{"id":800,"date":"2021-09-07T19:19:48","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T23:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.alumni.ncsu.edu\/?p=800"},"modified":"2021-09-07T19:19:48","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T23:19:48","slug":"hollywood-called-he-answered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/2021\/hollywood-called-he-answered\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Called, He Answered"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

They oughta make a movie about Scott Addison Clay \u201998. And then hire him to come up with a plan to promote it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because while you may have never heard his name, Clay has made it big in Hollywood. From his office just around the corner from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Clay has helped transform the way the entertainment industry sells the movies and television shows it churns out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had gone to art class. I had done theater. I had done filmmaking. I had done coding. . . . So this was putting all those skills together in a new art form that was emerging on the Internet.
\u2014 Scott Addison Clay ’98<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As the world became increasingly digital over the last dozen or so years\u2009\u2014\u2009and anyone with a cellphone could easily access all sorts of entertainment\u2009\u2014\u2009Hollywood could no longer rely on movie trailers, billboards and press junkets as the primary way to get fans into theaters. \u201cTraditional marketing techniques were becoming less and less effective,\u201d says Jake Zim, who was a digital marketing executive for Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox before becoming senior vice president of virtual reality at Sony Pictures Entertainment. \u201cPeople were spending more time on the Internet and on their phones. That\u2019s where conversations were happening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Scott Addison Clay ’98 standing on Sunset Boulevard. Photograph by Christian Whitkin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That opened the door for Clay, 46, who had a unique set of technical and creative skills that enabled him to reimagine how Hollywood could use the new digital landscape to sell itself. Clay created web-based games for movie studios that drew Harry Potter fans to rack up \u201cMuggle\u201d points and allowed Godzilla fans to track the movement of the iconic movie monster as it traversed, virtually, around the world. He got stars to film short segments that Clay\u2019s team put together as part of an online trivia challenge. Along with a handful of others, Clay has been on the leading edge of making Hollywood interactive\u2009\u2014\u2009allowing fans to immerse themselves in games, contests and other activities with the stars and characters they love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe knew people were obsessed with Harry Potter, so if we could give them something they could chew on and do constantly, and earn recognition and possibly win some prizes or something, they\u2019re going to go crazy for that,\u201d Clay says. \u201cWhen you do that, you essentially arm what we call \u2018evangelists\u2019 to basically advertise your property for free. And then you hope that their friends see that stuff and go, \u2018Oh, I want to see that movie.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking a Seat<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Clay\u2019s story starts with him searching for the proper balance between his abilities with math and technology and his attraction to music, movies and performance. At NC State, that meant being practical and majoring in engineering so that he could get a \u201creal job\u201d after college. But it also meant taking so many electives\u2009\u2014\u2009from screenwriting to fencing\u2009\u2014\u2009that he graduated with 72 more credit hours than he needed. He spent one college summer in Illinois, going door-to-door to sell encyclopedias, and a subsequent summer at Oxford, studying Shakespeare and art history. He was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist in a band, performed in several student plays and musicals at Thompson Theatre and worked at WKNC. \u201cI milked it,\u201d Clay says of his four-and-a-half years at NC State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Programs from Anything Goes<\/em> held in NC State’s Thompson Theatre.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Scott Addison Clay \u201998 got the lead role of Billy Crocker, above, in his first audition at NC State.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

After earning his degree in environmental engineering, Clay opted against getting that \u201creal job.\u201d Instead, he moved to New York City to pursue acting. He found parts in small theater productions and low-budget independent films that didn\u2019t come close to paying the $625 rent on the one-bedroom, mouse-ridden apartment he shared with three others. He landed a background role as a bar patron on The Sopranos<\/em>, earning $75, and a slightly larger role as an MIT student in the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind<\/em> that paid $600. He waited tables and tended bar, and became a jack-of-all-trades for small theater groups and the indie films he worked on with friends. He built websites to market their productions, used spreadsheets to manage their budgets, dabbled in set design, took photos and arranged shooting schedules. He played nine roles in an off-Broadway production of Julius Caesar<\/em>, built the show\u2019s website and sent out postcards to market the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Clay was off to Los Angeles, Calif., tagging along with a couple of New York roommates who were making the move. He continued to juggle multiple roles, serving as an associate producer and an actor on the 2006 cult classic, The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell<\/em>, and as a writer and actor (he\u2019s passenger #2) on a short film that year called Cats on a Plane<\/em>\u2009\u2014\u2009inspired by Snakes on a Plane<\/em>\u2009\u2014\u2009that had to be filmed in two days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n