Randy Finch's Film

FIL-4661 Film Producer Homework due Feb. 2nd, 2012

2012-01-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

The assignment for Feb. 2nd, 2012 is to create a blog (using Blogger) about a feature length film. The film can be any feature length film that was commercially released.

Before you start on creating your blog, you should start with a review of the Film Fest Marketing Project website. As we discussed in class there are posts available there about How To Create A Blog and this Blog Assignment.

Here's how you should go about creating your blog:

First you must research (on the Internet) the film you have chosen to blog about.

Post the following information on a new blog you create using Blogger:

A short pitch (three sentences or less) for the film.
Include an image of the film's poster.
Include an embedded trailer for the film.
Indicate whether you have seen the film or not (it doesn’t matter either way). List the main cast, director, and producer.
Did the film play the festival circuit?
Are there reviews available? An official website? Provide links.
Finally, what were the angles they used to market and sell this film? Do you think they were correct? What would you do differently and why?

Resources

Refer to these documents for help on adding links, images, and video to a Blogger blog:

Refer to these resources for help in researching your film:

Review the following blogs from previous student projects for reference:

Submitting

The assignment is due on February 2, 2012.

Once you've completed your blog, post a link to your blog as a comment to this post. To receive credit, your comment must be posted before our class (3pm on Feb. 2nd, 2012).

If you have any questions, please contact Randy Finch.

The Distributed Network: Why Hollywood Doesn't Get the Internet

2012-01-25T13:40:00.000-08:00

Chris Dorr is a digital media consultant with a client list that includes MTV and the Tribeca Film Festival.

On January 25th, 2012 Chris Dorr contributed an eye-opening blogpost to the Tribeca Film blog that neatly explains the gulf between Old World big media companies (like the movie studios) and New World internet users and tech companies who are using the internet to distribute and access content.

Chris Dorr's very informative short article is a must-read for indie filmmakers and web-savvy movie fans. I'm pretty sure that Chris Dodd of the MPAA and the leaders of Old World big media companies could benefit from reading Chris Dorr's blogpost too, but I'm not holding my breath that they are going to read it or change their positions about the New World of content distribution.

Still, wth just a few words and a couple of diagrams (see above), Chris Dorr neatly explains the way that movies have been distributed for 100+ years (i.e., through a few gatekeepers in a centralized network) and the way internet users have come to expect that movies will be distributed in the future (i.e., through a "distributed network").

These two models - and the ways that they differ - are at the bottom of all the major battles being fought today between Old Media and New.

As Chris Dorr explains, online "piracy" and the ways that content will be sold in the 21st century cannot really be understood until you understand why the two sides are having such a hard time seeing eye-to-eye.

Transmedia Case Study: Campfire's Work on HBO's Game of Thrones

2012-01-25T11:28:00.000-08:00

Game of Thrones Case Study from Campfire on Vimeo.

At the January 24th, 2012 TransmediaNYC meet-up, Steve Coulson, Creative Director of Campfire, presented the campaign that his "immersive marketing" company launched for the premiere of HBO's Game Of Thrones.

If you want to know more, you can follow the link to a great storify that recaps what was said and shown by Steve and the lucky participants at the Jan. 24th meet-up.

After SOPA and PIPA, Is the Next Battle ACTA?

2012-01-25T09:43:00.000-08:00

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement ("ACTA") is a treaty described by the authors as an effort "to strengthen the international legal framework for effectively combating global proliferation of commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy."

The trading partners who have been working on ACTA include the United States, Australia, Canada, Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Morocco. Representatives from these countries have negotiated a "final version" of ACTA - which their reps signed on Oct. 11th, 2011 in Tokyo. The next step, that would bring the provisions of ACTA into force, is ratification, acceptance, or approval from each of the signatories.

On January 24th, 2012 demonstrators gathered outside the European Union offices in Warsaw to protest the Polish government's plan to sign ACTA on January 26th, 2012 (see photo above). At the same time, several key Polish websites announced that they would go dark on Tuesday evening January 24th to protest ACTA.

Around the world, many advocates for internet freedom see ACTA as a threat. For example, the EFF says: "ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet legitimate commerce and for developing countries’ ability to choose policy options that best suit their domestic priorities and level of economic development."

Under the ACTA treaty, Internet Service Providers ("ISP") will police all data passing through them, making them legally responsible for what their users do online.

Should a user do something considered a "breach of copyright" the ISP would be responsible for monitoring that activity and providing information to government authorities that could then (depending on local law) disconnect that user from the Internet, and/ or result in a fine or even jail time for that user.

Although many of the local laws that could impose such penalties are already in place, ACTA removes the legal safeguards that currently protect Internet Service Providers from liability - shifting the entire system of enforcement of Old World copyright into a new high gear that will have many (intended and unintended) consequences on innovation and freedom of expression.

For example, according to an analysis by the Free Software Foundation, ACTA would require that existing ISPs no longer host free software that can access copyrighted media. This effectively means that software that is capable of legal use would be banned from the internet because it might also be used for illegal purposes. In other words, a free app that allows users to find your film online - even when you have given people permission to download your film for free, because you want to sell them merchandise or because free downloads publicize an upcoming live event - would be banned, just because such apps also might enable illegal downloading of copyright content.

In trying to protect the legitimate interests of content creators and owners, lawmakers must be very careful about creating new rules that criminalize behaviors that could (instead) be monetized. This is a disruptive time, but Old Media must adapt - and the regulations that invade privacy or unduly stifle innovation must be avoided.

Vision, Scope and Finance Homework due Jan. 31st, 2012

2012-01-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

The first part of your reading assignment for January 31st is to read the first three chapters in Frank Rose’s Art of Immersion (pages 1-76).

Next, continue your review of screenwriting tools by reading this overview of screenwriting classes.
Then read a post, paying special attention to Jeff Kitchen's ideas about giving your protagonist a dilemma.
Then read about screenwriting for improvisation.

Your written homework, please attach a link to this blogpost as a comment, is the following VISION exercise.

1) State your (newly revised?) premise (the one sentence COP).

2) Explain how your protagonist and antagonist really fit your premise.
Romeo and Juliet have a great love that defies even death. Are your characters also the embodiment of your stated premise?

3) Do your characters make their own decisions?
In providing the details to round out these characters, have you provided sufficient physiological, sociological, and psychological justification so the protagonist and antagonist are acting on their own in the face of conflict? This is important: Your characters should be complex, but your characters must also act in ways that are consistent with traits and experiences. Please explain how Jeff Kitchen’s ideas about an “ethical dilemma” apply to your protagonist.

4) Does your conflict and its resolution prove your premise?

How to Write an Improvised Script

2012-01-25T07:13:00.000-08:00

Ben York Jones is an avid fan of improvisation and sketch comedy. Along with childhood friend and collaborator, Drake Doremus, Jones co-wrote the 2011 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Like Crazy.

Like Crazy has earned much attention for its realism - but the unconventional process that the filmmakers employed has also led to some misunderstanding: For example, the October 21st, 2011 NY Times reported that Like Crazy was made "without a script."

As a co-writer of the film, Ben York Jones felt compelled to respond. Initially he put out a 140 character response via twitter: "The actors worked from a very detailed "scriptment" written in prose. On set, they were asked to put things in their own words.”

While that brief response suggests the broad strokes - the actual work involved (from inspiration to execution) on Like Crazy deserved more detail. Like Crazy is a film that all microbudget filmmakers could profitably study.

That's why I'm grateful that on January 24th, 2012 (in a guestpost for Ted Hope's invaluable blog) Ben York Jones has shared more about the process of conceiving and making Like Crazy.

Here are some excerpts from that blogpost:

"[W]e decided what would be important to communicate was not what the characters should say, but what they should withhold."

"[W]hen you ask your cast to improvise, you’re also asking the crew to adjust accordingly. A focus-puller’s task, for example, becomes a lot more demanding when the actors have no marks to hit"

If you're thinking about making your own film outside the traditional production paradigm of Hollywood films, read everything you can about the making of Like Crazy and the ideas that inspired their process. A great place to start is Ben York Jones' entire post on Ted Hope's blog.

App-maker Moonbot Gets An Oscar Nomination

2012-01-25T06:14:00.000-08:00

"The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore," directed by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, is one of five animated short films that will be considered for outstanding film achievement at the 84th Academy Awards on Feb. 26th, 2012.

At the same time that they were developing the Old World film, Moonbot Studios also was hard at work on a New World application, an interactive iPad App of Morris Lessmore (trailer above), that is available on iTunes for $4.99 in the App Store.

Faithful readers of this blog will remember I've previously blogged about the innovative Morris Lessmore app (including some very informative "making-of" videos). To read about how this Oscar nomination might serve as a bridge between Old Media (film) and New (apps), you can follow this link.

Making Your Audience Part of Your Drama

2012-01-25T04:59:00.000-08:00

Nuno Bernardo is the co-founder and CEO of transmedia production company beActive. Nuno is also one of the authors of Sofia’s Diary, a teen drama series broadcast by social network Bebo.

Sofia’s Diary tells the story of Sofia who, after an incident in a school chemistry lab, is sent to London to live with her dad and step-mom and brother, but still tries to keep in touch with her friends. The series was originally launched in Portugal in 2003 as an experimental web and mobile service - it was relaunched and was updated daily from 2008-2009 using online and mobile tools to tell it's story - with so much success that a TV version also aired briefly (after school on English TV's Channel 5) in 2009.

As the plot of Sofia's Diary unfolded in daily online episodes, Sofia encouraged teens to call a help line about gun crime after popular character Sean Walker was killed. Later Sofia also encouraged her audience to call a help line about road safety after the character of Scratch was hit by a car.

In a January 24th, 2012 blogpost for mipworld, Nuno Bernardo explained how Sofia's Diary used the interactivity of the web to engage the audience.

"We realized that it is vital to keep your audience communicating with you, because if you don’t engage with them they’ll quickly get busy with the billion other distractions on the internet. Beating the distractions is just one element of this interaction; the other is keeping the tone of your engagement consistent with the tone of normal communications between friends on social media, blogs, Facebook or Twitter."

So, for Sofia's Diary, the writers "created what in television terms is called the ‘A plot’. The ‘A plot’, or main story plot, has to be controlled solely by the writers. Accordingly, the audience could not touch, interact with or in any way interfere with the ‘A plot’. What they could alter was the ‘B plot’, which contained all the minor episodic dilemmas that were contained in Sofia’s life."

"We allowed the audience to make minor changes in the show – so they felt that this was their show and was responding to their suggestions – but avoiding dramatic changes that could ruin all the drama of the story we wanted to tell."

"The audience were being texted, coaxed and confided in on their web sites, just as one friend would to another. Sofia was telling them there was something happening in her life; but not only that, she needed the viewers to talk to her because she needed their help. By using these new tools, we moved away from passive storytelling, where the audience sits back and observes the characters in action. Instead, the characters were always living, always updating and, most importantly, always engaging with and challenging the audience to get involved."

The Future of Books?

2012-01-24T04:36:00.000-08:00

A January 20th, 2012 Wall Street Journal article discusses, Chopsticks, an interactive app about a piano prodigy.

Chopsticks is yet another example of an emerging genre of fiction made possible by new technologies. Specifically, Chopsticks is narrative storytelling built for tablets - employing traditional text as well as "family photos, letters, documents, instant messages and YouTube videos."

FIL 6614 Assignment for January 23rd, 2012

2012-01-23T20:32:00.000-08:00

Please post links to your pitches - as comments - here.

Here are 2 links to get you started:

http://filmsoutsidethebox.blogspot.com/

http://nilsdistro.blogspot.com/

FIL 6614 Assignment for January 30th, 2012

2012-01-23T20:17:00.000-08:00

Here's the assignment for Monday night January 30th, 2012:

Required reading:

Think Outside the Box Office: The Ultimate Guide to Film Distribution and Marketing for the Digital Era [Paperback] by Jon Reiss

pages 1-52

The Long Tail, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More [Paperback] by Chris Anderson

pages 1-84

Then look at The Wrap, The Hollywood Reporter, and IndieWire for info about sales at Sundance, for your...

Written Homework (post to each of your blogs - then please post a link as a comment to this post): A jointly written speadsheet about sales at Sundance 2012 (see prior year spreadsheets on reeldistrib.com for format).

Indie Film World Mourns the Passing of Bingham Ray

2012-01-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

On January 23rd 2012, word traveled from the Sundance Film Festival that a champion of independent filmmaking, Bingham Ray, had died.

Bingham was a familiar face to anyone on the festival circuit. He was the co-founder of October Films - where many indie films found a home in the 1990s - and had recently assumed the role of executive director of the San Francisco Film Society.

Bingham suffered a stroke on Thursday January 19th and was hospitalized in Park City, Utah where he was to attend the Sundance Film Festival. A second stroke followed and Bingham Ray, 57, died in Provo on January 23rd.

Although I never had a film released by Bingham, I saw him on numerous panels and we reconnected at festivals around the US and Canada. He was a magnetic figure - a key part of the world we indie filmmakers constructed for ourselves - radiating energy and self-assurance.

Bingham's sudden passing reminds me of how fragile this life is - and of how lucky I've been to have shared a life in indie film with great people like Bingham (and the others in the video at the top of this post - where Bingham speaks at the end in a way that I find comforting tonight).

Indie filmmakers who can trace our roots back to the 1980s are a small and passionate group. We are all in mourning tonight - feeling Bingham's loss in many ways - some personal - but others shared like a disturbance in the non-mainstream force.

He will be missed.

The MPAA, Corruption and SOPA: The View From 1788

2012-01-22T14:20:00.000-08:00

"An avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the acquisition of wealth." Alexander Hamilton, the man on the $10 bill, writing on March 26th, 1788 in The Federalist No. 75.

The Founders of the American experiment - the deeply-idealistic but also deeply-practical authors of our radically new form of self-government - were obsessed with corruption.

Leaders like Alexander Hamilton (a skeptic of republicanism) and Patrick Henry (an anti-federalist) could find rare common ground with James Madison and Governeur Morris when it came to the threats to the integrity of self-government from corruption.

Preventing improper influence over government decision-making is a theme that runs throughout the Constitution. Still, as the Founding Fathers feared, corruption continues to seep into our form of government.

One (particularly brazen?) display of how business can corrupt government decision-making occurred at the end of the debate over the so-called "anti-piracy" bills SOPA and PIPA.

Specifically, when Chris Dodd, the chief lobbyist for the six major movie studios and a former Senator, appeared on Fox News on January 19th, 2012 to discuss the apparent failure of SOPA in Congress he was unusually blunt about what the movie studios expected for their millions of dollars in campaign contributions:

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake," Dodd said. "Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

Think for a moment about what lobbyist Dodd blurted out.

Essentially this former Senator acknowledged that the MPAA had paid for Congress members to be elected in return for their performance on behalf of the six studios.

Whether lobbyist Dodd's words rise to the level of a quid pro quo arrangement worthy of criminal investigation ("To the extent that large contributions are given to secure a political quid pro quo from current and potential office holders, the integrity of our system of representative democracy is undermined.") - or whether he was simply frustrated and careless and misspoke about a non-criminal understanding - the fact remains that this is what the Founding Fathers meant by "corruption."

To the men who wrote the Constitution, the evil of corruption wasn't just that money could leverage specific bad actions (like passing a flawed bill like SOPA or PIPA). When the Founding Fathers wrote about corruption they were concerned with the way bias could actually change the moral attitude of an individual and a nation.

In the eyes of the Founding Fathers, the power of the MPAA to manipulate our political process - remember, in addition to their movie studios, their parent companies also have consolidated control over television and other media industries - might be seen as a form of corruption.

After all, once a politician accepts money from the MPAA, lobbyist Dodd has made it clear, that politician is expected to be compliant.

But that isn't where it ends. The MPAA also has the power to shift discourse. Even if they can't outright buy votes, they can still corrupt the public debate.

For example, once a Congressperson has taken a large donation from the MPAA - will he/she speak out against SOPA or PIPA - or will he/she slink away when the bill encounters problems, noting the change of position via twitter or facebook without taking a more public and principled stand?

It's increasingly clear that SOPA and PIPA are failing in Congress simply because these laws threaten what many Americans see as the best chance of creating jobs and growing the American economy - a robust internet.

But how many politicians will dare say that?

There is ample evidence that SOPA and PIPA got as far as they did in Congress because politicians - who admittedly didn't understand the technology or the proposed laws - were too compliant with the wishes of some of their biggest contributors.

And lobbyist Dodd has made sure that our legislators won't soon forget who pays for their campaigns and who controls the media they need to get re-elected.

If you're concerned about the corrupting influence of the MPAA on this debate and what lobbyist Dodd said on Fox News - here's a link to a petition you can sign.

UPDATE: January 25th, 2012 A petition has begun circulating, asking the Congressional beneficiaries of MPAA money to give the money back.

Does Online Piracy Hurt The Economy?

2012-01-22T12:17:00.000-08:00

A January 21st, 2012 post to the Forbes website by E. D. Kain concludes that "the economic impact of piracy and the impact on employment is being wildly inflated by the entertainment industry and that steps to reduce piracy would actually likely have very little effect."

The Forbes article cites a January 12th, 2010 study, File-Sharing and Copyright by Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of the University of Kansas, that finds that the “data on the supply of new works are consistent with the argument that file sharing did not discourage authors and publishers” from producing more works for the US market.

The inspiration for Mr. Kain's piece in Forbes seems to have been a January 18th, 2012 article in Ars Technica by Julian Sanchez, a fellow at the Cato Institute, that concludes "the credible evidence for the magnitude of the harm [caused by "piracy"] is fairly thin."

In other words, even if SOPA and PIPA weren't badly drafted laws with terrible unintended consequences, the "piracy" harm they claim to address has been wildly overstated.

Even as lies and distortions and what some see as veiled threats (Chris Dodd, the chief lobbyist for the movie studios, has delivered a very blunt message to the politicians who took MPAA money only to walk away from SOPA) continue to flow from the darkest corners of old media, Forbes.com ("the world's most widely visited business web site") has conceded that: "The data simply doesn’t suggest that piracy is causing any serious economic harm to the US economy or the entertainment industry. Heavy-handed approaches to preventing piracy are wrong-headed and reveal a dangerous level of short-term thinking on the part of both lawmakers and industry leaders. Worse, the impetus to crack down on piracy is based largely on industry data that wildly inflates the problem."

Star Wars Uncut

2012-01-22T07:15:00.000-08:00

Star Wars Uncut started with Casey Pugh, a developer at Vimeo, who initially posted the request for user-generated 15 second segments - crowd-sourcing the ridiculous epic through the internet.

Thanks Siobhan O'Flynn for the link.

Another Journalist Duped by Robert Levine's Distortions?

2012-01-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

Another journalist has fallen victim to the illogical arguments of Robert Levine ("How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business"). Readers of this blog may recall that I've previously pointed out some of the many problems with Mr. Levine's grandstanding and his book, Free Ride.

They are not hard to spot.

Still, in a January 20, 2012 The Globe and Mail review of Free Ride, Paula Todd, a lawyer who teaches journalism (and should know better), becomes yet another victim of Mr. Levine's glib line of BS - without even pausing to consider the obvious sophistry that underpins Free Ride.

For example, one of Mr. Levine's favorite arguments is that YouTube is built on "pirated' Saturday Night Live clips. As recounted by Ms. Todd in The Globe and Mail: "In 2003, for example, NBC delivered an $800-million (U.S.) profit to its owner, General Electric. Just seven years later, the network was looking to lose more than $100-million."

Wow. A $900 million dollar swing!

According to Mr. Levine (who Ms. Todd quotes uncritically), "while viewers were busy downloading Saturday Night Live from the Internet, Google was poised to buy YouTube for $1.65-billion."

Wow. Google bought YouTube because they wanted to get their hands on all that money that rightly belonged to NBC!

Terrible right?

Not exactly.

Because, to suggest, as Robert Levine does (and Ms. Todd credulously repeats), that "piracy" is the cause of what happened to NBC between 2003 and 2008 is patently absurd.

Are Ms. Todd and Mr. Levine aware of the landmark events in NBC history that account for the drop in profits between 2003 and 2008? For example, Friends ended in 2004 (and with it NBC’s lock on “must-see-TV” ad revenue) and the network struggled to breakeven on the Chinese Olympics in 2008 (having paid billions for U.S rights to the Olympics through 2012).

How about the problem of comparing apples to oranges?

Do Ms. Todd or Mr. Levine realize that NBC Universal was formed in May 2004 by the merger of General Electric's NBC with Vivendi's Vivendi Universal Entertainment and that profits at NBC Universal were depressed in 2008 because of a string of flops in its movie business (No movies in the top 10 of 2008, but many clumped at the bottom of that year’s barrel including Leatherheads, Definitely Maybe, Changeling, Death Race, Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins)?

Finally, if we've reached the breaking point where "hijacking content that someone else paid to create deprives content creators of the cash to make more of it," why does TV ad revenue continue to grow? Over the 2003-2008 period MagnaGlobal reports worldwide TV ad revenue grew from $122.5 billion to over $155 billion. Mr. Levine describes a world where TV advertising revenue has been crippled by the internet, instead of the real world where TV ad revenue continues to grow (Deloitte predicts over $200 billion in 2012) as the world becomes more wired.

Sheesh.

Mr. Levine's over-the-top obsession with "digital piracy and greedy technology firms" make him a lousy standard-bearer. This is a genuinely disruptive time, but content creators deserve a better champion. It's just too easy to knock down many of Mr. Levine's arguments with facts (even if Ms. Todd was not up to the challenge).

Content-creators need to be compensated in the New World - and enterprise-level "piracy" is a real problem. Robert Levine is 100% right about that. But I fear that Mr. Levine's hyperbolic distortions (and his attacks on people who are engaged in good-faith efforts to find a New Way) do more harm than good. Paradoxically, Robert Levine and his absurd claims may be an obstacle to getting content-creators compensated in the New World of digital connectivity.

Would You Like Some Show With Your Product Placement?

2012-01-21T12:57:00.000-08:00

Is SOPA Dead? Don't Put Down Your Pitchforks Just Yet

2012-01-20T13:47:00.000-08:00

If you think SOPA was an aberration, a bad law that was defeated because Old Media and our legislators listened to and accepted the arguments against internet censorship and overbroad laws - think again.

As Clay Shirky explains, in yet another brilliant piece of writing (his January 20th, 2012 blogpost entitled "Pick Up the Pitchforks"): "The risk now is not that SOPA will pass. The risk is that we’ll think we’ve won. We haven’t; they’ll be back. Get ready to have this fight again."

How to Put Balance Back in Copyright

2012-01-19T09:25:00.000-08:00

In an online post, that will also appear in the February 6th, 2012 edition of The Nation, Caleb Crain reviews a new book by the intellectual property lawyer Peter Jaszi and communications scholar Patricia Aufderheide (both pictured above) entitled Reclaiming Fair Use.

Mr. Crain's book review also serves as a great summary of the current state of the Fair Use exception to US copyright law.

SOPA and PIPA: Khan Academy

2012-01-18T20:29:00.000-08:00

NYC Anti-SOPA Protest Jan. 18, 2012

2012-01-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

SOPA and the Italian Shipwreck

2012-01-18T09:32:00.000-08:00

The T-Shirt pictured above quotes the Italian Coast Guard's profane command to the Captain of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia - "Get Back Onboard."

This T-Shirt has become very popular among the 99% in Europe almost overnight.

Apparently this angry demand has struck a chord - representing a general frustration with leaders.

In Europe, "Vada a bordo, Cazzo!" distills into a few words a broad-based conviction that the people in charge have abandoned their responsibilities to the rest of us.

For me, the parallels between the way the Captain of the Costa Concordia handled his ship and the way Congress has handled the proposed internet "piracy" legislation known as SOPA are striking.

Apparently both the Congress and the Captain were navigating waters and running systems that they didn't really understand.

Both were focused on what was best for them - while ignoring the dangers to others.

And, now that SOPA and the Costa Concordia have both hit the rocks, Congress and the Captain are distancing themselves from their disasters.

In January 2012, Congressional supporters of SOPA began to leap overboard - perhaps out of political expediency or maybe because of the gaping hole in internet security that SOPA's DNS-blocking would have created.

As of January 18th, 2012, Captain Schettino is claiming he "tripped" and inadvertently found himself in a lifeboat alongside the Costa Concordia while passengers were dying onboard.

If you listen to them, neither the Congressional supporters of SOPA nor the Captain intended any harm. And they say it only seems like they snuck away into the night.

How long will it be until Congress and the Captain start blaming others for their lack of competence and courage?

Movie Posters From Another Universe

2012-01-17T11:35:00.000-08:00

Peter Stults is a New York based illustrator and designer, whose love of old movie posters has resulted in "posters of films that, title wise, we were familiar with, but there was a slight difference; they were remade as if they belonged to a different era or a different genre, the name of the movie was there, but the actors were different, the style was different."

Apparently Peter Stults is expanding on existing meme - here's a link to another alternate universe movie poster site.

Saul Bass and the Shower Scene From Psycho

2012-01-16T15:49:00.000-08:00

Design historian Pat Kirkham has written the definitive article "Reassessing the Saul Bass and Alfred Hitchcock Collaboration."

Ms. Kirkham's exceptionally well researched and written January 11th, 2012 article for the Design Observer's Observatory webpage includes the following:

"Film director Billy Wilder, who knew both Bass’s and Hitchcock’s work inside out, had little patience with those who could not see the difference between the overall style of the film and that of the shower scene. He told [Ms. Kirkham in a 1994 interview], “Like most people in Hollywood you knew who did what if you were in the industry, especially if great stuff was involved. Everybody talked about that scene. Right from the beginning I understood that Saul did it. Everybody knew. Everybody knew Saul was brilliant. Who questioned it until those remarks of Hitchcock? . . . You only have to look at the sequence and look at the film and think. Think for one minute. You see the shower scene and you see it is not at all like Mr. Hitchcock — King of the Long Shot.”"

There is No Net: Schuyler Moore's Modest Proposal to Mend Hollywood Accounting

2012-01-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

Schuyler M. Moore is a partner in the corporate entertainment department of Stroock, practicing entertainment, corporate, and tax law. Accordingly, he's an expert on how Hollywood films are financed - and then generally fail to pay back third-party investors.

Or, as screenwriter and playwright David Mamet observed in 1988: "[T]he first rule of Hollywood is there is no net.”

On Dec. 15th, 2011 Schuyler Moore wrote an opinion piece for the Hollywood Reporter suggesting a revamp of how Hollywood pays back investors and accounts for the expenses of making and marketing films - a system that has lead to "widespread distrust of studio bean counters [and] has contributed to the retreat of investors from Hollywood and escalating demands by talent for higher upfront pay because they're skeptical of getting anything on the backend."

What does attorney Moore suggest? Basically, the deal that I began offering to actors working on my independent films back in the 1980s: Bonuses based on box-office performance.

How would that work? Basically, if the film performs to a certain (objective monetary) level at the box office, then lump sum payments are due. For example, a producer looking for indie financing of $1 million dollars (offering 10 units at $100,000 each) could promise investors recoupment of 100% of their money should the film reach a certain box-office number - with subsequent bumps should the movie continue performing. E.g., if the film grosses $20 million domestically, for every $100,000 of investment that investor would receive a payment of $100,000, same thing for hitting $25 million and $30 million.

Note: It's rare for an indie film to make millions at the box-office - so investors may not like these odds. But the chance of tripling their money should the movie hit $30 million (with no excuses like "we haven't reached breakeven because of high distribution expenses," etc.) might make the deal more attractive.

Also Note: The indie filmmaker offering such a deal to investors - and the investors - are both gambling that a third-party distributor will emerge who is willing to assume such obligations. Legally the distributor must agree to "assume" all such obligations: Otherwise the producer might be liable for payments (triggered by the film's theatrical success) that the producer doesn't have the resources to pay.

Documentary Film Techniques Appropriated By Political Campaigns

2012-01-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

Victimized people telling the camera about their hardships, varying film stocks and images of abandoned factories surrounded by empty parking lots - these are the elements of a documentary exposé by Michael Moore, Robert Kenner or Alex Gibney. As reported by David Carr in the Jan. 16th, 2012 NY Times, these tropes also play a prominent role in “When Mitt Romney Came to Town” - a 28 minute film attacking Mitt Romney that was paid for by supporters of Newt Gingrich.

Is this use of documentary style filmmaking a new feature of political campaigns?

Here's a political campaign film from 1956:

Notice how the filmmaking techniques of the 1956 Adlai Stevenson film (with John F. Kennedy playing the part of a television interviewer in an awkwardly formal "at home" conversation) are similar to the techniques that Edward R. Murrow was making popular in his "Person to Person" interviews - like his 1955 interview with Marilyn Monroe:

Also notice how Lyndon Johnson's 1964 campaign ad used some of the techniques (juxtaposing images of an innocent against the military efficiency of a countdown to a nuclear attack) from a nuclear-preparedness "documentary" from 1957:

Alex Gibney, the filmmaker who has made documentaries like “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer” told David Carr writing in the NY Times that he was concerned about the appropriation of his techniques for “When Mitt Romney Came to Town”: “It worries me because it pollutes the form... People could marginalize something that I made by saying that it’s no different than some other piece of paid propaganda that is out there.”

But hasn't this appropriation of techniques always been the key to successful political filmmaking?

Internet Native Films: Deliver Me To Hell and Other Fine Examples of Film Experiences That Wouldn't Work In a Theater or On Traditional TV

2012-01-16T09:21:00.000-08:00

Webby-Award winning director Martin Percy has written a manifesto concerning Internet Native Films. It reads (in part):

"The internet is a great method of distribution – for uploading, commenting, linking etc - and most online film takes advantage of this. But as you know, the defining feature of internet content is that it's unlike linear media such as books, regular TV and movies – instead, it’s interactive.

And here’s the puzzle: although most of the data on the internet is now video, almost none of those videos use the medium in any significant way. Almost always, once you press “Play” you might as well be watching on TV. But things are starting to change...

A new sort of online film is emerging. It doesn’t just use the web as a method of distribution. Instead, it tries to combine the emotional connection of live action film with the flexibility of the web. You couldn’t show these films on a regular TV without losing something essential. You could say, therefore, that these films are “native” to the internet. You could even call them “Internet Native Films”."

Having written a manifesto for the Internet Native Film revolution, Martin Percy has also begun compiling a growing list of exemplary Internet Native Films. Martin's collection (which includes Deliver Me To Hell - the interactive YouTube Zombie film adventure written and directed by New Zealand's Logan McMillan and embedded above) is currently curated on Martin Percy's internetnativefilm.com website.

So far, Martin Percy has been grouping Internet Native Films into 3 categories:

1) Interactive film:
You interact with it DURING the experience

2) Personalized film:
You personalize it BEFORE the experience

3) Enhanced film:
Traditional linear films, but with enhancements.

Other categories may emerge as new online experiences are created.

SAG and AFTRA Merger

2012-01-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

According to a January 16th, 2012 report in The Wrap after years of talks and false starts, committees representing the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild have agreed to a merger.

The proposed agreement must be approved by each union's board of directors and be voted on by membership. Board meetings are scheduled for the end of January 2012, so the membership votes could be completed before the Oscars.

FIL 5414 Assignment due January 24th, 2012: Questioning the "5 Things Every Filmmaker Should Know About Happiness, the Audience and Storytelling"

2012-01-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

First, finish reading the Egri book.

Then the assignment for Tuesday Jan. 24th, 2012 has two written parts:

The first part of your written homework for our next class is to use the character exercise from Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing to outline the traits of your protagonist and antagonist. Basically, you must write a blogpost that lists a carefully considered response to every item in Egri's list of character traits for at least 2 characters in your script: the protagonist and the antagonist.

Next please read the following and answer the question at the end of this post.

Psychologist Martin Seligman has been getting a lot of attention recently centered around his 2011 book Flourish and its suggestions for happiness (tips for individuals to find happiness in their personal lives).

Dr. Seligman has reduced his happiness research to what he calls the PERMA model.

PERMA is an acronym - standing for the five essential elements that Dr. Seligman says should be in place for us to experience lasting well-being. According to Dr. Seligman these are:

1. Positive Emotion (P)

"For us to experience well-being, we need positive emotion in our lives. Any positive emotion like peace, gratitude, satisfaction, pleasure, inspiration, hope, curiosity, or love falls into this category – and the message is that it's really important to enjoy yourself in the here and now, just as long as the other elements of PERMA are in place."

2. Engagement (E)

"When we're truly engaged in a situation, task, or project, we experience a state of flow: time seems to stop, we lose our sense of self, and we concentrate intensely on the present. This feels really good! The more we experience this type of engagement, the more likely we are to experience well-being."

3. Positive Relationships (R)

"As humans, we are "social beings," and good relationships are core to our well-being. Time-and-again, we see that people who have meaningful, positive relationships with others are happier than those who do not. Relationships really do matter!"

4. Meaning (M)

"Meaning comes from serving a cause bigger than ourselves. Whether this is a specific deity or religion, or a cause that helps humanity in some way, we all need meaning in our lives to have a sense of well-being."

5. Accomplishment/Achievement (A)

"Many of us strive to better ourselves in some way, whether we're seeking to master a skill, achieve a valuable goal, or win in some competitive event. As such, accomplishment is another important thing that contributes to our ability to flourish."

What does PERMA mean for filmmakers?

Recently, veteran film producer Lindsay Doran (The Firm, Sense and Sensibility) has been talking to filmmakers about applying the PERMA elements (the five things that Dr. Seligman says make life satisfying) to the stories told in motion pictures.

At the risk of oversimplification, Ms. Doran says mood-elevating films don't need happy endings, they simply need their lead characters to have engaged and positive relationships with other characters at the end of the film - often related to finding a purpose or meaning in life.

According to a Jan. 13th, 2012 profile of Ms. Doran in the NY Times, audience researchers have confirmed this: “Audiences don’t care about an accomplishment unless it’s shared with someone else. What makes an audience happy is not the moment of victory but the moment afterwards when the winners shares that victory with someone they love.”

In other words, "[p]ositive movies do not necessarily have happy endings; their characters’ personal relationships trump personal achievements." Which might explain why Casablanca is satisfying, even though Ingrid Bergman flies away - and To Kill A Mockingbird remains a deeply moving classic, even though Atticus Finch loses in court.

Ms. Doran explains that the happy ending is "the one that is most memorable and might make people go back to see the film a second time, [but it] might not be about winning. It might be about not winning, about finding something deeper that means more than victory.”

So, according to Ms. Doran, screenwriters who want to pluck at the audience's heartstrings might just consider the ending with a character who survives loss and finally connects deeply with another character. That kind of connection - based on a mutual sense of meaning - “might be both the more inspiring and the more commercial way to end a movie.”

Write a short (500-1000 word) blogpost about the PERMA model, screenwriting and whether microbudget filmmakers should be concerned with Ms. Doran's advice about endings with a character who survives loss and finally connects deeply with another character.

Be prepared to discuss in class.

Web 3.0: The Contextual Web

2012-01-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams

According to former Google UX Researcher and current Facebook product developer, Paul Adams, we are at the dawn of a new internet age - Web 3.0.

Paul Adams (who created the slideshare above for a June 2010 conference) says Web 1.0 was about published content (The Published Web"), while Web 2.0 was about finding, buying and sharing things ("The Transactional Web").

So what is Web 3.0? According to Paul Adams, the latest iteration of the internet will understand us and respond appropriately - given the user’s current context - hence "The Contextual Web".

Film Scarcity Is A Sh*tty Business Model

2012-01-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist whose January 15th, 2012 blogpost for the Business Insider questions the current business model of the major studios:

"Making movies is expensive and risky. I totally get that the studios need to make a lot of money on those movies to make their business model work. But denying customers the films they want, on the devices they want to watch them, when they want to watch them is not a great business model. It leads to piracy... but more importantly it also leads to the loss of a transaction to a competing form of entertainment."

What would happen if the studios started offering their latest films on ubiquitous digital platforms for $5 per view net to the studios on the same day everywhere in the world?

"I understand that many participants in the broader film ecosystem [e.g., theater owners and the people who make and distribute physical copies like DVDs] might do worse under this model. And I understand that moving to such a model will cause great disruption and pain to the broader film industry. But the studios themselves are likely to do better in a direct distribution model when they reach a broader market at lower effective prices to the end customer. This is what happens in digital distribution. Prices come down, markets expand, customers see lower prices and broader availability."

SOPA: Video from The Guardian

2012-01-15T10:57:00.001-08:00

Classic Hollywood Guide: How to React When You Screw Up a Scene

2012-01-14T20:32:00.000-08:00

Abandon the SOPA Ship: Why Congress is Paddling Away From the Law That the Studios Insisted They Needed to Fight "Piracy"

2012-01-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

Friday the 13th (of January 2012) was a bad luck day for SOPA - an "anti-internet-piracy" bill that some experts described as a threat to internet innovation. On Friday the 13th, SOPA's chances for passing in Congress seem to have suddenly run aground.

One clear sign that SOPA was in trouble came when House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) announced that he would postpone hearings on SOPA's DNS-blocking provisions which were scheduled for Wed. Jan. 18th, 2012.

This move came late in the day on Friday the 13th, just hours before the White House issued a statement (early on Saturday January 14th, 2012) saying:

1) President Obama will not support any anti-piracy bill that has the potential to censor lawful activity or inhibit innovation and

2) The White House would reject any legislation that involved DNS-blocking:

"We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk."

So what prompted Congressman Issa and the White House to make these moves on Friday the 13th?

Perhaps most significantly, on Friday January 13th, 2012, SOPA author Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) released a statement announcing his intention to remove the DNS-blocking portion of SOPA:

“After consultation with industry groups across the country, I feel we should remove Domain Name System blocking from the Stop Online Piracy Act so that the Committee can further examine the issues surrounding this provision. We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign websites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers.”

What exactly is DNS-blocking and why - beside the concerns of some "industry groups" - had Representative Smith - SOPA's sponsor - decided to abandon DNS-blocking as part of SOPA?

Whatever DNS-blocking is (we'll get to it below) apparently the political support of SOPA had hit an obstacle on Friday the 13th and the Republicans had decided not to push forward: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) talked to Congressman Issa on that day and they agreed that the Republicans would not bring SOPA to the floor for a vote in Congress unless there was a consensus on the bill: Something they could no longer promise.

So what is DNS-blocking and why is it controversial?

How did the rush to enact SOPA - with its DNS-blocking provisions - turn around so quickly?

What caused some of the most ardent backers of SOPA to suddenly shift to positions opposing DNS-blocking?

And, perhaps most importantly, do we really need to bother to understand DNS-blocking (it sounds technical) - now that it's apparently dead?

Even though it seems to have been defeated and it is technical, before we say a final farewell to DNS-blocking, a few minutes spent examining this particular MPAA-backed folly might reveal how the big corporate owners of content (once again) have over-played their hand - by exaggerrating the threat to their business from a new technology and over-reaching in their efforts to quash a disruptive innovation.

Here's how DNS-blocking was sold by the big media companies who claimed they needed it to attack "pirates":

In Nov. 2011 testimony before Congress, the big movie studios claimed that DNS-blocking was no different than spam filtering and an effective and safe technique to "ensure that the content [consumers] find is legitimate."

As the MPAA and RIAA explained it: DNS-blocking meant US internet users would be "blocked" from accessing a foreign site based on the complaint of an MPAA or RIAA member that the foreign site hosted or induced "pirated" content.

And, back in December 2011, it seemed that the studios and record companies could prevail - getting Congress to pass a broad new "anti-piracy" law that included DNS-blocking - over the objections of self-described Free Speech advocates.

In late December 2011, a majority of the House Judiciary Committee seemed ready to accept the MPAA line, that DNS-blocking was a safe and easy way to shut down access to entire "foreign rogue websites" (e.g., The Pirate Bay), even if all that was wrong was that such sites operated "with the object of promoting" the sharing of a "pirated" video or excerpts from a copyright song. After all - it wasn't American sites that SOPA would be blocking, "it only applies to foreign rogue websites" and DNS-blocking was a technology "employed around the world today to deal with spam, malware, viruses and all manner of bad behavior."

But in the first few days of 2012, other web-savvy experts started to get their concerns about SOPA heard. These technicians, researchers and operational specialists (i.e., nerds) were pointing out that the MPAA was glossing over a fundamental problem with SOPA: The proposed law's mechanism for cutting-off access to offending websites - DNS-blocking - was incompatible with the security provisions that are currently the bedrock of the internet.

Apparently, the MPAA and backers of SOPA hadn't taken the time to really familiarize themselves with the operation of the security tools that are in place to prevent criminals from hijacking websites and your private data. These tools cannot tell the difference between what SOPA requires and criminal activity. In other words, to get SOPA to work, the protocols for protecting everyone's privacy would need to be weakened.

Even Comcast, another big supporter of SOPA, had to admit this fundamental flaw: "DNS redirect services... are technically incompatible with DNSSEC and / or create conditions that can be indistinguishable from malicious modifications of DNS traffic."

In early January 2012, some key SOPA supporters finally came to realize that the MPAA and RIAA were asking them to pass a law that would undermine the security of the entire web in return for the (easily circumvented) power to censor the next YouTube or Google.

In the days leading up to Friday January 13th, 2012, Congressional leaders began to realize that DNS-blocking was unacceptable as a solution to "piracy" and - on Friday the 13th - they began to abandon the SOPA-DNS-blocking ship.

So, for now, SOPA with DNS-blocking seems dead...

Of course, there's no guarantee that other provisions of the bill — like the ability for private companies to use one instance of "piracy" to attack an entire website as a copyright infringer — won't show up in other legislation backed by the enormous financial clout of the big media companies.

And certain old media titans, like Rupert Murdoch, were so incensed by the White House's Jan 14th, 2012 statement and the news that SOPA had foundered, that they took to the twittersphere to vent: "So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery."

Stay tuned.

Creating Transmedia Narratives

2012-01-14T08:03:00.000-08:00

Creating Transmedia Narratives: The Structure & Design of Stories Told Across Multiple Media

View more documents from Peter von Stackelberg

Creating Transmedia Narratives: The Structure and Design of Stories Told Across Multiple Media a Dec. 2011 Master's Thesis by Peter von Stackelberg.

What the White House Says About SOPA

2012-01-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

The following letter, concerning new laws that claim to attack "online piracy," was sent to people like me (who had signed an anti-SOPA petition) from the White House on January 14th, 2012:

Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet
By Victoria Espinel, Aneesh Chopra, and Howard Schmidt

Thanks for taking the time to sign this petition. Both your words and actions illustrate the importance of maintaining an open and democratic Internet.

Right now, Congress is debating a few pieces of legislation concerning the very real issue of online piracy, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). We want to take this opportunity to tell you what the Administration will support—and what we will not support. Any effective legislation should reflect a wide range of stakeholders, including everyone from content creators to the engineers that build and maintain the infrastructure of the Internet.

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing.

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders. That is why the Administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year that provides prosecutors and rights holders new legal tools to combat online piracy originating beyond U.S. borders while staying true to the principles outlined above in this response. We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values.

This is not just a matter for legislation. We expect and encourage all private parties, including both content creators and Internet platform providers working together, to adopt voluntary measures and best practices to reduce online piracy.

So, rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don’t limit your opinion to what’s the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what’s right. Already, many of members of Congress are asking for public input around the issue. We are paying close attention to those opportunities, as well as to public input to the Administration. The organizer of this petition and a random sample of the signers will be invited to a conference call to discuss this issue further with Administration officials and soon after that, we will host an online event to get more input and answer your questions. Details on that will follow in the coming days.

Washington needs to hear your best ideas about how to clamp down on rogue websites and other criminals who make money off the creative efforts of American artists and rights holders. We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge.

Moving forward, we will continue to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis on legislation that provides new tools needed in the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting, while vigorously defending an open Internet based on the values of free expression, privacy, security and innovation. Again, thank you for taking the time to participate in this important process. We hope you’ll continue to be part of it.

Victoria Espinel is Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget

Aneesh Chopra is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology at the Office of Science and Technology Policy

Howard Schmidt is Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff

My analysis of the January 14, 2012 status of SOPA - and why leaders in Congress seem to be abandoning it - can be accessed via this link.

Brian Newman On Disruptive Innovation: Why Bad Anti-Piracy Legislation (like SOPA) is Just the Tip of an Iceberg That Could Sink Indie Film

2012-01-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

As former head of the Tribeca Film Institute, Brian Newman really understands the indie film world. And, as Brian explains in his very thoughtful Jan. 13th 2012 blogpost, indie filmmaking currently stands at a crossroads: If Congress enacts SOPA, our path to distributing indie films online will almost certainly become tougher.

What do indie filmmakers need to know about SOPA (and its companion in the Senate, PIPA)?

If the big studios get their way and enact SOPA/PIPA, it will be a watershed moment announcing a new era of censorship and legacy corporate control over media.

Indie filmmaking - which is entering a new era of web-enabled content creation and distribution (think about the online video from the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements and expand that to include documentary and fiction filmmaking from indie filmmakers from around the world) - will suffer.

Here's why: Even though SOPA is just one law (allegedly targeted at "offshore rogue sites") - the corporate control over independent media that it would institutionalize is (per Brian Newman) a part of a much larger effort to deny indie filmmakers a new era of innovation - in favor of protecting the old revenue models - like the sale of physical copies of Hollywood movies. The big studios are spending heavily right now to influence our legislators - to back SOPA - a law designed to retain a business model that big media is unwilling or unable to change. Now is the time for indie filmmakers to push back. Tell your Congressperson you are opposed to SOPA/PIPA.

According to Brian Newman: "SOPA/PIPA will stifle innovation. More importantly, it will stifle our most ambitious entrepreneurs, the people who might actually turn around our economy, all for the sake of making sure that you spend what little money you have on the products of a dying industry."

Are Apps Bullsh*t? Or Are Apps (the kind that play on tablets) the Future For Indie Filmmakers Eager to Monetize Their Content?

2012-01-12T06:29:00.000-08:00

Will tablets replace laptops and desktops?

With VOD becoming a viable source of revenue for indie films, should indie filmmakers rush to make their content (both their films and ancillary content, like behind-the-scenes videos and games) available for the New World of "touch and swipe" tablets?

That's the new world Jack Marshall of digiday (pictured above) is writing about in a January 11th, 2012 post from CES. Marshall observes that tablets represent "the largest change in the way humans interact with digital content since the advent of the mouse and the keyboard... touch and swipe is increasing both user engagement and the volume of content they consume."

I agree with Jack Marshall that tablets are set to boom because they are cheap and portable - and because the user experience is interactive and engaging.

Even if you think you'll never give up your laptop computer for a shiny new tablet -and you don't want users watching your film on a 7 inch screen - you must admit - with a natural and fun user interface and the price of tablets plummeting - the worldwide market for the "touch and swipe" content that plays on tablets is set to explode.

But how can indie filmmakers profit from this new platform?

Films will stream, but how will the other content around your film be delivered to tablets?

Many content companies are betting that the future will be apps - but other are focusing instead on rich Web experiences.

No one knows for sure which way the New World of content will unfold, but Jack Marshall explains that (as the mobile internet continues to improve) some insiders are predicting that web experiences will come to dominate the market: "Short-term apps [may be] the easiest way to get their content onto tablets, but the long-term solution is the web."

Support for the "apps are bullsh*t" position comes from startups, like OnSwipe, that are betting their future on tablets and the web (not apps). Here's a short video with the head of OnSwipe making his pitch:

How It's Made: Cine Cameras

2012-01-12T05:53:00.000-08:00

Did Utah's AG Inadvertently Reveal His Lack of Impartiality in His Editorial in Support of SOPA?

2012-01-10T19:54:00.000-08:00

Over the first weekend of January 2012, Utah's Attorney General Mark Shurtleff wrote a column in the Salt Lake City Tribune supporting the MPAA-backed SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills.

According to a January 10th, 2012 analysis by torrentfreak "many of the sentences that are passed off as Shurtleff’s work actually look very familiar."

The evidence in the torrentfreak blogpost makes it plain that Attorney General Mark Shurtleff "ripped off sentences that can be directly traced back to the MPAA and affiliated groups."

Why is that a problem? Because, should SOPA become law, Attorney General Shurtleff will have the power to grant requests for domain seizures and DNS blocks. If he's already parroting (without attribution) the words of the people who will be seeking these seizures and censorship - what are the chances for impartiality?

Does Your Protagonist Have a Webpage?

2012-01-10T19:43:00.001-08:00

The evolution of storytelling tools continues.

Here is a January 8th, 2012 blogpost by Joanna Penn where she writes about creating an ebook - a new form of storytelling that in this case includes innovations like "the protagonist’s actual social media web pages, containing his status updates and others’ responses to them, as well as his blog posts."

FIL 5414 Vision, Scope and Financing Assignment for Jan. 17th, 2012

2012-01-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

1) Come up with your own one sentence statement of premise (Central Organizing Principle) for your movie
2) Research and write a short (500 word) paper on “Pascal’s Wager” - in particular, ask yourself how Pascal’s Wager (e.g., acting “as if” you have a belief in something) might be used as an argument for the COP as a tool for filmmakers (even skeptics, who don’t think their film’s meaning can be reduced to one sentence)
3) Read the preface and pages 1-128 in The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri.

Dubbing Through the Decades

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

Press Day at CES 2012: New Phones and Tablets

2012-01-10T06:52:00.000-08:00

Hollywood: "A Way For Rich Guys To Get Dates"?

2012-01-10T06:41:00.000-08:00

Question:. Are the facts (about Hollywood resisting new technology that eventually proves to be a profit center) in this clip accurate? Are the commentators for real? Or is this sublime sketch comedy - based on a kernel of truth?

The Devil Inside: The Really Scary True Story (of Hollywood Marketing)

2012-01-09T05:48:00.000-08:00

Here's a Hollywood riddle:

What will happen to the executives at Paramount who acquired an indie movie that received a rock-bottom “F” CinemaScore from the opening weekend audience and some of the worst critical reviews in living memory?

Answer: Those execs should expect promotions.

The Devil Inside - an indie film that Paramount acquired for $1 million - is the number one box-office performer of 2012 (so far) with an estimated opening weekend box office of $34.5 million.

What does the huge success of The Devil Inside say about the power of Hollywood to market (crap?) to a youthful crowd?

How did Paramount get millions of kids - 85% of the opening weekend audience for The Devil Inside was younger than 35 - to all come out at once to see a film that most of them would eventually hate?

What can indie filmmakers learn (if anything) from the marketing of a $1 million film with no stars?

And how does a $1 million film, made in Romania to save a buck, knock Tom Cruise (in an enormous comeback hit) from the top spot?

To analyze the success of The Devil Inside on the first weekend of 2012, lets start by analyzing how Hollywood executives plan their releases based on prior year results - learning from past audience behavior on certain key weekends.

In particular, let's look at the first weekend of the new year as if we are Hollywood marketing execs...

Historically (before 2005), on the first weekend of the new year, there were two kinds of movies in theaters: Oscar hopefuls expanding out of limited release and complete and utter dogs dumped into the weekend.

Why was the first weekend of the year - historically - a time that Hollywood execs cleared their shelves of unwanted merchandise?

The key factor was that the mass audience (newly back at work and school) did not turn-out after gorging themselves on movies over the Christmas break. Before 2005, the odds were that any movie released on the first weekend of the year would underperform and disappear.

Then, in 2005, one movie defied the odds. A PG-13 supernatural thriller - White Noise (2005) starring Michael Keaton - was dumped into wasteland of the first weekend of the year and unexpectedly performed. White Noise (2005) opened January 7th, 2005 on 2,261 screens and did $24.11 million that weekend, averaging $10,665 per screen and ultimately earning $55.87 million domestic theatrical box office gross.

Why?

Apparently, White Noise tapped into the audience for movies like The Ring (October 20th, 2002) and The Grudge (October 24th, 2004), as well as a surge of interest in the horror genre in general, to get a lot of younger people - bored by the feel-good and high-art programming that typically dominates the Christmas box-office - into theaters on the first weekend of the year.

Still White Noise didn't top the box office in its opening weekend. That honor belonged to Meet The Fockers in its third week of release.

In fact, before 2006, no new movie had been able to take the top slot over the stronger holiday fare still playing in theaters.

But - building on the unexpected success of counter-programming like White Noise - that all changed in 2006.

In late 2005, King Kong (2005) and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (2005) were ruling over the box office. (Kong opened on Dec. 14th in over 3500 theaters and grossed over $500 million worldwide as did Narnia which opened Dec. 9th in over 3600 theaters.)

How could an R-rated horror movie compete with these blockbusters?

The chances for Hostel (2006) were further complicated because those who didn't get to see Steven Spielberg's political thriller Munich (2005) over the holidays got their first chance after New Years, as it nearly tripled its theaters hoping to build on the year-end buzz. (Munich opened in 532 theaters on Dec. 23rd and then expanded to 1,485 theaters on Jan. 6th, 2006.)

The success of Hostel (2006) changed everything. Made for under $5 million, Hostel went on to gross over $80 million worldwide, earning almost $20 million in US theaters on its opening weekend where it ranked #1 (in 2,195 theaters, $8,909 average per screen).

After White Noise (2005) and Hostel (2006) Hollywood marketing executives learned that horror movies could open with surprising numbers after the holidays.

In 2007, Three – a psycho killer thriller marketed by by Fox Faith, 20th Century Fox's Christian-themed label - tried to capitalize on this strategy in 458 theaters. But Three failed to take hold, grossing a paltry $1500 per screen.

Notably, because it couldn’t be ready in time, the sequel to Hostel (Hostel Part 2) was not slated for that now special first weekend of the year slot in 2007. Instead, the marketing minds at Lionsgate decided to put the sequel into the summer. Unlike Eli Roth’s first offering, Hostel Part 2 (2007) opened in a tougher, more competitive marketing environment in the summer of 2007. And it flopped. After taking $8 million on the first weekend in the domestic theaters, the movie tanked. It finished with only $17+ million in domestic theaters and another $15 million foreign.

Still, since 2005, the first weekend of the year has been set aside for heavily marketed R-rated horror fare.

The success of The Devil Inside suggests that Hollywood knows that marketing to context (we understand - you're a kid who wants a horror movie now) can triumph - even over bad content. In other words, having a good movie may not be as important - on certain weekends anyway - as reaching your audience with targeted marketing that hits them at a time when they're ready to spend.

The Rise and Fall of a Studio Marketing Executive

2012-01-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

I expect the brussel sprouts in my refrigerator to last longer than some of the movies currently in theaters.

Because Hollywood movies have a notoriously short shelf-life - the pressures on studio marketing execs are also extreme: Marketing campaigns MUST deliver huge audiences in the first weekend - or (like last week's brussel sprouts) the exec is tossed out.

In the Jan. 8th, 2012 NY Times, Brooks Barnes wrote a fascinating (and chilling?) article about the rise and apparent fall of M. T. Carney, Walt Disney Studios’ president of movie marketing (Hollywood Reporter photo of Ms. Carney in happier times below): "Despite successful ad campaigns since [being hired in mid 2010] for films like “The Muppets” and “The Help,” Ms. Carney has still not found her footing, and Disney appears to have concluded that she never will."

UPDATE January 9th, 2012: She's gone.

Thanks to Sheri Candler for the link.

FIL 5414 Syllabus 2012

2012-01-08T15:58:00.001-08:00

Syllabus for Vision, Scope and Financing

FIL 4661 Syllabus 2012

2012-01-08T15:41:00.001-08:00

Syllabus for Film Producer

FIL 6614 Syllabus 2012

2012-01-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

Syllabus for Domestic and International Models of Distribution

How Netflix, Redbox and Blockbuster Will React to Warner Brothers' New 8-Week DVD Window

2012-01-07T06:58:00.000-08:00

At the Consumer Electronics Show during the second week of January 2012, Warner Brothers will announce that they are stretching the DVD new release window from 28 to 56 days.

What is the "DVD new release window?"

Currently Warner Brothers, Universal and Fox reserve a 28-day "window" in which they sell DVDs to consumers - but don't allow companies (like Netflix and Redbox) to rent them out. Sony Pictures makes Netflix wait 28 days for its hits but allows Redbox and Blockbuster to release them sooner. Only Paramount and Disney currently allow Redbox and Netflix to offer DVDs for rental the same day they go on sale - without a DVD new release window - although Disney does charge the rental companies more for new releases.

Warner Brothers has decided to double that 28 day time frame - hoping to goose the flagging DVD market - figuring that more consumers will buy DVDs of recent hits if they aren't available for rental. It's not clear that an 8 week wait until a film becomes available for rental on DVD will significantly increase DVD sales - but that's what Warner Brothers has decided.

Now the established DVD rental services will be faced with a choice: Wait the full 8 weeks to buy their DVDs at a discounted price from the studio - or purchase DVDs on the retail market (like you or I will able to) and offer them to their rental customers 8 weeks before anyone else. The latter course will cost the rental services more money and it will certainly create tension between Warners and the impatient rental service.

In a Jan. 6th, 2012 gigaom post Ryan Lawler predicts that Netflix will abide by Warner Brother's new rules - but Redbox may not - and Blockbuster almost certainly will not.

Unlike Netflix, where DVDs are a declining part of the business model (Netflix is focused on making streaming deals for new content while continuing to offer DVDs for older titles as a legacy business) - Redbox has built their business on impulse rentals of the latest hits. Apparently getting a DVD as soon as possible after it hits the theaters really matters to Redbox customers.

According to Mr. Lawler's reporting, the current DVD purchase deal that Redbox has with Warner Brothers (with the 28 day hold back) expires at the end of January 2012: "When it’s over, you can expect the company to find alternative sources for Warner Bros. DVDs. It might pay a little bit more for each title, but it’s likely to make up that cost in the eight weeks that its users would have to wait for those movies to hit its kiosks. As a result, the new Warner Bros. window could actually end up being a net positive for the kiosk rental firm."

As for Blockbuster? With a declining market share, Blockbuster has already been going to sources other than the studios for their DVDs and using the availability for rental on the same day that a video becomes available on DVD (what is know in the film business as “day and date”) as a unique selling point in its marketing. In other words, to distinguish itself from Netflix and Redbox, Blockbuster has already been ignoring the 28 day windowing deal that the studios tried to impose on DVD rental services. Now that Warner Brothers wants to extend the exclusive sale window to 56 days, the day and date policy of Blockbuster is (in Mr. Lawler's words) "unlikely to change."

So Warner Brothers has decided to extend the DVD sales window (the time before DVDs become available for rental), in an effort to make some more money from retail DVD sales. What about the other studios? Even though anti-trust law prevents the studios from openly colluding to set prices or DVD sales policies... I expect some of the other studios (Universal?) will follow Warner's lead and extend the exclusive sale window for DVDs to 56 days.

What Filmmakers Can Learn About Marketing From Clay Shirky's Insights Re: Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users

2012-01-06T14:24:00.000-08:00

The reliably insightful Clay Shirky has written a Jan 4, 2012 piece for his blog entitled "Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users." In addition to being a great explanation of what is happening to newspapers as they move online, Clay Shirky's piece also sets out the fundamental ideas that New World filmmakers must understand to effectively market their films online. Here are excerpts from Mr. Shirky's piece, followed by a few words of my own for filmmakers:

"[I]n March [2011], the New York Times introduced a charge for readers who crossed a certain threshold of article views... a blow to the idea that online news can be treated as a simple product for sale, as the physical newspaper was."

"A printed paper was a bundle. A reader who wanted only sports and stock tables bought the same paper as a reader who wanted local and national politics, or recipes and horoscopes. Online, though, that bundle is torn apart, every day, by users who forward each other individual URLs, without regard to front pages or named sections or intended navigation. This unbundling leads to the odd math of web readership — if you rank readers by pages viewed in a month, the largest group by far, between a third and half of them, will visit only a single page. A smaller group will read two pages in a month, a still smaller group will read three, and so on, up to the most active reader, in a group by herself, who will read dozens of pages a day, hundreds in a month."

"There has never been a mass market for good journalism in this country. What there used to be was a mass market for print ads, coupled with a mass market for a physical bundle of entertainment, opinion, and information; these were tied to an institutional agreement to subsidize a modicum of real journalism. In that mass market, the opinions of the politically engaged readers didn’t matter much, outnumbered as they were by people checking their horoscopes. This suited advertisers fine; they have always preferred a centrist and distanced political outlook, the better not to alienate potential customers. When the politically engaged readers are also the only paying readers, however, their opinion will come to matter more, and in ways that will sometimes contradict the advertisers’ desires for anodyne coverage."

"[P]eople who hit the threshold and then hand over money are, almost by definition, people who regard the paper not just as an occasional source of interesting articles, but as an essential institution, one whose continued existence is vital no matter what today’s offerings are... [Such a paper must think of itself in a new way, it must] appeal to its readers’ non-financial and non-transactional motivations: loyalty, gratitude, dedication to the mission, a sense of identification with the paper, an urge to preserve it as an institution rather than a business."

Why am I quoting Mr. Shieky's post about newspapers at such length here - a blog for filmmakers?

One reason:

In the paragraph above, where Mr. Shirky talks about building "loyalty, gratitude, dedication to the mission, a sense of identification," he is making the case for relationship marketing: The kind of online marketing that New World filmmakers need to understand and practice.

A filmmaker's core audience is like the NY Times customers willing to pay for more than a few free articles.

The NY Times has a core audience willing to pay for an unlimited number of articles (even if they only read a few each day). Similarly, a filmmaker needs to identify a core audience, where each individual is willing to hand over money not just for a DVD - but based on the relationship that individual will have with the film and the filmmaker.

In relationship marketing, the financial transaction - where a member of the core audience gives you money - is not only about the material thing that is handed over for the money. The key to relationship marketing - the online path that Mr. Shirky sees for newspapers like the NY Times - is to provide each member of the core audience an experience that responds to their emotional and aspirational needs. Yes, you need to supply a good product (a great newspaper or film) - but that isn't enough. In the New World of infinite media choice, your core audience needs to believe in - and want to share - the message that you (and they) are spreading.

Will Tablets and Digital Publishing Revolutionize Education?

2012-01-06T08:15:00.000-08:00

70 million tablets will be shipped worldwide in 2012 (up from 17 million in 2010). These sleek portable machines - and the digital publishing that they enable - are certainly growing in popularity, but what does this technology really mean for students and instructors?

According to a January 6th, 2012 post to Mashable by Trevor Bailey, director of worldwide education at Adobe Systems, "the quality, volume and variety of interactive content is rapidly expanding... Richer than their print counterparts, digital textbooks include a number of interactive features. They are not limited to static pictures, but can integrate video, audio, animation, interactive simulations and even 360-degree rotations and panoramas. In addition, universities have the ability to create custom, institutionally branded viewers with unique displays and navigation options."

A Pearson Foundation survey conducted in March 2011 reinforces Trevor Bailey's assertions. Even though tablet ownership is still low, the survey found that 86% of the college students who owned a tablet believed that tablets help students to study more efficiently. And a majority of all college students (63%) also believe that tablets can greatly enhance the college learning experience.

And, since students can be hard on their devices, we now have video evidence of just how durable the iPad can be...

Rupert Murdoch Opposes Fair Use

2012-01-06T07:43:00.000-08:00

Rupert Murdoch suggests Fox may challenge the doctrine of Fair Use in the courts in an effort to "bar [it] altogether": See the 4:32 mark of this Nov. 2009 video.

What Jazz Bands Can Teach Filmmakers and Entrepreneurs

2012-01-06T04:11:00.000-08:00

In filmmaking (and many other high-tech businesses) rapid change in tools and business models require that the workers improvise and adapt.

How can New World filmmakers (and other high-tech entrepreneurs) organize and lead their teams?

Are their proven methods for inspiring creativity and innovation within an established structure while allowing for improvisation and nimble response to changes?

According to Deniz Ucbasaran, Professor of Entrepreneurship at England's Warwick Business School and the lead academic on a prize-winning paper entitled Leading Entrepreneurial Teams: Insights from Jazz, the jazz band leaders Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Art Blakey have a lot to teach 21st Century filmmakers and entrepreneurs.

As reported in the Jan. 2nd, 2012 Guardian, Ucbasaran argues that entrepreneurs are like jazz band leaders: They have to "build creative tension and give individuals their heads" while working within the framework of a collective. They have to harness the "disparate egos of highly talented people" and somehow keep them working towards the same goal.

Online "Piracy," SOPA and the Moral Economy

2012-01-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

Data from a Nov. 2011 study conducted by the American Assembly suggests that legal media is replacing online "piracy." Apparently, when given a legal alternative that is available at the right price and usage point, consumers are paying for movies, games and music online.

Why are internet-users paying for something they could get for free?

“There is ethics at work in these decisions,” Joe Karaganis, vice president of the American Assembly told The Register.

Mr. Karganis's reference to ethics with respect to what big media calls internet "piracy," reminded me of a recent videotaped conversation between Simon Pulman of Starlight Runner and Prof. Henry Jenkins of USC, where Prof. Jenkins discussed his views about online "piracy" in terms of what economists and historians have come to call "moral economy."

What is Moral Economy?

The term "moral economy" was first coined by Prof. E. P. Thompson writing about the English food riots of the 18th century (e.g., keelmen in Tyne in 1709 and tin miners in Falmouth in 1727). In a 1971 essay entitled “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd”, E. P. Thompson observed: "It is possible to detect in almost every eighteenth-century crowd action some legitimizing notion. By the notion of legitimation I mean that the men and women in the crowd were informed by the belief that they were defending traditional rights or customs and in general, that they were supported by the wider consensus of the community."

In other words the food riots were (for the 18th century rioters) more than desperate need-driven and immoral acts. In the eyes of the rioters, the food riots were an attack on a system that did not reflect the reality experienced by the masses.

The 18th century mobs were not just rioting to steal food (in some cases food stocks were destroyed, not plundered) but to humiliate the profiteers and hoarders who were seen as opposed to the interests of all peasants. As Prof. Thompson wrote in a subsequent book: "[O]ne function of riot was to moderate the appetite for profit unleashed by the developing ‘free market.’”

Media scholar Prof. Henry Jenkins recently observed that it might be helpful to compare the behavior of 21st century internet "pirates" to the conduct of 18th century food rioters.

Whether we agree with today's young internet users or not, it is worth noting that from their perspective, their online behavior is grounded upon a moral view of the internet and how ideas should spread online. Many young users of the internet and entrepreneurs who are building businesses online, oppose new internet censorship laws like SOPA. Their ideas of legitimate practices generally include remixing and appropriating small amounts of copyright content, as long as the motive is not enterprise-level commerce or obviously harmful to the copyright holder. In their eyes, these internet users are moral actors, with a defensible and coherent 21st century view of social norms and obligations.

In other words, from their perspective, like the food rioters of the 1700s, the internet "pirates" of today may not simply be engaged in immoral acts. They see a morality at work - one that is supported by the masses of internet users: A morality that policy makers are currently ignoring.

Please note: Observing that so-called internet "pirates" might be expressing a commonly held belief among their group and a great many internet users (about the disconnect between copyright law and the ease of copying?) does not make the "pirates'" actions right.

My point is that, in crafting new laws like SOPA, Congress is making decisions about the proper economic relationship of the parties. And an analysis that only considers "protecting U.S. intellectual property from foreign criminals" but ignores how the new law will adversely effect the millions of American citizens who are currently using the internet - by limiting their access to legitimate foreign sites and by marking anyone who links to a prohibited foreign site as a criminal - is a prescription for failure.

Just as rioting to keep bread prices at traditional levels was said to constitute the most anti-social expression of "the moral economy of the poor" - illegal copying via bit torrent sites may represent the worst of the moral assumptions of the wired.

What does this mean with respect to the debate about SOPA?

Can policy makers ignore the widely-held beliefs of a large segment of society - and censor websites and criminalize behavior that many feel is not criminal (e.g., linking to foreign sites that might themselves contain links to un-permissioned copies)?

In my opinion, the disconnect between the big content owners and the millions of Americans who use the internet in ways that big media wants to stop, needs to be bridged by laws that do not criminalize behaviors that are pervasive (incidental copying and sharing for non-commercial use). Obviously, the interests of the big content owners need to be protected, but not by outlawing broad swaths of internet use.

In my view, the cost-benefit analysis of SOPA must include 1) the unintended consequences of the new law, 2) the serious questions about its efficacy, and perhaps most importantly 3) the beliefs of millions of people for whom the new law will create a new scheme of censorship that will deprive them of access to content and innovation.

Is it impossible to formulate a new model that protects big content owners but also avoids censorship and criminalization of behaviors that many Americans feel are right?

In the current debate over SOPA, Congress would be wise to consider how the conduct of the masses (revealing, as Prof. Thompson wrote, while discussing another "illegal" mass action, “custom, culture and reason”) can be reconciled with the "free market" claims of big media.

A note on semantics: The extension of the term "moral economy" to internet "pirates" would almost certainly not meet with Prof. E. P. Thompson's approval (we'll never know, as he died in 1993). While he was alive, Prof. Thompson tried to limit the use of the term "moral economy." Prof. Thompson was pointedly reluctant to analyze every situation in which consumers and capitalists disagreed about the pricing or availability of a commodity as involving a "moral" component: "It is not only that there is an identifiable bundle of beliefs, usages and forms associated with the marketing of food in time of dearth, which it is convenient to bind together in a common term, but the deep emotions stirred by dearth, the claims which the crowd made upon the authorities in such crises and the outrage provoked by profiteering in life-threatening emergencies, imparted a particular “moral” charge to protest. All of this, taken together, is what I understand by moral economy."

Henry Jenkins Talks "Spreadable Media" With Simon Pulman

2012-01-05T03:22:00.000-08:00

If you want to understand how media is evolving in the 21st century - from the old models of production, distribution and broadcasting to new methods of media production and circulation - this conversation between Henry Jenkins and Simon Pulman that took place as part of Vancouver's Merging Media Conference in October 2011 is a great place to start.

What the Studios Won't Tell You About 2011: Dennis Toth on the Real Box Office Numbers For Hollywood's Worst Year Since 1995

2012-01-05T02:14:00.000-08:00

On January 4th, 2012 film financing consultant with R&R Consulting, Dennis Toth, posted his Box Office Report for 2011.

You should read Dennis Toth's entertaining and clear-eyed analysis for yourself: But, if you're pressed for time, here are some excerpts:

"[T]he Hollywood approach to the tent pole production isn’t working (don’t believe me, just check out a solid article by Oliver Lyttelton at IndieWIRE)." Nevertheless, "Hollywood is determined to dig itself in and rigidly stick with the current tent pole model. The indie system has been pressed to the wall and has virtually nowhere to go but online."

According to Toth, the numbers for Hollywood and indie films in theaters in 2011 were both terrible.

For Hollywood, Dennis Toth suspects the real box office numbers in 2011 were much worse than the record decline that has been officially reported by the MPAA. Instead of the 4% drop in box office revenue that the studios admit, Toth thinks the real slump may be more like 12 percent. And 12 percent actually understates the severity of the ongoing trend away from theaters - because foreign markets lag US markets in the shift to home and mobile device alternatives and the "majority of box office is now being generated overseas, often by a margin of 2 to 1 or even 3 to 1."

The indie market for theatrical release is no better - after Woody Allen's stunning success with Midnight in Paris (global take of $117.3 million) there is no indie film that was a break-out theatrical hit with great ROI.

And, as if the revenue numbers weren't bad enough on their own, Dennis Toth thinks the studios ability to change their production model is also suspect. He describes the studios' latest vow to trim down production expenses (from $250 million to $230 million?) as "like the alcoholic who decides that he will stick to a steady daytime diet of beer and save the whiskey and vodka for his nighttime drinking."

Thanks to Sheri Candler for passing along the link.

Boosting TV Engagement Using Social Media

2012-01-05T01:15:00.000-08:00

2012 may be remembered as the year that broadcast and social media merged.

In a January 3rd, 2012 piece for TV Technology, Susan Ashworth writes about the intersection between broadcast and social media technologies: "Whether it's to gather reaction, gauge opinion, develop brand preferences or cement station loyalty, the possibilities inherent in social media are proving to have an irresistible appeal to broadcasting."

At first, the "second screen" phenomenon was seen as a threat by broadcasters: "A recent study by Razorfish and Yahoo estimates that 80 percent of viewers today are "mobile multitasking," sitting in front of their TV screen with a secondary mobile device in hand—a trend that seemed to add to the ongoing concern over audience fragmentation from ad-skipping DVRs and online video streaming."

But what was initially seen as a threat, is now being accepted as the new reality. Increasingly, broadcast stalwarts are reaching out to viewers through the second screen, attempting to integrate the behavior that users have already adopted. The idea is to make the experience of watching a show more engaging and immersive. For example, "for its primetime drama "Bones," Fox [recently] rolled out a companion app for mobile devices that encourages TV viewers to keep simultaneous tabs on the online and social media aspects of "Bones" while it airs, such as gathering unique details that are found only online and interacting directly with other fans as they watch the live show."

For certain programming, it may even be possible to merge audience response from the second screen into the primary content in real-time. While it won't work for all content, new types of programming and certain existing types of TV content (sports, news, weather, game shows, reality, etc.) may benefit from initiatives to combine social media messages into shows as they air (taking content from the second screen and making it part of the programming as it goes out). For example, Miranda, a company that supplies traditional broadcast graphics technology, has partnered with a software company, Quest Research & Development, to create a bundled solution that has the ability to display viewer's messages on-air. The resulting system displays a twitter feed that can be filtered or moderated as the show is broadcast.

Thanks to Nick DeMartino and Gunther Sonnenfeld for passing along the link.

Dylan Sellers Now Tops Acquisitions and Production at The Weinstein Company

2012-01-04T12:19:00.000-08:00

On Jan. 4th, 2012 Anne Thompson wrote that, in a pre-Sundance move, The Weinstein Company is bringing in veteran Warner Bros. production exec Dylan Sellers as President of a combined production and acquisitions department. Sellers will be based in Los Angeles - and he'll report to Harvey Weinstein and David Glasser in New York.

"Reporting to Sellers are Daniel Guando, SVP of Acquisitions, Negeen Yazdi, VP of Acquisitions and Co-Productions, Julie Rapaport, Director of Production and Business Development, Collin Creighton, Director of Production and Development, Jennifer Malloy, Director of Acquisitions and Co-Productions, Sam Grey, Creative Executive, and Noah Sacco, Creative Executive."

New James Bond Website Launches - www.007.com

2012-01-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

A new James Bond site, www.007.com, was launched on January 3rd, 2012 in anticipation of the release of “Skyfall,” the franchise’s 23rd movie. The site also celebrates the 50th anniversary of Bond movies. (The first one, “Dr. No,” came out in 1962.) The site features a brief introductory video with co-producer Michael G. Wilson (above).

Thanks to Tom Garrett of the University of Tampa for the link.

In 2011 More Americans Streamed Movies

2012-01-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

A Jan. 4th, 2012 Hollywood Reporter article reveals that "14 percent of Americans now say that their favorite way to watch a movie at home is to stream it over the Internet via a subscription service."

This data, from a recent Deloitte survey, shows that streaming has made huge gains (up from a reported 4 percent two years earlier) while the Old World ways of watching a film (i.e., attending a theater or renting a DVD) continue to fall.

What does the future hold?

Will significant numbers start using mobile technology (like tablets) for film viewing?

It's still early, but the trend toward tablets certainly bears watching: In 2011 "[o]ne percent of consumers called streaming to a tablet their favorite way to view a movie (not counting at a movie theater), and 13 percent of Americans owned a tablet in 2011 (mostly iPads), up from 5 percent in 2010."

Thanks to Ted Hope for the link.

Nathan Rabin on The Frighteners (1996), CGI and Giving a Warped Filmmaking Mind a Chance

2012-01-04T04:49:00.000-08:00

The opening sequence from Peter Jackson's The Frighteners (1996) serves as a jumping-off point for a great Jan. 4th, 2012 piece in the AV Club by Nathan Rabin.

Writing about The Frighteners serves as an opportunity for Nathan Rabin to explore the gamble taken by Robert Zemeckis on the then young smart-ass filmmaker, Peter Jackson.

"Zemeckis and Jackson are both creative progeny of Mad magazine, Looney Tunes, and the Marx Brothers, unabashed creative anarchists who delight in running amok and controlled chaos. They similarly share an enthusiasm for new technology that borders on mania. They’re not the kind of patient souls to wait until a technology has been perfected, or even refined, before diving into the deep end with it. They’re leap-before-you-look types. "

While The Frighteners is an "engagingly flawed film," Nathan Rabin uses it to recount the missteps that were part of the early days of CGI (that "dazzling, game-changing, and extraordinarily powerful tool") and to examine how punk filmmaking kids - like Peter Jackson and before him Robert Zemeckis - were once given a chance "to use all of [the] tricks and play with all of [the] toys" by risk-taking established filmmakers - who (against the odds?) recognized a kindred spirit.

Gary Vaynerchuk v. Howard Stern

2012-01-03T14:38:00.000-08:00

When one of the internet's earliest success stories (and biggest egos) attempts a takedown of the self-appointed "King of All Media" - sparks are sure to fly.

What I find interesting about this video (from 2008) is the way that Gary Vaynerchuk uses old media (a stationary camera recording boring video) and new media (the interweb) to make points about how new media is doing what old media used to do - only better.

Maybe - but Gary Vaynerchuk's video is probably not the best evidence of the power of the new tools...

Granted, this video is almost 4 years old, but looking at his latest video offerings online, one has to ask, is Gary Vaynerchuk still on the cutting-edge?

And does Howard Stern really represent what Gary has replaced?

Or do both these stars represent the past?

And, if so, what is replacing these icons of radio and the old internet?

UPDATE: On Jan. 4th, 2012, in response to a tweet from @garyvee, I've revised this post to make it clear that the Gary v. Howard video dates back to 2008. Nevertheless, my point - that Gary Vaynerchuk's timely insights about the "thank you" economy and relationship marketing are being pushed out via Web 1.0 techniques - still seems valid to me. I've added a link to Gary's website where you can view his very latest updates. What do you think? To me the video tools he is using seem to smack of days gone-by - they're not very interactive or engaging.

Bloom: Legal Transformative Use? Piracy?

2012-01-03T09:43:00.000-08:00

"Bloom" (created by Nick Bertke, better known as Pogo on the web and in the music scene) is a patchwork of vocals and musical chords from various Disney films.

Apparently Nick recorded the harp sample from 'Sleeping Beauty' and a series of chords from 'A.I: Artificial Intelligence' to form the base of the chorus. The vocals are sampled from Disney films, each of which are illustrated in the video.

I am posting this video to illustrate the kind of work that the studios hate (because it appropriates their copyright content) but many New World filmmakers - and a massive worldwide audience that loves the familiarity and novelty of video remix - celebrate.

If you think this kind of work deserves a place online, please consider signing a petition opposing SOPA - a law that mandates an "internet death penalty" for offshore websites that post this sort of content - or US sites that link to them.

David Carr of the New York Times Sounds the Alarm: SOPA Threatens the First Amendment

2012-01-03T09:11:00.000-08:00

According to David Carr, writing a Jan. 1, 2012 piece for the NY Times, issues crucial to American media and technology businesses and the people who consume their products - even implicating the right of free speech - are about to be decided by politicians who don't understand how the internet works. Apparently these politicians have been bought-off by big media.

Given big media and old Washington's "historically wobbly grasp of technology," SOPA - the internet censorship legislation currently working its way through Congress - is likely to have dire unintended consequences. For example, Mr. Carr quotes Laurence Tribe, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, to the effect that SOPA would “undermine the openness and free exchange of information at the heart of the Internet. And it would violate the First Amendment."

Read Mr. Carr's entire piece here.

Marketing Your Film at the Dawn of the Relationship Era

2012-01-03T07:56:00.000-08:00

On Jan. 2nd, 2012 Bob Garfield and Doug Levy published an insightful piece in AdAge about the end of the old age of marketing (e.g., mass market advertising focused on the product) and the dawn of "relationship marketing."

Using case studies and interviews with experts, Bob Garfield and Doug Levy do a great job of explaining how the internet has changed the relationship between anyone with a product to sell and the audience. While their AdAge article is written for a general readership, understanding relationship marketing is especially critical for low-budget indie filmmakers setting out to market an indie film online.

To begin with, filmmakers must understand that their relationship with their core audience is the centerpiece of their marketing.

That relationship is built on trust: "Trust is an asset, not a commodity. It cannot be purchased. It must be earned. And it can dissolve before your eyes."

But how do you build a trusting relationship with a core audience?

The new imperative, according to David Rogers, executive director of Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership who was interviewed by Garfield and Levy, is: "How do you, as a marketer, get the subset of the loyal customer who doesn't just buy your product again but ... writes those positive reviews? They share your links and retweet you on Twitter and post a photo of themselves with your product on Facebook and "like' you on Facebook and generate all these network conversations, which go back to the top of the funnel and influence other customers in your network at their own stage of awareness, consideration, preference or action."

According to Garfield and Levy, building trust and loyalty via relationship marketing requires a new set of goals.

Marketing a film into the new online ecosystem, where every member of your core audience is a vital player on your marketing team, compels a new approach.

Before a filmmaker can establish a meaningful relationship with the core audience, the filmmaker must be able to answer one fundamental question: "What is your brand about?"

"Do not confuse genuine purpose with other notions of differentiation, such as positioning or USP [unique selling proposition], rooted in manipulation or contrivance. They are "What can we say about our brand that sets us apart?" Marketing from purpose is no less differentiating but it's accomplished via a brand's demonstrated character. It can be banal or lofty "to make the most delicious ice cream," but you have to explain to all comers why you're in business.

Here's how outdoors outfitter Patagonia defines its reason for being:

Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

This has been the Patagonia way for 40 years, since founder Yvon Chouinard set up shop to outfit lovers of the outdoors without contributing to the destruction of the outdoors."

So what is your film trying to say?

What is the big idea?

What is your Central Organizing Principle?

How can you communicate your central organizing principle to your audience?

How can you engage with your audience in ways that encourage them to share your message (one that they believe in as well) with their friends, fans and followers?

Once you understand why your audience should be loyal (what they are committing to), then, and only then, can you begin engaging with your core audience in meaningful ways.

Your everyday task as a New World filmmaker is to make sure that every interaction with your core audience (no matter how small) confirms and reinforces the "What is your brand about?" message.

200 Billion Videos Viewed Online In October 2011

2012-01-03T07:32:00.000-08:00

Data on worldwide online video viewing from comScore Video Metrix shows that 1.2 billion people age 15 and older watched 201.4 billion videos online globally during October 2011.

Canada and the U.S. accounted for the highest number of videos per viewer in October 2011, averaging 303 videos and 286 videos, respectively.

Of the 201,420,689 total views, Google Sites, driven by YouTube.com, were the top video destination with nearly 88.3 billion videos.

Bladerunner Sketchbook

2012-01-02T17:08:00.000-08:00

Open publication - Free publishing

Six Tips for Filmmakers Raising Money in 2012

2012-01-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

Eric M. Jackson is the CEO and co-founder of CapLinked, an online service that gives companies tools to manage a capital raise (obtain money). Before CapLinked, Eric served as PayPal’s first marketing director. Those experiences make him the ideal author for a January 2, 2012 blogpost to venturebeat that lists 6 key steps for filmmakers who are raising money (both in person and using the new tools online) in 2012:

1) Structure your raise right.

2) Prepare key documents.

3) Put your network to work.

4) Meet new people.

5) Don’t break the law.

6) Start the process now.

Internet Distribution: Community on Hulu, How the Web is Changing the Game for Film & TV

2012-01-02T06:20:00.000-08:00

In Dec. 2011, the online video service Hulu rode to the rescue of an NBC comedy series - announcing that it was acquiring the internet rights to the NBC sitcom, Community.

Reportedly, the cable channel Comedy Central, owned by Viacom Inc., may also be in talks to license reruns of Community.

But it's Hulu, an internet distribution company co-owned by NBCUniversal, News Corporation, The Walt Disney Company and Providence Equity Partners, that fans of Community (see video below of a Community flash mob from Dec. 22, 2011) can thank for new episodes.

In November 2011, its third network TV season, things were not looking that good for Community... In fact, it was facing cancellation.

Back then, Community was averaging only about 4 million viewers an episode. Not enough to guarantee a primetime slot in the world of network television - where advertisers prefer hit shows, which can average 15 million viewers a week.

Even though Community, starring Joel McHale and Chevy Chase, had a loyal following, NBC execs were uncertain. Could they could make more money with another show? Or should they continue to support Community - so that it could compile enough episodes to reach "syndication."

What is "syndication?"

Syndication is a term that is used in both print and broadcast media. It indicates content that is purchased for use by a local newpaper, TV or radio station. In the broadcast industry, reruns of a network TV show can be syndicated to local stations - with the local stations choosing the time slots for the reruns.

In the past, only hit shows were able to make it to daily syndication. And for years, daily syndication, where episodes of a television series are shown five times a week on local broadcast outlets, represented the financial promised land for sitcoms.

Now, that model may be changing, with internet services like Hulu willing to distribute shows that aren't big hits.

In the old model, access to daily (also known as "strip") syndication was generally reserved for hit half-hour comedy shows with enough episodes (usually a minimum of four full seasons, but preferably 100 episodes) to allow for several months of daily shows without a rerun. The economic bonanza of syndication on local TV was the foundation for the old production system - where the initial runs of most television series were not profitable. In that old model, star salaries and the cost of production would typically leave the studio - in the case of Community, Sony and NBC/Universal - with a big loss. The studios were willing to absorb losses on their initial network runs because daily syndication (where studios are no longer paying production costs) could generate huge profits - more than enough to balance out any losses. But to reach syndication, the local channels wanted big mass market hits (not niche hits like Community) and 100 episodes.

The fact that Hulu and other internet distribution companies can survive by marketing to niche audiences - without the need for 100 episodes - is changing the TV game.

In the New World of television distribution, a rabid audience that helps to market your content via social media, may be more meaningful than a library of one hundred episodes - or even huge ratings for an initial run on a network.

Making a deal with Hulu required a huge culture shift within NBC. According to Meg James writing on Dec. 31st, 2011 in the LA Times: "Television production studio executives long have been wary of Hulu and other forms of Internet distribution, fearing they would lead to increased piracy and destroy lucrative secondary markets, including syndication and DVD sales. But video streaming services offered by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.com are becoming an unexpected boon to the TV syndication market. By writing checks to license library content from networks, the Internet services are injecting new revenue into the TV business and breathing new life into middling shows."

Social TV: Does the Gaming Platform "Steam" Suggest a New Model for Monetizing Cult and Niche Films?

2012-01-01T17:53:00.000-08:00

Some of the country's biggest TV station groups are set to launch what they hope will be a game-changing social TV initiative in 2012.

Unfortunately, a key element of fan culture - the opportunity to connect with your favorite performers and creators - has been overlooked in the materials that I have seen about this latest social TV initiative.

This blogpost proposes a new "social TV" business based on fan interaction with stars.

First: What is "social TV?"

At its most basic, a social TV platform allows users to communicate with other fans watching the same program. More sophisticated versions of social TV also provide access to bonus features (e.g., additional content) and promotional opportunities related to the programs.

While the opportunity to chat with the principals of your favorite show could (obviously?) be part of the promotional materials offered by a new social TV platform - the big networks haven't put that unique selling proposition at the center of their pitch. Instead, the emphasis seems to be on simply merging TV shows with social media.

Specifically, according to a November 15th, 2011 article in the Hollywood Reporter, 10 big broadcast groups with 201 stations, including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CW and WB affiliates in markets that cover 76 million U.S. homes, have entered into a deal with ConnecTV, a real-time social network custom-built for TV viewers (see video above of Ian Aaron of ConnecTV speaking at the Social TV Summit in NY on Nov. 16th, 2011).

Created by business people who are apparently locked into Old World marketing and sales, the latest social TV plan seems to be about alerting the user to what social media friends are watching and allowing them to interact. Ultimately the (admirable but limited?) goal of ConnectTV seems to be to simply merge the TV experience with social media.

While ConnecTV should work, I think that a huge opportunity is being missed: The chance to chat with the performers and authors of your favorite show.

The dream of talking back to your TV is not new. There have been a number of well-publicized experiments with interactive TV, dating back to the 1970s. But the moment for a new kind of social TV - where users actually interact with heart-throbs and programming in new ways - seems finally to be at hand.

Research by Thinkbox suggests that close to half (44%) of UK TV viewers already are watching TV while chatting on social media - so clearly the audience has no problem multitasking while absorbing TV. But the big media companies are reacting to this "two-screen phenomenon" simply by pursuing technology that promises an integration of the two separate platforms - chatting and sharing reactions with social media friends while viewing TV. While the ConnecTV experience may be seamless - the real benefit over existing two screen solutions may not be significant.

For me, the New World opportunity lies in creating a platform where the user really interacts with the players and crew (not just their online friends - and certainly not just a new channel for intrusive suggestions from marketers based on data-mining).

While ConnecTV is apparently focused on the technological challenges of meshing social media with content from the major TV networks and increasing revenue for advertisers, I believe the unique selling proposition lies elsewhere. My idea involves providing something that fans would really pay for: The chance to interact with their idols.

How would it work? And is the technology too complicated for a start-up to even touch?

The business model I an envisioning might be built on a service that is already familiar in the gaming community: Steam.

Steam is currently the most popular electronic platform for distributing games.

There are no monthly fees to use Steam or to download purchased games. Instead, users create a free account and download what is known as the "core." Then users of Steam get access to some free content, but they can also purchase premium content (games), with the ability to interact with other users.

The idea that I am proposing is that a distributor of motion pictures could make a business based on a platform like Steam's that offers films and contact with performers and key creatives. In particular, my new service would offer premium content for a fervent niche following (e.g., anime, karate, children's content, horror, etc.) and, in addition to that premium content, the service would offer realtime access to the people behind the films - using the social media aspects of a service like Steam (or ConnecTV).

To understand my proposal, let's first look at how Steam works.

A Steam user starts by downloading a "core." After that, users can purchase and download any content they choose (in the case of Steam, from a library of games - but in the case of a new motion picture platform, from a library of films). The content (games) is played while logged into Steam.

How would the Steam model work for films?

Electronic distribution makes Steam more convenient than going to a store (even an online store) and games on Steam can be cheaper than elsewhere. Almost every month Steam lets users try out premium content for free for a weekend.

Just as Steam offers premium content for free at scheduled times, my new film platform would offer exclusive access to actors and crew at set times.

What other functionality could filmmakers adapt from Steam that would be of interest to film fans?

Steam users can automatically store game saves (the system remembers where you left off). This function, remembering where you left off - and where you've commented or made notes - would be useful for film fans.

In addition, users can store related custom files to Steam's cloud service. This functionality - storing related content that the user has found online - could really work for film fans.

But the key functionality of Steam for my new service is built-in voice chat and instant messenger.

This chat and message functionality is how fans could interact with other fans and their idols.

In summary, I am proposing a subscription service built around:

1) access to a library of film content (both free and paid) and

2) offering fans exclusive access to other fans and,

3) at set times, access to key players in their favorite films.

I am suggesting that the gaming platform of Steam could be used to build out a custom film service, that gives a niche film audience an exclusive opportunity for chatting with each other and their favorite stars.

I think creating such a service (built on an existing platform like Steam) that links a niche film audience to their community - including the leaders - and their favorite content is a viable idea. What do you think?

Thanks to Ross Pruden who first got me thinking about Steam as a platform for film.

Will a $35 Tablet Spark an Explosion of Creativity and Revenue in Entertainment and Education?

2012-01-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

On Oct. 5th, 2011, the Indian government launched a 7-inch Android-based tablet - the $35 Aakash.

Developed to link students at India's 25,000 colleges and 400 universities in an e-learning program - the Aakash has the potential to revolutionize the way entertainment and education are delivered around the world.

An initial run of 100,000 units has sold out. A second generation model of Aakash (projected to cost the Indian government $50 per unit) will be circulated to students at the subsidized price of $35 early in 2012. A commercial version of Aakash will be marketed as UbiSlate 7 for about $60 - with shipping also expected before the end of February 2012.

At the heart of the Aakash tablet is an HD video co-processor. So it already plays video like a champ.

As the Aakash tablet and other competitors (all priced well-under $100) become widely available, children (and their parents) all over India will - for the first time - have access to apps and motion pictures online.

How long will it be until apps based on the new Hollywood children's film - or innovative educational texts - are available in Bengali - with about 1/2 as many native speakers as English - and Hindi-Urdu - with about as many native speakers as English?

What revenue models will emerge for motion pictures as tens of millions of new customers are connected to streaming services every few months?

In 2012, will apps and films, playing on ubiquitous mobile devices like the Aakash, change entertainment and education in ways that were not imagined just a few years ago?

Vivek Wadhwa on Education for Innovation and His Five Tech Industry Predictions for 2012

2012-01-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

Washington Post columnist and academic at Singularity University (and other leading institutions) Vivek Wadhwa examined some of the myths surrounding education for tech careers in a provocative April 2011 TedxEmbarcadero talk (above).

In his talk, Prof. Wadhwa addressed some of the key questions facing educators and anyone planning on working in high tech industries.

For example:

Why are US companies going abroad to hire engineers?

Are Chinese and Indian universities turning out better-educated engineers - or are the workers in those countries simply cheaper?

Are there important distinctions between the Indian, Chinese and American higher education systems that prepare workers for the tech industries?

Are the American, Indian and Chinese Universities all really only good at turning out mediocre students - who need to be retrained to succeed at innovation?

Is it even possible to educate for innovation?

Does innovation = science and engineering graduation rates?

Or is there something else at work?

Where is R&D really centered?

Is China innovating or simply copying?

What about India?

Is India becoming as R&D hub with a unique potential? And, if so, why?

What do the Indians know about workforce development?

What are the best practices for interviewing, testing and re-educating that explain India's rise?

(Hint: Wadhwa says that the best Indian companies simply accept the inadequacy of the their country’s education system and - in response - they've developed their own highly innovative, training programs that more than compensate for the mediocre educations that Indian universities generally deliver.)

Is the American system of high-priced higher education (as Peter Theil has recently argued) a deeply flawed model for innovation - holding out false hopes of huge returns?

Is there a higher education bubble (just like the housing bubble) that is about to burst?

Or, as Professor Wadhwa argues, is higher education necessary, if only as a credential and a time to mature.

Is a university education still good value if it costs over $100,000 - because it provides a foundation that can be built upon (by more specialized training for innovators?) later?

Where will tomorrow's innovators come from?

And, while we're thinking about the future, in addition to his Tedx Talk, I've excerpted (from a December 2011 blogpost in Venture Beat) that contained Professor Wadha's predictions for the coming year (2012) in technology:

1. Social media will lose its sizzle.

2. The bubble will pop for the current crop of tech IPOs.

3. The worldwide tablet market will explode - driven by sub-$100 tablets.

4. Voice recognition will go mainstream.

5. Issues with the security of cloud computing will shake the tech industry.

Independent Film Predictions for 2012

2011-12-31T14:30:00.000-08:00

What will 2012 look like for independent filmmakers?

Here is a link to filmcourage where some readers suggestions have been collated, including:

1) An independent filmmaker not named Steven Soderbergh, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, or David Lynch will crowd-fund $1 million.

2) We will see a rise in independent actors embracing Social Media and playing a larger role in the promotion of independent films.

3) A film made for under $1M will end up in the Oscar discussion, but fall short.

The Evolution of Search: Why Filmmakers Need to Understand Google

2011-12-31T14:26:00.000-08:00

The New World of film distribution means connecting online users with your content. The more you understand about online search - the better you will be at delivering your film to your audience.

Inside the Production Design of Hugo

2011-12-31T13:11:00.000-08:00

Featurette: Martin Scorsese

On Dec. 30th, 2011, the NY Times published a short piece about the remarkable work done by production designer Dante Ferretti on Martin Scorsese's tribute to the early days of motion pictures, Hugo.

The NY Times article is a nice companion to Alex Suskind's Dec. 2. 2011 piece for moviefone about Hugo and Georges Méliès, the pioneering French filmmaker who inspired Scorsese's film.

Faithful readers of this blog know I have written about Georges Méliès and his role in the early history of motion pictures. I've even written about the real-life movie-lover who discovered Georges Méliès at work in a small toy store in the Gare Montparnasse, Leon Druhot.

Thanks to Tom Garrett for the NY Times link

The Connection Between the Collapse of Theatrical and DVD - And the Studios' Support of SOPA

2011-12-30T17:46:00.000-08:00

In a few days, a Congressional Committee will resume their 'mark-up" of the Stop Online Piracy Act ("SOPA") - a new internet censorship law. As 2011 draws to a close, it seems increasingly likely that SOPA will make it out of that House Judiciary Committee - then on to both Houses of Congress - and perhaps to President Obama's desk (where the outcome is uncertain) in early 2012.

The biggest financial backing for SOPA comes from the legacy movie studios and other old media and old money businesses. So far, these established supporters of SOPA have experienced no pushback from internet users, although a threatened boycott got domain registrar and Web hosting company GoDaddy to change from backing SOPA to pulling its support almost overnight in late December 2011.

While the 20th Century media titans are gearing up to push SOPA through Congress, we are just getting word that 2011 will be the worst year for motion picture theatrical attendance since 1995.

Is it a coincidence? Or are these two events - the ongoing collapse of theatrical and the push for a new internet piracy law - related?

The studios are redoubling their efforts to pass SOPA - a law intended to protect their online revenue stream - just as theatrical (the oldest revenue stream of motion pictures) appears to be dying.

And the collapse of theatrical attendance is not the only threat to movie studio revenue in 2012. In 2010, the DVD market also began to unravel. Consumers switched from buying DVDs to low-cost rentals from Netflix and Redbox. According to SNL Kagan, revenue collected by studios from DVDs dropped 44% in 2010. And that collapse of DVD sales appears to have continued in 2011: While seven movies saw DVD sales that exceeded $100 million in 2010 (lead by Avatar, which pulled in more than $183 million in 2010), no DVD did $100 million in sales in 2011.

In the face of declining ticket sales and lack of interest in DVDs, does the studios' SOPA strategy make sense?

Can the studios stave off dwindling theatrical and DVD numbers by enacting a new law that attacks offshore piracy?

Probably not.

As I've already explained on this blog, almost everyone who understands how the internet works thinks SOPA (if signed by President Obama) will fail. The mechanisms for blocking and censoring in SOPA may actually (paradoxically) harm internet security. And SOPA almost certainly will not deter the ardent pirate from the un-permissioned copying and sharing of Hollywood movies. In fact, SOPA workarounds have already been created.

Instead of making the theatrical experience more profitable or finding ways to rekindle interest in DVDs - the studios are focused on stopping online piracy - even though most experts agree that the new tools of SOPA will do little to deter determined pirates.

And is piracy really the problem?

Judging by recent statistics, piracy seems to be waning and SOPA may not even be necessary. There is growing evidence that illegal copying is already declining - without any new laws. There are many possible reasons for this drop in illegal copying - one likely factor is the increasing availability of convenient and LEGAL quality streaming services (like Netflix). Apparently the great majority of consumers are choosing to pay for films and music online - even for titles that could be downloaded from torrent sites for free.

So why are the studios pushing for a new law if losses from piracy are growing smaller, online revenue is growing larger, and the problems of illegal copying and file-sharing probably won't be solved by the new law?

Why are the studios (that employ many smart people) so adamant about SOPA?

Do the studios think that the revenue from streaming will offset the lost theatrical and DVD receipts?

Outsiders, who have looked at the numbers, are not optimistic. The drops in theatrical attendance and DVD sales are not being replaced by streaming: "Though the online movie business has been growing at a healthy clip for the last few years, driven in large part by the majority of Netflix's 24 million U.S. subscribers who stream video, it hasn't come close to making up for the rapid drop in DVD revenue." Add in a decline in theatrical revenue - and the studios are facing a looming financial disaster.

The legacy motion picture businesses (i.e., Hollywood) are clearly suffering through a truly disruptive time. Theatrical box office and DVDs were the lifeblood of the industry. In 2011, both were in rapid decline. And the studios seem helpless to stop these trends.

Instead the studios are focused on fighting piracy with a new (ineffective?) law. And even if SOPA passes and works, streaming is unlikely (in the short term anyway) to generate enough revenue to replace the theatrical and DVD revenue that has disappeared over the last few years.

As Ross Pruden suggests: "The time [for the studios] to identify, develop, and implement a more sustainable business model is now."

But what business model? How will the big studios generate revenue in the remainder of the 21st century?

Skyliners: Wire-Walking and Free Flight

2011-12-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

I Believe I can Fly ( flight of the frenchies). Trailer from sebastien montaz-rosset on Vimeo.

Short film from director/editor: Sébastien Montaz-Rosset with sound design: by Michael Denny. Music: The Rural Alberta Advantage. Frank, AB.

Planetary: iPhone App Represents Your Music Visually

2011-12-30T07:14:00.000-08:00

Planetary (voiceover) from Bloom Studio, Inc. on Vimeo.

Because filmmakers tend to be visual-thinkers, I thought you might be interested in the music-of-the-spheres aesthetics of Planetary, a free iPad app from the data-artists at Bloom, that analyzes your iTunes music library and visualizes it as a 3D galaxy.

With Planetary, artists become stars that form constellations, albums are planets orbiting those stars, and individual tracks are moons that spin around the planets.

My idea for a great new app?

Combine the current functionality of Planetary (i.e., beautiful graphical interface) with the ability to make connections and new music suggestions (like the data-mining music discovery app known as Music Explorer from Coincident) and a searchable music subscription service like Spotify - and music search and discovery on your portable could explore strange new worlds of music...

Music: the final frontier. These are the voyages of you making connections between your current music library and new music. Its an app that helps you seek out new artists and the influences of your favorite artists... To boldly go where no iPhone has gone before...

Blast off.

If I Go Before You, Please Make Sure My Ceremony Matches This In Every Detail...

2011-12-29T18:17:00.001-08:00

Long Tail Fight: Robert Levine "Calls-Out" Seth Godin

2011-12-29T05:41:00.000-08:00

On Dec. 29th 2011, in a spasm of contemptuous tweets (e.g., "Seth Godin is a fool"), "Free Ride" author Robert Levine hyped a former colleague's blogpost (and Mr. Levine's own book?) by launching a full-scale attack on Seth Godin, an influential business blogger.

Statements like "Seth Godin proves you don't need to be good-looking to succeed in the entertainment business" may get Mr. Levine the attention he apparently craves. But it's hard to see how this kind of attack strengthens Mr. Levine's challenge to Seth Godin's advice.

Calling a business consultant a coward ("He won't stand up for his views") may get Mr. Levine a flurry of page views, but what about the merits of Mr. Levine's and Mr. Godin's arguments?

Does the success of one English pop-singer in 2011 - Adele's 21 - really expose Seth Godin as a fraud?

Or are the fundamental observations that Seth Godin has made about the future of marketing - and in particular Mr. Godin's observations about the Long Tail and its affect on the music and book publishing industries - still valid?

Indie filmmakers have a deep vested interest in the outcome of this dispute.

Should we filmmakers rely on the Internet - hiring marketing and distribution specialists as needed - or do we need to pursue the old model of an "all rights" deal from a big distributor?

On the one hand - indie filmmakers are being told that the Internet is failing them and that DIY is a hoax. There are professional reactionaries, like Mr. Levine and his former colleague at Billboard Glenn Peoples, with a vested interest in the old ways of selling entertainment. Because they have predicted that the New World of online commerce will fail (Mr. Levine has argued that the Internet is "simply too chaotic to provide the infrastructure for a 21st-century economy") a success at any big media company becomes more than an opportunity to celebrate the old ways - it is seized on as a chance to savage the new.

On the other hand - indie filmmakers have been hearing from early adopters like Seth Godin, that the Internet is their future. Seth Godin, Cory Doctorow and others (who make good money as consultants - more than most indie filmmakers will ever see) have staked their livelihoods on educating others to the concepts and tools available for sharing content in the networked 21st Century.

So which is it? Old World or New? Can both co-exist? What about the merits of Mr. Levine's arguments? What exactly has Seth Godin been promising indie filmmakers? Will the Internet become a new way of monetizing content? Or is Mr. Levine right? And what exactly does Mr. Levine hope to gain from attacking Seth Godin?

Starting with the last question first, Mr. Levine apparently feels he deserves some of what Seth Godin is being paid as a consultant: "Seth Godin makes a ton of money as hired entertainment. If I point out how dumb he is, maybe I can get some of it!"

As to the other questions raised by Mr. Levine's attack...

It's too soon to call a winner in the Old World v. New World battle, but - having read Richard Levine's awful book Free Ride - I do have a preference as between Mr. Levine and Mr. Godin.

Faithful readers know that I'm a big fan of Seth Godin's - precisely because he avoids the hyperbolic mischaracterizations that riddle Richard Levine's writing. You have to wonder if Mr. Levine or his former colleague at Billboard Glenn Peoples - who wrote the Dec. 28th, 2011 attack on Seth Godin, the apparent stimulus for Mr. Levine's Dec. 29th, 2011 tweet-spree - have ever read what Mr. Godin has written about the economics of pop music.

Mr. Peoples's year-end blogpost uses Adele's success in 2011 as a cudgel - a blunt tool for beating back Seth Godin and the Long Tail. Like Mr. Levine, Glenn Peoples goes too far, misstating the facts and making some absurdly unjustified logical leaps.

It should be clear to anyone that Adele's triumph does not mean that everything that Seth Godin has said about marketing is wrong.

Why?

1) Adele's 21 might just be an exceptional case - an outlier in a larger trend away from album sales and physical copies.

2) Furthermore, (and most importantly for refuting Mr. Levine's year-end attack on Seth Godin) anyone who actually reads Seth Godin knows that Mr. Godin has been remarkably nuanced and circumspect about the Long Tail. For example, on Nov. 10th, 2011, Mr. Godin published a neat little allegorical piece - that cautioned small business-people about expecting too much from the New World of online marketing: "The long tail is for organizations that own warehouses."

In short, Mr. Levine and Mr. Peoples misstate Mr. Godin's position and then refute that straw argument - without ever addressing what Mr. Godin has really said or what is really at stake.

Mr. Levine may sell a few more copies of his (truly awful) book by picking fights with his betters. But (as usual) Mr. Levine's latest attack on the Internet and the people trying to build out a new business infrastructure online fails to accurately report what people are actually saying and doing. Mr. Levine's latest tantrum exposes what I've suspected all along - he is deeply emotionally invested in an ideology and he bends the facts and logic to suit his (childish?) emotional needs.

Without the Internet, I have to wonder if Robert Levine would even matter? The Internet contains a lot of stuff that doesn't stand up to the minimum standards of critical analysis. But, in the new online economy, writers like Robert Levine can clearly get a lot of attention. They might even get paid.

Why President Obama May Sell-Out the Internet and Sign SOPA

2011-12-27T18:53:00.000-08:00

Mike Masnick has written a chilling Dec. 27th, 2011 blogpost for techdirt, explaining why President Obama might just sign SOPA into law.

Opponents of SOPA - an innovation-killing Internet-censorship bill, that is backed by the big movie studios, old media and money and the AFL-CIO and opposed by almost all the major Internet players and pioneers as well as free speech and human rights advocates - may have been lulled into thinking that President Obama is a friend of the Internet and therefore he will ultimately do the right thing.

They may be wrong.

Mike Masnick does a great job of weighing the competing behind-the-scenes interests:

The Motion Picture Association of America ("MPAA") wants the power to shut down "rogue sites".

But free speech advocates and the people who created the Internet say SOPA goes way too far.

And inside government "the State Department is strenuously opposed to the bill [because]...it would do significant harm to their efforts to push internet freedom and openness around the globe."

While the Justice Department and ICE "would gladly support [their new powers under] SOPA"...

Ultimately, as Mike Masnick observes, the decision may boil down to the fundraising imperatives of an election year.

"Any bill that has the support of the MPAA and the AFL-CIO is red meat for [the President in an election year] when it comes to fundraising."

Conclusion?

"[T]he signals suggest pretty strongly that if the bill landed on his desk today, President Obama would sign it into law with little hesitation -- and declare it a victory for the economy and American jobs."

Before it's too late, you can sign this petition.

Riley on Marketing: "Some Girls Like Superheroes"... Don't Try to Trick Your Audience and Don't Assume You Know Them

2011-12-27T18:18:00.000-08:00

Orly Ravid on The Dynamo Player

2011-12-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

Orly Ravid has posted a very informative piece (e.g., tips for using the service, price points, etc.) about the Dynamo Player - a service that many DIY filmmakers are using to facilitate online distribution and revenue collection.

Faithful readers might recall that this isn't the first time Dynamo has been mentioned: Here's a link to an earlier post on this blog about Dynamo.

Basically, a filmmaker uploads their video to Dynamo, sets a price, and then the video can be published anywhere on the web. The filmmaker gets paid every time a user decides to watch.

I like the way the Dynamo Player works with core audience members. If your fans want to share their enthusiasm for your film via social media - they can - and the Dynamo Player is designed to make that sharing easy - while protecting your ability to make money from every user.

Here's how it works: Once your film is uploaded to Dynamo, it can be embedded anywhere on the web. There is no special software to download. That means a fan can post your film to their site with the player embed code, and then let others know about your film using the Twitter and Facebook sharing tools to spread the word. But the filmmaker still gets paid by each viewer. Viewers pay in just a few clicks through (trusted services) PayPal or Amazon.

There are no minimums, no contracts, no up-front fees, and no need to keep advertisers happy. When a viewer decides to watch the film, they must complete a transaction. The filmmaker retains full control over the video’s price and access period.

On Location with The Hobbit: Great Behind-The-Scenes Video Diary #5

2011-12-26T20:39:00.000-08:00

Entertainment Apps - TinTin the iPad Experience

2011-12-26T17:14:00.000-08:00

If you're interested in how entertainment will be evolving in the next few years - you could not find a better example than The Adventures of TinTin.

In addition to Steven Spielberg's 3D movie of TinTin and the video game (both of which I've already written about on this site), you can also pay $39.99 (list price) for a traditional coffee table book. Or, for only $5.99, you can buy “The Art of The Adventures of TinTin” for your iPad and get all the content of the Old World print edition - and much more. What more? On the iPad you get all the interactivity of an app.

What's an app?

To people in the computer industry, an "app" is just a shorthand expression for the end-user programs known as "applications."

Why is a computer program worthy of a blogpost on a site about filmmaking?

Because many people who've made their livings in the film business (myself included) anticipate that mobile entertainment apps are poised to become a brand-new multi-billion dollar industry.

If you're not familiar with apps - or how they are about to become a huge new source of entertainment revenue - a good place to start is with the short promo video (above) from Harper Collins, WETA and Holopad that demonstrates the unique functionality of the TinTin iPad app. As described in the video, in addition to the traditional book's artwork (created by WETA and based on the original comic artwork by Hergé), the iPad app includes 3D models of the characters and vehicles from the movie (that you can spin around to view from different angles), HD video clips, immersive 360-degree set renderings, etc.

Why does this interactive form of content - the TinTin app - suggest an entire new and substantial revenue stream?

To understand why apps hold so much promise for filmmakers and entertainment companies - in addition to the expressive possibilities - you need to understand how apps are sold and where they fit into the worldwide market for entertainment properties.

In general, application software or apps are computer instructions that allow the user of a device to perform certain tasks with that device. You may already be familiar with apps like Angry Birds or Facebook for your phone.

Apps can come bundled with a device - or they can be purchased and installed (usually downloaded and installed with a couple of clicks) by the consumer.

Apps have become very popular since July 2008 - when Apple first launched their online App Store targeted at providing apps for Apple's new generation of iPhones (the 3G) and in anticipation of their January 2010 launch of the iPad.

In an online app store, consumers browse through apps (in 2008 the Apple App Store offered 500 apps, as of Oct. 2011 there are more than 500,000 apps available there) and download the ones they want (some apps are free, but many cost a small amount).

Since Apple started their app store, other competitors have jumped in - and mobile app creation and usage - primarily apps for social networking and gaming - has exploded.

But many observers (again, myself included) think the potential for entertainment apps - custom-built for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets - is still largely untapped.

If we're right, consumption of entertainment through mobile apps will sharply increase in 2012. Here's why:

1) Consumers have embraced mobile apps. But app development is still in its early stages - the interactivity and complexity of apps that provide immersive entertainment is just beginning to be explored.

2) Entertainment apps can fill a demand for mobile entertainment that the big media companies have been slow to fill with other content.

The biggest entertainment companies have been slow to license their traditional video content for international distribution via the Internet (they're locked into existing distribution deals and freaked out about piracy). For example, Apple currently (Dec. 2011) only offers traditional TV programing for streaming via iTunes in 6 countries. But Apple has app stores in 72 countries and app makers have started to roll out versions of apps targeted at diverse demographic profiles.

Meanwhile, in many parts of the world, consumers are just beginning to buy smart mobile devices. For example, experts are predicting that in 2012 over 18 million new smartphones will be sold in India - a rapidly growing percentage of the 200+ million mobile devices that are sold there each year. Also, in November 2011, the Indian government began offering a 7-inch Android-based subsidized tablet - the $35 Aakash:

At the heart of the Aakash tablet is an HD video co-processor. When the Aakash tablet becomes widely available, children (and their parents) all over India will have access to apps and motion pictures online. How long will it be until apps based on the new Hollywood children's film are available in Bengali - with about 1/2 as many native speakers as English - and Hindi-Urdu - with about as many native speakers as English?

Because apps are fun, affordable, not as susceptible to piracy, and apps don't cannibalize from (but build on the marketing for) other existing revenue streams - the big content companies are beginning to see apps that play on ubiquitous mobile devices as the source of new untapped worldwide revenue.

After the Media Apocalypse: Rex Sorgatz

2011-12-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

Media entrepreneur and New York resident Rex Sorgatz hates LA.

But (in a twisted little Dec, 21st, 2011 piece he wrote for Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab) Rex Sorgatz predicts "LA is the Future."

Sorgatz's logic?

The current media system is broken. Tied to old production, distribution and revenue models - the bloated legacy 20th Century media businesses are about to implode.

"[W]hen that happens, the fallout for the LA-based television industry will be catastrophic. It will make the print media collapse of the past decade look like Legos. I predict over half of [the] 1,600 cable channels will disappear. Sure, they’ll try to recreate themselves on YouTube or via other online mechanisms, but that industry is already too bloated to realize that it needs to do more than shave costs by 10 percent — it needs to move an entire decimal to the left. Maybe twice. When the collapse hits, capital will rush out of the traditional entertainment industry faster than you can say “Lehman Brothers.”"

Why then does Rex Sorgatz say "LA is the Future?"

Basically, Rex Sorgatz is betting that the vacuum after the collapse will attract new ideas and players.

Rex Sorgatz predicts that entrepreneurs - many of them from outside the old Hollywood system - with knowledge of social sharing technology, new revenue models, a gift for aggregation and distribution, etc. "will be poised for this moment [with] the cash, the talent, and the creative culture to seize it."

In other words, LA will become the new land of opportunity - just as soon as the Old World of Hollywood is blasted into dust and blown away.

It may be hyperbolic (and wishful thinking by someone whose cable bill currently runs over $200 per month) but Rex Sorgatz may have a point, sometimes it takes a forest fire to clear the ground for new growth.

Gary Vaynerchuk: How Indie Filmmakers Can Break Through In Today's Increasingly Crowded Online World

2011-12-26T08:12:00.000-08:00

Gary Vaynerchuk is a pioneer in e-commerce (his online wine business grew from revenue of $4 million to $45 million in just 5 years - and his online wine TV shows attracted tens of thousands of viewers per episode until he called it quits in 2011).

Gary Vaynerchuk's ideas about engaging with users (and how he expresses these ideas - warning, profanity is part of Gary's in-person pitch) have made him a star in the new world of online marketing.

What Gary Vaynerchuk calls the "Thank You Economy" involves responding personally to customers. For example, Gary advises marketers to track the personal preferences of every user and then mine that data for opportunities to let the users know you're listening to them as individuals (e.g., sending a customer who tweets about Derek Jeter an autographed baseball).

Of particular interest to filmmakers is what Gary Vaynerchuk has to say about "content." According to Gary Vaynerchuk: Content matters, but the single most important word for the next decade is "context."

Why is context more important than content?

No matter how good your content - the important truth is that your content must compete - "break through" - in a world where more content is uploaded every 48 hours than was created prior to 2003.

What does this mean?

What hits your user in the emotional center - not what you are selling - is paramount. The relationship with each individual in your audience is critical - not your content.

What does this new online reality mean for filmmakers marketing their films?

Marketing is no longer about pushing out messages about your content. Instead of Old World marketing messages ("buy my film") or trying to increase the numbers ("like my film's page on Facebook"), the engagements with individual users - based on listening to their emotional needs and not what you want to tell them - are at the core of successful 21st century film marketing.

In this ongoing massive cultural shift - where recommendations and word-of-mouth are at the center of indie film marketing in ways that were not imagined 10 years ago - maintaining a real two-way dialogue with users is crucial.

Marketing your indie film in the 21st century means creating opportunities for users to express themselves, listening to them and then responding in meaningful ways. According to Gary Vaynerchuk: "The only thing that breaks through is the one-on-one connection."

Rebecca MacKinnon: Let's Take Back the Internet!

2011-12-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

In this July 2011 TEDGlobal talk, Rebecca MacKinnon describes "the expanding struggle for freedom and control in cyberspace."

Preparing 21st Century Media Students for Constant Flux: John Seely Brown and Finnish Schools

2011-12-26T05:54:00.000-08:00

Hollywood and other institutions are concerned with preserving the value of their stock and business models - but ongoing changes in infrastructure (for the foreseeable future, John Seely Brown predicts "constant flux") are challenging old revenue streams and the way we prepare students for the future.

How to prepare students for careers in media in the 21st Century?

Creative experiments with 21st century media that are shared online can facilitate "social learning" - which is a powerful predictor of success.

But US schools are not set up to recognize collaborative online work and problem solving that engages with a changing (non-traditional) infrastructure.

Universities abhor failure - but the 21st century media infrastructure is changing so quickly that the assumptions underlying any work can change overnight - e.g., the architecture supporting promising work can shift and a 21st century researcher must move on without regret or recrimination.

Are the old models of academic research incompatible with the work that must be done?

How can 21st century media students succeed in an academic system where the measures of rigor and success have been inherited from prior centuries?

Starting in the 1980s, Finnish schools set about reforming themselves - abandoning traditional assessment and rote learning. In Finland today the only standardized test is the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of the equivalent of American high school. Instead of testing, teachers are trained to create their own measures. And instead of homework, teachers are trained to facilitate creative play and cooperation.

Although Finland is a small nation with a much more homogeneous population than the United States, that doesn't entirely explain why Finnish 15 year olds rank near the top in reading, math, and science of all industrialized countries. Norway (another small homogeneous Nordic country) uses a traditional system of education (similar to the American) with mediocre results. It seems that well-trained teachers and responsible children are more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.

But how can we train teachers and students to make content for platforms that are not yet in existence?

How do the tools for productive inquiry into 21st century media creation differ from the tools that trained prior generations of media-makers?

21st century abilities, for example, the ability to see patterns that no one else has seen before, cannot be learned simply by looking backwards.

In the 21st century, students must be taught that media tools and structures will not remain the same. Students must be prepared for an ever-shifting landscape where mastery of technology and historical systems is important only insofar as it aids productive inquiry.

As the context will constantly be changing, the emphasis should not be exclusively on "content." Students need to know that their solutions must be adaptable - capable of being reframed in terms of context.

Could the US follow the Finnish model and emphasize creative collaborative play over homework and standardized tests?

Perhaps, as John Seely Brown suggests, 21st century media students should receive more education in terms of games and riddles. As in gaming, the freedom to fail over and over again must become part of 21st century media education. And, as in solving riddles, instead of relying on familiar forms and recognizable shapes, "sudden epiphanies" and improvisation must be supported.

The Greatest Innovation For Spreading Good Ideas? Or is the Internet Simply Making Us "Docile Copiers?"

2011-12-25T06:08:00.000-08:00

I am acutely aware that this blog is not that innovative. Yes I endeavor to share "new ideas" here - but there is precious little that I have done on this blog that is really mine - truly original or creative. Mostly I copy (see below).

In a Dec. 15th, 2011 blogpost, Professor Mark Pagel, a Fellow of the Royal Society and Head of the Evolution Laboratory at the University of Reading, addresses - from the perspective of an evolutionary biologist - how the Internet fits into the history of human creativity. I've copied a few of his ideas below - but, if you're interested, please read the entire post...

Professor Pagel observes that "whereas all of the other animals can pick up the odd behavior by having their attention called to something, only humans seem to be able to select, among a range of alternatives, the best one, and then to build on that alternative, and to adapt it, and to improve upon it."

In the history of evolution, this uniquely human "social learning" represented something new "because now ideas could arise, and they could jump from mind to mind, without genes having to change."

This human capacity has lead to what Prof. Pagel calls "idea evolution" - but Prof. Pagel writes that instantaneous and inexpensive mass communication has not made us more creative or active...

According to Prof. Pagel: "[A]s our societies get bigger, and rely more and more on the Internet, fewer and fewer of us have to be very good at these creative and imaginative processes. And so, humanity might be moving towards becoming more docile, more oriented towards following, copying others, prone to fads, prone to going down blind alleys, because part of our evolutionary history that we could have never anticipated was leading us towards making use of the small number of other innovations that people come up with, rather than having to produce them ourselves."

Is Prof. Pagel right?

Perhaps. But his analysis assumes that bad ideas (blind alleys and fads) are as attractive as the (admittedly few) good ideas that are being circulated online.

And, to accept Prof. Pagel's prediction of a world of docile copiers, you must ignore a slew of recent events that were triggered - at least in part - by ideas that spread online.

Yes, most of us will have no more good ideas today than we had yesterday - but the spread of good ideas is happening more quickly than anyone ever imagined - and the effect of the Internet on the quality of human life has been unprecedented.

For example, the Internet-connected people of the Arab Spring may only be sharing a few (300 year old?) original ideas - but they are hardly "docile copiers."

The effect of a few good ideas - unavailable in certain quarters until Facebook and Twitter - has changed the world forever in 2011.

Yes, Prof. Pagel is right: Most of what is online is not original and most users of the web are not that creative. But it's a mistake to undervalue how significant the Internet has been in changing lives: The ideals of the Enlightenment and the principles of non-violent civil disobedience and ruling by consent of the governed are reaching people who had no chance of learning and sharing and implementing those ideas before 2011.

Perhaps Prof. Pagel, a scholar who came of age before the virtually cost-free environment of the networked world, isn't giving the Internet enough credit. Yes, the web has given new life to the observation by a 1950s science fiction writer that "90% of everything is crap." But that's not the point. It's all about how a few good ideas can spread online and be implemented by people who are activated by them.

The fact that most people are not churning out great ideas is unavoidable online. Until recently, most bad ideas never saw the light of day. But it's important to remember that in the tide of online sludge, a few good ideas (once denied to millions) are also carried along to spread in nano-seconds - where they can be acted on by non-docile copiers - all thanks to the rise of the the networked world.

"Piracy" Declines as Legal Streaming of Movies Grows in 2011: Is SOPA Necessary?

2011-12-24T09:58:00.000-08:00

With more people streaming movies via Netflix and other legal services - and using their iPads, Kindles, and tablets, which don’t have hard drives for huge movie files - the threat from online movie "pirates" seems to be in decline.

The revenue from paid-for online video increased by 200% in 2011, while at the same time there was a significant drop - almost 40% - from 2010 to 2011 in illegal downloading of each year's most pirated film.

Why is movie piracy apparently on the decline? One answer might be that the new films in 2011 weren't worth the effort. But another answer (which corresponds nicely with the increase in paid streaming) is that consumers and the content owners have found a better model for delivering content online - a model that consumers are willing to pay for.

BitTorrent sites offer FREE illegal downloads - but the data from music and motion picture sites all over the world suggests that consumers are actually willing to PAY for the convenience and quality of legitimate streaming services.

In short, just like when VCRs were first invented, the movie industry may have over-sold the "piracy" threat from a new technology, focusing only on the threat to an old revenue stream - even as the new technology (in the 1980s it was videotape rental, in 2012 it will be VOD streaming) begins to pour untold millions into their coffers.

If you're over 40, you may remember that the early adopters of videotape machines and the MPAA tussled in the early days of the VCR. If you grew up with VCRs and DVD players, you know that eventually the Hollywood businesspeople were able to find a way to make big money off the new technology.

Just as the MPAA fought home video players in the 1980s - only to make huge revenue from DVDs thereafter - the movie industry has recently been fighting a free and open Internet. In particular, the MPAA has been contributing heavily to key legislators in an effort to get a new (and deeply flawed) law - SOPA - passed in Congress in early 2012.

SOPA would kill innovation on the Internet - giving big-content companies the power to shut down access to foreign sites that might have hosted one offending video or song - and creating a whole new scheme that would require American services to scour their sites for links to allegedly offending sites. But the MPAA insists it needs SOPA's draconian measures to fight "piracy."

Whether SOPA would actually work is an open question. Many technologists say that SOPA would not deter determined pirates. In fact, some coders have already built workarounds, just in case SOPA passes.

So, even though there are significant doubts about SOPA's effectiveness, the MPAA is spending heavily to get it passed.

Throw in the fact that some experts - like Google's founder Sergey Brin - are outspoken opponents of SOPA, saying the law creates a whole new scheme for Internet censorship similar to that practiced in China and Iran, and you'll begin to see why so many entrepreneurs and free speech advocates oppose SOPA.

SOPA will be taken up again in Congress right after the 2011-2012 holiday break - at the exact moment that we are receiving news that a new revenue model - streaming legal VOD - has taken hold. If streaming works - and is generating growing revenue, without the awful (unintended innovation-killing censorship) consequences of SOPA - why are we voting a whole new scheme of censorship into place?

Will Congress get the message that SOPA is a bad law that fixes a problem (online piracy) that is already in decline?

If you want to help, you can sign this petition.

Hitler Reacts to the Stop Online Piracy Act ("SOPA")

2011-12-23T12:14:00.000-08:00

Need Releases (w/ Photo)? There's an App for That

2011-12-23T06:29:00.000-08:00

Filmmakers need "releases." (A release is a binding contract in which someone foregoes a right to sue you for specific types of claims. For example, without a written release, if you reproduce images of an individual, that person might have their attorney send you a "cease and desist letter" telling you to stop or they might bring you into court and sue you for various violations of personal rights.)

iRelease, Easy Release and Release Pro are all $9.99 iPhone apps specifically designed for photographers and film and TV producers.

All these apps allow a producer to quickly get someone's legal permission to be in their project - or to use a location or a photograph.

In addition to getting a signature, all these apps apparently (I haven't used any of them yet) integrate a photograph of the signee into the release - eliminating the chore of matching pictures to the correct release once back at the production office.

A "Bittersweet" Victory For User-Generated Content

2011-12-21T01:16:00.000-08:00

The big media companies want to shut down your access to sites that host user-generated content (some of which might include their copyright content - like a Destiny's Child/Nirvana mash-up on YouTube).

In what the Electronic Frontier Foundation ("EFF") is calling a "bittersweet" victory - because VEOH, the prevailing party, has already been driven out of business by the costs of defending themselves against Universal Music Group ("UMG") - on Dec. 20th, 2011 the 9th Circuit Court dismissed UMG's claim that general awareness that one's site hosted some infringing videos is enough to deprive an online hosting service (in this case, VEOH) of the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA").

Basically, the safe harbors of the DMCA provide that services like VEOH cannot be held responsible for hosting infringing work - if the service promptly blocks access to allegedly infringing material or removes such material from their systems at the copyright holder's request.

The big content owners are unhappy that companies like VEOH and YouTube have "safe harbors." Big content owners want the power to shut down sites with offending content - especially offshore sites. That's why the big content companies are supporting a new law - the Stop Online Piracy Act ("SOPA") - that is currently being "marked-up" in Congress. SOPA would shut down access to what the big content companies call "offshore rogue sites."

At the same time that they are muscling SOPA through Congress, the big content companies are also pushing to expand their control over domestic sites - including taking services like VEOH to court for not doing enough to discourage "piracy."

Some of the sites that host user-generated content have chosen to fight back. Recently, Hotfile countersued, claiming that the big content companies have gone too far - abusing their powers under the DMCA by seeking to delete more files than they are entitled to.

The question of the limits of DMCA takedown power were at the center of a 2010 lawsuit where the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected Viacom's claim that YouTube was guilty of massive copyright infringement. Instead, the court granted Google - YouTube's parent company- a motion for summary judgment and asserted that YouTube fully qualifies for "safe harbor" protections under the DMCA.

Even though they have suffered setbacks in the VEOH and YouTube court cases, the big media companies remain intent on turning the web into something that operates like television, "where nothing gets on the air until every clip is "cleared" by an army of lawyers."

This is not how the web currently works and (as the courts have consistently applied the DMCA) it is not how the law is supposed to work.

One year after the YouTube victory over Viacom in a lower court (Viacom is currently appealing that decision in the Second Circuit), VEOH has now triumphed over UMG in the Ninth Circuit. But the established Old World content owners are not done.

If they can't win on the merits in court under the existing law, the big content companies will lobby to change the law. Apparently, the big media companies want to make it unpleasant for any start-up anywhere in the world considering hosting or linking to user-generated content.

As reported by the EFF: "The cost of defending the [UMG] case effectively drove VEOH out of business years ago. If Hollywood manages to get Internet blacklist bills SOPA and PIPA passed, expect to see many more innovative startups meet the same sad fate - or never get off the ground in the first place."

Because the big content owners (like UMG, Viacom and the MPAA) are not satisfied with the DMCA, they have gone back to Congress seeking sweeping new powers to block access to offshore sites that might be hosting pirated content. And the new law also contains provisions that would criminalize domestic sites that link to such foreign sites.

The big content owners have been fighting to protect their 20th Century business models - and (even now that that the model of selling physical copies for home use is clearly dead) UMG, Viacom and the MPAA are unwilling to adapt. Instead of embracing innovation and new business models, the big content owners are using their massive influence in Congress and their legions of lawyers to manipulate things to punish the New World innovators. As the EFF observed after the VEOH decision: "UMG will doubtless claim that this [VEOH] decision is why it needs more arrows in its online enforcement quiver." New arrows like the overbroad and innovation-killing law currently working it's way through Congress - SOPA.

Your Film Online By Invitation Only: FilmFlyNet

2011-12-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

A new Italian website FilmFlyNet provides a service that many filmmakers may be interested in.

Instead of sending DVDs by traditional mail, you can now upload your film just once and then send screening invitations to as many contacts as you wish.

I haven't tried it, but FilmFlyNet claims to be a secure platform where you can give permission to selected individuals to screen your content online - while keeping track of who actually views the video (and how often).

To watch video content, each invitee only needs to open an email containing a link, click on the link and then watch the content online as a stream. The content cannot be downloaded.

What about illegal copies and unauthorized viewings?

All you are sharing is permission to watch a stream - but, in practice, an invitee could forward the email with the link to others. If you don't want your content to be shared that way - the film owner can set how many times the film can be watched (each new internet session is considered an additional viewing). So, for example, if you don't want the link to be shared, just set the maximum views to 1.

Thanks to Sheri Candler for the link.

Is the Future of Filmmaking Amateur Creation, Collaboration and Sharing?

2011-12-20T07:41:00.000-08:00

What will 21st Century filmmaking look like?

Up until the end of the 19th Century, entertainment and storytelling were things most often created by "amateurs" - family and friends enjoying the process of creation and sharing. Then motion pictures and recorded music were invented - and participatory culture all but disappeared in the 20th Century.

In the networked world of the 21st Century, the process of amateur creation and sharing has been reborn (often with amateurs performing and sharing their versions of standards - similar to the way that amateurs gathered to sing popular songs prior to the invention of the phonograph):

What does the explosion of amateur music online mean for filmmakers?

The evolution of music online may be telling filmmakers that the next great platform for filmmaking may be amateurs collaborating and sharing online...

Consider the process of making and sharing music with an iPhone Ocarina or the Glee Karaoke app: Both allow a player to collaborate with other players all over the world just by tapping a globe icon.

Who will create the filmmaking app that provides a similar platform - smoothing out the rough edges and allowing amateur creators to collaborate and share their filmmaking online?

What sort of films will be made using new apps by collaborators linked via the social network?

Already we are seeing the power of amateur video posted to social networks as a tool for social change.

What other sorts of stories and messages might be delivered online if there were better online tools to support amateur filmmaking?

One example of the power of the new online tools came in March 2011 in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, when a single Glee Karaoke user organized a group version of Lean on Me - inviting other users to add their voices... Soon thousands of voices from all around the world joined to create a form of expression that never could have existed before:

It's clear that new iPhone apps are unlocking musical expression and sharing. What about filmmaking?

Will new apps be created to empower the millions of cellphone cameras that are already connected to the Internet to open up new creative and social possibilities?

Will new apps, digital cameras and sharing via social networks lead to a 21st Century revolution in filmmaking?

Taxi Driver Sweded by Michel Gondry

2011-12-20T06:41:00.000-08:00

In honor of the French premiere for Martin Scorsese's Hugo, Michel Gondry made a "sweded" version of Scorsese's Taxi Driver - starring Michel Gondry.

Since 2008, the process of making a condensed recreation of a popular film - on a limited budget using a camcorder - has become known as "sweding" - with the finished tribute identified as the "sweded" version of the original.

As Gondry fans know, in his 2008 film Be Kind Rewind Jack Black's character accidentally erases the videotapes at Mos Def's rental store and the pair remake all the movies themselves. These versions become popular with customers, who are told they take longer to arrive and cost more because they come from Sweden. Hence, the films are referred to as "sweded."

Thanks to Anne Thompson for the link.

Movie Exhibitor Stocks Fall Amid Slumping Box Office

2011-12-19T17:35:00.000-08:00

Late on Monday Dec. 19th, 2011 the Hollywood Reporter broke the story that "on the heels of the box office's third weak weekend in a row, Regal Entertainment shares fell 9 percent [in that day's trading]."

This one day's drop wouldn't be news on its own - but Carmike Cinemas stock price also tumbled - almost 5 percent on the day - and Cinemark had a bad day too.

Why all the doom and gloom? Is it just a panicked response to one bad weekend?

No.

With just 13 days left in 2011, year-to-date box office is down around four percent.

And this year-to-year trend of lower box office is the result of an (even more troubling?) drop in attendance (actual butts in the seats) that started in 2006 - Since 2006, the actual number of tickets sold (not the box office gross - which includes significant increases to ticket prices for 3D etc.) has declined every year - except 2009 when Avatar brought people back to the theaters (apparently only temporarily).

So the sudden drop in the value of movie theater chains on Dec. 19th, 2011 was both a response to a long-term trend and a short-term problem with weak holiday film openings. According to the Hollywood Reporter: "The box office has been weak for several weeks, and the most recent weekend was considered the third dud in a row, with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked underperforming compared to their debuts. All-in-all, the weekend was down 14 percent compared to last year."