SpringBoardMedia

New website, new blog

2011-06-24T12:16:00.000-04:00

I'm moving the blog to www.sub-genre.com Please follow me there.

Yessirree, I’ve finally gotten around to updating my online life a little bit. Just under two years ago, I left my day-job for more independent pastures and launched my new company sub-genre media. But, I had many years worth of blog posts over here at Springboard Media, which was never a company, just a blog, and I kept blogging there. Every single time I give a lecture or do a consultancy, this leads to confusion. On top of that, I never really liked the Springboard Media name. I had actually just grabbed that name for a project I was working on at the time and it stuck around. But lately, I’m getting tired of the Blogger platform, and figured that when you couple it with the fact that it was confusing…there needed to be a change.

Well, I’ve decided to finally launch the new sub-genre website using tumblr as a backbone. I’m still making improvements, and I’ll be adding a lot more soon, so please hold back on the critiques until I figure out how to make this look prettier. In the meantime, if you’ve ever liked reading my blog, please update your RSS feeds, etc to here. I’ll keep Springboard up as an archive of my past writing, and will refer to it via links here and there, but from now on, all of my writing will be from sub-genre, where you’ll also be able to follow more about my consulting (as I get around to adding it).

Thanks to all, hope to see you at sub-genre.

The problem I'm having with Kickstarter

2011-06-20T17:48:00.000-04:00

I'm a fan of Kickstarter and their team. I've used it for films I've helped as a consultant, and I've contributed to several projects (not all of them film related) through it. There's nothing wrong with supporting projects you love, and yes, there's a little bit of a funding revolution going on as a result. That's all well and good, but...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the unintended negative consequences of it, and particularly how these relate to our current political situation and the future of both funding for the arts and of what types of projects get support. We build our society and our future with little decisions. We tend to make them quickly and just focus on the novelty of new mechanisms, instead of thinking about their bigger implications. This critique isn't a thesis, but rather my initial thoughts on the subject.

On the face of it, Kickstarter is pretty harmless, and I think the founder's intentions are good. It's great that people can raise money for cool things from the crowd. It's hard to raise money, especially for the arts, and there have always been a lot of gatekeepers in the way. Now, the people can decide what gets funded.

I fear, however, that this particular phenomenon fits a little too squarely with the right-wing agenda in the US (and elsewhere, actually). Government support for the arts has always been miniscule, but it's now disappearing rapidly, with many states moving to cut their state arts commissions and one that already has. This year, we saw more attacks on the NEA, CPB and other public funding for media and the arts. Yes, crowdfunding helps bridge the increasing gap, but I'd be much more excited if I received calls to action to support public funding for the arts every five minutes, instead of another email announcing a Kickstarter campaign I can help fund.

Why should I need to help fund some filmmaker I love, when I pay taxes that I believe should support the arts, but don't. This smacks of the "big society" ideas going around in the UK to me. The government doesn't need to help the people anymore, the people can help the people. While contributing to a Kickstarter campaign doesn't make you a right-wing, arts-cutting person, by any means, the adoption of such trends can be detrimental to the argument for public funding of the arts.

Now, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, to play devil's advocate. Heck, the State Arts Agencies are probably a lost cause, and the NEA hasn't been very effective (although their new leadership is trying hard). A crowdfunding system is better than no system at all, and I've seen multiple projects raise more money in less time through Kickstarter than the average government grant. But I'm also weary of some other things this trend reinforces.

First, I've already witnessed the following:

Funders who have already determined that they don't need to fund production and distribution, because anyone can shoot a film for cheap and give it away on YouTube, who now also add that it's easy to fund a movie, so why should they? Trust me, I've heard these arguments already.
Funders who understand that good films can be expensive to make and distribute, but who think that you should show them a successful crowdfunding campaign, to show community support. I'm all for the power of the audience, but some art isn't necessarily popular, and making it a popularity contest won't make better, or more effective, art.
Funders who don't know anything about any of this, but they smell a trendy subject easily, and are easily swayed. Many of these are now asking how your campaign went, even though they've never even looked at Kickstarter.

My biggest concern, however is this - guess who usually gets help when the people help the people? The rich and connected people. That's who. They've traditionally been the ones able to make indie films, by the way, even though people don't like to talk about it. This isn't exclusively true, of course, but it tends to be true - filmmaking has been a rich person's game for most of its history. In addition, the doc community is nothing if not an insider's clique, and Kickstarter isn't changing that much. There's a big danger, and it's a very likely scenario, that we'll just get more of the same in terms of what and who gets funded.

Take a look at who you hear from and support on Kickstarter. Unless you are an exceptional scout, I'm willing to bet the list is disproportionately Western, White and middle-class or above. Take a look at the most funded projects on Kickstarter, again it appears (from an unscientific survey) to hold up these assumptions.

Perhaps this will change. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps we'll live in a crowd-funded world in the future and it won't look like this. I'm not so sure. Are you? I, for one, would like to see things mature to something different - government funding for the arts, that is accountable to, open to and influenced by the people. Perhaps augmented by the crowd, but not solely supported by it. Diverse in both projects funded and who funds them.

In the meantime, I'll keep supporting the projects I love on Kickstarter. Perhaps someone will start a Kickstarter campaign to build an arts agency that takes the place of the NEA someday. I'll contribute to that too!

Movie Recommendation - General Orders No 9

2011-06-20T13:03:00.000-04:00

I spammed/emailed this to my friends earlier today, and thought I'd share it with you here.

Friends -

I'm writing to tell you that the film "General Orders No 9" by Bob Persons opens this Friday, June 24 at the Rerun Theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

I first encountered this film as a jury member at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival and it absolutely blew me away - I couldn’t think of another film I had seen like it, and I’m still haunted by its beautiful imagery, poetic narration and clear artistic importance. I was not the only one. Mike Ryan said the film was “one of the best I’ve seen at either Sundance or Slamdance” and Michael Tully described that the film “makes Malick look like a straight shot of Hollywood" (and this was well before Tree of Life came out). In a review with nary a word of critique, Robert Kohler wrote in Variety that it comes “seemingly out of nowhere...a true original.”

Kohler was correct - filmmaker Bob Persons is not a film-school educated filmmaker. Instead, he attended the Double Take Documentary Film Festival (precursor to Full Frame) as a spectator with no knowledge of the history of the form and became enamored with documentary film. He decided he needed to become a documentary filmmaker and taught himself how to shoot a digital camera, and learned the history of film by renting nearly every film at Atlanta’s Movies Worth Seeing video store (an amazingly well-curated video store, still thriving in this age of Netflix). As I said to Bob after his first screening, he then went out and made a masterpiece.
Since that time, he's won many awards for the film, and he's now working with Variance Films to release the film nationally. The film opens June 24th, this Friday, at the Rerun Theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn. It's a great venue, with craft beers, full bar and excellent food available in the theater (that's right, in the actual movie theater, while you watch). There will be live music accompaniment by the film's composer, Chris Hoke, with the Sunday matinee show (June 26, 2pm) which is not to be missed. The film is currently scheduled through June 30th, but it might be extended if it does well. As many of you know, the film's stay at the theaters, and how many it eventually plays, is based upon how it does during this first week. We hope to open in Manhattan, and then in many other cities (some are already booked, like Savannah, Denver and Dallas), but the odds will improve greatly if you buy tickets and see the film, and if you tell your friends who live in NYC to do the same. I'm helping arrange Bob's DVD, VOD and other digital sales soon after the theatrical tour of the film, and we'll announce their availability on the film's website, but trust me, you want to see this on the big screen.

For those of you so inclined, please tell your friends to follow the film on Twitter and Facebook, and please help spread the word. You can watch the trailer here, check out the awesome movie poster here (hint: not only is it for sale, but some cool art from the film will be available for sale soon) and again, buy tickets here. Bob will be here for the Q&A after the Friday and opening weekend shows.

Hope to see you at one of the shows.

General Orders No 9 - the Malick-y doc

2011-06-02T18:22:00.000-04:00

As many of you know, I've been helping out a filmmaker I know (Bob Persons) with the hybrid distribution plans for his film, General Orders No 9. Well, I'm happy to report that Variance is taking the film out starting June 24th at the Rerun Theater in Brooklyn. It will then tour to many cities and come out on DVD, VOD and all those other mechanisms not long after that. The trailer just went live on iTunes and it is a beaut. I didn't help in the editing, so I can honestly say it is one of the better trailers I've seen for an indie doc in quite some time. I recommend you check it out. For some reason, Apple doesn't let you embed the trailer so you have to click the link. Dumb, but so is the fact that their Twitter button doesn't work right now. Seriously. Makes you feel better about your grasp of tech doesn't it!

And what's with this Malick-y thing? One of the reviews of the film mentioned that it made Malick look like a regular ol Hollywood guy. We didn't ask him to say that, but it's true.

Report from DocAviv

2011-05-19T19:31:00.001-04:00

I'm just back from the fabulous DocAviv Film Festival. This was my first trip to Israel, and I wish I could've stayed longer. I met wonderful people, saw some great films as part of the International Jury, went to the beach (a lot), visited many of the famous sites and learned a lot. While DocAviv takes place during Cannes, that doesn't matter much to the locals, who are coming out in droves, filling the theaters and having a great time watching some amazing docs.

We awarded two prizes. The first was a Special Jury Mention to the film Darwin, by Nick Brandestini. He's off to Karlovy Vary next, and you can check out the film here. We also awarded the International Competition Award to El Sicario: Room 164 by Gianfranco Rosi. Turns out El Sicario was recently picked up and will play NYC and elsewhere soon. I highly recommend both films as well as all of the others in competition. There was also an Israeli Doc competition (with many great films, Israeli docs are in their prime right now) and student film awards, as well as a DocChallenge and many special events (including my favorite: Food and Film). The festival is only 13 years old now (happy Bar Mitzvah), but is growing in importance and stature and I highly recommend that doc makers, industry and fans check it out. You can't get much better than May in Tel Aviv, with good docs, good conversations and outdoor screenings at the Tel Aviv Port!

While there, I also ran a workshop with Hypermedia on the Future of the Doc, called "Re:Invent." It was a full day workshop broken into three sessions: new business models for distribution and audience engagement, transmedia practices and pitching. I learned a lot from the audience - about particularities of Israeli cinema and possibilities, about new ideas and I hope I left behind some wisdom as well. The biggest things I learned are: 1. that Israeli Docs are great, the scene is vibrant and winning awards (this I knew, but learned even more while there, watching about 15 recent docs) and 2. that there's a pretty solid funding system in place, but not much for trying new models of outreach and distribution, and last 3. that the political situation makes many things difficult for Israeli filmmakers both at home and abroad (in many ways, and from many different perspectives, too much to cover here). There were two interviews that ran in conjunction. One at NRG, and you can see a Google Translation here, and one with DocMovies. Speaking of DocMovies, they have launched a really cool distribution service that is very filmmaker friendly, and I hope to cover more about that soon.

I've uploaded the slides from my workshop to SlideShare. Feel free to download them, and use them as you wish. I hope to give more updates from the festival soon.

DocAviv - Roadmap to the Future of Docs

View more presentations from Brian Newman

And a late edit: The organizers published this great Flickr Set of the day:

Up Next: DocAviv and building a roadmap for the future of Docs

2011-05-04T13:28:00.000-04:00

I'm finally settled into the new apartment, and have found the buried computer cables. No, I didn't go completely offline thanks to my Android, but I am not much into typing the blog from my phone. While the rest of the film industry preps for Cannes, I'm now busy with a few filmmaker clients and with preparing for my next masterclass/workshop in conjunction with the DocAviv Film Festival, scheduled for May 18, 2011.

I'm working with Hypermedia to put on a full day workshop on the future of the Documentary. Here's the English version of the description and you can find the Hebrew version here or here. If you are in Tel Aviv, register and/or stop by and say hello, and tell your friends who might live there. While I hope to offer some new insights into the possible future of the doc, I'm really looking forward to learning from the audience how the film industry there sees the future, because their doc community is pretty strong and vibrant.

Here's the description:

Roadmap for the Documentary Filmmaker

Why try to predict the future when you can simply invent it?

Digital technology, new business models and a plethora of innovative production and creative tools – all these are combined together and promise many exciting years of research and challenges in the realms of documentary filmmaking. What are the possible directions in the field? Where do we go from here? How do we find the path to success in the new world?

This practical all-day seminar will lead the participants into the future districts of the field and provide filmmakers with a concrete, practical and up-to-date tool kit for turning an era of change into an era of new opportunities.

Content editor and producer: Ari Davidovich.

Wednesday, 18.5.11, at ZOA in Tel Aviv

Fee required, please register in advance.
For details and registration:
www.hypermedia.co.il/future

Sorry for the delay

2011-04-20T22:18:00.000-04:00

photo © 2009 Robbert van der Steeg | more info (via: Wylio)

While I've never been a daily updater, I've been better about posting lately...until this week. My personal life has intruded as my wife and I move our apartment this week to a new neighborhood - which is a good (great) thing, but packing is killing my computer time. Which is also a good thing! Back with more soon.

Helen Hill

2011-04-15T12:02:00.000-04:00

Image via WikipediaHelen Hill was a great filmmaker (among many other talents) who was murdered in 2007 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She was also an acquaintance, and because of that I've been following the progress of her husband Paul Gailiunas as he has been completing her final film. He's done, the film is now touring. There's a grand, big showing in Columbia, SC on April 16th - Helen was from SC and that's where we first met. Here's a note from Paul about the film. If you live anywhere near SC, I highly recommend making the road trip for this special evening.

"This is to announce that The Florestine Collection, the film Helen Hill started in 2001, has been finished and will have its first two screenings very soon. Helen began this project after she found more than 100 handsewn dresses in a trash pile soon after she and I moved to New Orleans from Canada. She wanted to find out more about the seamstress and make a film about her.

She received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and continued to work on the film as a new mother and then after Hurricane Katrina, which ruined a lot of the material she had already filmed.

After Helen was murdered in January 2007, I decided that I wanted to finish the film that she devoted much of her energy to. I got an incredible amount of help and support from our friends and family, and I recently completed it as a 16 mm film print, which is how Helen liked to screen her films.

The final result is a 31 minute experimental documentary that includes Helen's beautiful silhouette and cut-out puppet animation, as well as re-printed flood-damaged home movies.

Helen put a lot of love and energy into The Florestine Collection, and she was very determined to finish it. I am glad to at least be able to present my interpretation of Helen's vision for the film."
- Paul G.

The film shows:
Saturday, April 16
Indie Grits Film Festival
Columbia, South Carolina

It also showed recently at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Thanks Paul. We all miss Helen, and we're all excited that you've helped interpret her vision and have completed this film. I hope many film festivals and exhibition venues book the film for further screenings soon.

Letter from the Future

2011-04-05T17:31:00.009-04:00

photo © 2007 Adam Lautenbach | more info (via: Wylio)
I am a 32 year old indie storyteller living in Pepsidelphia (formerly known as Philadelphia, before the crisis), population 23 million, and it’s 2018. I moved here after the “event” in New York City along with everyone else. Last night, I went to Lance Weiler’s amazing Opera, Hope, which was supposedly the culmination of a nearly seven year process starting way back at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival when he played his short film and premiered the interactive Pandemic experience, which began this entire Gesamtkunstwerk phenomenon (the German’s told us transmedia was a bad name, and this one kinda stuck). I was able to get a ticket through my friend who does code programming at TopSpin, which was lucky because all operas sell out immediately now that they work with established directors from gesamtkunstwerks.

I go to the cinema more often now that the Pepsi Alamo Drafthouse offers free screenings 24/7 to anyone who has drank at least 4 Pepsi’s that week. It’s really great because I only see one advertisement for Pepsi at the beginning and then the film plays, I order some great Vegan food and a Diet Pepsi water, or a beer and enjoy the show with all my friends. We pick the show we want to see the day (or week) before, and which theater we want to see it in – KidFree, MobileFree or FullActive. I usually go to FullActive because then I can see what my friend’s are thinking while I watch the show (from my retina display), and I usually sit on the left side of the theater. I’m not sure why, but I think the content is usually better there than on the right side. I think more of the clues to the film show to the audience on the left side, but maybe I’m wrong. Sometimes, I go see something again from the other side, but I already know the clues from the left side feed, so it’s hard to tell. The Alamo is really great because I can also choose to see the film edited specifically for my town. Always better than what I get on PepsiNet for free at home.

Speaking of which, I’m so happy Pepsi took over Netflix. That happened back in 2015, a year or so after Netflix had taken over Time Warner, and it made sense to change it to PepsiNet since they were now offering me internet service everywhere, as well as flix. Now when I watch films, I can choose which charities my points go to (I’m on the point, as opposed to pay plan which means I see more advertising for free access and get points for watching), and I always choose Sundance. Then, Sundance selects which indies get funded and then get to go on the Sundance Festival Tour.

My friend Saskia Wilson-Brown got funded $50,000 to make her gesamtkunstwerk, plus another $10,000 for the theater piece she had made and $5,000 for the short videos. Then she went to Sundance Cokelanta, Sundance OWC (formerly Chicago), Sundance Duke, Sundance Harvard, Sundance Jetblue to Puerto Rico, Sundance Heinzburgh (formerly Pittsburgh), Sundance Sarasota the Riviera of Florida, Sundance Missouri Tea Party and even to Sundance LL Beane (formerly Maine). She did a big international tour, playing in Sundance Norway, Sundance Sur de France (formerly Cannes), Beijing Sundance, Rio de Sundance (note which towns get priority naming!) and Sundance Dubai, among other places. Her film played each of those cities with her and the cast in attendance, and only people who had given to her SundanceStarter campaign were allowed to attend. That was a cool idea Redford had when he took over KickStarter – if you don’t fund it, you can’t see it live, only a whole 24 hours later on PepsiNet.

Saskia’s theater piece made her (and Sundance) a lot of money, and rumor is she’ll be making an opera at the Pepsidelphia Opera soon, after Lance. They don’t announce the show until one month earlier, and only to subscribers to that artist through TopSpin. Since I subscribe to Saskia, I get to see her the week before the rest of Pepsidelphia for half-price. My dad, he of the Gmail address (why do old people always use Gmail??!!), doesn’t subscribe to her, so he has to wait a week to see her (if she’s picked), but my sister does, so we’ll go together.

Dad misses out on a lot, because he still gets his news from the Google Times. Google thought it was a good idea to take over the New York Times four years ago, which made sense as the City doesn’t exist anymore and they needed content, but it’s now known as the AOL of the Twenty-Teens. Apparently, AOL was some company that was popular back in the beginning of the internet. By the time my Dad was my age, it had sunk to the level of Facebook popularity. No one under the age of 40 uses Facebook anymore. It has become THE place to be though for the 70 and older crowd, the Boomers. They get all their content for free from AARP, and Livever (the pill to keep you alive longer) and talk to each other about how great they are while using Skype and Twitter. Word is that Google Times is a sinking ship, but they just took over David Letterman’s show, and have Paul McCartney hosting a talent search, so maybe that will keep them alive another ten years.

Me, I use Baidu because it’s easier to keep in touch with my friends in China and Brazil. You have to be able to speak both Mandarin and Portugese, so most adults can’t keep track of what you’re doing (other than the government, that is, but more on that later). Baidu is awesome. It let’s me not only keep in touch with everyone, but it also recommends to me pretty much everything I’ve ever used. For example, when I shop for deodorant, I can see which friends use which types and compare that to how I’ve felt about their smell and how often they get laid. This helps me pick the best scent so that one day I will produce a child with my partner.

When I do what you called watching TV, what I want to watch is picked by Baidu and PepsiNet based on my mood, who I am with, what products I use and what my friends have recommended to me. I don’t actually watch a TV, I just stare at a wall or a stationary spot and watch it through my retina display. Some people get freaked out by this and use their mobile to project an image on the wall, but no one under the age of 70 owns a television anymore.

I watch stuff from my queue, based on my mood, my friends, who I am with and what is most popular now. If the government or PepsiNet wants me to learn about some important news, like an earthquake, then that interrupts my watching, but otherwise, I switch to other shows in those rare moments when I get bored based on who I’m following on Baidu and what they recommend. The other day, I was watching the Today Show, hosted by the Olsen Twins, which I like never do (it’s for old people, but my PepsiNet server was acting up), and suddenly President Bloomberg came on to tell me, personally, that Bloomberg Media was now the official provider of news for all PepsiNet and CokeCast customers. Most people aren’t worried about any conflict of interest though, because Bloomberg promised to keep an iron wall between him and his company’s editorial policies, and most of the news is curated by our friends anyways.

I guess this is where I should bring you up on politics. Bloomberg became president after Obama left office. He ran without a VP, a first in America, but he said that he had more business experience than anyone in history, so he didn’t need a VP. People liked that idea. He had a tough race though. Hilary Clinton had become Obama’s VP, which helped him win the 2012 election. She was hell bent on finally being president, and ran in 2016. But the woman vote was divided by the Gingrich/Palin campaign, and the democrats lost a lot of votes to the John Stewart/Rachel Maddow campaign and the Al Franken/Michael Moore independent campaign. So, Bloomberg, after spending a billion dollars of his own money, and after declaring he had converted to Christianity, finally won in 2016. Some people say he bought the election, but most of us just think America felt sorry for him since he came from New York City. But I know the truth – he won because only 30% of the population bothered to vote, and the voting system was run by Xe-Diebold, who make our retina screens and electronic voting systems and they also have all the contracts for our wars. Who they want to win, wins.

I know this because I am one of the only people in my neighborhood, Tropicanaland, who has access to the Darknet, through the Freedom Box made by the great Eben Moglen. He’s been killed now, er, he’s on extended interrogation, but he created this great little device back in 2011 that let’s people create their own internet which is decentralized and can’t be controlled by any government or corporation. I use this to watch Al Jazeera, speak to my compadres in Egypt and Tunisia and Bahrain, where there’s real democracy, and I learn a lot of news that never makes it on PepsiNet or anywhere else in America (or Germany, China, Brazil and other important countries). Al Jazeera is where I learned the history of Xe-Diebold, formed by Dick Cheney when he merged what was Blackhawk with the Diebold company. This was while he was on his fifth new heart, but he still ran the company for another five years.

This is also how I know the truth about New York. See, everyone else believes the story the government gave – Iran attacked New York City with Nukes to kill the "Great Satan," and that’s why we hired Xe-Diebold to manage a war for us there. But what really happened was four rebels from Bahrain attacked us in revenge for Obama never getting tough and assisting their revolution back in 2011. That story wouldn’t sit so well with the public, seeing as how they’d already forgotten about Bahrain due to the earthquakes that destroyed all of California in 2012.

So, by the time 2013 rolled around and NYC was destroyed, we were pretty freaked, but we were used to relocating millions of people to other cities, and most people were ready for a Mideast dictator to demonize, especially since he was about to be deposed by another democratic mob himself and we needed some instability there to justify our troops, which keep the poor people employed (it's their only job opportunity now). I can’t tell any of this to anyone, or they think I’m one of the 9/11 conspiracy nut jobs, but trust me – if you visit Egypt, this is accepted fact and they have the biggest democracy on Earth, and I hear about it on Al Jazeera (via the Darknet).

Anyway, the Darknet is also how I try to distribute my films. See, I haven’t broken into the system yet. Back in 2011, anyone like me could pretty much make and distribute their film to a wide audience via the internet. But then several things happened at once and this changed. First, Obama and the MPAA worked together to shut down all pirate networks. Then they worked globally to change all IP laws so that we no longer had anything like the “first sale doctrine” or “fair use.” Then we got the pay as you go meter – for many years, until Pepsi took over Netflix, you had to pay a few pennies for every MB of data download, and soon very few indies could afford to make their films available unless they were on iTunes, Netflix, Amazon or the six major studios - iKavanaugh, Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Berlin or Toronto. But these studios also controlled the festival marketplace. At first, when Sundance and Tribeca started opening festivals in every major city in every country, it just sucked a little for the now-fired employees of the fests that had been in those towns. But before long, all of those fests closed and we had just the five major festival networks and the newly minted iKavanaugh Road Show. Then they all became studios.

Then, Berlin partnered with Lufthansa for the LuftFilm Idol show. From then on, Berlin only accepted 1 indie a year from America – through a reality contest show where the audience narrowed down the filmmakers from 100 Americans competing to make the best film for 50 bucks. The winner got flown on Lufthansa to Berlin and received 2 tickets to the premiere of their film. That went so well that soon Sundance partnered with YouTube to do the YouTube LiveLabs. You can see where this kept going, and now, unless you get into one of these Festudios, you are kinda shit outta luck.

By the way, in 2014 the entire system for documentaries collapsed. Sundance announced that other than at their film festivals, no one was watching the social issue docs getting made and they were losing a lot of money. New research showed that no one ever wanted to see a doc in a theater unless it was about music or sports, and that no one wanted to watch a doc that was more than five minutes long. That kinda hurt some feelings, but now docs are made by the bands they are about, as advertisements for their music and their touring. And for sports. Social issue docs only get made now as projects for college entrance exams. It helps people feel better about themselves, and if they do it right, they can get into Harvard or the New York Film Academy. Then they move on to entertainment, make docs for bands or NASCAR, go into advertising, become an investment banker or become a Degenerate.

Yep, those of us not in this system are now known as Degenerates – “indie” is now trademarked by Sundance, so we took the label used in China for unsanctioned films and we all show our films through Bittorrent on the DarkNet via the FreedomBox. The billionaire producer Karin Chien still secretly funds the D-Generate films Darksite, to pay homage to her background as a struggling indie, er degenerate. We all send notices to each other on Diaspora, the underground social network of the DarkNet. It was a legitimate open source service before the government found out that a lot of their users were talking about Bradley Manning, and so they got shut down from PepsiNet and soon the other two servers shut them down as well. Not long after, Obama told everyone that opensource was hurting business and the government, and that ended that whole movement. Except the OpenSource education programs of MIT and Harvard – those were exempted so we would have some college for people to attend for free since only the top 1% of society could afford, or pass the entrance exams for, real universities.

So, now I’m a Degenerate Filmmaker. I don’t get paid for any of my projects, but I have a fun time doing them, and when my friend’s donate to me on Diaspora, I actually make a few hundred bucks, which is more than the Berlin Luftfilm Idols. Most of my money is made in my “day job.” I work as a virtual assistant to a Brazilian money manager. I’m hoping that one day she’ll ask me what I do, and invest in one of my films, but if not...I do have access to her friends list on Baidu.

Conclusion to 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts

2011-04-04T15:19:00.006-04:00

Over the past week, I've been posting every few days about the future of the arts. None of what I brought up here was meant to be ground-breaking, but rather, was meant to be a summary of some key trends of the current moment that will likely have a profound impact on the arts (even if the trends aren't in and of themselves all that profound). I was hoping to spark some interest in the topic, and in the book where these thoughts first appeared: 20 Under 40.

In the original chapter for 20 Under 40, I ended with a conclusion that I won't print in its entirety here. Briefly, I argued that with these changes and trends come great responsibility for artists and arts organizations. We have a chance now to help shape the future not just of the arts, but of society. As I said in the book:

Perhaps the greatest threat to the digital future is society’s lack of imagination. What is needed most now is an ability to imagine what might come next, instead of trying to bend digital change to fit preconceived notions of the world. Herein lies the heart of why the arts sector must take the lead in these debates by experimenting with what’s next in technology.

The arts sector is well positioned to put forth innovations that harness the demand for participatory culture, for relationship and community building, and for connecting audiences more directly with artists. Such innovations can help people find the art and culture they desire and curate experiences that lead to discovery. They can help insure that democratic critical discourse remains an important facet of our cultural experience. Unless the arts sector takes an active role in creating the future, a new era of digital sameness may be the best we get, and our society will be the poorer for it.

My hope is that this chapter, and this series of articles on it will help spark some dialogue about the role of the arts in our future. You can check out each of the posts here, or buy the 20 Under 40 anthology here.

Editors Note: Oops, I forgot that I had promised to hint at three more key trends that I didn't cover in the book. This last bit was added after my original post:

I didn't have space in the chapter to cover the 10 things I think are vital changes. Here's the final three:

8. Diversity - The US is much more diverse than its current cultural marketplace. Arts organizations pay lip service to diversity all the time, but not enough is being done and audiences are changing and expect more options.

9. Global - We are a globally interconnected society now. I have more in common with people who share my tastes and cultural interests in Iceland (or Kenya, or....) than I do with my neighbors. Arts organizations need to think of whether they serve a global audience (not all will) and how they can do this more easily. Corporations ignore the state now, and perhaps so should we. In addition, we learn about and expect to interact with more global culture.

10. Remix - It's not just for music and video. Remix as a concept is seeping into other areas of culture and needs to be explored, encouraged and embraced by more arts organizations.

Bonus 11. Mobile - Ok, this one is obvious. Do I need to explain further?

Electracy: The New, New Media Literacy - Trend 7 of 7 for Future of Arts

2011-04-04T10:38:00.002-04:00

This is part eight in an ongoing series of posts on 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts. Originally published (and partially reprinted here with permission of the publisher) in the book: 20 Under 40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. I'm presenting selections from each trend, and you can follow the whole post series from here. If you are interested in these arguments, check out and think about purchasing the book here.

The New, New Media Literacy: Electracy

Digital technology has changed many things, but it has done more than give society nifty new gadgets and new ways to connect. Noted theorist Greg Ulmer has proposed that through digital technology civilization has shifted from orality to literacy to electracy—where all thought, processes, writing, storytelling, and business practices are based on or mediated by electronic, visual, motion media communication. This is not media literacy, but rather a paradigmatic shift which the cultural sector should not just be aware of but should be leading, as the changes electracy will bring about may profoundly alter the world.

Linguist Walter Ong described the change from orality to literacy and how this altered society’s perception of the world. This paradigm shift changed the nature not just of communication, but of religion, art, politics, and other processes. Culture could now be written down and passed along, instead of repeated through folk-tales. News could spread via print, altering the shape of nations. Detailed instructions could be put in a book and learned not through lengthy apprenticeship but through study. All the world’s knowledge could be archived and stored in physical libraries. The very notion of who and what human beings are transformed as cultures became literate.

Likewise, humanness will change as populations shift from literate to electrate societies. Knowledge, religion, culture, and power will be altered in ways that can’t yet be comprehended. The tensions this shift will bring are already visible, for example, in the debates among parents and teachers over the impact of gaming on children’s literacy. The shift to electracy also threatens existing structures and challenges ideas of ownership through copyright, the nature of much work, the value of many goods, and will likely influence widely accepted notions of currency. Electracy gives new powers both to rebellion and to state control. It alters the notion of communication and the nature of privacy. Of course moving towards electracy also affects what people create and how they interact with their culture. The full scope of these permutations are only now becoming apparent but will likely continue to manifest as society develops and responds to the next iteration of the evolution of digital technology.

Where this leads next is uncertain. While literacy shaped laws, education, religion, culture, and politics it was also shaped by these same forces. So too will electracy be altered by society’s current beliefs, fears, and very often, by who is in power.

When decisions are being made about digital technology, decisions are also being made about the future of how society will think, conduct business, interact, make and enjoy art, and how individuals will behave as social beings. There is much danger that many of the possibilities of digital will be thwarted by incumbents who are threatened by the changes digital might bring. One sees this most clearly, thus far, in the battles over network neutrality, copyright, security, and privacy. These issues are important to arts leaders—because the decisions that take place today will likely affect the possible future(s) the cultural sector may experience tomorrow, as well as the legacy it will leave behind.

Next Up: Conclusions and Hints at 3 Other Important Trends Not in the Chapter.

In a world of Free, the Future Lies in Find: Trend 6/7 Future Arts

2011-03-30T17:36:00.005-04:00

This is part seven in an ongoing series of posts on 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts. Originally published (and partially reprinted here with permission of the publisher) in the book: 20 Under 40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. I'm presenting selections from each trend, and you can follow the whole post series from here. If you are interested in these arguments, check out and think about purchasing the book here.

Trend 6: In a world of Free, the Future Lies in Find

In a digital world, a copy is just zeros and ones and thus—copies are free. This makes piracy of content much easier, but it also allows for the legal dissemination of content. Many companies are finding that they can use free as one aspect of their business model, often through advertising and sponsorship support or through the use of free content to attract people to pay for an upgraded “freemium” version.

It is important to note that this does not mean that free itself is a business model—that wouldn’t be sustainable, but rather that free access can be one part of a multi-tiered business strategy. Raise enough sponsorship and it could be mutually beneficial to you, your audience, and Target to make museum entrance free one night a week (which is not a novel concept).

Of course, at the end of the day, there truly is nothing for free. Someone pays to produce the content, or to host the video of the performance and deliver it over the Internet. Every arts administrator knows the costs of artistic production well, and a quick criticism of the free model is to point out that artists need to be paid. While this is true, perhaps there might be new models to be explored that take advantage of the economics of free. In fact, many artists have begun experimenting already, and some are finding success.

photo © 2009 PopTech | more info (via: Wylio

Zoe Keating, an avant-garde cellist, was able to join the top ranks of Twitter with more than 1.3 million followers, and can now ask her fans to donate money directly to her so she can make and record her music. Many give just to support her work, some “pre-buy” a download, ensuring quick, often advanced access to her music. Keating is now able to sustain a career, even though one can listen to all of her songs for free on her website and find all of them on pirate networks.

She isn’t alone; thousands of others use online tools such as Kickstarter to go directly to their fans and raise money to make their work. Others have found that free music access increases their fan base, allowing them to make more money from live shows and appearances than from album sales. Or they make money from merchandise. Artists are moving (back again?) to a patronage model—but this time, one where their fans and audiences help fund their work. Not just through purchases, but through donations and other support to help create works of art.

Arts organizations would do well to participate in the free movement soon. Luckily, the answers to the dilemmas of free content seem to be very much in the favor of arts organizations. Digital has changed the nature of value. In the past, value came from scarcity—it was expensive to make a film, or to buy a Matisse—but in a world of ubiquitous copies, the audience is overwhelmed with choice. Attention becomes the scarce resource, and as the amount of content online multiplies daily, audiences increasingly need, and will pay for, someone or something to help them wade through the digital mountains of garbage to find what they actually want.

If the history of the Internet thus far has been defined by search, its future resides in find. Online, as in the offline world, audiences turn to a trusted source to help them find what they want. This means that guides, librarians, and curators are more important than ever before. Organizations must add value to this connection, so they aren’t viewed as just another middle-man. This nicely dovetails with most arts organization’s positions as a nexus of the art and the audience and as a curator helping audiences find the best work. This is an area where traditional arts organizations have historically excelled. Contemporary arts organizations who focus their energies on being curatorial in a more participatory, communally-minded way should likewise be poised to excel in the digital (even free) economy.

Next Up: Trend 7, The New, New Media Literacy – Electracy

Communal Conversation trumps Marketing: Trend 5/7 Future of Arts

2011-03-29T11:50:00.001-04:00

This is part six in an ongoing series of posts on 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts. Originally published (and partially reprinted here with permission of the publisher) in the book: 20 Under 40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. I'm presenting selections from each trend, and you can follow the whole post series from here. If you are interested in these arguments, check out and think about purchasing the book here.

Trend 5: Communal Conversation trumps Marketing

photo © 2011 jeff hubbard | more info (via: Wylio)When people join a social network, they do so for a variety of reasons including connecting with colleagues, sharing information, or possibly to find friendship, romance, or work. If you glance at most arts organizations’ websites, however, it appears that the administrators think social networking is just about marketing. Themselves. Constantly. If an organization is event-based, one usually finds a flurry of postings just before and during the events it offers, but rarely afterwards—unless it’s a tweet saying “hey, thanks for attending, see you next year.” This couldn’t be further from what audiences want, which is an ongoing dialogue and real sense of connection.

Arts organizations must participate in the building of online communities in a natural way or they will become, as many already have, just so much more noise in the Internet social sphere. This isn’t easy for arts organizations, or for most artists and other people, because real dialogue is hard. In fact, this is precisely the area where one often learns that one’s real queasiness around social media isn’t technical—almost anyone of any age group can learn how to use social networks. What’s hard is conversation, whether that’s in the lobby or online. The entire architecture of most museums, theaters, and arts organizations seems intended to minimize the chance that a staff member could engage in even brief conversation with the public. The architecture of the Internet, however, requires true, engaged conversation.

Until arts organizations realize they must actually participate in a dialogue with their community, they can’t create a proper presence online. While that dialogue will necessarily be different from one institution to another, reflecting different ideas of what constitutes dialogue, it must be genuine, ongoing, and it must have some compelling voice—be it from everyone on staff/commission or just the artistic director or performers. Arts organizations should also begin thinking about how this will evolve over time—likely becoming more participatory, more enriching, and more argumentative at the same time, and likely leading to entirely new art forms which could be co-created by those organizations who take the lead.

Next Up: The Future Lies in Find

Participatory Culture: Trend 4 of 7 for the Future of the Arts

2011-03-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

This is part five in an ongoing series of posts on 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts. Originally published (and partially reprinted here with permission of the publisher) in the book: 20 Under 40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. I'm presenting selections from each trend, and you can follow the whole post series from here. If you are interested in these arguments, check out and think about purchasing the book here.

Trend 4: Participatory Culture

This sense of disintermediation has expanded into what is called participatory culture. Audiences can now easily participate actively in the art they consume, and expect to be able to do so. This is an historic return to the way art used to be practiced—by and for all. Ancient cultures valued communal art making and practice, with the arts integrated into community activity.

For too long, however, art has been placed on a kind of altar—to become a painter, a musician, a dancer or a filmmaker one had to learn “the rules” and follow the canon. Sure, punk rock existed, but to make “fine art” music, such as classical music, one had to learn an almost secret language. One had to take dance lessons, learn ballet, and compete. One had to go to film school and spend a lot of money on equipment. Art was no longer something to be produced by everyone, but something that one had to aspire to learn perfectly. And because it was hard, art became something that was largely consumed.

From today’s perspective one can see that the one-way street of art consumption was an historic aberration, and one society’s good to toss. Audiences no longer want to just consume their art—they want to be involved, to engage in the conversation around art and creativity and perhaps participate in its production. Technology facilitates the human need to connect, share, and participate—and this is great news for the arts.

Through digital technology and sharing culture, legions of people now have access to entire recording studios for free, cheap cameras, and programs to teach them any instrument imaginable. These digital consumers don’t think of themselves as amateurs, but as creative beings, contributing to culture. Each of these individuals now feel a greater connection to the arts and will likely explore more within their interests. In film, the YouTube mash-up creator may begin to seek out classic cinema, or avant-garde works because they now understand it better and feel a connection. They are participating with the arts, searching for a dialogue, and it is incumbent upon existing cultural institutions to tap into this energy and change how it operates to allow for a more participatory arts experience.

Organizations must address this shift in their programming and outreach and even in how they create and curate their shows. They will need to let the audience become more than just spectators. This doesn’t mean that all arts experiences must be participatory, as not all audiences desire the same levels of interaction, but rather that greater levels of interaction should be possible for those who increasingly expect such participation. While some arts organizations are beginning to experiment with programming that involves the audience, or that at least makes the experience more participatory, such as bringing the audience into rehearsals or having them add to a musical performance with their cellphones, the field as a whole should make every effort to make their experiences more participatory.

The value in some of the most successful web businesses today, companies like Amazon, Craigslist, Google, and Wikipedia, derives from the participatory contributions of their users. Users of Amazon gain insight into prospective purchases from the reviews left by other consumers. This value accrues to Amazon, it becomes a more trust-worthy site, but comes from the participation of its users. Facebook, one of the fastest growing companies online today, builds almost all of its value from the participatory activities of its users.

This new level of interactivity, sometimes referred to as web 2.0 culture, is growing and becoming more prevalent in the interactions of most people online. Arts organizations would do well to follow the lead of such companies and incorporate more participation into their organizations, perhaps gaining more value by encouraging dialogue and audience contribution than they can offer on their own.

Up next: Trend 5: Communal Conversation Trumps Marketing.

One Hundred Mornings

2011-03-24T21:07:00.003-04:00

A little break from the 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts posts to plug a great film opening Friday in Brooklyn. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting the folks from Blinder Films at Slamdance a year ago, but I didn't get to see their amazing film, One Hundred Mornings, until later due to the fact that I was on the Doc Jury for Slamdance that year. A few months later, I was lucky to be invited to Ted Hope's This is That Goldcrest Screening Series to check it out. I became a fan.

Now, the film is opening in NYC – Brooklyn, to be precise – at the Rerun Theater. Buy tickets now. Run, don't walk. It's such an amazing piece of work, done so well by director Conor Horgan, and I hesitate to give much of a review, because I saw it with no knowledge of the story going in and found that to be such a great experience.

So, no spoilers at all, but quit reading here if you, like me, prefer to be completely surprised by a film.

One Hundred Mornings is a bleak, horrifying, yet somehow inspiring film about the complete break-down of a society post-somekinda-apocalypse. What I liked about it was that Horgan doesn't sugar-coat anything, he stays real. It's also terrifying. I can still remember minor details that give me goosebumps, but can't say much more without giving anything away. What was most amazing to me was that the sorry state of distribution has led to a weird state of affairs where something this awesome is having a hard time getting a release in the US. Luckily, they're here now, but they only have one week in Brooklyn, so they need some love. Go see this great film this weekend (or next week).

Here's the description from Rerun:

Winner of the Best Feature award at five international fests (plus a special jury mention from Slamdance), ONE HUNDRED MORNINGS is a chilling post-apocalyptic drama set in rural Ireland. Conor Horgan's arresting, moody debut makes its New York theatrical premiere with a week-long run, March 25 - 31.

Upended by a complete breakdown of society, two couples hide out in a lakeside cabin hoping to survive the mysterious crisis. As resources run low and external threats increase, they forge an uneasy alliance with their self-sufficient hippie neighbor. With no news from the outside world, they can't know how long they must endure living in such close quarters, and with such limited supplies. Conflicting worldviews spill forth, unspoken animosity fills the air, and a suspected affair drives a wedge between them all. As everything begins to disintegrate, each of them faces a critical decision they never thought they'd have to make.

The film showcases an exceptional ensemble of Irish talent, led by Ciaran McMenamin (THE LAST CONFESSION OF ALEXANDER PEARCE), Alex Reid (THE DESCENT), Rory Keenan (INTERMISSION) and Kelly Campbell (BACHELORS WALK).

You can watch the trailer below, or buy tickets here.

Disintermediation: Trend 3 of 7 for the Future of the Arts

2011-03-23T00:05:00.005-04:00

This is part four in an ongoing series of posts on 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts. Originally published (and partially reprinted here with permission of the publisher) in the book: 20 Under 40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. I'm presenting selections from each trend, and you can follow the whole post series from here. If you are interested in these arguments, check out and think about purchasing the book here.

Disintermediation—The Audience as Curator
photo © 2005 alex de carvalho | more info (via: Wylio)
Also known as the rise of the crowd, digital technology has disintermediated culture, and this profoundly changes the top-down systems of the arts. For quite some time, arts institutions have talked about making art accessible to the masses. What was often meant, however, was that art resided here in this museum, with a special aura and we, the experts, will educate you, the masses, about its importance so you can come here and experience more of it.

Today, this talk continues, and true, a certain populism can be found in the blockbuster shows of Impressionism or Tim Burton, but disintermediation isn’t just about pleasing large crowds; it also means that audiences can gather around the long-tail of content. If audiences like obscure, niche works, they no longer have to wait for someone to bring it to them, but rather can pool themselves together online and form an audience for that art, often by connecting directly to the artist.

If one isn’t sure whether their tastes are shared by others, they can now find out by starting a blog, advertising it on social networks, and building an audience for, say, European free-jazz pretty quickly. If no local institution is bringing this work to a particular town, the digitally networked townsfolk can build their own tour, bypassing traditional booking agents, performing arts networks, and other middle-men to bring the artist directly to them. The fans no longer need to wait for a review in Artforum, receive a blurb via newsletter from their local orchestra, or wait longingly for their regional theater to stage a certain production. They can speak directly to one another, follow the opinions of those they trust, sample video and audio of performances or exhibits (often taken by amateurs), and coalesce around the art that they like.

Utilizing digital technology, audiences can now connect globally and discover new art forms and artists they would never before have found. They can also seek out more racial, ethnic, political, and religious diversity when they don’t see it reflected in their local arts organizations’ programming (or staffing). Having gotten used to the idea of digital content being available on demand, anywhere on any device—immediately, consumers will begin to demand this disintermediation and immediacy from other art forms and live arts experiences as well.

Arts institutions need to embrace this disintermediation. This doesn’t mean tearing down the walls and firing all the curators, but rather arts organizations should utilize the better aspects of this trend. True, many arts organizations have been experimenting with disintermediation and participation for some time (perhaps this is an ongoing experimentation for most), and many are having some success. That said, the field as a whole must contend with this phenomenon more directly and develop best practices because digital technology has compounded this expectation.

Today’s consumer expects that their content will be available on every platform simultaneously, watching their favorite film through Netflix, XBox, Amazon, iTunes on their cellphone, TV, or any other device. They don’t care about the established systems for discovery and access, and this too means that arts organizations must adapt and will need to collaborate and share more readily.

An audience member often follows the artist, so perhaps the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) should notify me when Grupo Corpo plays next in New York, even at a rival venue, not just when they next play BAM—and perhaps that venue would push their patrons back for another show. Perhaps subscriptions should be offered that allow me access not just to MoMA, but to multiple institutions, perhaps in multiple cities. Ticket selling systems of the future should likewise push content to me not just at my current location, but also to where I might be next. These systems should be “smart” enough to notify me of my favorite playwright’s next show, or my favorite actor’s new film. This sense of collaboration will be difficult because it challenges existing notions of competition and loyalty, but discovery of the arts is now disintermediated, and arts organizations that embrace these changes will thrive.

The Rise of With-Profit Endeavors: Trend 2 of 7 for the Future of the Arts

2011-03-21T09:39:00.003-04:00

This is part three in an ongoing series of posts on 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts. Originally published (and partially reprinted here with permission of the publisher) in the book: 20 Under 40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. I'm presenting selections from each trend, and you can follow the whole post series from here. If you are interested in these arguments, check out and think about purchasing the book here.

Trend 2: The Rise of For Profit and With Profit Endeavors:

Today’s combined economic and business practice turmoil also creates a perfect environment for strategic outside players to unseat established organizations. It’s not that the established players in the music industry, for example, didn’t see that change was coming due to digital technology. The changes brought about by digital technology are so disruptive precisely because in order to embrace the new paradigm, one must undercut an existing, often very profitable business model.

Likewise, it is difficult for established arts organizations to embrace change that might undercut their current business models, but this leaves room for others to enter the sector. One could argue that such a shift is already occurring today. For example, the amount of promotion, fundraising, sharing, career-building, and market-creation of such new online arts discovery services such as YouTube, Flickr, Spotify, Pandora, KickStarter and Etsy alone, all of which started very small and outside the nonprofit arts, have likely had more impact on the arts than any six nonprofit cultural organizations can claim in the last five years.

It isn’t impossible to imagine such services being created, much differently, in the nonprofit arts sector. For example, if a film festival had thought broadly about the combination of cheap access to the means of production and distribution and the growing forces of participation and disintermediation, it could have created YouTube. The site might look somewhat different, offer more curatorial sidebars and probably have a less catchy name, but it arguably should have been possible.

There was a time in the arts world when small arts organizations contributed to this sense of innovation. Organizations such as Nexus Press in Atlanta served as incubators for cutting edge book artists regionally, and the Off-Off-Broadway theater scene acted much the same way, pushing the field forward, taking chances and launching many careers. Today, however, that sense of excitement and innovation is sorely lacking from the arts sector. Innovation, risk-taking, and flexibility have migrated back to the for-profit sector, and cool new ideas aren’t brought to fruition as nonprofits, but as Internet start-ups that capitalize on the access to funding and the risk-taking, free-for-all atmosphere of the new digital economy.

Similar innovations could be developed in the nonprofit arts sector today, but due to the risk averse, highly structured funding environment that has evolved in the nonprofit arts sector, it is more likely that several organizations will get funding from a Foundation to think about and strategically plan for the future of their field. While they workshop their ideas for the future, two people in a garage will probably out-think them in two weeks and launch the next big thing that further disrupts the ecology of the arts.

Building a culture of entrepreneurship in the sector will require fresh thinking and innovative approaches to funding and support that aren’t readily apparent. Few nonprofits have unrestricted income with which to explore new, especially risky, programs and fewer still have enough general operating support to hire and pay the usually higher salary expectations of the skilled workers to build such new ideas. Most foundations won’t fund a new nonprofit until it has been around for three years, require grant proposals that take longer to write than most business plans and they often discourage any risk-taking, preferring “tried and true” programs.

In contrast, a sense of experimentation often, and importantly, without true strategic planning but rather a sense of “let’s just try it because it’s cool” is what works for most innovative companies and is what’s missing (and actively discouraged) from within the nonprofit arts. Ironically, this is what many arts organizations expect from their artists—experimentation and risk—and artists seem to flourish given this freedom. Unless this sense of exploration is recaptured, most innovation will likely be led by the for-profit sector.

If neither non- nor for-profit models seem to work perfectly, perhaps the arts sector should explore new ventures at the junction of the two, combining the assets of the for-profit and nonprofit sectors to realize both financial and social profits. This new space, perhaps called with-profit, as in social goals “with profit potential,” promises a rich field for the arts sector to explore. Such experiments could be undertaken by existing or new nonprofits on their own, in partnerships with existing for-profit organizations, or by creating new for-profit subsidiaries and/or affiliates of nonprofit arts companies. With-profit endeavors could use nonprofit funding to accomplish that which the market won’t support, while for-profits would step in to capitalize on those items that have commercial appeal. For example, perhaps nonprofit arts funding could be used to seed the development of 12 new plays, with a commercial arm (or separate entity) ready to step in and take the one project with the most promise to market. Of course, this would need to include some remuneration to the nonprofit and would require some clever legal thinking, but it could be applied to any number of art forms.

A with-profit partnership would allow a nonprofit to continue to serve its underlying mission, and maintain its tax status, while providing a vehicle for exploration of profit-making activities. For-profit partners (or divisions) could bring in investments, explore more robust marketing and program development with other for-profit companies and maintain an eye on the “double bottom line” of profits and mission. Such alliances are not uncommon in the health and science sectors and should be considered by arts organizations as well.

Next Up: Trend 3: Disintermediation, The Audience as Curator.

Downsized and Merged - Trend 1 of 7 for the Future of the Arts

2011-03-18T11:58:00.005-04:00

This is part two in an ongoing series of posts on 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts. Originally published (and partially reprinted here with permission of the publisher) in the book: 20 Under 40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. I'm presenting selections from each trend, and you can follow the whole post series from here. If you are interested in these arguments, check out and think about purchasing the book here.

Trend One: Downsized and Merged

The economy continues to bring bad news to the arts sector, but the real news is that is isn’t going to get better. The budget battles we see now in the US are only just beginning (and are spreading globally, but that’s another conversation). Already, state governments, and the IRS, in search of increased revenues are contemplating vast changes to the benefits of nonprofit status, and many foundations have had to curb support for such supposedly “non-essential” activities as arts and culture due to declines in their endowments. While many may agree that such cuts wouldn’t be necessary if it weren’t for specific policies being pushed to shrink government (such as tax cuts to the wealthiest few), the fact remains that such cuts are likely to continue.

In addition, digital technology fundamentally changes business practices, and is downsizing once large industries rapidly. Craigslist upended the entire business model of the newspaper industry, effectively downsizing an entire $1 billion sector to one $100-million company. We are seeing this now in other cultural industries, and we’re also seeing more companies avoiding state taxes by being entirely web based. The resultant decline in tax revenues from these shrinking sectors will greatly limit the ability of government to maintain minimum service levels, much less support the arts (regardless of whether this is the correct argument, it is what will be used), and foundations will look to pick up the slack from government – also at the expense of the arts.

As government and foundation revenue shrinks, arts institutions will increasingly look to earned income, but fundamental shifts in consumer behavior make this a challenging arena as well. Consumers have less overall spending power, and more options for their cultural and entertainment experiences. As consumers increasingly find their content online, they expect to find yours there as well, watching your performance online instead of attending it live. While this itself can be a revenue stream, it is also one where consumers expectations are for free and/or cheaper access, meaning online profit margins will likely be lower than any reduction in overhead costs. As these stresses combine, the nonprofit arts sector will likely have to rethink business practices, and contend with radically different economics.

Unfortunately, it’s not a stretch to say the nonprofit arts sector looks like a field of zombies—undead, potentially harmful shells of their former selves, haunting the landscape, unable to live or to die. Quite simply, funders, board members, and leaders in the arts need to take a hard look at reality and make some painful decisions. More organizations need to merge to save costs, end duplicative services, and achieve greater impact. Many more organizations need to be shut down entirely, having either served their mission well or having long ago abandoned any real hope of having a meaningful impact. These conversations aren’t easy, but they need to be had on a field-wide level. Even those organizations that are healthy enough to survive will need to consider downsizing their costs and refocusing their energies as the dwindling support for the cultural sector is likely a permanent shift away from robust public, foundation, and individual financing of the arts.

A thinned-out and downsized nonprofit arts sector is probably inevitable and may actually bring greater good. Strategically downsized organizations will more readily make this transition and might create more sustainable arts businesses. Mergers are often thought of as drastic measures to cut expenses or end duplicative services, but they can also be planned for to better prepare organizations to face new economic and cultural realities, fill strategic gaps, and lead to new programming and greater services.

Of course, downsized organizations will only become stronger, remain competitive, and possibly lead change through rigorous planning. Yet, these conversations are being resisted at precisely the time they need to be had. I explore some ideas for such change in my chapter, and there’s a lively discussion online now, sparked by NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman's recent comments on "Supply and Demand" (that's #supplydemand) and I gave my thoughts here. Love to hear more of your thoughts on this in the comments below.

In my next installment, I’ll speak about the rise of both for-profit and what I call with-profit endeavors in the arts.

Inventing the Future of the Arts - 7 Key Trends

2011-03-16T10:19:00.008-04:00

I recently contributed a chapter to the book: 20 Under 40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. For the next few days, I’ll be presenting excerpts from that chapter here, in hopes to get some more conversation started about these issues, and in the belief that if you like what you read here you might buy a copy of the entire book – or just recommend it to a friend. I’m editing each section down a fair bit, not so much to “force” anyone to buy the book, but because while this remains long, I felt some sections needed shortening to fit the blog format. Read on, send me your comments and please share!

INTRO
My fundamental argument in the chapter is that the disruptive changes we’ve seen as a result of digital technology will eventually affect all arts and cultural activities, not just those we’ve seen impacted thus far (print, music, film). Unfortunately, most arts organizations are being reactive and are trying to fit digital into their existing ways of operating, which mimics precisely those mistakes that led to crises in other industries. They must instead look strategically at these changes and make fundamental changes to their business practices in order to turn these challenges into opportunities.

While there are many challenges facing the arts, I argue that there are seven key trends brought about by digital technology that will arguably have the greatest impact on the arts sector:

We’ll explore the first of these trends next (edited from tomorrow, as in: when I get to it), where I argue that the future of the arts is going to be "Downsized and Merged."

While most of the next few posts are geared for those of us working at/with arts organizations, I do think any artist can benefit from reading these posts and contributing their voice to the conversation, so please do so in the comments.

You can see all of the 20 Under 40 chapters here, and buy the book (or E-Book) here.

Slides from my speech at Sofia Film Fest Meetings

2011-03-13T12:55:00.004-04:00

Image via WikipediaI've been having a fantastic time here in Sofia, Bulgaria. I've met many great, talented people – producers, distributors, filmmakers, festival folks, etc. I've learned a lot from them about the state of film in Bulgaria (flourishing, yet having funding difficulties), of film financing and distribution in Europe (too much to share here now) and about Bulgaria generally. I highly recommend the Sofia Meetings to anyone interested in international co-productions, or to anyone who just wants to meet some great European film industry folks.

As usual, I spoke a bit fast at my lecture and many people asked me to share the slides. So here they are. If you've been to some of my recent lectures, there's not much new here, but some things have been updated, including some stats on Facebook usage in Bulgaria (strong). The speech was a general overview of changes to audience expectations, digital disruption and how artists are using these new tools to build their audience and make new business models. I didn't know my audience was going to be distributors until I arrived, but as I explained on the spot - nearly everything I mention here can be used by distributors, film fests and organizations as well.

Sofia: Inventing the Future of Film

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Reclaiming DIY Slides from DIY Days

2011-03-07T10:43:00.001-05:00

Here's the slides from my recent DIY Days NYC speech (below). I think it went well, and feedback was pretty good, but please give me more of your feedback below. I don't speak from notes, and there are very few notes embedded in the notes section of the slides, so I'll post the video from the presentation when it becomes available, but I do think you can get the gist of it.

DIY Days - Reclaiming DIY: it’s not JUST a business model

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I added a slide to specifically point out one important thing – it needs more diversity in the samples I show. I said this from the stage, when I was showing the slide on Sarah Jacobson, but I noticed a couple of tweets where people missed my explanation for this. Here's the text of the note I added:

"Note: In my live presentation, this is where I stopped and explained to everyone that this slide-set really needs more diversity, especially in regards to women. I searched the web for many more images of DIY women pioneers, for this section and the earlier one (where I show Barbara Kopple) and had a very hard time finding them – not that they didn’t exist, but it is hard to find images of many of these pioneering artists online (especially of the right size and image quality). This acknowledgement doesn’t change the slight, but does hopefully make it clear that I am aware of the need for a new version of this in the future that takes into account people like Susan Robeson, filmmakers who worked with Third World and California Newsreel and more. I welcome suggestions in the comments section."

And I welcome more suggestions in the comments of this blog. I've got a pretty strong track record of calling people out for not addressing the strong history (and currency as well) of diverse thinkers and artists in this space, but it needs to be pointed out that I had this same problem. I also suggested that it would make a good project - reclaiming this history online, and a few people volunteered on Twitter, I'd be happy to meet about this. Just for a quick example, I can link you to Susan Robeson on Third World Newsreel, but a cursory image search for her doesn't bring much up at the pixel level needed for slides. I am sure I could've searched better if I'd had more than three days to prepare these slides!

Anyway, hope you enjoy these.

Let the teens take over arts advocacy

2011-03-04T15:39:00.002-05:00

I've been writing a lot lately about the state of the arts and threatened cuts. I even suggested we need some cool video to help make our case. Well, the students of the Rochester School of the Arts (NY) made one. Check it out, spread their word (ok, their video). Let's put them in charge of arts advocacy in the US - they can't do worse than the current advocates have done!

Getting with the (Jazz) Times

2011-03-01T12:12:00.000-05:00

photo © 2007 interstatial | more info (via: Wylio)
I'm a big fan of Jazz, and share this passion with my friend and fellow strategic planning consultant Morrie Warshawski. About a year ago, he brought my wife and I along with him to see Vijay Iyer at Le Poisson Rouge. We'd heard of his music, but hadn't gotten around to seeing him perform live, and we both thought he was great (thanks, Morrie).

We've now been to see him a few times, and just a few nights ago, I went online trying to purchase tickets for a couple of his upcoming shows. That was an experience I hope to never duplicate again – let's just leave this short and say that the entire online experience for finding and buying tickets to Jazz needs a massive overhaul. Iyer's site is okay, but the venue websites were a disaster (hint to Vijay's designer though - deep links to the actual performance page, not the venue page would help). Anyway, the experience was worth it because while on his site, I stumbled upon this great article in Jazz Times by Iyer about the state of Jazz today – attendance, education and the difficulty in getting access to live performances.

The article reminded me a lot about the independent film world: attendance declining; less and less financial support from the government, foundations and individual donors (but a rise in crowd-funding to be sure); more and more musicians graduating from Jazz programs and entering a crowded marketplace; musicians building followers/fans, but mainly because each new artist is looking for some connection to a possible break; fewer (affordable and accessible) venues playing live Jazz, and a general problem of access, meaning being able to find good Jazz because of these fewer venues, outlets (radio, etc) - so how do people even find the music.

Substitute film for Jazz/music and you see the similarities. I often lament the same situation in film - where are all these newly minted filmmakers going to find a job and earn a living? Here's a great quote from Iyer on the situation:

"It’s a basic problem of supply and demand. In this period of economic fragility, when jazz venues, festivals and record labels rapidly appear and disappear like so many elementary particles, where are all these highly trained, capable, student-loan-burdened musicians supposed to go? And yet, young people are entering this area of music in droves, an oncoming swarm whose aim is true. It’s as if the impossibility of the prospect drives them ever forward."

I've always argued, however, that I'm never upset as a consumer that there's too many musicians – I can always rely on friends and curators to help me find the good ones, and I believe this is true for film as well. With more and more classically educated and self-taught filmmakers, there's more people "in tune" with the history, importance and vibrancy of the medium, so audiences should only increase. Like Iyer, any filmmaker or film industry person, online gathers a fair amount of friends and followers. We're building a little network of indie film lovers. That's all fine and dandy, but how can we leverage this network to greater effect? If we did, could we solve all the "problems" of indie film? (I say problems, because they are always equally opportunities) Iyer seems to feel the same way, and is taking the next step and wondering how we might put all of this together for the betterment of all of us:

"So there it is, in all its banal glory: It’s 2011 and we’re all connected, across generations, subgenres, levels of visibility and empowerment. We have an abundance of young, highly skilled music students and recent graduates who are completely linked in with the rest of the jazz community. And collectively we face a scarcity of opportunities to present our music across America.

So my question is, can we achieve anything productive with this de facto musicians’ network? Can we marshal this virtual community of ours to confront the current situation? Is it preposterous to suggest that we all work not just as artists but as advocates, instigators, programmers, curators—the musical equivalent of community organizers? Can we imagine a “Field of Dreams” model where we, with our massive network, build the very nationwide jazz infrastructure that we’ve been waiting for?"

Great question, great spirit. I think the answer is an obvious yes, but I'd go a step further - given that we have multiple networks of artists, all struggling with the same problems across multiple disciplines, how much greater impact on the world could we all have if we joined together. It used to be hard to link such disparate groups, but it is now (so obviously) so much easier. Disconnected communities can become a mass movement. The time is now, let's build the network.

DIY Days - Reclaiming DIY: it’s not JUST a business model

2011-02-23T17:40:00.002-05:00

I'll be speaking on March 5, 2011 at DIY Days in New York City at the New School. It's a great event, and I'm really looking forward to this year's conference. Best of all - it's free! That's right, but you have to register. There are a lot of great speakers, and then you have me. Lance Weiler, the organizer, asked me to do something that really pushes people a bit, and I chose this topic:

Reclaiming DIY: It's not JUST a business model.

Soon after the recent film business implosion, a lot of people came to see that DIY made pretty good sense as a business model. But DIY was never JUST a way to make money: it’s always been an inherently political act tied intimately to the ideologies of punk rock. Doing DIY without the politics isn’t DIY. As the world changes in numerous ways before our eyes, the voices of true DIY artists are needed more than ever before. This talk will put the politics back in DIY.

That's the description we're putting online soon. I didn't add this, but I'll also be speaking a bit about how I think all DIY artists need to think of grabbing the social issue mantle back from the doc world. Not that docs aren't great, and I do love them, but it bugs me that anytime you talk about social action, or covering something of social importance, everyone thinks it has to be a doc. DIY is also about breaking down barriers , and DIY makers who aren't doc makers can bust these confines and do serious social change media without being so serious. Or, so I think. Tell me what you think, and/or what you'd like to hear more about. I'm planning my talk now, so it would be great to hear from you while I'm developing it.

Want to learn more about DIY Days? Watch the trailer:

DIY Days from The Sabi Company on Vimeo.

Making it Happen: Vimeo Conversation

2011-02-22T11:44:00.002-05:00

Late last year, Vimeo invited Ted Hope and I to speak at their awesome Vimeo Festival. We decided to each give a brief speech followed by a conversation about the future of film and media - or a few of those possible futures. The whole thing was one hour long, and is embedded below, but for those of you with less time on your hands, the trusty folks at Vimeo have edited together a little highlights reel that clocks in under ten minutes. If you take the time to watch either video, I'd welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Making it Happen (Highlights) from Vimeo Festival on Vimeo.

Here's the full length version

Making it Happen from Vimeo Festival on Vimeo.

Save the NEA

2011-02-16T16:34:00.004-05:00

It's that time again, when we get to play another round of "Culture Wars: Extreme Nincompoop, Edition X." That's right, you thought that we were done with the cretins who think the arts are a bunch of fluff and that they shouldn't be supported by tax payers money, but we're not. They were just napping, folks, and the culture war still rages.

I'm not going to explain why the arts matter, how little of our money goes to support the arts, how they finally have a rocking staff in place at the NEA or any of those things. I'm assuming my readers aren't dumb (try getting that respect from the regular media) and that you're up to speed on such matters, but perhaps have been so consumed keeping track of the revolutions going on in the Middle East via Al Jazeera English that you have missed the latest developments. That's the only reason I can think of for why we're not hearing more about this from the arts community. Hmmm, what's going on here.

Okay, anyway, here's the quick and dirty: Many State arts agencies have been recently cut - yes, entirely - in a few states and a few more are rumored to be following shortly. Now, the Republicans are threatening to eliminate the NEA entirely (and CPB) from the budget. Yes, it's true. You can read about it here and get active here (just don't expect a hip website or interesting campaign, mind you). I'm also linking some text Sundance sent out about it below.

You should care, you should get active, but I think we need to do more. I'm worried, however, that we can't or won't have much real impact, even if we keep their funding. I've been arguing that arts organizations need to prepare for this for quite some time, and I even wrote a chapter about it recently. I've suggested the field needs to make radical change, because such cuts aren't going to stop. I believe this strongly, yet I consistently get responses back from otherwise rational beings that I am supporting the Republican's arguments by calling attention to these problems and arguing we should change our business models. Good grief people - pointing out reality is not supporting their arguments, it is being practical. Part of that realism involves noticing things like the fact that when Obama came to office he appointed a big, gigantic brain trust of arts people to suggest policy changes. They recommended big things. Nothing happened. It means realizing that if Americans for the Arts only has an email campaign list of 50,000 people (thanks Leonard), we're in serious trouble. It means that everything we've done in terms of advocacy for the arts has largely been a waste of time.

We need more creative responses. Perhaps we need to put the artists in charge for once. Perhaps we need to recognize that not only do we need to rally and support the NEA, but that culture might just be the only thing that can pull us out of the continuing malaise in this country (you know, the one everyone but Wall Street is still in) and will definitely be the only thing remembered about this country when we're no longer relevant (I give that about 50 years, if it didn't pass 5 years ago....).

Yes, that's why the Republicans want to kill art - because it truly matters more than any of their bloviating nonsense. So, I'd really like to hear some good ideas for how to change the conversation. How to win this war. How to get a video about the need for the arts to go as viral as some kid biting his brother's finger. How to get a Kickstarter campaign started for a new, true Endowment for the Arts untouched by the grubby hands of either party.

That would be pretty cool.

In the meantime, listen to Keri Putnam of Sundance and do the following (from her email blast):

"

What you and I can and must do:

Call your member of Congress NOW at 202-225-3121 and tell your representative that you oppose any and all amendments to cut NEA funding.

If you are uncertain as to who represents you in Congress, click here.

Remember! Congress is made up of ELECTED officials. They are there to represent us.
Share this email with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues... everyone.

On behalf of the staff, alumni and Board of Trustees of Sundance Institute, and artists everywhere, thank you for taking action."

Beyond the Game, VoDo and Cinema Purgatorio

2011-02-11T09:23:00.005-05:00

As I've mentioned before, I am a big fan of VoDo - the folks who are using PTP sharing as a way to get money to filmmakers. If you haven't checked them out, you should, but the short version is that you can get their films for free, just like a pirate does, but they've built an easy mechanism for you to donate money to that film. They've also built a reward system, the Do, for those who share these films via social networks, spend money on films, etc.

I've not written as much (at all?) about another company I like, called Cinema Purgatorio (CP for short). CP was founded by Ray Privett, a very smart, capable distributor who is a true filmmaker's friend. He has done everything from running the Pioneer Theater (and making sure filmmakers got paid there before it went downhill (without him)), to working with distributors, theaters, etc. CP is a filmmaker friendly distributor - a very rare thing - and he prefers to work with the quirky, little films (usually) that need special care and attention in finding their way in the marketplace. And he does an amazing job with these films. Check out his website, he's currently working on Zenith, a great transmedia project by Vlad Nikolic, and he's done films like Christmas on Mars featuring the Flaming Lips and Bjork's Voltaic concert film. His website sums up his company like this:

"Cinema Purgatorio brings movies to select audiences via custom-crafted theatrical and semi-theatrical releases (including press campaigns), and mass audiences via output VOD and disc deals. Every season, Cinema Purgatorio films screen publicly in more than 40 cities; be on the VOD menus of over 10 million homes; and are released far and wide on DVD and Blu-Ray."

Well, now these two great companies are working together and CP also brings films to bajillions of homes through VoDo! You can now get the CP film Beyond the Game by Jos de Putter on Vodo. The film, which I haven't yet seen, follows two of the best players of World of Warcraft....and that's no easy feat to accomplish. Here's the film's description:

"Warcraft III is the most popular real-time strategy computer game, thrilling over 2.5 million North Americans and 10 million people worldwide everyday. The game creates an alternate universe, where players challenge each other with a mythically-charged online world of humans, orcs, the undead, knights, and elves.

In Beyond the Game, we meet - in real life and within the game - two of the game's leading figures, known as Grubby and Sky. Acclaimed filmmaker Jos de Putter tracks these Kasparovs of a new generation and a new game across the world all the way to the world championships in Seattle."

I really like that Ray is willing to take a chance and experiment with this new distribution model. Most people are afraid of piracy and PTP, but let's face it, your film is going to get pirated no matter what - fighting it won't help, so you might as well turn it into a business model. It also gets a film seen: Beyond the Game already has had over 300,000 downloads! That's some serious viewer numbers for a doc, and by using VoDO, they have a chance to help invent new business models as well. As Ray/CP describes on the VoDo page:

"Support of this release helps Cinema Purgatorio with its next generation strategies to bring movies to theatres, discs, and downloads, seeing downloads (and torrents) as a "legitimate" release method."

Amen. I hope it works!

You can get the film at VoDo or pay for it directly, and support a filmmaker and a film curator/distributor/innovator at Cinema Purgatorio.

Nonprofit Arts Zombies

2011-02-07T14:00:00.002-05:00

For those of you not following the conversation about the state of the arts in the US, you may not realize that a big war is raging right now with the hashtag #SupplyDemand. Say what?? You ask. That's the running hash-tag due to the bomb (s) that NEA chairman Rocco Landesman dropped during a recent conversation at a convening called #NewPlay Convening. Now, just because this hasn't run up the hashtag pole on Twitter doesn't mean it hasn't been heated. Sitting in front of tons of performing arts professionals, Landesman thought it would be a good time to point out that perhaps we have too many nonprofit theaters in the country. He was right, but he didn't go far enough - there's too many arts nonprofits period.

Trisha Mead sums up the conversation best at the Arena Stage blog, and here's the relevant excerpt:

"Here's a recipe for a hell of a conceptual fist fight. Convene 100 or so people from around the nation, each of whose mission in life is to grow the field of new work for the theater. Each of whom represents an organization that is fighting to generate new audiences, new ideas, new structures for expanding the American theater.

Then place a guy in cowboy boots in front of them (who happens to control the largest pool of public arts funding in the U.S.) and have him baldly state, "Look. You can either increase demand or decrease supply. Demand is not going to increase, so it is time to think about decreasing supply."" (italics mine)

He went on to cite some statistics and explain his comments further in a blog post....yes, the NEA has a blog, who knew?! The post is worth reading, and if you care about this stuff, you should probably also read the good responses from Diane Ragsdale, Edward Clapp, and Aaron Andersen (and the negative reactions). But most of the reactions I've found online seem to be that Landesman should never have thought such thoughts, especially as someone in a public role of supporter of the Nation's art, and that no one should ever believe we have too many nonprofits in theater-ville.

Many people argued against Landesman that you can increase demand, and perhaps this is true. I tend to believe so in my little indie film world, so let's just concede that yes, perhaps you can increase demand. Doesn't matter though, as you'd have to completely reshape the sector, if not the world, to increase demand to a level that would sustainably support the number of nonprofit theaters we have in the US. On top of that, the same can be said about nonprofit arts organizations generally - again, too many.

Let's just look at my arena - media arts. By my count, there are thirty-nine media arts organizations in New York City alone that are members of NAMAC, the organization which represents nonprofit media arts organizations. Not every media arts organization joins NAMAC, however, and some of the bigger names in the sector aren't on the list. Neither are the majority of the many, many film festivals in the City. Now, we can all probably agree that having a diversity of voices is great, and that audiences and filmmakers in NYC are well-served by having so many options for seeing work or getting support. But more than a few of these organizations are on a constant near-death watch, struggling financially and yes, artistically. A few are doing well, but trust me, that's a very few and even some you might think are healthy will tell you off the record that they struggle to make payroll regularly. I'm also willing to bet that there are more than a few that are doing fine, and doing good work, but work that is duplicative of something being done by someone else and that might be stronger if done together.

I've often wished that a foundation, or group of foundations, would put forth a fund to support one big roll-up in the sector. That's right, merge multiple organizations together, and even let one organization acquire the good assets of a few others and shut the rest of their business(es) down. There's quite simply no financial incentive for this now, and nonprofits are hard to put to rest. I wrote a bit about this in my chapter for 20 Under 40. Here's an excerpt from that:

"Unfortunately, it’s not a stretch to say the nonprofit arts sector looks like a field of zombies—undead, potentially harmful shells of their former selves, haunting the landscape, unable to live or to die. Quite simply, funders, board members, and leaders in the arts need to take a hard look at reality and make some painful decisions. More organizations need to merge to save costs, end duplicative services, and achieve greater impact. Many more organizations need to be shut down entirely, having either served their mission well or having long ago abandoned any real hope of having a meaningful impact. These conversations aren’t easy, but they need to be had on a field-wide level. Even those organizations that are healthy enough to survive will need to consider downsizing their costs and refocusing their energies as the dwindling support for the cultural sector is likely a permanent shift away from robust public, foundation, and individual financing of the arts."

That's right - things aren't getting better anytime soon. I'm not a fan of it, and I explain my reasoning more fully in the chapter, but the arts will continue to attract less support from all sectors, even as the US economy stabilizes. We need to have these hard conversations, and Landesman was right to kick start the debate. I'd much rather have it started within the sector, and for us to find a solution, than for us to be forced into a solution - and that time is coming near. I'm not arguing that every nonprofit arts organization needs to be merged or shut down, nor am I willing to publicly share which ones I think should go. These decisions need to be made by the leadership of the arts organizations themselves. They can be prodded and funded in these endeavors by foundations, but they shouldn't be forced. That doesn't mean, however, that we shouldn't have the conversation.

It's not necessarily a bad conversation to be in the middle of either. As I also say in my chapter, "Mergers are often thought of as drastic measures to cut expenses or end duplicative services, but they can also be planned for to better prepare organizations to face new economic and cultural realities, fill strategic gaps, and lead to new programming and greater services. In fact, a downsized arts sector does not necessarily equal less artistic programming. As many arts administrators know, budget tightening can often help one to focus on mission and expand services and programming through new, creative solutions." (Italics added). That's what we need to focus on - new, creative solutions - in these conversations. I'll be adding my own ideas to the debate, and hopefully the conversation, as it moves forward, but welcome your ideas in the comments below.

I Want My AJE

2011-02-01T13:24:00.006-05:00

photo © 2011 Mike Licht | more info (via: Wylio)While I'm on this whole Egypt obsession, let me bring up another new obsession of mine - Al Jazeera English. Yes, I've known about it before - they've actually been active in the indie doc space for awhile, aside from the other reasons to know about them - but I've never watched them as much as I have this past week. And....they're good. I want them on my cable line-up now.

In fact, AJE has not just had great coverage, it's been just about the only coverage you can find that is consistent, on the ground and not moderated by a bunch of doughy white people sitting in America. Jeesh. (and I'm allowed to say that because I am one). Seriously, couldn't any of the networks or news channels have found a few more Egyptian experts. You know, there's a rumor that some of them speak English and have degrees and what not. Look, we're not talking about some out of the way place that hasn't been our ally for like decades with just a few people running around up in arms. 80+ Million people are protesting in a modern country that has loads of good journalists, and we can only find a handful to put on the air.....shameful.

But not as embarrassing as having to watch CNN, Fox and MSNBC in comparison to the professionalism of AJE. I know that everyone already knows just how bad cable news is, but this week really put some extra perspective on the situation. I turn on AJE - live coverage of the most important news event of the week, if not the decade, and with great commentary and coverage. Heck, they even cut off important topics to cover....more important topics happening elsewhere in Cairo or some other Egyptian location, as opposed to some inane topic like Charlie Sheen doing more blow on some hooker's back. They ask the interviewees tough questions and act something like reporters.

I turn on CNN, and I got 5 minutes of former US Ambassadors sitting on the ground here pontificating about things they don't understand and an interview with an American who was so relieved to get out of the country. Then, a big pitch for me to vote on what story makes the news. Wow, CNN is with it man, they crowd-source the news? Who knew? And my story options....
Vote for:
1. Babies addicted to opium
2. Man sleeps with tiger
3. Nude woman protesters in the Ukraine.

I'm not making this up. They even tossed to the commercial with a quick set of images of those nude women protesters just in case I wasn't sure what to vote for. I forgot all about Cairo. Cured.

I don't generally watch any of our news networks unless there is a major global event. Even then, I usually switch over to the BBC or Guardian online for a better take on affairs. The important thing is, however, if I wanted to watch them, I could. Al Jazeera English....nope. I haven't researched this, but my understanding is there's been a lot of politics behind keeping them off most cable networks. While it has great carriage everywhere else, here in the good ol' democratic US of A it is limited pretty much to one satellite network. This is ridiculous and I hope they make progress in getting more carriage now that millions of Americans have been watching them online during these events. As I was writing this, I couldn't help thinking how much this state of affairs underlines the importance of net neutrality. I could write something pithy about it, but I found this on Wendy Seltzer's blog today and think she says it best:

"Moreover, the situation illustrates the value of open Internet here at home. Al Jazeera English, the television broadcaster giving the most thorough coverage of the Egyptian events — despite having its Cairo bureau closed and six of its journalists jailed — is not available through most US cable providers. Ryan Grim on Huffington Post calls this a “blackout”, but thanks to the Internet, that need not be a barrier. I’m watching Al Jazeera English on my computer, through pipes that can carry video, audio, and text of my choice. (So it’s disturbing to see Chris Sacca tweet that he “worked at an Akamai competitor when Al-Jazeera sought CDN [content delivery network: local caching that can help improve network delliery] help in 2002. US Gov made clear to us that we would suffer.” Cable’s limited-purpose pipe, where subscribers get only bundles chosen from among the channels their providers offer, seems an anachronism in the Internet age. We may still want to watch video (and not only create it ourselves), but we need Net neutrality’s assurance that we can get it from any source: peer, professional, or dissident."

Now, I have to note that many people complain about their anti-Israel bias. This is likely true and shameful, but to be expected given their base. I haven't witnessed this during my watching, but I believe this could happen. That said, it shouldn't stop our ability to watch it in the US. I've heard lots of horrible things, and seen lots of bias, on our existing channels, so we shouldn't stop AJE just because of this. The NYT mentions this in an article which came out today. I wrote this piece yesterday, but think the article is a good read if you want to contemplate what we do and don't allow on US television a bit more.

Watch the protests live on Al Jazeera English here.

Egypt, Tunisia, Social Media and Change

2011-01-31T19:40:00.011-05:00

photo © 2011 Al Jazeera English | more info (via: Wylio)The events in Tunisia and Egypt (and now popping up elsewhere) have been nothing short of extraordinary. It is too soon to say what will ultimately happen there, but what has been most fascinating to me, and what I am only slightly more qualified to comment upon, has been what it has revealed about the United States government, and its complete and utter failure to understand what was going on, and is going to continue to take place, globally.

When speaking of the impact of digital technology, I often use Warren Buffet’s quote about the recent economic collapse - that “it’s not until the tide goes out that you see who’s wearing the swim trunks,” and that digital has been like a great receding wave, revealing many a bad business model, or unveiling many realities that had been hidden away. It’s not that anything has changed, but our ability to see and share just how screwed we’ve been has never been easier. I used to call Delta and complain about their customer service, and tell a few friends, and that is where things stopped, whereas now I can easily unite an audience in open revolt against the entire airline industry. It has also been a tidal wave in terms of the way it allows everyone to rapidly create and rapidly share media and have greater impact on events beyond bad customer service, and actually influence the way we live - people are empowered with new tools that allow them to connect, expose secrets, corruption and/or bad political models and to act and possibly alter the world.

United States diplomacy (and failure at it) has not just been exposed to the world by weighty developments like WikiLeaks, but also the more banal evolution of communication which our leaders still fail to grasp - the speed by which people can communicate to one another and suss out the truth of almost any situation. This is nothing new, really. Smart people of all political stripes have always talked to one another about this or that “secret” that no one in power wants known. Now, however, this moves at the speed of light, or tweet-speed, and the emperor’s wardrobe is ever more transparent. When Biden went on television and said that Mubarak was not a dictator, he somehow still didn’t know that everyone watching (and then tweeting) knew he was lying and that Mubarak was a dictator. Biden still thought he had some communicatorial authority, an ability to shape the conversation, but that has long since disappeared. We not only knew he was lying, we knew why he was lying and also knew how and why he had already lost his moral grounding in the need to push this lie. We also know that while once this quote would’ve been a possibly apocryphal story of the lapsed ethics of our leaders, traded over drinks amongst news junkies, or perhaps even a scene in a future documentary seen by the very few, it will now be hyperlinked to every story ever told about this event, never to be forgotten, solely by sheer ease of reference.

Likewise, we could all laugh heartily at Secretary of State Clinton’s calls for openness, because we knew well what the US thinks of openness due to its recent juvenile response to Wikilieaks and its ongoing commitment to upholding the secrecy policies of the previous administration. Not to mention the calls from even crazier quarters to push for an internet kill switch. It has made for a pretty entertaining few weeks of TV watching, blog writing/reading, twittering as we watch the world’s collective “leadership” flail hopelessly at the digital disruptions now hitting the political sphere after wreaking havoc on the music, print, film, media and retail spheres. True, Iran cracked right back down on its protests and Egypt was able to shut down the internet, but these stories are far from over. Just because “the people” are now more empowered doesn’t mean they will always win, but they won’t stop trying. Sure enough, the protesters have used their offline social networks - such as friendships and meeting in mosques - to continue their actions even without the internet (and were doing so before the Egyptian government shut down the internet).

What’s interesting is how these protests/revolution(s) came together. By many accounts, it appears that both uprisings started because of the act of one man - in Tunisia, a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi, wronged by government bureaucracy, who in desperation, lit himself on fire; and in Egypt where it was reportedly the beating death of Khaled Said. These were the flash-points that tapped into an ongoing, slow build of public resentment against an elite, all-powerful government that had a habit of not listening to its people. But the people organizing the protests and leading it forward have been the youth. Established anti-government coalitions (such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), fell behind this movement and are now part of the mix, but the youth have led the action.

Malcolm Gladwell and Clay Shirky can argue all day whether or not social media helps spread a revolution, but something much more fundamental is going on here. Twitter, Facebook and other social media may not have started the revolutions, but they’ve been a part of it, mainly because of the most important factor in these revolutions - a growing young population very aware of the failures of the old regimes, often well-educated but frustrated by their job and future prospects, tightly connected to one another through social networks both new and old and, quite literally, with nothing much to lose. True, there are people of all generations involved in these protests, but the influence of a hyper-connected class of youth has been a very strong component of these recent events. They may be joined by many others, but youth unemployment and disaffection are at an all-time high, and guess what, youth media engagement is also at an all-time high. Unfortunately for world leaders, you can look around the world and see this same pairing in many a country, both despotic and democratic (or somewhere in-between).

The fact of the matter is, Egypt shutting down the internet was in some ways almost pointless. Unless you completely disconnect your population entirely, all the time, people are going to be social and find others like them online. They will communicate and form new networks and common likes and grievances, and discuss them. They are going to make media and share it, and often you won’t even know who its making fun of until it is too late. By the time a protest starts, the gig is up. Sure, China does a good job of censoring all of this chatter, but that hasn’t stopped people from spreading things like the story of Li Qiming, who after being stopped for a hit and run that killed one woman taunted “Sue me if you dare. My father is Li Gang!” (a high-ranking police officer). In the past this story would have been covered up, but it spread so quickly on the internet as a satiric quote in response to all kinds of corruption that the Government had to allow the story to disseminate and just now sentenced Li Qiming to prison. This story brings up the other undercurrent to these protests - the growing divide between the rich and poor.

As many others have pointed out, there’s a new global elite that hangs out together, builds companies together and rules the world together. As reported in The Economist, some 10 percent of the people in the world control 83 percent of the world’s assets. They are connected to one another, and yes, they are different than the rest of us. As the gap between the super-rich, merely rich, the somewhat rich and the poor widens, there’s a growing sense of inequity that feeds the sense that money and power are one, and this inevitably leads to backlash. Again, the people can talk about this, make media about it and share it and the story goes viral. By the time the “elite” wake up and try to change the conversation, it will likely be too late.

Interestingly, the new global elite also happen to invest heavily in the new technology economy and thus own most of the companies that make the real and virtual newfangled toys we play with. Many of these companies derive most of their value from the input of their users - Google and Amazon get smarter as you search and rate things - and while these products can make our lives easier and more fun, most of the real monetary value accrues to the companies and their shareholders.

What they haven’t seemed to realize until now is that while they may get rich and powerful sucking the data, dollars and power from the masses into these social networks, the masses might one day use these same tools against this very system. You connect the people and they might stop playing Farmville long enough to connect the dots. It is much easier now for the rest of the world to talk to one another and realize that, hey, regardless of political party or country, they’re all getting screwed.

Sure, these same tools can be used against protesters (and have been, in Iran, for example) and yes, you can shut off the credit processing to Wikileaks and the internet to all of Egypt, but once you’ve gotten people talking they don’t stop. Especially the young people. They switch to whispers, they use dial-up modems or phone in Tweets, pass notes through cell doors, but once they’ve shared the truth about the emperor (whichever “truth” they’ve chosen to believe), they don’t shut up.

The revolutions in Tunisia and now in Egypt are responses to very real oppression. You can’t overstate how different things are there from many other places in the world. The problems of disaffected youth in Europe, or the grievances of any given social network may pale in comparison (though not always), but it would be foolish to think that this political disruption won’t spread, in different fashion and at a different pace, to other parts of the world. There are many other countries with an educated youth that can’t find jobs, and that feel the older generations have squandered their future. There are many of different ages who agree with them. Even the magazines of the elite (it’s called The Economist for a reason) recognize that there’s been a growing gulf between the haves and the have nots and that historically, this has led to some bad things. Mix in the speed of communication and ease of connecting disparate groups that the internet offers and you’ve put an interesting spin on this old tale.

In America, the first of the groups to wake up to this reality were the youth who came out in droves for Obama. It’s hard to remember now, but he was a long-shot that only became the great hope after a lot of young, tech savvy people with time on their hands started pushing for him. Ironically, however, many of them now feel disillusioned and the torch has been passed to (grabbed back by?) the largely white, conservative, older, middle and lower class who form the Tea Party (the upper class just funds them). You couldn’t get a much different group than the protesters in the Middle East, but strange things happen in America. Many years ago, they would have been dismissed as just another John Birch Society, but through a mix of social media connection and activism, mixed with some old-fashioned (and borrowed) organizing, they’ve got their agenda on, well, ours. Back in the day, Rick Santelli’s rant from the Chicago trading floor would have inspired a small portion of the viewers of CNBC and perhaps some back-room discussions at think-tanks. Its impact would have only come after years or talking and organizing, but it formed an entirely new political party in the span of just a few weeks (a dire economy, Black president, Hispanic justice and openly gay senator helped fan the fire). Like them or loathe them, the Tea Party is just one harbinger of more to come.

The Tea Party is, to many onlookers, a strange, convoluted backlash to the changing face of America (I know that’s not how they see it, but that’s not the point). Look around America though, and there are a lot of other disaffected, upset people who aren’t represented in our political class or conversation at all (most of whom also raise the blood pressure of those in the Tea Party). They are talking, and while they may be stupefied and coddled by their American Idol and easy, consumerist access to anything they want, anytime they want, they are also starting to talk to one another much more often and that can only lead in one direction - more self- and group-awareness, and that usually leads to change.

In some cases, this will just mean little protests, as we see now with the LGBT community, and their supporters, fighting back against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Soon, however, things could get interesting. What happens when the young wives of incarcerated men, usually flung around the country and very unimportant politically, can connect to one another online and form a voting block? What happens when Latinos, African-Americans, Asians and other people of diverse backgrounds (who also trend young) realize that not only are they now the majority in 10 of our major cities, but that their needs and desires aren’t being addressed by those gathered in Washington (or in Davos). Not all of this will lead to uprisings, or even slight protests, in every case, but it is going to make for something interesting.

The problems in the US are nothing compared to those suffered by people in the Global South, for just one example, but they also pale in comparison to even those in European countries with much less openness, or who have suffered worse through the recent economic crisis. There are legions of well-educated, under-employed people in these countries, and they’re all connected now. While some form of localized political unrest is highly likely in many places, it will be more interesting to see how people combine their common goals, grievances and wills across borders. We’re already seeing evidence of China, Iran and other countries blocking internet reports of the protests in Egypt, and this will likely spread as other regimes get scared. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg compared to more widespread coordination, which we’re only now seeing amongst those bent on global terrorism (or amongst those playing MMORPG, interestingly). What happens when more peaceful (or not), but better organized players connect, communicate and coordinate efforts? Who knows, but it’s something you can bet many government (and business) leaders will be thinking about for quite some time.

In fact, they already have begun thinking about this and planning. Lieberman’s internet kill switch is only a more obvious and public response to fears of people connecting and doing something (good or bad). You don’t have to think about this much to realize that if governments and corporations are meeting in secret to pass things like ACTA, to stop people connecting and sharing (pirated) music and films, they’re definitely having a few such meetings about what happens as this political disruption continues. The high-level interconnectedness of the political, military and corporate spheres was lain bare by the response to the WikiLeaks cables, and you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to play all of this out a bit further in your head. Every new technology that has held the potential to bring more power to the people has been inverted and changed to reassert the control of the powers that be. This won’t be any different, though for at least a few more years it may appear that way, and that’s mainly just because the kids are moving faster with this stuff than the adults can process it all.

For now, however, we’re in a time of massive change to the political process and the people’s involvement with it. It’s too early to tell whether this will lead to something better or worse in Egypt, or even Tunisia, but it is clear that for a short window of time, the possibilities for changing the status quo are better than ever. It will be messy, loud and sometimes violent, but more often just pretty damn interesting. There’s a lot of young people connected and talking, and they want to be heard. They are fed up with the status quo and they can see through all that was once made to be misunderstood. They’re talking to one another and they’re getting louder. Cacophony is noisy stuff, but some of those in power better hope these voices don’t get more harmonious.

Film Fests still matter

2011-01-28T10:14:00.003-05:00

photo © 2010 | more info (via: Wylio)
Apologies in advance to every film festival programmer, staff person and volunteer for my stating the obvious in this title and throughout this post, but trust me, I speak daily to filmmakers and film world people who argue that film festivals no longer matter. Sure, they might give you that a premiere at one (especially one of the top tier fests) can be helpful, but then they slide into the venom about how the rest don't matter, should be paying filmmakers (or paying them more if they already do) and yadda yadda. I don't just hear this from rejected and angry filmmakers, but even from some very established folks.

I'm not going to address the myriad complaints about film festivals here. That would take a book, or a series of podcasts. Instead, I'm just going to say why they matter to me, and I think to many other people - I just can't get that sense of discovery and excitement anywhere else. In fact, I am getting to the point where I don't even care about seeing a film on the big screen if it's not during a film festival. Yes, there, I've said it. Even though I live in one of the few cities with multiple options for watching indie films on the big screen, I often can't be bothered.

Why? Not because I don't like seeing films on the big screen, but because like everyone else, I have a lot of other viewing options that are, quite frankly, much better enjoyed at home. I have more choices than ever before, and better viewing equipment. Getting out to the theater takes too much time, and is often a disastrous, unenjoyable experience (whether at the art house or the multiplex): If I am paying you $13 for a ticket, you should be able to have more than one underpaid, clueless high school kid staffing your concession stand (where I'll spend another $13 for a coke) at prime screening time; likewise, I shouldn't have to put up with crappy seats or a subway running practically through the screen to watch that foreign arthouse picture.

When I am at a film festival, however, I have left my usual life behind and am dedicated to doing nothing but watching cinema. (Well, usually. This recent Sundance was nothing but meetings, but that's another story). I've usually got an All-Access pass, for which I've paid or (for many in the business) my company has paid, meaning I don't think about the cost, or didn't really pay at all. (Side note - it's interesting that most people in the industry who decry piracy have never personally paid to see a movie!) Unless I've been relegated to the ungodly P&I line at Sundance, I am generally able to get in to whatever I want, and not feel bad about leaving to go to something better.

I will drop whatever I am doing, or change what I was going to see, at the last minute for a film that has been recommended by someone I trust, or who looked trustworthy in the line for the popcorn. I also get a (often false) sense of being the first one to find a gem. Humans are selfish beings, we like feeling we have privileged knowledge and then gossiping about it. That sense of discovery, of being in on something that few others know about, is like a drug. I never get that feeling when I watch something later at the arthouse - it is old news, especially now when tweets arrive with reviews before the end of the film. While I love me some Twitter, it still doesn't replicate the chatter between screenings and at parties found when attending a film fest (it is coming close though).

Film festivals let the non-industry, average-Jane audience get this same feeling. In fact, I still believe this is why many in the NYC film industry hate(d) the Tribeca Film Festival - they could no longer hold their noses up when speaking with people about a film at some NY cocktail party and say "oh I saw that first at Cannes." It was a leveler, much more so than the NYFF (full disclosure - I've worked at the Institute affiliated with the Tribeca Fest, so I am biased). I'll never forget during that first year's festival, seeing my non-film-industry friends proudly wearing fest badges - that were just maps of the venues, not actual credentials - around town. They were a part of the fest community and wanted to show it off, whereas the industry hid them between entering venues!

In Park City this past week, I was constantly in meetings. I found myself with twenty minutes to spare at the top of Main Street, so I walked by Slamdance to say hello to the founders. Within seconds, each of them had told me I must see Gandu, that it was already twenty minutes into the film, but I should stand in the back and watch what I could. I walked in and watched maybe 10 minutes of the film and was blown away. I had "discovered" a voice, curated by the Slamdance programmers from the 3000 submissions, and I got that excited festival feeling again (...then I left for a meeting, yeah!). That only happens at a film festival. I've now tweeted and blogged about it several times, and I only saw ten minutes. I am quite sure a few of my followers will now watch this film they'd otherwise never hear about. My parents recently retired to Durham, NC and have started attending the Full Frame film festival and are positively giddy telling me about the films they've discovered and the filmmakers they've met. Guess what? They too will end up pushing a few of their friends to see these films later. This gets replicated at little fests like Flyway all around the world.

Now, many will argue that you can duplicate this effect with event-based releasing, and indeed you can capture some of it - the one night only, special event that you must attend to experience. I am a big fan of this, and I'm also a fan of the idea of releasing your film to theaters and/or VOD as quickly as possible after a festival premiere, but....

One of the great things we've (mostly) lost in indie cinema is the old ability to gradually release a film and build up word of mouth. The festival circuit has allowed for that audience building, but in our rush to maximize revenues and get it to everyone quickly, many people are switching tactics and skipping most of the festival circuit entirely. Trust me, I am not being old fashioned or sentimentalist when I say this will usually be a mistake. We need a lot more experiments with giving audiences access, but that shouldn't be to the detriment of one part of the model that works.

Do I think filmmakers should submit wildly to film festivals and play ever single one before releasing their film online and on VOD? No. Like everything in film, success will come from being more strategic. But this post isn't about windows and new models. It's about recognizing a couple of things. In an (internet) age of ubiquity, where what is most valuable is my time and attention, what is needed most are exactly what film festivals offer: curators, discovery tools, a communal, participatory experience and a sense of excitement. Good film festivals offer all of these. They always have. Sure, they need to get with the program and do more of this year round and a few other things, but if you ignore this, as a filmmaker, you do so to the detriment of your film and the audience's experience of it.

In thinking about the new paradigm for film, and in building it over the next few years, we should be thinking a lot more about how film festivals (especially the regional, non-industry ones) fit into the picture, because they're really good at providing what people want - now more than ever.

Sundance - The Kid's Alright

2011-01-26T16:30:00.005-05:00

I just returned from Sun/Slamdance and have to say - I feel pretty good about the state of things in indie land. Last year, things seemed pretty grim and I thought that perhaps only Peter Broderick and Jon Reiss were figuring things out. This year, the energy felt different. I get accused of being a downer in some of these posts, and about the industry generally, but this post is nothing but happy, so put on your smiles!

Even the Sundance organization, late to every digital party thus far, has come up with a pretty good system for helping out indies. (Late? Yes, I had digital projection two years before them in Atlanta, they've botched their previous online partnerships, etc. etc.) Just today, they announced a new partnership with Facebook and Kickstarter, hired away the very smart Chris Horton from CRM and hinted at rumors of more distribution initiatives down the line. From what you can parse between the lines and from the bit (very little) I was able to pick up from behind the scenes, Sundance is doing this smartly. They aren't becoming a distributor, but instead are building on their strengths to help filmmakers. It's curatorial - starting with their alumni, but they hint it might expand later. It's educational - building on the labs to help train artists in how to best use Facebook Pages, for example. It's about bringing their brand and attention to their artists. No, none of this is new, but it shows a maturation of the space, and if Sundance does this right it will be good for everyone. The key here, by the way, is whether or not they keep fees low for artists, which they should.

Kickstarter is a big name, but their little competitor IndieGoGo launched a cool new partnership as well, by marrying their Distribber platform to Brainstorm Media, they can now offer any indie filmmaker the ability to get their film on every VOD platform for a fee. Yes, the fee is reportedly $10,000 and that seems high at first, but if you have an indie film that will make good money it might be a much better deal than the typical percentage splits of other middle-men. Sure, some little indie is going to do this and not make back the 10K, but I bet at least one will hit gold and fulfill their (Brainstorm/Indiegogo) stated wishes to be made to look stupid!

It was also clear that the business was back at Sundance - in every way. Audiences were up, press and industry screenings were too long for many to get into their choice films, sponsors were all over Main Street (alongside the bimbos in high heels in the snow, per usual) and the buyers have been buying films like crazy. It's too early to tell what the final deal count will be (I can't believe I am typing such lame words....), but everyone seems to agree that things are better. More importantly, however, in conversations with many of these "dead" distributors, as many in the DIY world have been proclaiming them, it is clear that yes, they "get" some things about the new world and many (not all) are hiring people to help build better audience engagement tools and test a few models. Yes, just like the music industry, we're still in for massive disruption, but not everyone is as dumb as they look (or recently looked).

I also heard from many new companies launching- some with "old" distribution models, many with new, and it seemed every Q&A had someone launching into a pitch for their new Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Quora, freakin-robotified new tie-in company. Many of these will no doubt fail, but I finally saw a bit of the energy of SXSW on the streets of Park City, and that was nice.

Even the little indies were doing well. Slamdance held another Filmmaker Summit, and despite there still being a couple people in the audience just learning about using the crowd (for funding, distribution, etc), it was also clear that 95% of the audience was smarter than the panelists this time around (okay, they're always smarter than me). Lance Weiler could talk about transmedia without an hour-long definition (that's his project in the photo above), and no one seemed to blink when Greg Pak showed off his comic book and we learned that the Ford Foundation was behind his transmedia vision (Vision Machine, that is). Hell, even Levi's is in the transmedia game with Miss Representation by Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

But probably my favorite thing was that the mood among the DIY indies was so upbeat. People were clearly ready to make their own new system, they have the tools and case studies to help them and were, frankly, completely unafraid of the new world order. I've always hung around this crowd a bit, so I get that people have been happily doing DIY for a long time, but this time it was clear that DIY had gone mainstream. People are slowly starting to "get it" a bit more and every single day I learned something new from a filmmaker doing something different. That's a good thing.

Another good thing this year was that Sundance had "31 documentaries, narrative features, and short films featuring diverse stories that include African and African American talent and/or directors in this year's line-up" according to the Blackhouse Foundation. I think the number of directors was 18, but I'm not sure; anyway, that's great for Sundance. I'd like to know the percentages for other diversity statistics, but it's great to see the nation's premiere film fest looking more like the rest of the country (note: they have had other good years for this too). While it remains difficult to convince Hollywood (or even Indiewood) to make certain stories, and there remains quite a power imbalance, the sentiment of the panel that I was on at the Blackhouse was clear - it's never been a better time to be a diverse filmmaker, make a diverse film and/or find its audience than now.

I was also pretty upbeat about the festival because I discovered a new writing talent in Alicia Van Couvering in Filmmaker Magazine. New to me, that is - she's the producer of one of the most popular movies of the indie world this year, Tiny Furniture, but hey, I don't get out much. Her article on a certain tendency of the American indie film (turn of phrase hat tip: Robert Ray and Truffaut) as of late is quite simply some of the best writing on indie film out there right now. This paragraph might be the single best paragraph on American Indie Film that I have ever read, in an article that comes darn close as well:

Let’s define the circumference of the navel at which we’re gazing (turn of phrase hat tip: James Ponsoldt.) Most Sundance films are directed by members of an extremely small urban artistic class seeking respect within their own tiny community. The reach of these films only occasionally spreads beyond the walls of the New York and Los Angeles neighborhoods where their makers reside. (italics mine) They are a concentrated example of a whole swath of American youth experiencing periods of extended adolescence — choosing careers late, marrying late, buying property late. Like some bizarre capitalist mutation on red diaper babies, these young people are encouraged since birth to find their inner specialness and sing their special song to the world. The fact that the world does not, in fact, want to hear their song, and worse yet, that they have no special song to sing, sends them reeling into a whirlpool of thwarted narcissism. It is, to be sure, the bubbliest of champagne problems.

What makes it even better is that she goes on to redeem this same tendency by showing that masterful filmmakers can make this a legitimate problem to explore. That said, the problem I have italicized above is a real one. It's why we need more diverse voices and it's why I am also glad that Gandu by Q was the only (bit of) film I saw while in Park City. Yes, unfortunately for me, I was in Park City for meetings, and even with a badge I only saw 15 minutes of one film (and 20 minutes past its start time) at Slamdance. I walked into the back, having been tipped off by some folks that it was gold. I am quite positive based on just those 15 minutes that this movie is brilliant. It was 15 minutes of pure amazement - punk, fun, exhuberant, black and white and with an amazing energy. It's a film from Kolkata, about kids in KolKata and it is unlike many other Indian films I've seen (but I am no expert). Here's the synopsis from Slamdance, and the director's bio:

Gandu hates his life. He hates his mother. She is the mistress of a local businessman. As his mother sells sex in the apartment the man has let them live in, Gandu picks the man’s pocket. In his dream, Gandu raps out the hate, anger, dirt and filth of his existence.

One day he finds a friend, a strange Rikshaw-puller, a devotee of Bruce Lee. Together, they dive into a dark fantasy. Smack, rap, porn, horror. And, within that, a glimmer of hope. This delirium meets with harsh reality checks, and the end of the mother-son relationship.

The narrative becomes fragmented and abstract, a head rush of emotion, graphic sex and finally Gandu the rapper getting a breakthrough. We do not know whether it is dream or reality. Surreal and bizarre come together, as the two friends lose their grip and the film takes over.

Director's Bio:

Born and raised in Kolkata. An arts graduate from Calcutta University. Worked in advertising for twelve years in India, Maldives and Sri Lanka. Directed over fifty, winning various awards on the way. Then, inspired by the independent films of Europe and Japan, retired voluntarily and shifted trade and city. Back in Kolkata, Q started a progressive art house namely OVERDOSE, a production, design and music company. He produces, writes, shoots and directs films. He works hard on his sense of humour to keep him afloat.

Here's an interview with him, which is also pretty amazing.

Gandu Q&A with director Q from Slamdance on Vimeo.

Here's the trailer:

Gandu Trailer from moifightclub on Vimeo.

Now that isn't the same niche as many American Indie Films.....or is it? A different take on the same theme of not wanting to grow up, and with a sex scene that's supposedly pretty hot (I missed it), perhaps this can find its audience here too. It plays Berlin next, and I bet it does well there.

So there you have it....my wrap report from Sundance. My guess is this is gonna be a good year for indies.

Photo Credit: Me, of Saskia Wilson-Brown and Gregory Bayne exploring Lance Weiler's Pandemic experience at Sundance.

Park City Conversations

2011-01-19T17:10:00.002-05:00

I'm off to Park City for Sundance and Slamdance, and I'll be speaking on two panels while there. The first is at the Blackhouse Foundation on Friday, Jan 21st at 2pm. Here's the description from their site:

"Hollywood has always been run “by the numbers” and for generations the studio system has relied on these formulas to predict not only box office, but what films, stars and directors get the green light. But what happens when the world begins to change? The early numbers from the 2010 U.S. Census are in and all signs point to a shifting landscape. The old “minorities” are becoming the new majority. So does Hollywood change, or will it be business “as usual?" Join the Blackhouse for this important conversation focusing on the changing landscape for filmmakers of color."

I'm really looking forward to that conversation, but they also have other panels, so if you'll be in Park City, download the schedule here.

I'm also excited and honored to be asked back to the Filmmaker Summit at Slamdance. Last year's was great, but the format has changed this year - less panels, but I think they will be strong. The Summit is sponsored this year by the Open Video Alliance, Workbook Project, IndieFlix, Banyan Branch and the Ford Foundation. Ford just announced a great new doc funding initiative, so register for free here and schmooze at the reception with Orlando Bagwell, who will be in attendance and speaking on the panel following mine. Here's the info on my panel:

Plz Retweet: How Social Media is Changing the Way We Make and Market Movies
Scilla Andreen (IndieFlix), Tiffany Shlain (Dir. Connected, Yelp), Brian Newman (subgenre media), Jenny Samppala (Banyan Branch), John Anderson (journalist), Lance Weiler (Pandemic 1.0)

The Twitter hashtag for this year's Summit is: #fs11. You also must register - it's free, but it will fill up fast, so register online now. For those of you not able to attend, the Summit will be streaming live, as it did last year, at slamdance.com/summit, starting at 1:30 MST and ending at 4:30 MST.

If you are in Park City, I hope to see you there.

Festival Apps - Quick Thoughts

2011-01-18T18:38:00.002-05:00

The annual trek to Park City is about to commence, and lo and behold, both Sundance and Slamdance have apps in the store! That's great, and I'm happy for them both, but I wish they were better - there's a few problems, and more to be explored. I love both of these orgs, so this is to be considered friendly criticism.

First, Filmmaker Magazine recently ran a review of the Sundance app, and you should read it because I am not downloading it. Why not? It ain't free. Yes, they argue on their site that the $4.99 helps support the Sundance Institute, and as a former exec of a few nonprofits, I can understand the need for support. But hello....this is a promotional app, it is there not just to help you, but also the filmmakers. Getting it downloaded as much as possible would be good for you and the filmmakers, and your audiences. Charging for it is ridiculous. Serious mistake, a missed opportunity to lead the field, and I hope they change this in the future.

But at least Sundance did one thing right and have the app for both iPhone and Android. Slamdance missed this opportunity with their app only being on iPhone (probably their vendor's only choice). Again, a missed opportunity - Android has now outpaced iOS in the marketplace and you need to be on both. Both should also have Blackberry apps. I know their system stinks, but I'm willing to bet a significant number of the film execs up in Park City, and those sitting it out for other things, are on corporate Blackberrys and would use the app.

These two quibbles aside, I am glad festivals are moving into this arena (a few of them, and some beat these two to it, I am sure). I'd like to see more, however, as these apps seem to be primarily based around what's going on at the respective fests. Self-promotion mainly. Sure, it's nice to get maps, see what's going on in town and mark your schedule (on Slam not Sun-Dance) and maybe watch some trailers. It would be better to be able to push out these reviews to your friends and followers. Even better if these folks could go ahead and add each of these films to their Netflix queue, or register to be notified when the film goes on theatrical (or other) tours. Even better if they gave you the option to share your interest and info with the filmmaker (opt-in, of course) so they could contact you when the DVD or VOD is available. Heck, it would be useful for filmmakers to just know how many people clicked to view their film, and from what zipcodes, but I bet most of this data will remain the property of the festival (or not be collected at all). I'd also like to see both fests extend these apps later to give new content year-round (their programmers reviews of films at other fests, for example).

Anyway, these are just a few of the thoughts that crossed my mind as I contemplated spending $4.99 on that Sundance app, but thought better of it. Hopefully, these apps will only continue to improve and might, in the near future, allow these festivals to extend their experience year-round and help filmmakers connect with audiences. When that happens, I might spend more than $4.99 (even though I shouldn't have to).

Futures Agency

2011-01-13T10:43:00.002-05:00

As some of you may know, in addition to my solo consulting, I am a partner in a consulting firm called The Futures Agency. TFA was founded and is run by Gerd Leonhard, an excellent speaker, consultant and media futurist. I am joined there by many other excellent partners from around the globe. Well, TFA has also launched a new website, using Tumblr, and I highly recommend that everyone check it out for great updates on the future of just about everything, but especially media and entertainment. Here's one excellent post to start with, Outlook 2011 by Glen Hiemstra. You can also follow us on Twitter.

What Happens When...a restaurant crowdfunds

2011-01-05T11:39:00.006-05:00

I don't usually write up things that are in the NYT unless I am responding to an article or critiquing it. I figure that if something is in the Times, it will get enough traction that it doesn't need any more help from me. Today, however, I read about something that mixes two of my obsessions - food and crowdsourcing, and I think it is relevant to filmmakers too. In an article by Frank Bruni (whose food writing has improved now that he's no longer THE food critic) about pop-up restaurants, he reports on the efforts of John Fraser, the chef of Dovetail, to open a temporary restaurant in SoHo called What Happens When.

The article is worth a read if you like restaurants. He's taken over a space for just nine months and knows that even if he can extend his lease monthly, it will eventually end (the building is being demolished). He can experiment. Have fun, see what happens when....How Fraser is doing this, however, is quite brilliant and barely mentioned in the article (because it wasn't the writer's point) - he's crowdfunding part of his budget and even crowd-sourcing the ever-changing theme of the restaurant. Every month, they will change everything about the restaurant to fit a theme. The layout, the design of the menus, the food...everything. Anyone who donates to the campaign, no matter the dollar amount, can suggest a theme for the restaurant. They'll pick one each month and give you credit. Everyone who donates gets their name on the wall at the restaurant too. Those who donate more get premium gifts, with $2500 getting you a lot of cool things plus dinner for two.

This is the first time I've heard of a chef using Kickstarter. I've seen it used very successfully by filmmakers, artists, musicians and even product designers, but to my knowledge this is the first chef doing it. Everyone who uses Kickstarter gives something back in return, which Fraser is doing as well, but I looove that he's taken the concept further by also letting the crowd give input on the theme. Note that he's not just randomly letting the crowd decide, he (and his team) make the final decision, and they interpret how to roll out the theme. That's smart. Creativity works better that way, but it does allow the audience/crowd/consumer to get some say in the process. Those who have a theme chosen will undoubtedly tell others about it, and this will bring more business as well. Smart. Other artists should think about how to use this idea in their campaigns - you can still be the artist, but getting some more participation might help when it comes time to exhibit that art (film, music, whatever).

I also really like that he has partnered with a composer, photographer and two designers to make this happen. He gets additional creative input, but I bet more than a few customers will show up just because they like that composer's work, or are his friends. Sure, every restaurant works with designers, but what's different here is that they are a central part of the team. They are part of the advertising, and part of the fundraising and (presumably from how things are written) they are creatively and economically involved in many aspects of the idea. Wouldn't it be great if this is how we thought of our crew on a film - as partners, not just someone hired for the month (or day, and yes, I know this partnership notion is sometimes true for films too). Wouldn't it be great if every restaurant had a composer making music that fit the food, instead of just blaring whatever the hostess picked that night?

Anyway, I like the way Fraser is approaching this new venture. I also like the space he chose - the former home of Le Jardin Bistro on Cleveland Place in SoHo - which was one of my favorite spots in the neighborhood (does anyone know where that woman went??). I can't wait to see how he transforms the garden each month. I'll definitely be supporting this on Kickstarter, and I think filmmakers can learn something from his approach. Check out his video below:

UnLogo - a great new project!

2011-01-03T13:12:00.003-05:00

After my last post, I received a couple of comments telling me to check out Jeff Crouse's UnLogo project. I did, and thought it was worth taking out of the comments and adding this as an actual post. I could write more about it, but Jeff's video about the project is short and sweet and makes everything pretty easy to understand. Jeff (whom I've never met) has some other great projects on his site as well - my favorite being the Godblock app, certifying that a website is free of messages of religious indoctrination. Check out his other projects after you watch this video.

Unlogo Intro from Jeff Crouse on Vimeo.

What I want for the New Year - AddArt for internet video

2010-12-30T17:28:00.004-05:00

Here's a simple idea for an entrepreneur to make a few bucks and disrupt the heck out of the business - design an Add-Art that works on internet video watched through a browser (or any internet connected device) that takes over whenever there's a pre-roll that I can't skip on a video online. Except instead of static art, which would get boring during all those pre-roll ads and trailers, pull in pre-curated artistic videos from Vimeo or YouTube (or Mubi, or....). I'm sure a widget could be made that could do this without the content distributors and/or device makers knowing about it, and it would save me from watching a bunch of crap I don't want to see. Or hearing it, if you made it work with Pandora. It would be a great bonus if the program also added witty one-liners, perhaps from Mark Twain, in place of those annoying text ads that can still be found running at the bottom of certain videos.

Please someone, make this, please.

11 Things on My Mind for Twenty11

2010-12-29T10:30:00.004-05:00

photo © 2009 Karola Riegler | more info (via: Wylio)
It’s that time of year when everyone makes their top ten lists, and I’ve done it before and am adding my 11 cents here now. I could just paste in last year’s list below, as all of them are still relevant, but that’s too easy...except for number 1, policy. Unfortunately, this one is much the same as last year, so to make up for this repeat, I’m giving eleven thoughts here. Most of these aren’t predictions, but are instead just a few things I’m thinking about as we head into the New Year.

Will the film industry start to take policy seriously? I doubt it. Policy turns people off, but if we don’t pay more attention and get active in these debates, the possible future for indie film might get turned off. It’s hard to imagine a world where the internet no longer works like it does now, but take one look at this graphic of what the industry wants and you quickly get a sense of what could become of the internet. This will be the year that this story gets framed to the public in a big way. The Right is already trying to paint the FCC’s recent ruling as “regulating” the internet. Filmmakers are story tellers. We need better stories about why this issue is important. There’s quite a role here for creatives, and I hope a few of them take this issue head-on in 2011.
Will Apple become a rights-broker? When talk turns to Apple these days, it’s usually about the Ipad, and when it might come to Verizon. What interests me more is this excellent interview with Michael Whalen about their purchase of a huge cloud computing facility down in NC, and what it might mean for the future. It’s becoming increasingly clear that ownership of content isn’t as important as controlling the experience around content. Apple is already doing well with consumers accessing content. They could also handle rights licensing pretty well - imagine if any artist could post their content (film, music, writing) and set terms and publishers and others licensed that content through a system built by Apple - in the cloud. As Whalen says in the article about their possible plans "What if iTunes or whatever AAPL calls their new streaming service is broken into TWO parts - the actual delivery and streaming of the programs, etc. and on the other side - - the administration of the copyrights in the digital realm including collecting fees and licenses from OTHER PLATFORMS." While this isn’t talked about much, it’s an interesting theory and worthy of some speculation.
Which indies will embrace the prequel? I’ve been speaking for a long time about how filmmakers can use short video as a way to build interest in their films before the film is released. Karol Martesko-Fenster has put a name on it with the idea of the prequel, and you can see a great example of how it can work for a documentary film with Bengali Detective which is premiering at Sundance. Lots of room here for other formats - building up certain characters or plot points in a narrative film, for example, and a great way to build audience.
Which indie transmedia experiments will succeed? A lot of indies are starting to experiment with developing their story across multiple entry points. Lance Weiler has a transmedia project premiering at Sundance and another in the works (or maybe several). Liz Rosenthal and Tishna Molla are pushing the field forward by holding excellent conferences and labs with Power to the Pixel, and rumor has it some other big entities are getting into this soon. Wendy Levy at BAVC is helping filmmakers learn more about it as well through the BAVC Labs. I don’t think 2011 will be a big year for transmedia - it will probably start gaining more momentum in both indie and Hollywood circles (and elsewhere), but it will probably be 2012 at earliest before the “big embrace,” but maybe I’m wrong.
Who will figure out mobile, social, check-in, rewards and indie film? There’s a few companies operating in this space, but no one has put it together well yet. This will be a gold mine (or three) someday and I can’t wait to see what launches and develops in 2011.
Will YouTube figure out what it’s doing? If any company could use a strategy, this is the one. I could give them a million ways to do what they’re doing better. I’m sure you could too. They obviously have the whole mass adoption thing down, but when it comes to working with long form film and changing the distribution paradigm, they need some work. They ran some half-assed experiments in releasing films last year, and have been making some interesting moves lately, but this is probably the year when they need to put up or ....
Will film festivals figure out social? Yes, they are all on Twitter. Marketing themselves constantly. Oh, wait, sorry, just constantly as the festival approaches or to hit me up to support some fundraising campaign they’re doing. Film festivals, through their curation, are better positioned than almost anyone to build a better relationship with audiences and help change the indie film paradigm. But only if they take social media seriously and start using it to help me (as an audience member) discover films year-round, and not just the ones they programmed. There’s value in the opinions and curations of your programmers. Lots of value, but only if you get smart about social (hint: see 5).
Which trades will die? The last couple of year’s have brought us a whole host of new trades - almost completely online - and some new business model experiments. The problem is, we’re not getting any better information. In fact, if you put a bunch of random people who use the Net in a room and asked them to list the top 100 worst ideas for a film trade journal, you’d find all of them represented somewhere in the mix of Variety, HR, The Wrap, Deadline Hollywood, MCN, etc. (I am missing many here, I know). I imagine Variety will survive, if only because enough of Hollywood will pay for it behind their pay-wall, but it’s long been irrelevant. I actually think the HR strategy to become more consumer focused could have worked, but as it is being executed it’s like they are aiming for Delta Sky Magazine level work. That said, they have some new advertisers that might keep them afloat. IndieWire is in good hands now with Dana Harris (Eugene, who did an amazing job, recently left), and she, and the good crew there, might turn this into something even more interesting. At least one of the others will die - that’s one prediction for this year. I was speaking with a media investor the other day, and we both agreed - this space is ripe for some disruption, and I hope someone launches something new (or redirects course), because man, we need something better.
Could someone start a fund for creative storytelling? Yes, I know there’s things like Creative Capital, but what I want is an IMPACT Partners for narrative films with no redeeming social value. Okay, just kidding, I know that all films have social value, and I actually believe that narrative storytelling is a better way to have impact on social issues than through docs, but you get my point. We need funding for narrative filmmakers with good ideas.
Who will be the new filmmakers who break through and reach an audience? Who will tell the best stories? While most of this post is about business stuff, what I really like is discovering a new voice, or seeing an established artist go in a new direction, or just stay in a tried and true direction with a great new story. Many of these films won’t make it to a large audience, so I’m also interested to see which ones can break through enough to enter the cultural conversation. From what I’ve heard about many films in development or even premiering this January, we might have a great year ahead of us.
Who will launch the next big thing? There’s a lot of people at work behind the scenes trying to build new film companies, transmedia companies, tech companies in this sector and similar new endeavors. I feel like I meet with someone about to launch the next big thing almost every day. Here’s to hoping that 2011 is a successful year for all of them!

note: I corrected the title of Bengali Detective (I had it wrong, as Bombay Detective....oops) and fixed the links.

How not to crowd-fund

2010-12-20T11:52:00.001-05:00

There's a lot of buzz out there about crowd-funding, and I'm a big fan of the practice. I think there's a lot of hype, and not everyone can raise funding for their project this way, but it's also more than just the funds received - it's just as much about your connection to your fans. When I've donated to a project, it's about more than the money. I feel a direct connection to the artist and know I am supporting their work. This is also true if I support a micro-lending program for an individual in need, a charity doing good work, etc. It feels good to know that while you may only be giving 10 bucks, you are giving it directly to someone who needs it (for survival or for art) and helping them accomplish something.

I often support such projects through Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a for-profit company. They take a small fee for their service - five percent, plus a small credit card processing fee added on by Amazon's payment service. This is pretty transparent, and it also seems fair and reasonable. I know Kickstarter gets a cut, but it is small and not dissimilar from what most nonprofits charge when they fiscally sponsor an artist, which can run as high as ten percent but is generally 5%. Take IFP for example. If you are fiscally sponsored by them, people can donate to you on and IFP takes a sliding scale fee - anywhere from 3% to 6%. Kickstarter works pretty well too, so I am fine with them charging for their service, even though they aren't a nonprofit. IndieGoGo is a similar site, and it charges 4% (which raises to 9% if you don't fund your project in its entirety), plus a 3% third party transaction fee.

That's why I am more than a bit perplexed that United States Artists (USA) is charging a 19% fee to those who donate to artists through their site. Wow. Really? Yes, really. That's 1% higher than what was reported in the NYT today, but it's what is quoted in their terms of use. There is no reason that any artist should participate in this scheme.

Now I have to give a little disclaimer before I continue. I have never been a fan of this organization. It's a long story, but when it launched I was one of a group of arts organizations that protested that instead of starting a new nonprofit to distribute grants to artists, the Ford Foundation (who started this) should have given grants to those organizations that were already supporting artists. Like the one I was running at the time (yes, some self-preservation was involved), but also like many other arts organizations. While I still believe this would have been a better path, I finally decided that even if the way it was being done was wrong, I would support the organization because artists were getting more money. I've recommended artists to them for support (it is a nomination process, not an open call) and I've been thrilled for those artists who receive their grants.

In fact, I recently read (in the Times again) that USA was launching a crowd-funding initiative, and I was very happy for them and the artists. Many artists reported that new donors were finding them, and they were getting more support for their projects. Some, while skeptical at first, were happy to report that donations had exceeded their requests. I planned to write up a blog post this week to highlight this great new initiative, as well as a proposal from Ian David Ross and Daniel Reed for a new way of crowd-funding philanthropy in the 20 Under 40 book that I've been plugging here. That post will have to come next, because I've now learned about the bad part of this initiative.

Look, as I said above, I have no problem with nonprofits taking a cut on donations to individual projects. This is fair. I would even support them adding a check box where I could add an extra gift to the nonprofit. Something like "help us support more artists like this, add an extra gift here." That approach was also mentioned in the Times story. I would even go so far as supporting a nonprofit that just asked for a donation to help support all of their work in support of artists and not single out an individual project (old fashioned donation style). I understand that USA has helped "curate" these artists, and for some people (not me) that might be a symbol of quality. I also see that some of them get matching funds from a donor, that's great, but it isn't worth taking 19% of my donation to the artist. Perhaps you should get matching funds for your organization so you don't have to take it from me!

The NYT story suggests that making a donation to these artists would otherwise be difficult. I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Any of them could sign up with Kickstarter, Indiegogo or any other service and accomplish the same thing. Sure, a nonprofit might be helping an artist get their stuff up online, and many artists aren't good at such tasks, so I can even support a small mark-up, but 19% is insane!

Not to mention....hidden. If the NYT hadn't reported that amount (they said 18%) most people wouldn't know. When you click to support an artist on the USA website, it mentions that you should look at the terms of service, but unless you do so (and they know 99% of people don't do so), you aren't told anywhere else about the 19% fee. There's another golden find in their TOS statement too:

You understand that your contribution is being made to United States Artists, that United States Artists has exclusive legal control over all donations and that United States Artists is under no obligation to use your donation to fund any Projects recommended by you for funding.

....

While United States Artists intends to take into account donor recommendations with regard to funding recommended Projects, United States Artists shall have exclusive control of your donation and is not obligated to use your donation to fund any particular Project.

Translation - we don't have to give your funds to who you select. We don't have to follow your intent. What, did the City of Philadelphia write this up? Okay, I am sure they will likely give my donation to the artist, and are likely saying this in case the artist breaks their contract, but in my view, that should mean I get a refund not that they keep the dough. (I have a few other problems with their terms (especially as it relates to privacy), but that's the norm these days with website, so I'll stick to this one quibble.)

This goes against the entire spirit of crowdfunding. It goes against the entire nature of what it means for artists to build a direct relationship with their donors. I have no idea if the artist gets my contact info, as perhaps I'd like to fund them again, directly, in the future. I'll likely get hit up by USA again if I make this donation, as they surely keep my email address. I also can't be sure that the artist will definitely get my donation either. But, I can be sure - if I read the NYT, this blog or the TOS - that my donation gets cut 19% if I make it through USA. Really. This is what's astounding - more of my money supports the artist if I make my donation through a for profit company than a nonprofit. Something is wrong here folks.

We need a better system for supporting artists. USA was supposed to be part of that answer. I'd be much more likely to support both them and the artists they have funded if more of my donation went to the artists directly. I'd support their system if the 14% mark-up over most fiscal sponsorship charges was plainly shown, or better yet, if it was optional. Heck, I might even donate more, if it was a choice. I don't like slamming any nonprofit for trying to raise money for artists, but this isn't the way it should be done. Unless something changes, I can't support this program and recommend that you don't either.

Panel proposal for Sundance - Brands and Indies

2010-12-13T17:08:00.001-05:00

This coming year's Sundance Film Festival will feature numerous panels in addition to the usual mix of films, new media and limos stuck trying to turn corners in the narrow streets of Park City. They usually announce the panels early in January, and tend to focus on things like creativity and distribution, but sometimes branch into other arenas of interest to the field. Here's one I'd like to see:

Indies, Levi's and Wal-Mart:
Indie filmmakers have always been desperate for cash, and increasingly there's talk of a new wallet in town - funding, partnerships and marketing support from brands. Shane Meadow's funded his entire feature film Somers Town through a partnership with Eurostar, and even little indies like Hunter Weeks have used branding partnerships to get their films made and seen. Branded entertainment is a buzz word, with some people suggesting it offers the perfect compliment - consumers/audiences getting content how they want it (free), filmmakers making a living and companies extending their brand. Even documentary filmmakers are now engaging with brands - with the Good Pitch leading the way. This could be great for everyone involved, but does it go against the "indie spirit" to which we're accustomed? What are the ethical issues to be debated? What are the best practices? How do I get in front of marketers? How do I protest this if I hate it? And is anyone actually getting their film made and seen this way? Come join a marketing executive from our major sponsor, Morgan Spurlock (whose film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is in the fest), Jess Search of the Good Pitch and a rep from AdBusters in debate about this emerging trend.

I'd go to that panel. I'd moderate it. I'd be interested in the debate. I am not against this practice either - as I've said elsewhere, I just think that as this trend continues, it would be good to have a discussion about it publicly - at one of the biggest film fests in the world (and one nearly synonymous with branding in the indie world). A quick aside though - actually, I hate panels. I'd prefer to see this as a debate between two people with a moderator, but you get the point.

Edit note - I added Morgan Spurlock's name after Sheri Candler reminded me that his film was in the fest, before I just said an indie filmmaker.

A new role for the film trades?

2010-12-06T15:52:00.000-05:00

Earlier today, I was reading my Twitter feed and noticed that Sundance had announced their short film selections. I had an interest in this news, because several of my clients and friends were awaiting announcements (ok, those accepted already knew from the programmers) so I clicked through and read the press release. All the news I needed to know was there on the Sundance site for me - info on the films, the directors, how many had submitted, etc.

Within 30 seconds, I received tweets from all the film trades that I follow, as well as from nearly every film blogger on the planet that yes, indeed, Sundance had announced their selections. None of them seemed to add any news to the, uhm, news. If we can even call it news, rather than PR - there's an old saying that news is what someone doesn't want published, the rest is just PR, but that's another post.

This makes me wonder a few things. Since Sundance, and any other film festival, film organization, film company, etc. can reach me directly now, is there any need for the film trades to report this news? Especially if they aren't adding much in the way of analysis? I can actually see the argument for the regular press to publish it - readers of the NYT may not follow Sundance, but surely, anyone in the film business who needs to know about Sundance can hear it from their Tweets and doesn't need Indiewire (or Variety, or...) to relay that info anymore.

Does this news merit being the headline of your daily email news? Probably not anymore. Should it possibly be moved down to an "as noted" column at best? Probably so.

Does this give you, as a reporter and you, as an editor, more free time to devote to other stuff? Yes! There's a lot of news out there not getting reported by any of the trades. All kinds of info it would be good to know. Some real reporting could be done. Some digging, and even some making people angry for being a ....journalist. You know, the kind that digs for hidden stories, now apparently only done by Wikileaks. Come to think of it, since all of the trades seem locked in a battle to become less relevant by the minute, perhaps we just need to start a wikileaks for the film business. That would be news.

Now, I know many of the people at the trades, and most of them are good people. I am not attacking any particular trade here, or any reporter, nor am I arguing that all of what they do should be muckraking. But if you take a look at pretty much every trade on any given day, you quickly notice a lot of PR and not much news. We could use a balance between the two. Just a thought.

So now you're in.....

2010-12-02T18:07:00.000-05:00

So, you were accepted into Sundance. Congratulations! Now what?

Here's some Sundance advice that you won't hear much from others. It applies to those who will get into Slamdance in a few days as well. This is not for the established filmmaker with a lot of experience, but for those new to the scene: 1) don't rush things, and 2) look out for yourself.

If you aren't one of the films that comes to Sundance with a professional team behind you already - ace producer, top attorney, producers rep, agent, publicist, etc. - then you've probably just started getting emails and calls from all of the above. You've probably heard something about how happy they are for you, how they've been following your trajectory for years and now they want to help you find success in the marketplace of Sundance.

It is flattering. It will make you feel great.

It will also make you forget any business sense you ever had before and make you more vulnerable to exploitation than ever before.

Odds are good that their interns are robo-calling everyone else accepted as well, telling them all pretty much the same feel-good story. So, beware. There are great producer's reps, publicists, agents, consultants...insert job title here....out there. You may end up hiring some of them. Your primary concern, however, should be you, your career, your film and getting your film in front of its audience. Now is the time to slow down a bit and analyze your situation.

Whatever you do, don't sign up with whoever calls you first. Talk to them. Have them tell you about other films they worked with. Ask them how they work. How many films will they be representing? What will their strategy be for your film? Can they send you references from other filmmakers? How do they handle expenses? Do they fly first class or coach (if they bill expenses to you)? There's more questions to ask, but the point is - you are the hot property here, not them. Don't let them make you feel lucky to be speaking to them - they should be lucky to help your film. Some will walk away, huffing that you are too much trouble for them - good riddance.

They likely haven't seen your film, so make sure they see it and then ask them what they thought about it. Listen to their voice. Did they love it? Or do they just see it as something to sell, represent, publicize? Sure, a good, talented person can sell/pitch/market anything, but even these will work harder for you when they love your film. (A quick side note - Generally speaking, you don't want to show your film to distributors at this point, but that's another post). Very few filmmakers ask this. It is uncomfortable. Ask them what their favorite aspect was and listen to their voice (or if you meet in person, look directly in their eyes). Working with someone who loves your film will be much easier than someone who just sees it as business.

Take a read of your gut. Consult with other filmmakers and friends (for free) and also shop around - there are many people to work with, and even those people who everyone tells you is the best ____ in the business has some competitors who are less well known and who are equally talented. Who you pick to work with you is one of the more important decisions you will make. It is tempting to say yes, scream for joy that so and so hot stuff wants to work on your film, here comes success! But don't. That success likely won't come, but it surely won't come if you don't strategize your next steps as much as you planned all the ones leading up to now.

You did plan all of this, right? No? Here's some quick advice -

1. Define your goals. Think about your goals for the film. There can be many, but you need to decide what is important to you. You need to think about what will be the best strategy for your film. As a filmmaker you have more options than ever before, and as Jon Reiss argues today, you don't need to think about the old paradigm(s) for success in today's marketplace. There is not one single answer here, so my hope would be you've already thought about this, but you likely haven't. So, you need to....

2. Read. A lot. Quickly. Sure, you can pay someone to help you build a plan, but you can also learn most of what you need to know by reading free stuff online. I could mention lots of resources, but here's just three: Look at the sidebar of Ted Hope's blog. He links to numerous online, free resources. Read a few of them quickly. Second, buy and quickly skim read Jon Reiss' Think Outside the Box Office. Even if you don't decide to follow his lead in the DIY mode, he mentions just about everything you need to know. Pull an all-nighter with this one. Can't pull an all-nighter? Here's a quicker read: Eugene Hernandez's two year old but still largely accurate advice about festivals, whether you got into Sundance or not.

3. Talk. Speak with other filmmakers who have been there before. Get their advice.

4. Build your Plan A. Whatever you end up doing, it's better to have options. Determine what you are capable of doing on your own. What can you do on your own - given your resources in time and money? Plot out what that would look like. You now have a Plan A. Pick any potential team mates (publicist, etc) based on this plan, but go in with an open mind. If you do get an offer, it is Plan B. If Plan B is better than your Plan A, then you might take it. You also now have something to negotiate against - if they aren't going to do something you can do on your own....carve out those rights. You can only do this, however, if you actually have a plan.

5. Take a deep breath. Consider all of those phone calls seriously, and then ....

6. Make an informed decision. Trust me, whatever happens to your film from here on out, you'll feel much better about it if you've taken the time to make the best possible decision for you and your film.

Now that you've eaten your vegetables, feel free to resume your celebration!

Video of my NYFA Lecture

2010-12-02T11:09:00.000-05:00

I recently spoke at the New York Foundation for the Arts or NYFA, a great artist support organization in New York City. They've posted the video of my presentation:

Reinventing the Arts Through Technology from NYFA on Vimeo.

You can also check out and download the slides from Slideshare.

New thinking on the arts - 20 Under 40

2010-11-29T11:51:00.000-05:00

Just over a year ago, I heard about a nifty new project to collect essays about new directions in the arts from twenty leaders of the arts under the age of 40 - called, appropriately enough, 20Under40. Having just stepped down as the leader of a nonprofit to go in new directions, and being just under the cut-off age, I had more free time than before to write a longer essay, and submitted my proposal for a chapter on ten important trends in the arts (which I wrote about on this blog in the link). My chapter was accepted, I finally got it written and edited (with some great editing help) and the book is now set for sale on this Wed, Dec 1 from the project website.

We received our author's copies not long ago, and after a quick perusal (to be sure my chapter actually made it through), onto the shelf it went, behind a stack of other books I need to read. Then came the Great Flu of Thanksgiving...okay, maybe just a cold, but I was laid up this entire past weekend, and had more free time to watch movies and read books, and I decided to read the entire book.

I'm glad I did. There are some great chapters in here, with some pretty cool ideas. I'm not going to review the entire book here, but I can say that if you have any interest in the arts, arts participation, arts education and/or new ideas for the arts and arts education it is a great read. I liked many of the chapters and will likely be bringing up these ideas on this blog, and in my practice, in the coming months, but here's a quick shout out to a few that struck a chord, as a way to possibly stimulate your interest in the book:

1. David J. McGraw - writing on The Epoch Model - the idea being that we should make room for organizations with an "expiration date" instead of thinking every new nonprofit needs to last forever. Oh, how I wish this would become prevalent!

2. Ian David Moss and Daniel Reid - unveiling a fabulous idea for crowd-sourcing philanthropy. This one is gold. Their idea goes well beyond the simple crowd-funding models we have now (such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo) and envisions an entirely new system for philanthropy....and they even write the chapter as a proposal for a foundation to adopt their idea. I'm not sure if anyone will, but I've already used this chapter as fodder for some new ideas in the film world. Ian has a great blog post about the idea and this project here.

3. Kylie Peppler - on how learning to "creatively code" is fundamental to the "future of arts education in a digital world." Right on. This one really spoke to me, as it touches on ideas of what it means to be electrate (literate in an electronic world), and because the author makes it clear that coding can be done by anyone - and should be done by everyone - because it is "essential to communica(tion) in a digital age."

4. Bridget Matros of the Boston Children's Museum closes the book's submissions with an amazing chapter about the need for new thinking about teaching arts to very young kids (under 5) if we are to build a more creative society. Matros uses real examples from her time in the Museum to show how adult's fear of arts/creativity impacts youth - and sets their thinking into rigid boundaries that are the opposite of art. It reminded me of an old quote from David Lynch, about how his parents wouldn't give him a coloring book because they didn't want him to feel bounded by the lines on the page - he needed more freedom to create. Matros says much the same, and her anecdotes about frustrated parents limiting their kids creativity to "paint a flower for Mommy" (because of their own fears and preconceptions about art) are poignant. Reading her chapter, it becomes clear that if we want to change public perceptions on the arts (and arts education, importance, funding, etc.) we need to focus on how we teach art to 3 year old kids!

Readers interested in seeing brief blurbs on every chapter can find them here. Fellow authors not mentioned here, don't despair - I learned something from every chapter, but feel the ones mentioned here resonate most with what I write about on this blog, and I couldn't review every chapter here! I'll likely have more here soon on the other ideas in the book. Kudos also to editor Edward Clapp, for putting this all together!

You can also support a crowd-funding campaign for the book (a very DIY effort, worthy of support), and while I've already found the books on Amazon, buying it from the project website will support the effort (and I say this not expecting any revenue from this, just to support the idea of the project). There's an all day launch party in Boston on Dec 10th and one will be scheduled in NYC soon. I'd love to see a similar book just about film. I've suggested my own 20 under 40 in film, and would love your thoughts on this in the comments.

Etsy rocks the docs...and should be in a fest near you

2010-11-23T08:38:00.002-05:00

Going along with this earlier post on the need for new thinking about docs.....I have another pet theory:

It's a crime that none of the major documentary festivals have bothered to show the Etsy short docs. What are these? Etsy has hired a team to make short docs about the artists and crafts-people who sell on Etsy, and while your gut reaction might be that this isn't art, they are pretty well made.

I think they’d have been perfect for the mission of DOCNYC - blurring the lines/acknowledging the changes in the field. If I ran a Doc fest, they'd be featured content on my website...and if you disagree with me, trust me, this would be in the spirit of provocation. But I can’t single this fest out - err, I guess I just did, but I like them and they seem open to ideas so....but really, this is about all fests

Guess what? There’s a few changes afoot in the world: Shorter content; the web; commercially supported films (this is a huge phenomenon barely acknowledged in the fest panel world); an interest in the DIY/Maker community; a slowly changing of forms due to technology...and a few other things. All of them are perfectly encapsulated in the Etsy docs. They raise ethical and other issues for the field - no more so than some other practices, but a good conversation could be had, for example, on the ethics of selling the products of the artisan you are documenting - and this alone makes it worthy of inclusion in a doc line-up. Plus, they work. Short, sweet...and money making. They may fail with this experiment, but mark my words, some version of this is the future of the doc, and we should be part of the conversation - instead of excluding them from the party, they should be welcomed.

Disclaimer: I know one of the makers of these docs. Have for a long time, but no other ties. I bet this is part of the problem - she knows many people in the doc world, and if you aren’t making a doc for Toronto or HBO (etc) then you just fall off their radar.

Shame.

Some of the best content I’ve seen all year.

Here's some faves:

Handmade Portraits: Old School Tools from Etsy on Vimeo.

Some more:

Handmade Portraits: Wood Mosaics from Etsy on Vimeo.

Lucky Duck Press:

A Letterpress Legacy with Lucky Duck Press from Etsy on Vimeo.

Pets with Fez:

Handmade Portraits: Pets With Fez from Etsy on Vimeo.

A note: I had commented here that their Flash cookies were problematic to me (thus the Vimeo link), but after emailing with some Etsy folks I feel comfortable that they aren't rabid data gatherers, so I removed that comment.

Piracy Helps Potter

2010-11-22T10:40:00.000-05:00

There was a story in today's NYT about the phenomenal opening weekend of the new Harry Potter movie - taking in about $330 million at the box office. Midway through the article there's a nice little paragraph about how this was accomplished in spite of some recent piracy of the film:

Early last week, the first 36 minutes of “Deathly Hallows,” about a quarter of the movie, leaked onto the Internet, prompting a fresh round of hand-wringing about piracy and leading to some worries that the movie’s opening weekend would suffer as a result. Mr. Fellman said that the studio was investigating but that the pirated footage did not appear to hurt the release. (If anything, the news media coverage of the leak helped.)

Good to see that piracy has once again helped a movie find success! Hollywood (and the RIAA, etc) keep wringing their hands about how piracy is ruining the business while more sober people keep pointing out that if anything, piracy seems to correlate with success and not hamper business at all. But really, I'd be surprised if Dan Fellman wasn't smart enough to purposefully leak those first 36 minutes - what an excellent teaser to get you to the theater and what pirate stops with one quarter of a movie?

Stop making docs

2010-11-19T16:48:00.001-05:00

Yo, you. Shut up, listen. I don’t want your (feature) doc anymore.

I know, you are offended. So what?

Make me a really interesting website, that happens to have maybe 20 minutes total of video. In 3 minute segments. Let me trade it, use it, share it, on my phone. Let it actually have an impact instead of just stroking your and your funder’s egos. Let it be interesting and aware of today’s realities. Let it be useful. Let it never play a film festival. Ever.

Do this, and I will love you. And so will everyone else.

I’m not saying everyone should do this, but you should. Yes, you. Thanks.

Montreal, Restaurants and the need for better social networks

2010-11-16T22:25:00.001-05:00

Anyone following my Tweets lately knows that I just took a trip to Montreal - I tweeted about the conference, the food, the Bixi bikes...everything. I was there to speak at RIDM, a great documentary film festival that has a new director and that is poised for some really great things. It was my first trip to Montreal, and my wife was able to join me so we added on a couple of days for exploring the city.

This post is not directly about film - but I'll get there by the end, trust me. My wife and I are foodies, and make a point of searching out the well- and not-so-well-known restaurants in all of the towns we visit together. On this trip we had some amazing meals. I'll list them all below the fold, for those who are interested, but what I learned on this trip was that how we discovered them, researched them and finally picked where we ate was not what I expected. The web influenced this, and so did the food sites - to some extent - but much less than I would expect. What it taught me was that in spite of years of development of trip and food sites, they are all woefully inadequate and there remain some golden business opportunities out there for anyone thinking about how to use technology to better "consumer experiences." I think this extends to cultural experiences as well - and thus film, music, theater, books....pretty much anything.

We had plenty of options out there for finding info on restaurants in Montreal - Yelp, Zagat, Gayot, TripAdvisor, Facebook, Twitter, the websites of the restaurants themselves, ChowHound....there's a plenty endless list. All of the places we ended up going to were listed on these places, and there were tons of reviews. But the reviews were pretty all over the place - good, bad. Who knew whether that stellar review of a restaurant was from a real foodie, or just someone who'd just fallen for the hype? Was that bad review from someone who is just anti-meat eating generally, or perhaps they had a bad relationship with the waiter? Sure, some of the sites let you see their other reviews or rate the reviewer, but generally speaking all these sites could do was help us narrow the field just a little bit - and we only started feeling comfortable when we compare these listings to those in more traditional sources - travel books, old NYT reviews, a 4 year old Gourmet magazine featuring Montreal that my wife hung on to, and of course...people.

We narrowed down the list of possible places to 15 or so restaurants, and then did what we always do.....turned to a trusted source for some help. We are lucky to be friendly with a VP at the Beard Foundation, so we always check in with this person for advice on the best restaurants and food wherever we travel. Within seconds, he'd emailed our list to two foodies he trusted in Montreal, and they conferred (via phone, within minutes, foodies are obsessive fans) and sent us back comments on all of our potential places and a small list of a few we hadn't heard about, or that we had removed from our list because of bad reviews online (judged wrong by these experts we still hadn't met, but had a lot more trust in because of who recommended them). We then confirmed with the brother of another friend in NYC who is from Montreal - a double check that we in fact had the best list we could. This was our ultimate guide - the recommendations of strangers we could trust because of who they knew.

This is why I am excited to see the launch of new social networks like Path, announced this week, that focus more on smaller groups of people you really know. I want more of them, and I hope someone builds them for me, because I don't have the time. I don't care what some person says on Yelp. Okay, I do care, but only a little bit. What I really want to know is what do my friends recommend. My real friends, not just all the people I talk to on Facebook, which includes a fair amount of people who I trust for film recommendations, but not for food (or wine, or book) recommendations.

I want to be able to walk down a street in Montreal and see a map of every restaurant nearby and have a rating based on just my friend's reviews. Mitchell ate here and liked it. (He's our James Beard friend) You are standing in front of this Persian restaurant, but three blocks over is one that someone else you know recommended much more highly. And there's a table open now (via Open Table). Here's the dishes they recommended. Mitchell liked this restaurant two years ago, but the Chef has moved on to another restaurant across town, and while Mitchell hasn't eaten there, three of your friends have and gave it good reviews. You starred this as a place you want to eat at when you read an article in the NYT three years ago, it still gets good reviews and your Bixi bike just broke down a short two blocks away from it.

These more personalized options don't exist yet, but they will. You don't have to think hard to imagine how this could also work for film, or theater or book readings or just about anything else. Simple example - I should be able to "check in" to Montreal when I arrive and be told that four films were playing at RIDM that I've been wanting to see because I read about them on Indiewire, two are playing that Basil watched at the Toronto Film Fest and liked and because I trust him I might want to see them as well. I should also be told that Lucy Walker has a new film there, and that because I liked her last film, I might like this one, and I should be able to buy the ticket and if I can't make the show...add it to my Netflix queue for when it is released, with a note saying who recommended it and why. Or just let me know she is speaking on a panel.

So, that's my request for today - someone build me all this stuff. Soon, or I might get bored one day and do it myself.

For those of you interested in the restaurants, here's the list with quick comments, below the fold:

We only had two reservations in advance. Everything else was chosen because we were in a neighborhood and ready for food, and we'd look at our (hand-written, we need an app for this) list and pick something nearby. These aren't intense reviews - no ambitions to be the next Chowhound here - but some quick notes on what we liked.

La Fromagerie Hamel - This one isn't a restaurant, but we arrived at an odd hour and decided to buy some cheese, bread and wine and sit around the hotel before the opening party. Hamel is the place to go - near a great market (Jean Talon) where we also picked up some amazing pate and fruit (that you can taste before you buy). I won't detail all of the cheeses here, but suffice it to say we indulged on the many unpasteurized cheeses from Quebec that we can't find at home in NYC.

Chez Nouri - This one is probably the only true "find" of our trip - not making it on many lists (although it was listed in Gourmet magazine in 2006 and confirmed by the brother of our friend). This also wins for most interesting dining experience. I'm not sure when the Communists took over Canada, but this place is in a bunker of a building that also sells duvets and bedding, and looks like something out of former East Germany. It's not even really a restaurant, but more of a counter with a window onto the chef's home style kitchen - electric range, small fridge and all. He serves breakfast, soups and a few Iranian specialties. We tasted a small sample of soup as soon as we sat down which reminded my wife of her mom's home cooking and then moved on to the Kuku Sandwich, - essentially an egg omelet that is deep green from the many herbs mixed in - I've made it at home and this was much better. He also gives Iranian cuisine cooking lessons, and this will be a stop on every trip. Decidedly not fancy, but a very down-home experience that you can't duplicate anywhere else. It's also very hard to find online, so follow the link above - it took me 20 minutes to find it even with the address and name!

Schwartz's Smoked Meat - This is on everyone's list for Montreal - the Katz's of Quebec, with their version of pastrami - an amazing smoked meat piled high on rye, with mustard, sour pickles and cole slaw on the side. It is better than any deli sandwich I've had in NYC and I am a convert. It's worth the line - only about 20 minutes when we went on a weekday, but normally much longer. Again, nothing fancy, just good eats.

Rumi Restaurant - While not advertised as Persian, this great Middle Eastern restaurant was the location of a festival-sponsored meal on Thursday night, and most of the food was heavily Persian inspired. We shared a family meal that included half of the menu - lots of stews/tagines, beef, lamb, vegetables, hummus, etc. While called something else, we had a great Fesenjun (he calls it Suleyman) - which was a chicken stew cooked with walnuts and pomegranate molasses (and that's Fesenjun for you). Highly recommended for group meals when you can share.

Chez L'Epicier - After giving a talk on Friday morning, we went down to Old Montreal on the Bixi bikes with no plans, but seeing this place, which had made our friend's list, we snagged a table with no reservation for the Table d'Hote - prix fixe lunch - which was one of the two best meals we had here. my wife had an amazing lamb shank with pearl barley, and an amazing savoy cabbage soup. I had veal carpaccio and then an amazing braised beef and pork dish with cheese and potatoes - not sure what the name was, but it was great. Then we had more Quebecois cheese. This one is worth a trip - in fact, it's hard to even rank it number two on our list.

La Montee De Lait - Dinner was at this classic, famous restaurant - and we were lucky to be there at all. We had a reservation, but forgot they had moved locations and took the subway to the wrong place. Luckily, we called, got the address and jumped on the Bixi bike, making it just five minutes late. We shared a few small plates - a toast of mushrooms, that was amazing, a tataki of seared and chopped salmon, a pork croquette, a seared scallop dish and then we shared a leg of rabbit dish that was excellently prepared. With a great wine list, this is a pretty great restaurant, but it lacked the intensity of L'Epicier and was a bit rushed in comparison. Very worth a visit, and might have soared if we weren't comparing it to such a great lunch.

Correction: We went to La Sala Rossa - confusing because they are on the same block and similar - not
Club Espagnol de Quebec , believe it or not, the review doesn't change....- After dinner we went here for drinks and music. We didn't try the food as we'd overdosed at this point, but it is known for great tapas and everyone looked happy. We liked it because unlike every other bar/restaurant in Montreal, they free-pour the drinks and you get more than the half-shot usual in your drinks. This is a real Spanish social club, so it has more of a rec room feel than a restaurant, but it's a great place to hear music in the upstairs club, have some drinks and there is supposedly a great patio in the warmer months. You can also speak Spanish instead of French here, which was a bonus for me.

Fairmount Bagels is in a constant rivalry with St-Viateur Bagel Factory for being the best bagel in Montreal. We tried them both and while they were great, we preferred the Fairmount bagel - but this might be because it was fresh from the oven and St-Viateur had been sitting a good five minutes (never longer, I presume, but not as hot and chewy). Yes, chewy, and a bit sweet. Montreal bagels aren't like those in NYC, and we're converts. Smaller, thinner and a bit sweeter - I know none of this sounds good, but trust me, it works. They are both open 24/7, the bagels are 60 cents (!!!), and as they are within blocks of one another you can try them both easily - we shared one at each with cream cheese (a whopping $1.10). Very good.

Romados - Romados is a Portugese rotisserie chicken shop and bakery. We had been biking all around some back neighborhoods and stopped in quite hungry for a late lunch. You get a 1/4 chicken with salad and cracked-pepper fries for about 7 bucks, and it is a huge meal you can't finish. Amazingly, the fries get even better as they cool and I am sure this place is a hit the later the night gets. Chicken is not chicken - these guys spice it and cook it right. You need a shower after from the grease, but it's worth it.

Au Pied De Cochon - This one's the winner. We expected it to be good - everyone writes about it, but we were very impressed. We've eaten at better restaurants, but only in the sense that they might be more refined. If you want food cooked with love - this is in the top ten from all of our travels. Don't go unless you love meat - while they do serve fish (and eels from the live tank in front), this is a meat-palace. I tried to stray from the standard tourist order, but my waiter smartly guided me to the Duck in a Can.....and I may never try anything else in that place. That's right, in a can (a photo is at the top). It's a gimmick; one which I was sure I wouldn't like, but it was amazing. A can comes to the table next to a big piece of toast with root vegetable puree on it - it changes often, but mine was parsnip. The waiter opens the can and dumps it on the toast. Inside the can is a huge piece of rare duck covered in Foie that has been cooked between the breast and a layer of duck fat (!), along with a lot of cabbage, thyme and pieces of duck meat. They place everything in the can and seal it at the beginning of service and then boil it for about 27 minutes which doesn't truly can the food, but it cooks it perfectly. It sounds gross, but it is amazing.

My wife got another lamb shank - this one confit style, with lentils, and I'm sure it was great, but I was in a duck fat coma and have no idea. We also tried the foie cromesquis - essentially little fried balls of liquified foie and an APC salad, which is a salad with a big pork cake in the middle made from pork tendon that has been cooked, fried and somehow breaks down to become the tastiest thing you'd never expect on a green salad. My wife had a guniea hen liver mousse to start, and it was seriously great as well. By this point, our dessert was a blur, but I vaguely remember it being great - it was a pouding chomeur, which means "poor man's pudding" and is a lot like bread pudding.

We couldn't eat all the food at any of these stops - about half at best, but no one should. I definitely recommend group dining for Au Pied de Cochon - many of the dishes (roasted pig's head anyone?) are better to share. I also recommend adding a few treks up the Mountain (for which Mont Royal, or Real in middle French, is named), and biking and walking everywhere to wear off the food - the Bixi bikes are practically free, and there are bike lanes everywhere in Montreal. If you visit, let me know of any other finds, so they can be added to my list for the next trip.

Making the impossible possible

2010-11-09T20:56:00.000-05:00

I went to hear the brilliant theorist Slavoj Zizek speak at Cooper Union last night. One part of his speech was especially interesting to me. Forgive me, Zizekians for paraphrasing his very smart argument, but the short version will have to suffice as it was a 2 hour speech. One of his main points was about how ingrained ideology is in our culture - we don’t think twice when people call certain things impossible and others possible. His critique was coming from the left (the still proudly Marxist left, in his case), but is pretty poignant nonetheless.

Why, he asked, is everything possible under capitalism and technology? We can go to the Moon, photograph a comet, build a social network that can connect the world, decode the genome, possibly upload our conscious someday to a machine, make space flight available to the rich, we can keep polluting the earth with no major changes because we’ll make up for this by paying for the carbon offset... etc etc, add your favorite new possibility here. Yet, say we want to have health care for all....impossible. Say we want to build a more equitable distribution of wealth. Impossible - that would lead to totalitarianism.

Instead, he argued, we need to look at all these impossible scenarios and realize they are the only places available for real change. Most of what is “possible” is a false utopia. Most of what is “impossible” is very possible and we can find examples buried all around. What is utopian is not to believe that we can have a different society, but rather to believe that the current paradigm can continue.

Now, you don’t have to subscribe to his overall political agenda, but I think that last point is pretty interesting when thinking about film. I got out of the meeting, and found this post from Mynette Louie, who was on the same wavelength:

"Wish ppl would stop telling me what's impossible b4 even trying. Indie film is inherently impossible--we have to try to make it possible!"

She's correct. What’s needed now is a big dose of radicalism. We need to stop accepting the current stru(i)ctures around what it means to make and distribute a film and see them as false paradigms. We need to reject the false utopianisms and design something radically new. This means that not only does traditional distribution not work, but....wake up...neither does DIY distribution if at the end of the day you are working for free to get your film out. You might just be indentured to yourself, but that’s still no better than being sold to “the man.”

Nope, a radical change will mean something much more. I’m not going to prescribe that solution here - I may not be capable of that ever - but I would hazard a guess that the answer lies in imagining the impossible as possible.

Ten Great Things about Indie Film

2010-10-26T12:43:00.000-04:00

I do a fair bit of complaining about the state of things on this blog, so I thought I’d take a moment to post about some good things for once. Riffing off Ted Hope’s list(s) of bad things in the industry, in a friendly manner, here’s my top ten list for good things going on. Sure, there’s more than ten, but I didn’t want to come up with 38 (much less 75), so I thought ten was a nice round number.

Ch-ch-changes: There’s been a lot of change at the top in the industry lately. We’ve seen big change at the New York Film Festival, MoMA, AFI, Full-Frame, LA Film Festival, Sundance and Indiewire to name just a few. That’s a great thing - new perspectives are needed and all of these organizations will probably be stronger for it in the long run. This is nothing against the people who left - in most cases, I know them and like them, but I like a little shake-out in the sector. It would be great to see a little more shake-out amongst the other “gate-keepers” in the industry, but hey, this is a start.
Sharing: It’s much easier for filmmakers to communicate and collaborate on projects now. While not all of the data I’d like to see is available, it is much easier for me, and everyone else, to communicate with one another and see what’s working and what isn’t working. It’s much easier to share and promote info on one’s film, to crowd-source production, funding and even audience building. As more tools are built to facilitate collaboration and sharing, we’ll see even greater things built - and anything that makes us less truly alone as an indie is a good thing.
Tools: Following on the sharing, we have some pretty cool new tools at our disposal - Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Crowd-Controls, Open Indie, Top-Spin, Good Screenings, WireWax and Wreck-a-movie being just a few worthy of mention. There’s plenty more (even the big ones like Facebook and Twitter are helpful to indies), and new things being developed everyday. Not to mention the DSLR revolution and other production tech changes - all helping indies to make a better film, often more cheaply.
The return of small: There’s always been a vibrant regional film festival scene, and while there has been a little shake-out, there’s also been a few smaller festivals rising up that promise good things - Indie Memphis, Flyway Film Fest and Camden to name just a few. Even the new Vimeo Festival (owned by a decidedly not small company) showed how well a “small” fest could work this year. Then we have the rise of indie film clubs and screening series, such as Cinema Speakeasy, Cinefist, the Pretentious Film Society, UnionDocs and similar efforts. I can’t even begin to name them all, and they make for a much more vibrant film culture. They’re also a great way for emerging filmmakers to build a support network, get exposure early on and develop a fan base - all good things.
Doc-everything: The doc world is growing up, in so many ways. From an evolution in pitching markets (the GoodPitch) to new funding mechanisms (Gucci, Impact, Fledgling, etc) and old (Sundance, Participant, Ford) and outreach support (Film Sprout, Working Films) and even new festivals (DocNYC) taking stage while older ones (Sheffield, IDFA, HotDocs) continue to thrive, while new blogs (What not to Doc) enter to give great advice - the field is alright. Sure, it’s still tough to make a doc, and yes, there’s a bit too much focus on social issue docs, but this is arguably the healthiest part of the sector. Note: I am leaving off at least a hundred names that are part of this vibrant scene, and I’m not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings. This is a testament to the health of the sector.
We’re figuring out distribution: For real. You can’t go to a festival anymore without some panel on distribution. There’s a plethora of experts to help you (Broderick and Reiss, amongst others); lots of alternative options to explore (Argot, Tuckman, Variance, Cinema Purgatorio); new avenues for VOD and digital (Gravitas, Brainstorm Media); a few web platforms trying new models (IndieFlix) and yes, even some of those supposed dinosaurs, traditional distributors, are figuring out how to make some things work (trust me, ask a few people like Magnolia, for example). We haven’t solved this puzzle yet, but we have more minds focused on it than ever before, and many more options to explore.
We’re thinking beyond the film: Sure, you might not be hip to transmedia, or may even hate it, but more and more artists are realizing that they are often creating a project, of which a film is just one component. This helps with expanding the story, giving more avenues for audience engagement and opening up potential revenue streams. While not everyone will be a Lance Weiler or Jeff Gomez, all of us can benefit from trying some new storytelling methods.
VoDo: I’ve explained it here before, but essentially VoDo is a simple way to support filmmakers on pirate networks. But piracy is a bad thing, you say. “Waah” says I. Keep bashing your head against the wall hoping it will go away. In the meantime, smarter people have thought up a way to turn a possible negative into a definite positive - we could use more of such creative thinking.
Filmmaker Magazine: Scott Macaulay somehow keeps improving this magazine, in spite of the competition and in spite of his busy producing schedule. Without picking on anyone, ahem, Filmmaker Magazine is quite literally the only trade publication worth reading anymore as an indie (I am not counting little guys like HTN (etc) in this mix, they rock). While the website could use some modernization (the content is good though), the magazine overall continues to serve up a great mix of reviews, news, analysis, new faces and new ideas. Thank goodness for that, because very few others are looking good in this race (to the bottom for most).
Variety is behind a paywall. Boy, I’ve never heard people gripe more than when Variety cut off their free access. But here’s the deal folks - the same 5,000 people or so (maybe more, just guessing) that paid for this in the past will pay for access now. Does it make their Tweets pointless? Yes. Did it open up even more room for their new rivals? Yes. Did it get thousands of indies to stop obsessing over sh-t that they don’t need to know about? Yes, and that’s a darn good thing.

So, tell me what you think of these ten things - are they good? What did I miss?

Upcoming NYFA Panel

2010-10-21T12:02:00.000-04:00

Next week I'll be speaking at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and this talk will be more broadly about how artists can use new technology (as opposed to my usual focus on just filmmaker artists). I highly recommend you check out NYFA's website for other great resources for both artists and organizations - job postings, fiscal sponsorship, education, arts advocacy, an artists directory, studio space, funding notices and more. They're a really great organization, with a lot of cred in the art world. Here's the description of the panel from their website, and registration info is below.

REINVENTING THE ARTS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Brian will survey some key changes in the arts due to digital technology, and will give practical advice for using new technology for art making, dissemination of one’s work and building a sustainable career.

• How has culture changed, past and present, as a result of technology?

• What are the new tools artists can use to experiment and put forth their vision?

• What is transmedia, and how might it be used by filmmakers and other artists?

• How have artists built sustainable careers, selling directly through social media?

• What have been successful strategies for the use of these new tools?

Most importantly, this seminar will argue that artists must harness new technology so that they shape the future of our field, instead of it being shaped for them.

Date: October 28 Time: 6:00 to 8:00 PM

$10 NYFA Artists (in advance) $15 General Admission (at the door only)

I'm Still Here as Transmedia

2010-10-20T10:55:00.000-04:00

I know the news on this film has largely subsided, but here goes anyway:
I’m Still Here is not only a transmedia project, but it’s also one of the more successful ones ever made...at least this year.

I’m ready for the mobs of trans-experts to attack, but let me (for once) be brief. Wikipedia defines transmedia storytelling as:

In Transmedia storytelling, content becomes invasive and fully permeates the audience's lifestyle. A transmedia project develops storytelling across multiple forms of media in order to have different "entry points" in the story; entry-points with a unique and independent lifespan but with a definite role in the big narrative scheme.

Now we can argue if this is correct, but since we can all contribute to the definition at Wikipedia, for now, this definition will be considered communal. So, to me, I’m Still Here was a story that unfolded across multiple media - television shows, tabloid news, websites, traditional newspapers and eventually a movie. There were rap songs, poems, drug-filled ARG, er, escapades. Joaquin’s performance was ongoing, pervasive and in a sense it was an ultimate ARG that no one was even sure whether they were participating in it or not. I haven’t looked too far, but I’m sure someone has even created a comic or animation about it. Each of these things was a story entry-point, and could engage audiences with the story in different ways. At minimum, it engaged many audiences in trying to figure out whether it was real, fiction, a bad drug trip or some combination of all of these.

So, how is this not transmedia? (I’m sure I’ll hear in the comments or offline....)

One of the most successful? Definitely not in terms of box office. But if we also look at success by how well people believed in and interacted with (even debated) the story-line, it was a huge success. Same with criteria such as media impressions, entering the cultural conversation, being uber-meta, etc.

Some might say it’s just a hoax, or a mock-u-mentary or doc or just plain stupid. But I think transmedia can be many things, and it might just be that something like I’m Still Here qualifies. Sure, this was an artful hoax, but why can’t a hoax be transmedia? Does the creator have to personally create all the platforms the story unfolds upon for it to be transmedia? Or can they create a situation where even the news as “reported” by someone else becomes part of the experience? Some might argue that the story has to motivate you to participate, but I think plenty of people participated in this by talking about it, sharing it with others and paying for a ticket (ok, maybe 5 people did that).

I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise, so please disabuse me of this notion if you think I’m terribly wrong. To be honest, I’ve been wondering for a month why no one has written about this yet - in my googling, I’ve not found anything (but again, tell me if I’m wrong). The closest thing I’ve found on this subject was Henry Jenkins writing about LonelyGirl 15 (back in 2006, mind you) and the relation of the “hoax” story to epistolary fiction. He wrote:

The content of earlier epistolary novels turned readers into armchair detectives and amateur psychologists, piecing together the events of the story from multiple, fragmentary, and sometimes contradictory, always subjective, accounts. These ARGs take on a more public dimension, exploring conspiracies or mysteries which exploit the expansive potential of the transmedia environment. Though read in private, these early novels became the focus of parlor room discussions as people compared notes about the characters and their situations. ARGS today offer a very similar experience of mutual debate and collaborative interpretation for a society just beginning to experiment with what cybertheorist Pierre Levy calls collective intelligence.

He too brought up that most people would think you need to push the audience to act, to do something. As he wrote:

This is the nature of art (fictional or nonfictional) in the age of collective intelligence: the work provokes us, incites us into action. Indeed, as an art project, Lonelygirl15 seems designed to encourage our participation. Yet we don't know what we are supposed to do if we do not correctly identify the genre within which the text operates: do we dig deeper into the text in search of clues (as in the case of an ARG) or do we go beyond the text in search of reality (as in the case of reality spoiling)? In this case, the public's uncertainty about the status of these images made figuring out the source of these messages the central task. The mystery overwhelmed the content -- perhaps more than the art students anticipated and forced them to out themselves so that we might hopefully engage with their work on another level.

In fact, we’ve been seeing a lot of these “in-between” docs that straddle the line of documentary and fiction, and thereby require us to get more involved as viewers in figuring out the “puzzle” of just how real they are. Jenkins noted: “In other words, there seems to be a fascination with blurry categories at moments of media in transition -- it is one of the ways we try to apply evolving skills in a context where the categories that organize our culture are in flux.” So perhaps as we straddle this line, we’ll get some hybrid forms that become more than just a movie and straddle into transmedia territory.

In a hypothetical debate, I can see arguing the other side - that it’s not transmedia, just a good performance, but more than anything I think arguing this point might help better define the term for all of us.

Until then, I’m calling this one transmedia.

Photo courtesy Magnolia Pictures

Mimi and Eunice and Nina Paley

2010-10-19T12:17:00.000-04:00

I bumped into Nina Paley the other night and she handed me a cool new comic she's doing called Mimi and Eunice. Like her past work, it's pretty amazing. Here's one of my favorite panels:

But don't worry, they aren't all about piracy. Here's another great one:

Per usual, Nina is releasing this work naturally. Some would call it through creative commons, or copy-left, but I say naturally because it's just the common-sensical, natural way such creativity should be put out there, shared and (hopefully) when liked, compensated. Exploring the site, I also found this great video she did for the EFF. What a creative way to summate many of the troubles of the web today. Check it out and if you like it, support her work! (honesty alert: I haven't yet, but plan to do so myself). If I ran a foundation that supported freedom of expression, artistry, innovation, creativity and culture, public service media and had an emphasis on policy, I'd give her a huge grant since she covers all my bases....creatively. But I don't.

Pixel Cross Media Forum

2010-10-11T21:59:00.000-04:00

I'm en route to the Power to the Pixel Cross Media Forum right now. It's a great event, one of a kind really, focused on Cross Media or Transmedia practice. There are lots of great speakers, people pitching projects, workshops and meetings and even a think-tank later in the week. You can watch it live here. I've been meaning to give it a plug for awhile, and now that my flight is delayed for about..oh...4 hours due to crazy hail in NYC, I guess I get to plug it more now!

I've written about the Pixel Lab a couple of times. I've also spoken there a bit, with this presentation on new business models being my most recent. I'm a big fan of everything the Pixel folks do, and highly recommend that you follow them online and try to attend an event in the future. I'm not speaking, but I am meeting with several producers, catching up with my friends/class from the Lab this summer and doing some meetings in London. I also hope to attend the amazing show by Ai Weiwei at the Tate Modern before I leave. I can say it's amazing already, as I've seen some video footage already from this film that's launching soon from Muse Film & Television. If you are based in London, check out the Pixel Lab, the Ai Weiwei show and drop me a note on Twitter to catch up!

Vimeo Fest speech on collaboration

2010-10-11T15:02:00.000-04:00

I had a great time speaking with Ted Hope at the Vimeo Festival and Awards this Saturday. I'm sure they will post video of our talks and conversation soon, but until then here's a rough transcript of my speech. Ted and I both spoke for 10 minutes, conversed for about 30 and then opened it up to Q&A, which was documented here (thanks to No Film School). I didn't read directly from this speech, so this is just a close approximation. A quick other note: Jeremy Boxer did a great job of curating some really great talks, panels and workshops. Kudos to him and the entire Vimeo team. The awards were spectacular, and I highly recommend checking them out online. I can't wait to see Bruce Sterling's speech on video and the awards ceremony and outdoor projections on the IAC center were pretty amazing as well. Here's the speech:

Thanks to Vimeo and Jeremy Boxer for having me here today, to talk about the future of film and media. We’ll probably get to the future soon, but I want to take a quick detour to the past. Today is about inspiration, yesterday was about innovation. When I look to get inspired about innovation, I look back at the history of avant-garde art and how they uniquely combined technology, theory, artistic practice and new business models to make something innovative and inspiring.

As I look back at all of the art work that engages me, that I find innovative, inspiring and transformative, I realize that they all share some common traits. Whether it’s Impressionism, Surrealism, Dada, Fluxus, the French New Wave or early American indie cinema - I find a few common traits -
Technology - using the latest tech;
Obsession with the art form;
Quoting, remix;
Collaboration;
Dialogue with the community;
Participation - these works demand more of the audience.

Let’s look at the auteurs of the French New Wave. People associate the term “auteur” with the single genius. But let’s look at just one of those singular geniuses - Godard. He started as an obsessive watcher of films. He watched everything, was in the cinema all day, could quote his favorite scenes to his cinematographer. He was a critic first, commenting on the films, and then a filmmaker. He made his films in dialogue with the whole of film history - quoting it, sampling it really. (Note - today he is supporting a French pirate, because Godard says there is no such thing as intellectual property.) He used the latest technology - smaller, lightweight 16mm cameras that allowed him to shoot in new ways and tight quarters. He made up a new style by mashing together everyone else’s.

It was also very much about collaboration. He couldn’t raise money for Breathless so he had to go begging for money and a story from Truffaut. He critiqued his friend’s films, they critiqued his. The entire French New Wave worked this way. They were collaborating, watching movies together, sharing scripts, sharing actors and story devices and they were participatory. An audience member couldn’t watch the films the same lazy way - you had to get involved. They were jarring, new and meant for dialogue. And they sparked a genuine dialogue about the cinema, one that was passionate and in dialogue with the auteurs themselves, even if it was carried out in print not online.

This dialogue circled back on itself - filmmakers responding to other filmmakers, to the news, to culture, to the critics to their audiences. The cinema it created was cumulative, iterative and collaborative.

I was reading Lewis Hyde’s Common as Air the other day, and he notes that creativity in science is “almost always cumulative and collaborative. It proceeds collectively and thus thrives when barriers to collectivity are reduced.” And what has happened online is nothing if not the removing of barriers to our collaboration and our creativity.

Hyde goes on to talk about how we are “collective beings .... who will thrive if there is a lively commons of art and ideas and who will disappear if there isn’t.”

That’s what we have today. It’s what Vimeo allows - a community of creators, collaborating, sharing, building a cumulative art form that comments on everything that came before it and creates something still new and worth sharing. Your audience is other creators and as creators we are also the audience.

We have access to tools to tell our stories for cheaper than ever before, and we can get it to an audience cheaper than ever before. We can talk to one another about the art form, about new technologies and about new artistic practices. We can find our fans, build them into an audience and enter into a dialogue with them about our art. We can involve them in the story through transmedia in entirely new ways. We can build a community, if not a movement.

This is what Hollywood fears - you aren’t independent anymore. You are a collective and you can collaborate and create things that rival what they can make - not in special effects or stars, but in creativity and reach. You don’t need them anymore - that doesn’t mean they’re gonna go away, but rather that we can build an ecosystem of creativity where they aren’t irrelevant, but where their output is just more fodder for us to build upon.

While many have been wringing their hands for the last two years about the bad business of film, we’re actually facing a great moment of opportunity. Never before have so many forces come together to allow creators to reach their audience. Never before could audiences participate with creators as they can now.

But this will only work if you take on the responsibilities that come with these new opportunities. You can’t just talk to your audience - you have to actually talk with them, be participatory. You also have to be vigilant - lots of powerful interests don’t like all this new stuff. It might suck to learn about and get involved with policy, but if you want this creativity to flourish you have to fight against the building of barriers - and that means being active in the fight for net neutrality.

Most importantly, however, you need to collaborate. Is indie film dead? Who knows, who cares. What this festival has shown, however is that creativity is live and well. If we all act together, nothing can stop us from building a much more exciting future than what we’ve thus far had. I think we need a collaborative movement to change indie film and I think we’re already building that here today.

Adventures in Plymptoons!

2010-10-06T10:40:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the power of social networking, I was alerted that one of my online "friends" - someone I've never met, but hope to someday - is doing a pretty cool documentary project on the great animator (and real world acquaintance, if not friend) Bill Plympton. The filmmaker, Alexia Anastasio, sent me to her Kickstarter campaign where she is trying to raise funds for the film.

I get a lot of these emails, and while I check them all out, I rarely have time to give a plug even to the good ones, but I watched her video and I really like it. It's also clear that she has the support of Plympton - he's very much a part of her campaign, so I figured I'd tweet about it soon. Today I woke up, however, and saw this great post from Bill himself over at Ted Hope's blog where he talks about being a serious animator and the trials and tribulations of releasing a good, grown-up animation today. I highly recommend you read his post, and it made me decide to give a plug today to this documentary.

So, check out the Kickstarter campaign. Kick in some dough (as opposed to Do) if you have the inclination. Then, go out to the IFC Center and spend some dough watching Bill's film, Idiots and Angels. If you like it, tell others, so they spend their dough and Bill can make back the money he is spending on the release. You'll get an added treat - the film is prefaced by a short Bill made called The Cow who wanted to be a Hamburger, which I saw when I was on the jury for short films at the Florida Film Festival. I loved it, the jury loved it - we gave it a prize, which qualified it for Academy consideration. You'll like the whole thing and will, hopefully, decide to go back and give more money to Alexia's Kickstarter campaign and then see Idiots and Angels again. Or so I hope.

Here's her campaign:

Made to Persuade - Orphans 8

2010-10-05T09:37:00.000-04:00

My friend Dan Streible over at the NYU MIAP program has sent out the call for proposals for the 8th Orphan Film Symposium - Made to Persuade. The Orphan Film Symposium has quickly become a must-attend event for all cinephiles, showcasing many interesting "neglected" films and videos. If you are a scholar or just anyone interested in this area, I recommend sending in a proposal.

If you are a filmmaker, make sure to check out the Helen Hill award - which gives you a travel stipend to come to the conference and present your work. Pretty cool.

From the press release:

NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Cinema Studies and the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program present the

8th Orphan Film Symposium

April 11-14, 2012

Museum of the Moving Image

Astoria, NY

NYU and Museum of the Moving Image host the 8th Orphan Film Symposium, the biennial gathering of scholars, archivists, curators, and media artists devoted to saving, screening, and studying neglected moving images. The renovated museum houses a 264-seat theater, video galleries, and digital projection areas throughout its new space.

Call for Presentations: “Made to Persuade”

The theme of “Orphans 8” is persuasion. What neglected film and video productions have influenced thought, opinion, behavior, and perception (or tried to)? What “pictures in our heads” come from moving pictures and sounds that were made to persuade?

Among the many forms under consideration are: political campaign ads, advertising films, television commercials, newsreels, newsfilm, religious pictures, sponsored and sales films, promos, PR, PSAs, EPKs, military productions, clandestine or subversive work, trailers, teasers, snipes, documentaries, essay films, public affairs and public access programs, activist and advocacy pieces, propaganda, issue ads, culture jamming, intelligence work, stereotypes and counterstereotypes, censored footage, indoctrination and training films, triggers, guidance and educational films, amateur samizdat, and related orphan films and media.

Selected speakers will lead presentations, screenings, and discussions. Proposals that include the screening of rare, rediscovered, or recently preserved works are highly encouraged. New media productions using archival material are sought as well, as are presentations about copyright issues and technical aspects of moving image archiving and preservation.

Send proposals (500 words or less) to dan dot streible at nyu dot edu

Mail proposals that include DVDs to

Dan Streible, NYU Cinema Studies

721 Broadway, 6th floor, New York, NY 10003

Early review begins 1.11.11.

Vo.Do and Distribution

2010-10-04T11:15:00.000-04:00

I had the distinct pleasure to moderate a post-screening discussion and Q and A with director Gregory Bayne and screenwriter and actor J. Reuben Appelman after the screening of their film Person of Interest at the Open Video Conference. I highly recommend both the film and the conference (it's over, so check it out next year if you missed it), but what I really liked was all of the news from VoDo - the P2P distribution system for indies.

In the spirit of seeing opportunity where others see a threat, Jamie King and friends have created a pretty spectacular little system for harnessing the power of P2P file sharing, the generosity of the Commons and the apparently ubiquitous human desire to collect meaningless rewards in order to benefit those indies who give their films away for free. On purpose, that is, because all of you give them away for free like it or not. Once a film is shot it will be pirated. If it isn't, you have proof that it sucks because no one bothered to pirate it. With VoDo, however, all hand-wringing over this situation stops.

Jamie and friends looked at this system and said, essentially - "wait a minute. One of the biggest hurdles for indies is finding an audience, and one of the biggest costs is physically distributing the film. Here we have a system that negates both of these problems, and somehow people think this is a bad thing??? Why don't we turn this problem on its head and build a business model around this new reality...."

Now, you may not be as predisposed as I am to believe in the power of alternative thinking. That's okay, but let me just postulate, as others have done before me, that most cool inventions come around when someone looks at something stupid in the world and takes an approach to the solution that seems 180 degrees opposed to the presumed wisdom of the experts. Hollywood and a few others are spending a fair amount lobbying Congress, holding secret meetings and suing their fans to combat piracy. One could ask whether they might profit more by not spending all of this negative money and just putting it in the bank, but that's another conversation. VoDo has said, well, let's give this shit a try.

Try they have. You can read all about the history and success here, but the short version is that they've built a system to promote and share films for free on most of the P2P networks and are encouraging people to donate to the filmmakers behind these "free" films. People are doing it. Not in droves, but it's growing, and filmmakers are making money. Not gargantuan sums of money, but some money and often more than the typical offer for a Minimum Guarantee by distributors these days. Here's their blog (ok, a blog isn't a person, but Jamie King wrote it...) on the subject:

Up until now, we’ve been distributing in co-operation with what we call the DISCO (Distribution Coalition), an ad-hoc group of the world’s largest trackers, indexes and clients — including uTorrent, Limewire, Vuze, The Pirate Bay, Isohunt and many others. This has worked very well for our filmmakers, generating (for example) around 875,000 downloads for Pioneer One Season One, Episode One and leading to over $30,000 in audience sponsorship (exceeding our target by $10,000.) The Yes Men, multi-award winning filmmakers who’ve been distributed by major channels like HBO and Arte, told us that VODO has been their favourite distribution of their film so far. They received around 650,000 downloads of their release, and over $25,000 in donations.

That's not bad for a beta test! I would point out in particular the audience views, for now only represented by downloads (no way to know who watched the whole thing, I don't think) - some serious numbers. More people than those usually queuing up in Netflix or watching your indie flick on demand. You can see this as lost income or an audience - I'm obviously interested in the latter and think the donations are a good beginning.

Well, this could obviously get even better if more people knew about it and promoted it - if they harnessed the power of the web - you might be thinking? Vo-Duh, they've said with the new Vo.Do 2.0 - which now recognizes that some people are influential and help spread the word. They've created a reward system - the DO (pronounced dough) in vodo - that let's fans, influencers and downloaders earn a reward for spreading the word. Here's how they (er, Jamie) describe it:

Actually, we know that individuals are out already promoting our work, and without any real recognition from us. We get serious amounts of traffic from Facebook. Pioneer One tweets were seen over a million times following our release. But we want to show you how much we, and our creators, value all this help. So we’ve created an internal currency, the Do, with which we’ll reward Influencers. Every time someone downloads a release because of you, visits an artist’s VODO page, signs up or sponsors an artist, you’ll receive a few Do.

There are two ways to look at Do: as a reputation currency that allows people to compare (or even compete on) how much value they have produced for VODO creators; and as an exchange currency that has actual value in the world. In time, you’ll be able to trade Dofor all sorts of offers, prizes and merchandise. In this first (experimental) stage, feel free to build up Do in preparation for later offers. But we’ll probably have to knock a few kinks out of our internal currency before it’s ready for prime-time. You can help us by gaming it as hard as you can.

What does this mean? Like FourSquare, you receive a fake currency - on 4Sq it's a badge or a mayorship, on Vodo, you get the Do, and yes it is addictive. I tweeted about a film on VoDo last week and within minutes I became the top-ranking holder of Do. I lost this distinction within minutes as more people learned of the system, but I have to admit, I want to climb back up the ranks. Perhaps that's why I'm really writing this blog post! What? - we get so little real reward in life that this is what it's come to? Apparently so. Count me in, and give me some Do! It works, however, and helps spread the films - and you get rewards as well that you can use as currency within the VoDo system. Pretty cool.

I also have to draw attention to something else they did right - got a great URL.
Vo.Do
Pretty cool and enuff said about that one! They have a couple other announcements, but I won't detail them here. Suffice it to say - they're up to some cool stuff.

Let me wrap up by saying here - they may fail. They probably will fail. Most early adopters do fail, but imagine for a second an alternate scenario. VoDo is a solution made by a bunch of crazy, underfunded people with a cool vision, some technical know-how and a lot of friends, but not much else. Can you imagine what could be built if instead of funding more custom suits for lawyers, the MPAA and others were experimenting with similar innovations instead of fighting for an old, and frankly boring system? We might have some seriously cool things in store if that were the case. Oh, wait. Don't tell them. Let them spend their money elsewhere while Jamie and friends, or someone who copies their underlying ethos, builds the next big thing.

The filmmakers behind Person of Interest are distributing their film themselves, and have opted to use VoDo. As Gregory Bayne said last night in our discussion - "it seemed like a perfect fit for an underground film." I'm hoping that it goes well for him and will hopefully report soon. You can also pay for a download or DVD, which is what I did - to support the filmmaker. But Greg is fine with you using VoDo to check it out for free. He's cool like that.

Download Person of Interest here - and give me some Do, just by checking out the link. (please, please, I'm a Do-junkie now)

More on Fair Use and Letterman

2010-09-27T20:32:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the comments in my post on Letterman/Phoenix and Fair Use, I found this great blog post from Roger Goff in response. I wrote a pretty lengthy response in his comment section, but Blogger/Google wouldn't allow it as it was too long. It's probably too long for most people, but if you care about this at all, read on:

Roger: I am glad you’ve taken this up to debate - even if we don’t yet agree. The main reason I wrote the post was that I didn’t find much discussion of the argument, even on my favorite blogs related to copyright and culture (a few have now appeared). As I’ve stated, I’m not an attorney, but I still (think) I disagree. Would love to hear more from you and other copyright experts, and will ultimately defer to consensus (if we get that far).

First, I don’t believe that Fair Use was intended to “allow journalists and educators to use small portions of copyrighted material in order to inform and educate the public.” My layman’s understanding is that fair use is an acknowledgment that we need some leeway in the special considerations granted to creators via copyright to ensure the public good, so to speak. To allow certain creative, educational or other public goods while still respecting a creator’s general rights. I believe there have been many court cases that affirm a fair use right beyond what your above quote considers. Perhaps a small point, but I think it does matter.

Second, I don’t think that commerciality (or not) is a necessary requirement to qualify for fair use. Didn’t the Supreme Court decision in Campbell vs Acuff-Rose (aka the 2 Live Crew decision) specifically argue that it didn’t matter whether a work was commercial or not? My understanding is there are the “four tests” for fair use, but that being non-commercial is just one, and that not all of the tests must be matched to qualify. Granted, I am going by memory aided by Wikipedia, so perhaps I missed some nuance here.

Third, and going back to the 2 Live Crew decision, it seemed the Supreme Court acknowledged some special consideration for parody and some copyright folks generally extend this to social, political or cultural critique (reading here from the Fair Use Best Practices of CSM as well). If the “best practices” are correct, then I would gather that this mock/doc/whatever is pretty clearly falling in the cultural/social critique camp. Further, if these best practices are correct, then this also qualifies as a correct use of “archival material in historical sequences.”

Last, I think, I don’t see how the fact that an archival footage market exists is a problem - again, my reading of the news around the 2 Live Crew case is that the Court acknowledged that a market existed for rap samples, but still agreed that the usage was Fair Use.

I don’t honestly have a dog in this fight. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I am generally pretty “copy-left,” but I am not in favor of granting any fair use rights where they shouldn’t exist. I genuinely want to know whether many legal experts agree or disagree that this should be considered fair use - so feel free to attack these non-expert opinions. I think that one of the problems of fair use for creatives is that you have to defend it to claim it - there aren’t any clear legal guidelines, even with the good work that Pat Aufderheide, Peter Jaszi and Michael Donaldson (among many others) have been doing to try to clear this up.

Glad to continue the discussion.

Shared Film - Panel with Gregory Bayne at Open Video Conf.

2010-09-27T11:42:00.000-04:00

This Saturday, I'll be attending the Open Video Conference to moderate an after screening talk with Gregory Bayne about his film Person of Interest. Bayne has been taking an alternative approach to releasing his film - he's toured it garage style, given it away for free, you can buy it in multiple formats on his website now and he's doing a bigger tour of the film beginning next year. You can read more about what he's done in this excellent Filmmaker Magazine post, but I'm most interested in getting his thoughts on how filmmakers (and other artists) can use Peer-to-Peer and other free mechanisms to build an audience and still make a living. I'm sure he'll have a lot to tell us, and I can't wait to finally sit down and talk with Gregory Bayne. Check out the conference website to learn more about the events - two days of great speakers and some great films. Here's the trailer for Person of Interest:

Fair Use, Mockumentary and Letterman

2010-09-23T11:39:00.000-04:00

Wow. It’s not often that pop culture, the latest indie docs and my interest in copyright collide. It happens less often than I watch Letterman, which is just about never. But lo and behold, there I found myself last night watching Joaquin Phoenix return to Letterman and a whole riff about Fair Use comes up! Now that was a truly unexpected turn of events.

If you didn’t catch it - video is linked below - the general summary is that Letterman talks with Phoenix about his infamous last appearance on the show and how he wasn’t “in on the joke.” The footage from this appearance shows up in the new film “I’m Still Here,” and Letterman jokes that their lawyers wanted CBS to be paid for showing the footage in the film, but that the filmmakers claimed Fair Use. Letterman then quips that it wasn’t really a documentary but a “theatrical ruse” and therefore, Phoenix and Affleck owe him a “million bucks.” Letterman continues joking about this for the remainder of their talk, which by my unofficial tally makes this the single longest time that Fair Use has been talked about in the mainstream media ever, or at least since 2 Live Crew was last in the news for “Pretty Woman.”

I’m no lawyer, but I’d put forth that showing this footage in their film definitely qualifies as Fair Use. On Twitter, Scott Macaulay of Filmmaker Magazine asked if this use qualifies as Fair Use since it was a mockumentary. It doesn’t matter whether your film is a documentary or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mockumentary, experimental film or even a narrative film. What matters is how the work is used. I’ll avoid getting into the nitty gritty of Fair Use here, as there are many other places to read up on the topic, but essentially your creative reuse must pass a few tests to qualify as fair use. One of the components of that test is whether the reuse is “transformative” and in the 2 Live Crew case, the Supreme Court argued that an artist’s parody qualifies as transformative enough to pass muster - even if that work was commercial in nature. They also noted that the parody would likely not cause any “market harm” as the two works (the original and the parody) existed in different market-places.

I think this same argument applies to the Letterman footage as well. Affleck and Phoenix are commenting on the nature of celebrity. They were parodying the obsessions and presumptions of that celebrity culture, including the Letterman routine. The film itself uses the footage to demonstrate or comment upon how people were seeing Phoenix as he mocked the system. To my mind, this is clearly fair use.

I’m sure some copyright experts out there can put together a more nuanced argument about this, but for some strange reason, my brief search of the interwebs today hasn’t brought up much commentary on this issue. If any of you legal folks out there agree - or disagree - I’d love to hear your take on this.

here's the video:

Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry and Muse

2010-09-22T20:04:00.000-04:00

Of the many events I'll be participating in this Fall, I'm most looking forward to the Muse Film & Television Gala, focused this year on the film Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry. (note, the website is a "holder" site, with a new one coming soon) directed by Alison Klayman. Big disclaimer: I am on the board of this nonprofit organization, so I am biased, but I can honestly say that I'd attend this Gala even if I wasn't. For those of you who don't know the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei, he is one of the more important, and more well-known, living Chinese artists today. He is also a social activist, quite controversial and quite the Twitter user. From the Muse website:

Scholar, dissident, patriot, artist or activist— who is Ai Weiwei? This much is certain: since his co-design of the Bird’s Nest Stadium for the Beijing Olympics, Ai Weiwei has catapulted to the forefront of the international art landscape, generating almost as much discomfort for his antics as admiration for his courage.

Whether smashing millenia-old Han Dynasty urns, or confronting Chinese police over a beating he received for investigating the Sichuan earthquake deaths, or turning a Twitter-advertised dinner party into a political action event, Ai Weiwei remains fearlessly outspoken, despite considerable danger to himself. Willfully turning a blind eye to the very eye the Chinese government has relentlessly trained on him, he advocates for freedom of expression and access to information– principles all the more fragile and precious as China undergoes its remarkable internal transformation.

Ai Wei Wei was recently featured in an excellent New Yorker article, and I highly recommend you get to know his work. Actually, if you saw the Olympics, you already do - he was the co-designer of the Bird's Nest auditorium. This video ran with the article, and gives a good intro:

Ai Wei Wei will be attending the Gala, along with many other outstanding artists and art/film world folks. The tickets are expensive - it is a fundraiser after all, but they are tax deductible and benefit a great organization. Muse Film & Television is one of the only organizations dedicated to making films about art and artists. While this film has a "social issue" and technology bent to it, many of their films are less overtly political, but equally important. Muse is a producer of this film, and they have a great track record, so the film should be pretty incredible. The Gala will feature an auction of many great artworks, dinners, vacations and more. There will be an online auction at Charity Buzz, but I don't have that link yet. If you have time, join me at the Gala, and if not - follow the film from their website. Or, just follow Muse on Twitter - they send out some great news and info about art, artists and culture.

Forget print, it's Journalism that is dead

2010-09-16T11:36:00.000-04:00

As people continue to debate the possible futures for journalism and newspapers a common refrain is heard - it’s not newspapers that matter, it’s the quality journalism that goes into them. Everywhere one turns, it seems someone is bemoaning the future of this quality journalism. Where will poor Mrs. Journalism go? Consensus seems to be that we can lose the print, and maybe some respected daily newspapers won’t make the transition online due to the current small returns from online advertising, but we need to salvage quality journalism. Some have even suggested that the government get involved with some Pulitzerian Buyout scheme. This is all pretty curious stuff, however, considering just how low the public pegs their respect for journalists (and the media generally) in nearly every poll. Where did all this journalism love suddenly come from?

Whenever lots of people quickly agree on something that seems so evident, they are usually not only wrong, but also denying something painfully obvious that’s staring them right in the face. I think here it’s this whole notion of quality journalism existing at the major daily newspapers around the country. Now this is a tall order, and I’ll concede in advance that there are exceptions, but I think we need to call BS on this nonsense and focus our energies on creating something better.

I read two newspapers every day of the week. I read both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, in print, before I do anything else. I also read dozens of blogs, trade-journals, Tweets and other web media daily. I read a lot, mostly about film, old and new media, the arts and the nonprofit sector as my career has been focused in these areas. I care a lot about certain issues, like copyright, piracy, arts policy, technology, open source software, open education, film delivery systems and the general state of the film industry. On many of these issues, I would say that I am relatively well-versed in the arguments both for and against my position (when I even have one) and could easily tell you where to go if you want to hear the other side of whatever issue is being debated. I mention all this because whenever I read an article about ANY of these issues in the mainstream press (NYT, WSJ, USA Today, etc.) the journalist usually has the story completely wrong. Not sometimes, but usually, as in more often than not. They are either completely writing the press release of some special interest group, haven’t researched the issue well enough and missed the most important parts, have generalized it to the point of silliness either because they don’t trust their reader’s intelligence or want to not offend or done all of the above and worse. Out of all of the writers I read on these subjects, I can think of only one who doesn’t do this consistently, and that’s Walt Mossberg of the WSJ. But he is usually writing product reviews and answering tech questions, which doesn’t fall in the camp I am complaining about. When he does consider some larger issue in the industries he covers (like net neutrality), he usually gets it right, or at least intelligently writes about the different arguments so you can decide. That’s one reporter out of hundreds that I read consistently.

The problem is, if you start to talk to anyone in any field that is quite knowledgeable about a subject, they’ll usually agree with this complaint. My wife is in the healthcare field and whenever I point out an article I think is interesting about a subject, she can point out all the flaws and missing information in thirty seconds. I have friends in the business and banking worlds who say the same thing. Same with real estate, law and just about any profession I have informally surveyed. It appears that the journalism in the newspaper only seems good to those who don’t know much about a subject. I don’t know much about gold pricing, so am I to trust what the New York Times said about it this weekend? Not unless someone can tell me they know that better than they know copyright issues. I shudder to think about what is wrong with the political and war coverage, or anything else that really matters. Oh, wait, I do know about that quality - journalism’s incompetence in those arenas was proven pretty handily in the run-up to Iraq and again in the reporting of the lead-up to the last election.

Perhaps it’s time we start to acknowledge that it’s not just print that’s dead, but perhaps good journalism as well? Perhaps we should stop wringing our hands over the future of newspapers and magazines, and start thinking about how we can revive the best of earlier journalistic practices and nurture the few good examples we have out there from the new media. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about how this could begin, but this is a long post already - what do you think? Am I reading all the wrong things and missing all the great journalism out there? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Sponsorship Blues

2010-09-14T11:33:00.000-04:00

There’s a lot of talk out there about how the future of film’s financing lies in branding and sponsorship, but I very rarely hear much about the possible negative consequences. First, let me say up front - I’ve done a lot of sponsorship deals in the arts world and I’m actually in favor of such things. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it - some people make that argument and I respect it, but this isn’t a trash capitalism critique. Rather, I think that I keep going to conferences about the future of media and people are speaking a lot about advertising deals, leveraging brands, selling sponsorships, etc and no one seems to be thinking about the consequences of this - especially the potential downsides. There are many.
The first potential downside is that there’s probably no upside. It is highly unlikely that you will get any major brand to sponsor your film. Yes, there are examples and I can show them too, but “sponsorship” is the new elusive lottery prize for filmmakers that was once getting into Sundance or scoring a distribution deal - it’s always been the lucky few and this will hold true with sponsorship. As a friend of mine who is very high up in the marketing department of a major company told me - “if a filmmaker asks me for sponsorship, I would say they should pay me instead because they are gaining much more from my logo than I am gaining from them.” She doesn’t take meetings with filmmakers, this is hypothetical, but you get the point - good luck sister.

The second downside is...once again, no upside - but in terms of the money to be had. One of the boom areas for sponsorship and film right now is in film contests. In these, some ad agency, or a middle-man, works with a festival or some other well-known film world brand and runs a contest where filmmakers (hopefully lots of them) make short videos that somehow use the brand and the winner gets some prize.

Look at any of the film contests out there, now and you’ll see what I mean. I’m not linking to any of them so as not to target anyone, but the majority of them offer something like: 1) win a cash prize of around $10,000; 2) get to attend some famous festival where your short will be shown; 3) the brand owns your film and can use it for marketing, etc.; 4) there’s usually some vague promise that you’ll be discovered - perhaps a meeting with some ad agency, or something.

There are variations, but these are pretty common. The most common factor is the paltry award - they usually range from a digital camera to as much as $15,000 US and rarely more. Sure, that’s a nice prize if you are sill in high school or college, but it’s not going to save the industry. Then again, this is more than most distributors will pay you for your finished feature film that wins a prize at Sundance (I’m not kidding), so everything is relative. That said, I don’t think this is the panacea we’re looking for in the film industry, and it won’t fund many feature films (Yes, I know about Somerstown, but that’s an exceptional case). You are also giving up your rights for a paltry sum, and one that is much less than they would typically pay for a commercial.

Some people will argue that you get exposure. That’s true, but you can also get exposure from your average YouTube video and maintain your rights to your film. Plus, if your goal is to become an independent filmmaker, having a reel of advertisements might or might not be the best thing. I’ve actually seen this work both ways - good and bad - but some filmmakers get pigeon-holed into commercial work. They can make a very good living at it, so I’m not knocking it, but this can sometimes lead to people only seeing them as a commercial director, or more often, the director not being able to turn down that good paycheck to work on art films anymore. I can also point out many people who successfully navigate both worlds, so I’m not saying it’s a definitely bad thing, mind you.

The third possible downside is more of an ethical dilemma. I don’t have one with accepting sponsorship, but if we’re going to start exploring this kind of funding, I think it’s worth mentioning that for many people there is one. How independent are you if at the end of the day, you’re shilling for some company? How ethical is it to take money from a corporation that might support policies you are fundamentally against? Or that might support regimes that have less than stellar human rights records? Or that discriminate against LGBT employees? Not all companies do any of the above, but if you look at just a few of the companies actively supporting film right now, you might notice more than one potential ethical dilemma. If people start funding more films through corporate support, will this mean foundations and government will see less need to fund such art? What happens to edgier, or less commercial work as film becomes a quest for vast numbers of eyeballs to push a brand? These are just a few of the many questions I think need to be asked.

In my opinion, all money is tainted in some way. You can’t take money from the government or foundations and truly keep a clear conscience. We’ve had support for the arts from patrons, the church, foundations, government and now from corporations. None of the earlier models have been all that great, so we might as well try this system. At the end of the day, however, I find it a bit distressing that I continually appear at conferences that have plenty of panels about sponsorship and advertising models, but there’s never a panel about the bigger issues - neither the very realistic possibility that these won’t be a saviour to many, nor any discussion about the potential ethical dilemmas. More than once I have heard questions or statements about this from the audience, so some people clearly want to talk about it. Recently, this issue came to the fore when many people protested BP’s support of many arts institutions in the UK. I think we need more open debate about this, and that film festivals, conferences and magazines/news sites should be leading the discussion. In fact, I think they are doing a disservice to the filmmakers they are supposedly trying to help by not exploring all of this further.

I guess I should be extra cautious here and add, once again, a clear note that I am not against sponsorship or advertising in any old lefty sense. Nor do I think that people shouldn’t experiment with it as a financing model, or enter a contest if they are fine with the rules and the ethics. I’m just suggesting that we need some more realistic commentary on this subject and that it deserves some healthy debate. If BP wants to sponsor your movie - awesome. I just doubt it’s going to happen to many people, and we might want to think about what this means a bit more.