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

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).

Slides from my speech at Sofia Film Fest Meetings

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

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.

Beyond the Game, VoDo and Cinema Purgatorio

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.

Film Fests still matter

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.

Piracy Helps Potter

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?

Vo.Do and Distribution

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.

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

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:

Film's equivalent of the great song?

When comparing the music and film worlds, and how they might react to digital, build fans, etc., people often talk about the differences - one being that film doesn’t have the equivalent of the single track, the one song. Many musicians have been able to do things like give away a free track to get you to sign up with your email for updates from them, or give away a track to entice you to buy the album, etc. I’ve been thinking about this today and think film does have the equivalent - it’s what Peter Dekom calls “moments” or those things that people see and remember, tell their friends about, laugh about over the virtual water cooler. You know, like when Napoleon Dynamite’s uncle hits him in the face with a steak, your favorite line from Monty Python or perhaps the most infamous - “you lookin’ at me?” moments. These are our equivalent to the great single.

This is obvious, of course, and I’m simplifying things a bit, but oddly, I’ve not heard it discussed at all (clue me in to what I missed in the comments). I think the problem for film is that we’ve bastardized our moments, chiefly through trailers. Trailers often include such moments, but they’re mashed up in a hodge podge that actually does disservice to the film (okay, yes, it sells films or Hollywood wouldn’t use them, but watch this to see how bad they are). It would be better to just set those moments free - literally, and hope they go viral (or do more than hope with some strategy, but that’s for another post). I’m amazed that we still don’t have video ringtones - my cell should be able to “ring” to Singin’ In the Rain with a video clip of the performance. Perhaps this would go viral and then some kids would rediscover it and pay to watch it (ok, they’d pirate it...but because they don’t have a credit card). I’d love to be able to share quite a few moments from indie films with my friends, but the trouble is, I can’t easily find them on the filmmaker’s websites unless they are buried in some trailer. I’m not taking the time to tell my friends to forward to timecode of 1:50 for the funny part, or poignant part, because I know they won’t bother. Filmmakers should be releasing these moments online, and early on. Sure, there’s an argument to saving the best ones for the theater (or DVD), but I think most of us can use all the free PR possible. It’s much more likely that these moments will be traded virally than your stupid trailer. If your moments are good enough, people might pay for the film - IF you make that easy for them as well. If you’re lucky, these moments might actually go viral and get seen more often than your film, but that’s not bad either - I’d be happy being the filmmaker with the one moment that hit 3 million views on YouTube - as would my future investors, I imagine.

Anyway, just some quick thoughts - a rarity around these parts (meaning my long winded blog). Whatcha think?

Future Think Edinburgh

I'm off to Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Film Fest, which remains one of the better fests out there and which is jam-packed with good panels and activities. I'll be speaking at a few events with the film festival. First, this Sat at 1pm is a panel called "Free for all" and you can guess what that's about - free, piracy, etc. I'm really looking forward to this one, as there's a rep from the MPAA there, and while I am sure he is nice and great, I'm also sure we'll disagree on this issue! I can't find a link online for this one, guess it's too hot a ticket.

Then on Sunday, I'll be speaking for Shooting People as part of their Digital Bootcamp. From the website: "For filmmakers, the internet is changing everything. Shooting People presents this half day session designed to help you and your film navigate the rapidly evolving digital and web landscape. The session is aimed at those for whom these tools are somewhat of a mystery, and know they need to understand them. Alongside a presentation from new models in funding and distribution expert Brian Newman, and a thorough case study of The Last rites of Ransom Pride by festival filmmaker Duncan Montgomery, the event is a comprehensive survey of resources, websites, social media, systems, tracking, crowdsourcing, funding, distribution, exhibition, outreach … and more."

Monday the 21st has me with Shooting People, BAFTA and the Fest again for Short-Sighted, where I'll lay out more of my thoughts on how to make a living by incorporating free into your business model. There's a lot of other great speakers as well, and I look forward to learning some new things. Immediately after that is FutureThink (Mon 21st) - a discussion on the future of cinema. From the catalogue online: " a look at the future: Where will our industry be in 10-20 years time? The world will always want visual stories but how will we view them and where? Will the rise of digital technology mean that cinemas become obsolete?" I'm pretty sure they won't, but I think there's lots of other changes in store, so it should be a good discussion. 

Anyway, there's a lot of other great speakers, so if you'll be in Edinburgh check out those links and look me up in town. 

ATL-PushPush Distrib/Fundraise 101

Just back from my old stomping grounds of the ATL, where I did a few private consults and one big, long workshop for filmmakers at PushPush Theater. The experience, for me at least, was great. My slides are embedded after the fold, but first a few words of thought on Atlanta. Having been there, I'm not telling anyone who lives there anything new when I say there's some serious talent in that town. Sure, we all know about Tyler Perry, Rainforest Films, Turner and all that, but the ideas I heard from several producers/directors were pretty incredible. I also like the fact that they have great resources in town like GSU's DAEL center, the Atlanta Film Festival, a top-notch new media/gaming sector and with an amazing tax incentive, there's arguably few places better to shoot right now.

They also have innovative thinkers like PushPush Theater. Yes, I am biased as they paid me to consult and to speak, disclaimer enough? That said, I don't know of many other theater companies that are thinking about community and creativity like they are doing. They aren't just a theater company. Sure, lots of people open their doors to improv, to people showing film screenings, to training, to actors who might want to go from stage to screen. PushPush, however, is going further and thinking about how their projects can become multi-platform transmedia productions. This kinda started with a program they did called Dailies, which helped a group of filmmakers workshop a series of short film experimentations into what became Pop Film's The Signal.

50,000 films is a great thing, post on The Wrap

My first post for The Wrap just went online. In it, I discuss how the ever increasing flood of films is a good thing. Say what? Aren't they just crowding up the house? I don't think so, and explain why. Let me know your thoughts, either here or at The Wrap (and expect some more zany thoughts there soon).

For those too lazy - here's the article, pasted below:

For a few years now, the topic du jour at panels and conferences has been whether or not the sky is falling on the film business. Most panelists seem to settle on a common culprit contributing to the malaise: Too many films being made.

Case in point: During a recent conversation between Ted Hope and Chris Hyams, hosted by TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman, the panelists bemoaned this fact, and when Waxman commented that more than 3,000 films were submitted to Sundance last year, Chris Hyams quickly interjected that the Sundance submission number grossly underestimates the real numbers. Based on his analysis of unique, individual entries from the thousands of film festivals that used B-Side’s Festival Genius software to run their websites, Hyams estimated that as many as 50,000 films were made in 2009.

Audible gasps were heard in the room, and judging by the questions and comments from the audience, on Twitter and from those watching the streaming feed, it was clear that everyone agreed that 50,000 films might be 49,850 too many.

Some things I'd like to know

To my mind, the biggest problem facing the indie film field is the lack of transparency around the numbers. Which numbers? All of them. Until we know a few basic things, it's really hard to say what's wrong, what might work, what has worked and whether anything really is wrong at all. Everyone talks about box office, but we all (should) know that those are really the least important numbers. If we had better data available, publicly, on VOD, deal points, DVD sales, etc., then we could build a more robust indie film sector. We don't know these numbers for a lot of reasons - many people make their living off keeping these things confidential, but some of them we just don't know because no one who should be asking them has bothered - ahem, that would be you, lackadaisical film industry trades (all of you). So here's twenty things I'd like to know, in no particular order.

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.

My presentation for BAFTA Scotland

Here's the Slides from my recent presentation in Glasgow, Scotland for Scottish Students on Screen, a program of BAFTA Scotland. For those of you who've seen my other presentations, this one won't be really new - it combines a few things from multiple different presentations, but it does add a few new things near the end. I always post these, however, so that people don't have to take notes on links, etc which are all embedded in the presentation. The entire day was great, with many other good speeches, including one from Anita Ondine and from Peter Mullan.

Glasgow - Inventing the Future

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Engage 101 at Shooting People/DCTV

Tonight I gave a speech for Shooting People and DCTV called Engage 101 - Audience Building Masterclass. That was an impossible enough task, so I tried to make it harder and give a brief overview on film distribution, all the new models out there and some basics on using the web and some old fashioned tools to build your audience...all the way up to transmedia 101. Whew, not sure that was smart, but I got good feedback and it was fun. I also learned a lot from the questions, and at the end we opened it up for a group session on a few films, and as expected, the audience feedback was great. I always upload my presentations for free, so here below it is. No audio or video was taken, and these slides don't capture everything I said, but the essence is there. If you're super advanced in this stuff, it might not be worth your time, but could be worth a view for some new (and old) ideas. Feedback appreciated as always. This was also just one of many panels and masterclasses these folks do, with many great speakers, so check out their info online.

here's the presentation, and my apologies that Slideshare always repeats the title, the title, the title....I don't understand this glitch.

Shooting People Engage101

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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.

10 ideas on the future of the arts (20<40)

My recent post about possible leaders in the arts under 40 (20<40) ended up getting some traction. The idea it was based on wasn't mine, but rather comes from an upcoming book on 20 new ideas by emerging leaders in the arts who are all under 40. I've been selected to submit a chapter, and hope to do so soon. The idea of the book isn't to discuss who are the leaders, but to listen to their ideas about the future of the field.  In the spirit of openness, I submit my idea below for your feedback and advice. The chapter I am contemplating writing (and I have to do it soon) is about some key changes in the arts. Not the most cutting edge changes, mind you, but those that I think will have the most impact in the next few years. These ideas will be old-hat to anyone who thinks about these matters a lot, but I think they bring together some of the more important changes we face in the arts in general - and of course to film, particularly as that's where I work. So, tell me what you agree with, disagree with, think is more important, etc. I promise that I'll consider all responses before submitting my final chapter. So here's what I think:

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.