Digital celebrities - From smartphone to silver screen

2016-06-07 11:01:14

Stars of social media are trying to break into the mainstream

Jun 4th 2016 | LOS ANGELES

THE conceit of a new film, Airplane Mode , is clever enough. Put some of the biggest stars of YouTube, Vine, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram on a plane to Australia without internet access. Faced by a few hours without the views, loops and likes that connect them with the outside world, madness follows. But will their millions of young fans follow the digital hotshots offline, to the cinema?

Over the past decade each new social-media platform has given rise to a subculture of celebrities, worshipped by teenagers and children but largely unknown to anyone else. Once YouTube was the main stage for this new type of star. Now every platform has them, including an array of new apps unfamiliar to grown-ups (ask a child about musical.ly, for example). Through projects like Airplane Mode , which recently finished shooting on a budget of more than $2m, these digital stars are trying to convert their massive online followings into mainstream fame.

The numbers alone make that seem a reasonable ambition. The low-brow escapades of these digital luminaries have earned them each millions of fans. Logan Paul, a co-writer and star of Airplane Mode , has 10m likes on his Facebook page. Amanda Cerny, a former Playboy model, has 4.5m followers on Instagram, and says her Snapchat videos get up to 2m opens , making her one of the world s most-snapped women not named Kardashian (Snapchat does not disclose such data). Andrew King Bach Bachelor (pictured) is the most-followed individual on Vine with 16m acolytes and Lele Pons, 19, is the most-viewed woman on Vine, with 189m loops of her videos in April, according to Tubular, a social-media rankings service.

The attention is lucrative. These stars earn most of their money through branded content deals with large companies the biggest names can earn over $100,000 for a single campaign. Talent agencies have taken note. Mr Bachelor studied as an actor and says he turned to Vine after repeated rejection for roles because he was not famous enough: Oh, I ll be famous, just you wait, he thought then. He signed with United Talent Agency in 2013 and has appeared in a couple of minor roles, including a comedy film that flopped at the box office. Creative Artists Agency represents Ms Cerny and Mr Paul. Ms Cerny has been cast in a scripted virtual-reality series and Mr Paul appeared in an episode of a popular television series.

But turning the adulation of all those fans into a long career will be tough. The videos these fledgling personalities have thrived on until now snippets as short as six-and-a-half seconds (the maximum on Vine) appeal to the adolescent sensibilities of their fans. In a recent 53-second Facebook video, Mr Paul and Ms Cerny demonstrate things girls do that guys should be cool with (like taking hours to get dressed). Though no masterpiece, it has been watched 15m times. But the lifespan as a digital big shot can be short a few years at most before their audience ages and moves on. Airplane Mode is assured a high-flying social-media campaign but that may not be enough to get the next stage of its stars careers off the ground.