Shooting pilots

Four years into making House Of Cards with Netflix, Mr Spacey still says he's in an "enviable and remarkable position, we get to go to work every day and tell the story we want to tell". Yet the on-demand pioneer was far from Mr Spacey's first meeting when, together with his film company chief David Brunetti and director David Fincher, he was pitching scripts for the first two episodes.

"We went to every network, every cable channel, but Netflix were the only ones that didn't demand we shoot a pilot," says Mr Spacey, who derides pilots as "expensive auditions" and hopes that the success of House Of Cards will help kill them off.

"Pilots force you to establish all your characters upfront, to somehow prove to them that this thing can work. They compromise the writing, even before they open you up to a myriad of opinion from all levels of executives from all kinds of departments, which usually results in a script unrecognisable from its original intentions."

For Netflix, analytics confirming the popularity of old David Fincher and Kevin Spacey movies on its platform was enough for it to commission two seasons upfront.

"My character strangled a dog in the first five minutes of the first show, and that set the tone for the rest of the series," Mr Spacey said last year. "Netflix did it right."

Mr Spacey doubted that the film The Usual Suspects, which brought him to prominence in 1995, would even get made today, much less become a hit.

"That was low budget, limited shooting days, none of the cast were household names. Its driver was great storytelling, and frankly the arena for that is now television," said Mr Spacey.


"The major studios only want tentpole movies, so a lot of the greatest writers, directors and actors have migrated to an HBO or a Netflix, and the audience that went to see The Usual Suspects has come with them. Of course as soon as a character-driven drama makes some money again, that might change back to an extent."

'Immersive storytelling'

An avowed fan of Facebook's Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets, Mr Spacey thought "immersive storytelling" would be the next big trend in consumer media.

"A lot of the early problems with the technology have been solved, it's time for the content creators to produce," he said.

Apart from WoofbertVR, which is currently seeking gallery and museum partnerships, Mr Spacey is also interested in classroom applications for virtual reality.

"The schoolroom hasn't changed a whole lot in decades. So imagine being able to slip on the goggles and be at the bottom of the ocean learning about the Pacific, Gettysburg hearing about the Civil War, or on the stage of The Globe in the 1600s, running lines with the actors?"

Virtual reality will bring the TV and gaming industries closer together, Mr Spacey predicted. He's been a trailblazer here too, working with the makers of 2014's Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare to develop Jonathan Irons, an antagonist character he plays in scenes shown between levels. Mr Spacey can imagine future virtual-reality productions where multiple alternative scenarios are filmed, allowing immersed viewers/players to evolve thier own storylines.

Mr Spacey will trial such a work situation when he makes his debut as a 3D hologram, beamed into Brisbane on November 25 to address the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia annual conference.