Black Lives Matter &  Silence is Not An Option

What a week to begin a social media vacation! While I am not participating in the feed, I am listening, donating, and lending other virtual support. But in thinking about writing this newsletter this week, I was very conscious of two competing impulses – to not post, as the world doesn’t need the opinion of some white guy right now, but that I also couldn’t just skip the newsletter and be silent. So instead, I want to refer to a few other voices, and places to collaborate with, and give support. My readers who are Black, or come from more diverse backgrounds can/will probably skip this, as they likely know everything from here on out. First, I recommend that you head over to IndieWire to read their interview with Stanley Nelson, the renowned filmmaker and co-founder of Firelight Media. I’ve been lucky enough to know Stanley for a long time, and have always admired his artistry, his advocacy and his wisdom. In this interview, he speaks to the current crisis and protests, and perhaps his most important point is this: “One of the things we believe strongly at our company, Firelight, is that people should tell their own stories. We really believe this is a time when filmmakers of color can have a chance to tell their stories. It’s incumbent on white filmmakers to help them do that, to move out of the way so that they can do that. Part of the hierarchy of race in our country is how many times white filmmakers have the access to power and money, the access to equipment. They could get out there and make a film about this that’s in some ways not entirely representative of where we are as a community. It’s really important that people tell their own stories.” – Stanley Nelson. Amen. I work in two worlds – indie film and brand storytelling. In the indie film world, we’ve made strides in recent years, but there remain major issues around diversity and access. The branded content world is pretty much light years behind – meaning worse – than the indie world in addressing diversity. While there are exceptions, it’s a field that is not representative of the diversity of America or the world – in the people making decisions, the people being hired behind the camera, the stories being told, or the audiences being served. And while we need to address all aspects of diversity, inclusion & access, right now we need more Black voices, and they are particularly underrepresented in brand storytelling. In thinking about this, I am also reminded of a recent op-ed by Kareem Abdul Jabbar in the LA Times, where he said: “So what you see when you see black protesters depends on whether you’re living in that burning building or watching it on TV with a bowl of corn chips in your lap waiting for “NCIS” to start. What I want to see is not a rush to judgment, but a rush to justice.” It also matters who is making that show, and who is advertising those corn chips, and as the media sector and brands start to navigate how to get involved in this space, and respond to it in a meaningful and respectful way, the entire sector would do well to hire more people of color for the myriad roles and for the stories being told.

While there are many people and organizations working on these issues, two organizations stand out to me as places to listen to, work with and support right now – the aforementioned Firelight Media and the Brown Girls Doc Mafia. While there are others, these are two nonprofits that specifically support filmmakers of color, and do a great job – in different ways. Firelight is a premier destination for non-fiction cinema by and about communities of color. Firelight produces documentary films, supports emerging filmmakers of color, and cultivates audiences for their work. Brown Girls Doc Mafia is an initiative advocating for over 3,300 women and non-binary people of color working in the documentary film industry around the world. 

Supporting these two groups can help ensure that these stories get told. You can donate to Firelight Media here.  Donate to Brown Girls Doc Mafia here. For those of you working in branded content, I also imagine both would also be great resources for brands who want to connect with someone for advice on the films to make, or the directors to hire, or the stories to tell. But before you do that, read the BGDM FAQ on how to be a better ally. Read the whole thing, but the last part sums it up: “Overall: Check your privilege, be genuine, be mindful, plan ahead, do the work, be outspoken for this community, be flexible, seek council, and hold yourself and others like you accountable!” I’m pinning this section to my reading list and plan to refer to it often.

I also recommend reading Beyond Empathy by Sonya Childress, a Senior Fellow at the Perspective Fund now, and former Director of Partnerships and Engagement at Firelight Media (where she posted this). It is essential reading. Here’s one edited excerpt: “What we often miss in character-driven films designed to build empathy towards individuals is an understanding of the structures and narratives that shape our attitudes and behaviors towards entire communities. And frankly, this political climate demands new narratives. (…) The empathy frame also distracts us from more strategic uses of film: to validate and empower those who rarely see their experience on screen, to convene disconnected people and movements, and to build alliances and power. The power when we — the marginalized “others” — use film to speak to our own communities or across identity and issue silos to build common ground and strategize solutions. In this way, film still plays an important role in connecting groups who may see each other as different, but it does so with the baseline assumption that the film subjects are human, and do not need a film to assert that basic premise. When film is used in this way the impact is categorically different, and we see that what lies beyond empathy is solidarity. The notion that our plight, and humanity, are intrinsically connected, and to create a better future I’ve got to get my hands dirty along with you.” – Sonya Childress

Another important piece of this is how audiences connect with these films. This is done in myriad ways, but in recent years, one organization that has been doing an amazing job is the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia. I’ve not yet been able to attend, but was on a recent panel with Maori Karmael Holmes, the ceo and artistic director. From that panel, I know she’s working hard to put together some version of their festival, which usually takes place July 30 – August 2^nd. The organization also recently posted In Defense of Black Life: Ways to Get Involved and Take Care of Yourself, which has a lot of great links and resources. You can donate to BlackStar here. These are just three great organizations to work with and support (IFP just started a list). I know there are many others I should be mentioning, and/or others I don’t know about, but these are three that I respect, plan to donate to, and hope to learn from in the coming months and years ahead. I’m still learning, and figuring out ways to use my platform and voice to help, and get out of the way and just donate when I can’t. (FWIW, I am not just now writing about this (that’s just a recent example), but I must do it more). I hope my other white readers will do more of this too, and will think hard about how they can use their positions to take action and join the cause.

Photo: National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Credit: Me.

Last, not long after writing this, Warner Brothers made Just Mercy available for free across all platforms in June. The film is about Bryan Stevenson and his work at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which has done ground-breaking work on criminal justice reform, racial justice and public education. They also founded the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Social Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. My wife and I visited this last year, along with other Civil Rights Memorials in the South, and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life, and I’ve felt since that it should be mandatory viewing for every American, especially every white American from the South (attendance rates are higher from outside the area). Watch the film, but put the Memorial/Museum on your attendance list for the future. It should open later in June, and you can socially distance easily at the Memorial. You can donate to EJI here.

Other News:

Full Frame A& E Speakeasy Conversation Rescheduled The Full Frame festival panel was rescheduled for Blackout Tuesday. It is now being held on June 11: 

Online Festival Strategy for Documentary Filmmakers 

THURSDAY, JUNE 11 | 1 PM (EST) | REGISTER HERE | FREE WEBINAR As more festivals make the move online, documentary directors are left questioning, what is the right path for their films? Join us for a discussion on emerging strategies for nonfiction filmmakers, where we’ll tackle the most pressing concerns and questions about the changing festival landscape. Moderator: Deirdre Haj, Full Frame director Panelists: Josh Braun, co-president of Submarine Entertainment; Ramona S. Diaz, filmmaker, CineDiaz;  Brian Newman, founder of Sub-Genre (me!).

Register today and learn more about the panelists joining the discussion.

Stuff I'm Reading

Film

When Will it Be Safe to go Back to the Cinemas? Asks Bilge Ebiri in an excellent piece for Vulture/New York Magazine, where he breaks down every aspect of the question from how things happened post 1918, to what the scientists think, and the theater owners, and even what's happening in other countries. Of all the articles being written about what happens next to moviegoing, this is the one you should read.

A Way of Life in Peril: Festival Distribution in the age of Covid is online: I mentioned this earlier, but the panel I did with the Film Collaborative is now posted on their blog. Jeffrey Winter does these in a unique way - he holds the panel privately, then posts an edited transcript of the panel, augmented with Vimeo outtakes of the better parts. I joined the folks from Ro*Co films, Tim from Kartemquin, and Orly from the Collaborative, and we talked very openly about what's working and not in the space right now. Once again, I have to point how important Annie's comments are in this panel - in the changes to educational distribution and how well PBS is handling the virtual space. If you do nothing else, skip to her parts, but I think it's a good (long) read.

The Information is Running a Free News Summer School - Reports the NiemanLab - a great idea, which I like more than all these panels - in-depth conversations with individual leaders, made into a class for students who are missing out on internships this year. Seems like we could duplicate this in many areas of the media/film biz (and I may try it too).

The Streaming Wars are fierce. 'Is it too little, too late' for new combatants? In a report on Tuesday, J.P. Morgan media analyst Alexia Quadrani asks whether it is “too little, too late” for new services coming to market now, given the potentially lower demand compared with just a few months ago. Also, the challenges of producing new content during a pandemic mean that new services can’t depend on attractive new original content to draw subscribers.

Why Film People need to Read Matt Ball's Epic Piece on Epic Games - Matt Ball may be the only person who writes longer posts than me - so be prepared - but he's also super-smart and it's a newsletter everyone in the media business (of any type) should always be reading. His recent 6 part piece on Epic Games, written with Jacob Navok, is super important. If you can't read it all, just read part 6. There are so many good things, but to me, it's critical for us to think about how Tim Sweeney and Epic are building a bigger vision for a better future. In this case, it's about the meta-verse, and making sure independents (designers and gamers here, for now) need to build systems for a future that is more open, more democratic, more respectful of privacy, and well, just better. As everyone in film keeps talking about blowing up the system and building something new, they'd do well to read this and think about how it applies to film. Gaming is much bigger than film in every measurement, but so much of this applies to our world too. 

Miscellany:

Microsoft replacing Journalists/Editors with AI - As if things couldn't get worse for journalists and the state of media, The Verge reports that Microsoft is laying off journalists and editors - even the ones who choose which photos go with stories - and replacing them with AI. 

Why TikTok Stars are pivoting toward gaming - "According to Jason Wilhelm, a YouTuber who started a channel in 2011 with Call of Duty gaming content, and now serves as CEO of TalentX Gaming “Gaming gives you another way to monetize your platform.” As Digiday points out, this has been true since before Tiktok, to the days of Vine, all way back toward when gaming had just begun streaming. 

This new technology simulates the feel of solid objects in Virtual Reality - Developed by CMU, and using an arm apparatus with strings to your fingers to give more feeling when touching virtual objects. Thomas Reports.

Trump's Executive Order on Social Media is Meaningless and a Distraction- says Mike Masnick in TechDirt. If there's one article you read about the clown's order this week, make it this one, as per usual, Masnick breaks down the realities that are sometimes being left behind in other reporting.

Posted on 4th Jun

Creativity, Covid & Digital Detox

Every Summer, since 2010, I take the month of August as a break from all social media, and I take the latter two weeks of it and into Labor Day as a Holiday from email and any phone calls except from my immediate family (or emergencies). It’s always the most creative time of my life. I take all the time I would be spending on social media and put it into something creative, and I’ve learned that even in those times when I might be staring at the wall, or the floor of the subway (oh, to do that again), I’m allowing my brain to get the little vacations it needs in order to be more creative. I’m about to do this again, and I am suggesting some of you might want to experiment with doing the same. (Got no interest in that idea? Click here to skip to the news.)  

A year ago, I essentially didn’t come back – to social media, that is. I decided to take all of my saved time from social media and use it to increase the frequency of this newsletter. I began writing almost weekly posts – not just here at Sub-Genre, because I also contributed guest posts to Brand Storytelling and some other places. But in general, I wrote more and my audience kept growing and I got more feedback, and was much happier. Behind the scenes, I also focused on more of my own creative writing and journaling, and didn’t miss the social media feed one bit. Mind you – I didn’t unplug from news and become a completely clueless human being – I still read two newspapers in print every morning, and (when not on vacation) read countless online news, blogs, etc. but I just skipped the social feed.   Every now & then, I would post one of my newsletters on social media, but usually on LinkedIn, which is more work related, and very seldom on Twitter or Facebook. But I was not an engaged/participatory poster – which is bad practice, I know, but I had to keep my sanity – and would just post, manage any client pages real-quick and then get out without perusing the feed at all. And I get more feedback off social media too - via email, mainly. Ok, my cheat was that I would post to Instagram every now and then, and look at the feed for five minutes, but even that was rare. I deleted all of the other apps from my phone.   That was B.C. Once covid hit, I kept up the writing, but let myself slip back into the feed. We were all sheltering in place, and I wanted to keep up with my friends. And a lot of that was good – I wouldn’t have known about some people’s struggles with the virus, or of other’s struggles with sourdough, without it. And it wasn’t all personal, several film-industry friends started up very good groups focused on responding to the crisis, and those were quite helpful. And I have loved things like going back on TikTok and finding the incredible talents of people like Jeff Wright or Maria DeCotis on IG, and IGTV theater from the 24Hr Plays #viralmonologues, and comedians saving comedy clubs like Mike Birbiglia,(or what we're trying to do for #pausedfilms on my movie). And I think those people using social media creatively are helping to change the world for the better.   But along with all that good, there has been some bad – at least for me. The worst part is probably the vitriol. From all sides. I get it – we have now lost over 100,000 lives in the US alone (as the NYT captured so well) mainly because of a botched response at the top, and that can piss you off, among other things. And I’m also worried, because the vitriol of the right is much more prevalent. You can’t scroll TikTok for more than ten minutes without encountering some idiot yelling about masks, but aside from NowThis, I don’t see much UGC countering it from the left. But I get enough anger to last me more than a day just reading the news. I don’t need endless variations of the same stuff the rest of the day from everyone else (I am not saying people shouldn’t do this, just that I don’t need to see all of it). Trust me – the anger I need to sustain my protests or my art of dissent is more than well informed by the news I consume. The social media anger around politics has added plenty to my angst, but zero to my fire.   The biggest problem is that even with the good and the bad, it is a time suck that steals time from my brain’s need to disengage to be creative. I can feel it, literally, in my bones. In fact, I am almost convinced that all of social media is an accidental plot to steal away the time we need for contemplation, creativity and real innovation. I say accidental because I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but you could build quite a few here – that’s not my goal.   My grandmother used to say that gardening brought you closer to God. I am not a religious person – or even spiritual, you hippies – but she was right. As monks, meditators, swimmers (that’s my religion), runners, and many others can tell you, she was right because you need to empty your mind to really get anywhere. Checking the feed, quelling the urge by glancing at the phone, and responding to one last post is not allowing my brain the emptiness it needs.   Similarly, I’ve always argued that one reason many nonprofits find it hard to innovate is that they don’t have the “monetary breathing room” to think differently and get out of their rut and dream up something new. The one time I was able to be innovative in my thinking as a nonprofit leader was when I inherited a nonprofit that was going nowhere fast, but had a board that gave it enough money that they could give me three months to contemplate its future, and change its direction. That’s contributed, I think, to the lack of innovation among many arts and film organizations right now. Again, not to be misunderstood – there is innovation happening, I’m not talking about everyone here. But many folks don’t have time to innovate because the house is on fire. For me, stuck at home (in a very privileged position, I am quite aware), social media is adding fuel to the fire analogy and sucking the air out of the room that might spark my creativity. How’s that for not being creative?   But seriously, I’ve come to realize that if I want to come out of this with better ideas for how to build the future I want to see, I need to be operating at maximum creativity. I’ve done an informal audit of my life over the last few weeks, and a lot of things have helped me in that regard, but not social media, and any collateral/accidental good is outweighed by the bad. On top of that, even if nothing creative or innovative comes out of any down-time from social media, I’ve decided it will surely be offset by the other positive of just having more time to focus on things that matter to me more – like my wife, my family and my mental health.   I am writing this from a place of privilege. I know that, and also know that even acknowledging it doesn’t change that it’s true. While my client work is down, and I have a film stuck in limbo, my situation is vastly better than that of so many others. And while I will take some of the gained time from not being on social to do more volunteering (via phone), I’m not pretending, or under any delusions that I’ll be changing the world.  But I am quite sure that I’ll change my world – my personal world – for the better by spending less time on social media and more time doing things that matter more to me. And if that small subset of the world who bothers to read this every week sees an improvement in my writing, then that’s good enough for me.   I do know from experience that disengaging from the social webs can increase my productivity, my creativity and my happiness. So from now – Memorial Day (when this was written) – to Labor Day – I’m taking a social media vacation. I’ll keep writing, hell maybe even more. And I will stay informed via news and politically/socially engaged in other ways. In spite of my skepticism about Zoom panels, I’ll keep doing those and will watch a few. Some clients still contact me on LinkedIn, so I will have to check for that a bit, but for the most part, I’ll be off the social webs. Why am I telling you here? Because they’ve become so ubiquitous that everyone assumes you’re always there, and I need to point it out. It’s also a way to keep myself honest.   But I also recommend that anyone who has made it this far into this long post considers some form of unplugging as well. You don’t have to go cold turkey like a social media AA. Tiffany Shlain does it once a week as a digital detox Shabbat, and she just wrote an excellent Op-Ed about it for USA Today (we must be on the same wavelength this week). It may seem counterintuitive to unplug at a time when those lucky enough to be safely home and with broadband are missing friends. But covid is hard even for those of us lucky but not in the 1% - a lot of people I know say they are doing ten times as much work for 50% less pay (and that’s still considered lucky). Just like some people are realizing that their quarantinis might not be contributing to their sanity, I’d suggest that getting off the social feed can be a much needed recharge for other parts of your life. And if you are in the creative industries, in any of the numerous roles that might encompass, I think we all need more of your creativity – either during or after this mess.   Creativity, innovation, insight, inspiration, hell – even well-targeted rage -  comes from many things, but I’ve found it to definitely come hand in hand with being more disconnected. For some, it’s just sitting down in front of the screen (or paper) until you write that novel, poem, short story, political screed or script. For me, it’s that too, but also about the little down times when your mind wanders. Once the urge to pick up the phone and check the feed goes away, those little moments come more often and your mind wanders more, and it’s never once led me to something less interesting than anything I’ve found via the endless scroll.

A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy: Online Festival Strategy for Documentary Filmmakers  I'll be speaking on this great panel next week:

TUESDAY, JUNE 2 | 3PM (EST) | REGISTER HERE | FREE WEBINAR As more festivals make the move online, documentary directors are left questioning, what is the right path for their films? Join us for a discussion on emerging strategies for nonfiction filmmakers, where we’ll tackle the most pressing concerns and questions about the changing festival landscape. Moderator: Deirdre Haj, Full Frame director Panelists: Josh Braun, co-president of Submarine Entertainment; Ramona S. Diaz, filmmaker, CineDiaz;  Brian Newman, founder of Sub-Genre (me!).

Register today and learn more about the panelists joining the discussion.

Posted on 4th Jun

Reimagining Film Fests Panel

After I published my recent piece on film festivals (which also ran in IndieWire), I started having a discussion with Rebecca Green of the Dear Producer newsletter about many things, including what the film fest of the future might look like. She invited me to a panel she's hosting on the subject - this Friday at 2pm ET - and you can register for it here. I'll be joining a few people I think are among the smartest in the biz - Karin Chien, Marilyn Ness and Rebecca (moderating) to imagine what it would look like to re-imagine festivals in a way that helps everyone – the festivals, filmmakers and audiences.

One of the ways I've been thinking about this panel is - if festivals didn't exist at all, what would we create from scratch? I think that helps frame the discussion in a different manner than usual. It's also a question I asked in a post back in 2013 - and that I return to often- "The question should be, what do filmmakers need most now? And is what they need something that a festival can help with, or do we need to start something different to solve this need? If filmmakers got together in the same spirit that led them to create film co-ops and festivals (and filmmaker organizations, and magazines, and…) then what would they make together today?" Of course, festivals also must serve audiences, and they're all trying to survive a global pandemic. But the hope is by asking what would be build that would be most helpful for filmmakers (all of whom are coming with different needs, too, btw), then maybe we can add these ideas to what gets built out of this crisis. It is one of many different conversations being had right now - I've been on two other zoom panels about it this week alone, and know of two more (at least), but it's one I hope will be interesting. 

Join us for the discussion on Friday.

Stuff I'm Reading: Film

10 Great Things about Online Film Festivals: Thom Powers wrote a good, well-researched piece for IndieWire on the good things about how film festivals are moving online. I agree with most of it as well, and think everyone should read it. As he says, many of the positive things being built should be kept in the future - especially the access it gives to more people to watch these films. I think he's too rosy on the prospects that buyers are ok with this, because even just this morning some of those same distributors he mentioned told me the opposite. But I do hope he's right that the situation is becoming more acceptable to some of them. Anyway, check it out.

10 Questions Every Filmmaker Should Ask About Online Film Festivals - Clay Pruitt over at Seed & Spark posted this piece about how filmmakers can weigh their options with online festivals. And while I am sure they see it as a corrective to my piece - I actually agree with 99.9% of everything he suggests, and you know what - reasonable, knowledgeable adults should be able to realize both viewpoints are not only compatible, but true right now, that's called complexity. It also lines up pretty much with what I've been writing here for years (here's one example from a few weeks ago, and one from 2010). While I don't disagree with much of it, I do have a minor quibble with his ending - I don't buy the argument that your decision impacts whether a festival lives or dies. Last time I checked, there are way more films applying to festivals than can be shown. The small percentage that have to turn them down for distribution reasons can't possibly be large enough for that to be true.

Last, The Film Collaborative has been doing a series of conversations/posts about festivals/distribution during Covid - that are worth checking out. I just joined them earlier this week for one that should be posted here soon, maybe by the time this article runs. I joined Annie Roney and Cristine Platt Dewey of Roco Films, Tim Horsburgh of Kartemquin, and Jeffrey and Orly of the Collaborative to discuss the pros/cons of online fests and the impact on distribution. Read the report when it posts. Tim explains the evolution of their thinking with regards to festivals (more pro as time goes on), I elaborate on my post (and the misunderstandings of it), and Roco spoke about the interesting and great side-impact of covid on educational distribution, which is apparently opening in-roads for high school screenings that previously didn't really exist. 

The Climate StoryLab Report is Out: The folks at the DocSociety have held their second lab for climate change media, and their report is online now. It's filled with research, case studies, best practices and more. 

Coronairus Didn't Kill Quibi, but these 8 things Might - says VanityFair. I think there are more than 8 things killing Quibi, but the two most important are at the head of the company. Good read though.

Stuff I'm Reading: Branded Content & Misc.

IBM Launches New Doc on AI on The Verge -  Self-promotion alert, as I worked a bit on this project, but check out IBM's Debater online at Vox. It's a great little doc - which premiered at CPH:DOX - about an AI robot that can debate a human in real time. 

Is Now The Best Time for Brands to Make Docs? I moderated this panel for BrandStorytelling this week - and yes, festivals came up even here - with three great guests. The thesis was that the market for docs produced by brands has only gotten better during covid. As cord-cutting increased as much as 43% last month, and more people move to streamers - who also need more content than ever - and consumers look for more authentic stories from brands, now is the time to consider moving marketing dollars into the space (after budgets come back, of course). The other panelists were: Rupert Maconick, producer of 5B for Johnson & Johnson (acquired by Verizon), and Lo and Behold for Netscout (Magnolia); David Charles Rodrigues, director of Gay Chorus Deep South, AirBNB's first feature, purchased by MTV; and Lowell Shapiro, Founder, Black Box,  an entertainment and management company, and DocBox, making documentary content for brands. It was a great, albeit brief, conversation. The stream should be up here by the time of this post.

hey, We're a Brand PSA: And with so many ads that feel like this amazing spoof, it's definitely a time to consider more authentic content than advertising.   How Advertisers are Using TikTok during the Recession: A good example being: "Procter & Gamble’s Distance Dance sponsored challenge with dancer Charlie D’amelio on TikTok last month has generated over 14 billion views since it launched last month. That’s on the back of ad format that costs $150,000." DigiDay Reports.

AR Contact Lenses Coming Soon: Mojo Vision is raising money for a contact lens that let's you use AR technology to do lots of crazy stuff. Digital Trends reports. Ok, it might not come soon, but I can't wait, as I still hope to build a program that let's me replace all advertisements with art sometime in the future.

Posted on 21st May

Amc_Azon...but, which AMC?

The big media news this week was that Amazon might buy AMC, but the problem was – no one was sure whether that meant AMC Theaters or AMC Networks. For an entire day, Wall Street and Hollywood were prognosticating on what it meant for Amazon to buy one of the biggest theater chains, and then…whoops, it might be that a reporter made a mistake on whether it was the stock ticker of AMC (theaters) or AMCX (Networks) about which they were reporting. (!!!) What’s even crazier is that both moves would make perfect sense, and that shows just how seismic are the potential changes coming to the media industry – neither case would be surprising, and we all expect deals like this to happen almost daily as the economy rearranges the business. I’ve been predicting that Amazon or Netflix would buy one of the major chains for awhile now, and in that same linked post, I also predicted that IFC – which is part of the AMC Network – would be acquired soon, too – and that was BC. If you look back at what happened after the 1918 flu, it was a lot of consolidation, with the big studios getting bigger and the little guys disappearing. I suspect we’ll see the same as a result of this pandemic, and in addition to one or both of these AMC’s getting bought, I predict a lot more mergers and acquisitions soon. Some of this will be bad for indies, and consumers, but when it comes to the situation in the world of theatrical, I can see some silver linings. The first reaction to any consolidation is negative, because it would mean Amazon (or some other conglomerate, but Amazon is the biggest one) would be swallowing another part of the world. But while I’m not usually an Amazon-apologist, I don’t think their taking over AMC Theaters would be half-bad, and it might even be good for both makers and consumers of film. Sounds crazy, I know, but bear with me.

First, I still think AMC Theaters are going to be bought soon by Amazon - or Netflix, Disney, Comcast or AT&T. Or some other studio. Before yesterday, most people seemed to disagree, mainly saying that none of them needs theaters to survive. But I’ve never seen this as a survival move, but more of a way for any of them to sweeten their membership and content offerings, which helps to cut down subscriber churn and give more people reason to join their services. And for Amazon, it also brings a lot of other benefits – more locations for Prime lockers, venues for live Twitch gaming, and that’s just the start. Second, I have a hard time worrying that Amazon would be any worse of an owner than AMC’s current owners. Sure, Amazon is bigger, and is eating the world, but Dalian Wanda group isn’t exactly a mom and pop shop, nor is Silver Lake Partners. AMC was also fine cozying up with evil folks like MBS just to break into Saudi Arabia (and NATO’s Fithian saying they’d use movies as a “sword of freedom” is a laughable excuse). Nor was AMC ever a champion of indie and arthouse films. Sure, they would play them sometimes, but they never took them very seriously. One could argue that Amazon Studios has been a bigger champion of good cinema than AMC has been, and they’ve definitely played a bigger role in getting arthouse cinema to the masses as of late. If this was Amazon buying Landmark or Alamo, I might be more worried about the impact on mid-tier films, but with AMC being the target, I don’t see any negative repercussions for the arthouse-set. One of the biggest worries about Amazon and Netflix has been that their streaming services compete with theaters. But I don’t believe that – never have, never will. I firmly believe that in non-covid times, there’s a group of people who like going to see movies in theaters and they’ll keep going, and another group who couldn’t be enticed there with free gold, and they’ll keep streaming. And then there’s the rest of us – we love movies and know that some movies – cinema and blockbusters, mainly – need to be seen on the big screen, but a lot of other movies are just fine on the (no longer too small) home screen. I want to see the new Bond film on the big screen, and Parasite is best there too, but I want to see a lot of others at home, and fast. But a lot of those latter two groups (the non-theater goers, and the rest of us) are left behind by the idiotic windowing practices that are mainly being kept in place by the owners of the major chains. There are a ton of movies that this group, which I’m a part of even as a cinephile, forgets by the time they come to streaming. They get lost in the crappy algorithms and queues of the streamers, and are never watched – or paid for – and that’s a lot of revenue left on the table. Or worse, an incentive to go pirate the same film. But if an Amazon or Netflix buys the major chains, we would see these windows disappear for most films, and shorten dramatically for the blockbusters and more cinematic films. This is a case where the big monopolies (Amazon and Netflix) would be better for consumers than the ones they’d replace (AMC, Regal and other major chains). And that could arguably help film culture, by making it more accessible, which might lead to more revenue for all films. I know these are big “could’s” and “might’s,” but I’d bet on them.

Amazon (Or Netflix) could also use these theaters to build a more robust MoviePass out of Prime, by merging Stubs with Prime and IMDB. It would make it much easier for audiences to get credit for films no matter where they are watched, and to track/follow the films they want to see. If I miss something at the theater, I could watch it at home, and get credit for it, while the rights-holder gets more of my money. AMC wasn’t doing too great pre-Covid, either. We were likely going to see a lot of consolidation/reduction of venues anyway. But if Amazon owns them, and gets valuable real-estate for delivery, local shipping, etc. they may actually keep more of them open. They would also gain a venue for other live events – most notably, gaming, which is a key part of Amazon’s future. Again, more chance of them keeping these venues open. Yes, there are some major downsides to Amazon owning more of the world. Especially when it comes to what they know about us from the data they hoover-up. But AMC was only a better steward of that data by (our) luck of incompetence. I am a bit worried about film festivals and other sometimes renters/four-wallers getting anyone on the phone to make a deal, but again, AMC/Regal weren’t exactly easy there, either. And yes, I’d rather shop local and not have major conglomerates, but again – that wasn’t AMC anyways, and I’ll (hopefully) still have the Film Forum and other local arthouses (and I believe in their business, if they can survive this crisis). When it comes to the chains, I think there’s more upside here. Personally, I’d rather see Netflix as the owner, but that’s because I think Netflix has shown a more consistent commitment to diversity, more than anything else. Now, what I also see happening next is Comcast, AT&T or even Verizon kicking the tires on Regal. You could see a wireless store inside the lobby soon, and waive your phone instead of a ticket, or get a Peacock/Crown-Club subscription before long (h/t to Christopher Escobar of the Plaza Theater/Atlanta Film Fest who has written about this, too). But I don’t see a future where AMC and Regal remain unless they get bought by one of these bigger conglomerates. And right now, I see more good than bad in that probable future.

Now, what happens if they buy AMCX? That's another post...

What I'm Reading: Film

Will it be Survival of the Fittest or Collaboration for the Future? That's essentially the question producer Rebecca Green asks in her fabulous post on Dear Producer this week. She notes that everyone is working in their silos to save their way of doing things in the film world, instead of coming together to save the indie field, and she calls on the "companies and institutional organizations in the U.S. whose mission statement is to support independent film is this: Don’t just focus on your own agenda. Join forces with each other. Use your combined ingenuity, money, resources, and perseverance to ensure that independent films can continue to get made and be seen." 

Kudos to KinoLorber for Releasing VOD Box Office Numbers - Score One for Transparency! Indiewire Reports on KinoLorber's very transparent release of its VOD numbers for eight titles. Pretty detailed stuff here, and while these numbers are small, these are also small, arthouse films undergoing a very fast experiment in the VOD-only world. ScreenDaily also reported updated numbers later. 

Ted Hope of Amazon Studios Tells All - Ok, not all, but he does talk about what Amazon looks for in a pitch, and gives some other great hints, in this interview with the Woodstock Film Festival's Meira Blaustein. These kinds of talks are just one way festivals can add value outside of their normal programming.

Guide to Doc-Making in the time of Corona - The Doc Society, Sundance and Field of Vision collaborated on this handy guide to the ins/outs of trying to film during the virus. 

How is China Rebuilding the Movie Business? Slowly. Theaters have yet to open and are offering alternative programming. Production companies are closing and the box office is projected to be cut in half. Just a few items to note on a country (albeit very different) that's ahead of us on the curve. China Film Insider Reports.

Only 7% of Americans are Ready to Return to Theaters - according to a study reported in Screen. Interestingly, of the cinema-goers who go often (more than 6 times a year), only a third reported the communal experience as being what they miss - going against most theories about the reason for movie-going.

Endeavor Is Hiring a VP, Production Health and Safety: Probably the first of many postings for a completely new job created by the virus. Apply away, if you can figure this stuff out (which most producers are trying to do right now, anyway, right?).

ShelterShorts Launches - (H/T to the Great Sundance Institute Newsletter) ShelterShorts launched recently - read the Sundance link for background- proving three things, at least - artists will make great art, no matter the circumstances; we can probably find all the creativity we need in these extreme low-budget experiments to fill our future slates; and - a bunch of bored filmmakers can out-Quibi a Billon dollars any day (see below for more)

Quibi Founder Katzenberg Calls into the Podcast that makes fun of Quibi - well-played, Jeffrey, and same to the founders of the podcast, who call him "Shrek-Daddy." Slate reports. They are also pivoting their podcast to one that tells him what Quibi should be doing, to try to save them. Meanwhile, Jeff spoke with the NYT and blamed everything on the virus. I don't know about you, but I've been glued to my phone even more during the quarantine, actually, but it's been on more interesting stuff that cost a lot less to produce. Try again, Jeff.

What I'm Reading: Branded Content

The BrandFilm Awards Winners Were Announced. Last week, they announced the BrandFilm Awards, and you can see the full list of winners, honorable mentions and finalists here. Kudos to everyone who was nominated and who won. I was on the jury, and there were many good projects. 

How are the Biggest Media Companies Doing? Digiday takes a look at everyone from Peacock to the NYT and how they are faring during the crisis.

What I'm Reading: Misc

Has Anyone Asked Artists What They Need? Over in Dance Magazine, Raja Feather Kelly asks a question similar to my post about asking filmmakers what they need. Raja says, "take us off your mailing lists asking for money" and ask artists what they need, and continues: "Artists are a force for change. Artists carve the path forward. Artists will design the plan for the reclamation of culture. Artists are here to transform, challenge and make meaning. Artists are here to constantly reimagine our world and show us what our world could be. Artists are here to bring people together and build communities. Artists have been here for entertainment and culture time and time again. Today, in these uncertain times, now more than ever, you can be here for artists." He also includes a script for the questions to ask.

Posted on 15th May

Innovation vs. Inertia

Innovation vs. Inertia. That's the tug of war I'm feeling most during these crazy times. If you know me and read this newsletter, you can guess which one I prefer. I want to see more innovation coming out of this crisis. But while everyone says they're innovating, I feel that inertia is winning out. It often does. It's always easier to maintain the status quo, and during a time of crisis, just getting back to the status quo can seem like a big win.

I admit - it would be nice to go back to the world I was living in around early March. But in actuality, we're learning that in early-March, we just thought we were living in the BC. In actuality, the virus was probably already in Europe as early as November, and in the US by January, if not earlier. Underneath the calm, we were already in the middle of the crisis. Inertia was killing us, and we didn't even know it.

Likewise, the film business wasn't all hunky-dory before this crisis hit. I don't care what part of the film business you work in - if you are honest with yourself, I'm pretty sure you'd admit that the old system wasn't working all that great. Whether you're a filmmaker, or a festival programmer, a sales agent, a brand film marketer, or a studio mogul, the status quo hasn't been great for awhile. Heck, even Netflix and Amazon were dealing with debt, competition, standing out in an attention economy and runaway costs. Wherever you sat in the film world BC, things were shaky. There's a reason Netflix's break-out show was called House of Cards. 

I bring this up because I've been having a lot of conversations with people in the industry lately, and the conversations always fall into two categories - people who want to blow things up, and build something new, and those who feel we just need to get back to normal again. Innovation isn't technology, either. If you re-build the same system, but just move it online during covid, that's not innovation. That's just maintaining the status quo with some newfangled trappings. That comes from inertia, actually.

Innovation vs. inertia. And if I was to bet on what will happen next, I'd bet on a lot of inertia and return to the status quo, and a lot less on innovation and new models. Because innovation is hard, and the opportunity costs can bring on...inertia.

That's one of the reasons I've been writing this newsletter (since 2006) - to try to push for less inertia and more innovation. My very first post was about imagining possible futures for the media arts. In retrospect, that post is pretty clunky, but the push towards innovation was there. During this past week, I've been getting a lot of feedback to my post about film festivals, which just ran in IndieWire as well, and most of it has been positive. But the emails, posts and conversations I've enjoyed most have been the ones where people say something to the extent of - ok, how do we come out of this and build something better? And that's what I hope to keep pushing for while most of us are stuck at home - getting past the inertia and innovating for the future. That's definitely not easy when you're wearing a mask and gloves, and trying not to touch your face. But it's a lot better than going back to the status quo. 

My Interview on the Content That Moves Podcast

Jesse Roesler of Credo Nonfiction has a great ongoing podcast called Content That Moves, which is sponsored by BrandStorytelling, and he interviewed me back in January during their conference at Sundance about branded content and distribution. 

While I am biased, I think we had a great conversation that would be useful for any brand thinking about how to make quality films that get real distribution - in film festivals, theaters and/or broadcast and SVOD. And as people seem to be moving budgets away from traditional marketing into more "genuine" content, this can be a good time to think about when it makes sense to get such content out beyond YouTube or your owned channels. Those also make sense, and should be part of any distribution equation, but often you want things on Netflix or NatGeo, or something like that, and that's what we're discussing here. It's probably also a useful conversation for anyone working in this space, or wanting to, as a filmmaker, but that wasn't the focus of our talk. 

I also recommend checking out Jesse/Credo's other work - he's a good filmmaker and his company is making some great stuff. And the podcast has other strong interviews, with many more good ones coming soon.  Listen here.

Stuff I'm Reading: Film

Can Filmmakers and Festivals Collaborate to Make a Better Future? That's the gist of what I'm asking in my updated Op-Ed for IndieWire, which is a slight rewrite of my piece here last week. They titled it: Filmmakers Should Avoid Online Film Festivals, Unless They Ask These Questions — Opinion: Many filmmakers are wondering if they should accept offers from online programs. Here are the hard questions they should ask. Not a ton of changes from before, so no need to read it again, but if you missed it, this version is edited and adds some small points.

Drive-In O-Rama - Everyone wants in on the drive-in game now. Some recent great links - Vilnius (Lithuania) turned its airport into a drive-in; a guy made a home-made drive-in for $100 (this is half-brilliant and half-The Onion; and h/t to Kelly Devine); and the CTC folks made a guide to opening a drive-in (via Celluloid Junkie) 

Vimeo Launched Stories in Place - a small collection of short films made by artists about small businesses, supporting them during this time of crisis. I'm loving the creativity that I am seeing on so many platforms during this crisis, and this is among the better ideas. Here's a shot from one of my favorites of the batch:

Deadline Shows the P&L for Yesterday - In a real coup, Deadline got a hold of a participation statement from Universal for Yesterday, which shows how a film can gross almost $154-Million globally, be on track to net $45-M but somehow show an $88-M loss. A lot of it is because of hefty distribution fees, plus overhead, and other creative accounting. But while this is a bigger movie, any indie filmmaker or investor should read this article and the attached screenshot of the statement closely. When I ran the Transparency Project at Sundance, I saw about a thousand of these from multiple films, and they were all pretty similar to this one. It shows just how hard it can be for any cast/crew or investor to make back anything once a distributor does their accounting. 

The DPA Reports on the Impact of Covid-19 on Doc Filmmakers - Last week, I reported on how the crisis is impacting artists, and one of the Documentary Producers Alliance board members sent me their recent survey results - Among those surveyed -  "80-85% had already been significantly, negatively impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, and as of late March, roughly 70% of projects had already been delayed, with 40% of all projects being postponed indefinitely. For the roughly 30 projects for which our members could determine, and did report, actual or estimated losses: Overall losses for this small subset of projects totaled more than $3 million, with a median loss of $60,000 per project." Not insignificant numbers. Note: the data isn't online yet, but is public and should be reported on soon.

The Death and Rebirth of Hollywood? - Everyone and their mom has sent me this post from Richard Janes, so it's probably worth reading if you've missed it. I think most of them are just hoping he's right that things look good for indie producers. And I hope he's right, but too few people are noting what I think is his most salient point, and one that very few producers are doing: "Indie producers have to become real entrepreneurs building brands, direct-to-audience relationships, and building strategies to generate the heat that agents once did for a very select few." Amen, and now is the time to do that brand-building work.

Reviews are in on the VR Film Premiere - The SF Weekly review of the Ask No Questions VR premiere is in, and apparently the experience was pretty good - if you can stand wearing VR goggles for 2 hours. I'm not a fan or doing this anytime soon, but it was a good way to approach a premiere, and get some press, during this lockdown.

Archive Valley is offering free Archival Footage Consulting to Filmmakers During the Month of May.Great offer for filmmakers at a time when you can make a lot of content with archival.

Quibi is What Happens when you value content more than users - According to Mike Masnick at TechDirt, and I agree. I could write 20 posts about everything done wrong and how to fix it at Quibi, but I'd have to charge someone a billion dollars. Masnick's post is pretty good. Funny thing is, I think more people may be talking about the VR launch above than Quibi.

And they've turned to YouTube to Try to Boost Growth -  Wait, isn't Quibi not TV, not IGTV and not...YouTube? But as TubeFilter reports, they've started airing episodes on YouTube (twice, in both horizontal and vertical formats...I'm laughing so hard I am crying as I type this). This is going to be the funniest biz-school case study of failure, perhaps ever. At this point, having fired their head of marketing, they should just randomly grab some user off TikTok and appoint them head of marketing. Or maybe anyone with a phone in their hand (or breathing...)? Because almost any random person could do a better job here.

What I'm Reading: Branded Content

The Brand Film Awards take place today (May 7, 2020) and they have a set of online panels and you can watch the awards online. Info and registration is here. I was on the jury this year, and there was some great work, so I can't wait to see the awards show. The online workshop is at 2pm est, and the awards should run at 4pm est.

How to Do Brand Journalism Right: The folks at Brand Storytelling continue to do great work, and had a great panel last week on brand journalism: The True Story of Brands Telling True Stories. You can watch the recording on their YouTube channel, and if you haven't already, look into and sign up for future events here. (and I'll be participating in more of them soon). 

Entertainment Consumption during Covid-19 Tips - UTA posted on LinkedIn about 4 tips for brands thinking about content. They are: develop your streaming strategy now (because SVOD is where it's at); embrace comedy (the top genre); Go live (stream); and double-down on talent alliances. Read the full post here.

What I'm Reading: Misc

Watch The Diary of Anne Frank, performed on Zoom - by the Park Square Theater, normally of St. Paul, Minnesota, the theater has performed and recorded a Zoom-based production of the play, and it's surprisingly awesome. I think I found this via the NYT, but while it doesn't replace live-theater, it has its own charms and it seems, so new artistic possibilities. You can watch the full performance here and donate here.

Posted on 8th May

Where's the Filmmaker in the Online Fest Planning?

With all of these online versions of film festivals popping up, I keep getting asked by filmmakers – “should we participate in this?” Or more often – “am I missing something? Why would we do this?”   My answer is always the same – if you are launching a brand-new film that is still seeking distribution, no. If you have a short, or an older film, or one where you have locked in distribution (and if your distributor agrees), or one where you are doing a DIY release – sure, or at least maybe. But if you are trying to premiere a feature film, and you don’t yet have distribution, then as of now you can’t consider these online festivals because buyers consider them a conflict with their distribution of your film. They do NOT see it as word-of-mouth building, or good PR, or a way to test/prove audience demand. They see it as a distraction at best, and lost income, or a loss of control or a loss of premiere status at worst.

That’s why you don’t see many feature films premiering as part of the SXSW/Amazon deal (the terms didn’t help). And its why Tribeca quickly announced that their new “We are the World” festival isn’t intended for new films, either. Because until Ted Sarandos, or someone else at Netflix, gives the greenlight for films to premiere at online festivals before streaming, then no one is going to do it.

I am helping about eleven films with their festivals and distribution right now (brand clients and one film that I produced), and most of them are in festival limbo land. Almost every day, I get new updates from film festivals that are canceling, postponing or rescheduling. Dozens of festivals have emailed to say they’re launching an online/virtual festival (it’s not virtual unless you’re in VR, but that’s another post), and they ask whether the selected film wants to participate. Of those letters, only two addressed why the filmmaker might want to participate, and how the system would work. Only one offered any kind of compensation to the filmmakers. But even when the festival offered compensation, that wouldn’t work for my clients with new films. There remains too much danger that distributors will see this as a problem. But still, kudos to those two festivals. Even though my clients couldn’t take their offers, we had something to consider, and it was clear that the festival had thought about how this impacted the filmmaker.   It seems to me that film festivals launching these new online events are thinking about many things – how to serve local audiences; how to keep their brands alive; how to salvage some part of their festival; how to not lose as much money; how to build a new model; and all of these are good & valid things to consider and they might be solved by an online festival (I remain skeptical). 

Film festivals have two main sets of constituents – audiences and filmmakers – and you can’t build a program for the former and forget the latter, but that’s precisely what’s happening. Too few people are asking – how can we build something that best helps filmmakers? And that’s the question that matters. Especially at a time when most of them have lost all of their income, and when they are under severe duress – remember, festivals, even as they struggle, might bounce back next year. But a film stuck in limbo could completely disappear, possibly along with the career of the filmmaker who made it.   As I speak with other producers, the common question is – are any of these festivals gathering any kind of input from filmmakers on what we want? I’m sure a few are doing this, but this is a field-wide issue, and it needs a field-wide debate and solution(s). If we’re going to use this crisis to build a new business model, let’s not do it in a vacuum. Wouldn’t it be better if we could step back and use this opportunity to build a new system that’s better than the old one? Perhaps one that helps filmmakers while serving audiences?

So, what do filmmakers want? Well, we need to gather a few of them and figure that out, and at minimum this will require another post, but in my conversations a few things keep coming up. First, we need to acknowledge that in the current climate, we don’t just need festivals for industry discovery. We also need them to help audiences discover films, but that discovery/premiere aspect needs to be timed to the release of the film to the public. That probably means most festivals – all but the biggest industry fests – need to rethink their “discovery” programming and focus on bringing audiences to films that have distribution sorted out, and are just about to launch. This probably means that festivals need to think differently about how and when they promote themselves and their films (a lot earlier for both). And we need to figure out how to push those audiences to films post-festival as well (via email lists with opt-ins, on social media, etc.) We also need to discuss compensation. There was an argument – one that I believed in for a long time as a festival programmer, that discovery and promotion were enough. But in a “virtual” world, there needs to be compensation for filmmakers, even when your festival is struggling. And there needs to be data transparency – to filmmakers, amongst festivals, to distributors, and in some cases, to the public.  These are just a few of the things that I keep hearing, but I’m sure that if we gathered some filmmakers with festivals (and distributors, and press, etc.) we’d get even better ideas. And yes, this is another argument for needing a new AIVF…

Now, I can’t close this post without acknowledging a few things. First – I am not slamming festivals here. I am saying we need to re-think the current online model, but I understand why everyone has rushed to just get their festivals online. I also know that a lot of these festivals are understaffed and are just trying to survive as well. And I know some of them are probably having this conversation already, through the Festival Alliance and other places, and I’m just not part of all of those conversations. But I also know that many filmmakers are having these conversations and questioning this model in their own forums, and I think it’s time we have more of this conversation out loud.

What I'm Reading: Film

NYWIFT Webinar: Brave New World: Reimagining Film Festivals in a Time of Crisis - TONIGHT - I'll be a panelist joining this conversation tonight, 6pm est - I doubt we'll discuss the above issues, but focus instead on the good stuff. From the organizers: When SXSW cancelled, it sent shockwaves through the indie film world. But the creative forces that have kept independent film vibrant over the decades are rising to meet the current crisis. Until we can once again gather in large crowds, the show is going on. Film festivals are moving online or reviving older forms such as using drive-ins for locations to gather at safe physical distances. This panel brings together a group of creatives to discuss how people and organizations are responding nimbly and re-imagining ways to connect and support filmmakers and audiences. We will explore the possibilities for evolving out of this crisis to create more fluid and far-reaching concepts of film promotion, audience engagement, and distribution. Join us for a conversation with Lori Cheatle, Maori Karmael Holmes, Brian Newman, Alison Willmore, Jeffrey Winter and Michelle Materre (moderator). Register here.

Trolls World Tour's digital Release Worked - The WSJ reports (paywall) that Trolls has made an estimated $100M+ in rentals, meaning about $77M back to Universal, which is more than the original made in theaters in the same time period. Whether it does well with ongoing rentals and has a better total revenue take remains to be seen, but as the WSJ reports, this is good news for Universal and bad news for theaters. Importantly, they also did a survey, and 51% of respondents said they "definitely" would have seen it in theaters, and one-fifth said they never rent digital downloads. With 5-Million rentals, that's 1 million new customers gained for the online sales. As I said at the start of this crisis, this will lead to some permanent window re-ordering. Of course, this has led to a massive freak-out by theaters, especially AMC - read the raving mad letter fired off by their CEO in Deadline; which led Wall Street and Indiewire to beg for some calm. This is gonna be fun to watch. Pop some popcorn and wait and watch for more fireworks soon.

Quibi Sent a Cease and Desist Letter to a Fan Podcast - In the 'you can't make this shit up' department- some fans made a podcast devoted to all things Quibi, and called it Quibiverse. They soon received a cease and desist letter from the lawyers and changed their podcast to an anti-Quibi site called Streamiverse. Other than industry folks, no one I know has bothered to talk about Quibi once, and they shut down free publicity. As I said to David Beebe when he posted this story on LinkedIn, "If you made a show about some old folks screwing up the launch of a platform..." via AvClub.

Festivals are Starting to Report on their Virtual Results - With CPH:DOX up first. While Screen reported on this earlier, The Danish Film Institute has a great interview with Festival Director Tine Fischer on how it came together, what worked, and what didn't work as well. A great piece for anyone contemplating virtual events.

Another Survey Shows People Aren't Excited about Returning to Movie Theaters and Events - Variety has the results of this survey, showing an unsurprising expectation to keep streaming a lot more, but going to a movie theater ranks just above going on a cruise again. Both will survive, but no one is going back to them fast, that's for sure, and festivals should pay close attention to these ongoing, always similar survey results.

What are the Ethics of Documentary Production in a Pandemic? Asks Carrie Lozano of the IDA, and the answer is she doesn't know- nor does anyone else, yet. But as she says, we do know, "As I write this, there is no scientific understanding, no testing capacity, nor treatment, to ensure that you will not contract or spread a potentially deadly disease." So she argues for a lot more caution and for doc makers not to make quick judgements based on what covid-19 is NOT (not a war, etc.) meaning the ethics are different and still being decided. Worth a read and more contemplation.

People are Making some cool DIY Outdoor Community screenings - and The Atlantic has a great photo essay showing them, now.  Check out this photo from Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty below, and click on the link to see more:

What I'm Reading: Branded Content

Brands Should Become Executive Producers - says William Swann of BBH LA in Muse by Clio - where he argues brands should work with the major platforms to jointly fund/produce/market better content. I've been helping clients do just this for 8 years now, but welcome the enthusiasm for more brands to do the same - it's time to become content partners (EPs) instead of just making branded content, and "create content that's attractive to distributors and delights audiences." Swann's article is a great intro into how it works. My one issue with it - very few agencies can actually do this work (although they all say they can). 

What I'm Reading: Misc

We have some (ugly but much needed) data on how Covid-19 has impacted the arts - Artist Relief, an emergency grant program started by a few arts orgs and their funders, has an online data tool that reports survey results from artists applying for aid. The results are updated in real time, and it ain't pretty, but man, is it needed and useful information. As of the time I write this, the economic impact (lost income and incurred expenses) was already at $285 Million+. And as Indiewire reported from the data, 71% of filmmakers were fully unemployed as a result of the pandemic. And the survey isn't finished yet (or the crisis, of course). 

Art Galleries have lost 70% of their income, and one-third don't expect to survive the crisis - according to a survey from the Arts Newspaper. And in a separate article, they also report that the UK could lose half of its creative businesses. Heavy stuff.

How to Move Forward without a Map: Ideo has some ideas on how to move forward when there is no map. I like this the most: "Experimenting doesn’t have to result in a full-scale business model transformation or a polished new offering. This is a moment of extreme leniency: Customers will forgive scrappiness and even mistakes, and they’ll appreciate effort and vulnerability from organizations who try. Moreover, experimenting in low-fidelity ways allows teams to quickly iterate, minimize costs, and preserve optionality. In other words, there’s little investment required for potentially high return."

Permission to Pause - Arts Programming During a Crisis - This is a great article for anyone working in the arts, even film festivals, and I found it via Noah Cowan, a film fest professional on LinkedIn. Peter Hemminger of the QuickDraw Arts Society gives some great advice on slowing down, re-thinking what your event would look like the way you want to do it online (not just moving it online), and asking what your audience wants/needs now. As well as giving yourself time to adapt. Highly recommended reading for all arts professionals.

Facebook to allow Paid LiveStreams - In a first for the platform, they will now allow artists to charge a fee for LiveStreams, which will not only help musicians, but also anyone offering live events - like a film with a live Q&A for example. Good news, and a smart move from FB, who usually only allow these things with free or ad support. Variety reports.

Travis Scott's Virtual Show on Fortnight Had 12M+ Viewers - setting a record. CNN reports - along with everyone - but this is newsworthy stuff, and part of the future of media, so I thought it was worth noting here.

Posted on 30th Apr

We Need an Army

Lately, when I speak with my closer film business friends about this Fall, the topic inevitably returns to how the film industry might re-open and whether we’ll be able to attend Toronto or other Fall festivals? The answer to this is no, but my new reply is always: I’m less concerned about whether or not we will gather in theaters than whether we’ll be able to gather in Washington DC, in protest, come November when Trump tries to stop the election.

Fair Warning – Stop Now if you don’t want politics – non-political news is “below the fold.”

Don’t think I’m crazy for too long on this one. And if this despot doesn’t try to stop the elections or seriously curtail voting, we have another issue already ­– Biden is going to lose. Now, before you get in a fuss and think I’m some Bernie-Bro or whatever, I’m not (promise). But we need to win outside of our bubble, and that’s where we’re losing.   Biden has no traction online. And that’s the only place that matters anymore – if not BC, definitely after, where we live now. As Bob Lefsetz recently said, “Joe’s got no media traction, he doesn’t know how to make news. And he’s too old to figure out social media. The only sunlight he’s gotten recently has been when Bernie, Barack and Elizabeth endorsed him.”  And while Lefsetz thinks the right VP pick will make the difference, it won’t – no one has ever voted for a VP.   Bottom line, Joe’s got no game. As one filmmaker told me recently, “Everyone is stuck with the notion that we are generally winning the battle over facts and losing the battle for hearts. Biden does nothing to help with the battle for the heart and soul of America.” And that’s going to be a huge problem come November, when our media is overwhelmed/inundated/obliterated by a sea of misinformation, all while truth is already distorted. The recent astro-turf protests are a harbinger of what’s to come; and if you aren’t terrified by how a few thousand people, organized by a handful of folks, could take over the news and change the conversation, then what does terrify you?

But I do see a way we can win. What we can do, as a film industry, is come to his rescue. We are storytellers, and we know how the web works, right? We know how to shoot, edit and post (online that is). We know how to craft a message and we know how to get it out to people. But instead of spending our corona-time worrying about when our industry can tell its stories again, we need to be using all of this time towards one thing – winning the information/attention war.   We need an army of filmmakers making the short form, social-friendly video that Biden will never get around to making for himself. It needs to be persuasive – capable of swaying someone’s opinion. And it needs to be a massive effort. This video by Nico Pitney on NowThis (screenshot above) was pretty popular and effective, but imagine what all of our filmmaker friends could do with a little time. I bet it would look more like this – from Inequality Media – and it would have more impact.

Guess what else we have – an army of unemployed filmmakers sitting at home, with time to spare. But who will pay for them to work, you ask? No one. I am sorry to report that there will be no WPA for this. The major foundations won’t fund it, as they are too timid. This is going to be free work, but it has to be done, and all of our free time should be going towards this goal.   (A quick aside here- I realize I am writing from a place of privilege, and that not everyone has free time, or can afford to think about political battles. I am also guessing most of my readers fall into a similar camp as me (same bubble). I’m also aware that tons of people are doing the hard work- on the ground organizing, etc. to win this, and I am not trying to belittle that work when I say it needs to be augmented with more work from all of us in the film world.)   We need thousands of new films every day. We need creatively made stories- that tell the truth, but that appeal to the heart. And we need help spreading these messages. If you don’t want to spend the next four years (or longer) hating life, then take your talent and put all of that energy into making media that helps, now. Have a camera on your phone – oh yeah, we all do – use it to film something creative now. Know how to edit, use that skill to help other filmmakers to edit these stories into something compelling. Already finished a film about topic-X that really matters, and don’t have time to make another? Well, I bet too few people saw it, or will see it. So re-edit your old films into shorter messages that get to the point fast, and show people how we can make a difference on that issue. I assure you, whatever you care about, and whatever your old films are about – there’s an angle to be pushed here.  Don’t live in the US? We’re ruining your country from afar, so you’re part of this fight, too. Don’t want to make videos for the election? Make them just to get out the real news – there’s too much crap from those who decry fake news while spreading it…like a virus.   Need inspiration? Copy Inequality Media. But make it for your cause, your issue, your talent. Because we all need it.    Now, off my soap-box and back to the news:

The NYT Covers the Fragile Eco-System of Festivals - Aisha Harris writes a nice Op-Ed for the NYT on the fragility of the fest eco-system. As she notes, "When there isn’t a crisis going on, putting up a festival is already an often financially precarious endeavor. Of course, some organizers will find ways to adapt and work around it, or are already doing so, but the ability to undertake an event with so many moving parts and variables just became infinitely more difficult. The ramifications are reverberating far and wide." My fear is that it's gonna be worse than anyone quoted in this article seems to be contemplating. 

Netflix Made Some Docs Avail for Free to Educators - On YouTube - This is a pretty cool gesture from Netflix for teachers stuck at home. Educational guides as well. Surprising that they worked out rights to show them for free on YouTube as well, but great. 

CauseCinema (iGems) made a free e-book for Earth Day, with info on some of the best environmental docs - Get info on the films, links to where you can watch them and more. Check it out here.

Sundance Responds to Covid-19 with Emergency Grants and More: The good folks at Sundance have responded relatively quickly to the crisis, with some great grants for artists, film organizations and more. Some items are for alumni only, but not everything, and many resources are online for free. I'd dig into this more, but it's been reported everywhere, and you can read for yourself. 

Arthouse Cinemas are Getting Creative - Via the Arthouse Convergence Newsletter,Sidewalk Cinemas and the Texas Theater are making "home cinema survival kit" concessions available for curbside pickup. And I'm loving Reel Rumble from Bryn Mawr Film Institute and featuring ArtsQuest vs. Renew Theaters in a Family Feud style show. Small efforts, but very crafty and interesting ways to engage audiences during the crisis. 

Fandango Bought Vudu - I think Vudu is actually one of the better interfaces out there, and while it wasn't a good fit for WalMart, maybe it will be for NBCUniversal/Fandango. The Verge reports.

Unfortunately, movie theaters remain last on the list of cultural events people see themselves attending anytime soon - according to actual data - from IMPACTS data - which is tracking which cultural institutions people expect to attend at pre-covid levels. One chart:

But we can watch a documentary in VR instead - Ask No Questions - a film which premiered at Slamdance and was set for many other festivals, is holding a VR screening in conjunction with San Francisco's DocFest and VR MovieHouse. You can get more info and tickets here, Deadline wrote about it here, and this is what it will look like:

Branded Content:

Every Covid-Commercial is the Same - Great video on the same-ness of every company's crisis ad. Yes, we all know why this happens, but it shows why another approach is needed. 

But Not Yeti-Streams - Not your average Covid-Commercial and quite possibly the most original idea from a brand during the crisis, yet - Yeti launched Yeti+Virtual Streams, which you must experience to understand. Brilliant stuff, folks. Like most of what Yeti does (former client, but I wasn't involved in this one). 

BackBone Media takes a Look at Trends Across Lifestyle Media and Marketing - and finds some good news. I've worked with the folks at Backbone on many campaigns for clients, and they're good, hardworking people. They've done a good job compiling what's going on in this space, and among the findings - a positive response to positive messages, at-home tutorials, entertainment, and escape from the news cycle (all to be expected). They recommend focusing on the long-tail over short-term sales. 

MISC:

This is the Wake-Up Call for Nonprofits and Foundations to Get Political - Good luck with that, but if there's ever been a time they should take their heads out of their a-ses and get political, it's now. Love the fire analogy here - "So the fires rage on and worsen as the firestarters get smarter and bolder, knowing that no matter what they do, the townsfolks will only respond to the effects of the fires, not try to stop them from setting fires." Via NonprofitAF . 

Strangers Project Collects Quarantine Stories - I stumbled into the Strangers Project in Hell's Kitchen back in December, 2019 and have been a fan ever since. It's explained here, but essentially, this guy collects stories from strangers and shares them online. He's been doing it for over 11 years, and has 60K+ stories. Normally, you have to contribute your story in person, but for a limited (we hope) time, he's collecting stories online. Contribute your story of what it's like to be you, now, in quarantine, here. 

Posted on 23rd Apr

Quarantine Questions

Some questions on my mind these past few days of quarantine, in no particular order.

What's Up With Online Film Festival Timing? - While CPH:DOX had a seemingly successful online festival (see below), I have serious questions as to how this works for other fests. But my number one question remains - in a virtual world, why are all of these online festivals taking place at different time periods, dictated by old systems built to avoid conflict, when they could all take place at the same time and amplify their message? Most of them are showing the same films anyway, and even with their idiosyncrasies built in, it seems to me that it would be better to move your dates, slow down a bit and explore the power of collaboration and joint-marketing instead of just plowing ahead. 

Whither the Trifecta/Fall Festivals? - I've heard rumors that the Trifecta (Venice, Telluride and Toronto) Festivals plan to take place in some form this September, along with many regional Fall film festivals. But I give you one quote: "There have been 10 influenza pandemics in the past 250-plus years—two started in the northern hemisphere winter, three in the spring, two in the summer and three in the fall. All had a peak second wave approximately six months after emergence of the virus in the human population, regardless of what initial introduction occurred." (emphasis mine), This comes from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's expertly named report - Rapid Expert Consultation on SARS-CoV-2 Survival in Relation to Temperature and Humidity and Potential for Seasonality for the COVID-19 Pandemic (April 7, 2020). Let's do the math: March+6=September. So either these festivals get cancelled or we show up there and risk dying. That math doesn't work - and your potential attendees know it, even if you and your board don't, Fall festival folks.

When do we get our IGTV Films? I spent two hours the other night watching the brilliant #24viralmonologues on IGTV from the folks at the 24Hr Plays. In brief, a playwright sends a short script to an actor who performs the piece by themselves, on their phones, and submits the results, which are entered into the contest. Who cares about the contest. It works. It's brilliant. It's pretty much a new art-form, and it could be duplicated and turned into a film. Or a campaign for a limbo-film. Why aren't we seeing more of these? Am I missing a treasure-trove of them? If so, please send them my way, or start making them now, filmmakers. Here's my favorite: Motherfuckers by Stephen Adly Guirgis, performed by Andre Royo. And yes, I am hinting that limbo-films should copy this strategy. 

And how are people finding time to stream movies with all of this new content? Yes, streaming hours have skyrocketed. But I can barely find time to turn on Netflix, much less think about any new service, when I have so much new online content to watch elsewhere. Not just the IGTV #24hrviralmonologues, but Alvin Ailey dancers in #aileyallaccess, or @NewYorkNico's #bestNYaccent or even print stuff like Quentin Tarantino's Movie Reviews on the New Beverly Cinema's website. or Orchestras around the world recording Beethoven with every musician at home, and I haven't even mentioned all the stuff like #goodnightwithDolly on TikTok, gaming, etc. It was an attention economy before this virus hit, but it's even more of one now. 

Can Quibi Survive its horrible launch? I'm a known Quibi skeptic, but the response to their launch was so bad that it almost made me flip to being a supporter, I mean I love indie films which means I'll always root for the underdog. Here are my favorite two quotes: Bob Lefesetz: “the kids can smell a rat.” And “it's chopped-up television. Do you think that's appealing?” Or try this one from Spencer Kornhaber in The Atlantic in a piece titled - Quibi is a Vast Wasteland: "After having spent a day and a half gorging on “quick bites,” I have zero shows to enthusiastically recommend. What I instead have is the sort of soul-deep burnout I haven’t felt since middle-school sick days spent on the couch with Regis Philbin." Ouch. And don't get me started on the fact they disabled the ability to share content- on mobile - in 2020 - jeesh.  They claimed 1.7M downloads in week one- which no one believes, but is definitely less than they'd hoped to receive (but more than any indie/arthouse film app ever got). You can't make this shit up, but you can imagine what could have been built with a Billion dollars instead of this garbage.

If people aren't flocking to VR headsets for entertainment now, when exactly is that going to happen? I can find lots of thought-pieces about how we might switch to VR now, but very little evidence that anyone is finding time to bother with VR for entertainment, and more reports about what isn't working. Tribeca's Immersive program, Cinema 360 launches tomorrow, and maybe they'll prove this wrong, but it's looking like people prefer drinking virtual happy hours on Zoom over actual VR. 

How do the Trades survive an Academy-awards advertising slow-down? Valence Media already announced major cuts at the Hollywood Reporter today. That same report had them losing $10M a year before the virus hit. The dirty secret of all of the trades has been that they make the majority of their revenue from Academy awards campaigns each year - it ain't the news, folks. So with the Academy Awards themselves in question, and the Summer block-buster season taking a major hit, and as I mentioned above, a possible issue with Fall launch festivals, how does this work for the trades? Sure, there will be a massive push for whatever films can launch this Fall, but is that going to make up for the lost revenue before that time? This sucks for all of us, but none more so than the good people who just lost jobs. Read critic Todd McCarthy's "It's a Bloodbath" piece here.

Ok, I've got more questions, but this could get depressing.

Film   New York State Extends Tax Credits (good), but screws low-budgets (packs bags...): Scott Macaulay of Filmmaker Magazine (a producer as well) reports on the situation. With budgets being cut like crazy, this is better news than perhaps we'd hoped. But by making a floor of $1M in NYC to qualify, the system is telling low-budget filmmakers to take a hike. Producer Mynette Louie sums up the problem well, " “I think that excluding smaller productions from being subsidized by tax credits might mean that some bolder, riskier films (which are generally smaller budget) become harder to finance,” she agrees. “It might also mean that lower-budgeted films helmed by working-class filmmakers with limited connections to rich people will have more of an uphill battle. Both outcomes would be really unfortunate as the world may need these types of films the most to help digest, heal, and progress in a post-pandemic world.” And Mike Ryan gives us the subtext: "“This seals it, New York is no longer a town that supports edgy alternative culture media. Get the message, young artists? Other cities await you.”

Posted on 22nd Apr

Inventing the New Reality

Last week, I looked at all of the ways I think the film industry is going to be impacted by this crisis, and how we won’t be going back to normal. I promised a Part Two that would be more positive, but remember that I did post positive thoughts just a week earlier. If you are looking for a list of clear solutions, quit reading now. I don’t have them, and I don’t think anyone else does, either. Instead, here’s some thoughts on how we should approach this new reality – a mindset we might bring to the situation – in the form of some slogans we would do well to remember. These are mainly written towards arthouse/indie filmmakers, but I think they apply to branded content folks (my other audience) as well.

Invent the Future This has been the slogan of most of my keynotes since 2009 – following the advice of Alan Kay, who said – the best way to predict the future is to invent it (some credit Dennis Gabor). The idea remains the same – predictions about the future are notoriously tricky, but smart folks shouldn’t wait around to see what happens. As I said last week, we’re not going back to normal, but since no one knows what the new normal is going to look like, we should invent (and build) the one we want. And that’s one of the sole things that gives me comfort when thinking about the future – a bunch of folks are probably inventing it right now. They might not even know it yet. But sure enough, a few years from now we’ll have entire new systems – a new reality – that was built out of this crisis.

Build Your Plan-A – Everything else is Plan B When indie filmmakers try to build a plan for their films, I’ve always given the same advice, but I think it applies to all of us now. Build a Plan A that encompasses what you can do for your film on your own. If you don’t get into Sundance, and don’t get bought by A24 or Netflix, how would you release your film to audiences given your resources – both time and money – what’s the best you could do?   That is your Plan A, and you plan for it as if that is what’s going to happen. Then, if you get lucky and a distributor does want to buy your film, that offer is a Plan B. Plan B might be better than Plan A – in the best case, it should be better than what you could do on your own. But now you have something to compare their offer to, your Plan A, and that gives you a way to figure out just how good that offer is, because you now have a baseline from which to judge. Maybe they aren’t offering something you would do, or you could do better, well, now you can negotiate because you have a Plan A. But if you don’t have a Plan A, then someone else’s Plan B is the only option you’re going to have, because you never made a plan. While this was advice for filmmaker’s thinking about distribution of their films, I think it applies to how we should plan for much about creative-life, post-covid-19.

Collaboration is Key If there’s one thing this virus should have taught us by now, it’s the importance of collaboration. We’ve seen the bad shit that happens from lack of it as well. We can all point to numerous examples of good things we’ve seen recently that only came about because of collaboration. But while filmmaking itself is a collaborative, team effort, I’ve always found the film community (non-documentary, mainly) to be the least collaborative group I know when it comes to everything except production. I think we’ll need to change this going forward. Here’s just a few examples where I think collaboration would work great:

A. Filmmakers – so many filmmakers were simultaneously hit with the same problems - cancelled festival premieres, and trying to figure out how to get the attention of buyers and/or audiences with their films. Instead of going it alone, why not band together? Instead of waiting for Festival-X to re-schedule, or Sales Agent-Y to pitch Buyer-Z, why not band together with several others who are stuck in the same boat and bring your films to audiences, together. Why not offer a “festival” of films that were in Spring Festivals as a package? Instead of relying on curators from those festivals, why not curate yourselves? I’d gladly pay $50 for 5 new science fiction films on Vimeo, and if you band together, you might have the mailing lists and resources to reach me. When we can gather again, why not a tour that you curate? This can play out multiple ways, but you get my drift.

B. Film Festivals – There’s a lot of room for more collaboration between film festivals, and I don’t mean just by joining an alliance. We’ll have to see what this means in practice, but the recently announced Toronto Film Fest initiative to go back to its roots as a “festival of festivals” is a great idea. Let’s take it a step further. Since 90% of the film festivals out there program the same films anyway, why do we need separate organizations in each town? The few festivals that are brands would do well to think about some version of M&A expansion. Others should collaborate to make more efficient tours of films and shared resources. Why launch thousands of small online fests that few people log into, when we could make one bigger one with an SVOD platform? All of these ideas existed before, but now is the time to implement them.

C. Theaters – Your job is not popping popcorn, but bringing cinema to your local audience – which most theater owners already know. People who like cinema will show back up later, but in the meantime, why give away those audiences (via their email addresses) to others who want to reach them? Band together, via AHC or EuropaCinemas or both, and build your own OTT platform (not individually, but together for scale) and you own the audience and share the revenue with distributors instead of vice-versa. Shift72 is powering many similar ideas, and they would be a good place to start.

D. Branded Content – so many brands make films about their work on climate change, or empowering women, or other important social issues. But if they really want to have an impact on any of these issues – and aren’t just virtue signaling – why not band together to have a greater impact? A series of films, podcasts, articles and yes, even ads, from multiple brands, simultaneously, would have much greater impact than that of any brand’s content “going it alone.”

E. Audience Building – Kevin Kelly was right when he said (in 2008) that all you really need is 1000 true fans. Filmmakers are not marketers. That’s been a hard lesson for the field over the years, but I’m going to try one more time – there’s never been a better time to build your fan/audience base. Everyone is stuck at home, scrolling through social media, and many of us have some spare time. Now is the time to focus on building your fan base for you as an artist, and for your (upcoming?) film. And you’re going to need that connection, because guess what – the world is going to have less of what we relied on for audience-building and marketing before – less: film festivals (and their curators), distributors, theaters, print publications, broadcasters, paid critics - there’s a long list of disappeared parts of the system. What will remain? Social media and your direct connection to that audience. But only if you build it, participate with it and nurture it. There’s also a big role here for collaboration amongst the other players mentioned above – theaters, festivals, distributors, and brands. While I argued above that theaters shouldn’t just give away their emails, I would advocate for everyone to join together to build a system, with varying levels of permissions and opt-ins, that would allow me as a consumer to subscribe to updates from multiple artists, distributors, theaters, brands, etc. I don’t want to just hear from Film Forum. I want to know when Tom Putnam releases Dark Divide, no matter where it’s playing, and I want to subscribe to him, just once and get future updates too. I’d be happy for all of you to be able to notify me – when it comes to FilmLinc, or when it comes to Netflix, or when it’s at your festival (but only when I’m visiting your town). Let’s build this system together. Festivals, theaters and brands should be curating selections for me, but not just of what they’re playing or funding. If I trust you, give me a reason to interact year round.

F. Advocacy – nonprofit service organizations should be merging together, or at least joining forces, and should start doing real advocacy, which means lobbying and other moves to build a better system for our future. The recent IDA/ITVS/Firelight seminars were incredible, but just a start towards what we need to see more often. Last year, I wrote a popular post about the need for a new AIVF – and we still need it. As I wrote then: “Yes, we have great organizations that might take up the cause – IFP, Sundance, Impact Partners, IDA, Kartemquin and many great festivals (if I didn’t mention your favorite org, it’s unintentional) – but solving the problems around building a better ecosystem for independent media artists is bigger than any one of their missions and if they haven’t found the time to do it on their own since 2006, it’s not going to happen now (but they’ll collaborate on the answer). We need a new AIVF, but for the modern era. I’m not sure what it should look like, but I know we need it, or something like it. I imagine it’s more of a with-profit than a nonprofit, meaning some hybrid of nonprofit activism and services, coupled with some for-profit, entrepreneurial activities.”  Let’s get that started, finally.These are just a few, pretty easy to say and hard to execute ideas – I know- but we have to start inventing somewhere, and I’m convinced that these ideas will be key to our success.

Stuff I'm Reading: Film   Emergency Grants for Filmmakers & Others - I imagine most of my readers have heard about these, but just in case - POV, the great PBS doc series, has launched an emergency fund for artists/filmmakers. Info and application forms are here. And Field of Vision/TOPIC have launched a fund for documentary freelancers, including producers, editors, assistants - anyone in the field it seems, which is great! Apply here. Last, The Opportunity Agenda and PopCollab offer $1K emergency grants for Social Impact artists and cultural strategists - apply here. Netflix Makes "Spoiler" Billboards to Keep People Inside - brilliant ad campaign here. While the actual "social impact" of distancing is obviously minor here, it's a great idea.  WeAreSocialMedia reports.  Need to apply for Coronavirus Relief as a Filmmaker? The IDA, ITVS and Firelight teamed up to bring together this super-helpful workshop on how to apply for the CARES/PPP relief program- whether you are a freelancer or small business. Honestly, this was probably the single best educational program or Zoom meeting I've attended since the lockdown began. The video is worth watching and the link has many other helpful resources - I think I used all of them.  The Future of Film Report is live - Future of Film's Alex Stolz launched his FOF Report recently, and it's a great read. I particularly like that he and his contributors focused primarily on how technology will change production and development, and most of it is very positive and interesting for anyone thinking about the future of film.  It's time to learn online marketing based on behavioral data - While this was written BC (before-covid), it's very timely now that we all need to learn how to market titles online smartly, using data. Anthony Kaufman reports on some success stories, and how to get started for Filmmaker Magazine. One good example, from Jim Cummings of Thunder Road - "The big takeaway for Cummings was the realization that he could connect with potential audiences and bypass traditional forms of gatekeeping. “Let’s say you’re having a hard time getting a Variety review. Now, you can just target people on Facebook who like Variety, and it’s the equivalent of getting press in Variety,” he explains. “By spending money on this or that platform, you’re able to hijack an outlet that wouldn’t let you have access without them having anything to do with it.” Cornavirus, Streaming and Piracy - I was interviewed in this nice little article from Aric Jenkins in Fortune back in late March (feels like a decade ago, right) about how the virus might impact streaming and piracy. I'm less worried about piracy long term (I see it as a failure in the business model), but do think behavior has changed, ever more quickly, and people want what they want, when they want it, on what device, yesterday.

Stuff I'm Reading: Branded Content   Steak-Umm is Leading Brand Messaging around Covid-19  - This isn't branded content, per se, but Steak-Umm has been doing an awesome job with its social media account (it's actually a person named Nathan Allebach according to FastCo). If Steak-Umm can find a way to make relevant, smart and informed content during this virus, you have no excuse not to do the same, BrandX (insert your name here). Hell, this is better than most nonprofits I follow. Brand-Purpose Storytelling Post-Covid: I participated in an online panel/Zoom about purpose-driven storytelling by brands - how to do it, and how to do it now - that was organized by Brand Storytelling. The video will reside here when they post it soon. This is one of a series of talks they are hosting, and it's a great resource for brands, brand story-tellers, and just about anyone in the media space. I recommend listening to the discussions, and you can get the schedule and register (for free) here. Budweiser is "not in advertising mode" says Anheuser-Busch InBev US CMO Marcel Marcondes to DigiDay - more than once - saying they are putting money into services and other areas. Like a lot of brands, I suspect. They did run this ad for their program to shift sports support to Red Cross support.

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Posted on 8th Apr

Confronting the New Reality, Pt 1.

Bonnie: Don’t let it end this way. Brian: All things end badly, or else they wouldn’t end. AKA Flanagan’s Law, from Cocktail During the past few weeks, I’ve joined many conference calls discussing how the film industry might change due to the Covid-19 crisis. And I’ve read many articles about this. With very few exceptions, they’ve all been based around an extreme optimism that assumes life will return to normal at some point. And wouldn’t that be nice?

But without even going so far as taking the most apocalyptic viewpoint, I think this is going to end pretty badly for a lot of the film industry. We aren’t going back to normal. At the risk of setting off a panic, here are my thoughts on how Covid-19 is going to impact the business, with a focus on what I care about – indie and arthouse films (I'll look at branded content soon). As I say at the end, this isn’t about getting us depressed, but rather, a hope that if we face the facts, perhaps we can build a better response. Production Netflix doesn’t see production starting up again before June,  but some are saying they’re already planning for 18 months of production problems. While this may have the silver lining of a need for finished content, see below, let’s use that as a baseline and pretend work stops for another 3-6 months. This means thousands of below-the-line workers and freelancers without jobs. How many can hang on and come back to work when production stops for that long? Who will have given up and taken a safe job – if those even exist anymore – and of those who have stuck around, which ones are going to want to work on a low-mid-budget, arthouse/indie film anymore? Film sets have always been cesspools of germs and breeding grounds for shared viruses, how many people want to go back to that? And if we can get back to production, will states cut tax incentive programs, or see those as essential job builders? I predict we’ll see a bifurcation into the extreme high and the low – more than we had before – where good crew only work on the well-funded Hollywood shoots and series. Recent college grads who have moved back home with their parents will work on the super-low budgets, but finding crew for the middle-ground will be next to impossible. That said, producers should have lots of development done and ready to go forward. Smart folks will put out promises to and lock in crew as early as possible. Cast But let’s say you put together a crew and are ready to shoot? You need cast. But most great cast were learning pre-virus that the best way to put food on the table was from series and big Hollywood films. And those have been on hold for a long time, until now. Now, there’s a need for great talent for all of those backlogged series and franchises. There goes your cast. On the plus side – they are also stuck at home doing nothing now. Smart producers will record some social media for their finished films, to assist with audience building when they launch their films. This will take some arm-twisting, but less than usual. A World without Agents? You typically cast your film with the help of agents, who also step in to help with sales (and sometimes financing). But the big agencies are already making deep cuts and laying off staff, and had bloated expenses and overhead to begin with. How many of them will survive? How many projects are they putting together for clients who can’t work? And how many sales are they making of films that can’t be produced? Sure, there will be a brief deluge of projects to be sold from the crop that were completed or close to it when this crisis hit, but what happens once you’ve sold those? Oh, and if you built your backup plan on live events, like Endeavor, what happens when that disappears? The agencies are so ingrained in the business that it’s the hardest sector to imagine disappearing, but visit one of their offices and marvel at the structures and the overhead for a few minutes, and it’s just as hard to imagine how you keep all of that going after this bottoms out. No, we won’t see the end of agents, but we will see a thinning of the sector, and perhaps a return to the days when agents were nothing special (I admit, as I type this, it sounds like I’ve slipped into a dreamland). Film Festivals Film festivals have always been run closer to the bone than any aspect of this business. They’ve relied on cheap labor, donations, sponsorships, grants, memberships, and… unpaid labor (volunteers) to keep the doors open. Most are putting on a good face now, but I doubt many can survive a big loss in income. Will SXSW or Tribeca survive a loss of millions from cancelled festivals? Will the smaller regional festivals fare any better? Who will be sponsoring festivals when places like Airbnb are cutting $800-million from their marketing budget? Sundance has many big donors and the prestige to continue. So does Cannes, Berlin, Toronto…and who else? Film Society of Lincoln Center, a bastion for the rich, older folks of NYC, has already laid off 50% of its full-time staff and all of its part-timers. Yes, they do more than serve the rich, but you get my drift – If they can’t raise emergency funds, who can?

People have always said we have too many festivals and need a thinning of the crowd, but I don’t think anyone expected that to mean what we’re about to witness. (side note: everyone comes home from Sundance with the flu during normal times. How many people want to go there in an ongoing covid-19 world? I can’t bear to think about that just yet.) Several festivals have decided to go the virtual route to replace lost screenings. The Garden State Film Festival claimed to have 15,000 viewers for 240 films (many were shorts). Not bad, actually. The most aggressive of these efforts, and maybe the most innovative, came from CPH:DOX, and reportedly demand was so great they salvaged 50-70% of their potential lost revenue and the market & forum (industry facing sections) performed pretty well for a first-effort. But CPH:DOX gets a lot of government support, which is not the case for most US festivals, and this surely helped them adapt quickly and build new systems. I can see this being replicated by the biggest festivals, and the most innovative, but few others. Meanwhile, those festivals who have moved online have (to my knowledge, universally) told filmmakers they can’t afford to share revenue from these screenings. Ok, in this crisis moment sure, but then they haven’t offered data, promises of future promotions or much else either. These may be unstated goals, but so far, one senses that a lot more thought has gone into how virtual offerings might help festivals, and local audiences, but filmmakers…not so much. Filmmakers have accepted all of this in the past, often in exchange for not much more than coach-class airfare, a hotel room and free wine and cheese (which was often a pick two out of three situation). But now you get less than that, and how does that word of mouth translate into future success in a virtual environment, exactly? I’m not sure, but let’s hope we can build some value-chain around the surviving ones, because the rest of this puzzle doesn’t seem to add up to any prettier of a picture. Theaters Even with the relief package, theaters are in a shaky spot. Before the virus hit, the big chains were already mired in debt, facing decreased attendance, and in danger of default. Perhaps the canary in this coal-mine is the closing of VIP Cinema Seating, their biggest supplier of luxury seats just this week. The hope has been that they can weather this until the virus subsides and people return to group gatherings. When theaters re-opened in China, many took it as a great sign. But then attendance averaged one person per day, and the government closed them again within days due to fears of a resurge in transmissions. Making matters worse, studies show people aren’t putting theaters high on their list of places to revisit anytime soon. We’re in for a longer-haul than most of even the biggest theaters can survive.  I predict we’ll see a re-ordering of the major chains, with AMC and Regal in serious trouble. (Just after writing this, the WSJ reports that AMC hired restructuring lawyers yesterday.) And while smaller arthouses have always been scrappy, few have the resources in place to survive much of a downturn, and some have already made major cuts. While Criterion Collection and the Arthouse Convergence have started a GoFundMe to save arthouses, the results so far are less than encouraging. I’ve heard reports of more than a few beloved arthouses who only have enough cash to make it a month or two, and of many others who are already facing tough lease negotiations. How many will be able to survive based on the Cares Act and other government relief? In theory, they can pay salaries and rent and get loan forgiveness. Let’s hope this keeps some doors open, but my fear is the downturn will last longer than the relief. Now add to this the bigger, existential threat – the disappearance of windows. Even before this virus, windows- the time between when a film premieres in theaters and then online, were collapsing. As I predicted weeks ago, the crisis pushed everyone, from big to small, to jump into even shorter windows. My hunch is that most of them will learn what Netflix and Amazon already knew – few films needed theatrical releases for the bottom line (talent and awards were the only valid reasons anymore). And while you can argue that true cinema, like Parasite this past year, can only succeed with theatrical, and that blockbusters will always draw fans to theaters as well, the virus will decimate enough theaters that only those films will be able to find screens anymore.  That won’t leave many screens for the rest of arthouse cinema. At the same time, none of the theaters had bothered to build any semblance of a plan for home-viewing before this happened. AMC theaters hired someone to liaison with studios to figure out a cut of that pie… the week before they closed their theaters. Arthouses have recently received offers from forward-thinking distributors to share revenue from VOD -  if they help to promote these films that would have played their theaters to their members. But as Julie Anderson Friesen of CinemaFalls in Sioux Falls, South Dakota pointed out to me, these patron lists were built over years and a split of revenue only looks fair if you don’t think about the fact that those patrons are now on the email list of the distributor and will buy/rent future films, but none of that revenue will flow back to the source theater. Terms need to be negotiated. Of course, theaters could have banded together and made their own VOD platform, and showcased distributor’s films and shared revenue while keeping their patron relationships in place, but that was too hard to do when they were busy furloughing employees to stop the bleeding. Let me only gently remind them – this should have been done pre-crisis anyways. My hope here is that the crisis will lead to some form of shared list, where I as a consumer, could sign up for updates from both my local cinema, and from distributors and artists directly (opt-in and out, of course). We’ve needed that for a long time anyways (I proposed such a system back in 2011) Arthouse Distributors - But don’t worry for too long that those arthouse distributors are going to get rich building an ecosystem off the backs of the arthouses. Sure, they have might gain more emails now, but none have ever been in the business of trying new things to market their films. They put them in theaters and took out print ads in the paper, because that’s what always worked. Or did until those two places disappear during this crisis. How many have the budgets to properly market these new VOD systems? My guess is not (m)any. Arthouse content actually does need theatrical to survive – it’s not just a marketing tool, but a major revenue stream for indies, and arthouse films require the longer time to build word-of-mouth that a theatrical allows. Bottom line – arthouse distributors needed theaters more than anyone else. Without them, they will have trouble surviving. Not that they had it easy pre-virus. Many were also over-leveraged and/or had owners that were ready to sell before things got scary. Launching OTT channels during a crisis is not going to reverse their bad news. And there’s more. Conversations with buyers and sellers over the past couple of weeks shows that most sellers are going direct to the biggest SVOD/AVOD/OTT players and skipping distributors – because a lot of what those distributors do is gone now that theatrical is on hold (maybe forever), so less quality content is even available for them to buy and possibly distribute. None of this adds up to much in the way of good news. Documentary If there’s ever been a scrappy bunch of filmmakers who know how to organize and survive an apocalypse, it’s been the documentary filmmaking community. There are more support systems in place here than any part of the business. Unfortunately, the only films that have ever been a financial success have been the top 1%, usually musician or sports biopics (Amy, Senna), the occasional Blackfish or Free Solo, and Ken Burns. Many smart producers were moving to commissioned work only pre-virus, and this trend will accelerate. Serious and social-issue docs are going to have a very hard time. The talk among distributors for the past few years was that post-Trump’s election, no one wanted to watch serious films anymore because they were just too exhausted after a day of his tweets. Imagine what happens now when he’s helped cause an entire economy’s collapse while tweeting about his ratings. Meanwhile, sitting around home for a few weeks has gotten the doc community to wondering whether any of this is sustainable, especially if you weren’t born into privilege? No wonder the most popular topic on the D-Word forum has been about dealing with mental health issues. Equity and Financing So when all of this happens, who is going to finance these films? Private equity was always a gamble, but it becomes a bigger one when you have nothing but tax credits to lessen the burden. Oh wait, how many states will keep offering those as tax revenues decline across the board in a recession that may become a depression? But when smart equity investors look at the buyers that will be left, it’s going to be mainly major platforms - who aren’t looking for equity, and who will only splurge for a small number of titles. The reports of those few splurges – as always – will keep some dumb money flowing. But the smart money is going to be investing in M&A activity, if anything, for quite some time. SVOD Players Which brings us back to those big-guys and their new services. Disney and Apple just launched new services that need more content. How many new subscribers are they going to get for just their library content? And Netflix long-ago switched to an original content strategy, while building up mountains of debt, as they lost library content to Disney and Peacock. Peacock might now have Friends, but as a new service that needs eyeballs, it was planning to blast into consumer-consciousness based on the Olympics. Or at least sports…oh, wait.  These major services won’t die, but we will likely see them buy up struggling smaller players to shore up their libraries and ensure new content comes there way post-virus. And none of them will be looking for niche, arthouse content anytime soon. The only services looking good here are suddenly ad-supported networks like Pluto (Viacom/CBS) and those attached to real businesses like…Amazon. (For the time being, let’s not even contemplate what happens if Amazon can’t ship packages anymore). But services build on selling toilet paper to the masses (both Advertising and Amazon) aren’t known for supporting quality arthouse films. While we’re thinking about streaming, perhaps we should deal now with the other new player – Quibi, which launches right when people have a lot of free time on their hands. But their business model was based on what’s usually also in your hand – your phone – which won’t look nearly as tempting when you’re stuck at home in front of a giant television loaded with content. Not to mention tons of free, live-streaming options on IGTV, and when you no longer have down-time to fill on that commute to your couch. Conclusion Ok, none of this looks very good, right? And before I get nasty comments, remember – I say all of this as someone who loves film festivals, arthouse theaters and even the agents and distributors (ok, maybe not the agents).  But I think it’s better to face the reality of how this crisis is impacting the business, and how bad it might actually get, instead of just hoping for the best. That will allow us to dream up the correct responses, and maybe let us have a better chance at inventing the future. I promise to get back to the positive thoughts – on how we react to these realities – next week.

Stuff I'm Reading

Film

A theater in Texas turned its parking lot into a Drive-In to much success: Forbes reports.Innovation plus social distancing, plus movies for the win. PLUS - they launched alcohol and grocery delivery, too. Everyone picked up this story, it seems, but few reported that part, which shows just how innovative this theater has been.

Collaboration will be key to survival: If that's even possible, says Jordan Zakarin in the Observer. A great article on the issues confronting all aspects of the business, and some of the new initiatives from distributors and exhibitors.

Criterion Collection and the Arthouse Convergence have started an emergency fund to help indie cinemas to survive. As I mentioned above, donations haven't been stellar yet, but there's still time. And they need it:  Donate here.

Matthew Ball has a trifecta of essays on how covid-19 is impacting movies/theaters, SVOD, PayTV and OTT, and Gaming. Not much new here, but it does have good data on where things were before-covid (bc) and what might happen next.

Sundance Curated some films you should watch:  I've been arguing for over a decade that festivals need to promote their curatorial abilities between festivals, and many are finally doing that. Sundance joined in this week. Now, I find it hard to believe their programmers are sitting around only watching old Sundance movies, but it's a start. Let's hope they follow Montclair's example and curate some other films next.

MISC

You filled out the Census, right? When I posted this, response rates were just in the 30% range. Come on people.

How Artists Can Stay Afloat - and Thrive - During the Crisis - Billboard talks with several musicians who have turned to live streaming and merch, among other ideas, to pay the bills. Some are even mowing lawns, and pointing out that any income is good in a crisis. Many good ideas here, some of which would work for other artists.

The Brand Film Awards Finalists have been announced. I was lucky to serve on the jury this year, and there's some great stuff in the mix. They're announcing the winners on May 7th in a virtual event, including some panels and keynotes.

Posted on 2nd Apr

Making Lemonade

When coronavirus shuts down everything, you gotta do something positive. Here's a quick roundup of some generally positive, good ideas that have come out of the crisis. Some are worth copying (or paying homage) if you're looking for ideas for your own film, organization or just your free time. (Note: the photo above is from the NYPost of some kids who made a hands-free lemonade stand in NYC).

Make a Global Cloud Film – that’s what Tiffany Shlain and Ripple are doing – collecting videos from around the world where people either read a poem she selected, or send their answers to a few questions (“What is the best thing that can come to this?”) and submit their videos, which her team will edit into a global crowd-sourced film. But the deadline is tomorrow! I’ve been doing a miniature version of this exquisite corpse artistic practice with a few friends, and love the idea of getting creative on a global project. This one would be easy for other filmmakers, brands and studios to duplicate in different ways.

Montclair Film Festival and discuss it with a group – While many festivals are launching online versions, the Montclair Film Fest is going to wait and have a “real” fest later in the year. In the meantime, they’ve launched Discover Together, where each Sunday, their programmers will pick a week’s worth of films to watch from home, available on various services, and then members can follow along with the conversation in  a private Facebook group. A nice way to engage existing and new members.

Filmmaker launches Theatrical at Home campaign - I know you're thinking, hey, anyone can call streaming by that name, but this is pretty genius. The filmmakers behind Phoenix, Oregon had scheduled a theatrical tour for their film, which was put on hold. So on March 20th they did a "theatrical at home" where you selected your theater and they let you stream it online for a fee, but shared the revenue with the theater where you would have seen the film. Thus helping the theaters that were taking a chance on them at the same time. Good lemonade. I'll try to find out how it went. There are now many other examples of this same strategy being put in place - or variations of it, see below for just one - but this was among the first, I think.  Attend a Virtual Cinema and Support a Real One – KinoLorber was one of the first distributors to launch a program to showcase a new film - that would have been in theaters – online, in conjunction with those same theaters. It’s called KinoMarquee and you pick your local arthouse that would have been showing a film and they get a split of the revenue if you rent it online. In theory, the arthouses promote these films and both can succeed. Here’s FilmLinc promoting Bacurau this past week. We are now seeing several other distributors with variations of this idea. Distributors in China are allowing Movie Theaters to Screen some old Blockbusters and keep all of the revenues to help them re-open – Details are scarce, but ChinaFilmInsider has the article, and apparently more re-releases are being done soon to help theaters recover and get audiences back in the seats. According to some other reports I've read, while many cinemas are opening again in China, they are reporting very low box office, so this idea might help lure people back to group viewing. Might be worth doing this here when we can copy it.

SXSW and MailChimp Team Up to Present Shorts - MailChimp Presents has teamed up with Oscilloscope and SXSW to present shorts from the recently cancelled film festival. This is a great way for brands to do something innovative and fun during the crisis, especially when curation helps more than production. Deadline reports.

Posted on 30th Mar

Ideas for responding to Covid in the Film Industry

We’re just barely into this coronavirus situation and I think we can all agree it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. While the world needs optimists, it also needs realists, and I’m in the latter camp, feeling pretty sure this is going to last much longer than a few months. But whether this lasts 3 months or 18+, the impact on our world is already huge and the film world needs to think big about how to respond.  Here’s just a few thoughts that have crossed my mind this week in regards to how we should respond, in no particular order, and definitely not trying to cover every facet here...

We need to experiment with new distribution models (and need grants for them) – Nearly every call I’ve had with clients (indies and brands) this week has been about how they might distribute their films in a world without film festivals, without theaters, and no clear sign of when the situation might get back to normal. But everyone seems paralyzed with fear of the unknown. Everyone talks about using the power of the web and social media to reach and engage audiences, but no one is willing to try new models to go direct to the audience online because so much (investment, pride, etc.) is on the line. But people need to stop hoping the old system comes back soon and start building new models now. If you are a brand – guess what, you don’t need festivals or the system – you can build a new model and market it yourself. If you are an indie – by the time things get back to normal, your film may be old news, and it may be too late to recover. Start experimenting now. That said, if you are a funder or nonprofit supporter - We need substantial grants - $150K and up to producers and/or indie distributors willing to experiment with some new models, asap. Funders need to give living support for filmmakers, especially producers – Almost every grant that exists is for specific projects and/or for directors. I’m not saying to get rid of those (although I’ve argued for that before), but right now we need to help filmmakers pay the rent and survive. We need unrestricted living grants. Sure, philanthropists can require some deliverable at the end, but it shouldn’t be tied to the completion of a film. And these grants need to be extended to those always overlooked – producers. Without producers, directors can’t make their films. And producers scrape together a living now as-is, but that’s even harder when nothing is getting made. So we need money for both.  And yes, of course, we need to prioritize historically marginalized groups in this giving as well. Help others, but don’t expect any help – Yes, we need to be altruistic and help others during this crisis. But we also need to realize – as indie filmmakers – that no one is coming to our rescue, and it’s time we take our survival into our own hands. Too many filmmakers who have films in development, and/or films that just had a premiere cancelled, tend to wait for the “system” to work out for their film. They wait for festival acceptances to launch their films, and then hope a sales agent will sell it to the highest bidder. But not only has this not been working for quite some time – the system is now broken. Completely. Even people who think they are gonna put it back together in a few months are going to learn soon that most of it is gone. It’s time to take hold of your destiny and make a plan for your film that doesn’t require other people coming to your rescue. What does this look like? Well, I’m not 100% sure, and that’s why it’s called getting creative. We need to invent new systems. I am pretty sure it doesn’t involve waiting on festivals to re-arrange their schedules, or for sales agents to call you back. It definitely involves building your audience directly. It might still involve traditional distributors, but even then, it will require you to be a lot more participatory with them and your audiences. And it means moving fast, and not waiting to figure things out later when things settle down. As Richard Brody mentions in the New Yorker this week – producers who survived 1918 did so because they moved fast (see below and here). Roll ‘em Up – I’ve beensaying for a long time that we need a great big roll-up in the indie space, and I believe it now more than ever. There are going to be a lot of bankruptcies and out-and-out failures in the indie space – theaters/chains; distributors; production companies; agencies; festivals and nonprofit support organizations; start-ups and I’m betting more than one major SVOD player and/or Studio. It’s time for someone who either has money, or can raise it, to roll-up some of these players into some more sustainable businesses. Don't forget about AVOD - these platforms will soar – The quarantined world is moving to streaming faster by the day. Viewers are also getting poorer, meaning the shift we’ve been seeing to ad-supported streaming networks will accelerate. It’s a great time to own an AVOD platform, and a great time for content rights-holders to move faster into this space. Don't move too fast - because audiences will want less content in the short term than is being assumed – Everyone keeps talking about how people are stuck at home just itching for stuff to watch. Platforms and publications are curating lists for them to watch, and everyone thinks it will be a boom time for viewing. But here’s the thing- check your own gut. Are you dying for things to watch? Or are you frantically checking news, social media and reports to find out what’s going on with the virus? And to find out who among your friends and acquaintances is ok? I think it’s the latter. While we will get stir crazy eventually, I think most adults are going to have plenty to do without increasing their film/show viewership in the near term (kids will need something to do, as the crisis isn’t as real to them). Gaming has increased, but it’s much more participatory and distracting than a film/show. It helps OCD better, which is what we all have right now. Jumping into the content soup too quickly is not a smart strategy. Timing this will be hard – fast, but not too fast is the best bet. Let people catch their breath first. There’s gonna be a crisis in branded content – but also great opportunity - There’s going to be a big pull-back in investments in the branded content space. It’s inevitable as we go into an economic crisis, and no one can fault any brand that focuses on staying alive as a business versus investing in content. Budgets will be cut, and even when they aren’t – productions are near impossible to pull off. I expect we’ll see a giant shake out in this space, and it won’t be pretty. But the reasons that smart brands have been moving into this space remain sound, and I would argue are only getting more valid. Consumers will keep cutting the cord and will move even more rapidly to streaming. Breaking through the noise with ads no one wants is getting even harder. Consumers will value brands they can trust even more. All of this helps branded content. If you can stick it out and convince your colleagues to stay with their plans, you’ll also find a much less crowded space – because let’s face it, few will remain. And while quality producers/directors and talent were becoming more open to working with brands before, they’ll be even more ready now – they need the support. Platforms will also need the content you do manage to get produced, and without traditional ways to market (like theaters), they’ll value your loyal customers and marketing savvy even more. Brands in film, or moving into this space – develop nerves of steel, as you’ll need them. If you can stomach it, double down.

Is there a silver lining for finished films? Maybe. Here’s the theory – production has ground to a halt, across all media. Yet the networks, the SVODs, the distributors need product to bring to audiences if they want to stay open. They can’t buy crap just to fill space – oh wait, they can and it’s called reality tv, but that can’t get made either – so there’s going to be more appetite for quality finished product. And there’s a lot of stuff in the can that was about to premiere at festivals. Let’s hope this helps them all find a home. But this will only work if people aren’t precious and don’t wait on releasing their films for too long – because (Again as Brody also says), a lot of creativity is gonna come out of these folks stuck in their homes, and it will take all of the attention away from everything/one else that waits for things to return to normal. These are by no means comprehensive thoughts on what we should do in response to this crisis, but just a few I had this week. Love to hear other ideas from anyone who cares to share them with me - I'm easy to find.

Stay safe out there – in your homes.

Stuff I'm Reading

Film

Studios start Streaming; closing windows - Well, that didn't take long. As I predicted back on Feb 28th, the studios are already closing windows and putting many films up on streaming fast, or from the start. Universal was first among the big guns. More will follow. The NYT was among many to have the story. Vulture had a good rundown too. FastCo said, go faster. 

Will CoronaVirus and Streaming be the Death of Theaters? - Some, like The Atlantic, predict this will mean the end of theaters. IndieWire thinks it just gives the studios more leverage (yes). But it won't - debt might do them in, but people will flock back when they can get out again. That said, windows won't go back to 90 days for most films, only those that are major popcorn flicks or that need sustained word of mouth.

Maybe the Film Industry is well positioned to bounce back -that's what Jim Amos of Forbes thinks - saying that IF (big if) the panic lessens by the end of Summer, we'll have a ton of product ready for screens, and a population ready to get out of the house already. It's that IF that scares me.

Lessons for the Industry from the 1918 Pandemic - Richard Brody at the New Yorker has what may be the best take on how to think about the impact of coronavirus yet - looking at “History of the American Film Industry,” by Benjamin P. Hampton (1931) he finds that the entire industry changed as a result of the flu, and the war, and only fast moving folks survived. Hampton notes (quoted by Brody): "The producers who hesitated lost ground in the struggle that was shaping its lines for the final test of industrial survival, and those who disregarded common business prudence and rushed ahead on a showman’s hunch saved their skins.” Lots of great thoughts here.

Nielsen released a report on the increase in viewing due to past crises in the US and the coronavirus in South Korea and Italy - and guess what? It goes up. The study shows close to 50% increases in viewing during past crises such as Hurricane Harvey, and around 17% in South Korea recently and 6.5% in Italy. Me: To be expected, but as the rec/depr-ession hits soon, we will likely see the viewership switch to the SVODs specifically, and more cord cutting from cable as people cut back on what bills they pay. What's a Doc Filmmaker to Do when fests get cancelled? The D-Word has the debate going on now. If you aren't a member of D-Word, you must join, but it's free and worth joining for many reasons. Right now, they are debating, discussing and solution-izing around how to handle covid-19, on the thread - How do we adapt? They might just figure it out.

Filmmakers Try to Figure out what to do when every Festival Cancels - NoFilmSchool talks with several filmmakers - including the director of a film I produced (Cas Nozkowski of The Outside Story), and two who are clients (David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg of We are As Gods) to figure out what people do next.

Need an update on Fest reschedule dates/cancellations, online versions? - The FilmFestival Database has you covered. In his new newsletter, Mike Forstein explains how he has updated his database with new dates, cancellations, etc. I have a feeling this is going to go more haywire than anyone thinks, but it's a good resource (still) for now. (That's a still from his newsletter/database at the top of mine above). And if you need another list - this one from the FreeTheWork folks has a list of all of the rescheduled fests, as well as which ones are still taking place online.

What are all these theater employees gonna do to make ends meet? Well, some folks started a fundraiser to at least try to get every movie theater worker in NYC a check for $600 bucks. That's a start. Contribute to the Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund here. H/t to Dear Producer which is a great newsletter which led me to this link, and that same link has other resources for artists in need during this crisis.

MoviesAnywhere's new ScreenPass let's users share films with friends - from your "digital locker." Up to three users for 72 hrs. Via the Verge. Reminder - if you pay for it, you should own it and be able to do whatever the f-k you want to do with it. This "sounds great" idea is more copyright-overreach-rubbish.

Why are users flocking to Contagion films now? (and why curation might not be a great idea right now - The Guardian's Charles Bramesco reports on how viewers are doing some exposure therapy. But more importantly for everyone curating lists of what to watch at home, he has a great point: "But I’d contend that there’s a faint futility to analyzing apocalypse viewing of any sort, because when something occupies as much mental real estate as the widespread panic of Covid-19, everything becomes apocalypse viewing. If it’s impossible not to spend every waking hour obsessing over the precarious state of the public’s health, it’s likewise impossible not to project those anxieties on to anything one might choose to watch." and ends with this, which I agree with completely: " It’s starting to seem like the only real therapy is the detached, unplugged, attention-commanding simplicity of chopping vegetables."

Branded Content

Trust is the Only Metric that Matters - Digiday has an interview with Attention Capital's Joe Marchese (pre-corona) where he brings up the importance of smart curation in a world that increasingly needs trust - "In this world where trust is eroding, the curator brands kind of become king. And I think the great example of this is Wirecutter." More brands should keep this in mind. 

That's the only branded content link this week because, well, there isn't much happening in the space. Brands are figuring out how to respond to this crisis. Content should be part of that, but it understandably isn't when people are tying to figure out how to care for their employees and their customers. More in this space soon.

MISC

Reporters without Borders is putting censored journalism in the library of Minecraft - File under brilliant. FastCo reports on a project to help people in countries anywhere, even with censorship, to get access to censored journalism.  A shot from their article:

TikTok is censoring ugly and poor folks - The Intercept reports on more vile social media behavior. 

Posted on 19th Mar

Coronavirus & the Industry

This is still developing, and no one - myself included - has their heads wrapped around what happens next, but I don't know how not to start this newsletter with a coronavirus update - it's all anyone can talk about. And it's impact is big for everyone, so I am not trying to minimize the bigger picture by focusing on how it's gonna change the film industry.

Everyone knows that SXSW cancelled, and left many films wondering what happens next, while 50+ people were laid off. Someone started a GofundMe page for service workers in Austin, which isn't a half-bad idea. SXSW announced they didn't have insurance, and then we learned that not only does Cannes not have insurance for cancellations by virus, but that they recently turned down an opportunity to buy it at a cost of just 6% of their premium. Talk about hubris. And crazy...although as I'm about to press send, Cannes tells Le Figarothey might cancel if things get worse. (they will).

Meanwhile, Stage32 announced that they'd be screening SXSW films on their platform for buyers, agents and other industry. IndieWire and a few other outlets announced they'd cover films from SXSW as if they had played (as long as the producers are ok with that). But everyone I know is arguing whether this makes sense, given that most press care about premiere status and word of mouth. And while we all know buyers can honestly form an opinion with a Vimeo link, how do you get their attention away from a festival?  I know that at least one VR company was known to be contacting festivals, offering that they could hold virtual events in their space(s), but while Forbes thinks this can work for conferences and events, Wired just reported that using VR as a replacement for the real world, isn't working out so well, and I don't know anyone who would sell their film to buyers or the public this way (which is in itself an indictment of the technology).

Numerous other Spring festivals keep saying they'll take place, but most people in the industry that I know are counting them all out. As I write this, Cleveland Film Fest and Full Frame both cancelled. I imagine 5-10 more will follow suit before I press send. Especially the bigger ones that draw not just crowds, but lots of travelers and red carpet press lines (guess who...).

My two cents: This is gonna get worse way before it gets better. Anything of consequence will cancel. There might be a Summer lull, as happens with many viruses, but then it will hit again this Fall, meaning filmmakers and industry can't count on NYFF, Toronto, Telluride, etc. Everyone is busy guessing what happens to the films that just lost their chance at SXSW, but what happens to the thousands of films about to be hit from cancellations from every other major fest, possibly through the end of the year? Will Sundance take place in January of '21 - can they get insurance when we don't have a handle on when we might get more masks much less a vaccine? Will SXSW get a bailout from the State of Texas (Utah helped Sundance back during the recession), or try to come back by "pulling on their bootstraps?" What happens to production on all the films trying to get cast to show up during a pandemic? What happens to your financing when the stock market goes down 20%+ and your investors get nervous? And how about your insurance for that shoot? And in my branded content world - How many brands are going to stick with long-form (and time consuming) bets when sure things like commercials are an easy fall-back?

And guess what folks - this is part of a new normal. As I mentioned two weeks ago here, fundamental business practices are going to get rearranged and it's going to be terrifying and interesting to watch. This is not being alarmist, just stating the facts; and I'm thinking we should plan for these things instead of hoping they don't come to pass.

Wash your hands. Don't touch your face, and don't even think about what happens next in the film world.

Will Packer, "Hollywood Underdog" as Indie Producer role-model.

Will Packer is the Hardest Working Man in the Biz - and he's finally getting some more attention from the indie world too - IndieWire has a great interview with super-producer Will Packer, and I highly recommend it to anyone making films, wanting to make films, or wanting to know how real producers do their work. I am biased as can be here - Will and I went to high school together in St. Pete, Florida and both played football (I sucked, he was better at that too!) - he was two years behind me, so we weren't the best of friends or anything, but this bonded us when we reconnected years later in Atlanta, where he joined the board of the Atlanta Film Festival, which I ran at the time.

I'll never forget sitting in a meeting of people in Atlanta who, at that time, were trying to get a tax incentive passed (wildly successful now) and Will stood up and said, "I have a film in theaters today that has the highest per-screen average in America, yet no one here is taking us seriously." That film was Trois, and he marketed it so well that Sony ended up hiring his company to market and distribute the films they bought from him later. His early films are case studies in how to market indie films to a "niche" (scare quotes because the audience was huge), underserved audience. And he still does this today, telling IndieWire, "I’m also involved with the distribution, the marketing. If I pitched it, if I oversaw the production and got it made, how can I then just turn it over to people and then say, “All right, now you go sell it.” Amen - and I wish every producer said that.

He worked his way up to being one of the most successful (if not award winning) producers in Hollywood, and as he explains to IndieWire, it took forever for the industry to pay attention. Well, they pay attention now. What's his formula for success? Another quote that I wish I heard from every producer: "It is: What is the audience, where are they, what are they into, what would resonate with them, what’s the marketing? Then I do a cost-benefit analysis, because if I think the audience that I could realistically reach is not worth the effort it would take to reach them, I probably won’t do that project." (emphasis added).  Read the interview and follow his lead.

While Will would admit his films are very commercial, he is the epitome of indie producer and it's mind-boggling to me that he isn't on the board of more indie film organizations today.

Stuff I'm Reading

More Film News

AMC Theaters has hired a new chief of strategy, to help negotiate with SVOD players, among other things. Deadline reports, on what is probably a case of a good idea, way too late.

Roku is among the entities that could be helped by coronavirus, reports InvestorPlace, and we'll see plenty of these articles as people stay home and switch completely to in-home. As I asked two weeks ago, will they ever come back?

AT&T back to its old tricks with streaming - According to Vice they are burying fees, doubling prices after low starter fees, and all the other great things that made us hate cable in the first place. Remember, people didn't just hate the bundle, they hated getting screwed.

A new site gives you every streaming service, but on one condition: you have to watch they are watching - Buzzfeed and the Verge break down how this demonstrates what we've always known -  a broken streaming model encourages piracy. 

Check out this film by Justin McConnel which breaks down the life of an Indie Filmmaker - From Nofilmschool. I haven't seen the full film, but people say it's what you should learn about in film school, all in one little film. The trailer makes it seem pretty informative.

Branded Content

Posted on 12th Mar

Sub-Genre At the Movies

I have to interrupt the normal newsletter flow for some self-promotion this week. I'm super proud to announce that a film I produced (along with Frank Hall Green and Joseph Stephans) - The Outside Story, directed by Casimir Nozkowski - premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. This one is a true indie, with no brands involved, and I can't wait for my friends and colleagues to see the premiere. The cast - partially listed on the graphic above - is amazing, especially Brian Tyree Henry. Stay tuned on our FB page for updates, but here's the synopsis:

After many acclaimed supporting roles, Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Eternals) takes on his first big screen lead character as Charles Young, an introverted video editor, trying to recover from a broken heart. Perceiving a betrayal of trust as a sign his girlfriend Isha (Sonequa Martin-Green, Star Trek: Discovery) is leaving him, Charles pre-emptively blows up his relationship and sequesters himself at home. The fates do not comply and Charles accidentally locks himself out of his apartment. Stumbling into a life-changing odyssey exploring his building and opening himself up to his community, Charles meets a world of previously avoided neighbors played by Asia Kate Dillon (John Wick 3, Billions), Sunita Mani (GLOW, Mr. Robot, Madeline’s Madeline) Olivia Edward (Better Things) Maria Dizzia (Orange is the New Black) and Michael Cyril Creighton (Spotlight) among others. In a nearly real-time experience, Charles is forced to re-evaluate his choices when he sees his life in parallel with the people around him. From his recently widowed neighbor next door, to the curious swingers upstairs, to the piano prodigy hiding out on the roof, Charles moves from one neck-snapping tableau to the next, disrupting and being disrupted in the process. With no shoes, no money, a phone running low and the stars aligned to keep him physically separated from his comfort zone, Charles discovers in The Outside Story we’ve all got issues and it never helps to keep them locked up inside.

I'm also excited to announce a few other client projects premiering soon - and there's more to come with about 12 client films premiering this Spring/Summer (!) - which I'll list once the fests announce their schedules. 

Also at Tribeca, is FRIES! from Zero Point Zero productions and director Michael Steed. As I've been telling folks, this one is going to change the world one fry at a time! Ok, it's just fun, and informative, and a crowd-pleaser. But it's been a pleasure to work with ZPZ, who joined Chrissy Teigen, Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Ripert, Sir Kensington's and others on this fun film.

And launching at CPH:DOX is Project Debater - a film by Epic Magazine's Josh Davis and Harry Spitzer, about an AI developed by IBM that can debate a human. This one will premiere with a live debate between a champion debater featured in the film, and the AI - augmented with power from the intelligence of the audience! Click here for more info. 

SXSW also premieres ZPZ's Radical Love - a great short about Michael and Eleanora Kennedy, a husband-wife legal team who represented a who’s who of the politically subversive class in the 1960s and 70s. I didn't work on this last one, but have been following it while ZPZ has been a client, and it's a must-see project.

Back to my rants on the week's news next week. For now, mark these films on your calendars/queues and please help spread the word.

Stuff I'm Reading

Posted on 12th Mar

Closing the windows in response to Coronavirus

With Coronavirus in the news and hitting the stock market, I've received many newsletters and updates on how it might impact the film business. Here's a straightforward and pretty decent one from the Arthouse Convergence about how to stay prepared as a theater owner, for example, and here's Variety reporting on how Netflix (and similar companies) might benefit from people staying home and watching television. But I'll make a bigger bet - if we see a serious quarantine from the coronavirus pandemic, we might see an irreversible impact on film windowing practices, as film companies see the benefits of marketing directly for home viewing and don't turn back.

Let me be clear- I don't want anyone to get sick, and I don't want anyone's business or their employees to be impacted by a pandemic! But when the shit hits the fan, a lot can happen, and not all of it will be expected. What happens if US (or French...) audiences suddenly can't go out of their homes for three months? All the talk about postponing films for a bit becomes secondary to - hey, why don't we launch a few of these titles direct to consumer - conveniently, on these SVOD/AVOD platforms we've been developing and that we own - and see what works? And guess what, most of it will work, because very few films really demand to be seen on the big screen (in general and to most consumers). And then the bosses, who have been careful not to alienate their theatrical partners, start looking at their dismal stock prices and relatively decent returns from direct to consumer, and decide that's where they should put more of their investments. And then it becomes a cycle - it works for smaller or specialized projects, then it works for something bigger, and then... why go back to the old ways of doing things once coronavirus has been solved? 

It will only take a few months for this unplanned experiment to make a difference in a business that's already changing. Yes, once we can all go outdoors again, everyone will rush to theaters (and that box office boost will be significant), but that will be for the popcorn blockbusters that will always work in theaters anyways. The rest of the business might well shift completely to the home. It could be a very bad time for theaters and theatrical based businesses - which are already having a rough Q1, and might not be able to hold on through a sustained quarantine. I also hate to say it, but Jeffrey Katzenberg could not be happier with the timing for Quibi, either. 

In the meantime - stay healthy everyone.

Stuff I'm Reading

Film

11 Million Americans Used Streaming Services Illicitly Last Year - A surprisingly well written article by Variety on password sharing, which doesn't argue that it's the same as piracy, and instead shows that education will work better than penalization- "Stricter enforcement would likely lead to some conversion to new accounts, but most would revert to ad-supported (i.e. free) options — in other words, attempts to penalize violators largely would be counterproductive;"

Amazon and Netflix to speak at Cannes Lions 2020- But they aren't moving into advertising, they say...

Studio Ghibli has made a ton of anime music available for streaming - and that's a nice gift!

Staples is opening podcast studios in six Boston stores- You know Podcasting has gone mainstream when Staples announces they have podcasting studios for rent - according to Endgadget, they are offering cheap studios and equipment to record your podcast.

It's a short newsletter this week, maybe that's better?

Posted on 12th Mar

Brand(ish) Film @ the Oscars

Quick Lessons from Hair Love – the brand funded film at the Oscars Everyone in the branded content world has been going gaga over a brand-funded film winning at the Oscars – where Hair Love, by Matthew Cherry won for Animated Short film, after a successful Kickstarter campaign and financial and marketing support from Dove, a unit of Unilever (full disclosure, a client, but not for this). While the film was not traditional branded content, it still marks a milestone, and has a few lessons for those of us working in this space (or wanting to work in it).

1. Most importantly – the film didn’t start with the Brand. No one at Dove went to the filmmaker with an RFP, hoping to make something that looked good for their brand. Instead, as AdAge explained awhile ago, Dove learned about the film after the Kickstarter began: “"In the middle of the Kickstarter campaign, they reached out and were one of the few companies that really got it," (emphasis mine) he says. The brand donated some money for the production but had no requirements with regard to product placement. "That was the thing that was so great," he says. "They just really wanted to support from the beginning, and the only thing we had to do really was the shout-out in the end credits."  Lesson: There’s enough creativity in the world, and it’s likely not coming from within your brand, or your agency (sorry). Smart brands will look for projects that would exist even without their support. Be open to smart pitches that fit your brand message/goals, but that don’t come from an RFP.
2. Trust your filmmakers – work with good talent, and stay out of the way. Dove didn’t give notes, and they didn’t have input into the film. Lesson: let the creatives be creative, and trust their work.
3. Diversity. The film comes from diverse filmmakers – who come from the community they plan to represent – and the subject and causes around the film are important to that community. Lesson: find stories that are coming genuinely from diverse, under-represented communities. There are audiences for these stories, and they will notice who is paying attention to their stories.
4. Cause Based. As Jordan Kelley of BrandStorytelling explains: “(Dove) put forward capital to help put the spot directly on an entirely different issue: The Crown Act. Dove financially supported the attendance and wardrobe of High School Senior DeAndre Arnold, who attended the Oscars as a guest of the film's creators to bring awareness to hair discrimination experienced by people of color in schools and the workplace across the country. Arnold's attendance combined with ample speaking opportunities with reporters and audiences gave the creators a platform to speak and spread awareness on the issue in a meaningful way. The Crown Act will ban discrimination based on hair textures and styles commonly associated with race.” Lesson: Have a cause, that genuinely resonates with your brand, and don’t just make a movie about it – stand behind that cause and use your marketing to bring attention to the cause, as much as you do towards the movie.
5. Stay Back – As mentioned above – Dove is only in the end credits, and they’ve been remarkably, smartly tame in their associated marketing campaign. There is no product placement, and they’ve concentrated their energies on helping the film do outreach screenings around the cause – having a Dove “self-esteem expert” join the filmmakers at Q&A’s. Lesson: less is more. Brand affiliation is better than product placement or overly loud marketing.
6. Tap into sticky trends – Filmmaker Matthew Cherry was inspired by viral videos he saw on YouTube about African-American dads helping their daughters with their hair. Less mentioned, there’s an entire history of films about African-American hair that shows a market for these stories (many well before Chris Rock made his, such as Ayoka Chenzira's influential (and amazing) Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy-Headed People) . And the Kickstarter campaign was going viral even before Dove got involved, and was one of the most successful shorts on the platform. Lesson: where there’s smoke…
7. Distribution – Importantly, the film had distribution locked in from Sony, which came about from producer Karen Rupert Toliver, a longtime animation studio executive (Rio, Ice Age) who worked for Sony Animation, and while this was a side-project, that definitely helped them secure distribution. The film played before Angry Birds 2, in theaters, before it went online. This was partly to qualify for the Oscars, but also to build buzz with audiences. Lesson: work with distribution pros, and don’t rely on your YouTube channel alone. In fact, focus on projects that can get real distribution, add your marketing power, and you’ll see success.

These are just a few quick take-aways from Hair Love’s win. While they are all simple, too few brands are following the practices that made this a success for the brand, and more should. Back in 2014, when I helped Patagonia bring DamNation to theaters, Adweek asked if a brand film would ever win the Oscars. Now, just six years later, we’ve seen it’s possible. Funny enough, most of the lessons above (except diversity) applied back then as well, as AdWeek pointed out in that article: “ DamNation bears minimal branding, and its directors were also granted final cut. After completing a short theatrical run to qualify for the Academy Awards, DamNation was released online. It will also be available on Netflix. "We're here to solve environmental problems," said Joy Howard, (ex-)vp, marketing at Patagonia. "If we can show that, then people process what we're about, become loyal and commit to the brand." (all emphasis mine) The lessons remain the same – and if more brands follow them, we’ll see more brand-supported films at the Oscars in the future.

Stuff I'm Reading

Conde Nast is establishing a network of film/tv studios - according to The Drum, their major brands - New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Wired and GQ will each launch their own respective studios as the publications aim to become digital and video-first.

Instagram Influencer Marketing Is Already A Nightmare. Political Ads Will Make It A Shitshow. Reports BuzzFeed - amen to every word of this smart report, and shame on the FTC and FEC who have no plans or clue on how to help the average user distinguish ads from reality.

New Tech 

Posted on 12th Mar

Sundance and BrandStorytelling quick takes.

Park City in January. Again. This was my 21st year attending Sundance/Slamdance, so I was old enough to drink...damn that Dry-January though! And for the past several years, I've also been attending Brand Storytelling, up in Deer Valley, which has become a must-attend event for those who dabble in anything to do with brands and content. Many in the industry complain about attending Sundance each year, or express joy when they can skip it, but I consider it a privilege to be so lucky as to be able to work in an industry that allows me to attend, even if it can be ridiculous at times. Anyway, here's my quick takeaway's (QuiTa's in Quibi speak) from Park City 2020 (no film reviews here, as I didn't see enough films to comment):

1. Buyers had money to spend, and they did. New records were set for sales (by .69 cents), and lots of folks seemed to be overpaying for films. IndieWire has a good break-down of all the sales, and this link has all their reviews and news. We won't see the real results til after the fest, and when things hit the market, but all signs were positive.

2. And a lot of deals were hybrids- look into the deals and you see a lot of shared buys - Neon with Hulu for that extra $.69 being the most famous. But smart buyers were combining forces to give the best offers, a real theatrical, an SVOD home and likely awards runs (and to deepen the buyer's pockets).

3. Talk on the town, however, was that it was a slow Sundance - in attendance and things worth buying. On the one hand, I'd point out that people say this every year, but...this was the first year that I rode on an empty bus, and I was able to get into two P&I screenings at the last second with no line, and plenty of room (very rare).

4. Change is everywhere. Cooper - the head of the fest - had his last full programming year, and rumors are out of a very smart pick for his replacement. Anne Lai left Sundance to take over San Francisco (which has more changes to be announced soon, I hear). Kamal Sinclair leaves New Frontier for the Guild of Future Architects. These are just a few of the many changes announced or known, and I'm sure I'm forgetting more important ones.

5. Quibi and Ficto made a splash. Quibi's was bigger because they have more money. Ficto made a splash with...MarTech Advisor, apparently. Actually, Ficto held an upfront at BrandStorytelling, and their tech looked more interesting to play with than Quibi's in spite of the budget differences. But my money still says both will be bought by some conglomerate within a year or two, maybe as an acquihire, and definitely with rebranding.

6. Brand Storytelling launched their inaugural Honor Roll this year, and while I am biased with one being a client and others being acquaintances, I'd say they did pick the best in the business for their first group. Take note that three of them are actively funding feature length films (at least), and all are committing serious resources towards authentic content that matters - they aren't dipping their toes. A lot to learn from this group. 

7. Brands and content are reaching a maturity and inflection point  - more on this soon, but the conversation behind the scenes at Brand Storytelling and in talks with clients took an interesting turn. On the one hand, more brands are making content, filmmakers seem more open to working with brands (but are decidedly unsure of how much they trust most brands), the platforms were openly courting brands, and studios were looking for branded content deals, and I didn't get shocked looks whenever I mentioned what I do for a living to people on Main Street. On the other hand, one can sense a lot of frustration as well - some brands are "content" to make "branded content" and others are decidedly making Films (capital F). Many want to see bigger ideas, step outside the mold and explore new models. Others are frustrated with the distribution options being presented (and the way festivals work), and still others are thinking even bigger - into systemic change. I've got to think on this some more, but the shift in thinking amongst my friends in this space and newcomers I met was noticeable.

8. This was a #metoo festival. Not only did we have people reacting to Weinstein in real-time, but we also had the backlash to the reaction, and then there was The Assistant in the program, and of course, the Russel Simmons doc-debacle (reports were very positive, and most reiterated the film's importance to the discussion). There was more, but that's enough to report on now.

9. Friends who know me, know that I swim laps most mornings - outdoors mind you (ok, it's a heated pool) - before meetings and/or films. And this year, they helped point me to VR in a pool, which quickly made my must-do list. That's right, among the many New Frontier offerings was a VR experience where you wore waterproof VR goggles, a snorkel, hopefully a bathing suit (they bought 600 apparently, just in case you didn't have one) and were tethered to a weight so you wouldn't float into a wall and split your head open. Then you experienced a trip to outer space while approximating weightlessness while floating in the Sheraton's pool.

The system was built by BallastVR, who makes the set-up available for swim-parks as an (apparently) strong revenue generator, that also includes a system for viewing content while going down a water-slide, or holding onto a wall-mounted, haptic and bubble-blowing system for added effect.

The Sundance-version didn't have the water-slide or the bubbles, but it was cool. I find most VR to be decidedly less interesting than the hype, and that was the case here to some extent. I didn't think I was going to outer-space at any point, and the graphics remain pretty basic. But this was the first time, out of many experiences, where my senses and my brain got pretty scrambled - when the images rushed forward to simulate landing, I felt like I was sinking, and when we blasted off again, I felt like I was floating upwards. It was hard to stay still when you wanted to dive into a scene, or float/turn to see a different view. And if I wasn't tethered, I definitely would have gone spinning into a wall. You could just start to see the possibilities. On the other hand, given the water-park reality of their business model, it also makes you wonder if this stuff will ever rise above novelty theme park rides, or educational uses. I also continue to wonder why film fests think this is their future, and why VR practitioners don't create a better exhibition format. but that's another column.

10. I guess I should have ten take-aways to make this a proper list, right? But most of what you learn from Sundance comes in the weeks after the fest, when the dust settles and we can look back and make sense of it all. And there's technically still a few days left for a bunch of people still out there, waiting to see who wins. So I'll hold those take-aways for a future newsletter, and just say that Park City remains the place to be in January for all things film and branded content, and what it all might become.

Stuff I'm Reading

Film

Why the New York Times Is Getting Into the Documentary Films Business  - the NYT was out in force at Sundance, talking up their "new" doc film business, holding parties, pitching to brands (while saying they won't work with them at the same time), and premiering some films. Odd that they are calling this a new side of the business when I helped them launch their "first" non-Op-Docs documentary film back in 2016. But glad to see them expand what they're doing. Variety reports.

‘Upstream Color’ Director Shane Carruth Says He’s Done With The Film Industry After His Next Project: And the film world groans as another auteur gives up on the business/artform. I'm a fan of everything Shane does and hate to see him go, but maybe this is just another Soderbergh semi-retirement?

Care about Impact? Well, Media Impact Funders just published a report for media funders - Decoding Media Impact, which you can get for free on their website. And over at PictureMotion, they published their year-end Impact Report, where they cover their 40 impact campaigns - which is a good place to look for lessons learned and hints for your own projects. That's a screenshot of their report above.

Streaming

Netflix's Data Reveals are as important for what they don't say, as what they do - according to a great analysis from Entertainment Strategy Guy. The devil's in the details of their public statements, and the ESG breaks it all down.

Could Netflix or Apple buy MGM? Maybe, says SlashFilm: "Netflix and Apple have already had preliminary talks about purchasing MGM, which isn’t just a content library, but an entire studio and entertainment company. They’ve produced hit shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, and they also own the cable channel Epix. So an acquisition by any of the streaming companies out there that can afford MGM would be a hefty purchase, and the fact that this is more than a library acquisition could end up keeping Netflix from following through, since they’ve never made a purchase like that before. Apple hasn’t made a purchase like that either, with their largest deal ever being the $3 billion purchase of Beats by Dre in 2014."

Netflix will nearly double the number of French Language Originals - as Europe starts to enforce rules dictating that 30% of your spend on content must be produced in the region, Netflix is increasing its local hubs. Not to belittle regulation, but Netflix is also finding that locals like local content. That's why you're seeing more productions not just in France, but in Germany, Italy, Mexico City, Colombia, England, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Consumers are spending more time on TikTok now than Amazon Prime - according to AdAge, proving once again that folks have plenty of fun stuff to watch - not being made by Hollywood either - and don't need Quibi.

Branded Content

TikTok is full of Sephora and Chipotle employees spilling secrets. That can get complicated. Vox breaks-down the trend of employees becoming unofficial ambassadors on TikTok - sometimes to great success (when they create an unofficial and wildly popular TikTok drink at Starbucks) and sometimes to their chagrin (when a Panera employee discloses to 75M+ that the mac & cheese is frozen). Chipotle seems to be doing it well. Here's an example of popular creator and former Chipotle employee Zahra, username @Muslimthicc, who "gushes about how to make the perfect burrito bowl."

Gaming/VR/AR/AI/Social

What's the carbon footprint of AI, streaming, gaming, and cloud storage? Combined? Wired takes a look at part of this equation in AI Can Do Great Things, if it doesn't burn the Planet. - I've been meaning to write an article about this lately, and need to do some more research, but Wired's article points out how a recent AI experiment used as much energy as the "output of three nuclear power plants for an hour." As we move our entire lives to the cloud, and shift from theaters and DVDs to streaming, how much more power will we consume? 

Wired reports: "The Department of Energy estimates that data centers account for about 2 percent of total US electricity usage. Worldwide, data centers consume about 200 terawatt hours of power per year—more than some countries. And the forecast is for significant growth over the next decade, with some predicting that by 2030, computing and communications technology will consume between 8 percent and 20 percent of the world’s electricity, with data centers accounting for a third of that."

More on this soon, but my vision for the future - AI/robots realize quickly that the carbon footprint needed to keep growing will kill humanity, and that's a small price for them to pay for more power...and that's the end of us.

Disney’s Myth: A Frozen Tale should be a case study for anyone filmmaking in VR: For Disney Animation studios, the trick is maintaining the relationship between interactivity and cinematic, "...we make cinema, we make films and we wanted to make sure it felt like that.” - Producer Nicholas Russel.

Instagrammers rejoice: A face filter for your clothes is here - There's a new AR t-shirt and app that lets you switch filters and see a different design/graphic any time you'd like. Nice future of fashion idea, that once again should be hacked, so I can replace logos in my feed with better art.

Posted on 4th Feb

Curation Needed

What did you watch over the Holidays/New Year? I spent the Holidays and New Year taking some time off from work, and almost completely off my phone/social media, and used the time to watch a lot of movies and read even more books. Just before I left the online world behind (save streaming), I wrote my predictions for 2020, but I left off one because I doubted it would come true. That prediction was, without editing: We may finally get some help in finding what we want to watch – We’ve reached information/content overload when it comes time to find something to watch on SVOD, AVOD or our millions of other options, including in theaters. Not only can I no longer remember what films I need to see, I can’t even remember which services host my favorite shows any longer. Way back in 2012, I started a company called Flicklist, with Ted Hope, that hoped to solve this problem (we failed, long story). We weren’t the first – Letterboxd and GoWatchIt launched in 2011 – and many similar services have launched over the years (iGems.TV and ReelGood, among the better ones). None have really been successful, or even solved all of the problems around discovery and remembrance of films – but just this month (ed: Dec, 2019), JustWatch acquired GoWatchIt, and reports are that the combined company will keep improving its services. I can’t predict whether they will finally build the universal film/show search engine we need, but I do hope that someone will finally build what we need in 2020. 

After writing that prediction, and then removing it from my final list, I read this article from Vulture, saying that The Next Streaming Trend is Human Curation. The article reports on the emerging trend of platforms using human curation instead of algorithms, including things like the new HBOMax "Recommended by Humans" interface, seen here and reported on via The Verge back in October, 2019. Or the new Netflix “Collections” beta, and the Comcast Xfinity system of using editors who recommend content, based on thematic areas like kid’s content, LGBTQ+ content, etc. I’d say kudos, it's about time, but when I look at all of these options, I can’t help but be reminded of the old Apple Ping curation system for music. That was a big fail - so much so that I could barely find anything about it online, but here you go, just in case you don't remember it. Every time a platform has tried to use human curation it has pretty much failed, and mainly because all of these systems are trying to get me to watch/listen to things based on celebrities or editors I don’t know, or people I have no reason to trust. Or worse, they try to build an algorithm based on your mood - this is the worst idea ever, and everyone keeps trying it, but it will never work (if you are sad, do you want a sad film, or a happy one?)

With Flicklist, we hoped to solve this problem by letting you follow the recommendations of people you trusted – which could be your friends, or a festival programmer, or a critic. You could even get specific, and say that you trust Joe for recommendations on Italian horror films, but that you trust Jane for American low-budget comedies – because often your friend’s tastes are specific and are only worthwhile for a few things. But like I said – that project failed. Anyway, throughout the holidays, I definitely could have used some kind of system. Sure, I had old-fashioned word-of-mouth, but I always suspect I’m forgetting the best recommendations, or the most relevant ones for right now. I wanted to know what new shows/films my friends were watching. The ones that hadn’t become trends yet. And I needed a queue that combined all of these items in one place – like I said, I can’t remember which show is where anymore. This system still doesn’t exist. My hope is that someone will build it in 2020, but until then, email me and let me know what you’d recommend. Nothing else seems to work.

Stuff I'm Reading

Film Correction/Hidden Life Disney Update – Last post, I linked a Twitter debate from Matt Zoller Seitz claiming that Fox was holding back HIDDEN LIFE from some theaters. Since that time, some in-the-know/trusted theater folks tell me the post was mistaken – one tells me “that Disney has taken a "hands-off" attitude towards Fox Searchlight, and no specialized exhibitor seems to be complaining. How is going to 100 theaters week two of the release of HIDDEN LIFE in 50 cities and playing more indies than usual by them constitute limiting its release? It will expand further in early January.  And terms are fair.”  Let’s hope this remains the case for future titles. Apologies for running that item without looking into it further as well.

Within days of my M&A predictions for 2020, Cohen Media Group acquired the UK's Curzon Cinemas and Artificial Eye. According to Deadline, and I expect we'll see more activity from Cohen in 2020. Although... I had expected the near opposite to happen and was watching Curzon to expand here, but we'll see more mergers soon.

Oscar-Shortlisted Syrian Filmmaker denied US Visa - Feras Fayyad, director of The Cave, which is shortlisted for the Oscar this year, and who was nominated last year for Last Men in Aleppo,can't get a visa to visit the US to promote his film for The Oscars, and the many other awards for which it is nominated. The film is a pretty searing rebuke of the inaction of not just the US, but the entire world, when it comes to Syria, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised, but WTF?! Learn more about the making of the film here, in Variety, and read the International Documentary Association's letter to Pompeo on behalf of Fayyad here, and add your name to the letter/petition as well.

Roku now makes more from streaming advertisements than TV or hardware - according to Scott Rosenberg, a senior vice president and general manager of Roku’s platform business in Cord-Cutters News. "In the long run, the total addressable market for streaming video is all TV money, period,”  (OTT) streaming “lets advertisers do things that they’ve gotten used to in digital but which hasn’t been possible on TV,” such as individually targeting consumers based on user-specific data."

Women are doing better – or the same, or worse – behind the camera, according to two conflicting studies that came out this week. The NYT has the news, with ten percent of the top grossing film’s having women directors, but the rival study “found that women in key behind-the-scenes jobs were outnumbered four to one by men. That figure remained unchanged from 2018.” Either way, the numbers aren’t strong enough, and I bet they’re worse for branded content and advertising. How do Media Buyers View AVOD players? AVOD players are rising as SVOD bundles get expensive, and most distributors are reporting decent results from the AVOD world (or at least growing). But what about ad buyers? The Drum took a look, and it’s a decidedly mixed bag. Not enough transparency, especially on actual viewer numbers, and that seems to be stunting their growth.

Netflix is counting two minutes view-time in its popularity numbers – According to the LAT, the latest run-down of popular shows/movies from Netflix uses a strange metric – how many people watched at least two minutes of the program. This seems like a pretty suspect metric to me, since I stop watching shows soon after two minutes all the time – because they suck. And if you watch more than 2 minutes, I hope it’s not behind the wheel- as the streaming wars come to a car near you – ZDNet reports on Tesla adding Netflix and others to its in-car theater. You can only watch when parked, and with Wi-Fi for now, but I bet there’s a hack for that soon.

Check out this history of Star Wars and its relationship with Internet forums - or rather how Star Wars has always been at the forefront of internet forums and what it tells us about how we may be consuming culture and media in the future, Buzzfeed covers. 

Branded Content

Need a reminder of the worst brand failures of the decade? Fast Company has a fun little video for you, but I think it's too focused on the recent past.

Note: Slow branded content news-week, as I have been writing an op-ed for next week's BrandStorytelling newsletter. 

Miscellany

Wattpad's Year in Review shows importance of diversity and other key trends: Wattpad, the multiplatform storytelling company released its year in review stats. I think these are worthy of attention for anyone in storytelling - including film and new media - as they show significant trends and likely gaps in what audiences want out of other mediums. In particular: - immigation - stories tagged #Immigrant growing by an astounding 1175% this year. - diversity - In fantasy, reading time for stories tagged #Diversity grew by 125%, while fantasy stories tagged #africanamerican grew by 95%. In sci-fi, reading time for stories tagged #POC grew by 152%, while tags for #Diverse in the same genre grew by  269%! In horror, reading time for #Diversity tags grew by 73%, while #africanamerican grew by 113%. - an 85% increase in stories tagged #Asexual, #Poly, #Polyamorous, #Bisexual, #Demisexual, and #Pansexual - and women in Action - 64% of the top stories tagged #Streetfighter, #Action, and associated genres featured women in lead roles

Syd Mead, legendary futurist died, and you should check out his thoughts on creativity in remembrance: Syd Mead died on December 30^th. Mead was a visual futurist and designer who worked magic on Blade Runner, Tron and Blade Runner 2049. A buddy of mine, Jim Hunter, made this great video tribute to his creativity back in 2010 – 2019: A Future Imagined, and I highly recommend watching it in memory of Syd Mead. How Adversarial Interoperability can break-up big-monopolies and save technology – Ok, that sounds like a mouthful, but adversarial interoperability is pretty simple – it means allowing me to make technology that works with (interoperates) with your technology, even if you don’t want me to. It means that a start-up should be able to make a technology that builds off the backbone of Facebook – even to create a new social network – even if Facebook, or Amazon, or whoever else, doesn’t want them to be able to do this. And it used to be the norm in technology and online. Restoring this ability would go a long way towards fixing many of the problems we have in technology and the future of the internet, mobile and social media. While this may seem wonky, I think it’s worth reading Cory Doctorow’s series for the Electronic Frontier Foundation on this concept, and telling everyone you know to do the same. I first read about this in Fred Wilson’s great AVC blog, and he even recommended that it be required reading for anyone regulating tech, and he’s correct. Spread the word. Oh, and his 10 predictions for the 20’s aren’t bad either. 5G is…underwhelming, according to users in South Korea, and the WSJ – Apparently, first adopters – 59% of South Koreans – aren’t finding much to do with 5G yet. Respondents say it does make for faster downloads and live streaming, but there just aren’t enough uses to keep it on all the time. Experts say the killer apps will come with self-driving cars and smart cities – years away. Keep that in mind as all of the 5G hype articles hit post-CES this year.

Posted on 10th Jan

Ten Predictions for Indie/Arthouse Film

Last week, I ran my predictions for branded content, both here and in a guest post for Brand Storytelling. This week, I’ve got my predictions and wishes for indie/arthouse films in 2020. I say wishes, not just predictions, because as you’ll see below, some of these are clearly more about what I wish, or hope, will happen than what I predict with any certainty. Not that I hope all of my predictions come true either – in fact, I hope I am wrong about the more pessimistic predictions. I’ve been writing predictions for the film world since 2006, and while I haven’t kept a running total, I’ll admit that some of them have been dead-wrong, while more than a few have been pretty accurate, if sometimes off by a year. So I freely admit in advance that I might be wildly wrong. At any rate, here goes:

1. Netflix and Amazon buy less indie/arthouse films at Sundance, and none at any other festival in 2020. The major SVODs will come into Sundance with quite a few titles premiering, but these are films they already bought. As they continue to pour money into originals and series, we’ll see a drastic reduction in acquisitions in 2020.
2. This leads to a significant reduction in pick-ups from other distributors, as they can’t find a well-paying SVOD home for their films. Normally, a pull-back from the bigger buyers would leave some breathing room for the mid-tier and smaller buyers, but unfortunately, they’re having a hard time breaking through the noise at the box office, and in finding a home for these titles in the SVOD world. This will lead to a big reduction in their spending at festivals as well.
3. That said, I do think we’ll see more pre-buys being announced at festivals – fests are becoming less of a market and more of a press and word-of-mouth premiere, where distributors will launch titles they already bought (For less of an advance/MG). At times, it will be hard to tell which were pre-buys and which were discoveries, but count on most being the former. While this has some negative attributes, I think it will be healthy for even the bigger festivals to become less of a market.
4. We see 2-3 distributor closings or mergers as the theatrical and SVOD markets become increasingly hostile to arthouse/indie fare. I predicted this last year, and I was wrong, so maybe I’ll be wrong again. But I keep hearing rumors (from good sources) about companies being for sale, struggling to pay bills, or gently looking for buyers, and I don’t see how the arthouse world avoids the consolidation we’ve seen among the majors.
5. Theatrical/Exhibitor Mergers – Regal’s owner Cineworld just bought Cineplex, becoming the largest exhibitor in North America, and I suspect we’ll see this M&A activity spread to the mid-tier, with some merger or acquisitions between the Alamo Drafthouse chain, Angelika, Bowtie, Laemmle (even though it’s supposedly not for sale anymore), or others. Or perhaps Netflix will make bigger moves in this space, going beyond long-term leases of theaters like the Paris. Or better yet, maybe someone will buy some of these theaters and merge them with some of the distributors mentioned above? I suspect some combinations here.
6. This market turmoil will push film-support organizations, festivals and funders to start seriously looking into more grants and support for distribution, marketing and discovery. I’ve already caught wind of some of these conversations, and hope we see more in 2020. But this remains a “wish” as much as a prediction, because we’ve needed this for quite some time.
7. The #DeColonizeDocs, #DocsSoWhite and Undocumented Filmmakers Coalition movements will spread, and influence narrative films, film festivals and branded content – finally – If you haven’t been following these dialogues, get started, now. Filmmakers, activists and their colleagues are demanding that the film community starts to pay attention to who is telling whose story, how these stories are being funded and presented, and for whom. The most recent addition to this dialogue (to my knowledge) is the Undocumented Filmmakers Coalition’s’ recent open letter to the Producers of Living Undocumented and the Broader Media Industry. I also learned a lot from Abby Sun’s recent Filmmaker Magazine piece on these issues, Self-Reflection in Theater Two, which reflects on how this debate is taking place in film festivals.While I can’t do justice to explaining these movements and their history here, I am glad this conversation is going on, and think word will spread. While the doc “industry” is in the thick of these conversations, I have found that many of my colleagues in the broader industry, as well as my filmmaking and film-going friends and most branded-content makers are completely unaware of these conversations. And the dialogue needs to expand beyond doc into narrative as well – as seen by the debate over Green Book at last year’s Oscars, we still have a need for more dialogue and action.
8. Luckily, more investment will flow into indie/arthouse films, especially for documentary and diversity – The market remains strong and cash needs a place to go, which means we may see some new equity funds supporting this space. I’ve heard rumors of several new funds for social issue documentaries, and imagine we’ll see a lot of investment activity here. This is great for the filmmakers who get the cash, but I also think these investors will soon learn that it’s a small percentage of docs (1%) that make a significant ROI. That said, you know what does show good returns? Diversity on screen (and behind the camera). Macro led the way in this regard, but I expect we’ll see 2-3 more funds focused on diverse cinema in 2020. And the smart money will see good returns here, as audiences are showing their demand for more diverse stories.
9. Filmmakers will find more support for narrative films – from Brands – no surprise here if you know me or my clients, and this is a repeat prediction from my brand predictions last week. We’ve seen a marked increase in brand-funding for film, but mainly in the short-form and documentary space. A few brands have been moving into long form narrative and fiction film, and I think we’ll see a few brands behind hits this coming year. This will cause others to follow their lead, and by late 2020, we may even have some buzz-worthy titles funded by brands premiering at festivals like TIFF.
10. My last prediction is a wish – I wish that 5-10 mid-tier film festivals will create a shared-premiere showcase category for American narrative films not accepted into Sundance that might assist in elevating deserving films to distributor’s and critic’s attention. This is a big one, probably worthy of its own article. But it’s been a topic of conversation with many festival programmers (off the record), producers and filmmakers I know lately. As Scott Macauley mentions in his excellent Filmmaker Magazine article about not getting into Sundance (linked last week): “The very real issue of not getting into one festival, Sundance, is ultimately a proxy for the larger existential issue facing independent film in general: the absence of a viable, self-sustaining marketplace for finished films.” As the same article mentions, the San Francisco Film Fest attempted to form a market/showcase via their Launch program, which led to many of the film’s receiving distribution. But we need something bigger and more coordinated. I wonder – this could be wrong – whether a showcase of great projects, curated by some top festival programmers and with a guaranteed multi-city tour/platform – could entice some buyers to take a risk, or create enough buzz with press to help a DIY distribution scheme? It’s worth trying or debating until something better could be created. I hope some smart minds can come up with some solution if not this one, because we need some other options.

Stuff I'm Reading

Film PBS and POV can now be streamed on YouTube TV - according to FastCompany - or in the PBS press release here, you can now watch POV, PBS Kids and more than 100 member stations on YouTube TV, which is part of their $5 subscription. T'ain't free, but if you don't have good over-the-air access, or have cut the cord, there's now another option for you.

Exclusive Star Wars footage will launch within Fortnite, in the lead-up to this week's release - according to Mobile Marketer, "Disney aims to reach an audience of teenagers and young adults who likely land in the movie's core target demographic. Those age groups are notoriously difficult to target through other advertising on traditional media channels, but "Fortnite" is played by 40% of children ages 10 through 17 every week... and teenage fans spend about 25% of their free time playing the game."

Netflix may not have ads, but it has plenty of branding - In case you missed this well-shared article -  The NYT looks at the prevalence of product placement and brand marketing partnerships at Netflix, which is decidedly not in a hurry to replicate the ad model being used by competitors such as Hulu. Even if people keep saying they'll add advertising soon (they won't). Me: Netflix should not consider ads, as it ruins their value proposition. But they are decidedly less than forward-thinking when it comes to their brand partnerships. As the article mentions, many subscribers are turned-off by the heavy product placement - which to me can be worse than ads - and many brands are turned off by the work involved in making deals. What makes this frustrating is how easy it would be to get this right - Netflix could make money from smart brand partnerships (and it needs another revenue stream, badly), while extending content awareness via smarter marketing partnerships. 

Demystifying Film Delivery - a workshop at Goldcrest post - if you are in NYC or can get here, and think you'll ever sell your film to a distributor/broadcaster/platform - consider taking this class. Because you will get a 46 page list of deliverables and it's one of the worst experiences you can go through as a filmmaker - aside from dealing with agents. Coming up Feb 5th and space is limited, so register now.

Check out this Twitter thread from critic @mattzollerseitz (Roger Ebert, NYMag, Vulture, etc.) on why these mega mergers ultimately hurt consumers and how art cinema is one of its casualties:

VR BigScreen has added Paramount to its VR viewing options - according to Endgadget - joining Netflix, Twitch and others in the virtual world, and lobby, via Oculus Quest, starting this week.

Branded Content

Wy did REI Ditch its Catalog for a Magazine? Poynter has the scoop. Great info here on this micro-trend of brand's publishing magazines, the reasoning behind it, what it means for print journalism and more (disclosure, REI is a client, but I don't work on this project). 

Hulu Rewards Binge Watching with a new ad format - according to The Drum, "When a viewer is about to start their third consecutive episode of a show, a branded message will appear that will "reward" their binging behavior, said Jeremy Helfand, vice-president, head of ad platforms at Hulu. The ad experience presents viewers with either their next episode commercial-free or a personalized offer from a brand. Kellogg’s, Maker’s Mark and Georgia-Pacific are initial launch partners with Hulu and agency Publicis Media." Me: I'd take the ad-free offer, for sure.

Cosmo Launches "You" Watch Parties with Google: Digiday has the scoop on a new tool Cosmo is launching with Google that allows viewers to interact around content. For now. it's a test limited to Cosmo and You on Netflix. "On Dec. 26, the premier of the second season of the Netflix series “You,” Cosmo will direct mobile readers to a new mobile web page called Cosmopolitan Watch Party, where visitors will get a stream of show facts, interactive quizzes and written interviews with the cast and crew at key points, delivered in time with the plot of the show. Viewers have to push play on Netflix and the Watch Party at the same time to get the two to sync up."  Me: I like the participatory nature of the experiment, and think we'll see more of this. But on the negative side - which the article very smartly addresses - this also leads to a lot of potential influence from Google (and other platforms) on the editorial content of their partners. As Nushin Rashidian, the Tow Center for Journalism’s lead research fellow on platforms and publishers says in the article: " (such platforms) tell publishers what content is performing well...and then publishers tend to want to replicate that success through covering similar topics. “Absolutely Google will have an influence in what Cosmo is producing,” Rashidian said."

How to Make Sure Your Branded Content is Actually on Brand - Business 2 Community breaks down several factors to keep in mind when creating branded content, namely: 1.  Choosing the Right Subjects  2. Using your Voice, Tone, and Vision 3. Clarifying your Vision 4. Designing According to your Visual Identifier

Miscellany

In the new magazine department - HiHeyHello  is a much needed new magazine for women, outdoors. Or as the founders put it: "At the intersection of adventure, sport, and creativity; we share stories of the women who are redefining what it means to belong outdoors. We celebrate the makers and the shakers, the activists and the organizers, the elite athletes to the first-timers. We adventure on our own terms. We have fresh ideas and we give a sh*t. Let’s rally together to celebrate the ridges and the valleys, the chapped lips along with the glory, the bruises and the stars in the sky. HiHeyHello is a community for women adventurers." I met co-founder Sierra Domaille when I was doing some work with Keen Footwear, and I know she'll make this a great new endeavor. Sign up/subscribe here. Donate to their Kickstarter here.

News Podcasts and the Opportunities for Publishers - A new study on podcasting asks the question on whether we've reached the total breadth of innovation and can podcasting become a mass market. 

Posted on 19th Dec

Ten Predictions (Hopes) for Branded Content in 2020

I’ve been writing top-ten prediction lists for film and media since 2006 – yes, back when my predictions included the final end of VHS (!) and what Google buying Youtube (Oct. 2006) would mean for indies. Last year’s predictions included Netflix buying a theater (pretty much), more brand studios (yes, again), and that Amazon would buy MoviePass and merge it with Prime (nope). Ok, sometimes I strike out, but my list is as much a wish-list as a prediction, so without further ado, here’s my inaugural Top Ten Predictions (and Hopes) for Branded Content in 2020. This full article is running on the BrandStorytelling Newsletter as a Guest Post - read the full post there. Here's prediction number one:

1. More brand docs will qualify for the Oscars in 2020, and one will make the short list –

Stuff I'm Reading

Film Didn't get into Sundance? Filmmaker Magazine's Scott Macaulay has an OpEd for that, and he's updated it a bit, and it has lots of good advice for surviving the let-down and what to do next.

The Best Undistributed Films of 2019 - Including the Grand Prix winner of SXSW 2019. Indiewire reports on the other issue in indie film - even getting into a festival and winning is still not a guarantee of distribution. Some great films here (and some meh, but hey...).

Netflix's speed-watching trial joins a long history of content cramming, but may be bad for artists and viewers - Speed reading for the new decade. Here's a quote from Woody Allen,  “I was able to go through ‘War and Peace’ in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.” Once again, artists are up in arms, but let's face it -people will watch things how they want to watch them. Heck, I remember speed watching two Kurosawa films at the same time on an old fashioned VHS edit system back in film school when I was on a time crunch for an exam. 

More than Half of 2020’s Sundance Dramatic Competition Films Directed by People of Color - Change is happening (slowly). Maybe the Golden Globes could follow suit and nominate some women directors??

Watching The Irishman on Netflix Is the Best Way to See It - No less a critic than Richard Brody chimes in to defend watching The Irishman on Netflix - he liked it better than in the theater. Good article in defense of home viewing (but not opposed to theatrical).

Doc Orgs Sue the US Gov't over Visa Rules that hurt filmmakers - The Doc Society (Good Pitch) and International Documentary Association are doing some heavy lifting, along with help from some Academic centers - and suing the US Government over Visa rules that are hindering and potentially endangering visiting filmmakers. The short of it is - the State Dept and DHS are requiring filmmakers to give access to their social media accounts - over 20 of them, potentially - to visit the US. This is bad for privacy, but could be bad for some people's lives -  these are doc filmmakers who take great risks daily, and many of their home governments aren't exactly friendly t critique. Read IDA's Simon Kilmurry's Op-Ed in the LAT explaining this in full. As he says: "So where does that leave our filmmakers? Either they stifle their speech online or they choose not to come to the U.S. to share their work. Either choice deprives American audiences the opportunity to hear new ideas and engage with original contributions to artistic and political discourse." And if you need to still make a year-end gift...IDA is a nonprofit that needs/accepts donations.

Branded Content PYPO Tries Twist on Branded Content With Frederick’s of Hollywood - Smart marketing from a lingerie brand to create content that puts female creators front and center.

That $120,000 banana taped to a wall shows the limitations of zeitgeist-y advertising - further showing how fickle the zeitgeist wave can be for your brand (You either come off as clever and 'with it, or lame and behind). However, brands attempting to capitalize off the popularity of the art piece might be the entire point and intention of its creator, as the New York Times outlines. 

Posted on 19th Dec

Some Facts from the Streaming Wars

A few tidbits from the streaming wars, just this week:

• It is now estimated that the major streamers - Netflix, Apple+, Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max - will spend more than $30 Billion on content in 2020. This doesn't even include Peacock, CBS All Access or the numerous other platforms. 
• And in the fight for eyeballs to watch that content, they're pouring billions into advertising, making up for the decline in advertising from other sectors (see below);
• But less of that money is going into films, as more of it goes into episodic (tv) shows, originals and licensing of major library titles. Netflix's film library has now dropped 40% since 2014, according to StreamingObserver. in 2014, Netflix had around 6,500 movies, and now it's got 3,849. 
• Yet even with that drop, Netflix dominated the "indie" Gotham Awards - winning more than half the awards given this week.
• One could lament this fact, but let's face it - one of those awards was for When They See Us, by Ava DuVernay (who was also honored), and while Netflix and other SVODs may be lessening their support for indie film overall, they are leading the way with diversity. This is no small matter. 
• And let's face it - Netflix is also a data company. If there was a compelling case for investing in buying more films - especially indie/arthouse films - they would be doing it. The data is showing them that too few people watch these films. The StreamingObserver article above makes it seem like film is losing out due to original content spend, but it's losing out because that's what people want.
• Meanwhile, 3853 feature films were submitted to Sundance this year. Yes, that's 4 more than Netflix offers. Let that sink in for awhile.

Stuff I'm Reading

Film

What is a documentary anymore? asks Dan Schindel in Hyperallergic - when you can arguably find great examples within video games, VR, video essays and even art exhibits. He gives this Sight & Sound link to many "best of" examples, and I went down a couple-day rabbit hole on Youtube and Vimeo catching up on the form. Great stuff. Dan's looking for great examples too, so check out the article if you are interested in and want to explore/debate the changing nature of this form.

The Sundance 2020 Feature Line-up has been announced - Some great looking projects have been accepted. This year, they accepted 118 features from 15,100 submissions. 3853 of those were features (the rest, shorts), and for perspective, 1698 of those were US features. Of the 118 feature slots, just 65 were open in theory to US narratives (open, not all of these were programmed that way). I can't really run percentages/acceptance rates without knowing how many of the features submitted were narratives vs. docs, etc. But the odds were against you. Kudos to those who made it, and kudos for Sundance on good diversity numbers (broken down in the link). 

Matt Stoller explains exactly why the DOJ scrapping the Paramount Consent Decrees is a bad idea - because we still have monopolies in the film business, it will hurt smaller chains and indies, and makes no sense. Or as he says,  "At any rate, I’m sort of glad Delrahim has done something so stupid and obvious. The exhibition business is already very concentrated. Imperial Disney is doing what it’s doing, and streaming is basically designed under the current public policy framework to become a fight among monopolists over market power. It’s time to have a real conversation about vertical integration in the big media industry. Much as China’s clumsy censorship of the NBA’s Houston Rockets executive made the stakes of our China policy obvious to policymakers, the proposed end of the Paramount Consent Decrees could spark a more open debate among artists in Hollywood about whether they want to have a creative industry anymore, and how political they are willing to get if they decide they actually do."

Martin Scorsese on The Irishman: 'Please, please don’t look at it on a phone' -  Scorsese, like most auteurs and cinephiles, cringes at the notion you might watch his film on a smaller screen. I agree, but it's a lost cause, as evidenced by the shots of people watching it on their watches in the article. Or worse:

Streaming

How To Build A Great Video Streaming App - Oh, if it was only this easy. But it's a good primer on the terms, and the basics of how streaming apps work

How Home Entertainment Companies Are Navigating the Streaming Apocalypse -  DVD, especially 4K UHD DVD, isn't dead, in fact sales grew last year. But it's a tough business. Cinephiles will spend for higher quality, but will anyone else?

US lagging on mobile video streaming due to spectrum crunch - The US is falling far behind on the video experience, because we allow monopolies to control our broadband internet and mobile, and they still suck. Ditch those channel subscriptions, but you are still stuck with the same evil assholes for your internet streaming speeds.

Branded Content

Everyone's moving to branded content because advertising doesn't work, especially in an SVOD world...except for the actual SVOD players, who are spending billions on ads, reports the WSJ. Analysts estimate SVOD platforms will spend multiple billions on advertising, helping to fill a gap where others slow down. Pretty soon, perhaps we'll just have SVOD and ads for SVOD, and nothing else? Or will SVOD have to start doing product placement in their own shows? Crazy times ahead!

The most disturbing horror film of the season is Peloton's new commercial -  A must watch, and as creepy as the headline and the comments. And it even impacted their stock, which dropped 9% in one day after the ad dropped. And they say advertising doesn't work...

ET go home: why Spielberg’s alien shouldn’t be flogging wifi - Spielberg Sells Out ET for a commercial -and a shitty one at that. WTF? Have you no decency, sir?

VR/AI/Gaming A Go Master (the best) has quit because he can't beat AI - A South Korean Go Master quit because AI is that much better. And I've recently seen a film (coming out soon) about an AI that can beat humans at debate!  

Then again, there's a lot of AI snake-oil, and this slide deck (PDF) shows you how to recognize it. (HT to Unsupervised Learning for both of these links)

Reports Say Amazon Will Enter Game Streaming: Should Competitors Be Worried? -  No surprise here, but Amazon is about to control game streaming as well as everything else we do.

Social Media

Mass media vs. social media - A good corrective to the narrative that social media handed Trump the presidency, when mass media was doing its own (crap) job at covering the news correctly. Which had more impact? Definitely the regular news.

Miscellany 

TikTok has 1.5 billion downloads, and is beating Facebook and Instagram. It is 3rd in downloads only to WhatsApp and Messenger. I still bump into film people and marketers who don't even know what TikTok is, in spite of the press and popularity. Yes, it's a young person's (and mom's) medium, but it's one to know well.

Posted on 6th Dec

Surviving Sundance Notification Time

Short newsletter this week due to the US Holiday. It's that time of year again – when filmmakers and their colleagues pretend to enjoy Turkey over Thanksgiving while waiting for the notification from Sundance on whether they are accepted or rejected. Literally every film person I know is waiting to hear. Some heard already - mainly no's but a few yes's, but most people tend to hear over Thanksgiving weekend if they were accepted, and just after if not. 

This year, I am somehow attached to about ten projects stuck in this limbo - from a mix of clients to personal projects, both indie films and branded content, and let me tell you - the wait sucks. There's no getting around it. Even filmmakers who won't truly have a good cut until February, 2020 (after Sundance) or later usually submitted anyway just in case (I don't like this strategy, but it's common). And while they've called everyone they know and tried to position their films with sales agents or whoever, it basically comes down to the taste of a small group of programmers, and you don't have much control over that process.

So once again, for all of you waiting – try to relax, and don't worry if you don't get in. Remember, there are other festivals. The programers make mistakes...a lot of them. Nearly every year, I know of at least ten films that didn't get in that are better than ten other films I see at the festival. But even when they are "right" in rejecting your film, there are other paths to an audience, and sometimes those other festivals and strategies can be better for your particular film. You can't worry too much about something so out of your control. 

That said - this system sucks. We need a better one. Last year, over 14,000 films submitted for about 120 feature slots and maybe another 60 short slots. That number will surely go up this year. And that's just for Sundance, not all the other festivals (estimates are as high as 60,000 unique titles submit to festivals via Film Freeway and similar services annually). We all know this system doesn't work, but we keep on doing it. Of course, I don't have a solution either, so here we are, pretending to use a system that doesn't work well, to determine what gets seen. I say pretending, because a large number of the accepted slots are not programmed out of the general entries, even at Sundance.

But yet - it's the best system we have now, if you think of it as just a sampling of what films are on offer for 2020. Sundance does a better job than most at curating a decent selection of what's coming out, and that's why we all follow it and copy it, and obsess over it. So, for those of you who do get the good news this weekend - kudos! I can't wait to see your films in Park City, and hope at least one of the projects I know about gets in too!

What does the first official Netflix cinema mean for Hollywood? - Netflix saved the Paris Theater - what does that mean for Hollywood, asks the Guardian? Well, they have a home for The Irishman after it finishes at the Belasco. Wow, the possibility of streaming sure is killing those ticket sales (not). I'm glad Netflix is renting its way to the Oscars, because they are saving some awesome theaters along the way.

Branded Content   Native Advertising has a trust issue, but the problem isn’t the format -  So, here’s the big question. "How can we use Native advertising to its full advantage, without being seen to deceive the very people we’re trying to sell to?" The writer thinks yes, if you are transparent, focus on the audience and have a good strategy. Me, I'm not so sure. I always hate stumbling into native content, and would always prefer a partnership that shows me good content, not just a longer ad, disguised as content. VR/AR/Gaming Vader Immortal is what a ‘theme park film’ actually looks like, and it’s great - If were looking for something just for fun "Vader Immortal uses its limited interactivity to build a compelling illusion of physically engaging with Star Wars’ fantasy world. And ultimately, that’s the point of a theme park — not just the spectacle and the inevitability, but the sense that you’re actually in the middle of it all." Social Media How removing ‘likes’ from Instagram could affect our mental health - "But, Instagram is making this change, even if it hurts business." CEO Adam Mosseri, explained recently at the Wired25 Summit that anxiety and social pressures that come from the app “are becoming more acute, particularly with young people, particularly in a mobile-first world. The idea is to depressurize Instagram,” Instagram’s Mosseri said. “We’re trying to reduce anxiety, we’re trying to reduce social comparisons.” Miscellany  What does the future hold for LGBT+ media? -While the present may be looking bleak with certain publications being shut down, LGBT+ will be on the uprise with new Revenue Streams and Brand Partnerships. Expect the latter to be key... kinda like all media. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Posted on 27th Nov

It's time for Branded Content to Break the Rules

I wrote another guest post this week for BrandStorytelling - check out the full article there, but here's a teaser:

As more brands move into long form branded content – meaning feature length documentary or narrative films around 90 minutes – brands increasingly have the same plan - to premiere at Sundance or another top festival and then “get onto Netflix”. These are worthy goals to be sure, and I’ve sold multiple brand client films to Netflix and other distributors. But this is just one strategy for distribution, and I keep hoping more brands will wake up to the reality that maybe they don’t need to follow “the rules” and go down this path to distribute their films. Perhaps it could be better to break the rules of the old-school film world and forge their own paths.

This might seem counterintuitive, but if part of the goal of premiering at Sundance/SXSW and then landing on Netflix is to show prestige and break through the noise, you might be picking the most crowded path of all.

Read the Full Post here. And in case you're wondering - yes, this applies to indie filmmakers as well, but brands are better capitalized to take control of their distribution. And no, I'm not saying you shouldn't keep in mind the realities of the marketplace, or best practices, but I am saying that a lot of those aren't working anymore, and we can explore new models, especially if you are a brand with a loyal following and marketing know-how.

Film

The NYT is moving more seriously into feature documentaries - according to Digiday, the NYT will start making more feature docs intended for SVOD and other major release. I worked on a feature doc for the NYT two years ago, so it's good to see them moving forward more aggressively now. 

‘Maybe Adam Driver Can Help Set Things Right’: Jenny Holzer on Why She Teamed With Amazon to Promote a New Political Drama. Great to see Amazon Studios working with a great artist, who specializes in word-play, on this campaign. 

The Justice Department is getting rid of the Consent Decrees - according to multiple sources, this one being the NYT, the Justice Department is getting rid of the Paramount Consent Decrees, rules from 1949 that stopped the Studios from controlling exhibitors/theaters (contrary to public perception, it didn't actually ban them from owning theaters) as well as from engaging in many bad business practices, such as block booking, where the Studios force theaters to play all their films if they want the good ones. People in the business are very worried about what this means for independent and smaller theaters - studios could force them to show their films instead of arthouse films if they want the latest Star Wars, for example. DOJ argues they will stop block booking for a couple of years and make sure the Studios don't do anything disastrous, and say that with Netflix, etc. we need to allow different business models to flourish. The argument against this move is probably best laid out in Forbes of all places. It seems the main concern at the moment is Disney - they could use their blockbusters to force theaters to play content that might go direct to Disney+ for example, but this could end up happening with all of the major players. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Why the Rich Get Richer as AFM Hits Schlock Bottom - The Hollywood Reporter reports on the latest AFM, where just like the rest of the business, only the Top 1% were making sales. But the AFM was built on B-Movies. As noted in the article: ""It feels like MIFED toward the end," notes one veteran buyer, recalling the once-mighty Milan-based film market that shuttered in 2004. "It takes a long time for these things to die. But our business is changing fast, and unless AFM does something to adapt, it won’t be around for much longer."

Streaming was supposed to kill original theatrical movies. Don’t tell ‘Ford v Ferrari.’ -  “I think the message is this kind of magic still works,” said Bruce Nash... “For all the talk about the popularity of streaming services and all the talk about [theatrical] reboots, people still want to see big movie stars tell an original story on the screen.”

Netflix board member Ben Weiss writes an op-Ed against Fithians disgrace comments, which I lambasted earlier. I guess we agree. The Disney+ launch was hacked - ZDNet reports that not only did Disney+ have lots of technical issues at launch, but a lot of accounts were hacked. Russian, and other, hackers were selling account logins, and people reported being frozen out, having their details switched, movies added, and other fun stuff. Disney prepared well by buying BamTech, we all thought, but launching an SVOD is harder than it might seem.

Branded Content

What brands need to know about Douyin - or looking to China for hints on how to use TikTok - China Film Insider has a great little interview with Arnold Ma of China's Qumin agency about how Douyin differs from TikTok (it's more mature), and how consumers and brands are using it in China. Given that teens are leaving WeChat for Douyin in China, and China is roughly a decade ahead of us in this industry, it's a great thought piece on where things might go here. As Ma says:"We think Douyin is here to stay, and it’s growing at a ridiculous rate. And now is the time for brands to take advantage of it. Imagine if a brand built a WeChat presence six years ago or a Facebook presence 13 years ago — today the brand would have the most powerful channel for its marketing."

‘Ford v Ferrari’ is a two-hour unofficial car ad that Ford’s pretty happy about

Instagram is still the most lucrative platform for branded content deals, even without 'likes.' Here’s why, according to influencer-marketing experts.

VR/AR/AI

Can Apple make VR mainstream? -  The Week argues that Apple's approach to AR should focus less on augmentation and more on ambience: peripheral information that guides or informs.

370 lucky ‘Rick & Morty’ fans can put themselves into their favorite show.How they did it is our future in 5G - "Sliding down a giant Morty barfing slide and then riding a hot dog like a riding bull are not things every festival can offer"

Miscellany

The New Dot-Com Bubble is here and it's called online advertising - Jesse Frederik and Maurits Martijn, in The Correspondent, delve into the fact that no one knows what's working in online advertising - even the measurements aren't up to snuff, and the more you dig, the worse it gets. You could say this about any advertising, but this article does a great job at looking into the biases that make us want to believe this stuff works.

Bay Area folks - check out Josh-A-Palooza - One of the first films I worked on as a junior programmer at the Atlanta Film Festival was HAIKU TUNNEL by Jake and Josh Kornbluth. Much later, just a couple of years ago, I was happy to get to work with them as producer on their film LOVE & TAXES. And now, Josh has a new theater piece, about Ben Franklin, and there is a full retrospective of Josh's work (alone and with Jake) in December, in Berkeley. Check out the details and go see this new Ben Franklin thing, as these political theater pieces tend to get popular fast. 

TheatreFIRST is proud to bring back Bay Area treasure Josh Kornbluth for the first-ever JOSH-A-PALOOZA, a festival of his work in theatre and film. This December, come down to the intimate Waterfront Playhouse to see such theatrical hits as BEN FRANKLIN: UNPLUGGED, LOVE & TAXES, and CITIZEN JOSH, as well as screenings of his films HAIKU TUNNEL, LOVE & TAXES, and THE MATHEMATICS OF CHANGE. Every event is followed by a Q&A with Josh, and benefits the work of TheatreFIRST. Whether you’ve enjoyed Josh’s work before or are coming in fresh, our limited seating promises a unique opportunity to get up close and personal.

Posted on 21st Nov

The Film Fest Database is Live

The 2020 Film Festival Database is live! Thanks to Michael Forstein for creating it. It's a super handy resource for filmmakers, production companies, brands making films - anyone who needs to submit projects to film festivals. 

Michael is an independent filmmaker who made the first version of this database on his own because he needed it, and then he made it somewhat open-source for anyone to use for free. It's a labor of love, and while he now has a small group of sponsors paying him for some of his time (kudos to them), you can and should donate to the project if it's something you are going to use. My staff and I use this almost daily as we help our clients submit to festivals. For now, it's US centric - Michael hasn't had time to go in and list all of the international festivals, which would be a great addition, but hey, it's a volunteer effort from one guy!

Which brings me to the bigger question - why did it take one indie filmmaker getting off his butt to do this for free to make this happen? Where are all these supposed filmmaker service orgs when we need them? (The Film Fest Alliance and Seed & Spark are the only ones I see, and the latter is a for-profit).  It's literally more useful than 90% of the non-grant programs that any film-nonprofit offers. It's a shame they haven't helped out and taken this under their wing. So my suggestion - send your org membership dues to Michael this year. 

WHAT I'M READING: FILM

The Great Streaming Battle is Here, but how do you compare the services, and what's the real story on what consumers want? The WSJ has the answers, and one of the best breakdowns of the difference in each service's offerings. (possible paywall). And over at the NYT they have an interactive, six question quiz that tells you which services you need to see your favorite shows and movies, and how much it will cost you. Smart stuff. (I’m at $43 and 7 services, with no Netflix).

Only 159 documentaries qualified for the Academy Awards this year. Yep, that's right, 159. I couldn't watch them all if I tried.

How Parasite became the most talked about foreign language film of 2019: The Guardian reports. The answer - Neon is a marketing master. Look no further than the Jessica Jingle and other memes. 

Disney+ Added 10M subscribers in 24hrs - making it the fastest growing streaming service ever. 

Should we break up the Disney Monopoly? - That's what Matt Stoller thinks. I don't agree with all of his arguments, but it's worth a read.

Viacom bucks direct-to-consumer streaming trend with new Netflix deal for Nickelodeon - With every corporation and brand racing to create their own streaming service to serve their individual IPs, Viacom is trailblazing their own path through their continued partnerships with Netflix. The streaming bubble will burst, but perhaps this is one way to hedge your bets.

And from the Onion on the James Dean CGI: ‘No, God, No!’ Screams Agonized James Dean Disappearing From Heaven As Filmmakers Finish Constructing CGI.

WHAT I'M READING: Branded Content

Vudu Struggles to find an audience and a model - Digiday has the rundown on the issues facing Vudu, not least of which was having a WeWork office in LA, as opposed to a more seemingly permanent home. 

How Buzzfeed has built a creators network for branded content - Buzzfeed is moving away from treating creators as commodities, but rather as collaborators. Really smart way to keep generating effective content while actually being a company that creatives want to work with (not work for). 

Nike smartly uses TikTok to encourage Sports Activity  - Nike noticed an issue with women in Milan not wanting to hear traditional “get active” messaging from brands, so they worked with social influencers and elite athletes for some fun collaborations, and it worked, with 100M views and over 600M readers about the program. Brands looking into how to use TikTok, here’s your case study.

WHAT I'M READING: Miscellany:

PBS has a new brand - not branded content, but actual brand logo-type and design. Bringing them from a “flip-phone to an iphone world,” as Fast Company reports.

Posted on 14th Nov

"It's a Disgrace" or Netflix vs. Theaters, again.

The Irishman opened this past Friday, and I finally saw it this week at the Belasco Theater. This is not a review, but it was great, and not just because it’s a Scorsese film with a great cast (Joe Pesci in particular), but because I saw it on Broadway, in a storied theater, that was a much more pleasant experience than seeing it at AMC, Regal or any other big chain theater. I mean, heck, there were only 2 pre-show trailers, no ads and it cost less than most movies in NYC. And Netflix added great touches, like phone booths in the lower lobby that played clips from the film, actual print newspapers with Hoffa headlines and funny fake ads, and some gag props on the bar that referenced key scenes in the movie (no spoilers here). A great experience all around.

And of course, the big theaters are not too happy with this situation, as the NYT reports. As you probably already know, the big chains usually want a 90 day window between a film’s premiere in theaters and its premiere online with Netflix (or anyone else). This doesn’t mean they will play the film in theaters for 90 days, but that they think too few people will go on day one if they know they can see it on SVOD just 90 days later (cuckoo cachoo). But this time, a couple of the chains were willing to give some ground and give a window of…wait for it… 60 days! Netflix rightfully said F-U, and is launching the film to subscribers just 26 days later. Which is about as long of a window as any consumer can possibly be expected to wait.

John Fithian, the head of NATO (no, not that NATO, this one represents all the big theater chains), was all aflutter, saying it was “a disgrace” that Netflix wouldn’t compromise with the theaters. No, John, a disgrace is me walking up ten floors at an AMC/Regal where the escalator is broken, to stand in line to pay astronomical prices for a popcorn from the only kid on duty for 20 theaters worth of patrons, only to sit in a broken recliner seat, with sticky floors and a movie being projected too dimly and with the AC only intermittently working. That’s a disgrace. It’s also a disgrace to blame Netflix for your idiotic windowing system.

Scorsese tried to make this movie in the studio system, and no one would put up the $159 Million budget. Netflix would. And that means it’s up to Netflix how it releases its films and how they window their films. The theaters tried to strong arm them, but Netflix found an elegant solution in the Belasco and smaller theaters. The chains were afraid of losing the 60-90 day window for all other movies, but in their short-sightedness, have just given consumers a “window” onto an alternate, better way to see movies than the usual crappy multiplex experience. They’ll likely remember how much better this was, and hope for it again. Luckily, Netflix is also renting out the Paris Theater in NYC for other films, and the Egyptian in LA as well, meaning we’ll get plenty of opportunities to see a film in a better venue. And they made deals with many smaller theaters in NYC/LA and across the country – and while they usually aren’t the Belasco, they are usually more pleasant experiences, so there are alternate options and better approaches here.

What would be smarter for the chains would be to step up and behave like Netflix – in reverse. Sure, AMC’s stock price isn’t as strong as Netflix’s, but they need to make major moves to stay relevant, and they need to start spending money on something other than 4DX seats that spit on you, shake and spray perfume. AMC (and Regal, Cinemark, etc.) should start funding movies and make them only available in their theaters and to their AMC Stubs (or similar) members. AMC is already launching a streaming service to its Stubs members anyways, with most of the Studios offering library content, and while the only have 20 million households as members now (compared to Netflix’s 158M), this would be one way to increase that number, while taking control of their destiny and getting some true cinematic masters like Scorsese to make films for them. They have the makings of an alternate system in place, so why not use it to their advantage, much like Netflix uses their subscriptions to their own?

They could even do it as a joint venture, like they did with Fathom, which is a JV between AMC, Regal, and Cinemark. If they’re willing to cough up $160M for a Scorsese movie and keep it in theaters for 90 days before putting it on AMC Stubs and Regal Unlimited, then they would make back the majority of the box office and any subscription revenue – while giving subscribers a reason to stay subscribed, or to join in the first place.

Sure, there are some legal hurdles to this, and a lot of logistics to overcome - not least of which is the fact they only know how to pop popcorn, not make something creative (see their pre-show advertisements), but these are obstacles they need to destroy before the streamers destroy them. (Ok, I actually think theaters are gonna be fine on revenue from other blockbusters, but you get my point). But, no, I suspect the main reason they won’t do this is that they know they would soon have first-hand data telling them their customers can’t wait 90 days either, because no one should.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM/ STREAMING:

Walmart Eyes Vudu Sale - Seems like huge news to me. Yeah, I know not as many people use Vudu as the others, but they actually have a pretty strong offering, with early access to titles, lots of bundling and deals, and it is a solid VOD and AVOD offering. With lots of potential - when tied to Walmart - for direct linking of sales from videos. But apparently the world is not just embracing streaming, but abandoning transactional enough to make it a losing proposition for Walmart. 

DocNYC runs Nov 6-15. Check out the website for full details and showtimes. Also make sure to check out the panels and talks at DocNYC Pro. My faves of what I've seen: American Factory, The Biggest Little Farm, The Elephant Queen, Honeyland, Midnight Family, Midnight Traveler, and Searching for Mr Rugofff. And that I want to see: Buster Williams, Bass to Infinity, Kifaru, Letter to the Editor, and The Story of Plastic.

How to Dissolve your Film's LLC? - Lindsay Spiller recently wrote a nice, easy to understand break-down of the step's you need to take to wind down and close up your film's LLC after it's great success. Very helpful stuff (I'm following his rules on a project now). 

Streamers chasing subscribers are giving it away free- in hopes they can hit their targets and maybe you'll subscribe in the future. I see a subscriber bubble ahead

The Women Who Helped Build Hollywood- the New Yorker reviews a few books on the history of women in early Hollywood, and they had many more important roles than you might expect given the inequities we see today.

James Dean being digitally resurrected for a new film - Collider reports on how an agency has licensed his likeness for becoming a digital character in a new movie. I’ve been saying this is coming for quite some time, and before long, “new” actors will have trouble getting work, as it’s easier to add in a more famous digital player. And before long, a robot will craft most of that scene too. As the author puts it best: “Running through my head in all of this is the iconic Jurassic Park line from Ian Malcolm: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

Character posters are ruining film marketing - says the Guardian,and I agree. These are those annoying posters like “Florence Pugh is Amy in Little Women” with a big blow-up of her face. A terrible marketing trend that is becoming overused. Not as bad as the twenty faces on a poster version, being used to satisfy actor’s egos, but pretty close. 

Some Film Fests are Exploiting Filmmakers - The Hollywood Reporter ran this long piece on “under the radar” festivals that are either fake or close to it, and who charge a lot of money for screenings, passes, hotels, etc. It seems like everyone I know has been sharing this on social media, but the funny thing is they didn’t even name some of the more egregious examples out there. Most seasoned filmmakers/producers and industry folks know these bad ones and will tell you off the record of who to avoid. Make sure to get references from other filmmakers on any fest you aren’t sure about - look up their catalogues online and pop an email to a few filmmakers to get info if you don’t know the festival’s reputation. There are a lot of scams to avoid.

WHAT I’M READING:  BRANDED CONTENT

9 tips for brands on commissioning short films or series: A great post on BrandStorytelling by Sarah Klein and Tom Mason of Redglass Pictures who recently made History of Memory with HP, and won the TribecaX award as well. They break down all the things you need to think about before you even call a producer/filmmaker. It's also important for filmmakers generally to read this - great tips on thinking about your story, your audience and your distribution strategy.

Check out BrandStorytelling ‘s new BrandVoice in Forbes - a new resource for all things brands and content. From the site: “We believe that a new era of media and marketing is rapidly emerging, one empowered by technology and driven by creative storytelling. What we see are brands taking a bold stride away from interruptive advertising towards content that provides value in the way of information and entertainment. Our mission is to encourage a higher level of collaboration amongst advertisers, agencies, media partners and creators, leading to a richer media environment for all.”

WHAT I’M READING: Miscellany

We Company may be imploding, but it’s also launching a gaming company - The Verge reports that the company has been filing some patents and posting jobs for “Play by We,” which looks like a housing/training facility for gamers, and maybe games later. If they exist at the end of the year, that is.

Posted on 7th Nov

Getting Real about Brands and Impact Films

This week, I wrote an Op-Ed article for the BrandStorytelling website and newsletter on the topic - Getting Real about Brands and Impact Films. This is the first of a series of articles I’ll be writing for them, and I wanted to start with a topic I think is super important for brands, but that also applies to filmmakers - that you can’t just make a social impact film, you have to do the impact work (or hire someone to help). Here’s the intro paragraph, and a link to the full article:

As more brands move into making content, especially long and short form film, many are starting to make films intended to have social impact. While films and media made for impact aren’t right for every brand, they increasingly make sense for brands wanting to share their values with consumers who consistently say they want brands to take a stand. But while many brands are making impact entertainment, too few are actually doing what it takes to have an impact, and need to start thinking harder about what impact means – before audiences (consumers) begin to see this as more cynical “purpose-washing” and brands meaning to truly have an impact have difficulty rising above all of this noise.

Read the Full Article over at BrandStorytelling

What I’m Reading: Film

Discover the future of film and storytelling at [Future of Film] Summit, the essential event for creators and businesses looking to succeed in the new landscape. Taking place at BFI Southbank, London on 26th November, the event will feature world-class speakers behind works such as AD ASTRA, BLADE RUNNER 2049 and BLACK MIRROR as well as hands-on sessions on the latest tech / strategies including virtual production, worldbuilding, interactive storytelling and brand-funding - plus amazing networking across film and media.  The full schedule and tickets are available now.  I've participated in other events from Future of Film, and the organizer, Alex Stolz, always puts together a stellar line-up and event. Highly recommended if you can attend.

How will HBO Max compete with Netflix and others? BGR has a quick run-down of how HBO Max will work - which is as a stand-alone offering, where you don't even need cable, and you get everything that's on HBO Now and HBO Go (confusing) as well as a ton of other content... for around $15 a month. T'ain't cheap, but that's a lot of films and shows.

“Don’t make me have to call every director and show creator on Earth to fight you on this,” (Apatow) wrote. “Save me the time. I will win but it will take a ton of time. Don’t fuck with our timing. We give you nice things. Leave them as they were intended to be seen.” That's Judd Apatow as reported in The Guardian, just a little angry with Netflix for trial testing a feature that lets users watch films at different speeds on their phones. This should be fun to watch.

Are Memes Ruining Television?- GQ reports on the ugly phenomenon of shows having characters behave wildly just to get a social media meme going. Yuck, but apparently a new trend.

Disney Is New to Streaming, but Its Marketing Is Unmatched - The NYT breaks down the myriad ways that Disney can market its new service - everywhere. Kinda crazy, but smart too.

Think you’re going green by streaming everything? Think again - Streaming isn’t green - it takes a shit-load of electricity and it’s a problem. And while this article doesn’t go into it, the same thing applies to cloud computing, gaming and bitcoin mining. We humans find clever ways to screw with the earth. Can’t wait til the robots take over and realize they don’t need to worry about climate change, as only we will die.

What I’m Reading: Branded Content

Porsche, Lucasfilm To Jointly Design Starship - MediaPost reports on a new branded content effort where Porsche designers are teamed with LucasFilm artists to design a starship, with Wired documenting the process. It’s all at this website as well. Nice way to promote design thinking and a car.

United incorporates Star Warsinto its safety videos - that's some content marketing that might make you watch a safety video, and buckle up for the flight.

The New Yorker launched a documentary channel. It might be good. Couldn't tell you though, because it had a big, long ad in front of it that couldn't be skipped.

Miscellany:

Kickstarter Co-Founder Yancey Strickler has a new book out: And it's high on my reading list. Yancey was not only a smart business leader, he's one of the smarter people i've been lucky to meet. He's introduced me to several authors I like, I imagine he'll join that list soon. Here's the blurb from Amazon, where you can buy it: 

A vision for building a society that looks beyond money and toward maximizing the values that make life worth living, from the cofounder of Kickstarter.  Western society is trapped by three assumptions: 1) That the point of life is to maximize your self-interest and wealth, 2) That we're individuals trapped in an adversarial world, and 3) That this is natural and inevitable. These ideas separate us, keep us powerless, and limit our imagination for the future. It's time we replace them with something new.

The Rap Guide Series by Baba Brinkman hits SoHo Playhouse - Baba Brinkman is a genius - he puts together rap performances around intellectual concepts - evolution, climate change and neuroscience among others - and makes them into entertaining, comedic and educational performances. He’s premiering a new one on Culture and revisiting all of his past ones at the SoHo Playhouse in November. A must-see if you live in or are visiting NYC.

Terry Allen doc on iTunes - Ok, I was ashamed when I finally watched this film and realized I didn’t know anything about Terry Allen. I’m glad Scott Ballew (of one-time client, Yeti Cooler’s film division) made this doc about him and his music. It’s available for pre-order now on iTunes. Here’s the description: Cult musician and artist Terry Allen is revered by the world’s creative elite, but is far from a household name. Fringe even in the fringe world of artists, musicians, and renegades of the 70’s, Terry’s voice is perhaps just now reaching the audience it deserves. ‘Everything For All Reasons’ sheds a comprehensive light on his body of work and life, and is punctuated with songs from a star studded concert at Austin’s Paramount Theater. Almost the antithesis of the Rock N Roll cliché, Allen shares the stage with his wife of 55 years, two sons, and life-long friends. The film includes behind-the-scenes rehearsals and interviews with legendary musicians that collaborate and have been influenced by Terry -David Byrne (Talking Heads), Joe Ely (Flatlanders), Lloyd Maines, Charlie Sexton (Bob Dylan), and Ryan Bingham. All pieced together to answer the question who the Hell is Terry Allen, and why haven’t you heard of him?

Posted on 31st Oct

The Upcoming Crisis in Arthouse/Indie Film

More from the best of times, worst of times files. Three articles hit this week that obliquely touch on what I think is a big crisis facing the indie film sector - in the middle of a golden age for content - and the need for us to build more mechanisms to support indie and arthouse narrative films.

First, Variety reports on the rising costs of scripted TV series as the streaming wars heat up. What does that have to do with arthouse cinema, you ask? Well, the article points out that not only are all of the streamers paying top dollar and attention to scripted originals - which means they are acquiring less of everything else - but that this practice also means that everyone in the industry has more options and their rates go up. Whether you’re trying to hire a director, cast, or a stunt person, or a Grip, or a publicist - they all have plenty of work and don’t need to scrimp by working on smaller indie films. Point being - a crowded marketplace can hurt smaller films in many ways.

Second up, Matt Zoller Seitz penned a nice piece in Vulture yesterday on how Disney is extending its habit of locking things away in the "vault" instead of allowing repertory screenings, and is now blocking many theaters from playing older Fox titles. It's possibly a ploy to get you to subscribe to Disney+, but also a threat to the bottom line of many indie theaters. While this is a little complicated, it has a big impact on what gets shown and the possible livelihood of arthouse and indie film. As Zoller Seitz writes - and it’s worth quoting this passage in full:

There might be a tendency to see all this as a niche issue, one that only affects nostalgists and people who are still enamored with the theatrical experience. But Escobar (Chris, of Atlanta’s Plaza Theater and Atlanta Film Society) and other theater owners interviewed for this piece point out that the estimated 600 independent first-run theaters left in the United States are the only reliable incubators for independent filmmakers who are unlikely to have their work screened in multiplexes dominated by Disney and other major distributors. Many of them are international filmmakers, documentary filmmakers, and filmmakers of color who are going to lose access to these venues unless they’re subsidized by other events such as repertory screenings of old movies that can be relied on to draw crowds. “These kinds of theaters are the only places where women filmmakers and other members of underrepresented groups can go and see themselves, the last frontier space,” Escobar says. “The more the means of making, distributing, and exhibiting films are controlled by a handful of companies, the fewer entry points those voices are going to have.”

Yikes. And then, Bilge Ebiri, also writing in Vulture, about the controversy over Scorsese et al dissing on Marvel, points out this little gem:

There’s one thing Scorsese said that really sticks out: Speaking of Marvel movies, he said they were “creating another kind of audience that thinks cinema is that.”(emphasis mine)  All great films create their own audience, in a sense; you can’t really broaden the art form’s range of expression without teaching your audience new ways to experience and think and feel about what’s onscreen and, by extension, the universe beyond the frame. Citizen Kane does this; Rashomon does this; 2001 does this; Jeanne Dielman does this; Do the Right Thing does this. (And it’s not just the capital-M Masterpieces that do it, either. Anna Rose Holmer’s The Fits does this; Chloé Zhao’s The Rider does this; Robert Greene’s Actress does this. I could go on, but we’d be here all day.)... (and he continues later):

Action blockbusters have always been successful, and the industry’s more independent-minded artists have always struggled to get around the financial imperatives of what is, after all, a business. But the last 15 or so years have seen rapid monopolization across many industries, and these types of releases have become dominant in what is increasingly looking like a zero-sum game. While lots of other films get made — more, in fact, than have ever been produced before — all the oxygen in the room gets sucked out by the big ones, leaving the smaller ones to choke.

Indeed. And if we lose those films, we’re gonna lose all sense of what cinema is and can be. As the blockbusters and “original content” fill every screen, we’re losing precious space for other voices.

As I read these reports, I was also coming down from the high that is The Good Pitch, earlier this week. Six documentary projects pitched to a room of 400+ supporters who might fund, help distribute, or help them have impact with their films. It’s a great endeavor, and it’s just one small part of what has become an entire ecosystem supporting documentary films for social impact. Sure, theaters and screens are getting overbooked by blockbusters and new shows, but these films will be seen and will have an impact - and the filmmakers can scrape together a living - because the documentary field has built this ecosystem of support over time. It was hard work, and it didn’t always make sense, but here we are after some decade or more of tinkering, and we kinda have a system that works.

But as great as it was to realize this,  it also reminded me of an even greater absence - of any similar ecosystem in support of arthouse and indie film. Sure, we have Sundance and all the film festivals of the Film Festival alliance, and whatnot, but there’s nowhere near the same level of support, or thinking about new models for support, going on for narrative films that aren’t blockbusters. All the rest of these films have never been easy to make - but now they are being made in a market where it costs more to attach talent and crew, and where the biggest platforms and distributors are focused on ever bigger projects and at keeping other films off screens, and as audiences begin to think there’s no issue because nothing else is showing up anyway, and hey, there’s Thor coming at me. 

I call this a crisis, and it won’t just be for the makers and lovers of niche cinema. Our culture needs independent voices - telling different, more nuanced stories - and it will be poorer in their absence. I think this is a topic we should be talking about at conferences, festivals and inside every nonprofit in the space. Because we need some novel solutions, and soon.

What I’m Reading: Film

How High Frame Rate technology ruined Gemini Man - Bilge Ebiri, one of the smartest film writers out there, gives a good break-down on Vulture, of why Gemini Man doesn't work at the high frame rate projection that Ang Lee prefers. 

Netflix tracks shows by measuring ‘starters,’ ‘watchers,’ and ‘completers’ - the Verge breaks down new data from Netflix on how they measure a view. More insight than we’ve had for awhile.

 Why do we re-watch films over and over? The BBC’s Clare Thorp breaks down the many reasons - nostalgia, familiarity, too much to choose from and more. Add this to the issues facing new arthouse films above as well. 

Which Streaming Sevice(s) should you pay for? Time Magazine runs one of the first break-downs, of what will soon be an overflow of articles trying to help us wade through the services, so we can wade through the content…

Disney+ announced its nonfiction line-up - It’s an odd-mix, to be honest - some older tiles, some relaunches, but also some interesting directors like Jeff Malmberg (of Marwencol). I think they’ll get to 80M+ subscribers soon on library titles alone, but I am scratching my head so far on this even being an announcement.

A lot of great film criticism is now online to stream - I’ve long been a fan of the practice of using video as a form of film criticism and commentary - in fact, I think the whole Op-Doc trend should be focused on this format instead of what is has become - and now The Guardian has a great run-down of some of the better examples, and the new BBC iPlayer series Inside Cinema. Check it out.

The D-Word and Peter Hamilton discuss all things Netflix:Netflix runs the wold, and is also a big black hole for most of the field - what are they funding, what are the terms, how can you break in, what's working, etc. Well the D-Word - an online member community for doc filmmakers that you can join for free (and should, it's great) is running a week long forum on this subject. From their announcement:  we're so fortunate to have Peter Hamilton, a veteran documentary business consultant who has written the ultimate guide to Netflix, leading a special 5-day topic starting today on The D-Word: Dealing with Netflix: What you need to know NOW!  Go there, read and learn.

Film I recommend:  Light from Light, starring Marin Ireland and Jim Gaffigan opens NYC Nov 1st from Grasshopper Films at the Quad (and then elsewhere). 

Gifted with sometimes-prophetic dreams and a lifelong interest in the paranormal, Sheila (Marin Ireland) is asked to investigate a potential haunting at a Tennessee farmhouse. It’s there she meets Richard (Jim Gaffigan), a recent widower who believes his wife may still be with him. The investigation that ensues — which eventually pulls in Shelia’s son, Owen and his classmate Lucy — forces them to confront the mysteries of their own lives.

I'm old friends w the director, Paul Harrill and think all of his films are great. I highly recommend putting this on your watchlist, or buying tickets to see it w some of the cast (and Paul) for the Q&A in NYC. 

Branded Content

Three Things to know about Brands and Impact: BrandStorytelling interviewed Shabnam Mogharabi of Soul Pancake to give three great take-aways from their joint study on brands and impact entertainment. It’s a six minute video – watch it at your desk, on the clock, as it will make your work stronger.

A look at Roku’s Branded Content pitch: From DigiDay, a look at Roku’s push to have advertisers buy ad space on its home screen - to the right of its list of streaming apps, to promote branded content. No one is sure if anyone will click, but it’s a big piece of real estate to promote your shows. Or just another intrusive ad - we’ll see where this one lands in the public debate soon.

Podcasts (and Video) may be hot, but don’t forget text: Adweek has a good article on why text is still important to your brand content strategy. As they say: “A fair word of warning for brands here is to ensure that this experience is in some way additive to your audience’s lives, which means not simply copying and pasting headlines from owned content efforts and calling it a day, but rather embracing a curator mindset.”

A new award has been made for branded content that is “storytelling for good” thanks to BrandStorytelling and the Clio’s. Make sure to enter your films soon - I look forward to seeing the winners in January in Park City.

How Pressboard is changing the way advertisers get content published - A dive-in from DailyHive, looking at how Pressboard works, why it was created and more from the founder. Pressboard is more of a marketplace for content marketing, but it’s a good solution for certain branded content. Check it out.

Posted on 24th Oct

Why were you rejected?

Why were you rejected? will you be accepted ?- fest service needed

Free idea to anyone who wants to launch it. We need a festival advisory service that helps filmmakers (and brands) figure out whether their film is good enough for film festivals (and which ones), and what would make it stronger – and it needs to be made up of festival programmers.

I work with a lot of filmmakers and brands, and one of the things I do is help them with their edit, and with submitting to film festivals. And when possible, I try to advise them on how good their film really is, and what I think its chances are for different festivals, and how they should strategically approach their festival run. But I can only do it for so many clients, I might be wrong, and sometimes people are going to submit even if they shouldn’t. In addition, when you get rejected from a festival, almost none of them will give you any feedback as to why – and they really can’t, as they get thousands to tens of thousands of entries. But at least once a month (as acceptance/rejection letters go out, or a deadline hits), I get a flurry of emails wondering about whether they should submit to X festival, or why they didn’t get into Y festival, or which one of two to accept. Should we hold it for this special fest, or ask this one to watch it, when we really want this earlier one. Etc. Etc.

And there’s another couple of problems I know about – most festival programmers are underpaid and doing this job as a labor of love. And they are opinionated, but usually afraid of speaking to filmmakers they reject. Everyone wants to be loved. So why not aggregate a group of respected festival programmers (and former programmers too), and start a service where you can submit your film for review, and get solid feedback on what works, what doesn’t, what you could do to make it work better, and what might be the best strategy for your film – no holds barred, honest advice from people doing this day to day at the best festivals. For a fee of course, which would then be shared with these programmer/reviewers. And of course, the reviewers would be kept anonymous, but the service would list the overall portfolio of festival programmers represented and prove that they are working with good folks. And to make it fair, every programmer would agree to watch any submitted film with “fresh eyes” if it ends up submitting to their festival (I know many ED’s will shut this down anyway, but I can hope), because hopefully the films will get stronger.

I know a few people who have offered somewhat similar services – but usually it’s feedback from one person or two people at most. And it’s not unbiased, and not coming from current programmers. Someone please start this, as I’ll send you five clients a month, minimum, and will use it for my own films too.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM

Streaming kills Physical Media - notes the WSJ. But Richard Lorber of KinoLorber begs to disagree: “Around here we say, ‘Blu-rays are forever...I would be a fool to claim that it’s a growth business, but for certain types of collectible films of enduring value, people really want to own them for so many reasons." But that's not true for everyone. Check out the arguments for and against at the WSJ.

AMC Theaters launches its own VOD Store - The NYT reports, and its about time. While I doubt they’ll do this well, AMC really could do something cool here by combining its data on movie-going with Stubs rewards and more. If my subscription got me movies in theaters and online… that would be a winner.

Watch the Exodus of talent from Hollywood to Streamers - the LAT mapped it in a great little animation. And they are right, it is stunning.

Film Delivery Demystified - Hey NYC area producers - delivering your film to a distributor is quite a pain. Luckily, Cinepointe and Goldcrest have two upcoming classes on that for you - check them out

With Distribber going out of business,Peter Broderick writes a nice update on what filmmakers can do if they were snagged in this fiasco, as well as some good general rules for working with distributors. 

Coming up in a few weeks at DocNYC-  SEARCHING FOR MR. RUGOFF  - by Ira Deutchman - I've seen a rough cut of this film, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of indie/arthouse film in NYC - or any of the issues around such things. 

From DocNYC:  Searching for Mr. Rugoff reveals the untold story of the creative genius behind 1960s-’70s film distribution company Cinema 5. Filmmakers, critics, collaborators and family members paint a vivid portrait of Donald Rugoff, a volatile, self-destructive and fearless champion of independent and art films. Drawing from a rich archive and colorful interviews, veteran distributor, producer and former Rugoff employee Ira Deutchman brings us closer to his legendary and controversial mentor, who took risks and fought for great cinema while facing personal battles of his own

FIlm to support: Dan Mirvish, co-founder of Slamdance, and a friend, has a new film project that is raising funds on Seed & Spark, and it looks pretty cool. Check it out:

WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Facebook Watch is expanding internationally - and The Drum has the story. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has ever watched, Watch, but know plenty of people who have made content for it, and been unimpressed with the experience. Let’s see if going international helps the Book at all?

5 Movies that altered Advertising - not branded content per se, but from AdWeek - a look at five films that changed how we think of film and advertising, including the first product placement, the first trailer, and of course, the Blair Witch.

For Axios, TV is its brand of original content - According to DigiDay, Axios is skipping the masses online and in standard editorial video and making quality TV with HBO and others. Smart move.

Posted on 18th Oct

Get While the Gettin’s: Or the Vicissitudes of this Market

A short one this week, as I’ve been on deadline for another article running soon elsewhere. It is a plumb crazy time in the film business – not unlike the financial markets, or our daily news.

On the one hand, this moment in the film business reminds me of a quote I read from Ray McKinnon in Garden & Gun: “ I always said that if you couldn’t get a role in In the Heat of the Night in those days, if you were an Atlanta actor, you should strongly reconsider your career choice. I actually played a crack dealer one year and got killed, and came back as the town newspaper editor.” Point is, the gettin’ was good for actors back then (and now).

And in many ways, that’s the case for anyone making films (or other “content” today). There are so many platforms throwing money around that it’s hard not to catch some. I get calls weekly from brands and platforms moving into this space and wanting help in funding content. And for once, Hollywood and smaller platforms are actually looking for diverse subjects and creators as well (still not enough, but better than it has been). Equity is running scared from the market and looking at film and media – everyone I talk to seems to be raising a fund, even for hard to sell content. Filmmakers I know who have been pitching the same project for years are finally getting traction. Money is easier to find than usual.

On the other hand, while multiple platforms are launching (Quibi, Disney+ and Apple+, and even KinoNow, etc.), many others are failing (Topic) or consolidating (everyone), or will implode soon (Buzzfeed, Vice) because they can’t compete with these deeper pockets. And the big Streamers would rather buy library, safe-bet TV shows (Friends), or make “original content” than acquire anything new and indie. Peel the onion a bit, and only the biggest, sure-bet docs are the ones that perform – the rest are having a tough time in the market. And for every filmmaker I know who is riding the gravy train of SVOD deals, branded content, and pre-sales – I can point to five who are making projects that “aren’t commercial enough right now.”  It is pure hell for some while pure heaven for others. Kinda like the 1% all around, which I’ve written about before.

This is called froth. It’s when lots of things are happening that don’t quite make sense. It usually means there’s a bubble about to burst. Prices become detached from value, and things start to become unstable. If you didn’t have enough to worry about after reading the news each day, now I’ve given you something else to stress about. Sorry. (And sorry for all the cliché jargon above and to come.) But it’s also, always, an opportunity. If you can figure out what’s behind all this and coming next. I have my thoughts on that – for another post – but in the meantime – buckle up and ride, because a lot of crazy, sometimes fun, shit is going on. But be cautious and have a hedge, because this won’t last. But my simplest advice for anyone not participating in the frenzy – partake. Do the projects that are getting funded. Get your foot in those doors while they are cracked open. You can always come back to the projects that aren’t getting funded, but only if you’ve taken advantage of this moment… and saved.

FILM/STREAMING: 

No-budget African action studio Wakaliwood is ready to take over the mainstream – AV Club reports on Wakaliwood – which I’ve been woefully out of the loop on – a Ugandan film movement led by Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey Nabwana (Nabwana IGG) . His fun, low budget films have been taking Uganda by storm, and closed out Midnight Madness at TIFF this year. A great read.

Disney is reportedly banning Netflix ads across its entertainment TV networks – from The Verge - the streaming wars heat up as the Mouse-House bans Netflix ads across its networks. Ouch.

Less Shaft, more House Party: Hollywood revisits 90s black film boom – Hollywood’s always looking for a remake, let’s just hope they don’t ruin any of these classics. House Party in particular was one of my college-day faves. The Guardian reports on a wave of remakes of classic Black films.

‘It’s a form of modern slavery’: MPs on Ken Loach’s film about the human cost of the zero-hours economy – A great Guardian article on Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You which shows the horrors of the gig economy. This was a fave of many at Cannes and I’m glad it’s getting notice – and can’t wait to see it.

Branded Content 

Do people 'f---ing hate' ads? Marketers look to embed brands in culture as aversion grows – MarketingDive reports from NYC AdWeek, where Boudica Chief Creative Officer and former Hearst content chief Joanna Coles stated “People hate advertising. They f----ing hate it … and it's all advertisers' fault." P&G’s Marc Pritchard was quick to agree. And everyone seemed to think brands need to step back and go deeper into content integrations- branded content – so expect this space to keep growing. Let’s hope it just doesn’t devolve into a lot of bad branded content – we need genuine approaches, not cloaked ads.

Facebook agrees to pay advertisers $40 million over inflated video stat – AdAge on the stink that keeps coming from Facebook, this time in their BS view stats for advertising and other posts. Keep up the good work, Mark.

VR/AR/MISCELLANY:

Can Gaming and VR replace the Outdoors? Asks Outside Online. A fascinating look at a gaming detox center, and the problem of people spending too much time inside and online instead of outdoors. But the article also shows research that shows people might be able to get the same impact of being outdoors from VR simulation. Interesting stuff, but I don’t believe in complete detox programs, and I also think we should get outside more. Go read and decide for yourself.

Posted on 11th Oct

Netflix vs. Theaters...again

Owen Gleiberman penned an “upper decker” of a review/slam of Scorsese’s The Irishman and Netflix’s release strategy this week in Variety when he wrote “Netflix, You Have a Problem: ‘The Irishman’ Is Too Good,” arguing that the film demanded a longer theatrical release before it hits streaming.

His entire argument can be summed up by his last paragraph:

“Netflix has, in fact, made such a good movie that a vast audience of people — a world of people — are going to want to see it in movie theaters. And if the film’s relatively limited theatrical release starts to feel like a compromise with that desire, it could give a great many people pause: members of the Academy, and filmmakers who are promised the moon if they make their next movie with Netflix. Sure, they’ll get to make the film they want, and that isn’t nothing. But the release of “The Irishman” is destined to shine a light on the underlying metaphysical question: Is home viewing really the moon? The 20th century is officially behind us, but it may not be going out of style nearly as quickly as the executives at Netflix would like it to.”

Are we really still debating this theaters v. streaming question? I feel like I’m stuck in the old (boring) festival debates over whether audiences would ever warm to digital filmmaking. We know how that argument ended.

Jason Hirschorn in ReDef was quick to respond, with this classic take:

“ I like Variety and I read Owen, but I'm having a little fun here, but sort of serious, this article made me want to become a mime…Some of these lines seem like they came from THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF THEATRE OWNERS (NATO). The world is flat and media habits are not changing. Not. Netflix plays a different game…See this movie. See it in a theater. See it at home. Where may depend on your age. It's still a good movie. Business and exhibition preferences are changing and will accelerate. There's no stopping that any more than fighting the eventualities of what happens to you in mob life. You get killed, go to jail or get old and die alone.”

Look, let me say it one more time – I love movie theaters and watching films on a big screen. But not everyone does, and not everyone who does has the time, and many of those who do want to see it in the theater, have kids or work and other challenges that keep them from the theater – not least of which challenges Owen acknowledges – “all those trailers, with the $10 Cokes and the idiots on their cell phones.”

NATO and Regal and AMC see this as an existential battle, but once again, it’s not. Think of the millions if not billions being lost by not embracing reality and playing along. Rule one – everyone who has bet against Netflix has lost. Rule two – consumers/audiences are past this shit already. So rule three is NOT “hey, we can kill Netflix by going against the will of the people to see films asap, and just stone them (both) to death.” Rule three is adapt. Why not embrace the fact that the film will be on Netflix in 30 days (or two weeks, or one day) and charge extra to see it in a theater for a limited time? Why not wait and show it after it’s been on Netflix and say – now see it in a theater for one night only, in every AMC in America, with an after screening digital Q&A with the digitally young De Niro?

Every single masterpiece of cinema – except Star Wars, which I watched 11 times in a row in a theater as a kid, but that was the only option then – I saw first on VHS, and then watched it on film when I had the chance. Every single Academy voter, industry insider and reviewer is also watching it on Vimeo or a screener, unless they made it to the NYFF Opening Night  (and some undoubtedly did both) – so why not let the public do the same? And come up with a business model that embraces the new reality. Otherwise, we have to smell the stink of Owen’s concealed NATO placement more often, while everyone waits for the theaters to wake up to what we all know is true.

We have more existential threats to theater going than Netflix – they are called – TikTok, Instagram, gaming, attention span, content overabundance, lack of curation, difficulty of discovery, a lack of representative voices (diversity) and a looming recession. Netflix wants people to see great films. You are actually on the same side.

WHAT ELSE I’m READING: FILM

Arthouse Distributor, KinoLorber, launches KinoNow - with tons of their titles for video on demand viewing. it's a crowded market, but being transactional (as opposed to SVOD or AVOD) for these titles is smart. And it's a great library.

Who Is Telling Whose Story, To Whom, and Why?:  The IDAruns a long-read, from filmmaker Lisa Valencia-Svensson’s keynote address at Hot Docs this past spring. It’s also a must read for anyone making films, and thinking about who gets to tell whose story, and how.

WHAT I’m READING: BRANDED CONTENT

BrandStorytelling is heading into its 5th year, with its key event at Sundance in 2020. I attend annually and it’s one of the best conferences out there - not just for branded content. You have to qualify to attend, and they’ve opened up their portail for people to request attendance. Interested in and working in this space? Give them a holler.

CMO Survey: Should brands get political? One-fourth of marketing execs say yes | Duke's Fuqua School of Business reveals - giving more evidence to the need for brands to take politics- and social issues - more seriously in their branded content as well.

Samuel L. Jackson is Alexa’s First Celebrity Voice, But it Will Cost You a Dollar - The first app for Alexa that I might use - if I trusted Amazon, that is…

Tourism Branded Content done right - Singapore Airlines and the Singapore Tourism Board made some good comedic shortsto get people to visit - As the article explains: “The campaign features Singaporean comedian Rishi Budhrani visiting three cities – Bland in Australia, Dull in Scotland and Boring in the United States of America. After sampling the best amusement options these places have on offer, Budhrani them flies his hosts in each city back to Singapore.” They’re pretty good. Check them out at the link.

How to do branded content right? The BCMA has a piece (essentially branded content itself) about how Nucco Brain helped Innovate:UK rebuild their content strategy and YouTube channel. In spite of being an ad for their services, it has some great observations about the state of branded content in the entertainment ecosystem and pointers on how to do things correctly.

Instagram is identifying branded content more clearly now - giving branded content tags to IGTV. Transparency helps.

The Colonel has a dating game on Steam - go date the Colonel and buy some chicken. This is the kind of stuff that makes me question branded content. 

WHAT I’m READING: VR/AR/Miscellany:

The NYPL has created books on Instagram - long reads - and it’s working - Fast Company reports on how hundreds of thousands of people are reading entire novels on Instagram - thanks to a super cool interface and some smart marketing. From FC: “Since launching in August 2018, more than 300,000 people have read the NYPL’s Insta Novels, and the NYPL’s Instagram account has gained 130,000 followers.” Now this is innovation. Seriously - this is one of the coolest things I’ve seen online from the cultural sector in quite some time. Go read them - just look in the highlights of the @nypl account on Instagram, and enjoy.

Bjork’s Co-Creative Director talks about her VR music video - For The Guardian. Artist James Merry nails it, when he says: For me, it’s a perfect medium for pop. I don’t wanna be in VR for the length of a film. I don’t wanna be in there for even half an hour, necessarily. I think a music video is perfect for VR. You dip in to this little self-contained world and have an experience with really emotional music and then you dip out again.

Scientists are using machine learning to create art - Scientific American reports on how combining two types of machine learning is leading to some interesting art (and logic and reason), and improvements keep coming. Look out artists. Our future robot overlords might like viewing robotic art.

How do we build a future digital economy with more dignity, that pays you for the use of your data? Jaron Lanier has all the answers in this 3 part short video series from the NYT.

Verizon buys the remains of Jaunt VR: Verizon is making some big plays in VR and also in AR - launching new branded content apps for AR as well. My take: this is where interesting concepts go to die. They’ll use the tech, but I maintain that a phone company will never get media right (and yes, that holds for AT&T, too). 

How does the Apple Arcade eco-system work? Apple Insider has the report, with info from developers, gamers and others. Sounds like they are solving the monetization problems more elegantly than ads or in-app purchases. We’ll see if it works, as getting people to pay for games has been tough.

Posted on 3rd Oct

Perception vs. Reality & Other Sub-Genre news for Sept.26.2019

This week, the NYT reported that Female Artists made little progress in Museums, based on research from ArtNet. The study showed that while the perception is one of growing gender equity in the art world, the reality is that just 11% of museum acquisitions were of female artists in the last decade. And women artists make up just 2% of the global auction market.

Reading this article, I was reminded of a recent Screen Magazine article about who is funding women filmmakers, which has been making the rounds to positive acclaim in my social media feed lately. When I read it, as much as I loved the work being done, I was depressed, as many of the funds and organizations mentioned were clearly, well, under-funded. This isn’t a knock against these groups. It was clear they are doing their best, but with very little actual capital, and that means there’s likely been a similar perceptual shift in film, with little actual change.

We need some systemic change across the arts, and that’s going to take substantial investment and donations, and real thinking about how to change the status quo. The conversation is definitely going on, but that conversation can lead to a perception of actual change, when the reality - to me - seems to be that less has changed than we should have seen by now. Which Anne Hubbell confirmed in the Screen Article, stating:  “In the past couple of years, there has been lots of talk and reporting on women directors and more female representation. But the numbers have not really changed. Statistics show that we still have a long way to go."

I've been lucky lately to work with a few brands who are paying attention to gender (and diversity) issues, but in addition to bigger investments from individuals, organizations and funds, we need to see brands who are making content taking bigger actions to hire women filmmakers to shoot their films, as well as more women subjects and stories. Corporations can have a bigger impact here as they move into the content space. And they can "up" the investment in women in film. I'll be pushing this with my colleagues more, and hope everyone does the same.

WHAT I"M READING: FILMS AND STREAMING Quibi Already Has a Better Lineup Than Apple TV+ says Gizmodo. And most of the industry that I’ve spoken with lately. My bet remains on Apple TV+, but Quibi is investing more like someone who wants to survive on content (Apple can give it away, if you stay on their devices). Amazon’s Brilliant ‘Undone’ Highlights The Promise And Peril Of The Streaming Era - Forbes reports on the sad fact that in an economy of abundance, it’s hard to get attention. Many great shows get lost. Including Undone, which features some uncanny rotoscoping animation done by my friend, and great artist - Tommy Pallotta. So add it to your queue. But seriously, we have a discovery and remembrance problem with streaming that is only getting worse by the day. Facebook is launching a streaming device that watches you while you watch TV - FastCompany reports on yet one more creepy Facebook idea. You’d almost think they had early investment from the CIA or something?  Investors Claim AT&T Created Fake Streaming Service Accounts to Hide Failure - Law.com reports on another creepy company doing something a bit untoward - AT&T doesn’t have the customers it claims, and created fake accounts to gin up the numbers. Maybe Elliott Management is right to be pressuring this company. Why streaming services are the new credit card rewards binge - The LA Times has the story on how more consumers are earning credit card rewards when they pay for their streaming. Smart move, credit card companies. How Much Would You Spend on Streaming Services Per Month? And Infographic: How Much Is Too Much For Streaming Subscription? -PC Mag and the International Business Times both take a look at what consumers are willing to spend to be inundated with too much content - really, shouldn’t we be talking to one another or getting outdoors instead - anyhow, they find that most people want to pay around $30 bucks a month. That means some blood in the water soon.

Speaking of blood in the water,Netflix CEO Chews Out Content Creators In Post-Emmys Locker Room Tirade Congratulations: You just outlived MoviePass - AVClub has a nice little story on the death of MoviePass. But Ted Farnsworth isn’t done yet. Former MoviePass Chairman Ted Farnsworth Trying to Buy Failing Company. This may get interesting.

‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’ Filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig Remembers the Late Austin Legend - If you don’t know Daniel Johnston, or Feurzeig’s film about him, do yourself a favor and go watch it now. IndieWire’s report is one of the many obits that ran after Johnston died recently, and it’s among the better ones. I was a huge fan, own two pieces of his artwork, and listen to many of his songs, so this was a tough one. 

The difference between distributors and aggregators - Jon Reiss pens a nice break-down on the differences between these two parties, and what filmmakers should keep in mind. This is in response to the recent death of Distribber, which is causing much consternation for filmmakers.

My Bogota, Colombia speech/podcast is now up - I recently travelled to Bogota, Colombia for BAM, to be interviewed about the future of film and branded content by Alex Stolz of Film Disruptors, and the podcast is now live. If you want to hear me prognosticate, you should check it out. It was fun. The link also allows you to check out his other interviews in Bogota, with Netflix and Annapurna, and Liam Young. Alex is also hosting a conference on the Future of Film, check that out here.

WHAT I"M READING: Branded Content

Fossil Fuel Ad Campaigns Emphasize 'Positives' After Climate Science Denial PR Lands Industry in Hot Seat - DesMog has the goods on just how slick and evil oil companies can be with their ads, pr and branded content.

Of Course Brands Ruined ‘Storm Area 51’ In another bit of bad Brand news, Vice took a look at how brands ruined the recent Storm Area 51 non-phenomenon. I think people being people ruined it, but they make a good case.

Welcome to McDonald’s. Would You Like a Podcast With Those Fries? A look at how trendy podcasting has become with brands. But it often works. A Guide to a Decade’s Worth of Brand Films in China - China Film Insider recently launched a section devoted to branded content in China, and it’s worth a look at what is trending there, as China leads the way in just about everything. The same folks ran a guide to China’s streaming services - which make our plethora of options seem tiny - that’s worth a read as well. 

WHAT I"M READING: VR/AR/Miscellany Snapchat Uses AR Billboards in Los Angeles to Back 2 of Its Snap Originals Show AdWeek takes a look at Snapchat’s recent use of AR in billboards for its originals. We’ll be seeing a lot more of this, and as it matures, it will probably get more interesting. The Music Industry and Trump Want to Blow Up Copyright Protection Bloomberg takes a look at the fight between composers and others in the industry around copyright. It can seem confusing, but it’s actually pretty simple - we need less restrictive copyright interpretation for creativity to flow. Copyright is supposed to strike a balance, and this change would do that, and that’s good, even if Orange-Man  is supporting it. This Apple patent may be the key to AR glasses we’d actually want to wear  FastCompany looks at the possible future of AR glasses that project on your retina. Much more interesting than what we have today.

Posted on 26th Sep

Dove sells Dads to Apple at TIFF; WeWork killing Real Work; Netflix wars and more Sub-Genre news for Sept 12.

Unilever’s Dove Mens+ Care funded film, DADs, lands at Apple during TIFF -  

Big news in the branded film space – and worth covering up front, I think. One of the big sales announcements at the Toronto International Film Fest (TIFF) was Dads, by Bryce Dallas Howard, which was picked up by Apple for its new Apple TV+ subscription service. The film was produced by (her father) Ron Howard, but most interestingly, it was funded by Dove Men+Care, a Unilever company (full disclosure, I’m working with Unilever on another project). In fact, they announced the partnership from the stage of the premiere.

That’s pretty big news for branded content – that the film got into TIFF, received solid reviews, and Apple made it clear that they are open to branded content on their new service (if it’s good). This follows the May premiere of 5B, by Dan Krauss and sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, at Cannes, in competition, which then won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix, which is an advertising award, and it was then picked up by Verizon/Ryot and got a theatrical and digital release, also to good reviews. It’s clear that good branded content is getting some attention.

Miscellany

WeWork and the death of Real Work in the City – off topic here for sure, but I’m going to write a longer article or book about this sometime, and given the We Company’s upcoming IPO, I’ll weigh in with my opinion now.  Plenty of others have written about the ridiculous valuations of this company and the downsides of it as an investment (here’s HBR if you want a good summary, or better yet, Scott Galloway), but no one is covering what I think is the biggest problem with WeWork – how it is killing off real work-ing businesses.   WeWork is destroying New York City and probably every other town of any value. It’s a gigantic vacuum of suck – hoovering up investments, office - and now living - square footage, startups galore, entire city blocks, press attention, millennial brain-power, design-sense and the last crumbs of dirt from the fingernails of the strivers who scraped their way into the city decades ago.   The average rent for a dedicated desk at WeWork in NYC is $636 a month, and the average individual office space is 36 square feet., compared with the industry average of 150 sq. ft. This is just for a one person, one desk office, mind you, and an actual office costs much more. At that rate, you’re looking at about $212 per square foot. You could rent in the World Trade Center or Hudson Yards for that rate. It’s actually double the highest average Class-A office space rental cost in Manhattan. They claim you save money on build-out and desks, and kegs, etc. but trust me, you can set up an office for cheaper than the difference in cost.

But because start-ups can’t do math and figure out what price per square foot means, and because they don’t have the money for the deposits required for normal offices (usually 10 years), and because they are funded by Venture Capitalists who don’t really care, they can just spend these insane amounts of money. No one spending their own money would pay these kinds of prices for rent. In fact, anyone who wants to make a profit wouldn’t pay these prices – and for the most part, they don’t – they sign long-term leases with real landlords to bring down their overhead. You have to be playing with “funny-money” to enter this game.

In fact, you can almost look at this as a weird circular washing machine – VC’s invest in startup-A, who rents at astronomic prices from another startup-B (WeWork) founded with VC cash; then startup-A hires employees who only buy from other startups (like Seamless), and take rides from other startups (like Uber) funded by other VC’s. Few of said start-ups make any actual profit, and get by with more VC funding. Importantly, little of this value actually accrues to anyone else – just the founders and the VC’s. And WeWork sells this on a false sense of creating a new kind of community – where you live, work, play, eat, and send your kids to school, in a community of the new economy. But what you’re really supporting is a late-stage capitalist machine that ends up profiting one person – the founder of We. Ironic name, no?

Meanwhile, real businesses - ones that actually contribute to the local economy and to our culture, and that have to make a profit to stay in business  - are pushed out. Further and further, as WeWork colonizes even the outer-reaches of the City. Manufacturing, small industry, the entire garment-industry in Manhattan, artists, crafts-people, small businesses, trades… you name it, they’re getting pushed out. Often for a WeWork space that houses a start-up that won’t survive the upcoming recession, if they even make it that far. This has happened in NYC, and appears to be happening in every City of any size around the world.

 Unfortunately, when it all comes crashing down – which it will – Regus (it’s profitable, public, less-sexy competitor) will pick up some of the pieces, but the damage will be done, and most of these displaced, real businesses won’t be able to return. The shops their employees went to – the ones not owned by CVS or Walgreen/DuaneReade or VC-backed businesses – are gone as well, and won’t come back. There’s a reason you see so many empty storefronts in Manhattan, and it’s intimately tied to this cycle.

There’s a movie in this somewhere to be sure, but unfortunately, that won’t bring back the value that has been lost thanks to the We Company.

FILM

The Netflix Wars hit TIFF – early in the festival, a journalist noticed that none of the Netflix or Amazon titles were playing in the ScotiaBank Theater, owned by Cineplex, and TIFF had to confirm that Cineplex wasn’t allowing streamers to show there at all. This is for industry and press screenings, mind you, showing that the brains of the theaters management are sized inversely proportional to the size of those big screens in that theater. This is nonsense that won’t help win the streaming vs. theater wars.

How many Indie Films Hit Cinemas? Stephen Follows analyzes the data, and it ain’t pretty. Out of 877 films analyzed, and removing Hollywood films, just 17% made more than $100K at the box office. Send your kids to film school, folks.

Google Has a New Tinder Style Interface for Finding Films – About time. The NextWeb article has all the info on how to use it, but just type “What’s good to watch” on Google, and they’ll show you an easy to swipe system that learns from your thumbs up or down, etc. and it shows where everything is available to stream. You can narrow down by platform too. Perhaps this system will finally help solve the over-abundance problem.

25 New Faces of Indie Film – Filmmaker Magazine’s Annual report on the 25 rising stars of indie film hit the streets and online. This gets reported a lot, but in case you missed it, check out the list for some talent to watch.

Apple TV+ Has Launched – at $4.99/mo. This has been reported everywhere, but in case you’ve been under a rock. And The Wrap has the full line-up that they’ll launch with soon. People are saying the streaming wars are going, but it seems to me, we’ve just built a worse TV. That said, they also launched the iPhone 11, and Sean Baker took to the stage along with others, to tout it’s great video capabilities. Read more about that via the Guardian. And CNET has the goods on how their subscription gaming service will work – including the ability to play offline.

Vulture announces Bilge Ebiri and Alison Willmore as critics – About time. Bilge has written for Vulture and NYMag off and on for a long time, but is now full-time at Vulture. Bilge is literally the smartest critic, and best writer, out there and deserves to be at the NYT – or MOMA - (full disclosure, he’s also a friend). Willmore has more than proven her critical chops at Buzzfeed (and Indiewire before that). Congrats to both.

The Radical Film Fair hits NYC this weekend – Presented by Eyeslicer and Kickstarter, there’s lots going on for those of you near Brooklyn this Sunday.

Robert Frank, photographer and filmmaker, dies at 94 - The NYT has the obit for Frank, who was one of my favorite photographers and filmmakers. While he's best known for The Americans, many also know him for his films like Pull My Daisy. I was lucky to meet him once, and was inspired by his work. There's a great film about him from Muse Film & Television (I was on the board once), called An American Journey, In Robert Frank's Footsteps, by Philippe Seclier, you can still get it on DVD on Amazon via KinoLorber.

BRANDED CONTENT

Marketers are capitalizing on documentary filmmaking’s golden age reports DigiDay (h/t BrandStorytelling): “It’s always hard to find funding, but [that viewership trend] has made my pitch to brands easier and more attractive,” said Shaun MacGillivray, president of film studio MacGillivray Freeman Films.

Advertisers aren’t worried about key execs leaving Quibi, reports Digiday. Sure, it might not matter, but it was some key talent, and just before launch.

The Tow Center at Columbia Journalism published a guide to Native Journalism – worth a look if you or your company is moving into this space. It’s got some great summaries, best practices, and concerns. Unsurprisingly, they found that publishers and brands saw no ethical issues, but that there was a clear lack of transparency around native content, and that consumers are confused by this obfuscation. I think this stuff can work and be done well, but it risks lowering consumer’s trust in news even further (it’s already pretty damn low), so publishers need to get more transparent fast.

Posted on 12th Sep

Fall Fests, Laemmle closing, Brands and hard news, and other musings post Labor Day

I’m back from my social media and all-things-electronic-vacation, and back to writing this newsletter. Can’t say I missed the social media, but I did miss the feedback from readers, so I’m glad to be back.

Fall Festival Thoughts:

This weekend saw the beginning of the Fall film festival season, with Telluride over Labor Day weekend, Venice, and now we go into Toronto, the NYFF and onwards. It’s a thrilling time to be a cinephile if you are lucky enough to live in or be able to visit one of these places, and even better if you get into one of them with your film. No matter the circumstances, that makes you part of the 1%. The very lucky few.

The festival season is a perfect example of the best of times, worst of times dynamics. Even those filmmakers lucky enough to get into TIFF face an uphill battle in getting their films picked up for distribution – heck, it’s tough to even get people to pay attention to your film at TIFF if you aren’t one of the bigger films. Numerous amazing films – especially arthouse, foreign cinema – don’t find substantial distribution, especially not in North America. On the other hand – as a festival-goer, you can’t complain about the plethora of great films on offer. But on the other hand, I’ll bet that once again, when I head to dinner and/or drinks with my industry friends, it won’t be long before the conversation switches from what we watched that day, to what shows we’re obsessed with binge-watching on Netflix – even the industry is focused more on episodic than stand-alone features.

There’s definitely a disconnect between what’s getting made, what’s being programmed at these festivals and what people ultimately want to watch. Many festivals are adding sections devoted to TV and episodic, trying to chase the coattails of this trend, but I think instead, they should be figuring out how to build audiences for these films year-round (to be fair, TIFF is one of many who do a good job at this with their year-round programming). Arthouse cinema can’t survive on the festival circuit alone – the free wine and cheese won’t keep the filmmakers fed (or housed).

But that’s a problem that I either don’t have solutions to yet, or the ones I’ve tried have failed. We need more good ideas – how about some panels about real issues like this, instead of the tired festival panels we keep repeating at every festival? In the meantime, I’m off to TIFF and then the wonderful little Camden Film Fest (Maine), and can’t wait to see some great films, and hope a few will break through the noise and get seen by others soon.

With Laemmle Being Sold, does the Academy need new qualifying rules? – Both Deadline and Indiewire reported in early August that the famed Laemmle Theater chain in Los Angeles may be up for sale. That’s 42 screens in 9 LA locations, and historically, Laemmle has been a consistent home for indie films, particularly documentaries, that want to play an LA theater to qualify for an Academy run. A handful of companies are kicking the tires and may buy the chain, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll follow this practice. What’s been left unstated, but was brought to my attention by a theater booker friend is just how important this is for qualifying. This person’s take was that Laemmle has been the qualifying run home for the majority of indies in LA, and without it, the Academy would literally have to change their rules about a theatrical run in LA being needed to qualify. Greg Laemmle, who owns and runs it, has been a champion for such films, and was willing to take risks to program (or four-wall) them – as LA is the place indie films go to die (not enough people show up). Let’s hope whoever buys it has the same ethos, or this could mean real trouble for the field.

Curating cinema: I’ve written a lot about the need for more and better curation services for film (and other arts), and in particular the need for more film orgs/festivals to do this. Well, Sundance is doing it, so I should give props to them for this service. Their curated list for August came out recently, and was also used as the lede in their most recent email newsletter. Kudos to them – now, I’d love to see them curate lists of films that are not festival alumni – we trust your opinions all around, Sundance, so share them.

And while I’m speaking about curation – why aren’t more trusted brands doing this in their newsletters/catalogues/etc.? And props to three other great curators – POV, the Criterion Channel and Jack Reynor, on Instagram – who are hands down the experts right now. And last minute note: Netflix just launched human-led curated collections this week (now, they should add some trusted brand partners).

Finding Cinema is harder than ever – reports Vanity Fair on August 2^nd, in a great article by Elisabeth Donnelly. Sure, in theory, you have everything at your fingertips, but as she reports, with more than 40 streaming services, and exclusivity, as well as the curation (or lack of it) from the services, and what you really have is a hodge-podge of film history, where auter-classics, as well as just cult-classics like The Revenge of the Nerds, might not be online, and only on a DVD somewhere. Not a new problem, but a well-researched and reported story, and worth a read. Unfortunately, no one has an answer and all seem to agree that the “celestial jukebox” or “Spotify for Film” we’d hoped for in film, will never arrive. Why did we make this internet thing, again?

Branded Content

Branded Content, “safe words” and the perils for hard-news: The WSJ (paywall) had a great article Aug. 15^th about advertisers using blacklists or terms to avoid in placing their ads – you know, let’s not show any airplane ads next to stories about bombs, for example. But as the practice increases, to where Fidelity’s blacklist has over 400 words, news outlets are feeling the pinch. As reported, “The ad-blacklisting threatens to hit publications’ revenue and is creating incentives to produce more lifestyle-oriented coverage that is less controversial than hard news.” It’s becoming a big problem for hard news publishers, and the story reports that even prime outlets like the NYT are starting to produce more lifestyle content as a result. My take: when you couple this with the increase in branded content, and even brand journalism, you have the makings of a big problem. Very few brands are willing to tackle truly hard stories, that don’t at least put their brand in a positive light (for good reason). Follow the money, they say, and if you do that here, you’ll find a lot more money going to certain kinds of stories and not others, being told. Sure, a publication like the NYT can take money from an ad in the Styles section and use it to fund a piece on Iran, but when more money comes in for fluff stories than news, that will get prioritized, both for advertising and what gets made as “content.” I work in this arena, and think there are solutions to be had, but this ain’t easy, and it’s a concern.

Extreme marketing – cleaning Everest, for example – is all the rage – The WSJ (paywall) reports on Bally, Panerai and others are using extreme, experiential-based marketing to engage consumers. From the article: “Girotto (Bally’s ceo) says he doesn’t expect any business return from the company’s spending on Peak Outlook. “Brands like Bally must have a purpose beyond profit,” he says. Of course, many consumers might say the same thing. “It is connecting through values,” says Hovland, the Devries Global CEO. “It’s extreme marketing, but it’s not extreme for its own sake.”

CGI Product Placement is coming to Films, and soon: Digital Trends reports that LA based Ryff, Inc. has developed a technology that can insert products and logos, etc. into films, and customize the product being shown based on the viewer. So, I might see a Coke bottle on the desk in a movie/show, and you might see it as a Budweiser. Or maybe a truck driving by in a movie has an ad for pizza for one set of consumers, and an ad for diapers for another. Cringe-worthy stuff here – and once again, a tech that could be hacked to insert beautiful art instead of ads (I hope…) – but if you can build it, advertisers will use it. You can check out a demo here. (h/t to Brand Storytelling’s newsletter).

Branded Choose Your Own Adventure (Bandersnatch-style) Games are coming to Twitch, reports Digiday, and it seems to be working. Saw this one coming – Porsche worked with Twitch to make a live, game-style launch of its new electric race car, and got 28,000 views at any given second, and 2 million in total. Expect to see a lot more in this space soon.

Posted on 4th Sep

Unplugging; Brands; impact and film and more news.

Well folks, “below the fold” is the news for this week – and for awhile. As my longer-term readers know, I take every August off for a writing and social media vacation. Every year since 2010, which means for ten years now (!!!), I’ve unplugged from the web – except for work – for the entire month. I don’t check blogs, read any online news, f-around with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media. I am not lucky enough to be able to completely unplug – I do take emails from clients and other general work for the first two weeks of August, but then I actually stop checking emails for the latter half of the month and am completely off-line through Labor Day.

It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. And it’s led me to decrease my time on Facebook and lave Twitter completely; and I barely use Instagram anymore, even outside of August. I go on every now and then to post this newsletter, and to do some client work, but I don’t check updates or get lost in the endless scroll. About a year ago, I decided that even if I was staring at the wall, that was better than scrolling the feed. I was more likely to think a creative thought, or not have a negative one, if I just avoid the herd online. And you know what – I haven’t missed any important news, just some baby photos. I’ve taken that extra time on my hands to write – here at this newsletter, and in my own creative writing, and I am much happier for it, and the feedback and subscriber rates have been much improved here as a result.

I highly recommend considering a social media/online sabbatical for everyone. We’re all too connected to our phones, to the feed, to news on what crap Trump has done today, to what everyone thinks about it, and to “keeping up” with all the news in our industry (whatever your industry may be). It’s not healthy.

Or more poetically – here’s Kate Tempest on this same subject on her new album, The Book of Traps and Lessons (which I highly recommend):

“Stroke the phone screen with your thumb like
A mother
Trying to wipe clean the face of her only
Child
That blemish that black dot that will not come
Clean
The first sign of the
Plague
Absorb the ache of all your
Friends
And sleep with the light in your brain burning
UV all night”

The D-Word, a great online documentary community board, has a special topic running on mental health and filmmakers right now. I’m not reading it – because I stopped participating in bulletin boards and email lists ten years ago as well - but I hear it’s going pretty well. If you must connect this August, I recommend perusing the comments and advice being given over there.

In the meantime, I’ll be swimming. I do this almost every day throughout the year, but focus on getting in more laps during August (most years, I even do an open-water race, but not this year). I picked it up again around the time I started my August internet sabbaticals, and it’s been great for my health – especially my mental health.

This weekend, the NYT ran an Op-Ed by a psychiatrist about what he’s learned about life and happiness from swimming, and it resonated for me. He writes about how he was always disappointed that he couldn’t swim faster, until his coach told him to focus on technique and the speed would follow. As Dr. Richard Friedman wrote in the NYT, “We all wanted to swim faster and the more hysterically we tried, the more speed escaped us. The same goes for happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, yet the more directly we pursue happiness, the more elusive it becomes.”

I think many people use social media and obsessively search the net, in some elusive search for happiness and meaning, and all it does is make you obsessed with the scroll, when happiness and meaning is all around you – if you stop searching for it, and just get offline and actually live. I need to do this more, still, but August is where I focus on this technique. Friedman concludes, and I will to, as follows: “In the end, happiness is a side effect of living well — just like speed can be the result of excellent swimming technique. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the pool.”

WHAT I’M READING: FILM & STREAMING

Chinese vertical dramas made for phone viewing show the future of mobile video - (h/t Sundance Creative Distribution):  China is always light-years ahead of us in the US on tech trends, and we see it here again with the adoption of more vertical formats for scripted shows, meant for viewing on mobile. With consumers switching from TV screens to mobile, this trend will continue. Quibi is going full bore with this as well, reports Digiday – they are requiring producers to shoot twice as much footage, so they can deliver every program in both vertical and horizontal formats. I know my auteur friends are puking now, but this trend might be here to stay. I say “might-be” because I hear a rumor that PornHub hasn’t adopted this format, and porn always leads the way for online video.

Average US Time spent with Mobile in 2019 Has Increased - EMarketer, in a report from June, shows that time on mobile now surpasses time on TV for the first time ever - a pretty significant screen shift. 

How Netflix is changing the future of Movie Theatres - “Theatres have to fight against Netflix by becoming more like Netflix” says Forbes, with a good run-down of the bigger theater chain’s subscription plans, and how they might use the data they can now access for smarter movie marketing.

BITE ME: End of the Road for the Joyful Vampire Tour, On August 5^th the Joyful Vampire tour comes to NYC, it’s the end of their multi-city DIY distribution tour, and the promise to share the numbers, be transparent, teach some lessons-learned about film distribution and have a party. I’m late to this particular show, but Ben in my office sent me these screen-shots when the tour hit his social feed and after perusing their materials, I was impressed:

Every few years some plucky filmmakers make a film that doesn’t get picked up and decide to go on tour. The late Sarah Jacobson did this with Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore back in 1997, and these filmmakers are following in her footsteps. It’s a lot of work to put together a film tour, but sometimes, it’s your only viable option.

You can watch their docu-series about the tour here, and the trailer is here. I have no idea if the film is any good, but I applaud their efforts.

WHAT I’M READING & THINKING: BRANDED CONTENT

This week was BrandStorytelling’s Elevate Conference. You can get a taste of what takes place by reading their newsletter, online here. The team puts on one of the best events I’ve ever attended, and if you are remotely working in this sector, it should be on your to-do list.

A lot of the conference topics are about learning who is doing what, discovering some new ideas and best practices. But there was a big emphasis this year on impact entertainment – brands trying to make a difference via social impact media, and how to do that. Another hot topic was measurement – most people there don’t even trust the viewership data they are getting, don’t know what other metrics they should be looking into and there’s a general consensus that some standardization needs to take place. There was a bit of future-casting – looking into what’s next, what we’re missing and what new forms story-telling might take.

Another much talked-about event was an inspiring interview with Debbie Sterling the founder of GoldieBlox. I am not in the demographic, but if you want to be inspired, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better story than how she defied all the naysayers and built a smart toy/tool to stimulate STEM interest among young girls, and “disrupt the pink aisle.” Starting with a successful Kickstarter, then hard work and brand building and later, some investment, she’s made a super successful brand.

But that wasn’t enough – as she sought to move into content, she took meetings with every studio, agency and broadcaster and they all turned her down. So once again, she and her team took destiny into their own hands and started what has become a super popular online video brand, with a GoldieBlox character, that has built a large and loyal audience of young girls who love STEM topics. I go into this for so long here because it’s a lesson for any filmmaker or aspiring entrepreneur, or brand going into content – don’t try to work with a system that isn’t built to try to help you. Break down the walls. As Mark Duplass has said – don’t wait for the cavalry to help you – you are the cavalry. Follow Sterling’s lead and just build cool shit and, if you do it right and get a little bit of luck – audiences will find you, with no one else’s help.

One thing that was not discussed, but kept coming into my mind – it’s been said that advertising is becoming a tax on the poor. Those who can afford it are paying for SVOD services and getting rid of interruptive advertising, but a large mass of people are telling surveyers that they want to pay less than $27 a month for their subscriptions, and for many, even much less – so they are moving to Ad-supported platforms (AVOD).

At the same time, there’s a huge war going on for eyeballs in the SVOD space, and that’s driving up costs for production and (in general) quality. Add to this the investments Quibi is making in the short form space (they will have both AVOD and SVOD options). What I see happening is a general raising of the bar, and that will mean that brands – and filmmakers – have to step up to another level in their budgets and quality to have any change of getting onto SVOD. And in many cases, those platforms will be very selective and curatorial.

So what happens if your brand wants to reach the “upper class” of consumers? Will you be priced or quality-filtered out of their feeds? And if you’re more broadly looking at the 90%, how does non-interruptive, quality content work in an AVOD environment, where those consumers reside? And where, um, it’s all about interruptive advertising, negating the reason to do this stuff. This is an upcoming dilemma that no one is talking about it, but I’m obsessed with the implications and where this might go.

Watching a presentation from WalMart’s Vudu – which is betting big on having the long-tail of content at a mix of transactional (paid) and AVOD (especially for their originals), as well as having shoppable content and very precise targeting based on your data (of which, they have a shit-ton) – and they are looking well-positioned for the future. They’re also pushing a curated content collection model that is very close to what I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. I never thought I’d say this, but Vudu is looking like a smart play for the future. Of course, this all represents another cultural bifurcation between the haves and have-nots and brands will have to think hard about where they want to reside in that world. Depressing/sobering to think about, so on to some better news.

Impact Entertainment matters to the C-Suite, according to a just released study by Participant Media, SoulPancake, BrandStorytelling and the Harris Poll. This was delivered at the Elevate conference, but Forbes has the summary as follows: “Top corporate marketing executives strongly support using film and TV programming to build awareness of their company's values, though the people who work under them are less certain about such an approach. And few say they know what to do next in harnessing Hollywood to push social positions that can reinforce their own brand's values.”

The full study doesn’t seem to be online yet, but I’ll post it once it’s online (and when I’m back from that vacation). SoulPancake’s GM Shabnam Mogharabi made an excellent presentation at Elevate, and the results were pretty clear – the bosses want to make impact entertainment, but the lower-level marketing folks are afraid of pushing this too hard (quite a disconnect). Unfortunately, another finding showed that while brands said they don’t want to “purpose-wash” or “green-wash” their image, they’re still not valuing impact measurement as much as brand-lift and other old-fashioned marketing terms – meaning…well, purpose-washing. Regardless, the study gives us some data, can start some conversations and just might bring more brands to the impact entertainment arena (where I work, almost exclusively).

Why Marketers Should Care About Consumer Perception of Corporate Social Responsibility

From AdWeek: “What does this all mean for businesses? In today’s socially conscious environment, customers are willing to spend more of their money with businesses that prioritize corporate social responsibility. Improving CSR business practice and CSRPPQ not only help build a positive brand image, but also have a positive impact on improving customer loyalty and contributing directly to the bottom line.” Click on the link for some good examples. This coupled with the SoulPancake study made for feel-good reading in the brand space this week.

WHAT I’M READING: AI/VR/AR 

Atari co-founder launches the first Alexa powered board game - a murder mystery called St. Noire, and it looks awesome. Oh yeah, it’s AI powered too. VentureBeat has the write-up on how it works (I am Alexa-less and can’t play it..yet): 

“Players take on the role of a hard-boiled detective to solve a murder in the mysterious small town of St. Noire.  Playing either with your friends as a team, or going solo, you will need to question a cast of colorful suspects, search for clues around town, and use all your deductive reasoning to suss out which character is lying to you.

St. Noire features multiple storylines and endings, immersive sound design, and cinematic voice performances via Amazon Alexa. To make sure no two games are alike, the identity of the killer is randomized on each playthrough, making every new game feel fresh and unpredictable. A full play-through may take 15 minutes to half-an-hour.”

This might not be just the future of gaming, but also of storytelling.

Amazon launches Prime video VR for Oculus GO, Quest, and Gear VR - Amazon launched a new store for 360 video. And Zuckerberg reported this week that they Facebook is sold out (temporarily) of the new Oculus Quest wireless goggles. Apparently, my boycotts of the technology are not working.

Posted on 1st Aug

Diversifying the Cultural Conversation

Elizabeth Méndez Berry (a director at the Nathan Cummings Foundation) and Chi-hui Yang (a program officer at the Ford Foundation) wrote a great Op-Ed for the NYT on July 5^th about the need for more diversity among critics, cultural writers, editors (and assigning editors) in the arts and cultural sphere. The entire piece is required reading, but these two paragraphs sum it up for me:

This matters because culture is a battleground where some narratives win and others lose. Whether we believe someone should be locked in a cage or not is shaped by the stories we absorb about one another, and whether they’re disrupted or not. At a time when inequality and white supremacy are soaring, collective opinion is born at monuments, museums, screens and stages — well before it’s confirmed at the ballot box.

Yet those who have for decades been given the biggest platforms to interpret culture are white men. This means that the spaces in media where national mythologies are articulated, debated and affirmed are still largely segregated. The conversation about our collective imagination has the same blind spots as our political discourse.

I agree completely and I’m glad they’ve brought this discussion to a wider audience, and enlarged it beyond the usual conversation about the need for greater diversity in stories and storytellers. And its no criticism of the article to say the conversation needs to be broader still – as I’ve mentioned many times before here, in film alone, the ranks of film festival programmers and directors, arthouse theater owners and programmers, bookers, critics, acquisition executives and other decision makers are far too white and male. There are notable exceptions, but they remain exceptional examples.

As I’ve written before, many diverse filmmakers don’t even submit their works to certain premiere film festivals because they don’t feel those fests are “for” them. I know this is true, because many such emerging filmmakers have told me this. And I’ve seen numerous great films that have had a hard time getting accepted to these same fests because they don’t fit the taste profile of many of these programmers. They are then passed by (or never noticed) by acquisitions execs with the same taste profile. And if they do get their film distributed, they then face a crop of critics who may not be as in tune with their work. This isn’t only a problem for Diverse filmmakers/stories (and art), but for diversity (small d) of cultural style – there’s a sameness in what fest programmers like and critics like that leads to less diverse styles of storytelling as well.

Anyway, while the Op-Ed has been making the rounds and was in the NYT, go read it now if you haven’t. On to this week’s news.

Stuff I'm Reading: Film

I recently joined Josh Hyde on his American Filmmaker podcast to discuss indie film, branded content and a few other subjects. If you're interested, you can check it out here.

Will Chicken Soup for the Soul be the winner of the streaming wars? Holman Jenkins of the WSJ makes a good argument on its behalf, and while I don't always agree with this writer (and almost never with this paper's politics), he makes a good case. The company has a relatively new owner, Bill Rouhana, who used to run Winstar, and he bought the brand for the name - because brands matter online for curation, and this one "says 'nice';" and then he bought a big stake in Crackle from Sony. Oh, and he also got Popcornflix, and its 24 million app users in his deal. 

He plans to use the ad-supported service to clean-up in the coming streaming wars. And I'll give Rouhana this - he gives a good quote to sum up the future: "The streaming war is going to be amazing,” he tells (Jenkins)  “I can’t imagine how much money is going to be destroyed.”

That is true, and Rouhana's bet that people will turn to free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) is already panning out as consumers get tired of paying for multiple SVOD services. And he may do a better job curating and helping you find what you want, because as Jenkins points out: "He and his advertisers have a reason to care if somebody is really watching."

I always say that people need to focus more on curation. Well, both POV and Criterion are doing that pretty well in their email newsletters. Here's POV's from this week and here's one from Criterion. Figured I should praise as well as complain!

Quibi's line-up and mandate is becoming clearer, and the Hollywood Reporter has a comprehensive run-down of the execs and the shows:

AMC Theatres Launches Venture to Promote Small and Mid-Size Films - AMC is trying a new system to promote small to mid-sized films and give them more marketing, more time in the theater, and maybe a chance at finding an audience. They’ve tried this in the past, but maybe this time will work better?

Should journalists - and doc filmmakers - tone down the rhetoric and step outside the echo chamber in their reporting on climate catastrophe? Yes, argues Matthew Nisbit in a piece for Issues in Science & Technology reporting on the new Covering Climate Now initiative. It's a good piece, and I think anyone covering climate in their work, especially filmmakers, should take it to heart. While his focus is on journalism, his points remain relevant to doc films - mainly that scaring people and doomsday scenarios aren't necessarily helping things and we need more rigorous debate.  He argues we need critically oriented science reporting ... to help maintain public faith in climate science and journalism.

How Darren Aronofsky and astronauts are taking on the environmental crisis - Both Arononofsky and David De Rothschild, a notable environmentalist, are pushing for less negative activist films, and more positive “As environmentalists, we’re undertakers of the wilderness,” de Rothschild says. “We tell you all the bad news. And bad news creates fear. And fear often creates paralysis.”

For HBO Max, streaming technology is anything but a commodity - the decision to leave Disney owned Bamtech and provide its own streaming technology has proven fruitful for HBO, having premiered the final season of Game of Thrones, without any major issues. Now, called HBO Max, they’re ready for prime time. 

The dead-eyed new Lion King painfully illustrates the difference between cinema and video games – AV Club runs down all of the problems w/ the making of this movie. I haven’t seen it, but we all know these movies have been huge moneymakers for Disney and one of the seemingly surest bets at the box office. Let’s see whether audiences respond.

Stuff I'm Reading: Branded Content

I am teaching a short class on branded content at NYFA in Dumbo, Brooklyn on July 25th. Find all the details and register here.

Will more brands invest equity in feature films? Rick Parkhill of BrandStorytelling covers the story of Johnson & Johnson with 5B, and speculates that more brands may move into this space. Having a couple of clients who are already doing this, I suspect we'll see even more of it.

Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ is dangerously close to becoming ‘Sponsored Things’ How much ‘New Coke’ and ‘Burger King’ did you spot?

Learn What YETI’s Head of Content Looks for in a Film- Among other things, he suggests concentrating on finding a good character, and then, make sure they “personify the brand.” I’ve worked with Scott and Yeti, and think they’re making good films, so check out his advice.

Cosmopolitan is launching a branded podcast with Tinder - 

“Historically, branded podcasts have been a pricey purchase with real distribution challenges. While there have been success stories, such as GE’s “The Message,” or, more recently, a companion podcast to the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl,” which averaged 1 million downloads per episode, branded podcasts are typically not used to reach a large audience.

But as the podcast audience continues to grow, and as more legacy media companies get involved in the space, some may hope to leverage their reach to drive more scale than previously possible. “It’s a good option for certain companies,” said Steve Pratt, the founder of Pacific Content, a podcast agency that was acquired in May by the Canadian broadcaster Rogers Media. “For [brands] that want big reach or a mass audience, partnering with a media company makes sense.”

Verizon Media introduces media to branded content arm with immersive experience “In the fight for attention, brands need to become smarter in the way they craft their stories. By putting on a ‘show’ instead of a ‘tell’, we showed firsthand just how RYOT Studio is revolutionising the way content is created, communicated and distributed.”

Check it out here

The only magic of content is that it makes your brand disappear - moral of the story: great storytelling will lead to effective ads. No need for gimmicks. 

Stuff I'm Reading: AR/VR/AI/ETC

The Pentagon Wants VR To Train for Nuclear War - scary, but another useful (but hopefully won’t be needed) application of VR

Using virtual reality could make you a better person - on a more positive note, maybe VR can help us become people who wouldn’t use nuclear weapons on each other. 

The NBA just invested in this hot AI startup to train and find its next crop of global superstars - the NBA has developed an app that not only utilizes AI to evaluate basketball skill, but also create an online community of like minded people sharing a hobby. 

“One of the most powerful things that we’ll see from this app is the community and the ability to have a platform that shares all the talent that’s out there connecting all those people, countries, and cultures.”

Offset, DJ Khaled, Russell Westbrook, and the brave new world of celebrity digital avatars - brands are starting to create celebrity avatars to help promote their products. One of the questions being raised is who ultimately will own these avatars, and how many will everyone have? 

An Indonesian University Is Accepting YouTubers And Exempting Them From Entrance Exams - at first glance, seems like they’re pandering toward the younger generation. But they’re doing something similar to Colombia and their Orange economy, which is to help foster creative content to help bolster GDP.

Before VidCon, Facebook Tweaks Monetization Options for Content Creators - Facebook has launched some new features for content creators, and I like one of them a lot - fans can now buy bundles of “stars” to give to their favorite creators, who then accumulate real money and esteem. Note: As I was writing this, Youtube announced a similar program called "Super Stickers" at VidCon as well.

Posted on 7th Jul

What does it mean when NYC loses Kanopy?

Big news in the educational streaming market this week - I may be the first person to ever type those words!- as the New York City Public Libraries Drop Kanopy’s “Free” Movie-Streaming Service. The NYPL, Queens and Brooklyn Public libraries all dropped the service (they are actually distinct library systems) citing costs. Now while many readers may not even know what the heck the educational streaming market is, I think this is bigger news - and worse news - than it seems.

Up until now, if you had a library card from these or many other public libraries, you could watch movies for “free” by just using your library card to access Kanopy, which has become one of the biggest streaming libraries for film in the educational marketplace. I scare quote the “free” part because Kanopy reportedly charges libraries about $2 per view (with a view being at least 30 seconds of watching), which adds up. In fact, these three libraries said the cost got too high for them to renew their contracts and would invest more into ebooks and audio books. Mind you, that’s what public libraries pay. Educational libraries, like a University or College, pay even more, with some quoting $150-300 once more than 3 people watch the film. For a good run-down of the educational market, Kanopy and how this all works, read this Film Quarterly article.

This is bigger news than it seems because those are three gigantic Kanopy clients. And Kanopy proved it when they flipped out - sending emails and communications directly to library users that, while couched in nice terms, were clearly trying to spark a mini-revolution among customers. If other libraries follow suit, it could be bad news for this new player, and for the educational ecosystem. And that’s bad news for fans of arthouse films who use the service, but also for filmmakers and distributors, especially doc filmmakers, who rely on educational sales/rental income to make up a not insignificant portion of their overall revenues. In fact, for some smaller films, the educational market is their primary income stream. And for even bigger arthouse films, it’s a meaningful revenue stream.

A closer look at the math is kinda interesting. Variety reported: “According to the New York Public Library, about 25,000 of its patrons (around 1% percent of the system’s 2 million cardholders) used Kanopy. The Queens Public Library said only about 6,000 of its 1 million cardholders used the service and that Kanopy was planning to raise the subscription rate to about $125,000 annually.” So while $2 per movie sounds cheap, it was adding up for the libraries. 

But the numbers are an even scarier harbinger of bad news for arthouse films to me - just 1.25% of NYPL users, and just 0.6% (barely half of a percent) of Queens library users bothered to watch movies on Kanopy. And using the Queen’s numbers, they had about 62,500 views among 6,000 viewers, or just an average of 10 movies per user annually - and this in one of the hottest markets for indie and arthouse films in the US - and for “free.”

Granted, these aren’t the most scientifically accurate numbers or analyses here, but the simple math shows not a lot of demand for arthouse films. And this is presumably among the 25% of the more culturally curious NYC residents who have a library card and presumably read a lot and would be our target audience (approximately 25% of NYC’s population has a library card). To really analyze this, we’d need to compare it to their other subscription rates, etc. but I don’t see the numbers getting much more impressive. As the NYPL said on its own site: “our resources are better utilized purchasing more in-demand collections.” Ouch.

So we have a situation where too few people want the service, $2 bucks a pop is considered too much for some of the better funded customers in the country to afford, and where many other public libraries could follow this lead and make the same decision. And given that the library is often where younger audiences often first encounter this media, the lost opportunities are pretty scary. Yes, libraries have some other options and can still buy DVDs for awhile, but if the libraries of New York aren’t seeing enough demand to justify the cost, and Kanopy can’t make the business model more affordable, things look grim for the future of any streaming service focused on niche films, or their fans.

WHAT I"M READING: FILM

Hollywood and Madison Avenue both have a problem - they need to work with more women behind the camera - directors particularly, but also in other positions. Well, Alma Har'el has a plan to "flip the script" and the LA Times has the article on her new venture, Free the Work, “a global network for women and underrepresented creators and the people who hire them.” Read the article to learn more about the project and how to get involved.

FastCompany has some questions about Netflix’s massive ‘Murder Mystery’ viewership numbers - Numbers netlix released regarding Murder Mystery imply a 120 Million dollar opening weekend. Many are skeptical and continue to call into question Netflix’s metrics for measuring viewership. Me: It doesn’t matter. We’ve built an entire system around knowing these numbers, but they only matter to advertisers. And stars. But stars know their market value and can still negotiate the rates they want. Nonissue.

7 FREE STREAMING SERVICES TO SAVE YOU FROM SUBSCRIPTION HELL - With Kanopy leaving New York and many more streaming services ready to take its place for a fee, Wired lists some free services one can use,and their list is: IMDB TV; The ROKU Channel; Tubi; Pluto TV; Crackle; Vudu; (You may notice that there’s only six. The one I left out, of course being Kanopy).

Disney Pushing To “Significantly” Expand Hulu’s Original Programming, Says CEO Randy Freer Hulu is stepping up its original content game, according to TubeFilter and the Information. And Disney is also saying that most future programming will have to be made by Disney owned studios, or be co-produced by a Disney brand, and “how much production support Disney will provide in exchange for that co-producer credit isn’t clear.” 

Bob Iger tells Barron's that Disney+ is not about competing with Netflix: "We’re not launching Disney+ to catch up to Netflix or even compete with them. The marketplace is hungry for this, and we have a brand people know and love."  And as Evan Shapiro said on LinkedIn  - that's smart:

Discovery Can pay it’s CEO a shit-ton, but won’t pay unscripted producers up front anymore - which is causing some panic attacks in the film-adjacent world. Deadline has the report. I’ve heard reports of producers having trouble getting financing for Netflix series, and now Discovery will become tougher as well.

WHAT I"M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Advertisers wish Netflix would bring on the ads, but Sarandos isn't stupid - Digiday reports that advertisers can't shut up about how much they really wish Netflix had ads, and they use a lot of good arguments for why it should have them, mainly by pointing to the balance sheet. But the balance sheet doesn't reflect consumer love or hate, and sorry folks, but consumers/audiences hate ads. And Ted Sarandos knows that - as reported in Deadline, he told the audience at SeriesFest in Denver - "the company has no plans to incorporate advertising (a subject of mounting speculation) or bid on live sports. Both are “not core to the proposition” of Netflix." Good branded content, maybe. Ads - not if they want to keep up paying subscribers. Sure, AVOD has a place- with people who can't afford to pay (ads are a tax on the poor now, of course, but that's a longer story).

Samuel Scott at The Drum had a scathing op-ed on the hypocrisy of brand purpose marketing at Cannes Lions. His argument is that no one is walking the talk, and especially when it comes to having an impact on environmental issues. He argues it helps more with employee recruitment than actual impact. I don't agree 100%, but he's right about a lot of this, and it's worth a read and a think.

Why does Content matter? - Lynn Browne (Co Founder of Brand Verge) lists why Branded Content is ultimately more effective than traditional advertising. 

YouTube's Sataya Raghavan tells brands how to optimise their Branded Content - The director of YouTube partnerships in India further argues that Branded Content is helping brands stay relevant and reach more audiences. 

Colombia wants to be known for its creative economy even more than its coffee - Colombian President Ivan Duque was at Cannes Lions where he’s pushing his “Orange Agenda,” which involves heavily funding and supporting the arts and creative industries. I can’t wait to hear what locals think when I am in Bogota in two weeks for the BAM Bogota Market, but I like the sound of this:

“We’re talking about a sector where you have festivals, carnivals, gastronomy, museums, visual arts, live arts, media, TV, movies, digital, advertising, marketing, gaming, jewelry. You add up all those sectors in a country like Colombia, its contribution to the economy is double the size of coffee and even bigger than mining,” said Duque, which garnered enthusiastic applause from the Cannes crowd at his session. “So we have to help people understand that when we’re talking about the creative industries, when we’re talking about talent and innovation, we’re talking about a very vibrant and important force to change our nation.” (President Duque)

WHAT I"M READING: INTERNET/OTHER

Cory Doctorow wrote an "op-ed" from the future for the NYT, where he speculates on the damage done when we give too much power to a few internet companies, and crack down on free speech in service of ending "harassment, extremism or disinformation" Which doesn't work, of course. Worth a read for why we should pay more attention to the poor policies being considered in the tech space.    

Posted on 27th Jun

Netflix’s “Ad-Free” Experience and the Future of Branded Content?

Erick Opeka got a few laughs on LinkedIn when he posted this comment recently:

I’ve long argued that Netflix is going about brands and content in the wrong way- product placement like this, or these gigantic ads for Lavazza Coffee on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee are actually more intrusive and gross than regular advertising. Heck, on the new season of Comedians… Seinfeld takes us on a five minute gushing tribute to Porsche that is longer than any commercial.

Aside from the few times when it makes legitimate sense to show a product for nostalgic reasons (and some of the Stranger Things tie-ins fall into this category), Netflix should move away from product placement and embrace smarter branded content. With nearly every brand you can think of making films these days, and all of them needing distribution, it’s a great opportunity for Netflix to get good content, lower its bills and bring in a new revenue stream without ruining the consumer experience.

Of course, this is dependent on maintaining its curatorial eye – use the humans at Netflix and the algorithm’s both to make sure that what you are licensing is entertaining (or enlightening, or otherwise valuable) to audiences. You can’t just start showing every crappy brand’s video, even if it wins a Cannes Lions (which are no arbiter of quality). But there are plenty of good branded content films/series out there, and many more in the pipeline and it’s astounding to me that Netflix isn’t pursuing this more aggressively.

Plus it gives them a marketing partner for each piece of content that often negates the need for a theatrical release – or when a theatrical is warranted, helps guarantee butts in seats through the extra marketing power of the brand partners. Yes, product placement does this too, but it’s much more advertising-oriented (and usually gross) than a simple logo at the beginning of the film, as most branded content is currently practiced.

FastCompany just ran a report about the product placement on Netflix, and points out that Netflix is pointing out that it didn’t accept payment for these placements. They’re clearly feeling a bit beat-up from the negative attention (there are gazillions of anti-product-placement stories online right now). Well-made branded content would negate this crap while expanding a smarter partnership structure.

Analysts keep writing stories predicting that Netflix will have to launch advertising, or an AVOD solution, to make up for slowing subscriber growth and to lower their debt. I don’t see this ever happening, as it makes for a poor customer experience. But switching from product placement to good brand relationships (and payments) via curated branded content would make for a much better option.

I’ll go a step further into (maybe) crazy-land and suggest that just as Netflix has upended the field of media, it can disrupt advertising for the better as well. If Netflix did this the right way – which would mean being super-selective, making brands work with trusted, quality producers directly (instead of with agencies) and with the real budgets it takes to make quality films/shows – then we could shift a lot of energy out of interruptive advertising and into quality content people want to watch. It would solve an actual consumer problem – wanting to skip ads – and a business one- wanting to break through the noise and reach those consumers skipping their ads – and an existential one – that it increasingly looks like content divorced from another profitable business is unsustainable.

I’m sure my leftist comrades are appalled at the thought of even more content being swayed by corporate interests. And this is a very real concern,. But it’s one we’re stuck with anyway, and one of the antidotes to that is better public support of media via a revamped approach – which could even mean requiring space for public media on Netflix – but that’s another article. Trust me – I am not arguing that we should only have branded content. That would suck (and be very much like the major networks anyway).

I’m just arguing that Netflix could do things better, and possibly disrupt a system (advertising) that is too busy taking micro-steps instead of making reach change.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM

Media’s Blame Game – AKA how not to do branded content, or media – This one from Om Malik (Founder of Gigagom) is making the rounds and it’s a good piece to keep in mind when contemplating my proposal above, as it shows how brands and their ads are slowly destroying our media. Well, that and a lack of planning or innovation on the part of media companies. It’s the must-read of the week.

The Doc Life: So What Exactly Does Successful Distribution Look Like? – When I go to film fests and talk to industry, one of the smartest voices in the room is always Tim Horsburgh, Director of Communications and Distribution at Kartemquin Films. Check out this interview with Film Independent, where he discusses the difficulties of film distribution.

Netflix is in the news nonstop: Here’s why Netflix says it lost US paid subscribers for the first time in eight years. And in other news, Netflix launched a mobile-only streaming plan in India for less than $3 per month, and some people think it’s a test-case for a similar service in the works for the world.

THE STREAMING WARS are heating up, and multiple publications weigh in: 

The Financial Times warns that we are heading toward over saturation.  SF Gate offers a list and breaks down the numerous services that will be available. (Spoiler: There’s too many). Forbes suggests that investors shouldn’t just look out for streaming dominance, but rather what companies are making smaller, but more innovative steps in the technology, and thereby lead the next media revolution (hint, this is the smartest take here).  Yahoo Finance breaks down how Amazon and Disney will be the lead challengers of Netflix. And for some counter-argument, The Verge weighs in on Plex, which makes piracy a streaming service. They correctly note that the rise in piracy further reflects that it is getting too hard and expensive for consumers to watch what they want. 

The Booming Podcast Business: Why Do You Listen? – I don’t know, because I don’t. But I know everyone else does.

And last, a plug for a great new film that I highly recommend, from a filmmaker I admire, and my friend, Rodney Evans: VISION PORTRAITS is a deeply personal documentary by award-winning filmmaker Rodney Evans (Brother to Brother) as he explores how his loss of vision may impact his creative future, and what it means to be a blind or visually impaired creative artist.  It’s a celebration of the possibilities of art created by a Manhattan photographer (John Dugdale), a Bronx-based dancer (East Texas native Kayla Hamilton), a Canadian writer (Ryan Knighton) and the filmmaker himself, who each experience varying degrees of visual impairment. Using archival material alongside new illuminating interviews and observational footage of the artists at work, Evans has created a tantalizing meditation on blindness and creativity, a sensual work that opens our minds to new possibilities. 

Opens August 9th in NYC at Metrograph

Opens August 23rd in LA at Laemmle Royal

Check out the trailer here

WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Quibi Acquires First News Program In Reported 8-Figure Deal With NBC - more Quibi news. The smart move here – Quibi shows that like Netflix, it is battling not to be just another service (here, on your phone), but an entire eco-system of content, so you don’t need to go anywhere else.

No, Your Brand Newsroom Is Not Really a ‘Newsroom’—and That Is OK - Another example of how creators making branded content need to embrace what branded content actually is rather than what they think it should be. 

Olivia Munn is starring in a new cybersecurity thriller about the Sony hack . . . for IT managers? - Covering a dull subject for branded content? Just get a celebrity involved. Lenovo uses the woes of another company’s hack (Sony) to push its own cyber-security. Will be interesting to see whether this works.

Will GAIL’s ‘Hawa Badlo’ campaign shatter the branded content ceiling - Brand Equity brings up how we don’t have an effective way of measuring branded content impact. 

 People are reacting more to branded posts from Influencers than their own “normal” posts. What the heck? But it seems true. Instagram claims it’s not their algorithm just pushing branded posts, but call me skeptical. The writer points out that perhaps “influencers are actually putting in more work to create high-quality content for their ad partners than they do for their own content.” Whatever the reason, that’s good for the cart. If more people are interacting with branded posts, they might do more shopping as well. Then again, as the writer for FastCompany points out: “Influencers are competing for our mindshare in the extremely limited funnel of our feeds. As a result, everyone we follow seems to be selling us something all the time—even when they actually have more to say.” 

Posted on 25th Jun

Missing the Boat on Curation

Every brand is now a studio. Every day, a new brand enters the fray of content creation. They all want to be filmmakers. And I obviously think that’s a good idea in general, or I wouldn’t advise brands on how to do it, smarter. But at a time of superabundance, when the last thing the world needs is another movie, smart brands should be thinking more about curation than creation.

Mind you, I didn’t say every brand. People trust certain brands and not others, and curation only works when there’s trust involved.  But for those brands that have built such trust and have the following to prove it – there’s a unique opportunity, and a glaring gap in the market for smart curation.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Joe Marchese wrote about curation and the attention economy for Redef recently, and pointed out: “…The brands, retailers, and media companies that understand how to operate in the current Attention Economy will become trusted curators and shape the future of culture and commerce.” (emphasis mine). 

You don’t even have to stop making films. Yes, they are sexy to make. But that’s also why everyone else is making them too. The argument today is really - why make content, when you can help me find it instead? I have thousands of options to choose from, and my feed is cluttered with too much stuff already. What I need help with is finding the best stuff to watch (and yes, you guessed it, curation can work beyond film, but let’s keep the focus narrow for now). The real reason I hate ads is because they interrupt me after I already just spent half an hour trying to find something worth watching. But I’d gladly watch your ad, or become an even more loyal brand follower if you helped me find the best stuff to watch without feeding me more ads.

In fact, I’d subscribe to your channel if you’ve curated the best content for me – even in this era of too many services, because what consumers want/need is better curation, not just a better selection. I’m surprised that the only brands to have launched subscription (and AVOD) services have been retailers like WalMart. Sure, that makes sense because they do sell things. But those retailers don’t have my trust. I’m pretty sure we’ll see curation services if not SVOD services soon from celebrity brands – Goop Video, for example. But there’s a couple of handful of brands that have that same trust, and they should move into this space fast.

The easiest way into it would be via partnerships – partnering with platforms to curate content. This could easily be done on Netflix or with publishers like the NYT – all of whom are slowly coming around to better brand relationships. But over time, curatorial brands should be platform agnostic, and indeed part of their power comes from being able to recommend great programming across platforms. I can barely remember which platform has my favorite shows anymore, but I’d use a curatorial app from a trusted brand to remember those and discover new content at the same time.

But curation shouldn’t just be about picking movies/shows for me to watch – it should also include content “around” films/shows  - guides to films, articles on why they’ve been selected, links for digging deeper, and over time, perhaps live or originals as well -  tours, Q&A’s with filmmakers, and more.

There’s a lot of opportunity here, and it’s time for some brands to take ownership of this space.

WHAT I'M READING: FILM & STREAMING

Apple Plans on Releasing Six Movies a Year For Oscar Consideration - According to the SlashFilm and others, Apple plans on financing “six small-budget movies a year with an eye toward stories that could win Academy Awards.” That’s good news for filmmakers and fans – quality over quantity.

Amazon is rolling out and IMDB streaming service that will be free (with ad support). At the same time, Amazon's Increasing Its Ad-Supported Streaming Video Investment. Amazon will let you watch films how you want – subscription (SVOD/Prime), for sale/rent (VOD) or free/ad-supported (AVOD) meaning they hit all potential consumers. Smart moves.

How Do You Build an Anti-Capitalist Streaming Site? - Nick Hayes and Naomi Burton, founders of the Detroit-based leftist media company Means Media, talk about their ambitions for Means TV, a worker-owned, completely viewer-supported streaming platform. They’ve made some great campaign videos, now let’s see if they can make this work.

3 Reasons Amazon Prime Video Will Survive the Streaming Wars. Other than just being Amazon, there are a few other reasons, go figure.

Amy Dotson gave a hell of a going away speech as she leaves IFP and heads to Portland. Filmmaker Magazine has the speech from BAM CinemaFest.  IFP was too dumb to keep her, so she's blowing things up and starting a new career elsewhere. Onwards! NYC's loss and Portland's gain.

WarnerMedia May Price Its Streaming Service Higher Than Netflix. Why? – Motley Fool argues that with a library that may rival Netflix in size and that the switch over to 4k among media will cause prices hikes among all the streaming services. They may just be ahead of the curve. Of course, everyone’s always said that no one can make money at the prices Netflix has been charging (thus why they chose said prices). But it’s also a big gamble when consumers have so many options.

Quibi has sold a lot of ads, as Variety reports. They have two tiers – and ad supported and ad free, but both have a subscription fee. But Madison Ave is ponying up to be part of the experience. No surprise there, as this is a solution built for Hollywood and Advertisers. I’ve written about it before, and I’ve also got an editorial in the new Filmmaker Magazine about it. It’s behind their premium paywall right now, but this is also a chance for me to plug that Filmmaker Magazine is one of the few publications worth your dime – subscribe now and read what I have to say about the pros and cons of Quibi, as well as many other great articles on the business/creativity of film.

WHAT I'M READING: VR/AR/AI

‘There’s Just No Doubt That It Will Change the World’: David Chalmers on V.R. and A.I. - Philosopher David Chalmers give his take on how V.R and A.I will affect the future for the NYT. He’s a smart one, and his thoughts on how Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will change consciousness and more – luckily he sees it as more like 40-100 years away.

ARTISTS ARE USING VIRTUAL REALITY TO CONVEY THE PERILS OF CLIMATE CHANGE - At this year’s Venice Biennale, artists are using creative ways to drive home the urgency of climate change and sustainability. Let’s hope they have more impact than we’ve had via films.

VR is training cops to empathize with the people they may kill –if VR is an empathy machine (which I don’t believe, btw), then maybe this will help cut down on some bad situations.

WHAT I'M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

5B wins the Cannes Lions Entertainment Grand Prix. Congrats to producer Rupert Maconick & Saville Productions, UM Studios and Johnson & Johnson. 5B is the rare brand film that can play at the real Cannes - the film festival, in competition mind you - and then also win an award at the Cannes Lions. And it's because the film is great content, well made, by a great filmmaker - Dan Krauss. Kudos to all of the filmmakers/team.

Cannes Lions Takes Place in Time of Change for Ad World -  Variety reports on how the ad world is changing - demonstrated by the presence of celebrities, showmanship, diversity and Apple - at Cannes Lions. A good run down of what’s going on.

Cannes Briefing: The scramble for the future of TV has begun – Digiday breaks down the trends at this year’s Cannes Lions, which seem to be all about the future of TV and as one unnamed exec put it: ““The challenge is always the same, trying to become or stay relevant for consumers in a world that’s more and more fragmented.”

Branded Content Campaigns Help Ads Cut Through Clutter -  Variety again on branded content, and why more people are turning to it. Nothing new here, but it’s a good summary of what’s going on - “In an era of content overload, when it’s easier than ever for consumers to skip an ad or avoid it altogether, many advertisers are trying a different tack: branded content. Rather than traditional “interruption” advertising, they are creating content that people actually want to watch, tailored to the platforms on which they are viewing it.”

REI launches a Magazine and Support for Nonprofit News on the Outdoors: This is a client, but I had nothing to do with these two items- REI announced today what I think are two awesome moves - the launch of a new magazine, Uncommon Path, and investing in 10 local news orgs through NewsMatch to support local journalism on environmental issues and the outdoors. Kudos to the team.

Posted on 21st Jun

Surviving the Trifecta Dash, Fake film fests, brain machine interfaces, new branded content and more

Surviving the Mad Dash to the Trifecta

This week’s newsletter opinion piece is shorter than usual because I’ve been participating in the June 14^th Trifecta Mad Dash – hitting the deadlines for the Toronto (TIFF), Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, what is known in the film world as the Festival Trifecta.

While this is changing a bit as the three duke it out over premiere status rules, it used to be that you could premiere at all three festivals in September. This is the way it should be forever, and this fight is ridiculous; but in theory, you can still do this pending a few things about timing and type of film. Anyway, every producer with a film that is finishing soon is doing this same hustle this week because they may only get into one of them (or none of them) anyway, but you have to try. Technically, the Telluride deadline is not until July 1, but that’s not too far away, so aside from some last minute polishing, everyone is trying to get their rough cuts good enough for submission by the end of today.

I’m involved with several films that will be submitting – films I produced or from clients and/or friends who wanted feedback, and I have many producer, sales agent and distributor friends who are doing the same thing.

It’s insane. And then we all do it again for Sundance, and Berlin and Cannes and…. a few others. But there’s no getting around it – we can complain about premiere policies, but you gotta have a deadline somewhere and it will always be a mad rush alongside thousands of other films. For all the things that have changed in the film world, the deadline madness won’t go away, unless you decide to forgo festivals and just take your film out there (which some people do, even for big films). But in reality, these top festivals are definitely worth it for those lucky films that get accepted.

So good luck to all of you out there who are submitting to a festival this week, and I hope your real final cuts are even better than the ones you are submitting today. I promise to have something fancier to write about next time, but for now, I have some more films to submit.

WHAT I’M READING:

FILM:

Filmmakers Beware of Fake Film Festivals - and these are just two of many other scams out there.

A team at Stanford has built a pretty simple tool to seamlessly edit what someone says in a video, by just using a text editor, opening the door to both easier editing of flubbed lines/missing dialogue, but also lots of crazy faked videos. While the accompanying video is very academic, it seems to work flawlessly and is pretty fascinating. Meanwhile, we’ve seen other versions of this being used for disinformation already - the fake Pelosi and fake Zuckerberg, but this tech makes it even easier.

BRANDED CONTENT

Branded Content Initiatives Help News Publishers Rake In Revenue, But Some Remain Wary – A new study shows strong profit margins on branded content, especially for smaller, local news brands. It’s part of a new initiative to help save journalism, and that seems like a reason to keep experimenting.

Mailchimp is launching branded content. Mainly around small business and entrepreneurship. Welcome to the party. It’s crowded here. But they did pick some interesting folks to work with, so I am intrigued: director Jason Woliner (What We Do in the Shadows), writer Samin Nosrat (Salt Fat Acid Heat), actor Jay Duplass (Prospect), and actor/composer Big Boi (Someone Great).

Instagram Lets Advertisers Promote Branded Content From Another Channel - Retailers can now create ads using organic posts from other channels that have branded content. So now you can pay an influencer to show your brand, or just find someone promoting you for free, and then create an ad from that content and promote it further. Weird, but interesting. This could be useful for film promotions too.

11 Branded Content Innovators Who Take Marketing to the Next Level – Good list.

Brands like HP and Apple try film to reach young consumers who skip commercials - More and more brands are discovering that it is both cheaper and more effective to create branded content documentaries over commercials. Everyone has posted to this LAT story, but it’s worth a read if you somehow missed it.

Pop Culture Site Powering Through 4 Weeks Of Sponsored Posts For Movie Its Film Critic Called ‘Contemptible Trash’ Most important article of the week.

Twitch is emerging as a favorite new platform for publishers – It’s collaborative, it allows direct links for sales and it seems to be working. Why? The engaged fans.

VR/AR/AI

What Black Mirror Striking Vipers gets wrong about VR - In essence, we’re much further away from the technology in the story than the episode would imply. But hey, it’s the only good episode this season, so let’s give them some credit for that.

DARPA is now investing in brain-machine-interfaces (BMI) that doesn't require surgery - meaning brain control of artificial limbs or allowing "a single soldier to control swarms of AI-enabled drones with his or her mind." Or an actor to control a recreation of a deceased one for a new movie before long.

OTHER

Meeker Internet Report: Too Much Streaming, Not Enough Security - Venture capitalist Mary Meeker has this to say about the internet: the streaming bubble is going to pop. Her 300 slide reports are a must read every year, but this article gives you the ten bullet point takeaways if you’re in a rush.

Apple Arcade is poised to make Apple the ‘art house’ gaming platform - and by doing so its choosing not to compete with the big gaming companies (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo) and instead carve their own niche within the gaming world. Smart move, Apple.

Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us? Let’s hope so, because I for one am done with the current crop. A good analysis of the IndieWeb – per the article: “Proponents of the IndieWeb offer a fairly straightforward analysis of our current social-media crisis. They frame it in terms of a single question: Who owns the servers? The bulk of our online activity takes places on servers owned by a small number of massive companies. Servers cost money to run. If you’re using a company’s servers without paying for the privilege, then that company must be finding other ways to “extract value” from you—and it’s that quest for large-scale value extraction, they argue, that leads directly to the crises of compromised privacy and engineered addictiveness with which we’re currently grappling.”

Posted on 14th Jun

Getting inspiration from a teen filmmaker, and more news you can use for June

How a Teenaged First-Time Director Won Tribeca With His No-Budget Feature

Philip Youmans, a nineteen year old, wrote, shot and directed Burning Cane, a feature length film, which would go onto win the Founders Prize at Tribeca Film Fest. The idea first came to him as a sixteen year-old in junior-high school. NoFilmSchool has the full story and interview, and this is my pick for inspirational story of the week.

A few  big take-aways from me -

1) he had a singular vision and was obsessed - every successful director I know is obsessed and won’t stop until they make their vision a reality. Youmans tells NoFilmSchool: "I've been making short films since I was in eighth grade. They were very bad in the beginning but I kept making more and more. I was getting better, learning about the things that didn't work. I learned through a lot of trial and error and put all of my money into my shorts growing up. That's why I didn't travel that much—I would put all of my money into the shorts. That, and gas for my car." That to me is the single biggest commonality I've found among successful filmmakers - whether you give them ten dollars or ten million dollars, they will spend every last cent of it making films, learning the craft, making mistakes and having break-throughs until they bring their vision to reality. Of course, the trick is marrying this to actual talent, but talent without obsession rarely goes this far.

2) he told a story that was native to his experience - the guy's a kid, what experience can he bring to film, some would ask? Well, read the interview - he knows his locale and focused on what he knew best. This was a story he could tell because he grew up right in the middle of it.

3) he had the gumption to reach out for help (to Benh Zeitlin no less) and that alone will help make his career. Sure, he got lucky here too, and actually got a response. But it was having the gumption to try - he didn't have any connections, he reached out via Instagram. Similarly to how Raymond Santana tweeted Ava DuVernay to get her interested in the story of the Central Park Five for When They See Us (which was partly his story), Youmans took a chance and it worked. He also relied on the help of his friends - as he says in the article, only your friends will help you make a low-budget film - "Friends are willing to stick through it with you even when things are incredibly uncertain" and that's true for any film, and any business endeavor.

Great coverage from NoFilmSchool - and a filmmaker we'll undoubtedly be hearing from again. Reading stories like this one renews my faith in indie film, and I hope it does the same for you.

WHAT I"M READING: FILM

Quibi: The next Go90, or streaming unicorn? - Quibi is setting out where other streaming platforms have failed: creating a mobile streaming platform. The differences: an executive all star team, backing by major studios, and rising trends in mobile consumption. But at the end of the day, will this only benefit major studios, or will it help Quibi to become a success as well? The debate continues on Digiday, who also report that Quibi has dropped plans for connected-apps, and is sticking with mobile only plans.

Amazon Brings Shows to Life to Stand Out in the Streaming Space Amazon is using multi media experiences to help promote their shows. Examples include The Garden of Delights, a sensory experience used to promote Good Omes at SXSW, and bringing back Carnegie Deli during the upfronts tp promote Marvelous Ms. Maisel. “

It's about going beyond the binge," said Callif. "How do you keep the conversation going with fans and get them not only excited and continuing with these properties, but also to hopefully be sharing it with their friends and family to get them engaged?"

Me: Transmedia storytelling is still at work, just under different names.

Video streaming apps go local for stories Upcoming Netflix originals such as 'Yeh Ballet' and 'Kaali Khuhi' will be based in small towns in India. With most OTT services needing relevant content to fuel their subscription-based models, “heartland stories” are forming a core content strategy, according to industry experts. In short, you can’t conquer a country without working with local storytellers. People want content that reflects their lives, and Netflix (and other SVODs) will have to invest a lot in local production to keep subscriber growth moving. Let’s just hope they work with some “true indies” along the way.

Youtube is changing how subscribers counts are displayed, possibly shifting its culture - While it seems like a small change, this could lead to big problems, especially as more attention is being paid to subscriber counts. I’m all for Instagram hiding like counts, so we stop obsessing over esteem, but the video business is a business, it’s not just social, and the last thing the video business needs is less transparency or “rounding errors.”

Cinelytic in the News – I’ve been following the development of Cinelytic for awhile now (it launched when I was helping run another data project, so we spoke a lot), and it’s up and running now and making some news. Check out this article in the Verge on how Cinelytic’s technology supports the business side of film. And also this interview with Fox Business News, where Cinelytic’s CEO, Tobias Queisser discusses their use of artificial intelligence to shake up the film industry. I think it’s a pretty smart tool for modeling potential film performance, and it’s worth using if you are a brand, platform or producer making a lot of narrative content (it doesn’t work for docs really).

WHAT I"M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

AI vs Curation and the Attention Economy-  Joe Marchese is one of the smartest people in the business, and he recently left Fox to work in VC, with a focus on smart start-ups curating the future of media (among other things) He penned a nice article for Redef about the need for better systems for getting people’s attention than the crap AI systems we’ve built, which are focused on maximizing eyeballs cheaply for advertising (he calls it fracking for attention...nice one).  As he says: “In effect, we have abdicated our responsibility for curating what is worthy of a fellow human’s attention to A.I. which, in turn, is optimizing only for immediate engagement and advertising margin.” And he makes a strong case for what’s needed: “However, the brands, retailers, and media companies that understand how to operate in the current Attention Economy will become trusted curators and shape the future of culture and commerce.” (emphasis mine). Read the full piece for what he thinks will work and how he’s working to build that future.

Film Independent held a Branded Content panel, and the takeaways are worth a read, and the full panel video is at the link. (h/t Sundance Creative Distribution newsletter). I take issue with the title - selling out vs. getting paid what you love to do, which perpetuates this myth that making branded content is somehow just about a paycheck - it can be creative in its own right, but the tips and feeback here are relatively solid.

How culpable are filmmakers who support frauds/bad companies in ads/branded content? - Hyperallergic has a good little article about Errol Morris’s work for Thernos (and AIG and Nike) and the ethical implications. Few people stop to think about the actual ethical implications (beyond the idea of “selling out,” so this is worth reading and contemplating for anyone thinking about this space.

BBC StoryWorks boss: Content marketing is advertising Jelana Li, head of BBC Storyworks AUNZ, rejects the idea that content marketing shouldn’t be viewed as advertising, but rather still carries the “function” of advertising,” which is to sell a product” “Consumers are very smart these days, they know when content contains a commercial message and if it’s not labelled as such, they feel betrayed,” Li says. Me: Amen. Part of being “authentic” with storytelling is acknowledging that any brand message is in some manner an advertisement. Even if your true KPI is societal change, or something else, your brand value increases (when this is done well) by the affinity with a good story, and no one is fooled by this. And if they are, they’ll be even more pissed off when they find out the truth. So be up front about it.

NorthFace-Pedia[/caption]

Why The North Face manipulating Wikipedia confirms our darkest fears of advertising - Another slap your face moment in brand mishaps this past week  - The North Face and its Brazilian agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made boasted about how the brand evaded Wikipedia editors to slyly embed the outdoor apparel giant’s products in high-traffic tourism pages for sites like Peru’s Huayna Picchu, Brazil’s Guarita State Park, and Scotland’s Isle of Skye. Wikipedia immediately called out The North Face in a Twitter thread, accusing the brand of lying about collaborating with the platform. Remember, authenticity is a buzzword for a reason.

Indigenous Media uses 60 Second Docs to Carve out a niche in the branded content world - Jake Avnett (CEO of Idigenous Media) is able to push strong branded content in a digital medium through film conventions. This is made apparent through the success of 60 second docs. Me: they’ve made 500 documentaries, generating 3.5bn total views and have 7 million followers, showing you can build an audience with great short form, but the key remains a mix of original/nonbranded, branded content and (pretty much) ads - content diversification.

The secret to great branded content? It’s not about the brand : Marketing Interactive lays out how to make great branded content, and guess what, authenticity is part of the key. Among their recommendations:

• Find authentic stories by engaging local storytellers
• Scout out your filmmaker through their short films
• Don’t make your brand the hero, be part of the hero’s journey - me, this one is crucial.
• Don’t be afraid to go long
• Think long term
• Create a content universe - It works better when the brand story is part of a bigger project. All great advice for brand storytellers.

Future Proof: How much branding can you put in branded content? Podcast: Branded content is absolutely everywhere… but why? What format works best, at each stage of a customer’s journey? How transparent should you be? And how much branding is simply too much? Dr Alex Connock, Associate Fellow at Said Business School and founder of Missile Digital, talks to the Future Proof podcast about his research and industry experience, sharing insights for marketers exploring the brave new world of branded content.

Atlantic/Netflix[/caption]

For Netflix’s ‘When They See Us,’ Branded Content Becomes a Powerful Educational Tool

The Atlantic using branded content for social causes through ‘When they See Us’ to inspire empathy and educate audiences about the problems plaguing the US incarceration system. Me: this is a great example of brand collaboration - in this case, two platforms who are also brands, working together to “build a story universe” that could tell more of the story that didn’t fit in the Netflix miniseries.

WHAT I"M READING: SOCIAL MEDIA

The Real Difference Between Creators and Influencers - very interesting how things change with time, and from platform to platform. Most of the difference is YouTube (creators) vs. other platforms (influencers), but it’s also about how transactional the relationship is, etc.

Unlocking TikTok: how marketers are experimenting with the video app- although Tik Tok is still new and less-inhibited by brands and larger corporations, marketers are trying to find their way in. But find it they will, as they’re desperate for your attention and if you are a day younger than me, that’s the main place you visit now.

Influencers you don't follow will soon be in your Instagram feed - trying to avoid that one annoying influencer? Well too bad. Brands are now investing money into advertising that will allow influencer ads to show up in your feed. Gross, but also to be expected.

WHAT I"M READING: MUSIC/PODCASTS

The podcast industry expected to create $1 billion in annual revenue by 2021 - with more startups investing in the podcast industry, advertisers are investing more money. The seemingly insatiable appetite for more podcasts can’t last forever – like video, there’s only so much we can consumer, but for now, it’s a good time to be a creator.

iTunes' Death Is All About How We Listen To Music Today - and the way we listen to music is through streaming. Begs the question - now what happens to all the music we’ve digitally purchased. Glad my faves are all on Vinyl.

Posted on 7th Jun

The End of the 'Net as We Know It, and other cheery news for May 21st

THE END OF THE NET AS WE KNOW IT

A recurrent theme I keep seeing as a subtext of many of the articles I write and link to here has been the ongoing professionalization of the internet and how that is impacting culture. Why I never thought of calling it what it is – gentrification – boggles my mind, but luckily this week Jessa Lingel did just that in a great article for Culture Digitally, called… The Gentrification of the Internet. (h/t to ReDef)

And she’s right. Just like our cities, the Internet is getting gentrified in the service of big business, advertising, commerce and the safety these entities need. These changes are subtle and have been taking place over time, but are fundamentally changing the nature of the Net. As she says:

In the early days, the Web was driven by experiments in technology, DIY community building and curiosity around connecting with strangers from across the world. The Web we have now is guided by different principles, like business models that rely on a constant transfer of data from people to marketers, social norms of consumption and self-promotion, and black boxing the algorithms that structure the platforms we use. The internet is increasingly making us more isolated, less democratic, and beholden to major corporations and their shareholders. In other words, the internet is increasingly gentrified.

She goes on to point out three critical similarities between urban and internet gentrification: Isolation, where we increasingly live in less diverse bubbles; Increasing Costs, where services get more expensive (urban) or where you get “out-spent and out-coded” by Facebook, etc.; and Uneven Commercialization, where local businesses are pushed aside, or earlier websites (Craigslist) get cast as outdated and uncool.

Meanwhile, over at Medium, Yancey Strickler (co-founder of Kickstarter) wrote a great piece called The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet, where he applies author Liu Cixin’s dark forest theory of the universe from his sci-fi trilogy The Three Body Problem to today’s internet.

Briefly, the idea of the dark forest is that the Universe is not unlike a dark forest – it seems quiet, dark and inactive, but there’s a lot of hidden animal activity going on, and there might also be a lot of activity going on in the Universe, but we can’t see or hear it. As Yancey says, “If it’s a dark forest, then only Earth is foolish enough to ping the heavens and announce its presence. The rest of the universe already knows the real reason why the forest stays dark. It’s only a matter of time before the Earth learns as well.

This is also what the internet is becoming: a dark forest.”

His thesis is that as we get sick of poor internet behavior, people are increasingly turning to dark forests online –“newsletters and podcasts…Slack channels, private Instagrams, invite-only message boards, text groups, Snapchat, WeChat, and on and on. This is where Facebook is pivoting with Groups (and trying to redefine what the word “privacy” means in the process).”It’s something he acknowledges he’s been doing more of, and it applies to me as well – I’ve turned to writing this newsletter instead of posting/reading Facebook, and I’ve been moving to more private forms of communication. But the problem with this is that as people like us “abandon” these spaces, we diminish our own influence on the larger world. Or as he says, “If the dark forest isn’t dangerous already, these departures might ensure it will be.”

It has me thinking a lot about just how momentous this moment is for the future of the Internet. People are moving into walled-gardens (Facebook, private channels); politicians are destroying net neutrality principles, and indeed the Net is bifurcating into at least three Nets (Our’s, China’s, Europe’s); we see calls for censorship and making the Net “safer” for kids and advertisers; and as more money piles into online content, the space for independent voices (be they news, or films, or music, or opinion, or…) shrinks and becomes harder to find.

We’ve not only broken the Internet to make a better Mall, a better TV and a worse cab, but we’ve possibly come near the end of the time period when we can do much about it. Nathaniel Rich’s gigantic article for the NYT last year (and now a book) Losing Earth: the Decade we Almost Stopped Climate Change, pointed out that from 1979-1989, we could see what was going wrong with global warming and had a chance to do something different, but for various reasons (money, politics, lack of will), we lost the chance. I fear we’re going through a similar decade as it applies to the Net now, and the implications for society overlap with and are not dissimilar from those when that battle was lost.

What to do? Well, Lingel argues we need to do three things: take control of the algorithm; diversify what you see/visit; and control the politics – by paying attention to the politicians (and lobbyists) and corporations trying to change the Net and make our voices heard. I’m not sure that’s enough, and that it’s not too late, but the Optimist in me holds out a little hope that we can use the Internet to come together to fight these changes and reassert a little more of that original DIY ethos. Let’s hope that’s the case.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM

Disney says its more than $400 million Vice investment is now worthless. Saw that one coming, but it amazes me that some people are still giving these clowns money. It. never. Worked. It was a media Ponzi-scheme all along, and only the old media guard fell for it.

Check out this fun interview with Werner Herzog - where he discusses everything from catching trout with your bare hands to how to pick a lock. Good stuff.

WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Why Brand Purpose marketing isn’t working with young people - Guess why? Because most brands don’t have a purpose and think they can fake one. You can’t. But when you are genuine, the audience knows it and responds in kind.

Will Streaming Platforms usher in a golden age of Branded Content - I’ve been saying this for years now, and finally people are picking up on the fact that brands are making longer form and episodic content to get past the firewall and onto SVOD. We’ll also see it increase as Netflix realizes they need another revenue stream.

Walmart is Streaming Shoppable Shows, and that could change shopping - Walmart is using streaming content to help facilitate consumers buying products. I don’t think this is the best use of branded content, but it will surely work for fashion and certain other brands, and it is (unfortunately) the future.

Forbes is making 40% of its revenue from branded content - according to Digiday - and part of the reason for that is more cross-platform thinking as exemplified by the ties between their research, events and content divisions. More on Forbes below, but combining services seems like a smart strategy in this space.

WHAT I’M READING: GAMING; VR/AR; SOCIAL MEDIA

How Jordan Freeman and Zoom are using Cross-media approaches and a stellar team to make gaming the new art form. A great read in Forbes on someone doing it right. Freeman has built a bit of a creative dream team (smart step one) and is focused on building story worlds, and making something more than the “usual” in the gaming world. It has a lot of potential. From the article, Zoom’s approach “could truly help games become more recognized as works of art: a seamless blend of elements we appreciate as artistic, but presented in a cross-media  package that combines imagination with interactivity, founded on

real creativity.”

Driving marketing in the 21st century with VR and AR - More on how the future of advertising is at least partly being realized  through VR/AR.

How video games can address climate change - Finally, some folks are using active/interactive media that  people actually participate in to address climate change (games, that is). It’s about time, and will likely have far more influence than all these scary climate films we’ve been making. Kudos.

TikTok has Created a Whole New Class of Influencer - As the article says: “There might not be much money – but, right now, there is very little artifice as a result.” and that’s why TikTok works for so many people - the lack of artifice, which is reminiscent of early web video. It will be about a year before it gets overrun with “professionalized” content, but it’s great for now.

VACATION -

Note that I am taking a break til after June 3rd and the newsletter will be on temporary hiatus. More in June.

Posted on 21st May

Arts/Film Ethics, the State of AI & Film, the Doc Market and more news

Ethics and the arts: Holland Carter (in the NYT) has a good run down of the ethical issues facing the arts world now, from stolen antiquities to whether you accept money from pill pushers or arms dealers when you run a museum. It’s worth a read to get the full scope of the argument, which comes down to we need more protests and thought about these issues.

It shouldn’t be much of a conundrum to just do the right thing. But I guess those ethics get harder when running a museum is not unlike firing up a vacuum cleaner in search of dollars – you tend to suck in a lot of dirt.

Speaking of vacuum cleaners sucking up dollars, there’s Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and they have their own ethical issues. Just this week, Indiewire ran an article about whether or not Hollywood will leave Georgia now that they’re getting closer to banishing abortion. The answer: of course not. Hollywood only takes convenient, cost-neutral stands. The film world is saving too much money to take a stand in Georgia. We can call it a complex issue, or just admit this truth.

Similarly, no one cares about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi when they take Saudi Arabian investment money, which AMC is taking, along with many others in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. There’s been little lasting outcry about that, and I have to admit I didn’t think about it when I went to AMC theaters recently, or when I took my last Uber, so I am a bit guilty of muddying these waters as well.

Of course the answers aren’t actually all that easy. As I look at the debates on the Sackler donations to museums, I find it just a touch ironic that those same protestors don’t seem to mind grants from the foundations of former crooks and robber-barons. As I’ve said before, the arts are fine taking money from dead capitalists, just not from those still breathing. There’s no clean money in the world, but you can at least try to do things a better way.

Meanwhile, over in brand-land, where I currently live, we have plenty of examples of brands trying their best to get this stuff right, and make the world a better place. This week’s Guardian article on Yvon Chouinard is a good example of a brand (Patagonia, a former client) doing the right thing. And while Chouinard thinks no one else is joining the fight, I see plenty of others doing more than just green-washing. A lot of brands/companies are responding to the push from consumers to do the right thing, and seem a lot less conflicted about it.

I find it interesting that my brand clients seem to have a better sense of ethics these days than my film and art-world ones, but I guess that’s the new world we live in.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM

AI Eats the World - Modeling edition - people keep telling me actors are irreplaceable, but I'm not so sure. In the lead up, someone has created an AI that can generate fake models modeling fake clothes. Watch the video. H/T to Daniel Miessler's Unsupervised Learning.

What's up in the Doc Marketplace? Anthony Kaufman has a great story covering every angle in IndieWire this week. I don't usually link to Indiewire - because you all read it already, right... - but this one is a must read. Especially interesting - IDFA announcing the end of their signature Central Pitch, and his take on what's working and not. I recommend this for everyone - filmmakers, producers, buyers and brands thinking about the doc space.

WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Carrie Brownstein on How Portlandia Launched her Branded Content Career: Much like the Kenzo short she directed, which put the story first as opposed to the brand, Brownstein endeavors to work with more brands that are “interested in doing things that feel like there is a connection with the audience that transcends the product itself.”

Spotify launches voice-enabled ads on mobile devices: an interesting look at how ads will engage in new innovative ways in down the line. And remember how people used to tell you how important cell phones would be and you didn’t know what they meant? That’s what’s happening next with voice, so this is pretty important.

After Streamlining Web Presence, Vice reportedly raises $250 million in Debt Funding: Vice rolls on, but my take is that Vice has been in the dead-pool for quite some time now (but investors and branded content deals may keep them zombie-live for a bit longer).

P&G is Moving Heavily into Branded Content - and the Drum has the interview w/ Marc Pritchard (their Chief Brand Officer), explaining why - to engage consumers more creatively. He also explains that in an OTT streaming area, they need to go “"back to the future" … with a 'brought-to-you-by' message upfront, rather than integrating into or overtly advertising within the series.” Which leads me to believe that the “back to the future” analogy will play out for awhile and lead us right back to… interruptive advertising as brands inevitably try to differentiate once again. But let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

Verizon announced it has bought 5B and is bringing it to market - I’ve been lucky to meet producer Rupert Maconick via BrandStorytelling, and watched this film at their last event - it’s a great doc about nurses leading the charge in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the early days (they noticed something was going on), and I’m glad to hear it’s found a great home. It will apparently come out under the RYOT label, and be tied to their LGBTQ+ initiatives. Kudos to all involved, and I can honestly say - watch this one when you get the chance.

Posted on 5th May

Ten Trends to Embrace in Branded Content and other Sub-Genre news for April 25

Lately, as I’ve been consulting with many of my brand clients, one thing keeps striking me about the media/film marketplace, and it has quite a few implications for the branded content space. Put simply the field has matured, and that means what was once good enough isn’t any longer. With more brands making good, quality content than ever before, and with the simultaneous rise in SVOD platforms spending more and more to make the best films, Brands making content need to step up their game.

Here are ten areas where I think brands need to concentrate in the next 12-18 months:

1. Diversity – Everyone is paying lip-service to diversity, but too few brands are taking this seriously. The world has changed – it’s no longer about giving some equal time, but about being relevant to the new majority audience. This means not just more diverse stories in front of the camera, but perhaps more importantly, behind it. And that means not just the director, but the production companies being hired and (if you’re using them) the creatives at your agency. I’ve attended many a branded content conference/event, and trust me, they are currently whiter than the Academy, or the indie film world, and this needs to change.
2. Up the ante – Take a look at any awards show for branded content, and be honest – there’s a lot of same-old, same-old going on. Brands need to up the ante and raise the stakes a bit. This means several things, but taking more risk, and stepping outside your comfort zone is the underlying need in the space. This also leads to the next four needs;
3. More narratives – You would think documentary is the only cinematic art-form if you only watched branded content. Of course, if you only watched branded content, you’d need our head examined, but that’s another post. While there are some notable exceptions (Somerstown, Lego Movie, Uncle Drew, Marriott’s Two Bellmen, BMW’s short’s The Hire, Carmilla, among others), too often, brands are focusing all of their messaging around documentary instead of narrative. I get it – no SAG, no agents, it feels easier to jump into docs. More importantly, I think brands are doing this because they crave authenticity – the only buzzword that could top curation this year- and docs seem to lend authenticity to a brand. But this has opened up a big opportunity – with so few brands making narrative films (short or features), a smart brand can really make its mark in this space. How to do this is a longer post, but for now, just consider that narratives open up a whole new area for press, audience recognition, story-telling possibilities and – when done right – could bring more authenticity to a brand. I think this is the future for branded content.
4. Turn to features – One could argue that brands are making short form content because that’s what people are watching online, it’s easier to view on mobile, especially with our on-the-go lifestyles, and the other usual arguments. And for many productions, this is true, but I suspect a big reason many brands are making shorts is that they just think it’s easier than making a feature. And let’s face it, if that’s your reason, it’s lazy. The decision to make short form vs. long form should be based on your goals, your intended audience and how you want to fit in the cultural conversation (among a few other things). Often times, a brand’s message would be better served by long-form content, be it documentary or narrative. Why? When done right, a feature film can have a greater impact. It’s seen differently, often more seriously, by audiences. It has a different release strategy, which often includes broadcast, theatrical or SVOD – and while these bring their own headaches and stumbling-blocks, they also open up many more avenues for earned media, and for meaningful additional marketing opportunities. While a few brands (and many of my clients, showing my bias) are doing this, more brands need to start playing around in this area.
5. Top Talent – But you can’t up your game, move into narrative, or make feature films and have a success unless you’re working with the best talent. That means not just turning again and again to the same producers you’ve trusted for so long, and broadening the scope of who you consider. It means looking at their IMDB page and reviews, not just their reel (commercial reels are always pretty slick). It means you’ll have another layer of red-tape, as they all have top agents (meaning a whole other level of asshole). But working with auteurs also brings more credibility, better story-telling, and a whole mess of new earned media opportunities.
6. More $ - All of these ideas are expensive. But the main reason brands need to increase their investment in branded content is that in a maturing market, you have to up your game and invest in quality content, and good films aren’t cheap. This can’t be driven by a need to cut your advertising budget. While many have been made cheaper, quality documentaries cost $750,000/hr and up. A good narrative film can quickly run into the low Millions. But when Quibi is investing as much as $150,000 per minute for ten minute shorts, your little $7500 Op-Doc style short has a lot more competition.
7. Truly give creative control – It can’t be said enough – give full creative control to the filmmakers you work with, and you’ll see greater success. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t show you cuts and keep you informed (I’ve seen the lack of communication become a disaster). But stick with what you know best, and let the creatives do the same. Seemingly obvious pro tip – be super clear with your goals, objectives and vision at the start, and build in approvals at different stages if needed (script, rough cut 1, etc.), and things will go easier for both parties.
8. More partnerships – I’m often shocked at how often brands just go it alone in making films. It seems obvious – own it outright - but it’s not the norm in most filmmaking. There’s usually a few partners involved – studios, different producers/financiers, and in the doc world, there might be 10-20 grant givers involved or more. I think brands need to partner more often, and this will lead to better films, and more help when it comes time for distribution and outreach. Of course, I don’t expect to see Pepsi working with Coke, but The North Face working with Macarthur Foundation, or with the Nature Conservancy, sure. Behind the scenes, I’m working with some folks to build more of these networks, and hope to announce more soon, but in the near-term, brands should look for like-minded partners to approach their films a bit more often.
9. Own the marketing – Again, should be obvious, but when it comes to film, too many brands focus on making the film (the thing they don’t know how to do) and forget to build an awesome marketing campaign around it, and that’s where you excel. No one – literally no one – in film not named Disney or A24 understands marketing. Brands do. Keep your focus there. And this means being creative marketing ideas, not just throwing a ton of money at your media agency and hoping for views. You’d think this one would be easy, but countless brands fail at this part of the film business, and I think it’s primarily because they don’t do the next thing.
10. Think about distribution from day one, not when you’re done – Too often, I get called when a brand has finished a film, and they say some variation of – “we just finished this movie, but now we don’t know what to do, can you help?” Happy to take that business and try my best, but as I tell these callers, that’s usually about a year too late. We’ve learned this in the indie film business and brands need to think about it as well – you need to start building your marketing campaign at the same time that you develop the creative ideas. Sure, things will ramp up as you get to later stages, but so much of your campaign might depend on the type of film you’re making, or it needs ancillary footage to be shot, or it mandates a distribution time-line that needs to be thought about early. Or maybe the audience is on NatGeo, and you should be co-producing instead of trying to sell it to the highest bidder at some festival. Or you need to activate your retail stores, and it might take six months to move that ship. There are lots of reasons, but trust me, you can’t start thinking about this too soon, and if you wait too long, media buys are just about your only (remaining) option. Don’t be that guy premiering your film at a conference/festival, and when the press asks “what’s next” your only answer is – we’re still figuring that out.

And one bonus note.

1. Skip branded content awards and go for real festivals – This one won’t make me any friends in the festival/awards world, but I say, skip them. They are meaningless. They were made to get big admission fees from brands and agencies, and they’re mainly pushed by agencies so they can show their clients that they can win some award. But the only awards and festivals that matter for branded content are not judged by a bunch of other advertising execs (who are usually white, btw). The important awards are getting into the regular program at a real film festival, or making a film good enough that reviewers want to watch it and you get Rotten Tomato scores, or that audiences show up and you can show butts in seats (or online views), and that lead to more earned media. Premiering at your booth at SXSW, and then winning a brand film fest award, and then getting 5K views on YouTube is not a plan or a success.

WHAT I'M READING: FILM

Disney and the Future of TV - Stratchery has a great write-up on Disney+, why it’s a smart move and the future of TV in general.

In light of last week's post about re-imagining public media, I should point out that the current state of public media is once again under threat. Recode and Kara Swisher interview PBS CEO Paula Kerger about what's at stake.

Still don't understand this whole writers vs agents thing? The American Prospect has a good summary, and ties it more directly to the private equity titans in the room (via Redef).

Disney+ is the service Apple wants - More bets on Apple buying Disney

AI is coming for Hollywood Next: says Nick Bilton in Vanity Fair, and which is exactly what I told the students at Columbia when I visited Ira Deutchman’s class last week. Don’t believe it? Every time you think some Hollywood movie is “formulaic,” it’s a hint at how easily robots will take over this sector.

WHAT I'M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Creepy Facebook patent uses image recognition to scan your personal photos for brands This one is scary, but worth reading to see our future/present.

Skip the branded content? Luke Blaser, writing for US Campaign, goes against the grain and argues that brands should take a step back when it comes to content creation and focus their resources on the actual products. Where does the promotion then come in? The consumers of course. Let the influences do what they do best.

Fullscreen research demonstrates how branded social content can positively impact offline sales  If that’s your goal.

WHAT I'M READING: Games

Don’t make a pot-themed game - because while murder, sex and mayhem are all fair “game” in the gaming industry, even legalized weed is still a no-no when it comes to marketing and promotion of games on Facebook, YouTube, many gaming systems and more, reports TechCrunch. Sickening, if you think about it for too long, I think

Posted on 25th Apr

Cleveland Rocks - or how to Run a Film Fest; and news on streaming, Branded Content and more

I’m just back from five days of being on the Nesnady + Schwartz “Portrait” Doc Jury for the Cleveland International Film Festival, and it reminded me once again of how important regional film festivals are to independent film.

Unfortunately, if you want to copy CIFF and run a great festival, you might just have to move your festival to Cleveland. So much about what makes them great is because of the local community. The audiences are amazing, with over 108,000 attendees, and it was common for mid-afternoon, weekday screenings of obscure documentaries to sell-out a 300 seat theater – the people of Cleveland love films. There’s something about being near the Great Lakes that feeds cinema lovers – because Cleveland audiences remind me of those in Toronto, another great festival city that is somehow better known.

And the City supports the arts. The main museums are free, and the Cuyahoga County Arts Council – Cuyahoga Arts and Culture (CAC) – is one of the largest public funders of the arts in the US. Beyond the government support, the majority of the festival’s sponsors are locally based corporations. Indeed, the festival’s $3.3 Million cash budget is made up of largely local support (with in-kind support, their budget is over $4.4 million).

Most importantly, the board supports the organization, with a full 10% of their funding coming from their board. Having been involved with some (ahem, deadbeat) boards, I can tell you, that’s an amazing amount. You can have great programming, but without a supportive board (meaning with cash), you won’t get far and too fests are saddled with well-meaning volunteers instead of board leaders who can give/get or get off.

In addition, local members make up 13% of their funding; heck, the local community contributed $150,000 towards a challenge match during the festival (making it $300K with the match).

Of course, you won’t get this kind of community support without great programming and a hard-working staff behind the scenes, which the festival has as well. The core festival leadership has been working at CIFF for as many as twenty years or more, each – and this isn’t dead-wood, but a sign of committed staff who love their community and their festival.

Aside from hiring great people, many of these things are hard to duplicate in every town/city to make a great festival. But CIFF does a lot of other things right, many of which can be duplicated. Here’s just a few:

• Doing fundraising right – one last thing about their fundraising – they do it right. They only ask for donations once a year, instead of bugging you with fundraising emails every week. And they do it before every show, pointing out that the cost of the fest is about $50 per seat – way less than the ticket price, and that makes it real for the audience, and people opened their wallets.
• Hospitality – the fest has a great hospitality room, and its open all day to not just filmmakers and VIP sponsors, but also to members and badge holders, with free coffee, food, beer and even ice cream. They put everyone up in great hotels, central to the festival and show people a good time. And like any good festival, they have great parties – keep the filmmakers drunk and they’ll love you.
• Central locations – apparently, CIFF is the largest festival under one roof in the USA (if not the world), and that helps a lot. While the festival expanded to two outside locations this year, most of the festival takes place at the Tower Center. Yes, it’s a half-dying mall, but for the life of the festival, it’s a convenient one-stop shop for all things film, with plenty of parking. And if you’re visiting from out-of-town, you can find plenty to do within walking distance.
• Great programming, serving its audience – this should go without saying, we all know you need good programming. But I’ve been to many festivals where the programming is more reflective of its programmer’s taste than its local audience. There’s a difference between challenging your audience here and there and being a snob. Cleveland has the right balance.
• Multiple Audience Awards – the festival had four juried competitions (three made up of out of towners), but the rest of the awards are decided by the audience. That’s rare and smart - put the audience in charge, and it pays back when they actually show up for the awards ceremony. See all the winners here.

I’ve run and/or been involved with a few film festivals. Inevitably, some well-meaning board member always says – we should aim to be more like Sundance. But I maintain that the US only needs one Sundance. What we really need are a lot more Cleveland’s.

update: I forgot to mention in my original post that the Film Festival Alliance held a regional roundtable at CIFF, so they are on it when it comes to learning from the fest, and sharing other ideas to get even better.

What I’m Reading: FILM

The Sky Is Rising: The Entertainment Industry Is Thriving, Almost Entirely Because Of The Internet - TechDirt reminds us that years ago, Hollywood was sure the Net would drive them out of business - just like VHS tape - only to learn once again that new tech always helps the bottom line (while destroying many legacy business models).

How Vimeo shifted from being a YouTube alternative to a $160m B2B player - This one is all pro-Vimeo, but given that everyone I know is trading Frame.io links now instead of Vimeo, and their ad campaign sucks horribly, I am counting them in the “fire sale” bin pretty soon. But maybe Digiday has it right, not me.

“Her Smell’s writer-director breaks down the stark reality that film distribution today is an inequitable system that excludes almost everyone”. This one’s made the rounds, including the Sundance newsletter, but just in case you missed it, Alex Ross Perry explains how First Reformed shows how f-d we are these days.

Stacy Spikes finally gives his views on what went on at MoviePass - Jason Guerassio at BusinessInsider has all the news you need to know on what worked  -and then what didn’t work -at MoviePass. Especially interesting is his claim that they verified giving AMC 100% lift in customers, and probably brought up the box office overall by a 5% lift. If true, astounding. It’s also a sad read about how a brand with amazing customer loyalty could kill it all within less than a year.

[caption id="attachment_1427" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Killing a brand in one image[/caption]

What I’m Reading: BRANDED CONTENT

Are Brands missing out on OTT? Yes, says OpenX Chief Communication and Brand Officer Dallas Lawrence to Forbes. As he points out: “Last year, brands spent $70 billion advertising to television audiences, mostly using a media strategy that look more like 1995 than 2018. “Only 5% of all ad dollars go to OTT, even though more than 50% of the audience is there,” he tells them. And his company’s data also shows that while nearly 50% of audiences would pay $10 to skip ads on OTT, 25% prefer a free service with ads, and 29% want a hybrid model with a few ads and a lower monthly cost. Expect to see more brands in your OTT feed, and smart ones should be funding original content in these systems, or they’re missing out on most of their potential viewers.

Lush UK has decided to move away from social media, reports Econsultancy. Lush smartly says it doesn’t want to pay to end up in your feed, and notes that they want to inspire more conversation, not less. Econsultancy analyzes the pros and cons, as well as whether its just a stunt, but I say kudos to anyone who stops polluting my feed with sponsored posts.

Are ‘documercials’ the future of branded content? Mehdi Elaichouni argues that not only are documentaries about brands more effective branded content than narrative stories, they can also serve as a saving grace for companies in PR Trouble (i.e Dirty Money)

 Why brands are turning to Amazon Prime Video to distribute their own content - hint: they can control their distribution and it’s easy to do.

Posted on 12th Apr

Towards a New Public Media, and more Sub-Genre news for April 3

Well, my last post seemed to touch a chord with more than a few people – apparently, many others are feeling the pain of being stuck in the indie film middle-class, and are ready to think about advocacy once again. There are myriad issues to be addressed, but my mind keeps coming back to one idea, and it’s a big one.

It seems to me that one of the biggest problems we have is a lack of imagination about what it means to build a space for public media – and the public good – in an online world. The beginnings of public broadcasting weren’t only tied to spectrum scarcity. Sure, in a broadcast, linear world it took government (starting in the UK) to force a set-aside for public media. But public media was equally tied to a more important underlying realization: that it was in the public’s interest to support media that wasn’t inherently commercial, or it wouldn’t get supported at all, and such a situation would be bad for democracy.

We’ve now spent decades allowing the market to dictate what happens in the online world. At first, it seemed that unlimited space for ideas would mean that the long tail might prevail and all voices were but a click away. And to some extent, this remains true, but similarly to the broadcast world, the illusion of infinite choice can mask many failures in the market.

On the plus side, anyone can distribute their work online, and indeed, YouTube proves that even some kid reviewing toys can amass millions of followers. And let’s give credit to Netflix for backing more diverse filmmakers and subject matter than perhaps any entity ever has in the past. But just as we didn’t count America’s Funniest Home Videos as being ample accommodation for diverse voices to be heard, we shouldn’t mistake UGC as solving this problem either. And when Netflix can cancel diverse shows that are gaining in popularity just because they don’t need the extra cost associated with going beyond a third season, we should realize that businesses don’t have our best interests as a society at heart either.

We need a new public media. It won’t look like the old public media, but the underlying concept is the same – to use a combination of public funding, policy, foundation and (later/even) corporate support to address the failures of the market to support media as a public service.

Now I say this in full realization that it can sound unrealistic and maybe even boring. While public media around the world remain active/vibrant in many ways, there are also many failures, capitulations to the market (and to crooked government leaders), and let’s just admit it – it’s problematic as an ideal. But a new public media, re-imagined properly, could be a game-changer, while addressing the failures of the past.

I’m definitely not the first to think about this, and while there are many other examples, I recommend looking at Sue Gardner’s recommendations to the Knight Foundation for inspiration (from 2017). She gives a comprehensive, but short and easy to read summary of the history and background of public media and then goes on to recommend:

Public broadcasters were designed to elevate the societies in which they operated: to help them be smarter, better informed, healthily pluralistic and successful. For decades they did exactly that. Their impact faded because of technological and public policy changes: we cut their funding, we deregulated their industry, and we didn’t make the kind of policy interventions in the digital world that we had been making for decades in conventional radio and TV.

Today, we’re in a mess. Our societies are fractured and fragile, and we need to heal the rift between the people and the institutions intended to serve them. I believe that calls for a reinvestment in public institutions, including public broadcasters, and for those institutions to re-center themselves on public service.

Now, she is thinking much more broadly here than I am – she’s focused on news, education and other underpinnings of democracy. Those are just as important, if not more, than supporting quality, non-commercial media, but I am focused more narrowly on how a new public media might solve the problems we’re facing in film.

A new public media would mandate that adequate space is given to independent and non-commercial voices. While I’ll stop short of saying Netflix should be forced to carry such media, that shouldn’t be off the table for contemplation. But somehow, policy needs to dictate a space for such films. It also means that carriage/distribution is not enough – we need mechanisms for discovery and curation built into the system to help people find this media.

A new public media should also address diversity, and this means across the spectrum. For example, American-born Latin Americans should be represented closer to proportionally and not just the broader “Latino” media. It should include narrative filmmaking, not just documentary (and not just period pieces or cooking shows, either). And short form as well as long form content.

And a new public media would need to more broadly serve a global and a local audience. Meaning – we need to acknowledge that one failure of the marketplace is its inability to bring global voices to the US, and that we’re a global society. But at the same time, this doesn’t lessen the need for more local and regional voices, which have also historically been shut out of the mainstream.

A new public media would also bring new funding streams, and my hope is that it would be a hybrid of public and private support, including the support of brands. I know this last part is controversial, but I refuse to believe that taking money from Patagonia is any worse than taking it from the Ford Foundation (to pick on two friendly places).

What else do we need, and how do we get there? Well, once again, this is where advocacy comes in, and why I said last week that we need a new AIVF. It’s only by listening to the field and advocating for what people want (beyond my ideas) that we will get to any kind of solution for the future.

What I'm Reading: FILM

“Everything is Changing” - Sundance ran a Nice Interview w/ MoMA’s Rajendra Roy about the current state of the field, and it’s a great read about what’s going on in film exhibition, curation, archiving and more. Raj has some smart thoughts about the role of Netflix (positive) and the need for the Academy and Cannes (etc.) to change and face the future. I also appreciate his comments on the true value of critics: “The truth is I haven’t read reviews before I see them for over 10 years. I just will not read a review of a film I know I’m gonna see because I want to inform myself first, then I will ravenously read them. So if we are doing that, why would we expect that anybody else would depend on the voice of God ordaining this film as worthy of my attention?”  That doesn’t mean we lose critics, but that we need to think of curation a little differently.

One minor quibble- Raj speaks highly of the “museumification” of cinema - where institutions like TIFF (and he hints, possibly Sundance) are building museums and “centers” for film - and suggests this is the future. I can only hope not - to me, that would be the death of cinema culture. The last thing we need are more buildings - institutions do this because that’s where the funding from rich people resides, in putting their name on a theater - but it’s not what the field needs at all. That said, Raj is one of the good ones, thinking good thoughts about the future of the field, and I highly recommend the interview.

 The WSJ reports that consumers can’t handle more streaming services (paywall for some). According to research firm, Magid, the average consumer will spend about $38 a month on as many as six services, but can’t handle much more, making it tough going for all of these new streamers (including Warner, AppleTV, etc.) And if you aren’t sure there’s too many already, just try to make it through IndieWire’s Streaming Bible without falling asleep before the comments (where some crazy people point out they missed a few services). And of course, BusinessWeek is already reporting that this glut of services might lead to some M&A activity.

Youtube is Backing out of the Streaming Wars, showing that even Google may not have deep enough pockets to compete with Netflix, but hey, one less service!  While they keep denying it, Bloomberg reports that YouTube will no longer be creating new expensive scripted shows, that all original content will now be free (ad-supported), and that Youtube Red is transitioning into a music streaming service. Some key execs are leaving as well. When even YouTube throws in the towel, you have to seriously start thinking about new meanings for monopolies and anti-trust.

If you still care about MoviePass and Theater-subscription plans, Screen has a good breakdown of the current state of affairs.

Former MoviePasss CEO Stacy Spikes Launches New Tech/Film Venture: And it has almost tripled its Kickstarter goal with twenty-four days left. The idea is that in exchange for watching fifteen minutes of branded content, one gets a free movie ticket. What makes this appealing for brands is that through user data, ads can be specifically targeted toward individuals and create calls to action. And given Stacy’s track-record, it’s a just-crazy enough idea to keep watching.

Netflix’s plan on owning your kids screentime: Going Brandless : Unlike Disney and Dreamworks (and other animation studios) Netflix animation doesn’t aim for an all-encompassing brand, rather they are seeking diverse creators to do what they do best - create great stuff. This could be a sound strategy given that the audience that Netflix is serving  is global, and diverse. But I’m a fan of building a brand, so I’d recommend they build sub-brands within Netflix (not unlike Amazon’s private labels).

Avengers: Endgame Broke the Internet: or at least several ticketing systems, most notably AMC’s for nearly 8 hrs. This may seem like a minor story, but it’s a serious f-up with a huge fan base - one that the studio was already teasing mercilessly for weeks (on timing of ticket avails). You had one job, AMC, and it wasn’t popping corn...

The folks at Union Docs are looking for applicants for their Collaborative studio. Highly recommend for aspiring filmmakers. as it is a comprehensive program that will get you in the room with other like minded filmmakers. From them:

UnionDocs is currently seeking artists, thinkers and makers from across disciplines to apply for our 2019-2020 COLLABORATIVE STUDIO. This is a singular opportunity for 12 artists to participate in group research and production. Spend 10 months in an expansively designed program that fosters and deepens an understanding of documentary theory and practice, develops creative partnerships and output, and immerses participants in a community of active, like-minded individuals with a shared goal of making something together. Application deadline is 4/4 (tomorrow).

Stuff I’m Reading: VR/AR/Branded Content:

Burger King is encouraging users to ‘burn’ rival ads in augmented reality campaign

In a fun new ad campaign, Burger King is having users download their App, and play an AR game in which users ‘burn away’ a competitor's ad, revealing a coupon for a free whopper. While this is gimmicky, remember - someone soon will create a similar application where anyone can block ads via AR, and I for one can’t wait til I have Android-specs that allow me to ad-block every billboard in Manhattan and replace it with cool artwork instead. That’s the real future of ad-blocking.

Posted on 12th Apr

Saving the Indie Film "Middle Class," what Hollywood gets wrong on YouTube and more news you can use

It’s an amazing time to be a filmmaker and film lover with more places buying films than ever before (and often for record sums), and more places to watch films (and shows) as well. But as I’ve written before, there’s a simultaneous negative trend going on, where it’s getting harder and harder for the majority of filmmakers to get their films picked up and have any chance of finding an audience. In many ways, the indie film sector has split into the high and the low, with no middle to be found (much like our society).

If your film didn’t premiere at a handful of major festivals, many distributors will pass on acquiring your film – not because they’re evil, but because they can’t take a risk when there’s fewer buyers who want these titles. Netflix, for example, had as many as 35,000 titles in its library in 2005 (when it was primarily a DVD service), but it now has just around 4,500 movies and 1,600 TV shows in its library in the US (it varies by country), and a significant portion of each are “originals,” that weren’t licensed as finished films. So as Netflix and other services become more focused on TV, originals and curated content, that means distributors have less places to license these titles and must also get pickier.

It’s a phenomenon that’s not just impacting new American indie films – most platforms don’t want to license older, “library” titles at all, so distributors don’t want them either. I’ve had numerous filmmakers approach me with Award-winning, Sundance premiering, once-popular films that are less than ten years old, but they can’t get anyone to help them keep their films available to the public because that market has collapsed. Many foreign-language titles aren’t licensed here at all – as one leading foreign sales agent from France told me last year – the US market brings him less licensing revenue than Benelux, and he’s almost ready to give up on us (he was slightly joking…I hope).

While it’s easy to get cynical, I don’t blame this on Netflix (or Amazon, or Hulu, or distributors) at all. Netflix has been a boon for many shows, films and creators – especially when it comes to diversity – but it’s not a public service. It’s spending a ton of money to make & license content, and if the market doesn’t support it, that money has to be used elsewhere. Netflix is just doing its job as a market leader that could be dethroned at any time. It has to cut underperformers and re-designate that money to possible winners before it becomes the underperformer itself.

This is a market problem, and while usually these represent opportunities for competitors to exploit, that won’t be the case here – long story short, the market is never going to find a solution that solves the problems of indie films getting to an audience. But it’s a problem that affects everyone in the business – whether you are making films, funding them, distributing them, starring in them, or just watching them.

I’ve been saying for a long time that the indie film sector- especially the nonprofits, film festivals and foundations that support it – will need to solve this problem together. As I contemplated this problem this past week, my mind went back to the beginnings of Netflix entering the streaming business (announced in January, but launched in February, 2007), and something else that happened around that same time – the death of AIVF in June of 2006. I think these two events are intimately related (along with the purchase of YouTube by Google in November, 2006) to our core problem for indies – the death of the “middle class,” and hints at how we solve it as well.

For those of you who don’t know AIVF, it was the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (link has the full history), and it was one of the leading organizations for indie filmmakers in the US. Throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, AIVF was the main advocacy organization representing independent film – it helped secure funding for indie films, advocated for the NEA’s grants to filmmakers, helped organize the beginnings of ITVS, fought budget cuts to public media, started one of the first magazines for indie film (The Independent) and so much more. Yes, we eventually had organizations like IFP and Sundance, but AIVF was one of the first in the space (so was Women Make Movies), and it was always more focused on advocacy than any of the others.

By the early 2000’s, AIVF was struggling, and I wrote a couple of posts about its pending and eventual demise, which you can read (along with Eugene Hernandez’s piece for IndieWire linked above), and Jim McKay wrote a nice piece back then as well. As I said then in a piece for IndieWire (note that I didn’t even mention YouTube):

"we have some great new possibilities, such as Google Video, iTunes and Netflix. But these are corporate entities; they are beholden to their shareholders, not to the needs of the independent community. There is no guarantee that they           will continue to distribute your media, and none of them want to make sure you get paid fairly for it. Only a place with the public good in mind can serve the needs of independent media artists and their audiences."

And as I said that same month in my newsletter rather dramatically but presciently, the death of AIVF would mean: “The definition of independent is debated regularly, but could soon just mean one thing: alone.”

Well, that’s exactly where we’ve ended up. In a sense, AIVF was the union for the middle-class filmmaker, and just like in the real world, the decline of the middle-class can be pegged directly to the decline of the unions, and for us – AIVF. It’s not that AIVF would have stopped the market from shaping how Netflix behaves – but that when we lost AIVF, we lost any semblance of a place that can fight to build an alternative for the rest of us. Movements need leaders, and without an AIVF, we’ve had no one to organize the field to create the systems we need.

Yes, we have great organizations that might take up the cause – IFP, Sundance, Impact Partners, IDA, Kartemquin and many great festivals (if I didn’t mention your favorite org, it’s unintentional) – but solving the problems around building a better ecosystem for independent media artists is bigger than any one of their missions and if they haven’t found the time to do it on their own since 2006, it’s not going to happen now (but they’ll collaborate on the answer).

We need a new AIVF, but for the modern era.

I’m not sure what it should look like, but I know we need it, or something like it. I imagine it’s more of a with-profit than a nonprofit, meaning some hybrid of nonprofit activism and services, coupled with some for-profit, entrepreneurial activities.

It would enable us to re-envision what a new home for truly indie films would look like – and corral the miscellaneous support groups, festivals, producers, services and platforms to help make it a reality. It would advocate for this need with foundations and other funders, who are currently too enamored with putting their logo on films (via production-funding) to think about the bigger problems of distribution and audience-building. It would advocate at the government level for a new generation of public media, for funding to make this a reality, and for public support (which is hard when people think they have access to everything already). It would take the lead on projects like bringing more transparency to the business, or demanding more diversity behind the camera, or making sure that Spielberg doesn’t hurt indies when he tries to kill Netflix.

These are just a few of the myriad needs we have that no one else is fully addressing. Advocacy and service organizations may not be sexy anymore, but I think the past 13 or so years have proven they’re needed more than ever. I may be proposing something too quixotic, but if anyone else agrees, maybe we can get a movement started.

What I'm Reading - FILM:

What Movie Studios are doing wrong, and what they should be doing on YouTube according to Little Monster media. What’s wrong: Letting others profit from their clips (and own their audiences); unde-utilizing their library content; trying to be everything for everyone (because they don’t know their audience); not making content endemic to YouTube are chief among the mistakes. What should they be doing? Watch the video to find out, but it’s partly fixing those mistakes and partly - taking YouTube more seriously (as opposed to Facebook, for example), because that’s where the fans are already located. Good advice for brands, and to some extent, indies, marketing films as well.

This bias against YouTube in the film world, also applies to Hollywood’s lack of respect for Freddie Wong as well. Freddie Wong went on Corridor Cast recently to explain how he built over 8 Million Subscribers, and more than 1.6 Billion video views on YouTube, but found Hollywood didn't care. It's a sobering statement from a DIY pioneer, and a dumb move on the part of Hollywood and other potential partners.

Why, Exactly, Do We Still Trust Telecom Megamerger 'Synergy' Promises? | Techdirt wants to know, and so should you. Time and again, these mega-mergers don’t only not bring the benefits to consumers that they promise, but they fail miserably as business ideas.

But I’m Not a Lawyer, I’m an Agent: Want to understand the fight between the WGA and the agencies about packaging fees? Nope, but you probably want a good read anyway? If you read one thing this week, make it David Simon’s take-down of CAA and other agents. Laugh a minute stuff here, but dead-serious as well.

Amazon is slashing royalties for video makers uploading to Prime Video This one has made the rounds, but further sign of the lessening value of indie and similar content to the online eco-system.

There’s another new social video sharing platform - and this one, Firework, allows for you to shoot for both horizontal or vertical viewing mode - just to drive filmmaker purists crazy.

Keep Your DVDs and BluRays, to avoid Corporate Censorship...and shitty business practices, says WaPo.

What I'm Reading - BRANDED CONTENT:

After laying off 250 staffers, Vice is now looking to raise $200 million Good money after bad...

Russo Brothers & Justin Lin Team To Launch Superconductor, Creative Services Agency reports Deadline. Looks like branded content is getting some serious new entrants.

Tongal is helping bring together brands with emerging filmmakers by giving them the opportunity to create their own Alien short film. While this is a bit of old news, I’d missed it, and it’s a pretty cool use of branded content by a Studio.

What I'm Reading - VR/AR/AI:

VR might be the future, but it’s not gonna be made at Google - Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio. Is this a sign that others can make it better, or that it’s just not working? I think the jury is still out, but this is a set-back, for sure.

At SXSW, filmmaker Brillhart is looking into the 'uncharted territories' of VR, AR A good summary of what Jessica Brillhart is up to post-Google, which is a good hint at where the field should be going next. Among her projects - VR for people with disabilities, spatial audio and experimentation: ““The systems in place are trying to keep something contained that should be constantly evolving,” she said. “Immersive cannot be contained. What we should fear the most isn’t disruption, it’s thinking things will always stay the same. No matter what the old guard says, our generation gets this stuff.”

[caption id="attachment_1412" align="aligncenter" width="300"] AICAN + Ahmed Elgammal[/caption]

The AI-Art Gold Rush is here:  The Atlantic reports on the rise of AI-generated art - we’ve now had AI art at auction, in gallery shows, and smart folks are starting to use it to not just create new art, but predict what will become popular and do well in the marketplace. Don’t think for one second that film is immune to this either, as AI, CG and similar wizardry simultaneously improves, we’ll have AI-created films gunning for the Oscars, as well as AI algorithms determining what we watch (oh wait, we already have that…).

Morpholio let’s you walk into any sketch via A/R. While this is being touted as a platform for architects, designers and real estate folks, I could see some cool uses for film production - running through your set, blocking the scene, etc.

Posted on 21st Mar

The Skoll Report on Impact Entertainment and other Sub-Genre News for March 7

What's the State of Social Impact Entertainment? Well, the Skoll Center for Social Impact Entertainment and UCLA have 186 pages of thoughts about that in their new report on the State of Social Impact Entertainment.

I’ve just barely had time to read the majority of it, but think it's a must read for everyone who cares about this space. First, as summarized by the LA Times, the report analyzes a variety of social impact projects and identifies some keys to success: "The report identifies some common characteristics among the successes of social-impact entertainment: a strong focus on the story, a deep knowledge of the issue, strategic alliances with key partners and clever distribution plans to connect with viewers."

I think the report is a pretty good summary of where the field has been, who is doing what and what has worked - at least anecdotally. My issues are somewhat minor: it’s surprisingly thin on actual data/measurement; it's too focused on Skoll funded programs (even for a report funded by Skoll) and what I call the "doc mafia;" and if it's going to bother to include new forms like VR and short form video, it should also include more about creative uses of social media.

But it does give a few good examples of what looks like real impact/change. And with filmmakers, foundations and now even brands wondering how to have an impact, and whether or not any of this shit works, it's a welcome addition to the ongoing dialogue. I'm sure I'll have even more thoughts as I finish reading this thing, but I recommend you add it to your reading queue (oh, and it has pretty "state of the field" maps, like the one I linked above).

What (else) I'm Reading: Film

Want to learn about people doing cool shit in the film business? Disrupting the status quo? Listen to Film Disruptors, the great podcast by Alex Stolz. I’ve been meaning to plug this for awhile now, but I’m behind on my podcasts to be honest (how does everyone keep up?). Every week or two, Alex interviews people doing some cool, disruptive stuff in the film business. And because he’s UK based, he has a decidedly less American focused lens, which I find refreshing.

AMC Cracks the code for Movie subscriptions: Theatre attendance is up and they’re not about go out of business, quite the opposite in fact. Turns out that copying MoviePass works well, especially if you charge even more for the subscription.

Meanwhile, MoviePass announced a new business plan, that kinda seems like the old plan. Thats said, it did bring their stock up 40% to just over a penny. But I bet they're not done disrupting just yet.

Netflix has a message for Hollywood: Make room for others. Nicely played Netflix, and true as well - leave the Roma debates aside, no one out there is pushing diversity to the top of its agenda like Netflix. And they aren’t just doing it to look good - they have the data, and it must be working. Time for others to follow them and “make room” for more diverse story-tellers and stories.

And Slate thinks Netflix should truly respect cinema and let us watch the f-n credits already. Gotta admit, while I disagree with Steven Spielberg in his arguments against Netflix, I loved this little article which makes a good point about what a creativity destroyer their system is, or as the writer puts it: "But until Netflix lets its customers actually watch an entire movie, no one should ever be expected to keep a straight face when they say they love cinema."

Apple's move into Hollywood is not going so well, especially because of intrusive execs, says the NYPost of all places. Apparently, development folks are angry that Apple is so worried about being family friendly, and has a lot of notes. My take: That's par for the course when a platform is protecting a brand as important as Apple, and there's no need for them to fund the next Breaking Bad. On the other hand, with reports that CEO Tim Cook is getting heavily involved, one can only hope he isn't ruined by Hollywood the way Bezos has been, or he'll be featured in the Post a lot more often.

Stephen Follows has a great breakdown of how a film's costs change at various budget levels. Worth a look if you want to see if your film budget is on target percentage-wise.

Changing of the (Avant) Garde - We are losing and have lost two of the most important figures in American avant-garde cinema - Barbara Hammer and Jonas Mekas.

Barbara Hammer's Exit Interview in the New Yorker is a must-read for anyone who knows her work or cares about the history of avant-garde and/or LGBTQ cinema.

Sky Sitney penned a great Obituary for Jonas Mekas in the latest issue of Documentary mag online (he passed away just before Sundance). Given that she grew up around Jonas, she brings great perspective. If you don't know much about Jonas, read his obit in the NYT or their wonderful series about aging where he was featured many times. (Knowing Barbara, she might yell at me for putting a story about her next to one about Jonas, but that's another story...)

What I'm Reading: Branded Content

AdWeek's Arc Awards for Branded Content ran online this week, and will be celebrated at SXSW this weekend. Some great campaigns here, including P&G's "Words Matter" piece done with CNN's Great Big Story (which I reported on before), and a nice long form doc from the Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau about songwriters that looks very interesting, It all Begins with a Song (I haven't seen the full doc  yet). Read/watch the full list here. At minimum, this list serves as a good “State of the field” report.

Is Netflix moving into Ad-Sales and AVOD? Well, this guy on LinkedIn thinks so, and claims they're hiring for the Unit. If that's true, then we truly created the internet to make a better TV, I guess, which is a shame. But when you're bleeding (borrowed) money like Netflix, you've got two possible new revenue sources - ads and branded content, and they're already doing the latter.

Thrive announced new hires for its branded content push, which is focused around health/wellness and experiences/events. Will be interesting to see where this goes.

Net Neutrality Back in the News & Congress

Ajit Pai has been trying to ruin the internet before we do it our own damn' selves, and now Congress is trying to stop him. The new Save the Internet Act has been introduced to do just what it says (and TechCrunch sums it up well). Want to add your voice by contacting your Congress-person? Click here.

Posted on 7th Mar

Academy Thoughts - North Face Tuxedos and Acceptance Speeches, and other Sub-Genre news

What I’m Thinking: Academy Awards

Green Book: I don’t have much to add to the backlash over the Best Picture results from the Academy Awards, as there’s been enough written about why Green Book wasn’t deserving of an Oscar. If you need any evidence, just read Shadow and Act, perhaps. Or spend your time watching Yoruba Richen’s The Green Book: Guide to Freedom doc instead, or learn how Don Shirley was evicted from Carnegie Hall in Lost Bohemia.

But I am perplexed that the Academy can’t figure out that the only thing worth watching in their entire show is the thing they keep ruining – the acceptance speeches. Hearing the music swell as they try to push people off-stage might be the most annoying thing on the planet. I hope they play that music when they fire their leadership someday. And that can’t come too soon; only in Hollywood can you cause this much mayhem, keep your job and have the town think you saved the show…!

It’s unconscionable that they found time to add a commercial for a nonexistent Academy Museum, but then cut short the Best Animated Feature speakers. Even when the acceptance speeches are long or flubbed, they’re still the reason people bother to watch the show. The speeches, the awards themselves, the In-Memoriam and (for some) the songs, are just about the only things worth watching, and the ratings won’t improve much until the Academy figures that out.

Netflix: Some people blame the Green Book win on the dilemma some voters felt they faced in voting for Roma, when it would validate Netflix’s business model. Sorry folks, that battle is over and Netflix already won, even if they didn’t win the big award. It’s ridiculous to listen to these pundits say that Netflix is making TV movies like HBO, when Roma alone proves they’re making cinema. Future audiences might regret that Green Book won any awards, but they’ll definitely forget they used to go to theaters before they remember that anyone ever cared whether Netflix won an award in 2019.

Availability, or Millions lost: While you could find many of the nominated films online for rent/sale/streaming, there were a lot of films being held back and only available in theaters or nowhere. By the time the Awards come around, everyone who is going to see the movie in theaters has done so, and there are millions more who would watch the films if they were available pre-Awards online. Studios seem to think that the Awards heighten interest post-show, but I’m willing to bet that if every film was available online for a low cost pre-Awards, they’d make millions more – quite possibly during the show when people get bored and decide just to watch that film they just saw getting snubbed.

Alex Honnold wore a The North Face tuxedo to the Oscars for Free Solo. And if that’s not the best brand placement of the past year, I don’t know what is. Sure, lots of fashion companies outfit people for the Oscars, but The North Face sure has gotten more out of their sponsorship of Alex than perhaps any brand/athlete relationship in recent history, and what an unexpected partnership for the red carpet!

What I’m Reading: Film

SVOD Wars Updates: April is coming: And no, I’m not referring to the premier of Game of Thrones, but rather the launch of Disney Streaming service which appears to be having every major media company in a scramble to acquire as many assets as possible:

1. Amazon spent $47 Million at Sundance for the rights of five different films.
2. Disney ended its partnership with Netflix, canceling their Defenders series of shows. (The Motley Fool says now is the time to buy.)
3. Hulu finds itself in a increasingly more complicated place with Disney now owning 60% of Hulu’s shares after the Fox Acquisition and the launch of Disney+ in April.

What I’m Reading: New Media

This Kevin Kelly article on AR and the Mirror World in Wired has been making the rounds, but just in case you missed it, and want to know more about where AR is going, it's worth a read. Kelly has a great way of pulling together disparate threads of exploration and summarizing their future directions in a way that makes you say "yup, of course that will happen." And most of it will, but thanks to advertising, with a much more dystopian flare than he tends to foresee.

Attention economics: Another reminder that Fortnite is not the main problem facing the games industry, but rather unreasonable performance expectations for new media and competition over the dwindling time of consumers . This is true for gaming and films - you have a lot more competition, which means your “game”must be stepped up.

What I’m Reading: Branded Content

MediaPost argues for better metrics on ROI by tying branded to shoppable content.  While I agree we need better measurement tools and think linking branded content is one way to measure success, I’d disagree that it should be a goal for most branded content - usually the most direct connections to sales make for the worst films. Sometimes branded content should be about building the brand, not just measuring sales. But unless we come up with good metrics, this might be the only one we have.

Whatever happened to the Denominator? Asked no one ever until  Kalev Leetaru in Forbes. But while his analysis is of Twitter and his methods are wonkish, he’s right that too often “we have traded more data for less understanding of what is in that data.” Or we’re obsessed with data instead of information… that we can actually use. Worth a read for you data nerds out there.

Peter Berg is launching a branded content division to his production company, Film 47, and I think it’s the model for anyone trying to build a sustainable production company business:

“It just occurred to us that we like the idea of trying to be a small, multifaceted media company that could make the film about an oil rig in Texas that blew up [Deepwater Horizon], and then make a documentary on the environmental cleanup, and everything in between,” Berg continues. “That aimed us at having our own production company/creative agency where we talk directly with clients or work directly with ad agencies, and help take on a more thorough or comprehensive role than a traditional production company.”

Folio magazine demonstrates the need for publishers to have their own Branded Content and it’s a good summary of who is doing what right now.

Posted on 28th Feb

Buzzfeed and Canaries in Coal-Mines, Happy Valentines Day Edition of Sub-Genre News

Buzzfeed and canaries in coal mines...

As I read all of the reports (see below) on the death of, er, layoffs at Buzzfeed and what it means for the future of journalism and Media (capital M), I can’t help but feel that these problems are the canary in the coal-mine for film. Why?

As the Columbia Journalism Review summarizes so well, most people are blaming Facebook for these problems, “But if the giant social network is partly to blame, it is mostly because editors at BuzzFeed (and many other places) yoked themselves so tightly to Facebook’s wagon…” And as any business school professor will teach you - if your business model depends on the business model of someone else, you are in danger when you no longer fit their business model anymore.

For Buzzfeed and similar publishers, they felt they had to lean-in (pun intended) to Facebook because there was no other choice - it’s where most of the eyeballs go, and with them, most of the ad dollars. But then you lose the direct connection to both your advertisers and your viewers. Ok, fine, you think - we’re building our brand, getting our content seen, and can leverage it later. But that didn’t work out so well.

In a sense, these publishers were making “original content” for Facebook, and once Facebook realized original content from its users (for free, no less) was more valuable, it didn’t need the content these publishers were providing. But the publishers can’t get the eyeballs or advertisers directly, and there’s no one really waiting in the wings to replace Facebook, so they’re screwed. Unless you are a niche publication (like The Information) that has built a small but loyal audience, and you know who they are, and they pay you to keep in touch (via subscription).

Likewise, every distributor (and aggregator) has been going to Netflix because they have the eyeballs and the money (not via ads here). But Netflix realized it could make its own original content and cut out these publishers, and that’s what they’ve been doing. So now everyone races to license their content to Amazon. In fact, when I speak with distributors, they pretty much admit it’s the only revenue source they can count on right now. But Amazon has also been slowly moving towards making their own content meaning you are also soon to be screwed (they’re also making their own products and brands, so you are in the same boat if you happen to be selling anything else, btw). They been scaling back Amazon Prime Video Direct already, and don’t count on that being the end of their purge.

But to make matters worse, like publishers, most film distributors and “content-holders” (and even producers for that matter), haven’t built up their brands or their connection to their audience. So, few people will subscribe to them directly, and the revenue from AVOD won’t ever be able to replace what they made from their now-disappeared or soon-to-disappear partners.

Unless you are that rare brand - Criterion (or filmmaker - Gary Hustwit) who has built their own brand and direct-to-consumer relationship, you are fucked. Or maybe you’re that lucky 1% of producers/filmmakers/studios who make stuff that is good enough to be “must have,” meaning you are A24, or Shonda Rhimes or one of about, oh, twelve other folks out there and you’ll be just fine. But that’s a small group of smart, creative people.

The rest of us are left hoping that as Netflix, Amazon, Disney and WarnerMedia move away from needing what we make, that maybe someone will fill the void and that becomes an opportunity. Right now, that looks like Apple to some people, but ask a few publishers what that feels like. Some say it’s the broadcasters, but we know what content they like to buy already. And some say it’s services like Pluto.tv, but I’m betting those will be “pennies replacing dollars” deals.

I’d like to say that you’re only screwed as a distributor/publisher. As a creative/filmmaker/producer, you can just work directly with Netflix or Amazon and be fine.. But then I hear stories of how slow Netflix is to pay, and how banks are starting to deny loans to cover that gap given how much debt Netflix and their partners owe them already. And then I look at the reality TV and HSN type shows Amazon is launching. And then I just stop thinking about this stuff before my head explodes.

Of course, canaries in coal mines die a long time before the rest of us. I mean, Amazon and Netflix spent tens of millions at Sundance this year. Things are looking good. And let’s face it, they are the only games in town, so we gotta be there.

But as Warren Buffet says - it’s not ‘til the tide goes out that you learn who is swimming naked. And the time to think about these changes is before the tide goes out.

What I’m Reading: Film -

Disney gave some more clues about its plans in its Q1F19 Earnings results webcast. Not too secret, but Bob Iger thinks their brands will help them cut through the clutter: “Presented with an over abundance of choice, consumers look to brands they know to sort through the options and find what they actually want. The DTC space is no different in that regard and we are confident that our iconic brands and franchises will allow us to effectively break through the competitive clutter.”

Apple is now telling various studios and networks to be ready for launch in mid April. And like Disney, they’re relying on being a family-friendly brand.

Because we need more streaming: MGM-owned Epix jumps into the streaming service arena with EpixNow

TVOOT is launching a crowd powered social tv platform that may help cut through the clutter. Don’t know what to watch? Ask your friends via VOOT. Think this might work? Support them on Kickstarter. My favorite feature - it automatically switches your screen to your favorite back-up channel during commercials, and brings you back home when the commercials are over. That should go over well in court.

The Information thinks Quibi is going to have trouble meeting its (short form) streaming content goals. But my bet is people will take the money, and they’ll have no issues when it starts to work (again, if he can keep Meg out of the way, sorry…).

If your lawsuits might not work, join forces with your enemy’s enemy, which is what ChooseCo (Choose your own Adventure) is doing with Amazon.

Games are also moving intro streaming, and will undoubtedly face the old problems of video streaming? Especially with console exclusives? There is no doubt that any subscription service can offer an overwhelming amount of content, but is that what the consumer actually wants? And how will they sort through all of these options?

I was just in Salt Lake City for work this week, and the Deseret News has a pretty good update on the current state of MoviePass and their plans to survive for the future.

What I’m Reading: Media -

More Buzzfeed News: Per the above, I’m swimming with the fishes and thinking about Buzzfeed a lot this week. Some are already asking - with Buzzfeed failing, who is going to swoop in and take over the fledgling digital media company?

The Hollywood reporter suggests that the big media companies (Disney, Viacom, Comcast etc.) should swoop in and buy in. Me: but why should they when these companies were not particularly good to begin with and are near death because they never had a sustainable business model? I smell another AOL/Time-Warner but as BuzzFeed/?.

Adage makes a similar argument that these layoffs shouldn’t come as surprise since these digital media companies like Buzzfeed were never particularly noteworthy to begin with being that relied on community created content rather than actual journalism.

So maybe they should look at the old guard? While most of the new media organizations are failing, the NYT is thriving: the times reports (on itself, so be aware): “BuzzFeed generated more than $300 million in sales, while still bleeding money, and The Times was on a pace to exceed $650 million in digital revenue.”  Why? Maybe because the NYT never relied solely on Facebook for traffic, or ads for revenue. But - considering just how often the NYT has screwed up its approach to digital, even with the war chest of money they’ve got, it’s odd to point to them as any model without being prepared to second-guess yourself soon.

BuzzFeed cuts should mean the death of metric-obsessed media says the Columbia Journalism Review, which also has a bevy of links to more coverage on the issue at the end of the linked article.

Journalism Isn't Dying. It's Returning to Its Roots - A good argument that we’re really back where we should be with hyper-partisan news, funded by (pissed-off) subscribers.

Maybe Apple sees the future of journalism? And that’s taking 50% of news revenue generated through their platform. Magazines support it, but Newspapers fine the model to be unfair. I agree - the only people who like this deal are likely close to death anyway.

What I’m Watching: Branded Content:

Brand Storytelling Partner Showcase online: For those of you who've read my posts about Brand Storytelling, and weren't able to attend and want to know what it's about, you can watch many of the partner presentations on the Brand Storytelling Partner Showcase on their YouTube Channel.

Creative Coupling: Just in time for Valentine's Day ,REI has a great new podcast interview with Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin about their film, Free Solo, which is interesting on its own, but what makes it more worth your time is that it asks what it's like to make a film like this as a married couple with kids? Some great thoughts here on the collaborative creative process. (disclaimer, I consult w these folks, but not on this).

Posted on 14th Feb

Five Sundance Takeaways, the death of Media and More Sub-Genre news

Five Insights from Sundance

When you head to any of the bigger industry festivals, you not only see great films, but also get a chance to catch up with others in the industry and get a read on what’s going on in the field. This year, I was lucky enough to attend Sundance, Slamdance, and Brand Storytelling - a conference just for brands, agencies, platforms and others working in this space. I emphasize lucky here because another thing people like to do at these fests is gripe about having to attend, when it’s really quite a privilege in life that this is part of our jobs. Anyway, here’s a few of the broader trends and takeaways that hit me as important during my time in Park City:

1. High and Low.

Entertainment has bifurcated into the High and the Low with very little in the middle - just like our society. We get to Sundance either crammed into economy seats or flying first class. The middle class has died across the world, and you’re either rich or poor.

There is no middle anymore, and that’s definitely true in the film world. Amazon and Netflix were spending $14-15 million on a few films (at least they were spending again); and outside of the 1% of top distributors, most buyers were waiting it out to see what remained and could go for cheaper. Or were hoping to capitalize on that middle gap where no one else seemed to be buying. Meanwhile, and this caused the next two trends, producers and financiers were all talking about you had to either go big, or go small, but in-between was a no-person’s land.

But my strangest experience at all of Sundance was also a high/low story - I went to see the excellent doc American Factory, where a subject in the film laments how last year he only made $27K at the factory as a skilled laborer, while his daughter brought in $13K more working as a nail technician. One hour later, I’m at a party where I overhear two (higher up) industry people debating careers and one tells the other “man, I’m telling you, you can’t live on less than $600,00 a year, it’s impossible these days.”  That to me was Sundance - and our current society - in a nutshell.

1. Everyone wants in Early

But I digress. The high/low split leads to trend 2- everyone is trying to board films much earlier. Film Funds are launching development funds, distributors are offering early back-stop deals or outright financing, people are optioning doc subject’s life rights before making the film so they can pre-sell the narrative feature. When you can’t count on what Netflix might do, and as the market bifurcates, safety comes in getting in very early (or very late, but that is often off the table when so many people are getting in so early…).

1. Producers (esp doc producers) are giving up on risk and moving towards commissions

Trend three also comes from the high/low divide. Conversation after conversation went like this:”No more one-offs and spec projects for me, I’m focusing my company on commissions.”  While Netflix and Amazon did open back up their wallets, last year taught people not to get caught without a big SVOD sale. Taking those risks and hoping to be the big sale at Sundance doesn’t always work, and it’s too stressful. With the middle dropping out, people want less risk and a guaranteed reward, which means seeking out and working on more commissions. Doc producers in particular are pitching projects to Netflix, Amazon, A&E, Natgeo and others early, and if there’s not a buy on the table or a commission for a series, forget about it, and drop the film. Secondary to this - trying to get a series commissioned which can pay the overhead while you do those labors of love on the side. The problem with this - but this is another article - is the downside of relying on those platforms payment schedules, which means you need to keep feeding the beast. On the other hand, I predict that this need for less risk will also lead to more producers seeking out brands for support, which should fuel an increase in quality branded content.

1. Not selling works best for branded content

I spent the first half of Sundance running between the fest and Brand Storytelling, the best conference on the planet for people working in the intersection of brands and film. And they showed a lot of case studies, and also premiered (sometimes as a work-in-progress) many brand-funded films. And hands-down the best stuff there was the least advertising-centric and the most focused on not selling (directly) by just telling a great story. Sure, at the end of the day, these brands hope that if you like the film, you will feel better about them and about buying their products, but that’s often not the direct goal of these films. Their goal, like the filmmakers they work with, is telling a great story. This wasn’t a surprise to me - it’s what I preach to my clients all the time - but I was glad to see so many brands and their partners have embraced this mission.

1. Trusted Word of Mouth Still Rules Discovery

This seems obvious, right? But I think it’s key to keep in mind as we move ever further into an algorithmically governed world, and as companies will increasingly use AI to serve us what they think we want to watch. Plus, I can plug a filmmaker and film this way.

Even at Sundance, you go into the festival hoping for a bit of algorithmic luck - you chose films based a bit on which ones are playing while you’re there, which ones the programmers put in the P&I at a time you can attend, etc. And you use word of mouth - from trades, industry friends, distributor tracking lists (when you can get them), publicists you trust, etc. But the word of mouth that matters most is from people you trust. Every year, I have an experience like this:

It’s my last night in Park City. I’ve seen three films (one great, one meh, one annoying but it sold for a lot); and I have just left one party and am debating whether to go a) the party known as one of the best at Sundance, or b) a film by a filmmaker I love, but that I know will come out soon and I can see it later. I have a spontaneous, text arranged meeting with someone I’ve never met before, and we decide to meet at the Treasure Mountain Inn’s restaurant because it won’t be busy. This is also Slamdance HQ and on my way out to option A or B, I run into Paul Rachman, a friend, filmmaker, co-founder and programmer of the fest who tells me Option C is my only option, and it’s playing right now, there’s only one seat left and he can get me in (we go back…). Very few people could have swayed me to skip party A or film B, but Paul also told me that Steven Soderbergh was a guest of the festival and loved this movie/director and it would be one of those moments where you say “I was there when…”

The film was worth staying for, and made everything about Park City 1 million times better for me. It was worth skipping other stuff, it was worth the crappy seats and screen at Slamdance (I love them, but let’s be honest), and it will be worth bragging about later. But the point is, this only happened because of a lot of serendipity (timing, etc.) and a lot of trust in two person’s opinions of film. Not critics either mind you, but people I trust as curators for other reasons.

No one has built in an easy way to take advantage of this trusted source recommendation in film discovery on any platform. We tried it with Flicklist - but we failed for so many other reasons. But when I’m flicking through the endless scroll of recommendations on Netflix, or watching another shitty movie because it has a good IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes score because you can’t trust the crowd - I wish I had access to just the recommendations I trust. I want this for film, for other culture and even instead of Yelp, or any other crowd-sourced system I know of. So if you are out there and you are smart, please, please, build me this machine - a system that let’s me designate people I trust to recommend the best stuff. That’s all I want, and it should be easier to make than an autonomous car.

Long story short, if you trust me at all, or Paul or Soderbergh, add The Vast of Night and its director Andrew Patterson to your watch list. It has its issues, but it signals a tremendous new talent. I can’t say it any better than Amy Taubin (another voice to trust, who was also tipped by Soderbergh) did in Film Comment: “For me, The Vast of Night was the kind of discovery that one comes to Park City for, a display of visionary moviemaking intelligence equal to that of my most memorable Utah experiences; Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko or Shane Carruth’s Primer, or for that matter, Christopher Nolan’s Following, which also premiered at Slamdance.”

What I’m Reading: Film & Content

Finally, an open source, useful film festival database: Created by filmmaker Michael Forstein, on his own time, and not by any of the “filmmaker service organizations” or “film festival alliances” that in theory should have done this shit a long time ago. But I’m glad someone did this - and as of now it includes a searchable, sortable Google Doc database, as well as two map versions for geo-targeting (BTW, for those looking, it has deadlines in the master database tab).  It needs more international fests, and has a few minor errors - but it’s one person doing this for free. Some foundation should retroactively give him a grant for his work (I’ll be donating, which you can do here).

Who is Netflix’s biggest competitor? HBO? Hulu? A new Disney service?  It’s actually Fortnite. In a letter to investors with their Q4 results, Netflix recently outlined how they aren’t just competing with streaming services for screen time, but also with other forms of media such as video games. “”We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO," Netflix said.” A good reminder to anyone in this space - you aren’t competing with just other movies for people’s attention, but everything else they can do with their time. The “Attention Economy” is here.

And about Fortnite: Redef has a great run-down of the myths and realities of what makes it tick. And when all is said and done, this is why it’s a threat not just to Facebook, but to Netflix and even movie-going: “Fortnite’s most significant achievement may be the role it has come to play in the lives of millions. For these players, Fortnite has become a daily social square – a digital mall or virtual afterschool meetup that spans neighborhoods, cities, countries and continents.”

Games moving to Subscription - Like Netflix and MoviePass, Games are moving towards a subscription model as well,according to The Week, which coupled with a freemium model (free game, pay for add-ons), should only increase their popularity. If the Bandersnatch model catches on, it could extend the freemium model to film as well - pay to get a better ending; or what I’d prefer - let me pay more to get a better selection of films instead of tv shows!

How important is Disney+? Many analysts are calling Disney the “safest bet in streaming,” with UBS projecting they sign up 5 million subscribers in their first year and grow to 50 million by year five.  That’s half as many as Netflix already has, but close to their US base as of now. Disney announced this week that they’ve already lost $136M in this quarter building the damned thing - but consider that an investment in a robust future.

Viacom bought Pluto Viacom is officially enlisted in the streaming wars, buying Pluto.tv (not the planet for those of you who have never heard of the free, ad supported service). They’re also saying their $340M acquisition will become a $5Billion ad business.

M&A: BTW, this confirms my prediction from a few weeks ago in the newsletter about mergers and acquisitions coming this year, and you can Add The Orchard to that acquisition list as well.

Forbes is predicting Amazon and Netflix will launch an ad-supported version of their services soon. My take: Amazon, sure, but there’s no evidence that Netflix would do this at all. I could see it in certain foreign markets on a mobile-only version, but “no ads” is one of their biggest selling points.

Netflix still has 2.7 Million DVD subscribers - and they brought in $85 Million in revenue last quarter from it. Small change for Netflix, but I predict the DVD service might grow since you can actually get a better mix of films there than on SVOD (which is why I still get the DVDs).

Amazon Prime just booted a bunch of indie films off of the service with no heads-up the filmmakers. TheNextWeb thinks its a travesty, which it is, but apparently only some 3000 people agree, as that's how many are signing the Change.org petition to bring back indies to Prime. Which begs the question: is the sum total indie audience less than 4000 people?

At least we have a new niche streaming service: There’s a new Home for Classic Films as the Criterion Channel sets Launch date of April 8th. Will there be enough consumer support to keep Criterion alive when FilmStruck shut down in 2018? While I love Criterion, my bet is that they need a lot more capitalization so they can curate a much broader selection to remain competitive. I still don’t believe that enough people want only niche films to keep a niche service alive - I know I need a bit of both (niche and mass entertainment).

What I’m Reading: Media

Unless you are living under that rock, reading a print newspaper, you may have noticed that this past week/month might go down as the time when all hopes for the future of the media finally died - in print, digital and in many people’s dreams.

Buzzfeed, Vice, HuffPo, Gannett and others all announced layoffs. Jill Abramson’s book about her time at the NYT and what’s happening in the space hit bookstores and the reviews and articles became even more timely as a result (read Jill Lepore in the New Yorker in particular) The free vs subscription wars seem to be coming down in favor of paid subscribers being the only solution, but no one seems sure what to do in a world where Facebook, Google and now Amazon own most of the advertising space, and the eyeballs. I believe that what’s happening in journalistic media is similar to what we’ll see in film as well, and worth watching closely.

So what can we take from this?

Jeremy Littau in Wired has some good thoughts to keep in mind -  First: “The internet wasn’t just paper—it was also the paperboy. It was a content, platform, and distribution model all in one.” Remember this, filmmakers/content-makers. And second: that a lot of overlooked audiences (women, people of color) finally had somewhere else to go: “The internet gave these already dissatisfied audience segments new choices—and reason to leave newspapers behind.” Which will happen to film if it doesn’t continue to diversify its voices/audiences as well.

Focus on quality and loyalty: News organizations chose to compete with each other on mass scale, rather than finding what they’re best at. As Rafat Ali says in the article (but really back in 2016): “‘Time to focus on what matters: building loyalties, both with users and advertisers (if that’s a constituency), focus on doing the things that build revenue base, stay away from hiring diva-stars for the sake of hiring them, and focus on quality as consumers are tiring off cheap tricks.”

The future of media is niche. While all these layoffs are happenings, news organizations such as The Ringer, The Athletic, and Politico are doing well. Why? A super loyal reader base, which they own, and not attempting to compete with large tech companies such as Apple and Google. But it also means you can’t count on the hyper-growth targets demanded by VC’s, so it’s better to take funding elsewhere and build for the long-term - go figure!

The Solution is constant experimentation to serve your audience better:  Corey Ford, Founder of Matter Media’s solution for media companies is true for film companies too: “The focus needs to be: If you’re going to be long-term sustainable, how do you build an organization with a culture and processes that enable teams to constantly be understanding their audience and adjusting — constantly be experimenting with new technologies, and constantly seeking out new sustainable business models? If you’re a leader of a media organization and that’s not the No. 1 thing you’re thinking about every single day, I don’t think you’re leading your organization to long-term success.”

Brands/Platforms need to be intimate.

While consumers are becoming more wary of social media, brands are seeking to create more personalized and relatable relationships through consumers. What does this look like? Well, Conde Nast gives a good example when they “launched a private Facebook group called Women Who Travel, which provides a safe space for passionate female travelers to ask each other questions, leave suggestions and offer encouragement. Since the group is private, it requires moderator permission to join and provides a sense of exclusivity and authenticity that can be hard to find elsewhere on the web. The group has quickly grown to more than 120,000 members strong.” That’s niche, intimate media for the win.

But as Nick Child’s reminds us: don’t get too intimate: because false personalization kinda sucks.

What I’m Reading: Culture

Guidestar and the Foundation Center are now Candid: If you’ve ever raised money for a film or nonprofit from grants, you’ve probably used the Foundation Center’s database of grants. And if you’ve ever applied for a job at a nonprofit, you are stupid if you didn’t use Guidestar to search for top executive salaries, and (more importantly if you might take that job), their financial backgrounds via their 990s. And now the two have merge into one entity called Candid. I love this. I’m a big fan of mergers for greater efficiency and services, and this looks like just such an example. Kudos to the leadership of both organizations and the funders who paid for the merger.

What I’m Reading: VR/AR

Screen reports that AR will grown into a Trillion Dollar Industry - Or so said Ted Schilowitz, a futurist in residence at Paramount. Me: A trillion dollars may be spent on it over time, but that doesn’t mean any profits will be made. Ok, I’m being cynical, and I think AR does have a future, but after playing around with the latest and greatest at Sundance, and speaking with the teams there about costs and potential, I’d say the costs to get involved - as a maker or a consumer - are too high and the payoff is too low to see this happening anytime soon.

Blatant Self-Promotion Department: A film I’ve been consulting on is now available on multiple digital platforms.Check out Long Time Coming if you haven’t seen it already:

Synopsis: You don’t have to be a baseball fan to appreciate this incredible story of two groups of 12-year-old boys and their coaches who snubbed southern segregation because they wanted to do one thing: play ball. Florida’s 1955 Little League Championship was one of the first integrated Little League games in the South. For the all-black Pensacola Jaycees, it was a long trip away from home to play the Orlando Kiwanis, and the film brings the two team captains together after 60 years to discuss for the first time how that historic night felt for them … and maybe get a little play in while they’re at it. With commentary from Ambassador Andrew Young, Hank Aaron, Cal Ripken Jr., and others, this film is about baseball, sure, but it’s much more about culture, society, and a few important childhood hours that hold meaning and questions for both sides over a half century later.

Available for sale/rental now:

Amazon Prime Video: https://amzn.to/2MPDOXo

FandangoNOW: http://bit.ly/2BnQm3E

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2t8JiDw

iTunes: https://apple.co/2suReig

Vimeo On Demand: http://bit.ly/2HSV1QX

Vudu: http://bit.ly/2SaOMwx

Microsoft Movies & TV: http://bit.ly/2TwIjc0

YouTube Movies: http://bit.ly/2GpMZN0

Posted on 7th Feb

Pre-Sundance 2019 Sub-Genre News - what I'll be talking about at the Dance

Sundance is as much about the conversations in line for films, as the films themselves. Here’s a few things I expect to talk about while waiting for some great movies. Hope to see you at Sundance and chat about the following:

1. Sundance Needs Speed-Dating. Yeah, I know, it’s a film fest and there’s plenty of movies to see, but every year I spend more time in meetings than theaters. That’s my own fault, but I do have one wish – could we all just show up one day early and have an eight hour speed-dating session where we switch seats every ten minutes and each see 48 people (6 per hour, 8 hrs, screw lunch) and get the meetings out of the way so we can just watch films the rest of the time? The Arthouse Convergence kinda acts like this for exhibitors and fests, but the rest of us need some kind of solution to the madness that is Park City.
2. WWND? What Will Netflix Do? We all want to know. Will they be active? Will they spend? Or, more likely, will they sit on the sidelines and stay focused on their own original content? The lack of Netflix action last year led everyone to shit a ton of bricks. Entire business models (reliant on their acquisition fees for SVOD) had to be rethought. What will this year tell us?
3. The need for a new (Foundation Funded?) SVOD - With the demise of FilmStruck and Fandor recently – and the soon to be announced death of every other SVOD/OTT service not called Netflix or Amazon Prime - as well as the increasing lack of interest from Netflix in anything remotely indie, foreign, arthouse, classic, just old, or heck, just a film…we are in dire need of a home for the rest of us.

No one can launch a rival to Netflix without Billions in the bank, it seems, but meanwhile – I can’t find thousands of titles I want to see anywhere (legally) online. Filmmakers I know are getting their rights back to their older titles and all but a few of them are getting the cold shoulder from distributors because no one (read not Netflix, that’s for sure) wants to license these older titles. All but a handful of foreign gems are overlooked by US distributors every year, and plenty of decent indies are left hoping for a Hulu deal, even though no one I know has ever typed the letters H-U-L-U into a browser, but it’s all we can hope for anymore.

I could go on and on, but I think it’s time some people with money turn their attention to this problem. As I’ve mentioned before, Foundations need to stop focusing on making content, and start investing in making it available to audiences. It will take hundreds of millions to make this work, so join forces my foundation friends because you are the only ones who can save us. Otherwise all of these films you keep funding will play Sundance and then sit in your grant portfolio but be seen by no one else because no one will put them on SVOD, and even though no one’s making any money on any of these films, no one will give them away for free, so we need a grant-supported (and/or crowd-funded) SVOD service to pick up the slack.

1. MoviePass is not Dead: Contrary to all reports otherwise, and even though its owner’s stock is almost de-listed, MoviePass is not dead, and in fact is launching new programs and promotions and will be active at Sundance trying to get the word out about its changes. How do I know this? I met with them two weeks ago to find out what’s up, and I liked what I heard. I know they have steep odds against them, but I imagine we’ll be hearing more from them than anyone expects this year, and we’ll likely be discussing them at Sundance, or at least how to get an invite to their party.
2. Are film fests struggling, due to decreased sponsorship? Anthony Kaufman had a nice little story in December in Filmmaker Magazine (subscription needed) about the death of the LA Film Fest and how festivals are having a harder time attracting sponsors and are seeing a slight decrease in individual donors. The struggle for funding is an ongoing topic of conversation for all film festival organizers, but I do think things are getting worse and won’t get better. Now that I work with multiple brands (on branded content), I see a lot more of the sponsor pitch kits that festivals send, and very few differentiate themselves or show any remote understanding of the brand they’re pitching or make any case for why that brand should sponsor that festival beyond being nice. This is mainly because the smaller fests can’t afford the staff that could take the time to tailor their pitch, so I don’t blame them really, but as brands build more direct links to their consumers, and start making their own content – fests are going to have to step up their game if they want to attract brands. They won’t do it just because you show great films. It’s hard to show greater value, build more customization, have better activation and still just serve your audience, but it has to be done. That said, fest organizers are scrappy folks, and I’m sure they’ll rise to the challenge.

Ok, that’s five things to discuss in line for films – other than “what have you seen?” – see you at the ‘Dance.

What I'm Reading - Film:

Who is gonna own Awards Season? Netflix...says Fast Company, noting that:

• “They spend way more than anyone else.
• They pursue any and all ways to promote their projects for awards.
• And most importantly: They, and especially Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, really, really, really want to win” (Fast Company).”

In other news regarding aggressive moves, Liberty Media is reportedly in talks to purchase a large stake from CAA.

And further - CNBC says Apple better buy Sony, Lionsgate or A24, or someone making content, and soon. And I agree - the future of content is gonna be tied at the hip to companies making other products.

The Innovative Storytelling of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch has confounded Internet Pirates, although video games are pirated just as much as movies, so I can’t imagine it won’t be that long until the pirates find a way to replicate the experience.

On the subject of innovative media that could potentially confound pirates: check out this four minute dystopian short film that utilizes periscope film technology to create an immersive visual experience… and all without cumbersome VR Goggles. It’s also a good hint at our future.

Peter Hamilton analyzed the break-down of acceptance rates for Sundance. Check it out here

When it comes to your data, not even your OTT provider can get it.

Digiday covers the lack of transparency in the OTT world, with Amazon, Roku and others not giving subscriber data to the platforms, meaning they know less about who is doing what and what works.

What I'm Reading - Culture:

In the rare good news from Government file, POTUS has signed a new law - the Open Government Data Act -  that requires all agencies to publish their data in a machine-readable format. This has been a brewing movement for quite some time, and it's a good move for consumers in the long run. No more data dumps in unreadable formats, or sending you to the copy machine, or worse - making you pay to get access to the data you funded.

And in the bad Government file - go figure it's Ajit Pai again, who refused to testify to Congress about why the mobile phone carriers are being allowed to share your data with aggregators. He used the shut-down as an excuse, but as EndGadget reports, he isn't affected by the furlough. Which makes you wonder why he really cancelled his appearance at CES last week?

Steven Soderbergh, Creator and Curator: We all know that last year he produced Unsane, but maybe we should be asking what he consumed? Turns out he’s a creator and a curator - and he provided a comprehensive list of all media he consumed in 2018.

More reasons people should be more focused on gaming. The Drum sums up four reasons why Gaming is a necessary market in media right now:

1. Gaming is not niche, but a mass market.
2. Gaming is focused on long term attention and consumption
3. People watching people play video over streaming is growing in popularity
4. eSport popularity is also growing exponentially

Yet, no one wants to put real money into gaming, a decision that is so easy, even an Ai could make it.

But maybe we are overestimating the intelligence of Artificial Intelligence? John Naughton of The Guardian seems to think so.  

Need a Facebook replacement? Just getting used to TikTok? Well, get ready to hear a lot more about Squad, the latest screen-sharing, video chat app that's going viral w the young'uns, and will therefore be on all our radars by next week.

What I'm Reading - Branded Content:

REI and The Atlantic: ReThink teamed up for this great, in-depth report on how to increase diversity in the outdoors, and make it more inclusive, proving that branded content doesn't need to be film, it can be great "journalism" as well. As a consultant to REI, I am biased, but I had nothing to do with this piece, and I'm also a fan of anyone bringing attention - and potential solutions - to this problem in the outdoor industry/society.

AeroMexico for the Win - on immigration, DNA and Mexico. Ok, this is an ad, and it's a bit shaky on the science, but it made me smile - Aeromexico has a nice take on getting US of Americans to visit Mexico  - by showing them how much of their DNA is Mexican. Nice work, Aeromexico.

Larry Fink of BlackRock tells companies to take a stand: Outspoken leader Larry Fink makes news again with his letter to CEOs telling them, according to Andrew Ross Sorkin in the NYT: "Businesses...cannot merely have a purpose. They must be leaders in a divided world. Stakeholders are pushing companies to wade into sensitive social and political issues — especially as they see governments failing to do so effectively,” Amen to that - and smart ones will be doing it in their branded content campaigns going forward.

Posted on 18th Jan

CES Quick-takes and more Sub-Genre news for Jan 11

I attended the madhouse that is CES for the first time this year, and it will likely take me a week to process all that I saw and learned. While I took some meetings, and did the requisite networking, I spent a lot of time on the floor gazing into our future. The few film industry people I knew seemed to spend most of their time in their booths or in meetings, and wondered why I’d spend so much time on the floor. But as my good friend, and trusted guide to all things CES, Meyer Shwarzstein (of Brainstorm Media) told me - you have to visit the floor because that’s where you’ll see what’s happening next in our business.

Unless you are a brick, you probably heard a lot of the news out of Vegas, but the big things this year were: all things Artificial Intelligence; robotics; VR and AR; 5G; Privacy; 8K screens; drones; IOT and smart homes; Virtual assistants and self-driving/flying transportation. But here’s my quick takeaways:

8K Screens are game-changers: Yes, we’ve all seen big screens, and we’ve had 4K and great sound-systems for quite some time, but when you stand in front of the new wall-sized 8K screens from Samsung, and roll-up OLED TVs from LG, you really wonder why the fuck anyone would go to a movie theater again. Aside from artificial windowing practices delaying my purchase, and the slight delay we’ll get before people can pay for and adopt these new screens, they’re simply better than any theater screen and all arguments in favor of theaters fall away (oh, it’s a group experience...I have Facebook, and can invite over my friends, etc.).  And yes, I am drooling over that roll-up screen.

VR/AR works...for games: Oh, the high hopes we had for VR. But at CES, it was clear that people have made some cool games, but not much else. As CNET put it so well, “In 2019, VR is a sideshow in a theme park, a marketing stunt, a slide in a PR PowerPoint presentation, a niche hobby for people locked in rooms with a ton of money to spend, and -- worse -- no one seems to know what direction we're headed in, or even what virtual reality should be.” Maybe my upcoming trip to Sundance’s New Frontier will change my opinion, but at CES, VR was best when being used for a cool game, but most of them weren’t games you’d pay for more than once, or want to own.

Autonomous Vehicles are here, want them or not, as are Autonomous Cameramen: You could get an autonomous Lyft, although everyone else will swerve around you - killing others in the process, because they just don’t trust them. There was an autonomous 16-wheel big-rig, autonomous delivery robots, drones, prototypes for autonomous flying cars. That’s all well and cool, and it probably means I’ll be catching up on more films while a robot drives me to Vegas in the future. But the autonomous/robotic tracking cameras were also all the rage. Multiple companies debuted cameras that can follow individuals with or without sensors - and from tiny cameras on your phone to gigantic camera arrays that can capture an entire sporting event, or drone cameras that can follow any mountain climber up a wall without getting tired. Lots of company’s essential pitch was: you can’t afford to hire a film team, but our robot cameras can do the work for you. Look out my filmmaker friends.

Distributors wanted: Attending CES with a new product, no matter how good, is a bit like making a little indie film and going to Cannes (or Sundance/Toronto/Berlin): it’s easy to get lost, and hard to stand out, yet thousands attempt it every year against all odds and a few make it.

The parallels with the film business are unending - the big guys have bright and shiny booths, they take out ads all around town and have armies of people trying to grab your attention to buy their new shiny object. The little folks are stuck into Eureka Park, itself a cavernous building with thousands of competitors, and they get a tiny booth to hawk their wares. No one has taught them how to market themselves, they don’t have any sense about how to pitch their own project (because they just focused on making it), and to make matters worse - the biggest movers and shakers can’t be bothered to even visit “the floor,” instead preferring to take meetings in suites and do business away from the plebes.

There are country-sponsored zones, where Holland or Japan spends money to promote its industry (just like we have Unifrance with a booth at Toronto). And you can spend your lifetime crafting something unique and cutting edge, only to be placed next to some gimmicky crap that draws away all of the attention. Right next to these robotic chicken heads, clapping away… a poor guy who built an open-AI with deep learning that can teach itself to locate humans or cell-phones or your watch in a video in real time (or anything else you want it to do, actually). He tried to be good natured about it, but admitted “people seem weirdly attracted to the clapping robot chickens.”

And what sign did hundreds if not thousands of start-ups have on their booth? Distributors wanted. Please, someone, anyone with any knowledge of the market, please help me bring this to the masses - I know they’ll like it. And unfortunately, most of those distributors aren’t even visiting their booths.

We are the Robots: But if I learned one thing, it’s that the robots are already taking over by...well, turning us into the robots. Take for example the multiple kitchen tools - that read you the recipe, and tell you what to do and where everything is, and whether its fresh and how many calories...so that you can do the cooking. Shouldn’t the robot be doing that?

Example after example of this dynamic was on display at CES, but to be honest, you need look no further than your likely email program - Gmail. Now that I have auto-complete turned on for my emails, my only reason to exist is to push the tab button, approving the text it has already guessed for me. Again, I’m the robot, and we’re barely into this revolution.

This message was written by my robot. I just typed the words it dictated to me.

WHAT I'M READING: FILM

Sundance’s Creative Distribution team surveyed film distributors about what they want, and how they operate, and published the results online. This one has been making the rounds, but just in case you missed it, it’s a great service to the field (done in conjunction w/ the great Dear Producer newsletter, which you should read if you don’t already).

The Big Winner of the Golden Globes? Netflix and Hulu. And they did it by giving the consumer what they want, producing an overwhelming amount of content ,and by just generally breaking all the rules.

WHAT I'M READING: AR/VR/TECH:

We’re stuck with click-bait, intrusive ads, no privacy and data collection, because that’s all that works online, right? Bullshit, says Zeynep Tufeki in a great little article in Wired. And it can be done through a little bit of innovation. Me: It’s high time we stop believing the old arguments and push for some new ones.

Meanwhile, a few AI experts tell us what's ahead for 2019: As expected, some feel that we are more years away from the innovations that companies like Google are promising, others feel that the future is foreboding, while others see Ai enhancing user daily life.

But at the very least, A robot (AI) can now spot art forgeries by just one brush-stroke. Next step - making the same art (forgery?) from what it's learned about famous artists…

Brooklyn/AR:

Sony just launched an Augmented Reality app-based adaptation of an exhibit formally at the Brooklyn Museum. David Bowie Is will allow users to explore the full museum show in detail from their own home, and for about half the cost.

WHAT I'M READING: News, Media and Culture:

Wall Street has an idea on how Disney could beat Netflix: But guess what - it’s about getting rid of windows for its own content. But it’s clear that Disney will not do that as Iger is fond of keeping theaters happy (for now).

Disney’s Bob Iger Talks Streaming, Park Plans, and Learning from Kodak. Iger is one of the few big media honchos who deserves his job - he’s smart - so listen to this podcast or read the interview to see what he thinks is next for the Mouse and culture.

The BBC reminds us that Golden Globes and Grammy's aside, the gaming industry is bigger than video and music combined.

And it all comes down to three properties in 2019: Fifa 19 (A realistic soccer simulation), Red Dead Redemption 2 (An open world western ala Grand theft Auto), Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (A military shooter riding on the coattails of this years most popular, but also free to play game, Fortnite). It goes to show that gaming is currently the most innovative entertainment category, and most profitable, and it doesn’t even have a televised awards show.

Germany’s Far Right Upset over Receiving free tickets to Schindler’s List

Steven Spielberg’s decision to bring Schindler’s List back to theatres all around the world to spark discussion has been seen as an attack from Germany’s far right party AfD. But what can you expect when most young people (18-35)  know “very little” about the holocaust.

Podcast from Mass Media Expo:

I recently spoke on a panel at the Mass Media Expo in Boston, and the great team from the GoCreativeShow Podcast was there interviewing the guests.

They've just posted the interviews, and they are a great run-down for anyone interested in the current state of media, and what's going on in media in New England.

My segment is in Part One (55:00-1:05:00) and other guests in that episode speak a lot about the rise of branded content. Check it out at these links

Part 1

Part 2

Posted on 11th Jan

Sub-Genre News, Predictions for 2019 and more news you might use

Ten Predictions for 2019

1. Mergers & Acquisitions: 2018 was the year for big mergers like Disney & Fox and AT&T & Time Warner, and 2019 will be the year for interesting M&A action in the lower levels of media. My bets for acquisition: IFC Films, A24, Neon, KinoLorber, First Run, Alamo Drafthouse, MoviePass (it’s not dead yet, and has a lot of good data, see below) & Magnolia. You heard it here first - one or all of these will be bought by someone (likely not the same someone), and I just don’t know by who (yet). One great new acquisition was just announced - PictureMotion and Film Sprout - and I expect many more.
2. Netflix will buy a theater chain. Netflix tried to get Landmark, but Mark Cuban jacked up the price (and it went to Cohen Media), but this year, they’ll get serious, so they can lock in more talent and more press. I thought it would be Landmark or Alamo, but perhaps someone bigger?
3. Amazon will buy MoviePass, Merge it with Prime, and offer the best mix of online and real-world cinema going for one low price. Ok, they may just launch this service without buying MoviePass, but with it, they’d get a lot of data and a head-start;
4. Failures: As the economy gets shakier and crazier, things will start to shake-out and a lot of people carrying too much debt, or too little business model will die off in 2019. I don’t want to single out anyone for this honor, but I bet we see many OTT channels/providers hitting the scrap heap, a clearing out of all of these short-form “channels” that no one is watching, and a few film entities that don’t merge will end their runs in 2019. Unfortunately, I think the downturn will hit sponsorships, which will seriously hurt if not close a few great film festivals (that’s 3 predictions in one, btw);
5. New Models: In 2018, the talk of the town was - “WTF do we do if Netflix didn’t buy us at Sundance?” And no one had an answer. As Netflix continues to focus on originals, which means less indie acquisitions at the fest stage, we’ll see more creativity around how to finance and release films, especially documentaries. Back in 2016, Roco Films helped launch the International Buyer’s Coalition to counter Netflix’s might (pooling resources to buy films for international public television), and I think a few more of these new business models will be launched in 2019. My hope is that we’ll see more collaborations between nonprofits/fests and distributors around audience-building, because that (and curation) are what we need most now;
6. Diverse Voices: Thanks to a stellar year for diverse cinema in 2018, we should see more investment in diverse voices for 2019 - an ongoing change that should only continue for quite some time. But I’ll go a step further and say that one of 2019’s biggest media investments will be in a new venture to fund and bring more diverse voices to market - something like the 2017 launch of Macro, but maybe bigger.
7. #MeToo Continues - yes, more revelations and reverberations, but just as importantly - more initiatives to address gender inequity behind the camera, in front of it too, and in the stories being told. Like diversity, this is a trend long-overdue and sure to continue. As a branded content person now, my biggest hope here is that Brands start to take this more seriously in finding creative voices for their content;
8. More Brand Studios - Every year, I talk about the rise of branded content, but I think this year will see a few more brands get serious and launch dedicated branded content divisions, and finally capitalize them right and also own their distribution and marketing (as opposed to just partnering with a distributor, YouTube or Facebook).
9. More Blockchain Platforms, with less success - Last year at Sundance, I met with at least ten different groups promising to launch blockchain enabled platforms for film distribution, and a few did launch, but more will hit in 2019. While 1 or 2 might score some press, I predict most will die as they remain focused on a problem that doesn’t exist - just making a new version of Netflix powered by Blockchain, instead of things that might work, like back-end rights management systems for existing providers. But if any of them want to succeed, do this - take ½ of whatever your total budget for the year is and re-dedicate it to consumer marketing, because all y’all got an awareness problem first.
10. A Stellar Sundance - The economy should still be strong enough through the fest, and lots of players have open wallets looking for films. Netflix will be less active, but Amazon and others should be more active. The lineup looks great, and we should even see some (more) acquisitions of New Frontier stuff - VR and AR, interactive and mobile-first entertainment (and I don’t even have a grasp of what’s on offer there yet). In addition to acquisitions announcements, I can’t wait to hear some press confirmation of some of the ideas above - mergers and new models in particular.

What I'm Reading- Film:

This history of the Hollywood Reporter’s founder, Billy Wilkerson, is going on my GoodReads Books to Read list asap: Hollywood Godfather: The Life and Crimes of Billy Wilkerson by his son, W.R. Wilkerson III. The review in the WSJ (may link to a Paywall) is fascinating, detailing how being spurred by the Hollywood moguls, Wilkerson started the Hollywood Reporter as a “hand-full of papers thrown over the Studio walls” and built it into a fearful source of news that the Studios didn’t want reported. Of course, it was also a religious war (devout Catholic vs. the Jews running the studios), which would lead him to another religious war later against the (atheist) commies as a proponent of the Blacklist.  He also fell in with mobsters and apparently single-handedly started the battle that became the Hollywood Antitrust case, or Paramount Decree, leading them to divest of their theaters (which is currently being reviewed for repeal). Good and bad, this guy did a lot, and the Hollywood Reporter marches on. Reading this review, however, made me pine for the days when the Trades actually reported news - you know the stuff not sent in a press release  -instead of being mere industry promo-tools, which is all they are now.

Is it the end of Netflix’s Golden Age? Don’t count on it, says me, but maybe so, argues Mark Sweney in the Guardian. And he has some good points - it’s getting more expensive for them to license content, they need to focus more on international growth and everyone else has finally woken up to streaming. But Netflix has beat the negative prognastications for many years, and my bet is that the upstart rivals will have a harder time winning back customers than Netflix has in keeping them happy.

File under Kitchen-Sink - which is apparently AT&T’s strategy for the future, according to DigiDay. Faced with cord-cutters and the decline in advertising, AT&T will try a bit of everything to maintain dominance. My take - it will make for a fun 2-3 years before the inevitable death of these ideas.

Maybe we just need to be watching films more slowly, which is what the new Very Slow Movie Player does. It plays one film at 24 frame per hour. TechCrunch has the report.

[caption id="attachment_1354" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Photo via VSMP[/caption]

Or however the fuck we want: Bilge Ebiri has a year-end post about many things cinema for Slate where he admits some of his best cinematic viewings were off old, 10th generation bootleg VHS tapes. But noting that the big streamers seem to not just want to privilege their method, but kill all others, he asks the obvious question: “So you guys tell me: Am I just a privileged fuddy-duddy hanging on to the outmoded ways of his youth? I want Netflix and Amazon to exist, and I want movie theaters to exist, and I want Blu-rays and DVDs to exist. Do I ask the impossible?” Me: Nope, they’ll all exist - but not every movie will exist on each format, you and every cinephile will be stuck watching all of the above to watch what you want, when you want.

What I'm Reading - Branded Content:

CNN Builds New Year’s Eve Ad With Lots of Spin:, CNN offered robust sponsorships of their countdown clocks and various other graphics over their coverage of NYE, reflecting a changing paradigm within televised news; where before it might be considered unethical to present logos of outside companies during news coverage, branded content is now fully embraced in the newsroom. While it’s not hidden at all  - you could tell what was sponsored - it does show that nothing is sacrosanct anymore when it comes to finding revenue to keep the “news” beast growing.

The Betches started as a blog, but is now a branded-content funded, media empire. Forbes reports on how they did it, and how it works. From the story: “Betches' revenue is predominately earned from brand partnerships that include 360-degree strategic campaign conceptualization, video production and execution, branded social and digital assets and artwork, experiential event marketing and influencer activation, according to their advertising page, which also states that Betches had 2 billion impressions, more than 6 million users and 155 million video views per month.”

AdAge Wraps up the Best Ads in Film & TV for 2018, and I can’t disagree with their top-4 for ads, but it could use more from the actual branded content side. But there’s a few good ones here.

What I'm Reading - Net, News, Media and Culture:

In the end of the year rush, I forgot to link this nice little article from The Verge detailing how the new AT&T could “bully its way into streaming domination.” Can’t beat Netflix at the content game? Just throttle them, give preferred access to your own channels and content. As former FCC lawyer (and Public Knowledge founder) Gigi Sohn says in the article: ““The repeal of net neutrality — and more importantly, the abdication of the FCC’s duty to protect consumers and competition in the broadband market — ensure that AT&T will have carte blanche to discriminate in favor of the video content it owns.” And Ajit Pai is too busy drinking from his gigantic mug to give a fuck.

Is the future of media likely to become even more partisan as the ad-model breaks? Yes, says Derek Thompson in The Atlantic - but it’s a good thing. As he points out, when newspapers switched from patronage to ad-support in the past, “large ad-supported newspapers grew to become profitable behemoths, but they arguably emphasized milquetoast coverage over more colorful reader engagement.” Voter rates were actually higher under the more politicized papers as well. As the ad-model breaks and we head back towards patronage - via Bezos owning WaPo as well as digital subscribers - we’ll get more partisan news, but maybe that’s actually better for us. Interesting and quick read.

Posted on 3rd Jan

Quibi: The future (death) of online video and more Sub-Genre news for Dec 14, 2018

I’ve written before about Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new venture Quibi. This week, Variety held a live interview with Jeff and CEO Meg Whitman that is available as a podcast here. It’s worth a listen for both the good and the bad it portends for the future of video online, and I’m pretty sure this is one of the most important new developments to the future of online video and the web. I’m excited and depressed about it too.

Quibi is all about investing a shit-ton of money to make really great short form and episodic content, with big name directors and talent. They’ve announced deals with the likes of Guillermo Del Toro and this week, Deadline also has a report on some recent big hires, with a hint that Spielberg’s been hanging around the office. They’ve also built an app and viewing experience that will launch in 2019 or early 2020 that supposedly makes watching short form video on your phone even better/easier (more on that in the podcast).

And they are spending a lot to win the war for your eyeballs – they raised over a Billion dollars for this venture, and Jeff explains in the interview that (like Netflix) they are paying producers 120% of their budgets and up to $6-Million per hour for the best short form content in small bites (quick bites…Quibi). And they are relatively producer friendly - producers can exploit their IP on other platforms after just 2 years by repackaging it into different 20 minute segments, and after just 7 years, the rights revert to the creative team. That’s not bad by Hollywood terms.

So Quibi is making HBO quality short-form content, and paying HBO prices to make it. And they elude to this in their pitch pretty quickly. In fact, the transparency of their budgets in this interview is so astounding that I imagine it’s just an open pitch to producers – “we have an open checkbook, give us a call.”

Whitman explains their value proposition in the interview: “You leave the house every morning with a little TV in your pocket. It’s called your smart phone. “ (Quick aside: No shit, Meg, are you just realizing this? You aren’t inspiring me to believe you are any more “with the times” now than you were at EBay or HP! Wait, you’re the boss…uh-oh.) …”And you have in-between moments where you want to see something great... like HBO said: we're not TV, we're HBO...we're not short-form, we're Quibi.”

So the upside of all of this is a lot of money being invested to make really great stuff in a format that people seem to prefer, and with a pretty creative-friendly environment (if you are part of the 1% of top filmmakers who they bother to work with). And that’s a game-changer for the space. As their content hits the web, it will force others to compete. It means brands making short form content will have to invest more to steal attention away from Quibi. It means the NYT Op-Docs, TOPIC and others won’t be able to get away with their meager investments anymore.

In fact, you could argue that the entire history of online short-form “professional video” has been about multiple companies trying to build something out of nothing- paying too little, thinking they can build an audience with little investment. Quibi has upped the ante for short-form content platforms, and they will likely slay many online video dragons. This is all great.

So what’s the bad part?

The core problem with this venture is that it isn’t solving any problem that consumers actually have. And that’s always a bad business proposition.

People already have found their answers for that “in-between” time - YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and other social media and online videos. Even watching Netflix on their phone, which is only getting easier and better with 5G. Yes, there’s a problem of overload – and having too much content to weed through. But no one sits around saying – you know, I just need more content to watch to fill these “in between” moments that Meg mentions. That problem has been solved.

Nope. The problem that Meg and Jeff are solving is one affecting the suits in the industry – people aren’t watching their shows. What they’re watching is still a lot of amateur content – so much so that Ryan ToysReview is pulling in $22 Million a year from advertising, as millions watch him review toys.

Quibi is a big Hollywood solution to the problem of too much content – well, if people might watch amateur video, the way to get them to watch our stuff is to pay a shit-load to make it even bigger and better, and hope we can crowd out the amateur stuff. But I think in a world where 7 year olds make $22-Million for UGC, the jury is out on whether people want more "professional" content, and if they do, it probably just means the internet has finally died.

I swear, if you listen really closely to this podcast, you can hear the internet crying, because they're talking about how to kill it.

Every new media technology has followed the same trajectory, and pundits and assholes like me have been warning for years that this would also happen to the internet (here’s me in 2007). When the phonograph was created, Edison thought we’d use it to record grandma for posterity, and it became a one way-street of everyone buying “professional” records pretty quickly. The same with radio, with TV and now with the internet and online video. In every instance, a medium made to be open and participatory became a one way street of consumption of “top quality content” by only the “best talent.”

It’s not that Quibi will one day kill YouTube and amateur content completely. What they are doing is good intentioned and not evil. But as more companies invest even more money in online video; and as advertisers want “safe” content with lots of views around their ads; and as the FCC kills net neutrality, meaning eventually Quibi will pay to be sure you get its content faster than amateur content; and as this investment kills off smaller competitors like Vimeo; and as Netflix and Quibi and others invest in originals from a smaller and smaller group of “top talent;” well, all of these little moves slowly strangle the democratic, participatory nature of online video (and indie films too).

So I guess I have a love/hate relationship with this Quibi-thing, and it hasn’t even launched yet.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM

Some people think Netflix needs to fear Disney; other’s don’t. I’m in the “don’t fear the Mouse” camp; but what’s important to me is that as everyone moves to more original content, and battling to keep the top-rated shows and movies inside their walled-gardens, none of them are fighting to keep much indie film around. This war is just gonna make those big Netflix acquisitions even scarcer.

Verizon just admitted that Oath – that’s Yahoo/AOL. has gone from a $4.8 Billion dollar valuation to just $200 Million, yes, they’re taking a $4.6B write down, and getting out of the content game. Wowza.

Bilge Ebiri wonders whether Special Effects can be Special again in Vulture. This is a long-read well worth your time. Spoiler alert: It’s all about making fake humans (you know, so we don’t need any new actors…)

TechDirt gives us the dirt on the MPAA and RIAA trying to revitalize SOPA again. This shit just never ends. As Masnick explains (and eerily timely given my above comments): “In short, here are the major copyright industry representatives, knowing that everyone's busy off fighting other fires, making quiet inroads towards bringing back SOPA, despite the total clusterfuck it proved to be seven years ago. These guys will never stop in their quest to destroy the internet as we know it, and their push to turn the internet into a broadcast medium controlled by gatekeepers, rather than a communications medium for all of us.”

Pop-Up OTT for Xmas: Yes, that’s right. Unreel is launching Christmas Zone for the holidays – a pop-up, short-term OTT channel full of your Christmas movie favorites. (H/t to Erick Opeka for this link) Ok, some favorites and a lot of public domain stuff. But while I feel OTT is mainly a losing proposition, pop-up OTT might just work better than…

Bye-Bye Fandor. Within hours of my last newsletter predicting most niche-OTT efforts will fail, in the wake of FilmStruck’s demise, Fandor announced it was closing down (transferring assets). I am not surprised, but having known many of the founders and various staff over the years (who were all amazing folks), I am sad to see them go.

WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

GroupNine Media (Thrillist, NowThisNews, etc.) is launching it’s own in-house brand studio, says Adweek.

PeakTV much? AdWeek has a run-down of the 5 Best shows you didn’t probably watch because you couldn’t find them. Wait, we need Quibi why?

WHAT I’M READING: IMMERSIVE

Lance Weiler and his class at Columbia published a great run-down of 52 immersive things to check out. Each one mixes storytelling, play, design and code.

Posted on 14th Dec

FilmStruck is Dead, but Sub-Genre News is Back

FilmStruck and the Future of SVOD: Less is not More.

FilmStruck is Dead, which sucks, but it’s just the canary in the OTT-Mine.

While I was gone for a month, nearly everyone under the sun went ape-shit crazy about FilmStruck shutting its doors. I get this as a cinephile, but I also guessed it wouldn’t last too long when it launched, and amongst all the great stories about its demise (see a few links below), I think the perspective that’s missing is precisely what AT&T/WarnerMedia figured out – niche channels won’t survive in the oncoming content wars.

Less is not more. More is where it’s at and here to stay, because they didn’t just shut the channel, they announced it would be part of a bigger offering – TCM and other “niche” content will be part of a future AT&T WarnerMedia offering that features not just the Classics, but also a lot of everything else.

But that ruins the niche, aficionado experience you say? Nope. Study after study has shown that people who like Classic films, or films about any other niche, also happen to just love films and want to access a bit of everything. The most famous of these studies was Anita Elberse way back when (2008) arguing about the long-tail, and guess what – she’s still right.

If you like movies at all, you will find your way all the way back to Tarantino (cringe, I know, but I sometimes teach and that’s all these kids remember anymore), or way back to Scorsese, or even to Kurosawa, and maybe sideways to Mekas (or go crazy and find Barbara Hammer, or Gordon Parks, or…). But it’s not just about finding history; it’s that people with any taste in any subject, tend to have broad tastes. I find it easier to think about in music terms – if you like Robert Glasper, you probably also like Common, avant-garde jazz, Q-Tip, Kendrick Lamar, Esperanza Spalding and lots of other music too (they’ve all collaborated together). The notion of someone who only likes obscure Japanese noise music is just wrong – the more niche you get in your tastes, the more likely you are to also like a wider range of stuff.

And this is also true for the average Josephine. Why spend $6 bucks a month on all the obscure titles you want from Fandor, if you could spend $8-13 a month and get those plus some Disney titles. In an attention economy of super-abundance, my dollar is going to the widest catalogues, not the most “special.” Wait, what? Doesn’t curation rule online? Yes, but within platforms not between them – and this is the mistake every OTT operator is making. Including Netflix. Have a lot; have the best too. Help me find it through better curatorial tools within your site, so I can weed out what I don’t want to see, but jeesh – if my parents show up at my house and don’t want to watch Stan Brakhage films all weekend, I better have Won’t You Be My Neighbor to stop some fights real fast.

Here’s some of the better FilmStruck death links if you missed the shit-storm:

The Guardian telling us dark days are ahead.

The LA Times saying streaming will erase movie history

Deadline on one of the many petitions to save FilmStruck

Deadline on another petitionThe Hollywood Reporter letting such petitioners take some kind of credit for saving FilmStruck (ahem, they just announced their plans a little earlier, but thanks!)

Sherry Brennan of Fox in MultiChannel being the only adult in the room, telling us “only a handful of platforms can support themselves in the niche OTT world,” and breaking the news that only a small number of subscription-based over-the-top services have more than 100,000 subscribers at this point,” And most of them are churning through customers once they try the free trial period.

John Stankey explaining to the NYT that FilmStruck titles will be on a new WarnerMedia streaming service in 2019.

The Hollywood Reporter on the possible tiered costs of this new service

But if you want to really get in an argument about FilmStruck, make sure you read Katherine Groo in perhaps the most interesting take on FilmStruck of all – that it wasn’t good for movies – in WaPo. Love this: “The failure of such a short-lived service cannot possibly be a threat to film history in any way that matters. Rather, it is a crisis in the digital fantasies of the 21st century: that (privileged) people can have on-demand access to the wealth of human culture.” Or, take this: “The argument that we need immersion in the masters of film to make digital images for streaming platforms is either a category error or an effort to protect against the future — that is, to ensure that whatever is to come resembles the powers of the past. If the concern were really about access, rather than taste, privilege, auteurism and connoisseurship, the people lamenting FilmStruck might be advocating for greater funding to film libraries and archives and more experimental models of open access and public engagement. What we need is not a deep introduction to narrow “fundamentals” but a more expansive and inclusive understanding of what film is, can be and has been.” Wowza!

What I’m Reading: Film

Meanwhile, no one watches film anyways, they’re too busy watching squishies and ToysReview: While not enough people watched FilmStruck to save it, The WSJ reports on Squish Toys, and how one Holly Woodruff’s got a 49-minute video of her hands squeezing-and-releasing more than 700 squishies one-by-one that has been watched 3.1 million times. “Most fans—some of them adults—watch the videos to relax, Ms. Woodruff says.”

And nearly everyone covered the BBC’s story about seven year-old Ryan ToysReview pulling in $22-Million a year with a golly gee-whiz attitude. But what this really shows is that nearly 14 years after YouTube was founded, the world just wants to watch itself make funny videos, and has little time for what Hollywood wants to make. Seriously, YouTube has spent billions trying to get people to watch “professional” content, and people like Katzenberg are raising billions more to make “high end-quality” content, when clearly the internet has spoken, and it thinks UGC is just fine.

But if they are, they might as well just use Kanopy. Because as IndieWire reports, A24 just made their entire catalogue available for free on Kanopy – to anyone with a library card. Why are people even bothering to launch other services?

Why is gaming so absent from Film Fests? That’s what I wondered, as I read this brilliant editorial about the artistry of Red Dead Redemption 2 in the NYT from Peter Suderman of Reason.com. Seems to me that all of the “cutting edge” programs at places like Sundance, Tribeca, etc. spend a lot of time pushing VR and other interactive platforms and not gaming; yet games are so clearly the only form of current and future narrative art that are both currently working and popular. The bias against games as narrative art continues.

Release windows are shrinking? Not so fast argues Colin Dixon in nScreenMedia, who gives three good reasons PVOD (premium VOD) will fail: Disney won’t do it; box office is increasing; and theater owners still don’t see anything to gain.

Some asshole wants to shut down the Quad for noise disturbances, reports the NYT, but thank God its owner, Charles Cohen, just bought Landmark and can make his noise wherever he wants now. Seriously though, who are these fucks moving to NYC and ruining our lives when existing landmarks mess with their condo-living?

What I’m Reading: Branded Content

Marriott is going to theaters reports DigiDay. Marriott took it’s StoryBooked series to 30 theaters in 28 markets, aired it as an hour-long broadcast on FYI, and then again on A&E before making it available for streaming online through April, 2019. Multi-platorm plays are getting bigger, because only bigger breaks through the noise.

And AdWeek explains why, in a pretty good article on how brands are taking control of their narratives by making more content, longer content, and controlling how it gets to consumers.

What’s next, the article asks in summary: “Best of all, brands can target who they want to see this content across whatever platforms they choose. They don’t need to pay to shout this content across a major TV network but can instead seek out the market that wants this content how and when they want it.

It’s a new era for content. The only question now is how far will brands go. Could we be watching the Patagonia Network on our televisions soon?”

Well, given how poorly OTT channels are working out, as explained above, maybe not. But brands might have a better go at it than traditional film companies.

Maybe that’s because Branded Content makes people happy. So says RealEyes and Turner in a study they released that was picked up by AdAge. But if you read this, you may vomit. I did.

Why is this Newsletter so Late?

Sorry I didn’t post for a few weeks, but I was producing a movie, which kept me too busy to write a newsletter, and that's why this is a summary about old news. But this also gives me a chance to make a shameless plug for the great press we got in Deadline for our cast on The Outside Story, by Casimir Nozkowski, which just wrapped shooting in Brooklyn. Can’t wait to bring this film to you next year.

Posted on 7th Dec

DocNYC and other news

DOCNYC hits NYC Nov 8-15^th.

DOCNYC has grown to be the largest doc fest in the US (I don’t know how they measure this…) and it’s got a stellar line-up this year. There are a lot of films playing, but I’m gonna pitch just one for you to watch – and I’m biased because I’ve been consulting with the filmmakers for over a year now – Stars in the Sky: A Hunting Story by Steve Rinella. I am willing to bet that 100% of my little reading audience doesn’t hunt – and has probably never fired a gun and has no interest. That’s ok. You can even be anti-hunting. But Steve Rinella is not only a good filmmaker, he’s the Anthony Bourdain of hunting – he knows his stuff, knows the arguments for and against, and this film will open your mind to thinking about it a little differently. And even if it doesn’t – you’ll learn a lot about how hunters and fishers contribute to our public lands. Check it out on Nov 11^th.

But to me, the best thing about DocNYC is the DocNYC Pro program – panels, keynotes/manifestos and pitch sessions. This is where you can really learn the state of the industry and put faces with names on those industry folks you want to get to know. Check out the full line-up for DocNYC Pro Here.

Mass Media Expo takes place in Boston this Saturday, and I am speaking on a panel about branded content, with my friend Rob Sheard of Zero Point Zero (producers of Stars in the Sky, mentioned above), and Megan Cunningham of Magnet Media. Both of these people are way smarter about the future of branded content than me, so make sure to come see us if you are near Boston. They’ve also got a great set of panels, including one about the state of OTT and cord cutting, and there’s also an Exhibitor’s Hall with many great vendors.

The Outside Story shoots Nov 10-30. I won’t be at DocNYC though, because shameless plug – I’m producing this great indie film at the same time. This is why this is a short post this week, and it also means I won’t be writing newsletters again til December.

What I’m Reading: Film:

There’s a glut of SVOD Channels – Milking Genre Fans, and people are getting sick of it already, reports Endgadget. As the writer points out: “So I'm spending a bunch of money on shows I don't even watch... It's basically no different from having cable. Cord cutters have long extolled the virtues of an "a la carte" model of TV consumption, where you pay only for what you actually want. Well, congratulations! We're there, and it stopped being cheap a while ago. (No wonder piracy's going back up.) Geeks might be fond of cutting the cord, but we're also quite fond of BitTorrent.” My take: this is unsustainable for customers and the folks launching these channels. I see a big shake-out in a year or two, in addition to the recent loss of FilmStruck. No one wants a la carte cable for more money. It just don’t compute. We either need some bundling of services, or this just won’t work.

The LA Film Festival is no More, and that's Great: Variety reports that Film Independent is shutting down the LA Film Festival. Why do I say this is great? I actually feel bad for the people losing their jobs, and hope Film Independent helps them find new homes, but I think it's great when an organization assesses it's situation and admits it can do something better. Kudos to Josh Welsh and the leadership team there for re-focusing on how to better serve indie filmmakers through year-round programming. As board chair Mary Sweeney told Variety: "“In the end, we concluded that the organization should explore a more nimble, sustainable form of exhibiting and celebrating independent film artists year round.” That's a great idea. I hope more film organizations take it to heart and think about what they may do differently as well (and no, not all of them should shut their fests, but some should).

Posted on 1st Nov

WithoutABox Is Dead and Mixed Reality Should Be?

WAB Patent

WithoutaBox is dead, reports Deadline, among thousands of others. Way back when in 2000 I was running the Atlanta Film Festival and got a call from a friend asking if we’d be a founding film festival of a new submission service. In all honesty, the staff and I assumed this thing would die off sooner than it would make our lives any easier, but it actually worked. Soon we were among hundreds of film festivals using it to streamline submissions – and then acceptances and rejections, and it was pretty cool (for a time).

At first it made submissions easier, then it contributed to a glut of submissions. Then things started going downhill. Amazon/IMDB bought it, and seemingly decided to freeze it in time with no improvements. And they could because they had Patent number US6829612, which prevented anyone from making a copycat system. Stephen Follows wrote about it back in 2013, and it's a good read if you want to understand all that went wrong with WAB.

Everyone in film knows this story well, but suffice it to say – Film Freeway finally figured out how to get around the patent crap and build a better service. WAB noticed it was losing business, and bribed many of the big festivals to keep using them, and actually made it start working again (design improvements mainly). Now every filmmaker has to keep an account with both services to apply to film festivals (among a few, small other ones), since each festival uses one or the other.

But Amazon has finally decided to kill it off. No one seems to know why. Out of all the press, I haven't found anyone who makes even a good guess. Some think it got expensive to bribe festivals with sponsorships. But Amazon is too rich for that. And it can't be the cost of keeping up the service or holding the data, when Amazon owns AWS. My guess is that Amazon figured out they were getting all of the data they need about films elsewhere, and a whole chunk of that data was just useless. But even I am not sure of why.

So Long WithoutABox. Long live Film Freeway (and the few other upstarts).

But… while I love Film Freeway, I still can’t figure out why Vimeo hasn’t taken ownership of this space? We all use Vimeo for every aspect of film viewing, why not just close the loop and become a better WAB/Cinando? That would be a service for the industry that would be a nice tidy business for them.

One can dream…

What I’m Reading: Film:

A24 Redfines the Sountrack as a Playlist: The WSJ reports (might be pay-walled for some) that instead of licensing the music (again) from studios, A24 just made a great playlist of the songs from Jonah Hill’s Mid90s. The songs are already there for free, so no money needed to exchange hands, and…earned media as well people.

What I’m Reading Mixed Reality:

Is MagicLeap and Mixed Reality a big Con? That’s what Gizmodo thinks (via Redef). Not much to add here, it's all true.

What I’m Reading: Branded Content

Robbie Bond, founder of Kids Speak for Parks, wants you to vote! This comes from Patagonia, and it’s all of 23 seconds, but combined with a great and simple website, it’s great stuff. Patagonia is taking the lead in corporations pushing citizens to vote and make their voices heard – especially in support of public lands and the environment. Kudos to them, and everyone else who is pushing people to vote in the Midterms. Go vote!

Posted on 1st Nov

With Apple’s new free content, what’s the future gonna look like?

This week CNBC (and probably others) carried the news that Apple is going to be making a lot of original content available for free (h/t to Sundance’s Creative Distribution newsletter for the link). While they are “only” spending $1Billion on content this year, people suspect they’ll be spending more. Later in the day of this news, I was meeting with another film executive who pondered – with consumers expecting more and more free content, can any media company not attached to something bigger survive?

I think it’s a valid question – prognosticators on Wall Street in particular keep betting that Netflix will sell after it starts crashing – and they keep getting proven wrong. But you gotta wonder – with Amazon and Apple and (eventually) Google and Facebook all being big enough to make content and give it away so you use their other services – where they make a lot of money – what happens not just to Netflix, but also Disney- even with the recent mergers – most other studios, and even a lot of broadcasters, etc. It’s not hard to imagine a world where we’re back to the Big Four, but with FAA(n)G being the last folks standing. And yes, I put the Netflix n in lower case because I am not betting against them yet, especially on their current streak. But I can see a world where they start missing subscriber growth as the economy cools globally, and then one of the others just buys the remains.

I think branded content will push this trend along faster. Right now, only a few are doing anything more serious than some dalliances. But Pepsi, Lego, and I think soon – Lyft, Red Bull and many others are going to take a cue from Katzenberg’s Quibi (which will also be bought) and start upping their game with much bigger investments in the space. And they won’t need to sell their content. They can give it away, maybe just via Google or Amazon, and will be damn good at marketing it too. It’s gonna be an interesting few years ahead.

WHAT I’m READING: FILM

Per the above, Katzenberg unveiled the name of his new service and it’s Quibi, for quick bites. Dumb name, but the fact that he could even find a 5 letter word still available online is amazing unto itself. A lot of people keep poo-pooing this new company, but I think it’s damn smart to be making high quality short form content with big name creators like those he’s announced – Sam Raimi, Guillermo del Toro, Antoine Fuqua and Jason Blum (but let’s see some women…). He’s basically doing what Vimeo could have done if Barry had been willing to invest more in the brand. Anyways, five bucks says Quibi will be a channel on Apple TV within five years.

BRANDED CONTENT

Joy Howard is the new CMO at Lyft. Ok, this isn’t branded content news yet, but I’ve worked with Joy at both Patagonia and Sonos – her previous jobs – on cool branded content, and as I’ve written before, Lyft is already doing cool things in the space, so expect to see more soon.

Advertising Week was all about original content, and Forbes reports that brands are figuring out that in a saturated media world, distribution is f-n hard stuff. Welcome to my world.

Posted on 11th Oct

The Crisis in Indie Film History Viewing (and Preservation)

I don’t normally link to IndieWire articles because I imagine everyone who reads this newsletter also reads IndieWire already. But this week, they ran a great little story about the Crisis in Indie Film Preservation, and I think it’s a must-read for the field, but it also points to an adjacent problem with no easy solution (although I’ll propose one) – access to viewing the history of indie film online.

Chris O’Falt, the writer, does a great job of describing the problems, so read that first, and by interviewing IndieCollect and Ira Deutchman, he heard from the most knowledgeable people on the subject. But in short, the crisis is that the history of indie film is in danger of disappearing. Films shot on actual film are often degrading, improperly stored, un-findable, or perhaps worse – we might have the original negatives, but no one can figure out what company owns the rights anymore so no one can digitize and distribute it. And the situation is no better, and actually worse, for films that originated on digital because digital formats actually disappear more quickly than film (do you own a DVD player anymore, much less a floppy disc?).

I take issue with only one point in the article – he says the crisis in indie film preservation was one that “no one saw coming,” which is ridiculous because almost anyone who is active in indie film has known about this issue for quite some time, and there have been efforts to fight this problem going on for decades.

I launched a program called Reframe with Amazon and support from the MacArthur Foundation, back ten years ago (2008), and we managed to digitize and preserve almost 1000 titles, and I was late to the game back then. Since that time, multiple archives have been working on the issue, as have the Sundance Institute and now IndieCollect.

But the problem hasn’t gone away, and is arguably getting worse because it’s just not sexy for Foundations to give grants to film preservation instead of film making (side note, this proves most grant giving is just brand building, but that’s another article).

But one of the reasons it’s hard to spend the money it takes to preserve indie film history is that once you do the work, it’s impossible to make money back. As O’Falt observes in his interview with Ira Deutchman – “Netflix and the other profitable streamers aren’t interested (in these films), according to Deutchman – so the cost of preservation is a hardship.”

This is a problem that goes beyond film preservation. In the past two years, I’ve had multiple filmmakers approach me because they’ve just recently gotten back the rights to their films, and have spent the time to make quality digital masters, but have found that no distributor wants them, because no platform wants their films. Netflix won’t license most of them, and as one distributor told me this week – their only option is to put the film on Amazon Prime via Amazon Video Direct, but the problem with this is that no one rents them and the revenues back aren’t worth their time and effort.

So filmmakers are stuck with another “self-distribution” dilemma – they can put the films on Vimeo, or they can pay a service like Quiver a few thousand dollars and get them on Amazon, iTunes and some other outlets, but without a marketing budget, no one will find them, and this also takes time away from being an actual filmmaker.

There’s no easy solution to this problem. The costs are enormous and the return on investment is likely small – there’s a reason Netflix doesn’t want these films. They aren’t the villain here; they just have the data to prove that people aren’t watching them enough to either pay for them or probably even store and deliver them to the small audience that wants them.

But I’d like to propose that there is a solution to be had here, and while it isn’t easy, it’s the right thing to do. It seems to me that there are thousands of film festivals, indie film organizations, film societies and film theaters that have arisen on the backs of all of these films. Collectively, they showed these films, built an audience, and while they all have their struggles, they’ve become long-standing organizations with a somewhat stable footing. Some have become rather big institutions – IFP, FIND, Sundance, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, etc. And I’d argue it’s their (and our, as fans) collective responsibility to do something about this. There are multiple ways to go about this, but here’s just one idea. It may not be practical, but perhaps it will help start a conversation that leads to something better.

Almost all of these institutions have members, who pay monthly or annual dues and often their primary reward is discounts on tickets and an email newsletter. These members also happen to be the main potential audience for these films. I’m pretty sure that most of these members don’t think they get much value for their membership, but instead see it as their donation to help a local group they care about, and most of them could easily be persuaded to pay a little bit more if they got something in return.

If each of these organizations collectively raised their membership dues by $25 annually, this money could go to a pool for film preservation and access, perhaps managed by IndieCollect. They could then partner with someone like say, Kanopy, to provide free access to these films via their membership fee to their local organization of choice.

I’m sure the numbers here have to be tweaked a bit, perhaps it’s a bigger annual fee or $5 a month more. And Kanopy needs financial compensation from the pool as well, but it also gains a lot of users, and titles, and has more to offer to Universities and library systems who will pay hefty fees for access. And of course, filmmakers need to receive some compensation. Like I said, the potential solutions aren’t easy, but we need to think about them.

Perhaps a major foundation or three could help underwrite this as a clever joint for-profit/nonprofit collaboration. But something like this could help solve both the crisis in preservation and the crisis in being able to view these films, and take the onus off the filmmakers who are least able to deal with these problems.

Hate this idea? Send me some others, my contact info is easy to find. Like it –let’s plan for a summit, sometime, to make this work.

A Note on the Missed Week: You might have noticed that I skipped last week’s newsletter. I’ve been trying to publish weekly, but the trauma of last week’s Kavanaugh /Ford hearings was just too much and I couldn’t imagine writing or reading a newsletter. I’m 100% in her camp and he proved himself unfit for Court, but I have nothing to add to this conversation that hasn’t been said better by someone else. Just letting you know why this was delayed.

What I’m Reading: Film

Free Solo is killing it at the box office, and also deserves an Editing Oscar. Free Solo just opened to the best Doc opening ever, and the best per-screen average of any film for the year reports Variety (among others). And it deserves it. It’s a great movie that you need to see on the big screen – and due to my work with brands in this space, I’ve seen every recent outdoor film and can say this is honestly one of the best; one that rises above the norms for the field and should be seen by all audiences. It also recently won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival, after playing Telluride (not MountainFilm, either) and coincident with a premiere at the Camden International Film Fest as well. NatGeo and Greenwich films did a great job here, as did the directors. But my vote is that it deserves to be nominated for Best Editing (Bob Eisenhardt) right alongside Hollywood films. I’m not even sure this is possible, but it deserves it. Bob’s editing keeps the momentum going for even the non-Climbing film fan, and even when you know the outcome. It’s truly suspenseful and very well done. Kudos to the whole team. Also, IndieWire has a great interview with Alex Honnold, the star of the film, and it’s worth a read.

My friend James notes that I haven’t commented on MubiGo – which was announced in Screen in early September, but it hasn’t gotten much traction in the US since that time, as it’s not available here. MubiGo is kinda like a MoviePass for arthouse films in the UK, where if you are a Mubi subscriber you can go to one free curated movie per week. Mubi curates the films- so it’s not the same as MoviePass, but has some similarities. You have to download a separate MubiGo app (aside from the Mubi app), and Here’s the MUBIGo FAQ page if you want to learn more. My take: I like any experimentation. I assume this is coming out of the recent funding initiatives from the BFI and the EU for promotion of European films, and it it’s an interesting experiment to follow. It could be something for Fandor and the Arthouse Convergence to explore here in the US. I’ll try to report more as I get more info (which is shockingly hard to find online).

Free SVOD Services are Growing in Importance in the US: It seems people are hitting a wall on paying for SVOD services after Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, and are now tuning in to free services like Pluto TV, the Roku Channel and similar services. I’ve heard from filmmakers lately that aggregators are getting more aggressive in wanting fast AVOD rights since Netflix is buying less indie films for SVOD, and this must be why.

Netflix Adding Choose-Your-Own Adventure Interactive Features to Black Mirror and then to many other shows, reports AdAge among others. Gimmicky, yes, but interactive story-telling is (part of) the future, and that such a giant of the field is doing it already is kinda exciting. I just can’t wait til things get more interactive.

Showtime Launching Doc about the NYT’s article about Trump’s Tax Evasion on Sunday: Ok, but seriously – if Showtime cared more about the country than branding, wouldn’t it have made more sense to do an Academy run and keep this thing in the news all the way through the Oscars instead of hitting at the same time as the NYT piece? You can’t possibly tell me they couldn’t afford to hire Abramorama or that some theaters in NYC and LA wouldn’t make room for this run at the last minute?! Come on.

Blatant Self-Promotion Department: I’m distributing a new documentary called Long Time Coming which opens Oct 23rd at the SVA Theater in NYC and multiple other cities via a new system called Nagra MyCinema.

Here’s some more info on the film: The players of the first racially integrated Little League baseball game in the South reflect on this revolutionary event, building a bridge to heal the social divide that exists in our country today. Featuring Major League baseball and civil rights icons Hank Aaron, Cal Ripken, Jr., Gary Sheffield, Davey Johnson and Ambassador Andrew Young. The film opens theatrically Oct. 23rd Nationwide, the week of the World Series. Special one-night-only screening event in New York Oct. 23rd at SVA Theatre. Buy tickets here.

 ART

Via Obvious

AI Produced Artwork is Now a Thing: The “first” AI produced artwork is being auctioned at Christie’s next month, according to Recode. The French art-collective Obvious made the algorithm that made the work. The AI learned from old portraits and kept generating it’s own versions while a “discriminator” tool would keep rejecting them until it couldn’t tell the difference between man-made and machine-made images anymore. That final image is what’s being sold. I guess art isn’t what makes us human, after all. And it will come to movies next. Oh wait, that’s already been done as well.

What I want to Read: Medium:

The Big Disruption by Jessica Powell available on Medium now. When the former head of communications for Google writes a book about a fictional Silicon Valley powerhouse whose logo is a giant squid, count me as sold. Starting it soon, and hoping it’s at least half as good as Jarett Kobek’s I Hate the Internet, which is a must-read btw.

Posted on 4th Oct

Sub-Genre News, Sept 13: NY Indie Guy Retrospective, Camden Film Fest & More

Columbia University’s Ira Deutchman: NY Indie Guy Retrospective

In the “hey all film festivals, please-copy this” department:

From the official release: On September 14-16 and 20-23, Columbia University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts will host a retrospective honoring the film producer and distributor Ira Deutchman, one of the essential figures in the history of American independent films.

 Since 1975, Deutchman has been a leader in distributing, marketing, and producing the work of independent directors like John Cassavetes, Barbara Kopple, Joan Micklin Silver, John Sayles, and Steven Soderbergh. Deutchman is perhaps best known for his work founding and running the distribution companies Cinecom, Fine Line Features, and Emerging Pictures.

To find out about films and purchase tickets, go to arts.columbia.edu/nyindieguy.

Films from the retrospective include both classics from the history of independent cinema and gems waiting for rediscovery. The celebration will also include panel discussions and an extensive exhibit covering Deutchman’s impact on cinema.

My take: When I first moved to NYC to try to break into the film business, I begged the only person I knew with any film connections to help me get some job interviews. That person was Cara White, who had co-founded the PR firm Clein + White, which was arguably the most important PR firm of that time in indie films, and she introduced me to three people, and one of them was Ira Deutchman, who was then running Redeemable Pictures.

I grew up traveling an hour from my home in Seminole, Florida to the little St. Pete Beach Theater (now closed, but there’s a movement to try to re-open it) to watch many indie/arthouse films that had the logos of the companies Ira had worked for/or run/founded on them, so that first intro was like being introduced to a bonafide celebrity for a film geek.

His tenure at Fine Line (1990-95) roughly overlapped with my time in undergraduate film school (89-93), and includes some of my favorite films, which were their own little film school: 1989’s “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” (Steven Soderbergh); 1990’s “Metropolitan” (Whit Stillman); 1991’s “My Own Private Idaho” (Gus Van Sant); 1992’s “The Player” (Robert Altman); 1993’s “Short Cuts” (Robert Altman) and you can’t not mention 1994’s “Hoop Dreams” (Steve James). And he worked on many more – too many to mention here.

While I’ve never asked Ira if he remembers this, he did take a phone call with me briefly, even though he had no openings, and that was pretty nice of him because I had very little experience and he was a busy guy. Over the years, I was lucky enough to have many more phone calls and conversations with Ira about the indie film business, and these all shaped my understanding of the field immensely. He taught me indirectly, by way of example: that indie film has always been a crazy business; to support work that you love; to give back to the community via teaching; and most importantly, to keep innovating, which he always did through the companies he launched, and he continues to do with the film work he’s producing/directing now (more news on that should come out soon).

When I’d complain about the state of independent film exhibition, he introduced me to the leaders of the Arthouse Convergence, so I could learn what was really going on there (a lot), and what else was possible. We’ve also brainstormed many distribution ideas together – and he’s helped me kill many a bad idea before it went too far. We’ve been on more than a few panels together at film fests, and I’ve listened to more than one of his keynotes, and he’s always one of the smartest folks in the room when it comes to thinking about the art and business of film.

If you are in/near NYC or can get here, the retrospective is a must-attend event. I especially recommend the “Conversation with” panel, where you can hear from him directly about the past, present and future of the industry. They also have 3 other panels scheduled on the current state of the field, Ira’s contributions to indie film, and the crisis in film preservation, that are all great events. Plus some of the best indie films of the past few decades will be screening, with many guest speakers.

This is a program that I truly hope inspires others to copy it – I’d love to see a smaller version of this film series and panels travel to Sundance and to regional film festivals near and far. So programmers/organizers: take note and copy away.

What I’m Reading: Film

 In the who has extra money for this crap department, The Wrap bought VideoInk, and is turning it into The Wrap Pro. This is so all kinds-of-expected-but-weird. My only hope is that the unnamed strategy here was an acqui-hire of their designers, because you couldn’t pay me to try to read The Wrap’s graphic design. Which is kinda sad, because in theory, I like what Sharon Waxman seems to want to build here with an in-depth news site, deeper dives via subscription and events to boot – but without a much better user-case than “ some accounts-payable team will pay for this” strategy, I don’t see why I’d fork over any money for this instead of the other trades and existing paid subscriptions that overlap enough for in-depth news, like The Information. The problem in this space is that it’s hard to bite the hand that feeds you, and fewer in film media are willing to do this than in perhaps any other space in journalism/advertising (again, here, they are almost always the same).

I’m off to moderate the Points North Forum Pitch at the Camden Film Festival, for the umpteenth time: I’ve been doing this for who knows how many years now, and it’s become one of my favorite duties each year. I get to moderate a panel of about 15 film funders as they take pitches from six teams of documentary filmmakers who pitch for seven minutes and then get 12 minutes of feedback from the panel. Some people get money, most get made and all of them get great advice; and it’s one of the rare pitching forums that allows the general public to watch, making it quite a fun event all around. Besides that, the festival has awesome programming, a stellar team, a beautiful, destination town, and just might throw the best film festival parties, which is saying something since most festivals take their party programming as serious as their films.

 What I’m Reading: VR

 Forbes looks into the future of VR in retail and consumer experiences. Visiting with LucasFilm’s ILMxLABs, they look at everything from the future of virtual pets, to re-visiting the place where you got engaged – all in service of hyper-consumerism. Some interesting stuff here, if we ever get past the current bad-360-video-land and into the future.

 What I’m Reading: Branded Content

 Mattel has launched a film division: And they hired a great person to run it, Robbie Brenner, a producer of Dallas Buyer’s Club among many other things. But as Forbes reports, Mattel has been screwing up a foray into movies for a long time, and the company’s not doing so great. So this hail mary pass may not lead to a win anytime soon, but let’s give her a chance to do something cool with the brand.

BrandStorytelling interviews Kari Kirschenbaum from Oath’s RYOT Studio about their work promoting MOTHER. (video link). She talks about how they worked with digital graffiti artist Insa to create a giant AR/interactive film poster and experience in London, which led to ancillary video content that was viewed over 57 Million times to help promote the movie. An older campaign, but a pretty cool activation.

Beer Lovers Rejoice: Heineken and NatGeo have a new short-form text and video piece about the discovery of what they call the “mother” yeast in Patagonia, and they’ve turned it into some beer and content. My take: I’m not a fan of the brand’s signature beer’s taste, but love that they sponsor film fests and branded content, and am skeptical of branded science, but it’s a kinda cool little short about finding an undiscovered yeast – supposedly one of the missing links to the beginnings of all yeast – and turning it into a beer, and it fits the NatGeo mission, so it’s a (little bit of a) win for both.

Nike’s sales went up 31% after the Kaepernick Ad ran, says Time Magazine. As I said before, that was a smart move.

Posted on 13th Sep

On not Submitting to Sundance next week, and other post-vacation news

On Not Submitting to Sundance next week:

Next Friday, September 14th is the official, public deadline for all projects to submit to Sundance (unless you asked for and received an extension). Which means just about everyone I know in the industry is rushing like mad-folks to finish a rough cut of their film that is good enough for Sundance.

Up until a week ago, I was doing the same, with an unnamed team of filmmakers on an unnamed project. But then we realized we just couldn’t finish a good cut of the film in time for the deadline (even if we had an extension), and that there was a good chance we wouldn’t have the best cut possible for the festival in January. So we pulled the plug, slowed down, took a deep breath, and… it’s the smartest thing we’ve done, and I encourage more of you to do the same.

I’ve been involved in some manner with at least twenty, if not 100, films that have rushed to get a good rough cut submitted to Sundance by the deadline. And a few of them have gotten in and done just fine. But I’ve also seen way too many that not only didn’t get in, but had no business trying with the cut they had by the deadline, and I think it’s a mistake to succumb to the pressure. Heck, I see at least 3-4 films at Sundance that aren’t ready for viewing and feel like they need a few more rough cuts, and that likely would have performed better if the filmmakers had just waited for another festival.

You only get one chance to put your best foot forward, and you’re doing yourself no favors by submitting something that was rushed and not ready for prime-time.

Sure, you still have time to make it better before the festival, so why not give it a shot, you might be thinking. And I’ve been part of teams that had films accepted into a festival (not Sundance) based on a rough cut of just a segment of the film (yes, that also happens), but far more films are rejected because they weren’t ready than are accepted on a bad rough cut. Remember, Sundance isn’t the only great festival out there (I don’t need to name the others, we know who they are), and with the current changes in the marketplace, you could even argue that you might end up showing the film to buyers before a premiere elsewhere. You have lots of opportunities, but only one chance to premiere the best film possible, and no one knows you’re even close to done yet, except for you.

We all thrive under pressure and deadlines, or we wouldn’t be in this business, but most films need a lot more time in post than anyone budgets for, and your film will have a better chance of getting in, and then getting seen and brought to market, if it’s as polished as possible.

If your edit is really tight, and you’ve locked in most of the story and just have finishing work to be done, then by all means – submit by next Friday. But if you’re debating whether your cut is ready, it probably isn’t, and my recommendation would be to slow down.

End of Social Media and Newsletter Writing Vacation:

Every year, I take a break from all social media for the entire month of August and until just after Labor Day. And this year, I paused this weekly newsletter as well. I’m back from that vacation, but I am not back on social media. As I have hinted before, I am finding that I don’t miss Facebook or Instagram at all anymore, and have no interest in Twitter or other platforms at all. I have to use them for client work – part of my job is marketing films on these platforms because that still works (as of this moment, but it’s getting less effective daily); but in my personal life, I’ve found that there’s no news that I need to know about that doesn’t eventually make it into the NYT, trade publications, and/or a few other newsletters I read (Redef and Unsupervised Learning being my current faves). The updates I used to love from friends and family have been drowned out by the vitriol that’s taken the place of normal discourse. I’ve also found that every second not spent online is another moment I can use for something more meaningful and creative, and I’m much happier, so I highly recommend you consider doing this as well.

What I’m Reading: Film

NYFA made a series of videos about Audience Engagement. Eugene Hernandez moderates them quite well, and they’re worth a watch.

Vimeo offering stock footage for sale: I guess if you can’t make a run against Netflix, then building more tools for creators is a good thing, and now Vimeo has launched a service where filmmakers can sell their footage as stock footage. This is actually something I’ve hoped they’d offer for a long time, so kudos to them. Hint hint: you get more for 4K and there’s actually a big market for that stuff.

Alamo Drafthouse is opening in Lower Manhattan. YAY! I’ve been saying for years that we need a great theater in Downtown Manhattan now that it has become more residential than commercial/business oriented (it’s stroller central down there). And now Deadline reports that Alamo is taking a space on Liberty Street, along with a video store (with free VHS – yes, VHS- rentals to boot). The smartest folks in the business make another smart move. Will Amazon buy them before the end of 2019? That’s my bet, and you heard it here first.

  Kenny Shopsin has passed away. Ok, this is tangential to film, but if you’ve been around the festival circuit as long as I have, you’ll never forget seeing I Like Killing Flies, the great documentary about the legendary Kenny Shopsin of Shopsins. I was lucky enough to meet him a few times, thanks to a regular who had an office next door to me years ago, and took me for multiple profanity-laced life-lessons over awesome meals (every obituary is about name dropping…). I’ve also become quite a fan of his daughter, Tamara Shopsin’s books. If you haven’t seen the movie, watch the film. Here’s a great clip where he explains why you’re a piece of shit (I am too), and that’s ok. Trust me. Watch the film.

Blatant self-promotion: I’m producing a new film, The Outside Story, with Frank Hall Green from director Cas Nozkowski, and while I was on vacation, we announced that Brian Tyree Henry (Paper Boi from Atlanta, among many other roles) has joined the cast. We shoot in November, and I can’t wait.

What I’m Reading: VR

 VR is Dying… because of short-term thinking. Or so says Nicolás Alcalá

in a fantastic post from early August announcing both the death of his VR company and the many reasons why he thinks the industry is struggling. His main message: we didn’t say the iPhone was dying when it “only” sold 1.39M units upon launch and 11M the next year. And we shouldn’t say VR is dying when Oculus Rift launched in 2016 with 6M units and is now at around 20M. It takes time. And it takes a big investment in great content, places to see it, and in marketing to see it. My take: Amen brother. I’ve been a fan of Nicolás’ work since The Cosmonaut days, and he’s always ahead of his time and right about what needs to be done. Content and marketing are the answer, along with thinking bigger. And best of luck to him on his new venture.

What I’m Reading: Branded Content

 AdWeek Reports on Grindr’s moves into content: By far, one of the most interesting talks I’ve seen at a conference was Grindr’s Editor in Chief speaking at BrandStorytelling about the launch of their digital news magazine. Now AdWeek has a great little article about what they’re doing. You wouldn’t expect great content from a dating app, but you’d be wrong.

Nike and Kaepernick: This is more of an ad than branded content, but kudos to Nike on making the smart move of the year with Colin Kaepernick in their new ads. AdWeek has a rundown about lessons learned, but let’s be honest – Nike is just taking a page from Patagonia (another client), with their smart embrace of controversial causes – such as suing the President and announcing he “stole your land” in their ads. Nike isn’t dumb. They know their younger consumers want brands to stand for something, and take on controversial causes. They also know that the backlash from Trump supporters is just amplifying their message to the consumers that matter. It also gives them quite a press/buzz bump at a time when they’re struggling from poor sales and poor management (with a #metoo problem as well). The lesson for brands is clear – don’t be afraid to be an activist company, because that’s what your core customer wants. From my perspective – brands are having more impact on social issues lately than the usual players (foundations and nonprofits), and it’s about time.

Posted on 6th Sep

Sandra Schulberg gets a Gotham and other Sub-Genre News for Sept 21

Sandra Schulberg honored with an Honorary Gotham Award  – Another week, another indie film legend and dear friend honored in NYC – and this time it’s Sandra Schulberg who founded the IFP and IFP Market – which just had their 40th anniversary. She also co-founded First Run Features, and has produced and financed many indie films, and now founded and runs IndieCollect, which is helping to save the history of indie film. Sandra was one of the first people I met in indie film via the IFP, and she’s been a trusted advisor and friend since that time. I was briefly on the board of IndieCollect as well, and highly recommend you consider supporting their mission too. Read more about Sandra’s contributions to indie film here. Congrats to Sandra, and smart move, IFP!

What I’m Reading: Film

Spotify is allowing artists to Directly Upload and Manage their Music When will this hit the film world? Spotify is allowing select artists to upload, manage, track and receive payments for their music on a transparent platform. Right now, it’s limited, but will likely roll-out to the public. As my friend Eric Stein said on LinkedIn, this quote is quite an understatement: “Should Spotify eventually roll this out as a public feature, it could have a great impact on the indie music market.” We can see this coming to the film world already via Amazon Video Direct, and I could see it working well for iTunes and other platforms. Netflix is taking a curated approach, but DIY direct UGC uploading and selling of film should be next (beyond Vimeo).

Stephen Follows analyzed how many festival films get distribution. And it’s a pretty cool little study, although it only looks at the top Global fests (Sundance, Cannes, etc.) and only at narrative films in competition for the Grand Jury Prize. But it shows that a good percentage do get seen.

How will Disney’s Version of Netflix likely work? The Hollywood Reporter delved into it, and I think most of their guesses are correct.

Should Movie Studios buy Movie Theaters to keep control of the business? Zach Evans thinks so, and he thinks they should do it as a consortium to offset costs and allow for more flexibility as a group to try new models. My take: I agree, they should, because it allows for more direct to consumer offerings, and they can re-create a MoviePass type experience, with a SVOD option as well. Plus, the Justice Department has made it clear they’re open to re-evaluating the old laws against this stuff. Further – Indie distributors should be looking to do the same with art-house theaters, before it’s too late.

But FAANG Groups should not buy legacy media companies, says Matthew Ball in a tweet-storm on Redef. And his argument is pretty convincing, but I think one will do so anyway. Why? Because it often seems easier to buy your way into a business you should be in than to build it from scratch. And FAANG needs to grow its content businesses.

A few Start-ups are helping Indie Filmmakers get their projects made, according to TechCrunch (h/t Redef). Some of this is old news, but it has a good run-down of sites like Tongal that help you pitch brands, LegionM for crowd-sourced funding and promotion of feature films, MovieCoin for blockchain funding of films, and a good write-up of how WattPad is getting stories discovered by Hollywood. Worth a quick read if you don’t already know about these sites.

Dinner and a Movie: Vox takes a surprisingly deep-dive into the world of movie theater concessions, restaurants, bars and how/why this is all growing so fast.

What I’m Reading: Branded Content

Jordan Kelley posts his second update on the conversations from the BrandStorytelling: Elevate Conference. A great recap on what brands are thinking about when it comes to distributing and evaluating the performance of branded content. A lot of this advice holds true for people in the non-branded film/content space as well, and is worth a read, because distribution and measurement remain the toughest parts of the business whether you’re an indie or a brand.

Posted on 5th Sep

Sub-Genre News July 26: BrandStorytelling & August Social Media Vacation Edition

Updates from the BrandStorytelling Conference:

I’m writing this week from the BrandStorytelling Conference – a twice-a-year, somewhat exclusive gathering of brands, producers, agencies, production companies, etc. that work in branded content, broadly defined. Many of the sessions are closed door so people can share things openly, but I’ve gotten permission from the speakers to cover a few items that I found particularly interesting, and my thoughts on these are below.

Overall, the conference is a great event. It is organized quite well by the presenters – kudos to Rick Parkhill and team. While they can’t fit everyone who wants to attend (literally, there isn’t enough space), you can follow what they are doing and what they are writing on their blog, or by subscribing to their newsletter here. I highly recommend it. So here’s two brief case-studies and some general take-aways.

Lyft’s Brand Partnership with The Equalizer 2 (And 1): Did you catch The Equalizer 2 like everyone else did this past week? Turns out that whole Denzel being a Lyft driver plot-line was not by accident – it was a brand partnership put together by Lyft. Austin Schumacher of Lyft told us that it was the first product integration that Denzel has ever done, which is pretty cool, and shows it was a partnership with the talent as well as the producers/studio.

I love this article from CinemaBlend that points out that Denzel had to learn how to use Lyft just to play the part, but the partnership worked because it made sense – it fit the story naturally enough not to seem like a gimmick. In fact, in my searches online, people don’t seem to even know it was an official partnership, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t given the brand a boost.

It’s very smart product integration – Lyft was mentioned in almost every review of the film, received multiple articles about Denzel learning to Lyft in Boston, and they were able to carry out some cool promos for the film, including one to let some Lyft “Driver Heroes” see the movie for free. Which also fits Lyft’s marketing goals – they market both to drivers and consumers, so keeping drivers happy is a smart move as well.

I have no data, but the earned media had to be through the roof. I did some research and found out Lyft did some promotions around Equalizer 1 as well, so they must have tested the concept and improved upon it this year. Kudos on a great campaign, that went far beyond product placement.

They also showcased the new season of their partnership with Kevin Hart – Kevin Hart, Lyft Legend on the Laugh Out Loud Network. It’s a great little short-form, episodic series with Kevin picking up unsuspecting real passengers, in disguise as Donald Mac. It’s in keeping with Lyft’s more humorous brand (Uber would never do this), and again, it’s a true partnership because Lyft gains from the association with Kevin on some smart marketing, but Kevin Hart also gains as he builds his Laugh Out Loud network with comedy. Austin told us that Kevin agreed to 15 hour days and didn’t request his usual extra payments to promote it on his social media – because it was mutually beneficial. Again, a great campaign.

NatGeo and BMW take branded content “further” with Behind the Shot: John Campbell of NatGeo took to the stage to discuss their recent partnership with BMW on Behind the Shot. It’s great.

NatGeo is the number one brand on social. Their main Instagram (they have a few channels) has 89.4 Million subscribers, and as I mentioned last week, they are doing some great things on IGTV. How do they do this? As John explained on stage, they have done two important things: 1) they moved from a monologue to a dialogue with their consumers – participatory culture; and 2) they let their photographers curate their Instagram instead of the brand curating it – they give some control to the artists, so they can do their job and be authentic.

And they also have a mission/purpose, which for NatGeo is called “Further,” showing people doing amazing things and pushing the envelope to do something better, epitomized by their Further Community. Or as their website says: “This year, as one of the largest and most trusted global media brands, we’re partnering with a new class of influencers to create original stories around travel, culture, science, innovation, and wildlife. These are stories told from the human angle and about motivation, survival, discovery, wonder, and mind-blowing courage and bravery.”

For this project, NatGeo worked with four different photographers and each one had an assignment. For example, Anand Varma followed bees and used a newly developed tiny camera to go inside the hive and capture them in never before seen shots. You can watch that episode here. In each case, the photographers also captured BMW, usually by going to the locations in a nice new BMW X3. It’s not subtle brand integration, but it helped make some cool short form content.

Most of the series was launched on Instagram Stories, meaning it’s disappeared from there by now, but you can watch most of the videos online and on the Facebook page for the project. There were ten chapters on Instagram and they ended up with 56M+ impressions, 3M+ video views, 85K social impressions, and this in turn led to a significant lift in awareness of the X3 redesign and 37% of people surveyed associated BMW with the “Capable of More” tagline. This is pretty impressive for any kind of campaign like this.

Important takeaways: Stories are super popular now on Instagram, and most people at the conference agreed that Stories beat the feed by far. While NatGeo and BMW are big brands, anyone doing content online should follow their lead – IG Stories, giving artists some freedom, be authentic, have a mission, and you can have a big impact via social stories alone – this didn’t need a broadcast component at all. Campbell reported that after NatGeo CEO Gary Knell spoke about the project with a large group of photographers, they all went from skeptics of branded content to seeing the power of using brands to amplify their message, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of these projects from NatGeo in the future.

Other takeaways from the conference: Brands are starting to make bigger investments in this space. Whether it’s episodic, short form, long form or even text based stories, managers are putting a lot more money and time (and people) into branded content and “upping their game.” Everyone also wants better metrics – but no one is sure what matters most, and the consensus is that each brand is making up their own, with a heavy lean on earned media as being more important than impressions. That said, just like in the traditional doc world, there’s a lot of boredom with the metric movement. More brands are launching in-house studios, and will work with freelancers, but are coming up with more IP and guidance internally (me: they should also act like studios and focus on what they know best – branding and marketing). Very few people are doing long-form content that can end up on Netflix, but that’s everyone’s goal (ironic since Netflix doesn’t give you numbers).

Marriott has been super active in this space and had some of the best advice: move towards owning your IP; look at content that can be franchised; Monetize; Own your library; live content is a growing area (concerts, etc.); and their digital magazine has given great ROI – content is not just video. And they’ve done such a great job that now other brands want to be featured in Marriott’s branded content, which is a nice sign of success.

Overall the space is maturing and people are setting best practices and moving towards some smarter measurement, but right now are going with their guts that this stuff works. I’m already looking forward to the next conference in January.

 WHAT I’m READING: FILM

5.4 Million Customers will cut the Cord in 2018: Making for a loss of $5.5 Billion for the industry, and bringing the cumulative total to 18.8 Million cord cutters, according to a report from cg42 in MarketWatch. Me: So who is watching all those shows being made on those channels? How does anyone compete with Netflix, et al.? Fun times.

Did your Congressional Reps sell you out on Net Neutrality? Find out how much money your representatives took from big media against Net Neutrality in the FFTF Battle For the Net Congressional Scoreboard. It shows who voted for what (For/against) and how much money they got to do so, and also helps you thank the good folks and slam the bad. Nice little tool, but buried under a lot of requests for donations from the Org – they do good work, but beg more than PBS.

Where should you premiere your short film? Everywhere, all at once, says Short of the Week (ht/Sundance Creative Distribution Newsletter), and I agree 1 million percent. The article is a great study of festivals vs. online, with many case studies and lots of data to back up their argument. Be ubiquitous.

BitTorrent Acquired by Blockchain Company, Tron: Nearly every single blockchain for film proposal I’ve seen sounds like BitTorrent 2.0, and now Tron has realized that too, and just went and bought them (reportedly for $126 million via Variety). Another move for a decentralized web/film platform, but the real story here for now is that you just can’t kill BitTorrent, though many an owner has tried.

VACATION from the newsletter/blog and social media – Ever since 2010, I’ve been taking a vacation from all social media and blogging/writing the newsletter during the month of August. And I go off email for 2 weeks in late August. It’s a much-needed break from the interwebs and busying my mind with often useless stuff that distracts from real creativity (imho).

A couple of years ago, I came back from vacation, but dropped Twitter permanently. Last August, I came back and decided to take everything except Instagram off my phone and only use social media on my work computer. Around the time of the election, I decided to drop Instagram off the phone too, and in January, I pretty much stopped using everything completely. And I don’t miss it at all. I highly recommend taking an extended break. If you read a real newspaper, you won’t miss any news items, and I guarantee you won’t miss the vitriol or FOMO. Weirdly, I’ve been using LinkedIn a bit, which I used to hate. But I’ve found that more and more people are using it for work related posts of relevant info, and they tend to avoid politics. I post this newsletter there and check posts from some key, smart friends once a week.

Why am I telling you all this? Two reasons. First, the newsletter/blog is going on hiatus until the week after Labor Day. Hope you enjoy the break from my writing as much as I will. And two – to encourage you to do the same. Take a break for one month sometime. If you work in media/arts, no one seems to work in August anyway, so it’s a great time to try it.

Til September…

Posted on 26th Jul

SubGenre News, July 20, Netflix, New Cash, China and Cheeseburgers

This week’s news is dominated by multiple reports on Netflix, due to their stock gyrations and a bevy of press. But we learn of a new film fund, and new ways brands are using Instagram TV (IGTV). More original thoughts next week, when I’m not offsite with clients all week. Until then, here’s the news:

WHAT I’m READING: FILM

New money for film via The Eyeslicer Radical Film Fund: The folks at the Eyeslicer – a traveling, variety film show – raised some money on Kickstarter for their next season, and are giving a fair bit of it away to filmmakers. It’s not a ton of money, but they are commissioning short films for their site, and pay you for non-exclusive rights, so you can exploit it elsewhere. Read all of the rules on their blog and the easy – and free – application form.

Is Netflix Falling Off a Cliff? TechCrunch and almost everyone else seems to thinks so, since they missed their own subscriber growth estimates and Wall Street “shaved some $10 Billion off its market cap” this week. While the subscriber graph is scary, I say don’t bet against Reed Hastings, because he keeps on winning. Wait for 250M subs.

Netflix spends more on marketing than many rivals do on content – AdWeek Reports Netflix is spending at least $2Billion on marketing its projects this year. Compare that to Apple and Facebook’s $1B spend, and it’s almost as much as Discovery spends for content now. Colossus. That isn’t headed towards a cliff.

But they don’t care about Net Neutrality anymore – as TechDirt reports, Netflix is big enough to pay to get the speed it wants and doesn’t care about the Net Neutrality fight anymore, even if they know it’s important. Thanks guys. My take: they probably support its death because that means less chance of competition (though who the f-ck is that gonna be?).

Chinese Film Slams Drug Prices…and is winning. The WSJ (possible paywall) has a great article on how a low-budget Chinese dark comedy film – Dying to Survive – is taking the box office in China by storm with a message against Novartis and drug prices. The film had brought in close to $374M USD (2.5 billion yuan) since just July 5th, and is already the 6th highest grossing movie in Chinese box-office history. It essentially slams Novartis for raising the price of a leukemia medication, making it harder for Chinese patients to get the medicine. It’s based on the true story of Lu Yong, who smuggled in cheap version from India to save lives. In a weird twist, the Chinese government is also fighting this issue, and is supportive of the film. Novartis is apparently none too happy. Sounds like a film that needs to be duplicated here.

WHAT I’m READING: BRANDED CONTENT

IGTV is getting weird, and long: AdAge and Gartner report that brands are making super long videos for Instagram TV (IGTV) the vertical, long-format push from Instagram. Some of it’s weird shit like Netflix filming a Riverdale star eating a cheeseburger in close-up – for an hour – and getting over a million views. You can’t make this shit up.

But NatGeo is going all-in on episodes to some success. From the article: “National Geographic put a whole episode of One Strange Rock on IGTV, runtime 45 minutes, called “One Strange Rock,” about the many wonders of planet earth. The same show is available on television show, but the network reedited it so it could be viewed in vertical form on Instagram. It had 360,000 views in the first 24 hours, and now tops 1.3 million views since being posted last month.”

My take: long, form’s time has come thanks to better mobile service and against all odds, vertical is winning audiences. Smart brands will move away from gimmicks soon, but they’ll work for awhile just like in the early days of YouTube. Expect more quality stuff like the NatGeo experiment to start dominating.

Posted on 20th Jul

SubGenre News: Finland sets the Branded Film Standard and more

AR Milk Carton

Finland for the Win in Best Branded Content maybe ever, with The Unknown Soldier: I don’t know how I missed this, but AdWeek tipped me off this week (read their article, it’s great), and the film premiered back in October overseas. In what I think is a first, the filmmakers behind The Unknown Soldier, funded the majority of their film with multiple brands, who also supported the marketing of the film in a big way – helping the film to become the largest box office success in Finland (and it did well elsewhere). Sure, lots of brands have sponsored films, but this goes to another level.

Via AdWeek

The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna (1954) is Finland’s most popular book, and it had been made into a movie twice before, as well as plays and an Opera. But 2017 was the 100th Year of Independence in Finland, which was a great time to re-make the film and get the entire country celebrating the Centenary. The book, and the film, tell the story of Finland fighting to keep its independence from the Soviet Union during WWII (they may have to do this again now that TrumpPutin are meeting in Helsinki soon…). So as AdWeek quotes Eka Ruola, the CEO of Hasan & Partners, “We want to make sure this story does not go forgotten—because it’s one of the most important stories for the Finnish national identity. We needed our Saving Private Ryan.”

So director/producer Aku Louhimies worked with ad agency Hasan & Partners to help produce the film and approach brands for support. Multiple big Finnish brands joined on, with about 26 corporate partners (by my count from their website), along with traditional media partners and Finnish broadcasters, distributors, film funds and investors. Brands included a food companies, a milk company, Land Rover, and many more. WikiPedia says rumors have it “that Rafale International, a defense aviation manufacturer whose Dassault Rafale fighter was one of the aircraft in consideration to replace the Finnish Air Force‘s fleet of F/A-18 Hornets, was the film’s main partner.”

Because it was a historical film, none were able to do product placement, but Louhimies and the team built a platform where each brand could activate around the film leading up to its release. So Land Rover didn’t have its vehicles in the film, but Louhimies made short form content showing the cast and crew using their vehicles in the production. The National Lottery, Veikkaus, sent emails to its best customers to help cast the roles of 3000 extras – and ended up with 14,000 video submissions.

via AdWeek

Each brand got very creative with how it supported the film. According to AdWeek again: “Other activations, all supported on social media, included national TV campaigns from different companies including food brand Jalostaja, and beverage brand Meira. A special edition of the Finnish magazine Tuntematon, by media brand Alma Media, was released in August 2017 and songs were recorded, including one from a top band that reached  No. 1 in the country.” Local milk producer Valio also produced an AR piece that could be viewed on millions of milk cartons distributed throughout Finland (see the video from Vimeo below, and sample products/sponsors below the text).

ARILYN x THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER MOVIE x VALIO from ARILYN on Vimeo.

Product Sample 1

All of this worked so seamlessly in support of the film because they started working with brands 18 months in advance. In an interview with CNBC, the producers say that the combined impact of this marketing gave them 10 times more visibility compared to its own marketing budget. And that led to success – in fact, it’s one of the most successful films in Finland. Their goal was 700,000 viewers, but sold over 1 Million tickets – in a country of just 5.4 Million people. They had over 20 Million social views and a box office of over $14 Million (as AdWeek noted, Titanic is the second highest grossing film there with $8 Million in box).

Product Sample 2

That’s quite a great success story, and one that I hope could be copied in the US. For example, we need a massive effort to combat a lot of what Trump is doing – on immigration, public lands, civility, the Court, okay- the list is unending. But instead of disparate efforts, it would be great to see a similar collaboration here.

Product Sample 3

Imagine if NatGeo (the magazine and the broadcaster) teamed up with a major distributor like A24 and worked with Patagonia, REI, Keen, The North Face, the 200 folks who have signed up to support public lands, major consumer brands like Adidas, major foundations like Ford and MacArthur, nonprofits like the Nature Conservancy, and investors like Impact Partners, and they worked with Sundance to enlist a great filmmaker, and Omnicom to devise a marketing campaign, and all work together to make and release a gigantic film about public lands. That would have actual impact, and we need it – for this and many issues.

Sponsors

Sponsors

Sponsors

WHAT IM READING: FILM

Trump Bites. Bill Plympton has made some awesome little videos for the NYT Op-Docs, called Trump Bites, as in sound bites, and he has a great Kickstarter going to raise money to make more with 110th St. Films.

Trump Inspires Nicolas Winding Refn : Nicolas Windig Refn has been shooting in the US, and he thinks Trump has made America crazy and we need art to save us. As he writes in the Guardian about the launch of his new website ByWFN.com:

“The future must be different. I want it to be an uncontrolled place of beautiful chaos, where everyone can create their own universe and is free to speak their own mind, without being overseen by big business. A place of free speech and free access. Over recent years, I’ve bought and had restored scores of old movies as a hobby. I wondered what to do with them. Then I realised I should share them for free, so I set up a website where they could be streamed. There’s no catch; you’re not being sold anything. Take it or leave it.”

He continues: “Donald Drumpf was elected on the promise he’d make America great again. Older voters rushed at the chance to return to a comforting fairytale. But they are not the same people who will inherit the US and have to heal its divisions. And the past was rarely this scary.” Looks like an upcoming trove of trash and inspiration both.

More Crowd-Funding I Like: Two campaigns to fund this week:

Pete’s Candy Store: This is their last week, and it’s a great time to make a film about an Iranian immigrant to the US who has created a haven of diverse culture- and ice cream – in the East Village.

The Motorcycle Man: He’s a bad-ass. Support their last dozen hours.

Posted on 5th Jul

Warby Loves Mister Rogers and more news for June 28

Warby’s Postcard courtesy Derris

Warby loves Mister Rogers. I’m four-eyed, and this past week, I had to get new glasses, which I picked up on Sunday from Warby Parker. Much to my surprise, the entire Rockefeller Center branch of the store was filled with marketing for Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the new Morgan Neville documentary on Mister Rogers. Focus Features made a brilliant brand-marketing campaign with the company, and it turns out it was bigger than just that store.

Warby’s Front Door, w me

But the store activation was great, and is a perfect example for what filmmakers should think about asking for from brands beyond cash. First, the front windows of the store had marketing for the film, which essentially is like having a billboard for your film right smack dab in the middle of one of the most trafficked parts of Manhattan – Sixth Ave at 50th street, right next to Rockefeller Center, the Jimmy Fallon entrance and Radio City Music Hall.

Second, throughout the store, they had placed postcard stations – you could fill out a postcard with a message to any one of your neighbors or friends and mail it to them from the store. Each postcard was pre-stamped with a Mister Rogers postage stamp, and marketing for the movie. And it was tied to a contest – give your email and be entered for a chance to win a private screening for you and your friends, in your neighborhood. Bingo – marketing message prominently placed throughout the store, and you give your email, so now they’ve built a fan mailing list for the film and presumably future Focus Feature films.

Postcard & Pen

And even better – they provided pens to fill out the postcards, which were also branded with the movie’s name, and there were plenty of them available, encouraging people to take them and advertise the film elsewhere. And to finish it off – a bowl full of Mister Rogers “EncourageMINTS” to take to freshen your breath (and get rid of that marketing taste, I presume…just kidding).

I emailed the marketing team at Warby, and their PR/Marketing agency responded with some more info about the campaign – which was super nice of them. They said they “launched the #BeMyNeighbor campaign, paying homage to Mr. Rogers’ life’s work and legacy of benevolence and inclusivity.” And they explained that in addition to the postcards, people could enter the contest online with the #BeMyNeighbor hashtag campaign. They held events in multiple cities for about a week, and if you search online you can find lots of local press – earned media – from the campaign. The campaign also included a blog post on the Warby website, and I would imaging more marketing that I didn’t receive.

The Mints

I did think of one lost opportunity – when Warby emailed me my receipt and again to let me know to come pick up my glasses, they should have marketed the campaign there too. I’ve done that with many clients and seen great success from including such campaigns in email receipts.

But regardless, it’s a great tie-in campaign, and gives some great marketing ideas that any indie filmmaker could copy/replicate – you don’t have to be Focus Features to approach a brand with a great idea.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM

Stephen Follows has a great article on advice for filmmakers trying to break into the industry. I recommend the full post, but especially like this graphic he made of the 84 steps to making a narrative feature film.

Peter Hamilton pens a depressing “anti-case-study” on the problems with investigative docs, by way of the film The Cleaners. It shows how a good film of investigative journalism can get broadcasters on board, premiere at Sundance and then 50 other film fests, and still wind up $400K in debt. Read it and weep. There’s much to learn here, but one big takeaway: don’t make your film without the full budget in place and hope for a big sale to Netflix at Sundance to close your budget gap. Those days are o-v-e-r.

BitTorrent sold for $140Million to a Blockchain Company named Tron. Yes, you read all of that right. BitTorrent has been part of many schemes for revolutionizing content distribution, and most of them failed, beyond that spectacular piracy part. But as we move towards Blockchain as a potential basis for distributing content and keeping tabs on who needs to be paid, etc. this is a brilliant way for Tron to speed up it’s decentralized hub model. Very smart.

MoviePass owner Helios and Matheson in more bad news. Business Insider reports that one of their board members and shareholders has been accused of defrauding creditors in India, has quite a controversial past, and gets paid $19K (!) a month to consult for them. This story just keeps getting better.

What does Will Packer look for in a pitch? Diversity. As he tells Vulture, in an article with interviews with multiple gatekeepers, “I think about the potential diversity of a cast while I’m reading: “Quite a bit. The reason there’s been such a dearth of diversity in Hollywood is because a narrow group of writers have depicted their versions of reality. If I’m telling stories that truly reflect the world, I shouldn’t have to try to be diverse. Also, I’m not white; I didn’t come up in the Hollywood system. This helps me have a very different view of content creation. And I live in Atlanta — not Los Angeles — so I’m naturally around more so-called ‘real’ people, and that helps.” Smartest man in Hollywood, okay he lives in Atlanta, so listen to him. I’m biased though, as we both played football at the same high school in St. Pete FL (and boy has he done better!).

WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Marriott is moving Alexa into hotels. Yes, you’ll be able to use it to dim the lights, order room service and change the channel on your porn-machine, I mean hotel television. But I wouldn’t doubt we see them do some cool story-telling with it in the future – get a bedtime story, or a Marriott-themed tale told to you via Voice as you wake up. Marriott is leading the way in branded content, so this is a logical next step.

Posted on 28th Jun

TAG as Branded Content & Other News

TAG as Branded Content

I went to see TAG this weekend, courtesy of my MoviePass membership, and while I think the movie is better/funnier than the critical reviews, what interests me most about it is the relationship the film has with the Wall Street Journal, and how it’s in some senses a big piece of branded content.

As most people know, the film is based on a true story, as reported in the A-Hed section of the WSJ in 2013. The original writer recently wrote up his experience writing the article and how it became a film – and why it’s called an A-Hed – and its worth reading. He is also not a woman who could be played by Annabelle Wallis, either, but that’s an understandable change (they also made one of the characters black, so yay for diversity and gender changes to sell films).

Anyway, while I can’t find any articles online explaining the exact deal between the producers/studio and the WSJ, I am 100% convinced the film has a marketing agreement in place and that we should think about it as a big piece of branded content – even if the WSJ didn’t pay for it.

The WSJ is mentioned umpteen million times in the movie, including in many awkward ways that had to be stipulated by a contract. And at the end of the film, they show the original article – but they change it from being an A-hed piece to a front page, top-of-the-fold main headline story. Which it wasn’t. A-Hed pieces are on the front page, but they’re always tiny and on the bottom, below the fold. So this was faked too.

The WSJ also ran their story about the making of the film very close to the release of the film, which could just make sense from a timing perspective as the film is being released, except if you know anything about the timing of stories, you have to suspect this was also part of the deal. Joe Morgenstern was at least transparent about this relationship and being biased in his review, but the rest of the business deal is not too clear/transparent.

I’m not saying anyone is doing anything wrong here at all – it’s a true story adaptation, and mentioning the WSJ is fair game. But I’m willing to bet that the number of mentions, and having some story come out from the author were part of the contract.

As newspapers seek more of these deals, we can expect more of these stories, and it seems to me we should have just a little more transparency about the relationship between the parties and how things get reported, since the main stakeholder here is ostensibly an objective news outlet above doing things for marketing reasons alone.

Regardless, it was a great tie-in for the Journal, even if it was awkward at times.

STUFF I’M READING: FILM

Diversity News: Sundance and Toronto will allocate 20% of their press passes to Underrepresented Journalists, says Brie Larson in Deadline; and Stephen Follows reports that only 36% of film buyers in the major film markets of Cannes, Berlin and the AFM were women, and only 32% were “high status” professionals (meaning CEO, managing director, etc.). His article has the full break-down by profession, country and over time, and it’s not been getting much better.

Blockchain and Media Explained. Blockchain is the hot trend for the future of film and music, but most of the business proposals I’ve seen are complete crap. Why? Because they don’t solve a real problem any better than you can do without it. Benji Rogers of DotBlockChain Music spoke recently about this problem and how he sees the future of Blockchain working in music, and it’s spot on – and the best explanation I’ve seen yet of how it can work best for film. The video is about 20 minutes, but he shows the problems with most of the proposed solutions, and how the proper use of Blockchain can create a better system to distribute content and get people credited and paid for their work. Check it out. (h/t Redef.)

Chinese Theater Moguls don’t see online/mobile Video as a Threat – that’s the word from the South China Morning Post (by way of China Film Insider to me). While the situation in China is very different than the West, Chinese theater owners (refreshingly) see online watching of films as additive, and building the audience who might also want to go see films in groups. That’s surely the case here, you just have to convince people (still).

AMC launched a rival to MoviePass. It’s twice as expensive, but you can go to any format (including IMAX), book seats in advance (a big plus) and see up to three movies a week, including the same film again and again if you want. It’s mildly enticing, but only if/when MoviePass fails.

Kickstarter for Oliver Sacks film: I rarely plug Kickstarter campaigns, but Dempsey Rice is one of my favorite doc filmmakers, and she’s making an animated doc film about Oliver Sacks: The Animated Mind of Oliver Sacks, and she’s raising funds now. I’ve consulted with Dempsey a little bit on this project and know it’s gonna be awesome, and not your standard bio-pic, but more meandering and intimate, like Oliver’s books and talks. And she’s got great rewards, like an Oliver Sacks animated swim cap, so you can’t go wrong supporting this one.

BOOK REC

 Best advice for creatives: Recently, a filmmaker I trust recommended that I read Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday. I don’t usually read marketing-type books, but this was a trusted, word-of-mouth recommendation and so I picked it up from the library…and couldn’t put it down. Holiday’s book is about how to create timeless creative work that lasts, and then how to position it and market it to reach a broad audience, and build that audience over time, all while building your fan base for your career.

A lot of what he says overlaps with what I teach filmmakers in my lectures – the importance of word-of-mouth marketing and building and owning your fan base. But it starts with how to make great content- whether that’s film, a book or anything else really, and it’s very much about creativity not just marketing, and where they overlap.

I dog-eared many a page, and took lots of notes, and highly recommend it for anyone who is trying to make great, lasting creative work and get it seen by a broad audience. It’s relevant for filmmakers, authors and other artists, and even for brand-storytellers and marketers. You can read it in less than two days, and I guarantee you’ll get something from it. I make no referral fees here, so I am honestly just pushing this because it is great. Here’s his site, or buy it online (but I recommend your public library, as those figure heavily into one of the story-lines of the book).

STUFF I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Grindr makes films. That’s right, Grindr, the gay dating app, is making branded content, and it’s pretty good. Digiday has an article on it, and the launch of their content section called Into, and BrandStorytelling had a great session with them at their conference at Sundance this year, which is captured on their Youtube channel. I attended that panel this year, and think everyone wondered how the heck a dating app could make good content, but they’ve come up with some great editorial around lifestyle, travel, etc.

Branded Content that Isn’t: Unbanned: the Story of AJ1, the film about Nike’s Air Jordan’s and the NBA, wasn’t sponsored by Nike, but had a lot of cooperation from them, and AdWeek thinks that’s one possible future for branded entertainment.

The future of ads? Fox just launched more of their new ad formats at Cannes Lions, an as Variety reports, they’re focusing on telling better stories that theoretically are seen as less of a disruption and more as content you might want to watch. Soon, Fox, NatGeo and others will launch Unbreakables: inspiring stories about people overcoming adversity, sponsored by brands. TBWA will produce the ads, and EP the stories, and has come up with over 300 story ideas already, according to the article. Stories might be told in six seconds, or across multiple ads, and even into the social media feeds of each property.

My two cents: Say what you will about Fox generally, but their ad team is seriously thinking about how to make advertising better, and telling better stories is one step in the right direction. On the other hand, I expect we’ll see a lot of green-washing/pink-washing, etc. as brands try to make themselves look better. The whole “overcoming adversity” trope is also getting a bit tired in the brand space, but people seem to like those stories a lot. So this is a step in the right direction – better storytelling with the potential to reach a lot of eyeballs, and maybe, if done right, the owners of those eyeballs won’t flick the channel and actually might stick around to see the story.

STUFF I’M READING: NET

Why AT&T really bought Time Warner, and what it means for consumers and net neutrality: Net Neutrality may be dead, but Ben Thompson over at Statchery has a great break-down of what government and the FCC should do to really protect net neutrality, all informed by the real reasons AT&T bought Time Warner: which was to increase the revenue potential of AT&T especially on OTT and mobile, not to increase the revenue potential of Time Warner (which is what the government’s suit got wrong). My two cents: Bingo, he nails it. As people shift away from cable and towards mobile, this content makes AT&T more attractive and keeps them competitive against Verizon and T-Mobile. The big problem for consumers here, potentially, also looks like a win – AT&T can start offering it’s own content for free (or not counting against data caps), which is called zero-rating. While this at first seems good, it also lets them lock in consumers to their brands, and makes it less competitive for others, meaning ultimately, less choice. It’s a somewhat complex issue, but read the article, because Ben’s proposed solutions are pretty simple and smart.

Posted on 21st Jun

We need Better Metrics; Net Neutrality is Dead; and other news

We Need Better Metrics

Over the past few months, I’ve become hyper-aware of the need for new metrics of success in the film world. Mainly for documentary film and branded content, because I work a lot in those two spaces, but also because those who work there so clearly need a better way to speak about their success and/or their return on investment (ROI) than just audience numbers, views or sales. 

As I reported a few weeks ago, when BrandStorytelling interviewed a bunch of C-Suite brand folks, one of their major concerns was the need for a better way to measure ROI. And when I wrote up the Sundance case study of Unrest, I noted the same thing – that while it wasn’t the purview of the report, it would have made a better case for its impact if it had focused more on metrics beyond audience and dollars (not) made.

Not to pick on Unrest, because no documentary that I know of does a good job of reporting impact, and that wasn’t the goal of this study, but as the report states, the filmmaker’s goals were not to make a lot of money, but to have a fair bit of impact – to raise awareness about ME and chronic fatigue, among many other things. But as I mentioned in my last post, they tout their 300 press write-ups, but don’t say anything about how many people those might have reached. Well, those are earned media. Normally, someone would have to pay someone to get that press written about them, and it has a value. And while you can’t get the NYT to tell you how many people read the review of your film, you can look up its average readership in print and online. If you want to get fancy, you can even make estimates of how many people read it. You can also look at how many people shared the article, or commented on it.

In fact, if you think about it for a minute, there’s a lot of stuff you can measure to show that your impact went way beyond how many people saw the film, or that 300 outlets reviewed it. Their impact producer reached out to lots of nonprofits and grassroots groups to help spread the word on social media and through email newsletters. Well, you can ask how many subscribers they have, how many followers they have, and how many opens/clicks and retweets they got. You can ask festivals to report back how many people came to your screenings. You can keep track of your own social media postings and how they spread – your audience is not just your Facebook follower count, it’s also your number of posts and how many times they were interacted with, and how many people saw your ads. And as Kenyatta Cheese says, your audience has an audience – and you can track a lot of that as well.

There’s a lot more you can do, too. When we work with clients, we will often track sentiment on Google analytics, and we can show how search terms change over time. So you may show how searches for ME and chronic fatigue spiked during the Unrest campaign, for example. Heck, I’d argue that they should have even publicized their piracy numbers, which are alluded to in the report, and broken down how many people pirated it, and where, to show how they had such an impact that people bothered to pirate the film.

There are tools for this, and companies you can hire to run all kinds of fancy metrics for you, but you can do a lot of it for free yourself. But one of the big problems is coming up with some consistency across the field. There’s a lot of work to be done here to codify best practices, build metric-taking tools that are accurate and dependable and replicable, and that go much further than the simplistic examples I am using here.

In fact, awhile back, there were several groups pushing for more tools for measuring impact, and there was a lot of fear and backlash in the field. A few tools were made, and Britdoc (now DocSociety) even put together a decent Toolkit focused on this back in 2014, which links to many of these resources. Unfortunately, a lot of this work seems to have stalled, or was too complex for many people to understand, so it didn’t get adopted widely. And it’s clear we need more work here as these tools aren’t being used very regularly and/or aren’t being disseminated widely enough.

Or perhaps the field just didn’t really care about impact and moved on. That’s my cynical thought, because if they did care, there would be a lot more action here. It’s easy to look back at the old case studies and arguments and see a field that really didn’t want to be bothered with measuring their actual impact, and just wanted to make a film.

I get that – filmmakers want to make films, and I know that we make films for many artistic reasons as well. But in many ways, the film is also just an excuse for all of the things you can do around the film that earn you press and attention, and that also have impact. When you are making a film for entertainment, or for profit or prestige (or just for art), then all the stuff you do around the film is just marketing to get butts in seats and get people to see the film. But for documentary, all of this stuff gets people to hear about the same issues, and can have just as much impact as the film itself. And a lot of these things are measurable, and if measured more often and accurately, these things can help us all make the case for the value of making these films.

That’s why I think we need to refocus on impact and we need more of these tools – and/or better ones – if we’re going to justify the budgets needed to keep making quality film/video when the distribution landscape can be as tough as that case study showed it to be for so many films. Because the impact of many of these films goes well beyond the numbers we’re currently sharing.

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to keep it simple and just follow the earned media example of brands. When Netscout sponsored Lo and Behold, by Werner Herzog, they didn’t tout how many people saw the film, or how much it made at the box office. Instead, they spoke about it in trade press and at SXSW as having increased their earned media exposure ten times over to 30 Billion organic media impressions, and how they would have had to run an ad campaign that cost $20-Million to do that, but instead made a movie for less than $2 Million and ran no ads. I’m sure they have lots of other data that isn’t public, but that’s the kind of data/metrics we need to move towards when we speak about the impact of our documentary work, and it’s where brands need to focus their sites when talking about their ROI to their colleagues.

If brands and foundations and filmmakers can all use better numbers, it seems to me there’s a collaboration to be had here.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM

Ava Duvernay on the cover of Adweek, as the star of their Creative 100 issue. Asked about working across formats – something I think every director should consider doing, she says: “As little as even 10 years ago, you were either a film director or a television director, you were either a commercial director or a documentary director or a narrative director. It’s all storytelling. At the end of the day, we’re trying to tell the story and make it as compelling, vibrant and heart-expanding as possible.” Amen.

Movie Critics are mostly white and men, according to a report from USC Annenberg that was widely reported, but is linked here in Variety. My two cents: Widely reported, but it can’t be talked about enough, me thinks. It’s a problem when fest programmers, critics (and reporters) and nearly every other facet of the industry is dominated by white folks, and mainly men. Silver lining: the best ones (Dargis, Wilmore, etc.) who get the most traction seem to still be women.

IFC Center’s Expansion Plans: IFC Center has been planning an expansion for awhile, and Curbed reports today that the revised plans include not just more theater space, but also some apartments – which would be a great place to live for any movie lover, and 6 new screens. Sounds great to me.

What’s Up with Windows these Days? Anthony Kaufman takes a look for Filmmaker Magazine at the current state of windowing a film’s release between theatrical and digital. He reports on some good examples/case-studies of the pros and cons of various windowing strategies, and what seems to be working best for various types of films. I’m interviewed in the article, and we discussed my pet-theory that Netflix is not just cherry-picking the best content, but by using more exclusive contracts for those films, is forcing consumer behavior into SVOD over transactional. This is similar to what we’ve seen in music – and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing for them to do this as a business model – but it does mean that as more audiences look for their film choices on SVOD, your indie film will have less opportunity to break through and be discovered for sale/rent. Interesting times.

WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

NYMagazine

Vice Media is a head-fake. My two cents: Thank god that Reeves Wiedeman at New York Magazine finally wrote this excellent take-down of Vice – A Company Built on Bluff – so I didn’t have to, because I’m not a real journalist. I’ve been telling everyone forever that Shane Smith’s greatest ability has been selling his shit to Rupert Murdoch, Martin Sorrell, Tom Freston and other old media men who wanted to be hip again, and that there was no there, there at Vice. Well, now NYMag, which does finally have a there, there again, has the story. It’s a must read, as it shows just how f-d the entire media business is if they could fall for this story. As someone said in my LinkedIn feed (I can’t believe I just said that phrase…), Vice is the Theranos of the media business. This story could have gone in any one of my subject columns, but I put it under branded content, because without them selling their bullshit to Intel, for the Creator’s series, they wouldn’t probably have made it this far.

WHAT I’M READING: INTERNET

Net Neutrality is Dead. And the Verge has the write-up on what that means, and what’s going on as we move forward. My two cents: It’s been dying for quite awhile – I went back and looked, and I first wrote about the possible death of net neutrality in April and May of 2006 (!), and the issues were much the same then – the FCC, Congress not acting, big corporations taking more control. But while net neutrality has been in danger of dying its slow death for awhile, it’s more serious now, and Ajit Pai somehow wins biggest d-bag of the Trump administration, and that’s quite an accomplishment, for pushing this through. Like the death of our climate via Pruitt and public lands via Zinke (and schools via DeVos, etc. etc.) this will be a slow process, but the short answer is only Congress can do much now, and we can’t hope for much there. I might feel better about this if the activist groups fighting on our behalf weren’t just hitting us up for funds every day like an NPR fundraising drive gone mad, or if anyone seemed to be getting themselves in an uproar about it, but I think we’re f-d.

WHAT I’M READING: START-UPS & ENTREPRENEURS

Foresight launches new cap table models: Launching a new start-up or any new business? Foresight is a brilliant little company that has built templates to help you start your business – build financial projections, business models, cap tables, exit waterfall tools, and a bunch of free tools, including a paid media marketing tool that helps you determine where your ad spend is working and where it should be going (this can work for film marketing as well). Taylor Davidson, who owns Foresight, is also an artist/photographer, and he launched a new cap table tool this week. I’ve used his tools and recommend them to any entrepreneur, and marketer.

Posted on 13th Jun

En El Septimo Dia, U-2, Mind Control and More

No real op-ed musings this week – I’m just back from vacation and too relaxed to write too much, but lots of news to link to below. But I will use this space to plug a film everyone should see.

En el Séptimo Día, by Jim McKay, opens in NYC this week and next week in LA. I don’t usually plug film openings, but I’ve long been a fan of every film Jim makes, and will think less of you as a person if you don’t go see this film.

Go see it: The info:
Opens Friday, June 8 at IFC CENTER (Manhattan): 12:45pm, 2:50pm, 5:00pm, 7:15pm, 9:25pm
BAM Rose Cinemas (Brooklyn): 2:00pm, 4:30pm, 7:00pm, 9:30pm
Q&A w/ director and cast at IFC 7:15pm show FRI and SAT.
Q&A w/ director and cast at BAM 4:30pm show SUN and 7pm show WED.
Opening in Los Angeles on June 15 at Laemmle Music Hall

What I’m Reading: Film

Atom Tickets has launched a free ticket rewards program, reports Variety, to compete with Fandango. My two cents – anything that rewards movie-goers for sharing films with other friends and fans is a good idea and is much needed in the space. We need more ideas like this to compete alongside MoviePass.

New festival – Filmmaker and long-time, recently-ousted MountainFilm Telluride Film Fest head, David Holbrooke has partnered with Nancy Shafer, who founded SXSW and also ran the Tribeca Film Festival, to launch the Original Thinkers Festival in Telluride Colorado. The Telluride Daily Planet has more info on the plans. My two cents – two stellar people with great ideas, so this is surely going to be good. I like that it’s not just a film fest, but a festival of ideas, and they only sell as many tickets/passes as there are seats, so everyone gets to attend every event, and everyone will be in the loop on the conversations around the films and speakers – no FOMO. Nice idea.

Mind Control a Film: That’s right, MIT Technology Review reports that Richard Ramchurn’s latest film, The Moment, lets viewers control what the edits, and what they see, via means of their brain’s sine waves and attention. You wear an EEG headset, and in theory everyone who watches the film sees a different cut. It’s playing on a tour where a group of people can watch it in a special trailer, and also at the Sheffield Doc Fest (even though it’s not a doc, it’s in their tech section). My two cents: While I’m a little skeptical of EEG mind games – people use this in advertising to claim that certain ads work best, for example – and the trailer is atrocious, it’s a super cool experiment, and I can’t wait to hear reports about how it works for the audience.

Voice Control your TV: Your remote is dead. That’s right, Amazon’s new Fire TV Cube just killed it. My two cents: Like I said before, voice is the future, and it’s coming fast. Now you can use Alexa to order up The American’s via Amazon Prime, and while you’re at it, check the weather, order pizza from Seamless and watch those on your screen (while Alexa narrates them), and tell it to brew your coffee and change your thermostat and lower the lights at the same time (if you’ve connected to the IoT).

UK Doc Funding Controversy spills into the open – There’s been a fair bit of controversy over the way the BFI has changed its documentary funding this year. There’s a reduction in total funds available, they awarded ownership of the process to Doc Society (formerly BritDoc,), and there is now a cap of £80,000 on grants – where the BFI used to give North of £200,000+ to many projects. Most of the griping about this has been over beers at festivals and in hushed tones, as no one wants to piss off their funders, but Screen Daily has a nice article about it that’s worth a read for anyone in the doc sphere. My two cents: I’m friends with the Doc Society leadership, so I am biased here as to the issue of who should get to manage the award. But I am a firm believer that the notion – prevalent among many grant funders – that you should spread the wealth and give more grants of a smaller amount, should be retired. It’s what’s helping spread a major problem of an under-funded but overstocked field. I’d also like to see BFI increase it’s total dollar support for the sector, and hope that everyone involved listens to the criticisms and improves the program going forward – this discussion should be more transparent.

U-2 Photo Michael Phillips, WSJ

U2 still uses Film: Not the band, but the spy-plane. Who knew? The WSJ has a great story and video by Michael Phillips about how the military still uses old-fashioned Kodak film – large gauge, 6 inch long, 2 mile long rolls of film – yes, miles- to film the Earth from 70,000 feet in the sky, 250 miles in any direction. That’s all mind-boggling, so read the article and watch the film. But they still use film because film’s resolution still beats anything you can do with digital. My two cents: While this is some serious pro-military propaganda (kudos Pentagon PR team), it’s pretty thrilling to watch the film. I don’t think anyone’s ever shown the inside of a U-2 spy-plane before, and seeing the Kodak film being analyzed is a cool geek-out experience as well.

What I’m Reading: VR

Storytellers, especially in Hollywood have it wrong – Maybe we shouldn’t try to tell stories in VR at all. That’s the message from Curtis Hickman of The Void. As he says, VR is interactive, and “a VR experience with a narrow story arc does nothing more than allow consumers to be passive observers to someone else’s agenda. “You can do that but you’re really missing out on the whole point,” he said (to The Drum) continuing: “Hickman and his colleagues advocate thinking of VR not as an extension of a TVC, but as a branded version of Dungeons & Dragons. “It’s a form of story where you have this dungeon master who is imparting a framework for a story and you have the players who are actively participating in the story,” he said. “Together, the group creates the story.” Amen.

Posted on 8th Jun

News Fri the 13th Edition: HBO vs Netflix and more

Not much to add this week beyond the comments on the links below. But here’s a little round-up of depressing news for Friday, the 13th.

The FCC might cut children’s television because the rules are “outdated” (as we get more branded content, which is part of what the rules are meant to stop), and will stop taking public comments in a decent fashion because Ajit Pai can’t handle feedback. The Justice Department just won’t give up on AT&T/Time Warner, as if they have any chance of stopping this thing (although AT&T did raise prices right after the merger was approved, and is doing some evil shit). Women who make science videos get some sickening feedback from men on YouTube. There is one last Blockbuster Video standing, in Bend, Oregon. Who knew?

Crazy times, but hey – those Thai boys getting rescued was pretty cool. Onwards to the news below.

Image via Reuters

What I’m Reading: Film 

Gaming is now bigger than film and TV: Reuters reports that gaming is now the world’s favorite form of entertainment.

WattPad is rewriting the rules for Hollywood: Vulture reports on how smart folks are using WattPad to discover authors and stories for film, and how most people in film are missing out on the trend and what their data can do to help with finding great stories and audiences. Best example: The Kissing Booth. Heard of it? Me neither, but it’s “touted by Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos, in an interview with Vulture, as “one of the most-watched movies in the country, and maybe the world.””

Fake Voice and Video is Coming. And it ain’t gonna be pretty says, Daniel Miessler. It’s being used now to insert actors (or your friend’s) faces into porn, but soon it will be used to make all kinds of fake news. It’s also interesting to think about how it will be used creatively in film/video and what that means for actors.

Nonprofits – and indie filmmakers – can win w/ smarter Facebook ads – so says Daniel Gallant of the Nuyorican Poets Café (and he’s a marketing consultant too) in the WSJ (there may be a pay wall). The key is getting even more targeted in your demographics. Sounds simple, but it’s the subtle differences between a Japanese cultural institution targeting fans of Japanese art, for example, “to focus on audiences whose interests included at least five manifestations of Japanese culture, such as woodblock prints, Ikebana or Kabuki.” My take: Read the article, as it’s a great, short primer on how to do FB ads right, and it’s also a great marketing push for his consulting – use the Facebook ad scandals to push how to market better with his firm – why didn’t I think of that?

Just how big does Netflix want to be? 250 – 400 Million subscribers, with new additions of interactive entertainment and gaming, but not live sports, according to Matthew Ball in ReDef. Me: I had lunch with a big media exec who thought this was an impossible goal, and I have to say, this person is wrong – this is the first article to nail just how big Netflix wants to be – as the article reminds us, their “only enemy is sleep.” That’s why the entire media business is losing it (sleep) too.

Just how Stupid is John Stankey, the new head of Warner Entertainment via AT&T?. Very, according to Scott Galloway. As Galloway describes so well, Stankey’s speech to HBO employees was not just tone deaf, but dumb, and shows he will possibly ruin the company. Best quote: “To move HBO to a Netflix strategy is to walk into the Musée d’Orsay and announce, “We need to scale this.”” I say Amen to that. As Netflix moves more towards quantity and shows, HBO needs to double down on quality. Not that I don’t love Netflix or believe what Matthew Ball says in the link above, but HBO needs to remain HBO. They don’t need advice from someone coming over from DirecTV, land of the famous hits…(HB)oops.

Graph via Galloway’s Newsletter:

WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT

Should brands be thinking bigger about content? Sam Glynne of Freemantle (writing in The Drum) thinks so. He suggests brands should be funding and creating big, long-lasting franchise hits, like his company makes – The Voice, Price is Right and other factual entertainment that lasts a long time and reaches a lot of people. Me: Only for mass-appeal brands and definitely not for anyone wanting to be hip or cool, or have any street cred, but yes, they need to think bigger.

Shinola Shies a light on Immigration: Nice little campaign in support of immigrants, as they film 100 immigrants coming out of their Naturalization ceremony in NYC and speak about what it means to become an American. We need a few nice immigration stories these days.

Posted on 5th Jun

The Next Marwencol? More MoviePass, Unrest report is out, and more.

The next Marwencol: Many years ago, David Naugle took some photos of his neighbor in NY, Mark Hogancamp, which were then published in Esopus magazine. Esopus subscriber Jeff Malmberg turned this story into the great film Marwencol, which is now being made into a Hollywood movie with Steve Carell by Robert Zemeckis. Well, now Naugle has taken some photos of his neighbor in Decatur, GA, Randy S. Jones, who is a retired attorney and teacher, and who has been making abstract art in his home for three decades, showing them to no one. David went over, met him and documented the work, which is now in Esopus 25, is hanging in a Pop-Up gallery in NYC til June 2nd, and is featured in Collecteurs Magazine now. David made a great video about it too, which is better than whatever Zemeckis will make about Randy eight years from now, and if any fest programmers are reading this, you should program it now.

Randy Jone 0520 from R&D Studios on Vimeo.

WHAT I’M READING: FILM

More MoviePass Lessons: Another week, another article on MoviePass, this time from Business Insider on MoviePass Powerusers. When all is said and done and MoviePass fails, it will likely be because of the drunken sailors leading the ship not the actual business model. But they’ve uncovered a few interesting tid-bits about the movie business that Hollywood and theater owners would do well to consider:

1. “MoviePass is making [sic] indifferent cinema-goers into fanatics”

Just one example from the article: “Kristie Pyle had not been to the cinema in three years before joined MoviePass at the end of March 2018. The 43-year-old North Carolina finance professional said it “had been so long that I needed to figure out how to use the kiosk.” In the less than two months since then, she’s seen 30 movies.”

Everyone in the business likes to claim that movies aren’t too expensive (here’s the Hollywood Reporter showing that the 2017 average ticket price of $8.97 is cheaper than prices in 1970 when adjusted for inflation). But there’s a reason most Americans go to just 4-5 movies a year, and MoviePass seems to be showing us that price has something to do with it.

Perhaps it’s not about how the price compares to a ticket in 1970, but how it compares to other things you want to do today, in a world where Netflix costs you $8-14 a month depending on the plan. But I suspect that in NYC and other major cities, where the average cost is closer to $14.30, it’s just the cost. I am basing this just on the unscientific survey of the workers at my gym, all of whom are movie fanatics- not just Avengers, one quotes Big Lebowski daily – and who all complain about the cost keeping them away.

Audiences who know about it are in love with MoviePass, and that’s all because of price. Unsustainable? Maybe, but I’ve not heard one person speak about Cinemark’s MovieClub, so there has to be some middle-ground. Since the same article says that 80% of their users go to less than 4 movies a month anyway, it doesn’t take rocket-science to come up with a plan that could work for everyone.

1. Anyway, BusinessInsider’s survey also showed a strong increase in people watching films multiple times. In fact, MoviePass had to institute a policy stopping people from doing this. Several customers in the article were going to see films 10, 15 or more times on MoviePass. This is another area where if Cinemas and distributors had data about their fans, they could reward these super-fans and encourage them to keep coming back, even without MoviePass existing, by sending them offers for cheap tickets, or giving them a free viewing for every 5, or concession rewards, etc. But right now, only MoviePass even has this data. Any future subscription plan or rewards card needs to think about incentivizing this crowd.
2. They also found that people with disabilities are starting to use it a lot. One customer was using it as much as five times a week because he’s out of work due to a disability. Again – a target audience that’s underserved and that could be targeted via data.

With MoviePass’ stock down to 54 cents this week, it likely won’t be around much longer. My fear is that the powers that be will just breath a sigh of relief instead of actually learning anything and doing something smart.

MORE FILM READINGS

Sundance Creative Distribution’s Report on Unrest is finally out, and it’s a must read. It’s also a long-read, and I’ll save most of my thoughts on it for later, except to say that if you are making documentaries and/or thinking about film distribution in any way, shape or form, this study is pure gold. It covers everything from motivation to hard costs, and even gives you hints at the numbers it can’t share (thanks for nothin’, Netflix…).

Studying Impact – But their report leads me to one more thing – I’ll delve into this more later, but I still find it shocking that filmmakers who are distributing for impact aren’t measuring and reporting much more about impact – which is the one and only thing this report is missing (they report on impact screenings, but are missing a lot about their actual reach and impact). But this is the case with every other film, so I’m not placing blame on them.

Just one example – they list 300 great press outlets that covered the film. Well, in my world (brands), we’d count those as earned media, and they come with both audience metrics and demographic metrics that are measurable and could show how many people heard your message. And you’d have to buy ads to reach those people usually, so you just accomplished something amazing, for a relatively cheap price. Which is much more important than how few people watched the film on Google Video. That study may be for another report, so for now, read this one and learn how they got the film out there.

Facebook Video is “a fun adventure not a business” says the Weather Channel to DigiDay, as they stop publishing video to the platform. Over time, they noticed they were “being paid in all types of currencies — followers, shares, views — that did not feel like money” said Neil Katz of Weather Channel in the quote of the year, for sure. While this is a business story, I think it’s relevant for film and other “content” publishers as they try to figure out what to do as Facebook takes over the world. Translating fans into dollars ain’t as easy as it seems.

INTERNET/CULTURE

Amazon has funded an Alexa Storytelling App: It’s called Novel Effect, and it follows along as you tell a story – for now, to your kids, and adds sound effects. It’s kinda cool, and is a great example of just one more way voice is taking over our future. Watch the video at the link.

Congress is trying to extend Copyright again ­– and it’s a bad idea. Larry Lessig has all of the reasons this idea still sucks over at Wired. Considering he argued this case to the Supreme Court the last time Congress did this – and they essentially said, oh this can’t be bad because we can’t imagine Congress would ever do this again – he’s worth reading.

BRANDED CONTENT

Top 3 Opportunities for Branded Content: BrandStorytelling is back at it with another great one: a survey of C-Suite execs on what they see as the top 3 opportunities, and I’m not surprised that they align with what I’m hearing from my clients:

1. Diversity and Advocacy – especially in regards to closing the gender gap behind the camera; reflecting more diversity and more LGBTQ perspectives;
2. Making stuff that lasts – whether that’s pushing for better budgets, making better stuff with the budgets they have, or spending more to make feature films, it’s all about investing in making things better;
3. Partnerships – between brands and agencies, creative and even between brands.

These are all needed, but my take is that they all tie together. Brands can have a much better impact and make better films if they work with diverse directors and cast/subjects, and if they work together to make and market the work- that will be content that lasts.

Memorial Day

I’ll be taking off next week for Memorial Day, so enjoy a little break from my missives.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

Randy S. Jones at Esopus Space NYC | David Naugle Projects

Posted on 24th May

Artificially Intelligent: musings on AI, Voice, DA’s and Film

Remember when you used to go to conferences and people would talk about the future of media, and someone would hold up their flip-phone and say that the future was all about the cellphone, and you thought they were crazy? Admit it, sure you do, even if it’s so obvious and old school now.

Well, that’s what’s happening now around Artificial Intelligence (AI), Voice (Alexa, Siri) and DA – Digital Assistants – and if you speak with anyone in marketing or tech, it’s all they can talk about, but if you speak with anyone in media, much less film, well…crickets, of the non-virtual kind.

How does this possibly impact the film business? A quick detour/tour of the utmost in simplicity is needed:

1. Voice is taking over the world. Alexa, Siri, etc. – It seems like a novelty now, but just think of 2001: A Space Odyssey or HER or many other science fiction films for 30 seconds, and you should get it. Almost everything you do will somehow interface with voice, and that has huge implications for brands, content, how things get discovered, etc.
2. Artificial Intelligence is also taking over the world. Read this to see how people freaked out about Google’s new AI platform, Duplex, at the recent I/O conference where their robots made reservations from real people who didn’t know they were speaking to a robot, and generally creeped everyone out. Or read how Stephen Hawking predicted AI will essentially wipe us out. Regardless, AI is getting smarter, and if you think Netflix is good at finding what you want to watch next, it’s only getting much better;
3. Digital Assistants are also the next big thing. And they are tied to both AI and Voice. Daniel Miessler has a great article on this subject called The Future of Content Destroys the Middleman, and by that he doesn’t mean sales agents or the usual middle-men of our content world – film and video – he means Google, or Medium and maybe (just maybe) Netflix if they don’t start taking this space seriously, although I bet they already are. Read his article for the best break-down out there.

Think of your Digital Assistant as your best friend, but in your brain and also in your computer, and because it’s tied to AI and voice, it gets smarter by the minute, and over time, it knows what you want to ask about or say, or schedule, before you do. So my DA will know that I am coming home and turn down the AC, warm up my food, chill my beer and maybe even tell my robot to turn down my sheets.

But it will also know that when I hang out with my wife tonight we both probably want to watch the next episode of Atlanta, but when I see my friend Paul, we want to start back on that exact moment we left off in our favorite video game, and when I see my Mom, our DA’s talk to one another and order her a wine, me a whiskey and suggest Haji as a mutual interest family film that we always seem to like, and makes sure that Amazon restocked the tissues, because we’ll be crying a lot.

You can already see how this overlaps a bit with film. The film business has been built around blunt force marketing, where you throw a ton of money at something and hope people show up. And that will still work for blockbusters. And for the last decade, it’s been built around getting smarter with search and recommendations via a graphic interface (GUI) essentially tied to movie posters.

But the future of content discovery and viewing (or consumption as they like to say) is going to be around voice, AI and DA (and maybe Blockchain, but the jury is still out on that one). And if your delivery service – be it Netflix, FilmStruck or HBO isn’t built for this world, things won’t be pretty. How will voice interact with that? I have no idea. But I think it will be more than just “Hey Alexa, show me The Avengers.” It’s going to be a combo of that, plus knowing what I want before I know I want it, plus knowing the wants of who I’m with, and it will definitely be better at remembering which SVOD service has my favorite show and which episode I fell asleep in last night.

Now, people will still want great content, so HBO as a producer is fine. But HBO as a skinny bundle is probably not. I think this coming world – like so many other things – favors Amazon, where your subscription to Prime, coupled with the best AI/DA and Alexa gets me not just video but also text and diapers. I’m not sure that even Netflix can survive in that world, but they have a much better chance than anyone who hasn’t aggregated a lot of stuff under a lot of data and intelligence.

Having one place that knows what I like to watch and can pull it from ANY provider, while also re-ordering my coffee and suggesting a book for my book club tomorrow night is infinitely more interesting to me than just having a service that offers me the films they have but not others. And if that place also owns the newspaper…

Or maybe not. Maybe it will be a new DA company that just pulls from the APIs of the various Netflix’s and Amazon’s of the world, and they are reduced to suppliers.

Or maybe I’ll just be stuck in my living room yelling “No Netflix, that’s not the show I wanted” or be stuck arguing in circles with a chat-bot all night for a refund from iTunes for the film that never streamed.

Given that we were promised jet packs, the latter is just as likely, but it’s more fun to think about the former ideas when dreaming about the future. I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure this all out.

But it gets even more interesting when you start thinking about how this all combines to impact story-telling as opposed to story-delivery. Because in theory, a really smart AI coupled with a DA that knows your every wish could combine with a few other technologies and just maybe make the movie you want to see or write the book you want to read for you. Robot’s already compose symphonies, so is that a stretch?

Yeah, I know, that’s pure crazy. But I find it funny that no one believes that a computer can be a great filmmaker or author, but we all have a sneaking suspicion we might be living in the Matrix.

STUFF I’M READING: FILM

Blockchain takes Cannes by storm: I swear I’m going to just have to stop linking to Blockchain articles soon because people are launching new projects in this space almost every day. . Screen has a nice little article about several of the new players in the space who launched at Cannes. Note to start-ups – Cannes is not the new SXSW. Fests are terrible places to get traction, attention and/or explain complex technology, but good luck with that.

Will Spotify be the next Netflix? Scott Galloway thinks so. He has an interesting argument that basically says Spotify has mastered mobile and social, the two things Netflix is not good at, and if you envision a video Playlist curated by your friends, easily accessible via mobile, you might have a real competitor to Netflix. Me: I hope he’s right, because we need more than five players (FAANG) in this space.

But…maybe Microsoft will buy Netflix? That’s what a smart media analyst named Porter Bibb thinks. He makes a compelling case and Microsoft has the money and needs something to do with itself, but dear god, I can’t imagine a better way to ruin a good thing, and I’d really feel bad for my few friends over there. Let’s hope this one is just conjecture.

INTERNET/CULTURE

I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore. This article by Dan Nosowitz in NYMag sums up my daily problem with the web for the last year or two – it’s not fun anymore. Can’t put it any better than he did here.

BRANDED CONTENT

TMOBILE Social Conscious Spend Increase – Ok, this is advertising, and a little confusing, but buried in the news about the Fox Upfronts was this tidbit from Joe Marchese: “A T-Mobile campaign during the World Series highlighting the company’s support of hurricane relief efforts…was deemed a success…So much so, he said, that T-Mobile has increased its budget for socially conscious spending (a quality that 80% of consumers expect from brands) from 5% of its overall marketing spend last year to 30% this year.” (emphasis mine). Ok, so that’s big. A – 80% of consumers want socially conscious spending from brands; B – the new ad formats from Fox, where there are less ads, but more strategically placed, are working; and C – they’re working so well that a brand is increasing it’s spend six times over in one year. Seems to me that’s a place that Foundations and others who support socially conscious media should also be looking, and we should all look for more news in this space soon.

Question Your Answers. Sometimes branded content comes from two platform brands, making an ad for themselves. That’s the case with the new Question Your Answers series from The Atlantic and HBO, where HBO talent will star in shorts to air online, on the Atlantic’s OTT channels, on HBO before their shows and on their YouTube channels. The first of the series are with Jeffrey Wright and another with Michael K. Williams and they’re fun to watch, and a clever way to remind you to subscribe to HBO, or the Atlantic, instead of someone else.

REI Presents: Women in Fire: REI has been doing some great outdoor content, all focused on women in sports, and their newest video is about women fire-fighters, which make up just 10% of firefighters. Reading the comments can make you sad, but a great branded content effort. Full disclosure: REI is a client, but this was made prior to my involvement and I still like it.

Posted on 16th May

Cannes, Patagonia Sues Trump, and other news

The entire film business and its various hangers-on, except for me, are over in France for the Cannes Film Fest and it promises to be an interesting year. Tons of business will surely get done – this is always the case, it’s one of the biggest markets, and right now thanks to a good economy, there’s a lot of free money running around looking to be spent; there seem to be several great movies there and no one is expecting any kind of disaster. But on the other hand…things look shaky.

Behind the scenes, there’s a gigantic freak-out happening in the market – no Harvey (that’s a good thing for many reasons, but he purchased a lot of good foreign films to bring to American audiences, and no one has taken that place yet); no Netflix making major deals or any real acquisitions (or will they?); a bottoming out of the electronic sell-through market all around; a super-abundance of content where only the same titles rise to the top; and a general lack of fuck-all knowledge of WTF to do in this situation by anyone behind the wheels of the various cars.

Will this mean new opportunities for the old stalwarts like Sony Classics? Will Hulu fill the doc buying gap from Netflix? Will Netflix buy a ton of films even though it didn’t premiere any? Will Amazon make any moves? Will any of the gazillion new Blockchain companies show a compelling business argument (See below)? How many new film funds can launch in one Summer? We’ll learn this and more.

But the number one question is: after all this pizzazz, will audiences show up to watch any of it in theaters six months from now, or should we be begging Netflix to just take it all and put it on SVOD?

What I’m Reading:

FILM

Sinemia launches plans for as low as $4.99 a month. MoviePass-like system, Sinemia, based in Europe, has launched a bevy of new plans, with one as low as low as $4.99 for one ticket per month and various plans up to $14.99 a month for 3 films per month including 3D, 4D and IMAX.

Another day, another blockchain-based film delivery system. This one is called TaTaTu and it aims to offer free content, rewards to users for sharing, and hopes to reach a billion users in six years. Meanwhile, Hollywood Reporter sums up some of the hype around ICOs and Bitcoin in Hollywood, Sitges Film Fest starts accepting a digital currency for tickets and the Oracle of Omaha thinks crypto-currencies are rat-poison squared. I think my money would follow the brains in Omaha over those in Cannes, Catalonia or California…

Apple Prime? What’s Apple going to do with video? That’s the question on everyone’s mind, and Redef takes a stab at answering the question, coming down kinda in the middle of every possible answer and saying it will probably be a mix of ho-hum strategies that add up to an Apple Prime service with video alongside music, magazines, cloud storage and maybe even cellular service in the future. Maybe.

The Holodome is open. Not film, exactly, but in the content world, Paul Allen’s Vulcan and MoPop in Seattle have opened the Holodome, a 360 experiential, immersive reality experience in a room without headsets. Geekwire has a couple of reports from inside the rooms. I’m headed to Seattle soon, and will have to check it out and report back on whether it’s any better than the (crap) experience of 360 video headsets.

SOCIETY

Patagonia is suing Drumpf over public lands and National Monuments, and the NYT has the full story. Full disclosure: Patagonia has been a client for about five years, but this is why – because they stand up for what they believe in and do the right thing. They’ve been dedicated activists since the beginning, and you can see this in their messaging and their films, but this lawsuit takes it to a whole new level – which is needed. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this kind of leadership in this space – not even from the nonprofit sector or the foundation world, where you should expect it. Makes you think a little differently about the power of brands.

BRANDED CONTENT

Refinery29 is launching an OTT Channel. Variety reports that the web platform, which already features a lot of video, will launch the channel soon, with a mix of documentary and narrative series and features. Seems like a new OTT channel launches every day, but Refinery29 has a sizeable audience, so this might have a chance.

Brands and Marketers are increasing their budgets for original video, says the IAB. With 81% increasing their budgets after the 2017 Upfronts. The IAB is biased here, but there’s no doubt that the money is flowing to video content. Check out their nice infographic and video at the link as well.

Posted on 11th May

The Doc I want to See: Michelle Wolf Thoughts

The Doc I want to See: I avoid political posts, because that’s what Facebook was made for, and I left if already, but I can’t resist, and do think this should be a film so bear with me.

After several days of nausea brought on by reading the collected nonsense of supposed responses to Michelle Wolf’s performance at the Correspondent’s Dinner, I am pretty sure that the doc we need now is one about the shit show that is the creepy and democracy-destroying relationship between our Washington press-corps and those they supposedly report about.

That any journalist, from any side of the political spectrum, could say her routine was anything less than the minimum requirement of the job shows just how much these two classes sleep in the same bed and eat from the same trough and pretend to do otherwise. True, some of the jokes weren’t funny, but neither is having these corrupt liars in the executive office, and all of her political commentary was spot-on and if anything, mild.

You can’t pretend to hold people to account all day and then be surprised when someone calls the press secretary/liar-in-chief out for being a liar and then you (the supposed journalists) as well for not doing much more than fanning the flames. Anything less wouldn’t be ‘Merican. And for the record, while this routine was required for this regime, it wasn’t too far off what was needed for any other.

Simply put – those covering our government elites are acting as if they’re Variety covering Hollywood – like it’s all an insider’s game governed by a press release, and we’re all part of the same system, we’re all “bro’s” at the end of the day, and no one needs to report too hard. But this is a democracy, not a trifling entertainment, and none of the people in that room should pretend to be friends, and none of them are doing their jobs.

Please, some filmmaker, work on this subject, because it’s rich for the mining and we deserve to see how this sausage grinder turns. I don’t need a doc about how the NYT covers the news. I don’t need one about the last year of Obama, or even an episode about how Trump is a crook. I need one about the complete failure of this entire sector of our democracy.

WHAT I’M READING

FILM

Black Media Story Summit – Black Public Media convened a “day-long, invitation-only gathering brought more than 100 black creatives and thought leaders together with media technologists, funders, investors and distributors in a series of conversations designed to get strategic black content into the distribution pipeline.” The full guest list wasn’t published, but it’s interesting (to me at least) that no mention was made of attendance from some of the more important folks in the media space- Netflix, Amazon, Facebook or even Macro. But it looks like it was a great convening, and I look forward to hearing more about it – a white paper will be released soon.

IDA Getting Real Summit – Care about docs? Of course you do. So the IDA’s Getting Real Summit (Sept 25-27) should be near the top of your must-attend list, and apparently, they’ll be hosting an event on their Facebook page on May 8 at 1pm pst (4pm est) where you can learn more about it and presumably ask questions and suggest ideas for the conference. My suggestion – a closed door session with high level reps from brands making docs and foundations supporting them brainstorming how they could work together to have a bigger impact by working together, with 2-3 filmmakers keeping them “real” and Joe Marchese of Fox telling what they’re both doing wrong and could do better.

Godard’s Sales Agent is the only person with a brain in the Cannes/Netflix/theater debates. Wow. Vincent Maraval tells IndieWire that “I would’ve liked to have the Godard film on Netflix for 10 days during Cannes, and on the day of its screening, release it theatrically in France,” continuing, ““I don’t think it would’ve stolen one audience member away to have a Godard film for 10 days on Netflix,” Maraval said. “We would still do the same number in theaters that we have had with Godard before.” Amen, brother. That’s the simple truth. I wish everyone else would wake up to it.

Culture/Tech

Could Apple Buy Conde Nast? That’s the juicy tid-bit dropped in this article from the Guardian. The idea is that Apple is moving more and more into being a luxury brand, and you can’t get much more luxury in the publishing world than the Conde Nast brands. My take: It makes sense, and as Apple moves more into original content, the best way to distinguish themselves from everyone else doing it is to focus on brand building, the upper-end and essentially shit that rich, dying boomers care about. So expect their film moves to include more docs about Dylan, Clapton and films by Scorsese.

What’s going on with Net Neutrality? It’s probably still dead. But people are trying to do something in Congress about it on May 9th, and you can read all about it here.

BRANDED CONTENT

Conde Nast OTT – But until Apple comes knocking, Conde Nast is joining the hordes of those launching OTT channels, announcing new OTT offerings for WIRED, Bon Appetit and GQ. And if you didn’t think we had enough content in the world already, they’ve got 35 returning series and 60 new pilots launching. Hear them knocking on your door for films, indie filmmakers? Nope, neither do I…

Brand Storyteller’s Top Headaches: Strategy, Distribution and Determining ROI. That’s what the survey says according to BrandStorytelling in their latest newsletter, and based on my experience, those are definitely the headaches I hear about most (and it’s why I’ve concentrated my business on the first of those two and am trying to help solve the third). Without a doubt, ROI is the hardest. How do you really measure impact, cost-effectiveness, reach and how do you show the direct connection to what matters for most brands – sales – when most content is a long-term proposition? In the indie world, the funders are mainly foundations, and they essentially have given up measuring the ROI of their investment. Let’s hope brands don’t, and give us a standard we can all find useful someday.

Posted on 3rd May

If I were MoviePass: what MoviePass Should Do Next

Everyone’s going crazy about MoviePass. Will they survive? Will AMC and the others just launch their own (more expensive versions)? Have they already disrupted the industry beyond repair, to where if they shut down, they’ve devalued the theatrical experience? Even I’ve written about them in the past.

If you’re getting people to ask this many questions, you’re doing something right, which is rare in this staid industry, so kudos to them. I am not a fan of any service whose basic business model relies on you being too lazy to use it enough to realize its full value – for them to survive they basically have to rip you off. But I’ve gotta hand it to Mitch Lowe (CEO) – he realized what its previous owners didn’t – that when you have a subscription business, only two things matter: subscriber acquisition rate (cost to get a new subscriber) and churn rate (how fast you lose them). Supposedly he’s gotten them both close to zero, and it has become the fastest growing subscription service ever.

But seriously, MoviePass is a great idea that has a window of about 12-18 months to either become a colossus or disappear. In addition to adding subscribers, it needs to start getting serious and get even more visionary. Here’s just a few ideas it could try out:

1. Stop fucking around. First things first. No more screwing your customers by turning on and off the ability to go to a particular AMC. No more not hiring real customer service and then hiring a crisis team because you don’t want to act like a real business. No more changing pricing plans every other day. Either you want to be a real business, with real customers, or you want to keep acting like you got kicked out from clown school. Grow up and be a business and do things right. Be a brand people love and you will crush the field. People so want to love you, so let them, and then take over the world (did anyone there even go to brand school???). update: after I wrote this post, they started f-n w/ customers again, getting rid of the unlimited option and going w/ a 4 movies a month plan. jeesh…
2. Buy Landmark Theaters. Rumor has it that Netflix almost did this before Mark Cuban jacked up the price. Yes, it would raise operating costs even more, but how awesome would it be to be able to offer 54 some odd theaters where you could not only guarantee seating for your members, but also run all kinds of special gimmicks to get traffic on off-nights, offer concession tie-ins and really put that data to use.
3. Launch an SVOD service, included in the same low MoviePass price (for now, you can raise it later). I’d buy FilmStruck away from Turner and grow it exponentially. This is probably impossible as I doubt Turner would sell FilmStruck, but it has the best brand and the best titles right now. So if that wouldn’t work, I’d buy Fandor (they already share investors) and merge it with the MoviePass membership. Then I’d invest another $100 Million or so, maybe a lot more, into licensing a lot more high-end and first-run SVOD titles, so that I could offer a MoviePass membership that lets people watch films online or in theaters day and date anytime they want. But this only works if they dramatically increase the quality and quantity of titles available. Fandor and FilmStruck are both too specialized right now for anyone but the most obsessed film buffs, and definitely not for the masses. You need classics, arthouse and Hollywood – you need to be what Netflix used to be about five-ten years ago, but with theaters added on instead of DVDs.
4. Double-Down on P&A – Invest more in the P&A fund they’ve been messing around with. They’ve already invested in several acquisitions, under the premise that they can push MoviePass subscribers to go see films, and share in the profits from the release of select films. I’d ramp this up via a substantial P&A fund and start rolling-out those member offers.
5. Darden Restaurant partnership– I don’t eat there, but Middle America does, and MoviePass needs to break into Middle America and away from the Coasts to break big. And the way to do that is dinner and a movie, and that can be done by offering deals to people to go to Red Lobster, Olive Garden and others via MoviePass coupons. They can add deals later with Yelp, OpenTable and others, but Darden is the place to start, and offering a deal that gets their customers a discount on MoviePass, while also getting you a discount at Darden when you show you went to a movie is a win-win.
6. Data Based Deals. Don’t back down from offering deals based on data. Don’t be creepy – like you were when you said you track my every move. But if you don’t become Facebook and you are transparent with what you do with my data, I am more than happy to let you offer me deals based on my data. If you know I love Wonder Woman – offer me a discount to the next movie in the franchise. If you know I always go to theater Z, offer me a discount to the restaurant across the street. Just ask me to opt in to these deal alerts and all will be ok. And you’ll make a fortune while I save a few bucks. This data is gold to you and me. I’d love to stop seeing a million ads for a movie I already know I want to see someday, and with your data and ability to retarget me a year later to see the film I want to see, that day is just around the corner, so use that data smartly.
7. Watchlists – I used to run this little failed app called Flicklist. We failed for a few reasons, but not because we saw a need for watchlists. Other’s in this space have this now as well (even IMDB has this now), but MoviePass needs to add a Watchlist and remind you when films you want to see are available near you (or online, once they add that service).
8. Friends – Another Flicklist idea that would still work, was getting recommendations from friends. MoviePass has hinted already that they want to add ratings that are different than RottenTomatoes. At the risk of de-simplifying their clean interface, they should integrate more closely with your Facebook friends and allow you to follow the ratings of your friends. That’s the crucial missing link in the film world today – people care about their friend’s recommendations for films, not the critics or anything else. It’s word of mouth, but make it electronic.
9. Hoover up The Data Companies. They already bought MovieFone, which gives them a ton of data. Next, I’d start looking at the other folks who have some great data – many are not technically for sale, but I’d be looking at Atom Tickets; Cinelytics; Letterboxd; Movio (VistaGroup) and anyone else with good audience data analytics.
10. Film Festival partnerships. Ok, this one isn’t going to make MoviePass a ton of money, and dealing with thousands of film fests isn’t easy, but I’d love to see a day when film fests could offer unsold tickets at a discount – or for free – through MoviePass. They’d fill up a possibly empty theater, promote their overall festival, and possibly gain a future patron. MoviePass would gain a little more street-cred…ok, I can’t pretend MoviePass gains much here, but it would be cool.

WHAT I’M READING

FILM

Doc Cinema is doing just fine in Toronto. Well, duh. Toronto’s citizens drink the cinema pixie-dust, showing up in droves for all things cinema. But while this article doesn’t state it, rumor has it that Hot Doc’s Bloor St cinema is actually kicking the Lightbox’s ass when it comes to actual revenue and success. Whatever the case may be, they’re doing a great job with their festival and cinema, and this article from the Globe breaks down their numbers and their programming strategies. A great read for anyone interested in the state of docs in theaters or arthouse theaters generally.

EyeSlicer Kickstarter. I haven’t supported a Kickstarter for a film in awhile, but I’m a big fan of the team behind the EyeSlicer and they have a new campaign for Season 2 going on now. In addition to making great content and touring it around the country, they’re making a ‘zine and launching a small film fund to help fund radical short films. Gotta respect that. Give em some loot, so they can give it away.

BRANDED CONTENT

Branded Content is growing faster than advertising, but it’s still a small subset of brand’s overall marketing spend. Approximately $16 Billion dollars is being spent on branded entertainment (versus $550B on advertising more broadly).While this is a small percentage of the overall spend, it’s growing twice as fast as advertising is generally, and much faster than GDP. The report doesn’t seem to break-down exactly where it’s being spent, but my guess is a fair bit if that is in video content.

This Newsletter/Blog:

As I keep mentioning, I’ve begun a process to move over to MailChimp. If you were a Google/Feedburner Subscriber, you’ve been migrated to Mailchimp, and you can unsubscribe if you don’t want this newsletter any longer. The Feedburner will shut down in the next two weeks, or you can unsubscribe from that email separately. Sorry for the hassle during this process.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

1. “I’ve gotta hand it to Mitch Lowe – he realized what its previous owners didn’t – that when you have a subscription business, only two things matter: subscriber acquisition rate (cost to get a new subscriber) and churn rate (how fast you los

Posted on 26th Apr

Subgenre news: open letter to Joe Beyer/Traverse City

Joseph Beyer, formerly of Sundance, is now running the Traverse City Film Festival, founded by Michael Moore. Well hot-damn, that’s a cool person, going from one cool place (with some interim steps) to another. I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Joe on some projects at Sundance, and he’s the real deal. Can’t wait to see what he does there. But while he figures out what to do, I will take this moment to give him a whacky idea, unsolicited and public, no less!

Dear Joe

Congrats on the new job. You’ve got a lot on your plate, with some big ideas already announced, but what would life be without Brian Newman giving you some other idea to think about? Here’s an idea I just had today while thinking about Tribeca launching and you getting your new gig, and I think you’re just the guy to launch it.

Every year when film festivals send out their rejection letters – some of them on Fridays, which earns them a special place in Hell as far as I’m concerned, but that’s another article – they always send a handful with genuine, heartfelt notes of regret, saying something like: “ you made it down to the very last cut, and we really wanted to program your film, but we just couldn’t find a place for it. Please send us your future work as we really do like you.”

When you get this letter as a filmmaker, you aren’t sure whether to slit your wrists or be proud, but being a filmmaker means being a glutton for punishment, so you take a deep breath and frame the damn letter (er, print out of the email) and hope they’ll like your next film.

And guess what – the festival programmers who send these letters really do mean it. They send lots of form letters to the rest of the rejects, and even some nice notes to others, but there’s always those 1 or 2 films they just couldn’t find a place for, but they wished they could.

I want to see those films. And I bet they’d sell out at any festival that programmed them and advertised them as such.

So here’s the idea, Joe, and only you have the connections, friendships and chutzpah to do it – contact every film festival programmer in the Film Festival Alliance and ask them to anonymously submit the one film they most wish they could have programmed. This can be computerized of course, and there will be overlap. Select the ten (or five, or even one) films mentioned the most, and program them as a special sidebar at the festival. Voilà! A festival program that no one has ever done, that will sell-out fast, and that will put a smile on the face of some very lucky filmmakers.

Sincerely – yes, that’s a sincere idea – me

 WHAT I’M READING

FILM

Nobody’s Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood. Ok, I haven’t read this yet, but it’s on my Goodreads list to read next, after reading this great review in the WSJ (paywall). J.E. Smyth argues that contrary to popular myth, the studio era from the 20s-50s was “an important and empowering chapter in women’s employment in the film industry;” and that women held numerous jobs at all levels of the business. She also argues against the auteur theory (which is quite male centric) and in favor of the communal nature of filmmaking, and argues against the notion that “female employees did not support the networks of other women necessary for other women in the profession.” Sounds like a lot of myth-busting and potentially awesome re-visioning of the history of women in Hollywood, and it couldn’t come at a better time. I can’t wait to read it.

Netflix ain’t buyin’ docs – I think anyone who reads my blog knows that, and also reads IndieWire already, but just in case you missed it, check out Anthony Kaufman’s great little story on what’s happening in the doc marketplace now that Netflix and Amazon are sitting on the sidelines. My take: Good article, but methinks the interviewees are putting a positive spin on the sheer terror floating through their veins as the biggest buyers shift gears from acquisitions to original content. But it’s good news for the smaller buyers, and as long as the economy holds up (ahem…) doc producers will survive.

INTERNET/SOCIETY

Jaron Lanier, we need to remake the internet. Jaron’s recent TED Talk made the rounds quite a bit, so this may be old news to many, but if not, check out the 14 minute talk over at TED, where he succinctly breaks down the not-novel, but timely idea that we need to rethink the business model of most of the web, where we get free stuff, supported by ads. As he points out to those who say, “who would ever pay,” well, Netflix has made a tidy profit on a subscription business, and it doesn’t take much imagination to think of how much better a social network could become if it was forced to get better/stronger/more-trustworthy, to keep adding subscribers.

Best quote was his next to last:

“We cannot have a society in which, if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it’s financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them”

The Internet Apologizes: NYMag has a surprisingly interesting long-read set of interviews with many net-founders on what’s gone wrong with the internet. It covers everything from advertising to click-bait to, well, Zuckerberg and even Lanier shows up again here. My take: We all knew the internet as we know it would get broken some-day, and that time has come. You mix the all-too-real toxic culture that has arisen on social media with the fact it may have elected Drumpf, scare the advertisers, awaken the politicians, and pretty soon everyone will conspire to ruin a pretty good thing.

Best quote in the article (that shows where we’re headed as well): “If email were being invented now and Mark Zuckerberg had concocted it, it would be a vertically integrated, proprietary thing that nobody could build on.” Antonio García Martínez

BRANDED CONTENT

Words Matter: P&G and Great Big Story made a pretty decent brand doc about the history of P&G adding sexual orientation to its diversity policy in the early 90’s becoming one of the first Fortune 500 companies to do so. This is a very brand centric doc, but in some ways, perfect branded content – it tells an awesome story of one employee leading the charge, starting in the 80’s when coming out in Cleveland was not an easy thing to do, and it was also intimately, and truthfully, tied to one of their products at the time, Peridex, which was primarily used by people with HIV/AIDS to help with symptoms of Thrush. Employee Michael Chanak worked hard, at first alone and then with a few others to slowly convince the company that they had to walk the talk, and the film ends up being a great story because it doesn’t hide it’s branded origins at all – in fact, they’re central to its interest and power. (H/T to Brand StoryTelling)

Once again, I’m teaching a Branded Doc workshop at UnionDocs in early May, and we still have a few slots left.

via GIPHY

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Posted on 18th Apr

Facebook Sucks: news for April 12th and more

Facebook Sucks. Okay, that’s not the headline, or even the gist of this article, but with Zuckerberg being grilled by Congress as I write this, I couldn’t resist.  Actually, the linked article is a pretty good in-depth story by IndieWire (from a week ago or so, but this seems to be bash Facebook week) about how the many recent changes to Facebook’s algorithms are impacting indie filmmakers. In short – you have to pay more to reach your fans, and even then you can’t count on your fans seeing your posts. So what used to be a helpful resource for artists isn’t much help anymore, and as Facebook moves more into video, it’s algorithms seem even more arbitrary making it hard for any indie artist to turn it into a revenue source or even a creative venue.
My QuickTake: Well, I left Facebook a few months ago and haven’t looked back, and I feel so much better about the world. I didn’t leave because of Cambridge Analytica but because it’s just become such a caustic place that I don’t need it sucking away my soul, and my creative energy, anymore. Everyone in the article seems to be saying: well, yeah, but we have nowhere else to advertise. And… that’s true. But Facebook won’t survive from you selling a ticket to an indie film; it survives from selling a Chevy truck (or really, by selling all of us to Chevy to sell us a truck).Like TV, Facebook isn’t made to help you or me be creative, so we need to find another platform, and if we can’t figure out a way to do that because we don’t want to miss out on someone’s latest post about Trump, well, we deserve our demise.

WHAT I’M READING

FILM

MoviePass buys MovieFone – Score two for MoviePass, after last week’s deal announcement with Landmark.

My QuickTake: While 777-numbers and Mr.MovieFone won’t come back, the nostalgia factor works well with the only people reliably going to see movies in theaters – Boomers and older, who remember anything about what I just said. And MovieFone brings some 6MM+ customers a month, a lot of data, and for those in the know, a surprising amount of forward-thinking plans about the possibilities for the future of connecting fans with films, which is what MoviePass is really all about. If MoviePass can keep this up – and quit f-n up with shitty customer service (driven by their desire to prove to AMC that they can send traffic to other theaters), then they have a chance to live past December of this year, which is what I – and almost everyone else – gives them as of now.

How many non-English language films get a US theatrical release? Not a lot. According to Stephen Follows it’s just 18.8% of all releases, and only 1.1% of total US box office. My Quicktake: as someone noted in the comments to Stephen’s post – it begs the question of why all the hoopla around banning Netflix from Cannes? If we want these films to be seen, and they aren’t landing in theaters, then we should applaud Netflix or anyone else who will showcase them online. Sarandos is right to pull his films out of Cannes – why get booed when you’re spending millions of your billions to bring these films to audiences that just aren’t showing up in theaters?

Sow the oats. Indiewire and others report on OatsStudios – Fuel Oats campaign- Watch the video for all the details, but Neil Blomkamp’s idea is to crowdfund a studio one film at a time, but say fuck it to all the hard work – no perks, no rewards, save getting the film when it’s done. As he says: every dollar ends up on the screen. My Quicktake: Well, he actually has a few rewards- behind the scenes footage, and those downloads, so I’m not sure he couldn’t do this via one of the existing platforms. But it’s been a slow-news year from the crowd-funding platforms, so it’s good to see someone doing somerhing in the space, and I’d love to see him raise enough to make more than just a cat video.

BRANDED CONTENT

Conde Nast’s Video Efforts – The NYT has a nice little article about Conde Nast’s efforts to shift just about everything to video in hopes of capturing more eyeballs and thus advertising dollars.

My QuickTake: If nothing else, this article is worth it for the deep-link to the (PDF) of the CondeNast ad-sales guide, used to pitch advertisers on why they should, well, advertise with one of the CondeNast brands. Lots of interesting, if biased and possibly falsified, data there. Is the web moving to video because that’s where consumers are going? Or is it because that’s where the platforms and brands want them to go (because of ever elusive ad dollars)? Is the whole thing just a big Ponzi-scheme that’s not much better than television? You decide, but this article will have you wondering all that and more.

I mentioned last week that I’m teaching a Branded Doc workshop at UnionDocs in early May, but right after I posted, they launched this cool little video for the class – check it out.

Friday, May 4 – Sunday, May 6 BRANDED DOCUMENTARIES: An Intensive 3-day Seminar on Creative Content from UnionDocs on Vimeo.

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As I mentioned last week: I’m moving slowly to a MailChimp newsletter that will publish almost weekly. Please sign up to move there as I’ll soon be disabling the feed from the blog page here (when I figure out how to do that). Or unsubscribe if you don’t want weekly updates. Thanks.

Posted on 12th Apr

Branded Doc class and updates

AdWeek – Will a branded doc win an Oscar?

Branded Documentary Class at UnionDocs I’m teaching a new branded documentary workshop at UnionDocs in Brooklyn May 4-6. I’ve done this twice before, and they both seemed to be a great success, so we’re doing it once again (it’s been a year or two now). I have some great guest instructors, including filmmakers Trish Dalton and Sarah Tricker; and producers of branded content, Rob Sheard from Zero Point Zero and Megan Cunningham from Magnet Media (all bios in the link), and we’ll likely add one more soon. We’re covering everything from business to creative, and it’s a great opportunity to learn how to work with brands to make great content, as well as pros/cons and how to break-in to this area. Register here.

STUFF I’M READING/AROUND THE WEB & NOTES

Film:

Blockchain and Film: Blockchain is in the news daily, and I get a call once a week from someone launching a new film-related business based on it. But I’ve yet to read a single smarter thing about the potential of blockchain for film than this Tweet-storm from Erik Opeka. Read it. Everything you need to know to solve the problems of film via Blockchain is in this set of tweets. It’s from back in January, and I keep meaning to write a post about it, but really, he says it all.

It’s a couple of weeks old now, but if you haven’t yet read the Sundance Institute’s report on the distribution of Columbus, I highly recommend it. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in indie film – marketing, distribution, even just how to make good artwork for your film, it’s all here.

My QuickTake: Anything that brings more transparency is needed, and this is a great report, all around. But whenever I read these things now, all I can think about is how much work it takes to release a film, and in this case, all of the help and discounts they got because of the Sundance name. It’s as much of an argument justifying a distributor’s fees as it is in favor of avoiding them, IMHO.

MoviePass partners with Landmark Theaters – Will MoviePass make it to December, 2018? That’s the question on everyone’s mind, and they keep trying to f-k it up, but this new deal with Landmark shows they have potential. You can select seats in advance, and not just from outside the theater, both steps in the right direction.

Branded Content:

The North Face launched a new series focused on “trail-blazing women and athletes” called Move Mountains. It features a series of films, a massive fold-out advertising section in print, a partnership with the GirlScouts (including new badges that can be earned); grants to women and a renewed focus on working with women in their supply-chain.

My QuickTake: Wow, great campaign. Full disclosure – I work with one of their biggest competitors and am thus biased against them, but I think The North Face has built a great multi-faceted campaign that hits at just the right time, with the right focus. I’m curious as to whether they worked with women behind the camera (I couldn’t find out yes or no easily before this post), which is a big problem in the outdoor film and branded content world, but kudos to them on the start of a great campaign.

WeTransfer launched a new web series called Works In Progress, and episode one features Bjork and Jesse Kanda. Check it out on YouTube and their WePresent branded content site.

My QuickTake: Closer to ads than short film, but an interesting way to promote the collaborative nature of WeTransfer, which I usually use myself when collaborating with other filmmakers, so this is a pretty natural use of branded content. At the time of this post, they have close to 50K views, which isn’t exactly viral, but it’s not bad for this kind of work.

SoundCloud has launched their new First on SoundCloud, with episode one featuring Taylor Bennett and future episodes showcasing artists who launched on SoundCloud.

My QuickTake: Now that Kerry Trainor has moved from Vimeo to SoundCloud, it’s no surprise he’s bringing video into the mix. Trainor was responsible for Vimeo’s brief foray into branded content, so he gets how this stuff works. While this still feels like a regular ad now, and views are pretty low, I expect to see more, and better, stuff here soon.

This Blog & Email Newsletter:

After my last two posts, a couple of people contacted me asking how they got on my email list. If you are receiving this blog post as an email, then you signed up for it – and confirmed it with Google/Feedburner – at some point in the past. If you want to stop receiving it, there’s an unsubscribe button in the email. I can’t add or remove anyone from this list. In fact, due to Google’s crappy take-over of Feedburner, I can’t even login to my account and manage it anymore. I am in the process of moving my blog/newsletter to Mailchimp now. You can now sign-up via MailChimp on Sub-Genre.com. I’ll discontinue Feedburner once I get control of my Google account. Sorry for any inconvenience.

For those of you who enjoy my posts, I’ll be posting more often now. My plan is to begin posting once a week, with one thought piece and links to news from around the web.

Posted on 4th Apr

Breaking the “rules” to win an Oscar for Short Docs

Watching the Oscars last night was a little more thrilling than usual, because this year I was friendly with several of the producers and directors behind the documentaries up for Awards for Best Documentary Short and for Best Documentary Feature. Along with so many others in the doc community, I’m super happy for everyone who was nominated – even those I don’t personally know – and even happier for the winners of each award. I’ve seen almost all of the films and they were all deserving, but the short I had not seen ended up winning in that category – Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 by Frank Stiefel. I watched it first thing today – you can too here – and in researching it, I found out it breaks a lot of the “rules” we think we know about success in documentaries. As such, it’s an inspiring lesson for doc makers everywhere.

Here’s the broken rules:

1. You need to premiere at Sundance or Cannes (or Toronto, or Hot Docs, or…)

This film premiered at the Austin Film Festival, not one of the majors. Yes, it won some awards there, and also won two awards at another prestigious film festival – Full Frame – but take a look at its laurels: Florida, Julien Dubuque, Sedona, Hot Springs and DocUtah. All of these are good/great regional festivals, but none of them are thought of as being as prestigious as the “big” fests. Which proves you don’t need their stamp of approval to succeed either, and also that good films will get programmed by good festivals, and these “smaller” fests can also lead to success.

2. Don’t make your film available for free

Heaven is available for free on YouTube. It’s not on HBO, Netflix or some other big broadcaster. And it’s not behind some paywall, or even for sale. It’s free. Anyone could check it out prior to its awards, and it was still a success. Free doesn’t mean bad. And I bet its views will soar post-Oscars… which wouldn’t be possible if the filmmaker had waited for some big deal before making the film available online for free.

3. You need to premiere on, and have support from, a big distributor/broadcaster

To my knowledge, this isn’t on HBO, or POV or even TOPIC. There’s no deep pocketed broadcaster paying for its Academy campaign (which ain’t cheap to do) and it still won. I’m sure they hired publicists and spent a lot of money to get to the finish line, but this proves that anyone can do it, not just those with big/connected backers.

4. You need lots of viewers/followers

In fact, as of the morning after the Oscars, the film had only been viewed 152,000+  times since it was published by IndieWire on Jan 2,2018. Most people think that you need millions of views online to be a success. The film also had just around 280 followers on Facebook at the time of the Awards. Clearly, you don’t need to be a viral/online or broadcast success to win the biggest award in film.

5. Success goes to super-connected filmmakers, with agents and lots of experience

This is the filmmaker’s second film, and while he’s had some success, he’s by no means super-connected or experienced as a filmmaker. Ok, the filmmaker’s first film was picked up by HBO, which is a big deal, but as he explained to EW during the release of that film, he wasn’t super connected then either:

“There wasn’t much of a plan in making this film. I was going to give it to my kids and that was the end of the story. Only, at the end of the editing process I thought, “Man, this is pretty good. I wonder if it is good?” I submitted it to the International Documentary Association and they had a competition and chose it as one the films that year. From there, it took off. I retired from being an executive producer at [production company] Radical Media and traveled with the film to festivals around the world. Then HBO bought it. But there was no plan. I don’t have an agent. It hasn’t been flogged by anybody to anyone. I guess I should probably take it more seriously in terms of that.”

Yes, he probably should have taken it more seriously, but you can clearly stumble into success with a good film, and you don’t need to have that super agent, or be part of the “doc-mafia” (getting grants from all of the usual suspects) to succeed.

6. Shorts should be short – 20 minutes or less

Heaven is just under 40 minutes long. That’s a lifetime for a short. Anything longer than 7 minutes long is an eternity online (people don’t watch longer shorts online); and festival programmers can tell you that longer shorts are often harder to program – every minute counts when you’re programming a  slot in a 90 minute program. But I’ve seen this rule broken many times – in fact, it seems that while fests and online viewers prefer shorter shorts, the Oscar often goes to longer ones. As Richard Brody points out in the New Yorker: “Every winner this century has run longer than a half hour; all but a handful are thirty-nine or forty minutes long. All five of this year’s Documentary Short Subjects run at least twenty-nine minutes; two run forty, and they aren’t really shorts but featurettes…” But the real lesson here is obvious- make the film the length it needs to be, not what’s dictated by the market. In fact, the director has said the film started as a feature, but it worked best when it became 40 minutes long.

7. Keep your title short

You can’t get much longer than Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405. People always tell you to keep your title short and sweet – memorable, and if possible low in the alphabet so it shows up alphabetically in online queues. Didn’t matter here.

8. Know your audience

I tell my clients all the time – think about your audience when making a film. And you hear that question all the time on grant panels, applications, pitch sessions, etc: Who is the audience? Well, here’s Frank’s thinking, from an interview w/ Deadline: “I never asked myself whether anybody else would be interested. I just kept plugging forward because I found her incredibly compelling and just went with that.” What this proves – focus on good stories and good storytelling first (ok, we all knew that, right?).

9. Success goes to the young

Frank Stiefel is 70 years old. And he didn’t start directing until he was in his Sixties. There’s lots of age-ranges in the doc world, with award winners from their teens to their 90s, but I think everyone thinks of award winners as the “hot, up & coming directors.” Furthermore, he says he couldn’t have made this film when he was younger. As he told No Film School: “I could not have made this film 10 years ago, and that has nothing to do with experience or with knowledge. I’m much more emotionally available today than I once was. I also don’t want anything today. I’m past the point of wanting a career out of this. I want nothing, actually. And so I went into it without an agenda and I remain without an agenda.”

He’s also in his second career – having worked in TV commercials first. His Oscar proves there’s always second-chances, new artistic directions, and that it’s never too late to begin an artistic career (and succeed). That should be an inspiration to lots of people. Even if you aren’t 70, don’t give up, don’t be afraid to change, and perhaps the best path to success is “not having an agenda at all.”

10. There are rules

We all know that each of these rules aren’t really rules at all, but this exception proves it – ignore the rules. There are none.

+++

To my mind, all of the nominated films succeeded, and they all have lessons for filmmakers and other artists. But I’m glad Frank won, just so I could learn these lessons from him, and finally see his film. His story, and the one he captured – Mindy Alper’s – are both inspiring, and they both taught me a few things.

++++

Note: After posting this, I learned that the film was also picked up for distribution by the awesome Grasshopper Films. So you can now also rent the film for educational or other screenings – while it remains free on YouTube – another set of rules broken, as you can do all of the above, and still get distribution.

Watch the film below:

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Posted on 5th Mar

The future is find – film curation & festival programmers

Just prior to Sundance and Slamdance, I conducted a very unscientific experiment and asked my Facebook friends – many of whom are programmers for film festivals who could all be expected to have long lists of “must-see’s” at the fest, and who are very opinionated when you speak to them in line for a film– what films they recommended at the festival.

I got back exactly what I expected – nothing. Now, there’s a chance that none of them like me enough to read my post and respond, and an equal chance that because it wasn’t about #metoo or Drumpf, they couldn’t be bothered. But I don’t think this was the issue.

When I was working with Ted Hope to build Flicklist (which failed miserably for other reasons), we encountered this same problem. We thought it would be great to showcase the greatest asset any film festival has – the expertise of their curators – as a way to help audiences find great new films. Who has a better handle on the films you should see in theaters and online? Who could better tell you to add that movie to your queue months before it gets written about? It seemed like a no-brainer – if I trust my local film programmer at the festival, I might trust their recommendations year-round, and take a chance on a film because of that – maybe even going to see a film at another film festival when I’m visiting another town, for just one example. And it would be a simple way to further the brand equity of those film festivals and their programmers, perhaps giving great curatorial “power” to the awesome programmer in Atlanta as well as the one at Cannes.

We approached a lot of film festivals and their programmers behind the scenes, and nearly every one of them said the same thing – oh, our programmers we would never share their real lists. They didn’t want to give away their possible programming choices, didn’t want to seem to privilege one film or filmmaker above another, especially early in the game, or didn’t want to be so public about their tastes. We made it clear they could hide their programming choices and only share other recommendations, but there was still concern. The lists of reasons went on and on – even when we suggested paying for the service. Programmers just weren’t accustomed to sharing their recommendations and favorites except in two places – in the festival selections, and possibly in end-of-the-year, best-of lists.

We gave up, but I’m convinced that part of our idea was a good one,  and I’ve hoped for a long time that someone else would crack that nut and tap into the collective curatorial power of those festivals and give them a new type of relevance outside of the time of the film-fest taking place. It hasn’t happened. No one has built any kind of curatorial machine that takes advantage of actual film curators. Not only that – no film festival, to my knowledge, has done it on their own. Not even the ones with the most power – Sundance, Cannes, Hot Docs, SXSW, or anyone else.

It seems to me like a lost opportunity, and it seems like a big, gaping hole in the services that festivals should be offering their audiences – not to mention a potential revenue stream. As content proliferates online, consumers need curators to help them cut through the noise to find the best stuff. Critics are part of this, but so are festival programmers, and they have a lot less baggage and more good-will already. And you don’t have to be a rocket-scientist to figure this out – everyone talks about the importance of curators to the future of content online. And every festival seems to think their programmers are good at finding good films, or presumably they wouldn’t pay them.

I would pay them for this service, and many of my film-going friends would do the same. If I could get a weekly email of recommendations from trusted programmers at my local festival, with a mix of things that played their festival, but also things they couldn’t program that they liked, I’d add all of those films to my queue and happily pay for it. Or I might even become a member of their festival – and festivals need reasons to convince me to become a member beyond a discount on tickets at the festival and an email newsletter (…talking about their next festival or their next fundraiser). Turn this into an app, and I’d pay for that app, and I don’t pay for anything now. Everyone I know wants help cutting through the garbage to discover the best films to watch, and fest programmers could be that guide online, year-round. And they should be, because as I’ve argued before (in 2013, jeesh), in a world of super-abundance, film festivals need to think beyond their old missions of just bringing undiscovered films to their locale.

Right now, the leading websites for finding films are Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. These are helpful to some extent, and I use them, but they’re not really curatorial or based on any curator’s knowledge. I can’t easily follow just the reviewers I trust, and none of these focus on curation, which is very different than criticism.

Yes, a few people have taken to Letterboxd to share the films they’ve seen, and for a long time, I hoped this would become the curatorial service that I think we need. Here’s my favorite programmer Tom Hall’s list of films he saw at Sundance, for example. But aside from Tom, I don’t find many actual curators telling me what to see online. Instead, Letterboxd seems mainly used by critics (here’s David Ehrlich of IndieWire posting his reviews and rankings as just one good example). But again, this is different than the curation a festival programmer could bring, and I think its lacking from the discovery process online.

But I’ve given up hoping for that world to come along. I think most of the fest industry is focused on their current model, not thinking about what they should be doing in a new paradigm. If they won’t take on that curatorial role, then we’ll need someone else to do it.

I suspect these new curators and curatorial services are developing now, being built, will launch, and they won’t include many of the experts or the expertise of these film festivals. The curatorial app of the future will probably be built on celebrity, an algorithm or some other system of trust. Once it launches, a few festivals will try to launch their own version, to jump on the bandwagon, but it will be too late. We’ll all get our recommendations from someone else – and in a world where almost any film ends up online eventually, I’ll have less and less reason to show up at the festival in person, when someone else will curate it for me in a more convenient form.

I’ve always argued that back in 2005, Sundance could have, and should have built YouTube. The technology and the need were there. The writing was on the wall, and everyone could sense what needed to be built, but nonprofits (which most festivals are) don’t think that way. They do the same old thing instead of the new. So we got a very different YouTube, and have no idea what that alternate one, informed by the curation, artistry and artist-centric thinking they had might have become. (To be clear, I’m only picking on Sundance here because they’re the most famous name, you could insert almost any other name; and Sundance has been plenty busy doing a lot of other good things).

This is another one of those moments. The need is clear. The history of the internet is search, the future is find – finding exactly what you need, hopefully with some curatorial help.  I think we have just a few more years before someone builds the perfect curation system, and a short window where this could be done by the existing players in this space. I’d much rather have that service be built by those with the curatorial vision found in our film festivals than on the backs of some algorithm or the whims of some brand or celebrity (or both). And I’d rather that the money it makes benefits these festivals than some new version of Facebook, and that this data informs better art, not more advertising. The technology exists, and festival programmers have the expertise we need.Who will pick up the charge?

Posted on 5th Feb

FAANG and Film

FAANG

In the business world, people refer to Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google as FANG – also known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This has been widened by many to include Apple, and while Google is now “Alphabet” the acronym has stuck as FAANG – the big companies that are changing all business through their digital prowess, market capitalization and stock performance. They are also increasingly impossible to compete against – just starting a real competitor to Netflix today would probably take a starting investment of maybe a Billion dollars.

For the film world, this is especially true – and its why Disney and Fox are merging, why AT&T wants Time Warner, and everything else you see happening. In the future, you need to own the content and the pipes to even have a chance at surviving. While everyone continues to underestimate Facebook Watch, and yes they’ve launched like amateurs, they will one day rival Netflix for where you find, watch and talk about content (movies, TV, news, likely music and everything else). Amazon, Apple (via iTunes) and Google (via YouTube) are close behind, and no one else stands a chance.

We can already see a real impact in the film world – when it comes to stellar offers for film, you’ve got Netflix and Amazon offering beaucoup bucks, and literally everyone else in the business is a second thought. Increasingly, if you aren’t on Netflix or Amazon Prime, you don’t exist to a substantial portion of the potential audience (iTunes and YouTube Red remain far behind here, and while Hulu is spending more, their subscriber base is still paltry). And bad news –while Amazon Prime takes almost anything, Netflix is buying less and less indie and doc content.

Meanwhile, nearly every OTT service that could fill the void in offering content NON (not on Netflix) struggles to gain attention or traction. Why pay for another service when it seems like you have more than enough content on Amazon Prime and Netflix, and can augment it with one-off purchases from iTunes?

Things are still shaking out, but my bet is that by 2020, FAANG will be the only names you think about when watching films (studios will still make films, and indies never quit), and it might possibly be just FAN (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix alone).

Posted on 15th Jan

KodakCoin is worth watching

KodakCoin

Yesterday (Jan 9th) Kodak announced the launch of KodakCoin, their new Bitcoin/Blockchain offering for photography, and their stock price jumped on the news. Why? Not because it’s a brilliant business strategy (which it is), but because investors go crazy for anything related to Bitcoin right now. But beyond that hype, this is something to watch.

The general idea of KodakCoin is that photographers can use it to get credited and compensated appropriately for their work in a digital world. This has been a big problem in the digital realm because a copy is the same as the original and as any other copy, and attribution and payment for use has been pretty hard to handle (or easy to skip). With KodakCoin and the Kodak One system they announced, there will be a ledger-based system to more easily track photographic images, and in theory, give them proper attribution, get paid, and (if they’re smart), photographers could also tie-in licenses for use not unlike Creative Commons – letting people use images for free in some situations, pay in others, or possibly even be paid based on future consumption instead of paying a license fee up front.

This has great implications for film as well. As I’ve written elsewhere, Blockchain could revolutionize how we do business in film, and this is a great first step. Most of the press just chalked this up to Kodak “trying to capitalize on the current cryptocurrency mania,” (The Verge), and the trades ignored it, but this could be a big deal. If Kodak knows what they’re doing, and does it right, this could be the future of how we deal with rights and consumption of images both in photography and film. Blockchain will work best for film if it’s tied into everything from capture to consumption – and Kodak is weirdly well positioned to capitalize on all of these areas.

Only problem, as I’ve seen others ask in comments on the announcement, why didn’t they call it KodaCoin, like Kodachrome, instead of KodakCoin? Missed opportunity.

Update – January 31, 2018 – Some news has come out in the NYT since I wrote this, and it seems that while the underlying idea of using blockchain to manage image rights is good, the way Kodak has set this up is a little wonky and that makes it possibly a lot less interesting. I recommend reading the article, and keeping a skeptical eye on how this develops.

Ed. Note: I haven’t blogged since July, 2017 and my output has been slow for the past year or two. I plan to write more often this year. If you’re receiving this via email subscription, and don’t want to anymore, there should be an unsubscribe button in your email. Otherwise, you’ll hear from me more regularly.

Posted on 10th Jan

Distribution & Discovery Ideas

After my last two posts on IndieWire (and here) about the need for more distribution funding and the problems with the algorithm ruling film discovery, several people asked me in the comments, on Facebook and offline for some ideas. So here’s a more positive post about five ideas for better funding of distribution and discovery. They’re five easy to think about, hard to implement ideas, and I’m not claiming them as just mine or as ground-breaking, but I hope this kick-starts some conversation.

via Ambulante

1. Plain ol’ distribution funds – Ok, the easiest route to helping with both distribution and discovery would be strategic offerings of distribution funds. They should focus on smart, tried and tested models; new ideas that show promise; projects to increase the diversity of what’s being distributed and big initiatives that might have impact beyond one film (slates, curated programs, regional strategies, etc.).

 Personally, I’d be open to the idea of funders backing the distributors themselves. In many countries, government funds already do this, because they support culture beyond the marketplace, and that’s what foundations should be doing anyway (some do support public broadcasting). But in the short term, it would be great if the money goes straight to producers/filmmakers, and the funds could be used to augment a distributor’s campaign (with extra grassroots outreach, for example) or for service deals, “direct” distribution, etc.

Importantly, I don’t think these should be focused on impact. We have a lot of impact funds already, and while they’re great, I’d love to see more funds supporting work finding its audience even when “impact”- read social impact – is not a goal.

As mentioned in my recent post, Sundance is already doing some distribution funding, and there are a few other funds, but more foundations should offer this support, as should more nonprofits, festivals and venues.

2. Transparency – I am biased here, as I helped on the pilot Transparency Project for Sundance, but I think this is the biggest need in the field. It’s impossible to build comps, speak honestly with investors about potential returns, plan for distribution, evaluate offers, etc. because there is no transparency as to what is being made where beyond box office.

We need data, perhaps anonymous and grouped by genre, budget and release strategy. But we need more than just VOD numbers. Festivals should be required to report attendance numbers for your screenings. Theaters should do the same (they do to distributors, but these numbers rarely make it to filmmakers). We should have transparency on diversity numbers – behind the camera, in the curator’s office, on the screen, how well films perform based on diversity…the list goes on.

A quick side-note, festivals and screening organizers should also share photo and video documentation to filmmakers. I’ve used this as evidence to secure better deals, and it can also be used for marketing.

We’ll probably never succeed in getting more transparency into Netflix, but we can start with the easy stuff, and work together – we need a transparency movement, and quite frankly, it needs to be forced on the field by filmmakers and their funders, because the nonprofits and even the distributors are stuck in the middle here, with little political capital to lead this fight. I bet some incentive grant money could open some windows, as could some requirements for numbers in grant reporting as a condition of funding.

3. Network Building & Data Sharing – We need funding to help build more direct connections between film festivals, theaters, nonprofit programmers and even alternate venues on an ongoing basis, to help them build audiences. What does that mean?

A few ideas – Building systems where the film-lover in Sarasota can track a film from Sundance to the Sarasota film festival and maybe not just buy a ticket in advance, but someday even let the programmers know how many of them want to see it. Systems to let regional festivals better triangulate artist and guest travel. Sharing of audience data, even if in aggregate, to help build databases of where the fans for certain types of films reside, and how to best reach them.

Why can’t I subscribe to indie horror films, black directors, LGBTQ films or indie docs, and get updates via email or app of what’s playing at 10-20 festivals around the country and add those films to my Netflix queue? Let’s go further – if I like Lucy Walker’s films, and see one at the New York Film Festival, they should let me know her new one is playing at BAM CinemaFest (an ostensible competitor), and vice versa. In the long run, each venue will win, as will Lucy.

Let’s build a ScreenSlate for every town, and get some foundations to fund it. But let’s broaden it, and let me subscribe to filmmakers I like (a la BandsInTown) and be notified whenever they play in town, whoever is programming the film. And let’s go further and remind me when that film is available on Fandor, or Netflix. How about when BAM shows the new Jim McKay film, they also link to his past films, or similar themes, for further perusal, even if it doesn’t hit their bottom line immediately? Again, in the long run, we all win as we’ve built a better culture of film discovery.

These are just a few ideas, and I’m sure other programmers can think of more.

4. Empower our greatest assets – the Programmers –  Film festivals don’t take advantage of their greatest asset often enough – their curation via their programmers. In many smaller cities, they’ve practically taken the place of critics as only local voice on film, but far too often, their voice is only heard by a small crowd (those who know them).

I trust Tom Hall’s programming more than almost anyone in the US. It would be great if Montclair was promoting his curation throughout the year, on other films, not just festival films. And to continue to remind me of films that played Montclair (or even a rival fest) that are now online. But for this to be done, fests can’t literally “take advantage” of these programmers, meaning more work for no extra pay. They’d have to build a financial model, which could include grant or sponsorship funding, but would more likely work in aggregate – as a tool built by multiple fests with a business plan and revenue model that supports all of them.

Let’s also take the programmers out from behind the curtain and hear their opinion a bit more. I know most are resistant to this, but I want to see a public list of the five films they rejected that they wished they could have programmed that are now available across town or online. Tell me your opinion, because you actually have one worth listening to (usually) and I trust it, and you can help build a better culture of discovery beyond your fest or venue (And yes, I know you already do a lot and with three jobs, like I said, let’s build financial models around this). One last note – I think a foundation should make a genius grant for a programmer/curator every year. Give them a ton of money and let them do something cool with their skills, or just pay their bills.

5. Touring support to organizations and to individuals – Yes, digital rules the world now, but the best way to get enough buzz to get people to know you exist online remains real-world screenings, be they full theatricals, or one-offs. Touring can be profitable for filmmakers and audiences alike, and it keeps the notion of watching a film in a group, together, alive. There are a few great tours out there (I know of Southern Circuit, which I used to run, and Ambulante in Mexico and now California, but am sure there are others), but there used to be more.

 We need funding to support more tours of films, in multiple ways. For the individual filmmaker to take their film on tour, even if they had a theatrical, let’s get them in towns without a arthouse cinema. For groupings of films – let’s curate a package of films with similar themes and have pop-up festivals around the country. Hell, there’s enough films about minimalist living to fill a couple of weekends.

Let’s fund film festivals to take their top films around their state, outside of the blue cities they reside in, to the neighboring red ones (oh how we need this). Let’s pool resources between a few festivals and take the best of one fest in each region (NE, NW, SE, SW for simplicity) to the others, perhaps Camden’s favorite in Albuquerque? Perhaps the best of the American Black Film Festival as a side-bar at, oh, every film festival?

Let’s take a series of human rights films to 300 public libraries around the US (we used to do that at NVR way back when). Let’s put some of these films in churches, or bars, but not just one or two, an entire tour of them. And let’s get sponsorship and grant funding for it. These are just some quick ideas, I’d leave it to smart curators (with genius grants) to build even better ones.

6. Bonus idea: Funding for fest websites and outreach – As I mentioned in my recent post, festival websites are notoriously horrible (mine may be worse, I know). That’s because few of them can afford to build a proper website, and they’re harder to build than you think. Back in the day, B-Side was helping with this, but now we have a hodge-podge of solutions, and I’ve yet to find a good festival website or app, meaning one that actually works. Even the best festivals in the world tend to have horrible web interfaces.

I still think an enterprising company could build this for multiple festivals and build a business on the data alone, even though this didn’t work for B-Side (but they tried to build a distributor instead of a data broker, which I think was a mistake). Regardless, it’s an area in dire need of funding, and if we can help festivals, theaters and other venues build better sites, we can encourage discovery and eventually build even better tools (like some suggested in 3 above) more easily.

 I’m not even sure we actually need more money. Festivals have no problem building big bulky print catalogues with tons of sponsor ads and words of wisdom from the executive director and the governor in the front pages. But beyond selling sponsors a fancy print ad, their print programs are worthless (usually), and are mainly a library badge of honor of your attendance. Many surveys show that audiences do use the print materials to find films, but I’d argue this is just because your website is such crap. This is the same dilemma the newspaper business is facing, in a way. To disrupt your print ad model with a better website is hard to justify when sponsors want ads. But we need to focus on discovery not just sponsors (we need both, to be sure), so those budgets should shift to digital. Heck, your sponsors would be better served by better in-person activations anyway. So let’s get creative.

So there’s 6 ideas (5+1) for a few ways to better fund distribution and creativity. I’d love to hear more ideas from the field.

Posted on 26th Jul

Wither the pull quote? On Ratner and Rotten Tomatoes

Brett Ratner hit the news this past week, saying: "The worst thing that we have in today’s movie culture is Rotten Tomatoes, I think it’s the destruction of our business." He went on to say: “But that number is an aggregate and one that nobody can figure out exactly what it means, and it’s not always correct. I’ve seen some great movies with really abysmal Rotten Tomatoes scores. What’s sad is film criticism has disappeared. It’s really sad.”

Now he's likely just upset that Batman vs. Superman scores so low on Rotten Tomatoes, which most articles pointed out, but he does raise a valid point about the industry that I've been pondering as well, but from a slightly different angle: the disappearance of critical reviews and pull-quotes from the marketing of films to audiences.

Working with Abramorama, I recently released a film I produced called Love & Taxes by Jake Kornbluth and his brother Josh. It's a little movie, with a small theatrical release, but we've gotten amazing reviews. We're happy to be at 100% for the critic's scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and have gotten heaps of quotes like this one from the NYT's Ken Jaworoski:"A Minor Marvel."

It used to be that distributors would tell you that one of the reasons to show films in theaters was to get the critical reviews, so you can put them as pull quotes on your movie poster and then your DVD case (or way back, your VHS box). And they seemed to work, because everyone did this. And you still see it in advertising for movies in newspapers, etc.

But guess where you don't see them - online, where most audiences watch these films. Go to iTunes, Amazon or Netflix and look - no pull quotes anywhere. Each of these platforms requires film distributors to remove these quotes from their poster art. Heck, Netflix doesn't even really show your poster art anymore, mainly using images from your set of film stills. Click on a film on these platforms, and you get some extra synopsis, and some cast and above the line credits, but mostly no reviews or reviewer's quotes.

Heck, Netflix doesn't even show the Rotten Tomatoes score anywhere. You have to try hard to even get to a details screen where you can see a few member reviews - and who knows how valid their opinions are anyway. Amazon Prime shows the aggregate IMDB score and customer scores, but you have to link away to even look at IMDB, and there's no RT link at all.  iTunes does show the RT score and does include the top four critics reviews. But even then, we can see that the majority of the marketing of films on the platforms is very limited.

And that's a problem for smaller indie movies. If you're a blockbuster or larger film, you can rely on your own marketing spend to gain awareness for your film. You can run that pull quote thousands of times in print and digital and try to get the word out. But for most indies, the majority of their marketing spend has been around their theatrical release and sometimes the beginning of their digital life. And almost all of this marketing goes into building word of mouth and discovery, so that someone seeks out your film, and perhaps helps it to land on the top ten on iTunes, which makes it get streamed more - because most people look on the home screen for their films.

But we have always hoped people would find our films through browsing as well, and might see the critics reviews, and maybe even a great pull quote and take a chance on our films. But that doesn't work anymore. And even if they heard about our film from its theatrical release, or elsewhere, they might be further persuaded to take a chance when they read a great pull quote. But that's not possible if it's not even there at the buying site. Few people are going to go look it up on your site, or in the NYT or on RT.

Now I'm almost ready to blame the platforms for removing the critics or reducing them to a Tomato score, but... they wouldn't have done that if it didn't work. They have more data than any of us can imagine, and if showing pull quotes sold or rented more films, they'd be pressuring us to get more of them, and would be displaying them properly.

Or maybe they do work. iTunes after all needs you to spend money and rent or buy the film, and they make a few of them available. Netflix doesn't care if you watch a title - it just cares that you keep subscribing. And just by having a good inventory of TV and films, you'll probably keep subscribing even if you don't read the reviews or watch my film. You don't need a conspiracy theory about lessening the role of critics to see why it may not matter to Netflix at all.

But it matters to us indie filmmakers. And it means we have to start re-prioritizing our marketing. Your thumbail images need to be that much better. Your poster design (and its pull quotes) matter less. Your marketing spend, especially on Facebook, should emphasize your best quotes even more. And for some people, they'll have to debate whether a theatrical run predicated on  getting reviews even matters for their film anymore - perhaps that four-wall or service deal money would be better spent on other marketing. Lots to consider in the digital age.

All that said, I think Rotten Tomatoes is not the problem. If you go to their site, you can access a lot more reviews now. But Ratner is right that our reduction of these reviews down to one score, and even worse - the cutting of pull quotes from online sites - is a problem.

Posted on 8th Jun

Panel at IFP Week: Social Capital

I’m excited to be attending IFP Film Week this week. I’ll be doing acquisitions work for Brainstorm Media and DIrecTV, and also speaking on a panel about social capital. Here’s info from their website, and you can click here to learn about other panels, or to buy passes.

Social Capital: You’re Richer Than You Think:

Social capital is the goodwill and excitement generated by your network of invested friends, family and fans. It can help your projects earn wider audiences — but how much can it do toward creating financial success? What are the practical limits of the word of mouth? Is social capital always necessary to create a successful independent film — or to be a filmmaker? We’ll discuss and debate the importance of social capital with some of the forward-thinking creatives who maintain artistic integrity while making the most of their fanbases.

Panelists: me, Dana Harris (Indiewire, moderator); Emily Best (Seed & Spark), Jon Reiss (filmmaker and media strategist).

Posted on 16th Sep

Vote: Two Panels at SXSW

I’ve been asked to speak on two panels at SXSW this coming year. Both look great and are being organized by some cool folks. SXSW picks panels (largely) through online voting, so if you think these are good topics, please click through and vote. While you’re there, check out some of the other panels and vote for them as well.

Panel One: The Key to Making Money with Digital Discovery

In today’s content oversaturated world, digitally released films often get buried so deep that audiences can’t ever discover them. How can technical advancements work to make the world of independent film a better place? How can filmmakers ensure their films are more discoverable and get audiences to pay attention? While there is no silver bullet to virality, great content isn’t enough. It takes resources both financial and physical, which filmmakers often don’t have access to. But with new tools emerging that apply discovery technologies to video – changing the way we find and watch films, and making lesser-known media tools more accessible. The future is bright for filmmakers who know how to marry filmmaking, social media, and technology. Join Jonathan Marlow, CCO at Fandor, an industry leader in streaming entertainment, and other thought-leaders for a candid discussion about video discovery and how filmmakers can make their films more accessible, and ultimately, more profitable.

Put together by the folks at Fandor. 

Panel Two: Didn’t Get In To SXSW

Didn’t get your film accepted into SXSW? Don’t sweat it. Every year, thousands of films are rejected from major film festivals, yet many still go on to become major hits. Learn how to turn a negative into a positive by making your distribution “Plan B” into your “Plan A”! A panel of industry professionals will offer their expertise on how to pursue alternative (and potentially lucrative) methods of distribution for your film—even if you didn’t necessarily win that big name laurel.

Additional Supporting Materials: http://www.slideshare.net/PRFilms/didnt-get-into-sxsw

Put together by the good folks at Passion River Films

I’m not on it, but I’m also a fan of this panel on subscription VOD. 

Posted on 4th Sep

Transmedia: Why I’m not Buying

My good friend Ted Hope recently posted a couple of blog posts about the indie/art world film biz, and how given that we live in an age of superabundance, we need to embrace new models. Specifically, that we “need to build extensions, collaborations, and expansive discovery nodes into your storyworld architecture,” and that we must “Show them ways that people can expand upon the narrative, where the background can be deepened, why people will engage deeply and often, and why they will feel they have a greater takeaway, a greater return, of the investment of their engagement.”

Really? And Really? I agree that we live in an era of superabundance, and I’ve given many speeches and lectures where I’ve addressed some creative and business strategies artists can adopt to get noticed and make a living in a time when everyone is an artist and over 40,000 films are submitted annually to film festivals each year. But while I agree that transmedia is one of those strategies, I don’t believe it is the only one, or even remotely close to the best one. Why?

Because I don’t want to be bothered with deepening my connection to you as an artist. I don’t want to see you expand your story world, and I don’t want to engage more deeply with your story. I just want to be entertained, or enlightened (or educated, or…) for some period of time. That’s all the pay-off I need. If you tell a cool story, I’ll come back for more. If you tell a certain story, it might lend itself to being serialized in some fashion and I might watch several episodes. Those few of you with a story that needs an entire story world and multiple platforms on which to tell it…I’m probably not that interested. Some people are, and if you’re an artist interested in this, by all means pursue it. But don’t forget, not every story fits this model, and not every fan wants to engage more deeply with all types of content. In fact, I’m willing to bet that the majority of your fans don’t care for it either. I hear lots of buzz about transmedia, but after attending over a dozen conferences about it and speaking with multiple “experts” on it, I haven’t seen a single successful model in the indie/art world.

What’s more important to me is that artists can now build a direct connection to their fans. Online web video artists, mostly working in serial formats but some expanding to long-form, have had much more success than any example you can point to from the non-Hollywood/Comic-Con world in transmedia. They’re the ones to follow.

As I’ve said before: copy Freddie Wong (but in your own artistic way) or Jenna Marbles (seriously) or any one of the next generation of YouTube stars. That will lead you to a better business model than deepening your story world. In fact, don’t even use that term, it’s so horrible, possibly worse than transmedia. 

Instead, focus on slowly and painfully building your fan base. You might also build a project that happens to have a film, comic book and genetically modified ear of corn tie-in, but that isn’t what matters, only the fan base does.

So, in summary, I agree with Ted that we need new models, but I think they’re already being built and are easy to find. Indies just need to adapt them to our ends, and that shouldn’t be too hard.

Posted on 31st Jul

Crowdfunding Projection Template

Thinking of launching a Kickstarter (or other) crowdfunding campaign? There’s a lot to consider – how much can I raise, what rewards should I offer, what shirt should I wear in my video? Too often, however, artists forget a lot of other details: fulfillment and processing costs amongst the many other factors.

Taylor Davidson has just launched a new financial modeling tool for anyone about to embark on a crowdfunding campaign. It gets very detailed – helping you estimate the impact of marketing, which rewards might be popular, costs and even let’s you compare what is going on to what you hoped.

I’ve used Taylor’s other financial models in my business, and I highly recommend that anyone considering a campaign use this template. It might help you plan for the unforseen, think of new ideas or just make sure you do it right.

Here’s the video from his site:

Posted on 17th Jul

Upcoming: Filmmaker’s Collaborative and Vimeo

’ve got two upcoming speaking engagements to promote. If you live in/near Boston, I recommend stopping by the Filmmakers Collaborative “Making Media Now” conference, where I’ll be speaking. There’s a lot of great speakers and panels, check here for the schedule. Here’s the description of my panel:

Panel: “Reframing Distribution: Times are a Changin’”
Back in the day (like four years ago) the film distribution model was easy to understand: find a distributor, and sell cable and foreign rights. Now we live in a Balkanized world with many more options, and risks. There are many alluring new ways of finding an audience, and the filmmaker has more control than ever, if only the clutter doesn’t get in the way. In this panel we will explore where we are headed, and how we can best take advantage of the new opportunities that are definitely out there.

Moderator: Garen Daly
Panelists: Anthony Kaufman, Brian Newman, Paola Freccero
Go to Speaker Bios

The next day, I’m back in NYC for the Vimeo Festival and Awards. There are a lot of great sessions, but I’m really looking forward to mine: “The Art of Getting Paid:”

“Yes, you create because you love doing it, but imagine loving doing it while being compensated appropriately—or even handsomely. Learn where the money is and how to get to it in this insightful look at the financial side of filmmaking through the eyes of fundraising expert and all-round maverick Brian Newman.”

They called me a maverick, I think I just speak my mind. I’ll be joined by a special guest TBA, and you can get a clue as to what I’ll be speaking about in my recent post about disruption.

I highly recommend checking out the schedules of both conferences as linked above, because the other panels and talks are what I’m looking forward to (oh, and the Vimeo Awards really, really, rock).

Posted on 5th Jun

Internet Censorship Day Nov 16th

If all goes as planned, I’ll be joining many others on Wednesday November 16th for Internet Censorship Day. That is, if I can figure out how to paste code correctly to this site…UPDATE: I couldn’t get the code to work. I stink, but I still support this cause!

What is it? Well, it’s a protest against a bill being considered in the US Congress that would be very detrimental to the future of the web. It’s an attempt to curb piracy, but it could have a much bigger impact, and it could be bad. I could explain it all here, but the campaign site does a good job, and the video below does it even better.

What this video and join the cause:

Posted on 15th Nov

RICKY on LEACOCK: Kickstarter campaign launches

I’ve been helping filmmaker Jane Weiner launch a Kickstarter campaign for her new film, a work-in-progress called RICKY on LEACOCK on the legendary documentary filmmaker. I’ll be posting a lot of updates here on the campaign – how it’s going, what we’re learning about raising money this way, other ways you can help. I’ve helped many filmmakers with Kickstarter campaigns, but this one is a bit different to me – I’m supporting her with my work and my donation to the campaign, not just because I like Jane and her films, but because I want to be a part of honoring his legacy – to documentary films, but also to the field more broadly and even to the “amateur” filmmakers posting videos online today. I’ll be writing more about this soon, but if you too are a fan of Ricky Leacock, please consider supporting this campaign, by making a donation on Kickstarter or by simply helping us to spread the word. Thanks!

Posted on 4th Nov

Having an (unintended) impact with a film

There’s often a lot of debate in the world over whether or not film can have an impact in the world. Well, today’s NYT shows the unexpected impact of the film Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi) on the upcoming elections in Tunisia.

Screenings of the film on a Tunisian television station have fueled a debate over religion vs freedom of speech, and many people expect it will lead to a victory for the more mainstream, but still conservative, Islamist party in the country. As the NYT puts it today:

“The episode began when a relatively small group of ultraconservative Islamists attacked the television station that had broadcast the 2007 film, about a Muslim girl growing up in post-revolutionary Iran, because of a scene in which she rails at God. He is depicted as she imagines him, violating an Islamic injunction against personifying him”

Public disapproval of the film has been strong enough to shape the debate over where the country is headed. As the article goes on to explain, it’s not that the film discusses other liberal values – people didn’t feel offended by shows depicting “racy scenes from French films or of couples kissing in public that might not fit with traditional Islam.” They were specifically offended by what they considered the blasphemous act of depicting visions of God. 

There seems to be much debate over whether the broadcaster purposefully showed the film to ignite tensions and stir debate over religious vs secular values, but according to the article, this has become a lightning rod issue in Tunisia.

Some consider the debate to be quite telling: “Some individual liberals observed with wry satisfaction that the film told the story of a supposedly liberal revolution that turned oppressive after Islamists took power in Tehran — bolstering the liberal argument that Tunisia’s moderate Islamists should not be trusted, either.”

I don’t know enough about politics in the region – or even religion in the region – to have much say in this debate, but I’m fascinated with how this little film can still have so much impact globally. Shows the power of the moving image – even if its not always in ways we expect.

Posted on 18th Oct

What I’d Change in Indie Film

Over at IndieWire, Ted Hope and Christine Vachon have been asking some questions about indie film leading up to their Masterclass. One of them is “if you could change one truly changeable thing about the film industry, what would that be?” I can’t wait to see all of the ideas, there’s already a few good ones in the comments, and they’ll be announcing the winner soon.

These are a few of my ideas for changing the film industry. I don’t submit them to actually win a trip to VacHope land (you can win a free ticket to their masterclass), but just to join/add to the conversation. Sure, they might not be truly changeable things, and I don’t have the money to make them happen, but they should be done:

1. I’d take 1/3 of all grant funding in indie film and re-designate it as funds for creative producers taking creative risks, to develop their next film. No proposal would be required, all nominations would be made by the crowd and grants would be decided by a panel of writers and/or directors.

2. I’d start a large fund for the support of artistically interesting narrative films that don’t fit any particular agenda. It’s too hard to get funding for a non-social-issue-doc right now.

3. I’d invest in IndieWire, specifically for them to reimagine what IndieWire should be today, given the state of the field and of current technology, allowing them the freedom not to worry about the current state of the market (advertising whims, Oscar campaigns, etc) and just focus on what the industry needs. Hint: We need more info that no one wants reported.

4. I’d start a large funding program for independent distributor’s marketing expenses – specifically, to increase their marketing and try some new things. All of this money might be wasted, or we might learn something about the value of good marketing.

5. I’d give grants to independent exhibitors to create a new, online social ticketing system that takes advantage of all the possibilities we see on the horizon for the next three years.

6. I’d invest in anything that the following people could agree on doing together (in alpha order): Chad Burris, Karin Chien, Mynette Louie, Scott Macaulay, Will Packer, Mike Ryan and Jess Search. They’d get $1M for two years start-up of anything that any 4 out of 7 of them agreed upon.

7. I’d offer a $5 Million dollar grant to any of the major film festivals in the world, with one condition – they get rid of their premiere policies entirely for at least three years.

8. I’d give every Black and Latin American female director who ever had a film accepted into any film festival a grant to make her second film. Too few of them get the chance, and it hasn’t been for lack of talent.

9. I’d pay a big lobbying firm to get Congress to pass three laws – 1) that the right of first sale applies to digital goods; 2) that all film companies must publicly and freely report all sales from all formats, not just box office results; and that we have real net neutrality on all devices, yep, wireless too.

10. I’d fine anyone who makes lists of things that need to be changed in indie film in order to fund all of these ideas.

Posted on 17th Oct

One from the arts – Jillian Mayer

Thanks to Artpapers Magazine, I’ve just discovered a new visual artist to follow – Jillian Mayer. I’m definitely a bit late to this game, but noticed that no one I follow/read has said much about her, and her work rocks.

Jillian is making some great art. It’s cool and popular too, but it still makes a statement. Check her work out. I’ll be following this artist, and am willing to bet she gets known in the film world before too long.

Three of my favorites:

I am Your Grandma:

Scenic Jogging:

Scenic Jogging by Jillian Mayer from Jillian Mayer on Vimeo.

How My Best Friend Died:

Posted on 11th Oct

The State of Indie Film in Graphs

I recently discovered Google Insights for Search. You can see how search for any term, or set of terms has changed. Wow, what fun can be had. Here’s some Friday fun for you.

Here’s Google trends for search on the term Independent Film. Not looking good:

Here it is for Documentary Film:

Here’s Indie vs Documentary:

Here’s Music Documentary:

Here’s a comparison of a few, including foreign film and French Films:

Note that if you type “social issue documentary” or any close variant, there’s not enough data to pull it up at all. But here’s some interesting insight – look how the trendy word “transmedia” fares vs Indie Film. Why…it’s just about as unpopular now!

What does this all mean? I’m obviously no scientist, but I think it’s fun to play around with, and I’ll let you make your own conclusions.

Posted on 30th Sep

Transmedia Activism and Docs at the NYFF

Looks like I’ll be joining a panel at the New York Film Fest this Saturday night at 7pm to speak about transmedia activism and documentary films. If you are in town and interested in the subject, please stop by and say hello (while asking a question in the Q&A perhaps). The event is in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater at 144 West 65th St, which is a good space for this type of event (seriously, it’s great for a conversation).

Here’s the description from the festival (more panelists TBA):

Session 2 of “Beyond the Screen: The Immersive Media Forum.”

Through the last century documentaries have played a pivotal role informing the public on issues of social and global justice and have served as calls to action, mobilizing citizens and leaders.  As filmmakers and advocacy groups meet on the fluid platforms of the web, a new form of activism has emerged, dubbed “Transmedia Activism.” This panel will discuss this emergence, and the role traditional documentaries and web savvy advocacy groups will play moving forward.

Beyond the Screen: The Immersive Storytelling Forum
Contemporary technologies have always had a profound effect on the way we tell stories.  Just as the printing press paved the way for the novel and television gave us the sitcom, so to the computer is changing the face of entertainment.  This is by no means a new idea – critics, creators, and audiences have been talking about the fact that the digital age is altering the traditional role of the storyteller and audience for some time.  What we hope to do at the Beyond The Screen is to move the conversation along, if only by asking one very simple question: “How?”

It’s a new age for telling stories and with it comes a new set of rules, a new critical vocabulary, as well as new models for doing business.  From video games with ever more realistic graphics and complex narratives to immersive worlds built atop our own that permit audiences to physically explore story in three living dimensions, a change is taking place.  Audiences are transitioning from simple consumers of entertainment into dynamic participants in their media of choice.  Beyond the Screen is a series of panels, presentations, and special events that seeks to draw together the makers driving these changes – the writers, producers, story architects, and designers in the fields of transmedia and video games – for a discussion of the state of the art as well as an exploration of the roll film has played in effected these emerging modes of storytelling…and how these emerging fields have effected the relatively new art of film.  Designed to be accessible to both active producers of transmedia and those just discovering the form (or forms as the case may be) for the first time, BEYOND THE SCREEN aims to change the way you think about storytelling – from how story is told to who is telling it.

Posted on 29th Sep

My Personal Kickstarter Policy

I’ve supported many projects on KickStarter, and I’m a big fan of it and other crowdfunding sites. I’ve shared my thoughts on it a few times here. I also will often blog, Tweet about or otherwise share links to projects I think are worthy of support. I’ve never personally supported a project where I didn’t somehow know the person(s) involved. Maybe we weren’t friends, but I’d met them at some conference or film festival, or had at least seen them pitch their project somewhere else.

I know many people support projects by people unknown to them, even people they’ve never heard of. I think this is a valid practice, but it’s not for me. My wife, on the other hand, has only supported one project and it wasn’t someone she knew at all, she just liked the thing this person was trying to do, but she had no account so I made the donation on her behalf.

Sometimes I support projects that are or have been clients of mine, or where I have some business relationship with the person, or have had something like this in the past. I try to always disclose this, but usually in a blog post, not on Twitter due to the 140 character limit.

I get asked to spread the word about projects all the time. Increasingly, I get asked by people I’ve never met, to support films by people I’ve not only never met, but whose films I’ve never seen. I understand the impulse – when spreading the word about a project, this is what people think you have to do. Cold calling. But I don’t think it’s the proper way to fundraise. If you want me to support your project, I’m simply not the kind of person who responds to a Tweet and then Retweets it to my (small amount of) followers. Plenty of people find someone who knows me and asks them to make an introduction. I’m not that hard to find this way. There’s a slim chance I might respond to a random email or Facebook introduction – with some explanation of why I might care about your project, but I’ll never just auto-retweet to help you out. Sorry.

I’ve helped many people run successful Kickstarter campaigns. We target and reach out to people who don’t know us, but we always contextualize the ask – “Hey Mister Blogger about topic this film covers, we think you might care about this because of X,Y and Z. If you agree, we’d love your support by way of spreading the word. If not, sorry to bother you, and we won’t contact you again.” Works much better than “Hey @bloggerpants show me some love.” What works even better? “Hey Jill, we met at DIYDays and had a nice chat in the hall. I noticed you know Ms. Famous Blogger, and I wonder if you could make an intro so I can explain this film I’m working on, and why I think she’d like to help spread the word.”

I also don’t think the few people who read/follow me would appreciate me turning on the firehose. Part of the reason I follow people and respond to their requests is because they curate what they promote. I do the same – I’m not spreading the word about something unless I know the people involved somehow, know their work and/or it’s something I’m passionate about. IMHO, this is how fundraising works generally, in both the old and new fashioned worlds, and more people need to realize the old quality/quantity argument applies here as well.

Why do I bother to write this up now? Because I can’t respond individually to everyone who asks me for help. As crowdfunding gets more popular, I am getting such requests often, sometimes several in a day. I’m sure people with more followers than me are getting deluged with requests as well. I’m sure each of these projects is worthy, and some might be 100 times better than what I’ve supported. But I support the person as much as the project, and now you know why I’m not tweeting about more projects.

I don’t automatically follow people who follow me online either, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.

Now…back to making my list of people to contact for my next Kickstarter campaign!

Posted on 28th Sep

How not to show a film

On Labor Day, my wife and I decided to finally go see Senna at a movie theater. We were just about to go see it at the Landmark Sunshine Theater, when we realized we could stay nearer to our hood and see it at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, saving a trek and supporting an awesome organization closer to us. I’d been there before for a panel presentation, but hadn’t seen a film in the new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (yes, of course, we’ve been to their other theaters over the years).

How surprised we were when we entered the theater and realized we weren’t getting seated in either of the two new, supposedly amazing theaters, but in the Amphitheater – which is basically a little room with glass walls and six or so rows of bench style seating with a gigantic tv screen in front. This is where I’d been to a panel, and the room works fine for such an event, but… we were here for a movie. What the FSLC likes to call a film. What they were, in essence, built to celebrate as an art form.

Senna is no ordinary documentary. It is (supposedly) a tour de force doc about a powerful sportsman in a sport that kinda demands the big screen (Formula 1 racing), big noise, treatment. Not something I wanted to watch from the comfort of my living room, or someone else’s for that matter. (oh, and btw, yes, I watch many films on my laptop, etc, but by choice, and at a different price point, and not at a temple to film, and…).

We reluctantly took our seats, it was about half full, which isn’t bad for a Holiday evening. But, due to a big design flaw, my wife’s feet couldn’t touch the floor. So, not only is this not stadium seating, but it’s not even standard theater seating, or standard…anything seating. She rested her feet on her bike helmet and we began debating our options – see this in a less than ideal space (to be charitable) or walk out and try to see it on a real movie screen in the future. Well, our decision-making process had barely gotten started when the usher came in to let us know the film would be starting soon, but there would be some light issues due to the design of the space and to let them know if it bothered us.

??

That was enough to get us to leave. They gave us a refund after pointing out that we’d paid cheaper – $10 instead of $13 – because of the theater. I decided the poor ticket seller had nothing to do with this absurdity and just smiled as I got my refund. We left. We fumed about the state of cinema-going.

What the heck has gone wrong here? How does a film society, not just any society, but THE Film Society of Lincoln Center thinks it’s acceptable to show a film this way and charge admission? I’m not going to bother to point out all the reasons this isn’t acceptable – I can’t believe that any of the cinephiles I know at FilmLinc would possibly think this is acceptable, and I’m sure they know the reasons why. I know that the current leadership wasn’t there when this theater was designed, so I’m not blaming them for not realizing that Mr. Fancypants Architect designed them a no-good amphitheater that wasn’t practical for showing films. But I do think all of them should take a little retreat, perhaps to a cinema like The Paris, and have a big talk about how they might better showcase this “important art” we call film.

I am guessing that showing films in the amphitheater is a purely financial decision. These new theaters were expensive, the economy is pretty bad and nonprofits always need a way to make more money, and I can understand that need, but this is not the way to do it. Frankly, I’m also surprised that any distributor would let their film be shown this way. I’m all for shaking up how we think of seeing films, and I think we all need to be open to new ideas, which is why I love the ReRun, for example. But this doesn’t feel like a bold experiment to me. It just feels like putting a film where it isn’t meant to go.

In all the reading I’ve done about the Center, I never read that the amphitheater was meant for showing films. I heard about it being used for talks, for special presentations and such. I could see it being used in any number of ways, but not as a first-run, arthouse theater. Give me some lectures, even with some film examples being shown. Give me screenings with running discussions. Showcase some of the great art-world films that usually only get seen in a gallery. Heck, I’d love to see something like The Clock in there (well, maybe not, the gallery here was more comfortable). But please, stop showing films like this, and if you must, please make it much more clear on your website that the film won’t be seen in a real theater so cinemaniacs don’t waste their time and money.

I’m off to do that tonight, finally going downtown to Landmark. I’d rather not. I am a huge fan of the FSLC and their new leadership and staff. I want to spend every one of my cinema dollars at their Center. I’ll still go when I’m 100% sure the film won’t be in the amphitheater, and I’ll go to that space for other, non-cinema, events. People don’t take constructive criticism well in this business, but if they read this, I sure hope they do this time.

(Photo from Film Society of Lincoln Center website)

Posted on 15th Sep

Home About » Our Clients » Our Films » Newsletter » Breathing New Life into Your (old) Film

I’ve long thought that people give up too easily on older indie films that didn’t break into the big time on the first go-round. Usually, it’s the distributors that give up, (not to beat up on them, but because many older indie films that one has ever seen are locked up with distributors, not lying in the filmmaker’s closet), but sometimes it’s the filmmaker not being creative enough with their older titles. I understand this – people want to move on to the next project, so spending much time re-positioning an older film may not be worth the time. But when you have a little success that first go-round, you’re well positioned to tap back into that fan base, and bring in some new ones, and noting does that better than an event-based screening.

Which is why I’m so happy that Milt Thomas is planning a 10 year anniversary screening of his little masterpiece, Claire. A very smart event-based anniversary screening. See, Claire was always an event-based screening kind of film. Shot on a hand-cranked, Mitchell 35mm camera in Black and White, Claire was a silent film only shown with a live orchestral accompaniment. This made for quite the magisterial screening, but it was also quite expensive to pull off. In fact, one very famous, major film festival turned down the film solely for this reason, but the film premiered at the Frameline San Francisco LGBT Festival and went on to play multiple festivals and cities. One of these was recorded to make a DVD of the film, but the real way to see this film has always been live.

Now, Milt is putting together an anniversary screening on November 3, 2011 in Atlanta, GA and he’s holding a very tiny Kickstarter campaign that will pay for the venue rental and for the composer, Anne Richardson, to re-compose the film for a string quartet, which will allow the film to travel to other venues much more economically. This is a very smart idea, and I imagine Milt can get a fair amount of 10th Anniversary bookings. I’m planning to support him, and to travel back down to Atlanta to be there for this screening. I recommend you do the same – Atlanta is great in November, and this promises to be a great event. I hope to see you there! 

Posted on 6th Sep

Social Media Vacation

Whoa, August caught up with me something fast. I usually take the month of August off from all social media. I’ve just realized that I broke that rule by nine whole days, yikes. Time to get off these interwebs. Why am I telling you this? Well, as I said last year, I don’t want anyone to be offended if I don’t answer them on Facebook or Twitter for awhile. I’ll be back after Labor Day and I’m sure I won’t miss much (things slow down in August, that’s why I picked it for this kind of vacation). If you know me well, or are a client, you can find me on old fashioned email until August 18th, when I disappear for about ten days from all communications while I take my real world vacation.

Last year, this little experiment led me to abandon FourSquare altogether, but I missed Twitter a little bit. I imagine that this year might cause me to go ahead and abandon Google+ early and will likely kick me off Facebook, as I get less value from that place daily. We’ll see.

I am never one to blog super often anyways, but if you miss me, I suggest you spend some time reading Donald Whittington over at “The Automat” for awhile. I just discovered him when he wrote a stellar review of a film I’m a fan of, and now I’m a huge fan of his blog. He wrote my quote of the year regarding General Orders No. 9: “This movie is a plea to everyone to start thinking, now, about what you want from living. What do you want from the day? Surely there is more to existence than scrambling back and forth in our cars like maddened human tumbleturds trying to figure out where to push all our shit. “

I’m going to spend the next month thinking about what I want from the day, without asking the internet to help me out. I suggest you do the same sometime.

Posted on 9th Aug

Edinburgh and the Future of Film Fests

For my money, there’s no better reading right now in the film world than David Cairn’s excellent series of interview posts on the Edinburgh Film Festival. You can read the latest one here, and part one and two here. I think this is essential reading for anyone who cares about film fests, the film industry, the state of and future of film going…or about the state of culture generally.

Why are they so great? Well, there’s been a lot of griping about this year’s Edinburgh Int’l Film Fest, but David’s series is going beyond the gripe. He’s interviewing several people involved with the festival, promising to also run an interview with this year’s artistic manager, and he’s not concentrating on the bad. For example, he starts by asking them to talk about their favorite moment’s from their history with the festival. The stories he hears are great, and tell us a lot about what makes a great film fest, as well as why people keep working at them. A few gripes do get shared, but what comes across the most is a great discussion about why festivals matter, what they mean to their local community and the film industry, and how that might evolve. I’m finding them a fascinating and much needed discussion.

What is most striking to me is the fact that I can’t imagine anyone in the US film news/blog scene doing anything remotely as important as this. Seriously. No offense to my friends in the film news space, but what has happened and is happening in Edinburgh is worthy of some serious reporting. Not just from the current perspective of “oh shit, this was a bad year,” but from the perspectives of: there’s great change facing many film festivals, what can we learn here?; Edinburgh has a glorious history, what did it use to do that we can learn from by examining the past?; How is film going changing?; What does it mean to run/be a film festival today?; and yes, Who is at fault and what can be done??!!

On that last note, can I just say publicly, since no one else is doing so:

Give me a f-in break people. Quit blaming artistic director James Mullighan for all the woes of Edinburgh this year. He may be a friend, but even if he was an enemy, I would point out that he only took the job some four months before the festival, he inherited many problems and the buck doesn’t stop with the artistic director. He had no time to do much of anything, and even less budget. As much as I loved Hannah and her predecessors (and am not pinning the blame to them either), I have attended the festival for the last few years, and there was a lot of (less public) griping going on about many of these same issues. The problems didn’t just start this year. He also seems to have experimented with some cool new programming that actually worked, as well. And last, and to my mind most importantly – the problems facing the Edinburgh Film Festival are arguably completely in the realm of the management level, not the artistic one, and I’d be willing to bet that ANY artistic director with less problems on this front could experiment more and honor the past more than was possible here. Let’s face it – if the festival is losing money, bringing in an artistic director too late and losing both big name support and street cred, the buck stops at a higher level. Without having met the CEO or board of the festival I am quite certain that’s where the blame should be placed.

Yep, them’s fighting words, but no one I’ve read yet has convinced me otherwise.

In the meantime, every film festival director and their board chair should make this series of posts a must-read for their entire staff and board. There should be a staff/board retreat dedicated to thinking about what can be learned from this debacle, and if you happen to run a film conference attended by many festival people, or maybe a conference for festivals…ahem…perhaps you should consider a panel about this as well.

In closing, so it doesn’t seem I’m wallowing in anyone’s failures and changes – I have loved the Edinburgh Film Fest since I first attended it. I’ve liked every staff person there that I have met, and think they are doing an excellent, hard job and took too much criticism this year. I think it can and will become an important festival again. Its problems can’t be pinned on any one person, but can be linked to leadership failures. I can’t wait to attend it again in the future.

What do you think?

Posted on 21st Jul

China Solves Piracy

I’m willing to bet that the future of film won’t be decided in the US or Europe, even if that’s the framework most of us begin with (us being my readers and me, most of whom are in the West). I think we’ll be learning a lot from China, where the business is booming, like everything else. I was speaking with some people well-versed in the Chinese film business lately, and they told me something interesting.

Piracy is rampant in China, so much so that the majority of their profits come from theatrical, because soon after it opens, the film is on every pirate network so there’s no ancillary business to speak of. This is the opposite of the US, for example, where the box office is largely a loss-leader for the ancillary revenues (its marketing).

This is a big concern to all of the producers here trying to crack the market there, but my friends told me it isn’t such a concern for the producers in China – they’ve come up with a model that uses piracy to their advantage – product placement. As much as 30% of their budget will often now be made up from product placement by brands who just want to have their product seen by consumers. The brands don’t care if the film is seen legally, or via piracy, because they just want eyeballs. Win, win for everyone.

I know a bit about the arguments against branding, consumerism and yadda yadda, but I think this is a business model we should start following more closely.

Posted on 29th Jun

Possible Media Futures…Redux

In moving my blog over to this new site, I looked back at my very first blog post on Springboard Media, way back in January of 2006, and was surprised to see that almost everything I wrote back then could be written today without much having changed. It’s also a pretty long post, it had been written originally as an essay for a Foundation, and it kinda set the tone for all of my future posts – long.

You can read the original in its entirety here, which includes the state of affairs as I saw it then and still see it now. But here, I’m going to cut straight to the solutions I thought we should focus on then, and I still agree with them now:

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
This is a pivotal moment in the history of media arts, a time filled with possibility and uncertainty, but most of all, promise. To address these challenges and to have the greatest societal impact, the field needs to think of innovative, transformative ideas.

Research, Policy, Advocacy and Education
There is great need for continued research, mapping, convening and policy work. The field needs the data to show the problems (such as lack of diversity), and the advocacy to ensure good policy decisions. There is also a need to convene around the multiple issues facing the media arts: What can be done collaboratively to broaden the reach of socially important media? «Note: This is largely being done now, one good thing.»In light of new developments, what directions are most central? Who is not being served? What can be learned from other fields? Last, there is still a need for education — of gatekeepers, of artists and of general publics — in the importance of media arts; in the value of media artists’ contributions to society; in the craft, technology and business of media arts; in its distribution and in media literacy. Through such work, the field can encourage broader support for and public understanding of the value of media arts.

Distribution
There are new models for dissemination, including alternative distribution and marketing strategies, new exhibition avenues, direct video sales and ever-increasing home video markets. Systemization of festival screenings, web-based networks and new distribution strategies could get the work to broader audiences than ever before. The field needs knowledge sharing — strategies, stories, case studies and experiments focused on distribution and dissemination. Citizens need assistance in building communal media experiences where individuals and groups can connect, learn from and utilize media for social change or educational purposes. Leaders in the field must think of what the public wants and deserves, and work together to make that happen so that audiences can find and use this important media. As a result, media artists will prosper, by finding new audiences for their work.

New Financing Models
The media arts need innovative funding models that validate artists, help them attract new sources of funding, and help them find and reach the broadest possible audiences. New strategies could be found in novel approaches to the venture capital model, or with open source and social networking advances. For example, an online, audience-driven fund for progressive media arts could enable individuals, foundations and investors alike to support a variety of work «We’re getting there». The Internet provides great potential to encourage individuals to become art patrons rather than mere consumers. Most of all, funders need to support creative experiments, where new knowledge and thinking may help expand the field. Many funders are experimenting with ways to get money, services and advice into the hands of artists. Such funds may come from multiple sources, but collaboration could be encouraged to leverage investments to most benefit artists and society.

Furthermore, boundaries between commercial and noncommercial media are disappearing, and are increasingly irrelevant to creators and consumers of content. Many people theorize that successful future strategies in media arts will come from combining the assets of the for-profit and non-profit sectors to realize both financial and socialprofits. This new space, perhaps called with-profit (as in social goals with profit potential), promises a rich field for exploration. What if with-profit organizations funded socially important work that will receive commercial distribution, thus reaching broader audiences that aren’t commercially attractive to the for-profit community? What if a with-profit developed a rights-licensing system that allowed creators and rights-holders to be compensated based on actual usage while simultaneously increasing public access? Perhaps the greatest potential for increasing the impact of media arts lies in with-profit ideas.

Conclusion
These potential solutions, while not all-inclusive, suggest some of the work that remains to be done. Society will benefit most from a multi-faceted strategy that considers these options alongside methods that are already working. Most of all, the field needs to continue to discuss the “big picture” and imagine possible futures for society. Every new technological advance in the arts has brought us closer to realizing the ideals of a civil society. Each time, there has been a chance to realize dreams —of technology allowing everyone to share and build knowledge, of a more democratic society where everyone could be producers, not just consumers, where multiple viewpoints could be shared and, in general, where the world could be a better place. Each time, such possibilities have been squandered due to a lack of vision about the future, the forces of greed, the power of the few over the many and the simple fact that technology never quite realizes its potential. Once again, society has been given a set of tools, none perfect, that can help realize our dreams, if we are willing to imagine the possibilities and act soon to ensure their success. All that we need is in front of us. Will we act upon it, or let this chance slip away once again?

Posted on 24th Jun

What gives?

Which would you buy?

Posted on 3rd Jun

createEquity Rocks…someone in film pls imitate

Ian David Moss of Fractured Atlas, itself a rockin arts group, has a pretty cool blog called CreateEquity. Every week of two, he posts a wrap-up of the latest news from the art world, which he calls “Around the Horn.” Here’s last week’s post. It rocks.

It sums up pretty much everything you need to know that happened in the art world recently – from new studies to new hires to important news. With enough info that you can actually learn something (unlike similar columns in the Hollywood Reporter, for example).

It rocks so much that it makes me miss having a similar service in the indie film world. I get more value out of this one column than I do from a week of reading every indie newsletter in existence. I’m too lazy, but can someone take the charge and copy/imitate this for indie film? Please?

Posted on 3rd Jun