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 9th Apr

Oh, Really Reed

Jeesh, Reed Hastings, you can really f-up a situation can’t you?! WTF man, as if the whole recent Qwikster debacle wasn’t bad enough, you get the opportunity to clean things up a bit in Sunday’s New York Times interview puff piece with you and you utterly screw that up as well.

Ok, fair enough, you suck at what might be the most important part of your job – public relations, but you did make a pretty cool service. I’ve been willing to forgive you, all along, and I’m still betting your stock will rise, against most pundits in the film world, but… you finally lost me today.

Andrew Goldman, the NYT interviewer, comes down pretty hard on you in the interview. He asks some tough questions, and finally gets to the meat of his argument when he points out that not only is your streaming collection woefully inadequate compared to your DVD selection, but that you’ll be losing your Starz deal soon, which includes Disney content such as Toy Story 3. What can cushion the blow (to his son) of losing Buzz Lightyear? he asks. Your response:

“I watch mostly independent films. I’m not in that particular demo. I’ll send you a list”

Oh, Really Reed. That’s your answer?

So, you defend your current crappy situation by appealing to indie film? That’s pretty ironic, isn’t it?

If you love indie film so much, why do you keep cutting the deals you give to indies? It’s an open conversation these days that you’re not renewing scores of indie film deals. It’s an open secret that outside of a few select indie aggregators, you’ve never paid that much for them in the first place.That’s fine, it is a small market, but don’t act like that’s why you don’t know – as the CEO of a publicly traded company whose very popularity hinges on being a repository of just about all films, indie and Hollywood – some better answer to the question. Jeesh. Yeah, I’m Reed Hastings, so f-ng busy watching indie films that I didn’t realize we’d be losing Toy Story 3, and don’t know why anyone would care.

So, do you really love indie film, or was this your publicist’s brilliant strategy for deflecting the criticism? I can almost hear her/him: “If they ask about Starz and Disney, say you watch indies and don’t know about that. No one watches indie films, but they have stellar street cred. It’s almost like pulling out a f-ing puppy, you become criticism/bullet-proof. People love to support indie films in spirit, but no one watches enough of them to actually call your bluff and point out that our indie selection is decreasing as well. It will be brilliant.”

But it’s not.

Luckily for you, your real customers – the majority – care about Real Housewives and other shows they couldn’t figure out how to DVR, so they need them streaming on demand. Your core customers, the ones you built your business on and who watch indies and classics and obscure titles, don’t realize that you’ve shifted your tactics and these titles are slowly disappearing. Your competitors can’t figure out that having 10K crap titles can’t compete with a mixture of good big/small content (and can’t afford to license it). You can be comfortable in your ownership of this space. You don’t need to change anything. You don’t need to listen to your core customers. You don’t need to listen to anyone. You’ll just do whatever you want while people continue to pay up.

Nope, no need to be strategic here. Once you’re the big kid on the block, who is going to disrupt this situation?

Oh, wait. I’ve heard this story before. This might actually get fun pretty soon.

Posted on 24th Oct

FilmDIY Guide to the Interweb

Recently, I was lucky enough to meet Kobi Shely, the filmmaker of MacHeads, and founder of both DocMovies and FilmDIY. FilmDIY is a very filmmaker-friendly e-commerce site where you can sell your film online at any price you want, nonexclusive terms and get an automatic 70% return. His company also helps with some promotion and things like Facebook apps, etc. Kobi sent me this excellent video they made to promote the service, and it’s pretty smart. Check it:

What is filmDIY? The Filmmaker’s Guide to The Interweb from filmDIY on Vimeo.

Posted on 7th Sep

On Gettin’ One Over: Food Trucks and the New Ethos of Quality

Like everyone else in NYC (and SFO and many other cities), I’ve been enjoying the recent explosion in Food Trucks and pop-up restaurants. Near my office in Midtown, I can often hit up any number of random food trucks, with my favorite indulgence being the Daisy Mae’s BBQ truck near Rockefeller Center. On the weekends, I love hitting the Kelvin and Kimchi Taco trucks, usually at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market, and I really miss Veronica’s Kitchen near my old office downtown.

There’s all kinds of ways to look at this phenomenon: too many rich people in NYC and the hipsteryuppification of NY; entrepreneurial business endeavors; menace to existing restaurants and old style water-dog and pretzel stands; or proof there’s not enough real jobs for college graduates. I like all of these simultaneously, but what is most striking about these to me is how different the ethos of these trucks is to what we’ve gotten before.

If you look at the recent, say 50 year, history of food trucks/carts in the City, they’ve been about one thing, really – ripping you off. Getting one over on someone who needs a quick lunch for not too much money. Give em a f-in dirty water dog. Or a crappy pretzel. Or a stale bagel that’s more expensive and worse tasting than the one at any corner deli. The customer has nowhere else to go. F-‘em

Now, not every vendor actually felt/feels this way. Many were/are struggling entrepreneurs, often immigrants, who were/are just trying to make a living, renting their cart for way too much money from another boss. It was what you did, what was expected. A way to make some cash. The history of the food carts, and how the City (from the bureaucrats down to all of us) have dealt with them is too complicated to explore here, but I think we can sum it up as – barely tolerable food, barely tolerated by the authorities and served up to suckers of either the tourist or harried worker variety. But whatever the motivation, giving a customer something good, decent, that had real value has not been a top priority.

The new food truck phenomenon is completely the opposite. Good, usually awesome, food that people will not just eat when they are desperate for a meal, but that they’ll hunt down via Twitter and follow obsessively. The vendors are usually quite serious about making high-quality food and giving you value for your money. Many are overpriced – yes, I could never eat at Rickshaw Dumpling knowing that I can get a better deal in Chinatown at Prosperity, but here’s the thing – at least they’re making quality food and you can tell they enjoy doing it. They’re also, by the way, not limited to hipsters – the food truck phenomenon is remarkably diverse, with the annual Vendy awards consisting of Red Hook vendors alongside Belgian waffles. Most importantly, regardless of the truck, you don’t get the sense they’re just “gettin’ one over” on you.

This to me is not just a defining attitude of food truck vendors. I think it’s something bigger and it might even qualify as a generational divide. Up until recently, we’ve been willing to live in a world of “getting one over.” Everyone was doing it – from the food cart vendor, to the McDonald’s franchisee, all the way up to MoMA. Yes, even MoMA. Every frickin’ museum in this City, including MoMA, has always had a crappy cafe where they’d sell you horrible, overpriced food created with not one ounce of love. It was endemic and accepted. “Eh, that’s what you get” we’d say. “Suckers” they’d think as they served up another steamed soy burger. Gettin’ one over.

Yes, the new food truck scene is sometimes overpriced, but I don’t get the sense I’m being ripped off by a scam artist every time I visit one of these trucks. I usually have an actual conversation with the owner, who is sweating it out right alongside his/her employees. I get quality food I’d actually recommend to someone else, not something I’d tell my visiting relatives to avoid.

It’s not just the food trucks. I rode my bike this weekend to the Morningside Park Market to buy sausages from “Brooklyn Cured,” my favorite food vendor in the City (he also does the New Amsterdam Market). The guy is working his ass off, and selling a quality product at a fair price because he loves doing it. I’ll keep going there because of this difference.

It’s very easy to knock this all down and say – just a bunch of rich people trying to find a new version of “authenticity.” I know all the arguments, but I’m putting them aside for now because I do think there’s an underlying ethic of providing quality goods to the consumer that we haven’t seen for some time. Oh, we’ve seen lip-service to it, and marketing to it, but not much of the real thing.

We’ll see it copied too. It’s already happening across the board, and you do see it in all the “authenticity” marketing going on, as well as in the move to “high-quality” in other places. My favorite example is, once again, MoMA. They’ve gone upscale with their cafe and their restaurant. They have a fancy chef instead of someone more used to school-cafeteria cooking, some craft beers and what not, but they’re still “gettin’ one over.” The restaurant is under-staffed, the feeling is still one of getting ripped off and the quality of the artisanal snacks (and entrees) reeks more of “how do we suck another dollar out of this jerk’s wallet” than “how do we make this a better, more valuable, experience.”

Contrast that with a place like the Rerun Gastropub Theater. The seats and environs are decidedly less fancy than at MoMA, but I’m getting food, beverage and a movie all of which have been created by someone who gives a flying fuck about the quality of what they’re giving me.

That attitude is relatively new as a mass phenomenon. It has its problems, but I like it more than the status quo. I see this same attitude in many of the newer galleries I respect, the filmmakers and film festivals that I tend to like, and that, to me, is something I hope to see more of.

I’m sure people in the worlds of food, film, art, etc will continue to get one over on us (I’m lookin’ at you, 3D), but I also think many of us will want something better, and demand it. Artists who take this to heart will have to work harder, just like the food truck vendors, and have a more direct connection to their customer/audience, but the experience will be more rewarding for both of them.

Posted on 12th Jul

On territorial licenses and geo-restricting

We do a lot of stupid things in the film business to keep our old business models working, but to my mind lately, the dumbest one is the continuance of territorial licensing and geo-restricting. I know the reasons why these persist, and I also know that right now, we’re in a time where we can’t completely change the system overnight, but…

I recently went to Tel Aviv to be on the DocAviv Jury and give a masterclass. In advance of the workshop, the organizer sent me a stack of Israeli Docs to watch on DVD, ones that he received legally from the rights-holders by asking them if he could get them and send them to me. Ninety (90) percent of them wouldn’t play in my DVD player here in the US. I had recently traded my region-free player for a gifted Blu-Ray and didn’t think to check about the region encoding, but I shouldn’t have to do this. About half of the discs that wouldn’t play in my DVD player, would play in my Mac (oddly, I usually got an error message saying they couldn’t be played, but then they started up five seconds later).

This is insanity. I should be able to buy a DVD anywhere and play it anywhere. The inability to do so drives piracy, of course, because all of the films could be found on pirate networks with no hassle. I could go on and on about the idiocy of this system, but luckily someone else already has – over at his excellent Transmediator blog, David Wilson has summed up the problems nicely. I recommend reading the entire post, especially as to how this is now creeping into digital downloads and streaming (lesson learned???). What is his solution? Pretty simple, but I doubt we’ll see much progress anytime soon. From David:

“Here’s the mantra again: anything, anytime, anywhere.

If you don’t give people what they want, they will find an easier way. And, I’m sorry to say, pirated content is by far the easiest way. It’s easy to find with search. It’s one-click. It’s generally pre-formatted to the widest common denominator. It doesn’t have licensing restrictions. And, it’s free.

I don’t want movies to be free. But, it makes me angry to see them so difficult to get my hands on. Why can’t I simply Google a film that I’m interested in, click ‘rent’ or ‘buy’ and – boom – watch it straight away on any device I own? Why is that beyond comprehension?

I get angry when I think about this – not least of all because of all the time I wasted with region-restricted content – but because of all the money that the industry is losing to piracy when it’s within their control to do something about it. Studios are actually CONTRIBUTING to the problem. Their inability to collect revenue results in a shortfall to filmmakers. That makes me mad. It should make us all very mad, indeed. We are being shortchanged by their shortsightedness.

If we want to stop piracy, we’ve got to make it easy to get, easy to use and offered at an attractive price. Nothing else is going to work.”

Agreed.

Posted on 28th Jun

A brand new website, a brand new blog

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

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

Posted on 6th Jun