March 16, 2022
Bye bye, Vimeo. It’s been nice, but often frustrating, knowing you. But as the entire indie world will soon learn, Vimeo is not meant for you – or other creators – anymore. This week, The Verge reported that Vimeo is raising hosting fees for creators to astronomical levels (from a couple hundred to several thousand dollars), and people are leaving for YouTube. This couldn’t come at a worse time for indie and arthouse filmmakers, or for other creators and creatives who need an outlet to share and sell their films, because so many other doors have shut in their faces already, and it was just about time for the entire community of video-makers to re-embrace the service, and none seems poised to properly take their place.
There was a time, not too long ago, when Vimeo was seen as the potential savior of indie film. There was also a time when they tried briefly to be the next Netflix (see High Maintenance above). There was a time when they had their hands in so many parts of the indie and arthouse (and to some extent, even Hollywood) film ecosystem – from editors sharing dailies all the way through film fest submission links to sharing the film with press, and for some, even running their VOD options to the public – that if they’d stitched them together properly, they would have owned the entire space.
But Barry Diller (the owner at the time) figured out just fast enough that competing with Netflix was going to cost hundreds of millions to billions, which he didn’t want to spend. And the management who understood the film world all left the building, leaving behind a (good) team who needed to become more profitable than is possible, even if you tie together all parts of the arthouse and indie film worlds. So, they went public and enterprise.
Now, Vimeo is a destination for corporate video – “a B2B solution, not the indie version of YouTube” in the words written with a disdain so great you can hear it from current CEO Anjali Sud. Problem is, that’s a successful way to make a business that will sell to someone for millions and let the whole mess become someone else’s problem to shut down someday, but it’s also a way to make the most boring video business on the planet. Must be a great recruitment tool for talent – come make a B2B video site! – and if you ever knew the old Vimeo, it was a destination for some of the coolest folks around…not anymore.
It’s also a little ironic that it’s happening now, just as everyone is talking about the resurgence of the creator economy. I’ve written before that there’s a weird déjà vu to all of this talk, but if the future is going to be about creator’s owning their work, their audience and their futures, Vimeo has decidedly left that ecosystem and someone else is going to have to build it.
And let’s hope someone builds it soon. Amazon Video Direct is no longer accepting most documentary films from indies. Netflix, Hulu and all of their buddies (ha!) have all turned their backs on buying completed films altogether and have mainly decided that TV shows are the future. Most distributors and aggregators only see a future in AVOD and FAST channels- advertising, which doesn’t work for every movie. It’s gotten so bad out there that I’ve started advising many indies and my brand clients to re-embrace the old DIY culture and release their films to their audiences themselves, using service deals and services such as Vimeo – the creator economy is the future! And a necessity! … but they just killed that idea.
Question is – is the creator economy the future of content, or is the future just more enterprise video? We may have our answer.
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Film
TikTok Partners with Cannes: Cannes has announced a partnership with TikTok, which is about damned time. Variety has the news, and while this will surely be gimmicky, we need more of these partnerships to keep bringing in younger and wider - and hopefully more diverse - audiences to the movies.
There's Gold in them Hills: This was going to be the basis of this week's main article, but then the Vimeo news hit. Vimeo has given up on creators, and AMC Theaters has given up on... theaters. And movies. They've gone into mining. There's lots of takes on this one, but bottom line is - AMC will soon become a weird but successful conglomerate known for nothing to do with movies, and people won't even wonder what the C in AMC once stood for in twenty years or so. Kinda like WPP (wire and plastic products) went from wire baskets to advertising, and is slowly on its way out the door. Send your kids to film school... there's gold in them hills.
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Branded Content
 Brand Storytelling 2022 Brand Film Award Recipients: The folks at Brand Storytelling launched their inaugural showcase/fest and awards this year. They were supposed to be held in person at Sundance, but alas Covid had other plans for us. But they went online and the judges have announced the winners. Take a look at their site for the full list of winners and nominees. There were many great awards, but I'll give just one shout-out to the Grand Jury Prize which went to ‘Learning to Drown’ from The North Face, directed by Ben Knight. Some words from the organizers:"Receiving the highest praise from the selection committee, ‘Learning to Drown’ is a thoughtful and captivating exploration of what it looks like to be engaged in a battle with mental health, set against the backdrop of an extreme sport. Legendary snowboarder and subject of the film Jess Kimura accepted the award, giving a touching tribute to her late partner Mark Dickson and his mother. Her ability to be so open about the difficulty of grappling with mortality and lost love set the film apart from the field, rightly earning it the honor of the Grand Jury Prize." You can also watch the film at the link. (BN)
Gaming platform The Sandbox and NFT project World of Women collaborate, revealing metaverse opportunities for brands: Female artists make up less than 16% of the NFT art market and account for only 5% of NFT sales, according to a report by Art Tactic. That’s why World of Women (WoW), an NFT-focused community and gaming platform The Sandbox announced a 5-year partnership to bring crypto education to women, bolster the metaverse ecosystem by providing financial backing to digital artists, and teach creators how to create and participate in NFT auctions. Founded in 2011, The Sandbox allows players to create NFTs and inhabit a virtual world where their avatars can engage with other players as well as with brands (Gucci acquired Sandbox ‘land’ just a few weeks ago). Zofia Zweieglinska for Glossy explains that brands interested in social impact might consider entering the metaverse: “With crypto’s decentralized format and the profitable NFT space, the field is well suited for values-and cause-led projects” like WoW and Sandbox’s. (GSH)
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Miscellany:
 Austin-Based Artist Combats Gentrification With Immersive AR Experience at SXSW: “What Once Was” is an Augmented Reality project that debuted at SXSW that addresses gentrification — specifically, the loss of local businesses and its impact on the community — in Austin, Texas. The AR experience “is activated by a QR code that takes users on a visual tour to see what once existed at their exact location while also encouraging people to shop local, BIPOC-owned establishments to protect the culture and community.” Check out the article for a couple videos on how the experience actually works, and to learn more about how AR can be harnessed for storytelling and for social impact. Adweek’s Natalie Venegas has the story. (GSH)
‘Misinformation on TikTok is a whole different beast’: How publishers are tackling the Ukraine-Russia war disinformation problem on TikTok: Misinformation of TikTok spreads like wildfire, and its distorting public perception on the Russia-Ukraine war in potentially dangerous ways. Publishishers are struggling to keep up. Christiaan Triebert, on the visual investigations team at The New York Times, explains that part of the problem is that it’s much more difficult to make posts debunking the original fake/doctored video go viral, since they’re generally less interesting to look at. It’s also hard to dispute false claims when you have to do so in the (often chaotic and rowdy) comment section, where you can’t post information other than text. Solutions Publishers are implementing include: (1) Not posting or reposting viral videos, especially those coming from user-generated content from the platform; (2) Creating TikTok videos of their own to combat misinformation (seems like bailing out water with a leaky bucket, no?); (3) Keeping high verification standards. The issue is that some projects can take half a day to determine their legitimacy. “You have to balance it with how important the news value [would] be of this video if you’re going to spend more than an hour on it”, Triebert explains.
What I think: TikTok’s algorithm should probably favor breaking news over unverified, user-generated content when the stakes are so high. P.S. I was on TikTok recently and saw a video of a soldier attempting to shoot down a helicopter with an RPG. It ended up being a video game, though if I hadn’t done some digging through the comments I’d have been fooled. Kayleigh Barber for Digiday has the news. (GSH)
Watch: Unlocking the Metaverse: Click this link to check out a really cool discussion with metaverse pioneers on how brands can become major players in virtual worlds. Why is getting started difficult? It’s as uncertain as the Wild West… there’s significant risk and brands don’t want to get it wrong. Though Epic Games’ CEO said the metaverse will become a multitrillion dollar market, so brands that get in early and do it right will strike gold. Topics of conversation include metaversal commerce, NFTs — who are they for and their impact, safety in the metaverse, and more. Garett Sloane for AdAge bring us the news. (GSH)
GSH = Articles written by Sub-Genre's Gabriel Schillinger-Hyman, not Brian Newman (BN)
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