google’s network to potential auds based on their interests.

Executives at Google and YouTube consider the effort an example of how the companies’ network of sites, which attract millions of users, can promote Hollywood productions, and hope it will help entice studios and distribs to devote more of their online marketing budgets to the two Web giants rather than go to rivals like Yahoo.

“Lambs” is the first pic to use multiple elements of Google and YouTube on a large scale, the companies said.

The key to the campaign is giving potential auds “an enlightened sense of engagement,” said Adam Stewart, Google’s industry director of media and entertainment. “We knew that within YouTube we had a community that would respond to this message.”

Oh my god, they’re serious, aren’t they? They think those “millions of users” will actually be drawn to the prospect of making a video about social awareness? That the MySpace generation has “an enlightened sense of engagement?”

Maybe I’m wrong. I’d like to think the children are our future and all, and of course I know that folks of all ages use and enjoy the capabilities of YouTube. Certainly, CNN’s recent presidential debate that solicited questions from regular citizens via the Net was a good use of the service.

But there’s a reason why the YouTube hit parade is chock full of Andy Samberg videos. Hell, even Obama Girl is more about a hottie prancing around than it is about anything of actual substance. And MGM will wonder why its online campaign fails to bring anyone into theaters for Lions for Lambs: the under-25s won’t care about it, and the over-25s won’t know about it. And another studio will claim that the Internet is a mysterious alien planet it simply can’t understand.

Source: Film.com

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