Video: Forecasting the Future of Public Media, from Silverdocs

Pat Aufderheide, the brainiac who runs the Center for Social Media at American University, put together a fun panel at Silverdocs last month to try to forecast the future of public media. The video is now available here. Responding to Pat's scary/fascinating/hopeful scenarios for the next five years were:

- John Boland, chief content officer, PBS
- Andy Carvin, social media strategist, NPR
- Doug Craig, senior vice president, home entertainment, Discovery Communications
- Paco de Onís, producer, Skylight Pictures
- Jacquie Jones, executive director, National Black Programming Consortium
- Scott Kirsner, editor, CinemaTech, and contributing writer, Variety
- Alyce Myatt, executive director, Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media
- Marita Rivero, vice president and general manager, Radio and Television, WGBH

The video below is the first segment... not sure if the other segments will play automatically... but the entire session ran about 90 minutes. That should supply plenty of Holiday Weekend Viewing Pleasure.

Can Yoostar Spark a Movie Karaoke Craze?

Next month, Yoostar will start selling a $169 system that includes a camera, green screen, and software that will put you into well-known movie scenes. Once the automagic compositing is done, you can share the resulting video with friends on Facebook or other sites. (It's like blending the offline ego trip of karaoke with the online ego trip of social networking!)

From Variety's coverage:

Five studios -- Paramount, Universal, MGM, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate -- have partnered with the company, as have the National Basketball Assn. and Sesame Workshop's "Sesame Street" franchise. The package will ship with 14 clips (11 from films, one from "Sesame Street" and two "moving backgrounds," which allow users to improvise a scene).

Included are single scenes from pics as old as "Double Indemnity" (1944) and "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) and as recent as 2006's "Rocky Balboa" and "Employee of the Month." The original "Terminator" and "Beverly Hills Cop 2" are also in the starter pack.

While it resists being called a game, YooStar is relying on the same good will that consumers have shown the vidgame industry for success. The service carries a pricetag many may consider steep in the current economy. Additional scenes via download are priced between 99¢ and $3.99. (The company hopes to have 200 downloadable scenes available at launch.)

(The game Rock Band, incidentally, has sold more than 40 million song downloads since its release -- so this actually could be an interesting new revenue stream for rights-holders... if it takes off.)

Forbes has more coverage. Here are two videos, the first a demo of the system, and the second a look at what the results can look like, starring Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association.

Weekend Reading: Making $19,000 on Twitter, Broderick's Distribution Bulletin, Finding Your Built-In Audience, Gigantic Goof

Some stuff worth reading this weekend...

- Mike King's blog on the music business has this incredible post about how Amanda Palmer, a member of the band Dresden Dolls, earned $19,000 on Twitter in ten hours.

- Peter Broderick's latest distribution bulletin focuses on Timo Vuorensola, the Finnish filmmaker and crowd-sourcing pioneer, now working on 'Iron Sky.' It also includes a link to the complete Vuorensola interview from 'Fans, Friends & Followers.' You can subscribe to Peter's distribution bulletin via e-mail right here.

- Chris Thilk at Movie Marketing Madness riffs on and adds to a post I wrote earlier this month about how filmmakers should approach the challenge of building an online audience. It's great stuff...

- There is apparently some new online marketplace for indie films called Gigantic, according to Variety. The geniuses behind this service, unfortunately, don't own the domain Gigantic.com and also don't show up when you search for Gigantic. I'm sure it will be an astounding success. Go check it out (if you can find it, put a link in the comments.)

Netflix vs. Redbox

Interesting article in yesterday's New York Times about the growing competition between Netflix and Redbox, the DVD-rental kiosk business that is owned by Coinstar.

Amazing facts: a Redbox kiosk stocks 200 titles (mostly new releases). They have more than 15,400 kiosks operating today, and are adding one new kiosk every hour. The president of Redbox is an ex-Netflix executive, Mitch Lowe.

I see Redbox's kiosks threatening local video stores more than Netflix...given that you still have to pay a $1 fee for every day the movie is late... and given that renting from Redbox, like the video store, requires a trip in the car (rather than just a trip to the mailbox.) Netflix is auto-magic; Redbox requires effort. (Not to mention Netflix's movie streaming service, which is pretty solid -- a good way to either sample movies you might want to watch on DVD, or watch entire movies if you don't care that much about resolution.)

But I'm surprised by some of the titles Redbox carries, like 'Waltz with Bashir,' 'W,' 'Religulous,' and 'Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.' You can also reserve a DVD on the Web site, to make sure it's still available at your closest kiosk when you arrive.

Have you tried Redbox yet? Do you use it regularly? What's the experience like?

(Update: The Wall Street Journal just posted a great story about Netflix's strategy that references Redbox.)

Keynote at LA Film Fest's Financing Conference: Endgame Entertainment CEO & Director James Stern

The LA Film Festival's Financing Conference started this morning with a great keynote from James Stern, CEO of Endgame Entertainment, and director of the recent doc 'Every Little Step.' IndieWire has the full text of his address, but here are four big ideas that stuck with me -- along with a ten-minute audio clip where Stern talks about niche marketing, 'the App Store effect,' handheld devices, and turning your film into an impulse buy.

1. In a world where millions of people will be accustomed to making instant impulse purchases of movies (through rental or download services on laptops, TVs, and mobile phones), the economics of making indie films could improve. Pricing will be key. People may pay $50 to watch a big-budget, well-marketed movie the weekend it is released in HD, in the comfort of their home. But $3 or $5 may be the right price if you're trying to get someone to sample something new, edgy, challenging, or independent.

2. Finding the target groups that can help start a groundswell around your movie is important. Stern mentioned a few films that have done this well: his theater doc 'Every Little Step' (16 million people have seen 'A Chorus Line' on Broadway), Coraline (they targeted knitting and sewing enthusiasts, because of the film's handmade look), and 'Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill' (bird lovers.)

3. Telling a surprising, remarkable story is much more important than production values. Outside of LA, who talks about an amazing dolly shot as they're leaving the theater? Regular people talk about characters and performances and plot.

4. Short form content is an area of great opportunity. Think about stories that can be consumed episodically, in small bites, and also potentially assembled into a longer 60-minute or 90-minute package. Stern said he expects to see more hit web series spawning movies and TV shows.

The audio:

Here's the MP3 file, or just click play below.

The Second Most Important Question a Filmmaker Can Ask

I had some great conversations with documentary filmmakers earlier this week at SilverDocs, and look forward to more stimulating debate at the LA Film Fest's Financing Conference tomorrow.

At SilverDocs, I suggested that there are two important questions filmmakers need to ask during the process of making a film. Filmmakers already ask the first one, constantly: will you give me money to help make my movie?

But the second one -- just as important -- isn't one that most filmmakers know about, or ask often enough.

Here it is: what groups, online communities, blogs, Web sites, or non-profits do you think would be interested in this film?

I think you should ask that of everyone you meet: your cinematographer ... your investors ... your screenwriter ... your prop master ... everyone you interview for a documentary. And keep a list of their answers.

You will discover that there are magazines, blogs, fan communities, and organizations with millions of members that you should build relationships with. Let them know what you are working on. Get them (and their audiences) involved in some way -- as you are making the movie. Give them sneak peeks as you are in post-production. Give them a trailer or early cut to show at their annual convention. Enlist their help in spreading the word once you're on the festival circuit or in theatrical release. Do ticket and DVD give-aways to get their communities buzzing.

You ought to be asking this second question throughout the process of making your movie because that will help you discover who the most powerful taste-makers are, online and off. People you encounter who know these bloggers and publishers and non-profit presidents will make introductions to them for you. That's something that no amount of Googling during the post-production phase can do, unfortunately.

What's the benefit of all this? Rather than building a great Web site and then trying desperately to get people to come to it, you'll have created powerful connections to people who already have an audience, and can tell that audience about your project.

There would be no movie if you weren't good at asking question #1: will you give me money?

And there won't be much of an audience if you aren't good at asking question #2.

(Of course, these two vital questions pertain to the business of making and marketing movies. I acknowledge that when it comes to the art of cinema, there are lots of important questions, starting with, "What do I need to do to tell a great story?")

Two from the LA Times

Two pieces on the digital media future that ran in the LA Times this week:

'Hollywood hits the stop button on high-profile Web video efforts' and 'Digital technology and dollar signs' (an op-ed piece I wrote.)

From the first piece, by Ben Fritz and Dawn Chmielewski:

Conceived with great fanfare, big media's attempt over the last two years to capitalize on the Internet video phenomenon embodied by YouTube and "Saturday Night Live" digital shorts has fallen victim to recession-triggered cuts and inflated expectations about the advertising revenue they would command.

"It's very similar to what happened in '99 and 2000, where everyone saw gold in the hills," said Mika Salmi, the former head of digital media for MTV Networks and now a technology venture capitalist, in reference to the first dot-com boom. "The reality is that it's much harder to make money than everyone thought."

It mentions the recent shut-down of 60Frames Entertainment, Disney's Stage 9 Digital studio, and earlier failures like NBC's DotComedy Web site and SuperDeluxe.

Meanwhile, in my piece, I argue that perhaps Hollywood hasn't been experimental enough with the Web, or taken users' behavioral changes seriously enough. (The top talent in Hollywood still wants to make feature-length, big budget content for cinemas, I'd argue...not short clips for mobile phones.)

From that piece:

Many in Hollywood still deride the wacky, user-generated videos that occasionally turn into viral hits on YouTube, the top website for video viewing. And it's true that one of the most-watched videos ever uploaded to the site is titled "Charlie bit my finger -- again!"

But a number of young creators -- many of them working outside of Hollywood's orbit -- have been feverishly experimenting with new ways to tell stories and generate revenue. An office worker in Connecticut created the catty entertainment commentary show "What the Buck" on YouTube, and suddenly found he was making more from the site's "partner program," which offers creators a cut of ad revenue, than he was at his desk job, which he promptly quit. Lance Weiler accents his suspense films with cellphone and Web-based "alternate reality games" that enable players to explore the story and interact with characters after they've left the theater. Robert Greenwald, a Culver City-based documentarian, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars online to support his left-leaning films and Internet videos on such topics as the mortgage crisis and the war in Afghanistan. And Gregg and Evan Spiridellis are building a new kind of animation studio in Venice, where they produce a series of viral videos about current events and politics, and sell subscriptions to a vast collection of customizable digital greeting cards. This month, they'll debut their latest video for President Obama at the Radio and TV Correspondents Assn. Dinner in Washington.

Business models for content on the Internet are still evolving. But it's already becoming clear that $100-million movies like "Land of the Lost," or even $10-million independent films, may not represent the future of the industry. And new technologies like YouTube, the iPhone and next-generation gaming consoles are opening up all sorts of new, creative possibilities. The artists and business people who will succeed in this new environment are those who are paying attention to the changing behaviors and tastes of this new digital audience -- rather than trying to ignore them or, worse, explaining why they are wrong.

Your thoughts?