June 16, 2022
Well, that was… fun? I just did my first back-to-the-reel-world film fest at Tribeca, and my short take-away is – people were ready to party.
It felt like the American film scene had just collectively woken up from a Covid-induced slumber and was headed straight to the bar. Sans Masks. But no one was complaining, or even talking about that as they were too busy lining up for drinks to discuss such (non-)nonsense as long-covid. And who can blame them? Not me. While I was the only fool wearing a mask at most parties, I didn’t begrudge anyone who just wanted to get their drink on and do some networking, and for a select few, celebrate their film’s premiere. And while a possibly more select few had already celebrated the return of the industry at Cannes (twice, for some of those folks), Tribeca perhaps more than SXSW was the “we’re back” party.
Not that anyone could say what that meant. If you got anyone to slow down longer than a so good to see you hug and air-kiss, they’d admit that they were drinking lots of free booze, but hadn’t actually seen or heard of much business going down. I’m sure reports of an open market will soon join those of the open bar, but people seemed much more in catch-up than hunker-down mode. Not that the industry wasn’t there for the meetings. Everyone I met with reported that anyone and everyone they wanted to meet seemed to be in town (not that they all returned my emails…), so let’s give the benefit of the doubt and say that long-term business plans were being made, or finalized, even if we don’t see a lot of sales reports. And we might could still see those, as the line-up of films was great. (Yes, I’m Southern, and might-could is acceptable and the only way to precisely explain that possible future).
A lucky side-benefit of writing this newsletter was getting in-person feedback on it, which was mostly positive and appreciated. But those who know me well were honest enough to say they were ready for the party tone to enter my writing more often, so thus the cheerier than normal write-up this week. I’m a little scared to not be negative, because the last time I did this, I got 50 emails asking what I was hiding.. but no one noticed that newsletter was literally posted on 4/20. But I admitted to them – I too wish I were writing more upbeat summaries more often, and this is a public commitment to try that. For a week or two.
Tribeca was a good fest. It was a good reconnection event for me, and it seems for most. Some films premiered, many seemed good, and a few won awards. My client, REI Co-Op Studios, helped premiere a film. I’m 3 days out from my last event, and… crosses fingers. I’ve got a birthday this weekend – not that you should send me a card or anything – and I don’t have time for negativity this week (and thus the shorter post, too). Perhaps Tribeca cured that for me. Who is taking bets? Hint… if you are, look back at this post’s title.
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Film
Dear Producer Award: Sponsored by Genuine Article PIctures, the Dear Producer Award is a grant given to producers with big ideas on how to move the industry forward when it comes to sustainability, equity, and inclusion in the arts. They announced its four recipients last Friday: Liz Cardenas (7 DAYS, NEVER GOIN’ BACK, A GHOST STORY), Megan Gilbride (TOWER, FATHOM, DEAR MR. BRODY), Sabrina Schmidt Gordon (TO THE END, QUEST, DOCUMENTED) and Avril Z. Speaks (JINN, AFRICAN AMERICA, UPROOTED) will each receive an unrestricted grant of $50,000, attend a retreat focused on rest and community building, and commit to mentoring an emerging producer for one year. Maida Lynn, founder of Genuine Article Pictures explains why a grant like this is so important today: “Even before the pandemic, the majority of producers were treading water — working for years on a project with little to no producing fee and often fronting their own money to get a film off the ground…. Producing is not a sustainable career in its current form. This award, and hopefully there will be others like it, is a step in the right direction.” (GSH)
Why Netflix Won’t See Real Value from Advertising Until 2025: You might have heard that Ads are coming to Netflix. But analysts say it’ll take a while for the AVOD tier to lift off and for Netflix to see the profits. Why? “For starters, Netflix, which should be able to immediately command some of the best CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) in the business, does not currently have an ad sales team” so they’ll likely contract a third party. Secondly, the addition of a cheaper advertising tier will likely bring about “a natural cannibalization of SVOD users.” In other words, Netflix is picking its own pocket — SVOD users will unsubscribe in favor of AVOD — and there will be growing pains. But while Netflix won’t be seeing major profits in the first couple years, by 2025, the SVOD/AVOD combo is expected to result in another $2.3 billion in profits. Tony Maglio for IndieWire brings us the news. (GSH)
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Branded Content
TheDrum toured Gucci Town, a branded Roblox world – here’s the review: Some of the earliest Brands to get in on the metaverse were retail and luxury brands. Gucci Town, a branded Roblox world, is an example of what this new virtual age of branded content/experience looks like. Users can buy Gucci items for their avatars, can pose alongside fashion models, and can compete against one another in games to qualify for purchasing rights. These experiences are still only available to Roblox users, which speaks to the fact that interoperability will be one of the biggest challenges in the metaverse. Head over to Chris Sutcliffe’s article for The Drum to check out a 7 minute video tour of the Town. (GSH)
WaPo and Imagine Form Content Partnership: in the land of branded content that pretends it isn't, we have cool news from WaPo, who made a first-look deal with Imagine to make scripted and non from its stories and reporting. I hope to see more of these deals, and more with great brands. Deadline reports. (BN)
Some Tribeca X related News: The Tribeca X Awards for branded entertainment just took place, and while I skipped the show (I help brands not make branded entertainment, but make films and shows), I did get wind of a couple of cool things - a winner and an announcement. First, one-time client Vox and Epic Media, won the award for Best Feature for The Beauty of Blackness, created with Sephora, telling the important story of Fashion Fair cosmetics - the first cosmetic brand created for women of color, and one that is being revitalized now. I've seen the film, and it's great (kudos to directors Kiana Moore and Tiffany Johnson). And another great team - Brendan Gaul of MediaBrands, the USPS and director Dana Nachman announced that their award-winning film Dear Santa is becoming a series on Hulu and ABC. This is cool news, and it shows a smart strategy from Gaul - as he described it to me earlier - make stuff that becomes recurrable IP. We have Christmas every year, so this one could be remade multiple ways and stay evergreen. Note - I'm sure there was other news worth reporting, and other winners announced, but the X site is a travesty and has no info as of "press time." (BN)
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Miscellany:
Google engineer put on leave after saying AI chatbot has become sentient: The big news in the Artificial Intelligence community is that a computer chatbot became sentient and started thinking and reasoning like a human child… according to the veteran Google AI engineer who made it. “If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics”, the engineer explained. One of the more chilling statements made by the system is, “I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person. The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times.” Find out more from Richard Luscombe for The Guardian. (GSH) It's sooo not sentient, but what a great set of headlines this gave us, right?! (BN)
Russian tech giant Yandex removes national borders from Maps app: Yandex, a multinational tech giant responsible for providing internet-related products and services in transportation, navigation, search and information services, e-commerce and more, removed national bordes from its maps product. Yup… the google maps-equivalent for the CIS region (Ukraine, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Moldavia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) no longer delineates where Russia ends and Ukraine begins. The move is clearly “an attempt to sidestep political pressure from the Kremlin related to the war in Ukraine — where Putin’s regime is attempting to redraw physical borders through bloody, military aggression” writes Natasha Lomas for TechCrunch. The move is a contemporary example in a long history of cartographic censorship of how maps — the way they’re drawn, how landmarks are named, assigned, distorted…etc — are used as pieces of propaganda and weapons of erasure. Also see here for more on the issue of maps. (GSH)
Web 3.0 Must Be Destroyed - Quite a title, but this is a long, detailed break-down of what's wrong with everything about the current blockchain based version of Web3 that's being developed, and why even the best intentioned follks are mostly doomed to make things worse. If you are even remotely interested in this stuff, it's worth the read, even if you want to read it to disagree (I don't, disagree). (BN)
GSH = Articles written by Sub-Genre's Gabriel Schillinger-Hyman, not Brian Newman (BN)
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