Conclusion to 7 Trends for the Future of the Arts

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?

Reclaiming DIY Slides from DIY Days

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

View more presentations from Brian Newman.

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

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!

Making it Happen: Vimeo Conversation

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

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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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."

A new role for the film trades?

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.

Vimeo Fest speech on collaboration

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.

Creative Rights & Artists

I'm spending this week over at the ArtsJournal Blog Network, taking part in a conversation with 20 other bloggers on artists, culture and policy.  The idea is for us to discuss the following topic for an entire week:

"Arts and culture are a cornerstone of American society. But arts and culture workers are often left out of important policy conversations concerning technology and creative rights even though the outcomes will have a profound impact on our world. Is it benign neglect? Or did we miss an essential call to action and engagement? With a new administration moving full speed ahead on technology and copyright issues, do artists even know what the priorities are? Can they recognize opportunities to make a case for what their work needs to thrive, and how it impacts society? Join us as we examine what exactly does it take to bring arts and culture to the table, and how our field can become more proactive to carve out a more powerful place for the arts in 21st century America"

There's already a fair amount of conversation on today, day one of the topic. I've posted my first thoughts here, and I hope you can join us on the blog and contribute your thoughts. Too lazy to link over? My basic argument, thus far, is that we're not interesting artists in the policy debate because it isn't positioned artfully. Perhaps if we gave artists the tools to create (and some dough), they might create a more powerful message about the importance of arts to policy and vice versa.

20under40

I mentioned recently at the bottom of a post that I've been posting less frequently because I've been very busy with my "writing time" on editing a chapter that was selected to be part of the new book - 20Under40: Reinventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century. 20<40, as I'll call it from here on out, is a great project put together by Edward Clapp and you can learn more about the other authors here, and even go ahead and pre-order the book here. My chapter is about "Inventing the future of the arts" and you can see a short summary of my idea in an old post here. Since the time of that post, I consolidated some of the ideas and now have just seven ideas (as opposed to 10) that I will be writing about. I'm in some intense editing now, but should be done soon....if I stop procrastinating by writing other things, like this blog post!

Now this might seem like a shameless plug, because it is, but I'm also plugging this because I think it would be a great project to duplicate in the film and media arts world. I once suggested 20 leaders under 40 in the film world, but I'd really love it if some reader volunteered to help put together a similar project for film. Perhaps an open call for ideas, maybe not a book but a film or robust online and video project...who knows, but it would be great to hear some of the good ideas out there, especially those coming from voices we don't often hear (which aren't always under 40...I know). If anyone is interested in taking this idea up, get in touch. In the meantime, check out the 20<40 site for updates on events, the book, other authors and what not.

My thoughts on 1 of Ted's 38 reasons indie film's failing

Ted Hope has a new post up at his truly interesting blog listing 38 ways the independent film industry is failing today. I would be depressed with just these 38 reasons, but I’m sad to report this is the second time he’s posted 38 reasons, as he had already posted 38 equally interesting things before. I’m sure I could post 24 more to get him to 100 total, but instead I’d like to add just a few thoughts on number 25 of his 38 failures, because I think it’s one of the biggest failures we face as an industry:

25. We know incredibly little about our audience or their behavior.  We spend so much money making our films without really knowing who are audiences are, why they want our product, how to reach them, or how they behave, or how they are changing.  Does any other industry think so late about their audience?  Does any other industry do so little research into their audience?  Shouldn't we all be sharing what info we have?

This one has always boggled my mind. I’ve written about it before, and will likely do so again, but I’m continually amazed at how little we think about and how little we know about our audience. Whenever I meet with filmmakers about their script or project, I ask them about their intended audience, and as you can guess, most don’t have much of an answer. Sometimes they’ll say something like “everyone who loves indie films” or perhaps they’ve progressed to “white males 25-34” or something. A few have films that have clear niche audiences - Nascar fans - great, or - Nascar fans who only watch at home, don’t tell their friends and drink fancy beer - even better, a true niche. Very few have built any fan base already, either for their films or themselves, which is mind-boggling in an era of Facebook, Twitter and plain-old email lists. I understand the whole “I’m an artist, not a marketer” thing, actually, but in this day and age, to not think about your audience in advance is not just poor business, it ignores the fundamental changes that have hit every business and every art form - that audiences are more participatory, so you can’t just try to engage them with a product and no conversation.

I could go on and on about this, but what drives me even crazier is how little we, as an industry, know about our audience(s). Excuse the artistes, but talk to almost anyone else in the business and you frankly won’t get a much savvier answer. Sure, many distributors have been doing this long enough to have some audience research and staff who know a bit about marketing (BTW, this is some, not all, distributors), but very few have done any real, in-depth research into our audiences and their behavior. Those that have done this tend to keep it private - it’s pretty valuable info to have when your competitors have barely thought about looking into it in the first place. As a field, we have very little to work with. How many festivals survey their audiences for real data? How many can break these results on a per-film basis? B-Side collected a fair amount of data on film-going habits, but their database is now part of another company (Slated), so do any of those fests have their portion of that data (I honestly don’t know)? Why aren’t film schools, business schools or all these nonprofits that supposedly represent us doing some data analysis? I have lots of questions like these, but I think you get the point - we need much better research into the audiences for indie films and for our individual films. I can think of a few quick, partial solutions to this problem -

1. Filmmakers - collect data on your audiences, from everywhere you can, and share it with others. Anonymize it, of course, but share it whenever possible.
2. Savvy computer geek film people - build open source platforms for the sharing of this data.
3. Nonprofit service orgs - partner with researchers to study indie audiences. I suggest using these folks, but I’m sure with a grant you could study this with just about anyone - and share it with your members (a reason for them to join!).
4. Festivals - survey your audiences and share this data with filmmakers. It will also help you when speaking to sponsors.

I’m sure there’s better ideas out there, so share them in the comments.

Possible attack on Attack of the Clones reviewer

Mike Stoklasa of Red Letter Media just recently released his new review of Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. If you haven’t already seen his Phantom Menace review, you’re missing one of the best things to come out of the interweb pipes. Seriously, don’t click these links unless you are ready to spend a good three hours of your day watching both reviews back to back (each review consists of about 10 episodes of 10 minutes each). I’ve written about him before - how I truly think he’s single-handedly created one of the more innovative new art forms online; I hope it changes film criticism as we know it and I think watching it gives the average creative viewer about a hundred new ideas for and/or about story-telling, criticism and new directions for remix, mash-up, copyright and creative practice to name just a few things. But I’m not writing this to help you discover the latest viral video sensation - the web does that fine without my help - but to point out that we’re in danger of missing out on more of these genius pieces because of fear. As both TechDirt and MTV have mentioned in the past few days, Mike is terrified to death that Lucas will sue him (to death) and is contemplating an end to his creative practice.

As reported in the MTV interview:
"...not 48 hours after its initial posting Saturday night, the first segment of the review was taken down by the popular video sharing service, "ostensibly" after a copyright claim by Cartoon Network.
"Was it really Cartoon Network or not? I don't know," Stoklasa sighed. "There was someone who started a rumor that it was a specific YouTube user who had copied the first part over to his channel and then put a link to his Web site in the description. But YouTube doesn't tell you who flagged it."

He goes on to say:

“The thing is, I'm no lawyer. But I had someone actually talk to a copyright lawyer, and they didn't know what to make of the reviews. It's a new thing, You can get away with using a clip from a movie for the purpose of review or commentary, but can you dissect an entire film like that? There's commentary and it's part satire [because of the character, Mr. Plinkett] and part review and part educational as well because there's elements of filmmaking insights."

This is how our copyright system works against creativity - because the rules aren’t always clear and fair use can only be defended if sued, the mere fear of a lawsuit stops people from innovating. Now, I think he has a clearly winnable case, and it’s far from clear that he’s received even the slightest legitimate threat of a suit, but the point is - this is clearly creative work that should be encouraged, not stopped (I can see why Lucas might not like it, but that’s tough luck, kid). Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi have done some great work clarifying fair use, as has Michael Donaldson and many others. I’m sure if needed, some team that includes them and probably the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) can step up to his defense - and they will likely win. In the comments section to the TechDirt post, Nina Paley weighed in saying we should start a legal defense fund to support Red Letter Films if he is sued. So I, like Nina the filmmaker and Mike Masnick the writer am just chiming in to say - yo, Stoklasa - keep making review films, don’t worry about lawsuits - if they come, I’ll join the Kickstarter campaign to fund your defense. A few other things - yo, filmmakers and critics - follow his lead and make more creative reviews like this - a flood of them might help  - a tsunami of remix reviews is a hard thing to stop. Yo- film festivals - program his reviews in their entirety as midnight screenings. The audience reaction will likely be amazing - and it will prove you can program something that's available completely for free everywhere, and still make money!

Here's part one of the new review:

The trifecta that broke the internet as we know it

That deafening applause you hear is not from Durham, NC post NCAA, but rather from the MPAA and the representatives of other major content providers on both sides of the Atlantic cheering on what may be looked back upon as the trifecta week that broke the internet as we know it. Three momentous things took place simultaneously this week that combined are more important than most people realize - the Ipad was released, the UK looks poised to pass Debill and a federal appeals court ruled that the FCC doesn’t have the right to regulate broadband, thus possibly ending its ability to enforce network neutrality.

Nail number one. Lots of people went and got themselves an Ipad yesterday, and many in the film industry are debating whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for independent creatives. Big media is rejoicing, as they think this will be their savior - allowing them to put the genie in the bottle and start selling their content to huge profits again. Old world computer geeks can’t seem to stand the closed, one-way nature of the Ipad (consumption), but their grandma’s seem to love it. Indie lovers think that wow, now they can make an application and actually make money for their content, or get their films seen by more people on the Netflix API. I have serious doubts that indies will be served well by these developments. Sure, a lucky few will make cool applications off the API to serve up and charge for their content, but most of us will be stuck where we’ve always been  - begging some gatekeeper to get our content onto the most used platforms. More importantly, this is a consumption machine - no USB drive, so you can’t even bring in your own content easily, no camera in front, sanction needed from on-high in Apple HQ, yadda yadda. My personal hope - this is like AOL in the early days. Everyone will flock to the ease of use of the walled garden for awhile and then realize they can do much more outside of it. That’s probably a best-case scenario, because this thing is popular and it’s hard to convince a public looking at something cool that there could be something even cooler than what they have. I can’t blame them, and we’ll see if perhaps this becomes the consumption machine for those things created on laptops, etc., including those creations of independents. In the meantime, the main reason I’m not playing with one is less philosophical - price.

Re-thinking impact in film

I recently attended a think-tank, strategy session for an independent documentary filmmaker trying to have meaningful impact with his film. He did a smart thing - gathering about 30 really smart people (plus me, somehow) to talk about having an impact with film. This got me thinking about this question generally, and while this filmmaker was coming from the right place on this, I generally have a problem with this whole question. I have been thinking about this sense, and it led me back to a post I made on this blog in 2006. There might be one or two of you who read me now, but I figured most of my readers are new (the rest having left from all these long posts), and I think this post is still pretty relevant.  Plus, I've been busy this month and posting less, so this gives me something new/old. So, with some minor revisions, here’s some thoughts on the whole question of having an impact with film.

Increasingly, the foundation community and other funders of film are asking the question, how can we have more impact with film? Quite often they are focused only on social media, and the implications are twofold: first, that past efforts to have impact through film have not succeeded, and second, that impact means more than eyeballs – in other words, that audience size isn’t enough and that some larger change also must take place. Let us realize from the outset that the first assumption is completely false. The second assumption puts forth a proposition destined for failure, and one that is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the relation of media to culture, the civic sphere and social change. That said, as many filmmakers and media organizations rely on support from those obsessed with impact, we must address this concern now, for although grounded in many false assumptions, the premise is ultimately true.

MLK and Media?

Last night I joined the first NYC Transmedia Meet-up. Sounds horrible, right, WTF is that? It was actually a great little gathering of several people interested in where things are at and going next in film, media and transmedia, or cross-platform (please another word soon) projects (the book on the right is a good place to start learning about this stuff, BTW). While my mental state only allows for a brief visit to such settings before I really want to talk about something else, I had a great conversation with a small group about the difference between transmedia as marketing and as real transmedia. Lot’s to unpack in another post, but I really enjoyed some comments by Jeffrey Lee Simons, who has been doing this a lot, and you can read his thoughts on his blog. At one point he compared good transmedia as similar to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Having had a couple beers, I was ready to pounce on this nonsense, but he might be right.

Among the many great aspects of Dr. King’s legacy was the fact that he empowered his audience. He wasn’t just a preacher, just a civil-rights leader, just a political figure, just an organizer. He was all of those things and more, but he had an uncanny ability to catch the mood of a certain moment and a lot of people and give them a message that didn’t just preach to them or tell them what to do - it empowered them to feel part of a movement, to know they could control their destiny and that their actions were as important as his. You never felt talked down to, or that he was the most important man in the room - you were on a journey with him, and yes he was very important to the movement, but so were you. When he said “I have a dream” it was powerful, for among many reasons, because that dream could become yours and you could add to it and make it happen.

This is simplifying Dr. King’s legacy a bit, but I think it’s a valuable lesson for anyone thinking about transmedia, and actually for anyone making a film generally, be it narrative or (but especially) a documentary. Let’s just call all of you media artists for now. What media artists often do is try to be the master of their story world, and exercise complete control over where it takes you. They tell you a story and it can enthrall, entertain or so many other things, but while it may “suck you in” it rarely empowers you and makes you feel you are as important to the story as the media artist who authored it.  Of course there are exceptions, but this is a generally true point for much media. Jeff’s point, I think (but it’s definitely mine), was that good transmedia goes an extra step. Yes, it gives you multiple story access points and good ones can be quite interactive, but to rise to truly great it must empower the audience. It too should capture the zeitgeist and bring you in to a journey for which you are equally important to the outcome. It should empower you to take action, to join the conversation and contribute to its fruition. Not by telling you exactly what action to take, necessarily, but empowering you to make a choice that could change the (hi)story. The nature of the story, by definition, must change based on how where you, the audience, takes it. Many transmedia experiences today are simply marketing. While they are on multiple platforms, they aren’t doing much more than giving you alternate ways to get to their story and (with some exceptions) they don’t empower you to add to or change the story. I’m not arguing that no one does this, but rather that more should think about this empowerment aspect.

While this clearly applies to transmedia, it also applies to traditional filmmaking. In documentary, in particular, I find a lot of films that tell me some story. It might be compelling, it might be persuasive, attempting to change my mind or enlighten it. They might also tell me where to donate, when to cry, or how to take some action. But rarely do I feel empowered in quite this same way. While I wouldn’t argue that every film should be an exercise in empowerment, I do think it should be explored by more filmmakers, especially those hoping to have a true impact. Plus, I can’t see any harm in trying to put a little MLK in your media making!

ACTA...wasthat? and why it matters

Well, the New York Times finally covered what is arguably the most important tech/film/net/future/etc story going on in the world (a close second to the Google/Authors Guild proposed rip-off) yet I'm not seeing much about it in the blogs and tweets I follow from the film world. That's bad news, because this is something every filmmaker should be aware of, as well as anyone who is interested in the future of content online. Or the future of the net, really, and that should be everyone. So what the heck is ACTA and what can you do about it?

I know, I know, these policy things make your head hurt. Mine does too, and this one is a doozy. ACTA, or the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Haven't heard of it? That's because you aren't supposed to know about it. It's a top secret negotiation between major countries to combat counterfeiting. You're probably thinking well, piracy and counterfeiting are bad, so what? Well, there's lots of arguments against that view, but even with it, it's a pretty big concern when major countries meet in secret, with no democratic input, about possible rules which could forever change how we access content online. Guess what....your needs as a little indie producer/consumer probably aren't on the list. But you can bet those of the MPAA are, and knowing how like the RIAA they've become, you can bet their proposals amount to breaking the net to preserving their business model.

These talks are secret, you know, like the ones you kept when you were twelve, so details are scant, but there's been leaks and they've have included some doozies.

Diverse thinkers on the new era

I’ve been spending much of the last few years on the road speaking at numerous panels about new models for film, new media and distribution. I’m continually peeved to find myself sitting on a stage with a bunch of other white guys talking about the future. Usually, there’s not even a woman on the panel. I often bring this lack of diversity up publicly, because I find it so odd to find a bunch of white guys talking about the future - when we are decidedly not the future. What gives?

I found myself thinking about this again at Sundance in the panel entitled “The Doctor’s in the House” on distribution. Besides the moderator, Eugene Hernandez, there was no diversity on the panel. Now, I’m not faulting Sundance here - while their track record isn’t great when it comes to diversity, they aren’t the only, just the most recent example of this phenomenon. It’s much broader.

During the panel, I tweeted out the following:

“What, do only white people think about new models for film?? Wtf #sundance c'mon”

My 20<40 leaders in Film

Well, that went over well....No one has suggested anyone for the twenty leaders under 40. Considering I made it clear that you could even nominate people over 40, I’m surprised. Perhaps no one cares, or perhaps as was suggested to me, people don’t want to diss anyone by not nominating them. One person suggested online that they couldn’t think of any real film leaders under 40. Before giving up on this experiment, here’s my list of 20 leaders in film under the age of 40. I’m not sure all of them are actually under 40, but they all look young. And these aren’t my only picks, actually, so if you aren’t on the list, don’t feel slighted. In picking my starter list, I tried to stay away from some of the usual suspects - i.e., if I speak on panels with you on a regular basis,  or everyone refers to you as our savior daily, I left you off the list. The people below are leaders in the film world who I deeply respect and who I think will do at least one thing, if not more, to improve the indie film world in the next five years. Disagree? Don’t say so here. No need to denigrate anyone, but do feel free to add people you think I’ve missed. I’m sure there are lots more.
This list is in alpha order by last name:

Who are the 20 < 40 in film?

I tend to spend my days between a mix of the film world and the art world. Not that film isn’t an art, but meaning that lots of thinking in the capital A, Arts World doesn’t filter to the Film World and vice versa. In the arts world, there’s a cool project going on now that I think would be worth repeating in the film world - it’s called 20Under40. The aim of this project is to gather 20 emerging (or even established) leaders in the arts who are under the age of 40 and compile their thoughts about the future of the arts in one anthology. Or, in their own words:

In light of the impending generational shift in leadership the field of the arts and arts education is about to experience, there has been much talk about the future: who will be our new leading arts thinkers, administrators, policymakers, and practitioners—and in what social, cultural, and political landscapes will these individuals operate? While there is great concern surrounding this matter, little is being done to provide a platform for tomorrow’s leaders to share their ideas with the larger field.

20UNDER40 endeavors to collect twenty essays about the future of the arts and arts education, each written by an emerging leader under the age of forty. In doing so, this anthology will provide a unique arena for new ideas by formally gathering the thoughts of young artists, teaching artists, administrators, researchers, and other arts and arts education professionals—legitimizing the talent of young leaders by bringing their ideas out of the margins and into the forefront of our dialogue.


I submitted a proposal which made it to the next round of selection. Now I have to turn in my chapter and make it to round two, which I have to admit - I hate. I mean, come on, I’m writing for free and don’t know if it will even be published, what is this....Hollywood? Regardless, I’m going to submit my ideas, and I’ll be posting more about my thoughts soon for your feedback, but this isn’t why I’m writing now. Instead, I want to know...You guessed it...

Who are the 20 leaders in film under 40? Who do you think will lead change? Should we  have a similar project in the film world? Perhaps where film leaders under 40 submit proposals for some website publication (Workbook project??) or a book? Perhaps we should start the <40AKC - the under 40 ass-kickers club, a monthly mixer for these folks? I think all of these could be interesting, but would love your thoughts. In the meantime, who are the 20under40 people we should be following in the film world? Feel free to nominate yourself, and bonus points if you name people that aren’t on the usual suspects list. Who is that? Oh, you know who we/they are.....

Now before you post a comment deriding the whole ageism thing here...I’m not saying everyone over 40 should be discounted. I’m not saying under 40 is a perfect cut-off either (what about under 50?). These were the same critiques that the Art world 20<40 folks received, and they answer them well online. I think this is stupid. Start your own damn club if you disagree. Yes, it’s arbitrary, but hey, none of you boomers seem to complain that you got to run everything else for the last 40 years or so, and still do, so give the under40’s a chance. And to be equanimous, go ahead, suggest your 20over40 below, or your 20><=40 or whatever rubric you want. As long as it’s good thinking about the future, I guess I really don’t care about the age of the prophet. I just want 20 great thinkers for all of us to follow.

Can film leapfrog music to success?

Everyone says that the movie industry should not repeat the mistakes of the music industry when it comes to digital. Many argue that we have already repeated these mistakes and continue to do so. I think we need to start thinking about this equation differently. We need to think more actively. The real failure of the music industry wasn’t just to make mistakes, but to not envision the totality of change and respond not according to how it looked on that day, but how things would look 10 years down the road. We need to not just repeat their mistakes, but also come up with solutions that are responding not to where we (and they) are today, but where we’ll be way down the line.

So I propose that we can’t start comparing anything we do until we’ve leapfrogged their current solutions. Until then, we are repeating all of the same mistakes.

For the MPAA, this seems to mean we haven’t succeeded unless we do more than the RIAA did. The RIAA stopped with relatively minor stuff - they try to sue their fans into submission. The MPAA decides it’s going for the jugular and will bypass American and all other laws and work on secret international treaties to rewrite copyright law in their favor.

This is not learning from the mistakes of the past.  It’s just going nuclear.

They may make some major changes, but they will fail at reinventing their model. This is also my main complaint with 3D. It’s not a new response - in fact, the last time the industry felt threatened they turned to 3D to solve their problems. More of the same, updated for today is not a paradigm shift.

In the DIY world, we’re still looking to the music world for answers. We look at what indie musicians have been doing with crowdsourcing, making cool apps to request a band, experimenting with free leading to fee, etc. and try to duplicate them for the film world. These are great experiments, but again, not paradigmatic changes.

Until it’s the other way around - the music world looks to the film world for novel solutions -  we’re still behind. Not repeating the mistakes means leapfrogging them, and until we do, we’re just repeating.

I’m not saying we (film) can’t learn from music folks, or that we shouldn’t be looking for many overlaps and lessons from multiple industries. This is good. But I do think we need to think bigger. All of the things I’ve seen so far look more like band-aids than laser surgery approaches to staunching the bleeding. I don’t know what the “leapfrog solution” is, but I’m thinking about this a lot, and would love your thoughts.

10 Things I'm thinking about for Twenty10

Ok, now I'm on this damn list machine, luckily there's less than 12 hrs left for making end of year lists. I don't have any predictions for film and media in 2010, but I am wondering about a few things:


1. Who will be the exciting new storytellers? 
Who will we be talking about post Sun/Slamdance, Berlin, etc.? I'm always excited to discover new talent, and while there's always great new works by established folks, I can predict with confidence that there will be at least one new discovery this year. But I also predict that like the last couple of years, the new voices I discover won't come from a fest or even a proper film, but from mash-ups, remix, machinima and plain old viral video online. Can't wait.

2. OpenIndie. 
What will it be? I donated to this thing and I still don't completely understand it. But, I have faith that the two folks behind it will make something cool that probably won't change the world (as they hope) but will likely change it just enough to matter.


3. Will fest launches work?
This is the year that many people think filmmakers will really start thinking of festivals as their path to finding an audience instead of finding a distributor. At least one filmmaker is using Sundance as their launch. I can't wait to see how many others do this and what degree of success they have.