Maybe it’s the beach air. I’m lucky enough to be spending a month working from a guest apartment in Rockaway Beach, and the salt air seems to be making me more hopeful for the film industry. In spite of many signs that it remains a dismal business, I’ve been witnessing a lot of good things lately. Sure, I got a call this morning from a major streamer passing on a great project, but I also had two calls this week where we’re close to closing deals for two other client projects. I’ll take two licensing deals for one pass any day of the week. So, in the spirit of Gil Scott-Heron, I think I’ll call it morning, from now on.
Looking on the bright side of things, even in dark times (and these are pretty dark, outside of the industry) can be nice. Take those two deals I mentioned above – the market has been crap, but we’re starting to see movement again, and I am hearing the same tentative remarks from others in the business. Cannes seemed active, and everyone I know is already looking forward to Telluride, Venice and Toronto coming up this September for active sales and meetings (with some of us looking to Locarno in August for more laid-back business meetings, planning and some films, too). The market isn't back, but there is some movement, and that's something.
Multiple producer friends of mine have recently raised funds for new film projects, and some for slates. I’ve met with at least three new distribution companies that are launching new models (Jon Reiss interviews four of them here). Behind the scenes, I’ve had meetings with a few new businesses that are launching in our space, with new business models attempting to fill some gap in the field, and a few of them look promising. There’s buzz about both Substack and Patreon doing things for creators in the film/video space (see below for more on that). And Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler has dreamed up a new corporate model for artists called, appropriately enough, an Artist’s Corporation. In the brand world, for every client we have who is cutting budgets, we have two new ones who want to do something cool in the film/media space, and a few are even talking about collaborations (my dream), and/or ways to “save the field,” which is also inspiring.
These are just a few of the developments I’ve been seeing, and it seems that everywhere I turn, there are signs of people doing cool, new things and figuring out a path forward through the madness that we call the film business. That was also the spirit of the panel I was recently on at DC/DOX. The State of the Industry. While moderator Addie Morfoot started the conversation warning people they might need a martini and a Xanax, everyone on the stage was leaning into all of the good things they’re seeing, and finding hopeful ways to move forward.
Sure, there’s some bad sh*t going on, especially as it pertains to things like public media, or any mention of or attempts to think about DEI in the field right now – and those are serious issues (and just two of the many) – but even there, I see a few people plotting new models, or figuring out new ways to force these issues into the conversation. And for at least the rest of this Summer, I’m going to take all the inspiration I can get, and look at the good things, and help build upon those ideas. As Gil Scott-Heron also sang –
“Why should I subscribe to
This world's madness?
Knowing that I've got to live on
Yeah, I think I'll call it
Morning from now on”
I’ve got those lyrics stuck in my head this Summer, and I recommend that everyone adopt that same mindset. Or at least try it on for the Holiday weekend. Enjoy the Fourth of July, everyone.
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Filmmakers, Apply Now For Funding & Guaranteed Distribution: Kickstarter and Tubi have teamed up to launch the FilmStream Collective, an initiative that gives selected film projects funding support via Kickstarter ($10k) and guaranteed streaming distribution exclusively on Tubi for 3 months. If you (or someone you know) has a final or near-final feature film and is looking for a way to bring it to life and get it seen, you can apply here.
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Authors Lose Fair Use Lawsuit And What It Means For Movie Studios: Last year, authors filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, accusing it of pirating e-books to power its AI chatbot Claude. The court found that authors do not have the right to exclude Anthropic from their works to train their tech, however, the company will potentially have to pay damages of hundreds of millions for illegally downloaded work. This is an extremely important ruling as the “decision will likely be cited by all creators of AI models to support the argument that fair use applies to the use of massive datasets to train foundational models (Daniel Barsky, IP lawyer).” The film world takeaway: The ruling lends credibility to the notion that AI video generators like Sora or Midjourney AI models (that can generate nearly exact replicas of frames from films) will compete with major studios. In fact, both Disney and Universal are currently suing Midjourney for copyright infringement, and likely worry that the judges’ analysis from the Anthropic trials will shape the outcome of their case, broadly ruling that AI video generators “are simply distilling every movie ever made to create completely new works (Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter).” Check out Cho’s article here for much more detail. (GSH)
Substack Embraces Video, Creators Seem To Benefit: This past year Substack has expanded its video tools for creators and audiences with live videos, video posts, and a TikTok-style video feed. The results according to Subalytics (an influencer marketing platform), as summarized by Digiday’s Alexander Lee: “Among Substack creators with between 500 and 5,000 subscribers, video-heavy accounts grew by 47 percent since the start of the year, compared to only 36 percent for those relying on text. Among Substack creators with 50,000 or more subscribers, video-heavy accounts had grown by 11 percent, compared to 19 percent for text-focused accounts.” What’s more, many creators feel like there’s minimal audience overlap between platforms: Glenn Kirschner (85,000 followers on Substack) believes “Substack is an additive opportunity because the fans who tune into his regular live broadcasts on the platform represent a different group than the million-plus subscribers who consume long-form video on his YouTube account (Lee).” Alexander Lee’s takeaway: “The video opportunity on Substack — particularly for smaller creators whose subscription growth has been boosted by the format — could help the platform maintain its lead with newsletter creators during a time in which some have grown increasingly wary of Substack due to both its perceived ideological shift to the right and its monetization model, which some say favors creators less than that of other newsletter services.” (GSH)
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The Next Great Disruption In Media: In a previous newsletter, we did a little writeup about media exec Doug Shapiro’s talk at Futureweek Forum in London, where he discussed past and future forms of disruption of content distribution as well as the four big trends that dominate the media business today. Check out Shapiro’s recent talk at AI On The Lot called “The Next Great Disruption in Media.” You can watch it here and access the keynote slides here. H/T to Mark Stolaroff for sending over the news. (GSH)
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Brand Funded Entertainment
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The Playbook Is Changing: Check out Rob Sheard’s Substack piece to learn why he thinks at least half of Brand video/media will be AI-generated by the end of 2025. Main takeaways: (1) The tech and the infrastructure is already in place. Just look at what Google’s Veo 3 or OpenAi’s Sora can do, for instance. And note that 75% of media buys are already being run by AI. (2) The economic pressure is undeniable: It’s just way way way cheaper (under 10k) to produce AI-generated video campaigns than your typical media campaign of $500-2M. (3) Consumer behavior is shifting, with younger generations arguably caring more about relevance and authenticity over who created what. (4) Sheard speaks to Agency/Brand leaders: “Your creative department structure is about to undergo the most significant transformation….The agencies that will thrive are those reimagining their creative teams as AI orchestrators rather than traditional makers.” (5) He also speaks to creators: “This is honestly a gut check. The work that will continue to matter is the work that can't be predicted or reverse-engineered. The breakthrough ideas.” New creative skillsets include AI prompt engineering and optimization, data interpretation, brand voice architecture for AI systems, cross-platform content orchestration, cultural trend analysis and more. Lots of helpful tips and predictions for the now/future. Go give it a read! (GSH)
Creators Become Marketers With Open Call: Last Tuesday, YouTube announced Open Call, “which will let brands broadly request sponsored content from creators who are part of the YouTube Partner Program. The new feature is powered by YouTube BrandConnect, the platform’s marketplace for brands to discover and partner with creators (Todd Spangler, Variety).” How it works: “Creators can proactively respond by creating videos that match the parameters of the project and then share them with the brand. At that point, the brand that issued the Open Call can decide which videos to use in their campaigns. The marketer can then promote creator videos as “partnership ads” in Google Ads.” Takeaway: The relationship between brands and creators is certainly evolving. Are we going to see more creator incentives like this across multiple platforms and would Rob Sheard say that this what the other 50% of Branded content will look like in the near future? Read more about YouTube’s Open Call here. (GSH)
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