Slides from my recent presentation in Chicago for the IFP Chicago Producers Series. Only a few new things for those of you who have seen me speak before, but I always upload the slides so attendees can get links, notes, etc.
2. Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive technology and disruptive innovation are
terms used in business and technology literature to
describe innovations that improve a product or service in
ways that the market does not expect, typically by being
lower priced or designed for a different set of consumers.
Clayton Christensen via Wikipedia
12. Twitter Stats (via Twitter)
• 105,779,710 registered users
• 1,500% growth over the last three years
• 300,000 new sign-ups per day
• 60% of new accounts were from outside
the U.S.
• 600 million search queries per day
• A NY Times story gets tweeted every 4
seconds
22. Details from Jill’s Next Record website
• $10 - Unpolished Rock (but with potential) Level: A free digital download of the
album, when it's released.
• $25 - Polished Rock Level: An advance copy of the CD. Weeks before the masses.
• $2,500 - Emerald Level: Mentioned as an executive producer of the album -- whoop-
di-doo!
• $5,000 - Diamond Level: I will come and do a house concert for you. Invite your
friends, serve some drinks, bring me out and I sing. Actually, this level is a smart
choice economically. I've played many house concerts where the host has charged his
guests and made his money back. I'd go for this if I were you.
• $10,000 - Weapons-Grade Plutonium Level: You get to come and sing on my CD.
Don't worry if you can't sing - we can fix that on our end. Also, you can always play the
cowbell.
53. Transmedia
What it is: Types/examples:
Develop the story across multiple entry points Events
Multi-platform Games/ARG
Audience can become immersed in experience Interactive components
Deep audience engagement Graphic Novels
Encourages participatory audiences Online & viral content
Each element a distinctive experience Think Outside the norms - experiences
Story flows & builds rev streams
54. Transmedia
Quick thoughts: Some Experts:
Keep a mind towards audience dev. components Christy Dena
from the beginning
Think beyond marketing Stephen Dinehart (coined)
It’s not all about the film - extend the experience Jeff Gomez
Think about impact & social change Henry Jenkins
Not just games.... events, gallery shows, etc. Mike Monello
Some projects may not need to be a film John Threat
...or can become one if successful Lance Weiler
Transmedia can be simple Many more...
69. Next in tech?
Augmented Reality Electronic translation
Touch technology Virtual worlds
Geo-location Open source
Controller-less games Tagging metadata to clip level
Social Robotics Collaborative “cloud” editing
Online/Offline social networks Application Program Interface (API)
Film/Video/Animation Micro-projectors
Visual Search Quick-Response (QR) Codes
3D (& 3D Printers) Brain-computer Interface (BCI)
Laptop Quantum Computers What else?
70. Next in theory?
Climate Change Evolutionary Psychology
Bio-Engineering Molecular Biology
Genetics - Decoding of genome Nanotechnology
Quantum Physics “Beyond Standard Model” Physics
Wave theory Terrorism/Security
Network Effects Privacy
Creation of artificial life forms Apocalyptic Theories
Singularity Inequality/Great Recession
Artificial Intelligence What else?
72. The best way to predict the future is to invent it
Alan Kay
73.
74. Phonograph could be used to record the "Family Record"--a registry of sayings,
reminiscences, etc., by members of a family in their own voices, and of the last words of
dying persons. Edison, North American Review, 1887.
And lately this change, coupled with the decline in advertising, has decimated the print industry.
And now this is hitting film
We stand here at a moment with a lot of potential -there are many possible futures
We stand here at a moment with a lot of potential -there are many possible futures
but to understand where we’re going, we perhaps need to take a look at where we are now
First, this is all becoming more participatory, a conversation
we’ve all heard of social networking, of course, and the thousands if not millions of social networks
here’s an example of a filmmaker using it to their advantage - building community. note how they make it easy for people to take the content to other websites and blogs through widgets, etc. Notice how Vanishing of the Bees has a blog, a petition, twitter, facebook, etc. and a widget to take the content elsewhere.
the latest twitter stats
Importance of twitter (today) Fastest growing 1382% increase in one year, 42% over 35.
Zoe Keating has used it to amass an audience of over 1 million followers, and she now has a self-sustaining career. Notice here she is replying/thanking a fan who cued her in on how to watch some media. She’s not just working a one way street, she’s communicating with her audience.
zoe has built a fan base, that’s in constant dialogue with her. Because this should be your ultimate goal - not to think of building an audience for just one film, but for you, your career - people who will continue to follow you, be in dialogue with you and support your career.
Filmmakers are doing it on their own. Iron Sky example
Join community in multiple places, now have over 12K fans, and the movie isn’t even shot yet
also have people requesting the film through a Google Map mashup, and have over 7K requests before the movie is shot. On Monday, when I took this screen shot, the most recent request was from Downers Grove IL
and now you can too with crowdcontrols
Patronage – radiohead model, give it away but can donate to get more. Jill Sobule got her fans to donate to make her album - 95K
Here’s a blow-up of what you got for your donation
here’s a recent example of filmmakers doing this - cosmonaut example - one of the more clever uses of crowd-funding
cosmonaut example - here’s some of their merchandise, gives a broad range for support
Age of Stupid did this as well to much success and made a guide to it that anyone can download
and if you can’t build it yourself, you can use tools like these from IndieGogo
or from Kickstarter, where the Four Eyed Monsters folks are raising funds from their fans to build new tools for any filmmaker to crowdsource funding, screenings, audience building and more
But the conversation isn’t just happening through text, twitter and marketing. the conversation is also done through video
Here’s one of the most popular videos from YouTube. A relatively amateur dancer that lasts about 6 minutes. 127 million views, but there are multiple versions, each downloaded over 100,000 times.
And this doesn’t count how it has been virally spread and shared.
600K people have rated it, and 240K commented on this one posting. Thousands have posted video responses as well.
Let’s put this in perspective.
Spiderman 3, most popular of 2007 – 56 million. Pirates of Carrib 2006 – 50 million, Batman – currently about 83 Million
Avatar - may be north of 250 million tickets sold - but still
Vs 100 million plus of the YouTube dancing video.
If we look at the lowest rated of the top 100 videos on YouTube, it had been seen about the same amount of times as most hollywood films in a week
And Justin isn’t the most popular video online - this one is (trades places with Lady gaga daily) and that scares the bejesus out of hollywood
back to an old example - four-eyed monsters, they put out video and took it in as well - encouraging fans to upload video commentary
Here’s a recent mash-up of their video responses – they’ve built so many true fans that this video has been seen over 200K times, thousands of fans have added more footage and the phenomenon continues years after their screenings.
And they want to mix it up, mash it together and sample it and share it like crazy
Make their own versions, commenting on it and trade those as well
thruyou
Rip – a film on remix culture (and girltalk) encourages mash-up and remixing
and this to me, is it’s ultimate usage - the remix reviews of the Phantom Menace - single-handedly created a new art form AND a new form of film criticism. Lucky for you, he’s speaking tomorrow.
Now, this is the next logical step - letting people actually be involved in the creation of new work
Back to Iron Sky - they are assigning tasks, for participatory filmmaking, and have over 1500 people helping with that - participatory means creation as well
Lest you think this is a weird Finnish thing - look at MassAnimation’s Live Music - 58K animators fro 101 countries made a join animated film
As mentioned earlier, people expect their content on multiple platforms, they want to see it when, where and how they want to see it and they wanted it yesterday
They want it when they want it, from whatever portal they like and on whatever device they like, and they want it yesterday
They want to share it virally with their friends
and get it on mobile- one of the biggest trends recently and in coming years, which I’m not devoting enough time to today.
and they want it free, whether with ad support or through piracy
Patronage – “Steal this Film” donation model
Now has morphed into Vodo, to launch soon
and that’s the key to cross-media in this environment. It let’s the audience get involved across not just multiple platforms in terms of screens, but in terms of story access points. This is the next step in the evolution of content
Cross media allows them to become active participants in multiple parts of the story. It allows them to delve deeper into the experience if they so choose, or access it from their preferred medium. The idea is to expand the story line into multiple media. The Matrix is the most famous recent example
of course, Star Wars was doing it before
and their fans are legion, and very involved with every aspect of the story
The idea is to expand the story line into multiple media. having multiple story entry points. games, ARG, graphic novels, mobile, etc
source of image: http://transmediabroadcast.com/wp-content/gallery/what-is-transmedia-broadcast/transmedia_broadcast.jpg
a big one here is gaming, which I’m also not devoting enough time to today
Definitions of transmedia and examples/things to think about
More to think about and experts.
So, if this is where we are now....
what does the future hold?
to understand what might come next, we need to take a quick look at the past
how do we innovate for the future?
All of this stuff I just showed is great, but it is become repetitious - everyone doing the same thing - when the arts get stuck in repetition it is useful to look to the avant-garde
This was innovation. For those of you who don’t know your art history, it’s Claude Monet’s “impression:sunrise” It was the painting that gave the movement its name, which was a put down actually (looks like an impression of a painting). Now the Impressionists weren’t the first to innovate because of technology and theories, but we’re going to start with them. First, and most importantly, nothing they did was completely new. Many of the techniques you see here had been done before, but they were the first to combine them all together.
The first innovation was premixed paints in lead tubes. As Renoir said, without this new technology there would be no impressionism. You used to have to grind your paints yourself and keep them in dried animal stomachs, among other things, but now you could get outdoors and take your paints with you.
They also took the latest scientific theories of optics (divisionism especially did this), spectrography and the study of light, optical realism
this was also the time of the rising popularity of photography, but note that they weren’t using the actual mechanism of photography, but rather the idea of the realism it allowed, the idea of it. They were also influenced by the art practice of Japan, which was becoming more accessible and by notions of how to represent reality. As well as positivism and the adherence to the scientific method. All of this combined for important new art.
So, by combining the latest technology and the latest theories they got great art. This has been the history of the avant-garde. We see it not just with Impressionism, but also with other avant-garde movements
so if you take the typewriter, a mind-blowing technology when it was introduced
(this one is Jack Kerouac’s btw, not a surrealist, but cool nonetheless)
and add in one of the hottest theories of the time - psychoanalysis, maybe mix in the concurrent rise of the detective story, perhaps as seen in Fantomas series of films
equals surrealism - automatic writing, - Breton believed that the typewriter allowed you to let you unconscious flow more quickly and unimpeded revealing true unconscious thoughts. This let to automism in general with drawing and painting, where they too could lead to the unconscious
and when coupled with film technology....we got things like Un Chien Andalou -
Again, technology plus theory. There are numerous examples, here’s one more
what happens if we combine all of these new tools in our story-telling? what effect will they have?
what happens if we combine all of these new tools in our story-telling? what effect will they have?
I haven’t the slightest, the foggiest idea
That’s what I’m hoping that you as filmmakers discover next. That we, as a community, keep in mind
Add a note of caution//clarification - not saying this is for everyone, or that
we stand now at a moment of multiple possible futures; what it’s going to be is anyone’s guess, but if we look back at the history of technology, every new technology offered similar endless possibilities which were quickly cut down to one
the phonograph was originally intended by Edison to be participatory, not to just sell you pre-recorded albums. But, along came the men in suits and all of the future possibilities of recording were reduced to one - selling recorded music - in very short time
if utopian visions for technology panned out, Ham radio would have brought democracy to the world, allowing us all to converse, but that didn’t happen either
so this is my plea to you in this room
there are endless possibilities
We need to become actively involved in innovating for the future. If we are to progress as a society we need to embrace this change. We, cultural producers and arbiters, curators, exhibitors, need to lead the innovation because if we don’t, the wrong people will.
If we want to really think about the future of media, we can’t leave it to the suits.
Those most threatened by the disruptions of digital aren’t aging dinosaurs
they’re actually vicious, blood-sucking beasts hell-bent on staying alive and thus far they will use policy and their power to wrest back this control. We’re living in a wondrous moment of change. It can seem scary, but it’s not. What’s scary is the future that might be built instead of the one that could. So instead of endless possibility, we’ll get there version of the future
because all we’ll get is a fancy, internet connected TV set that allows us to watch any movie ever made on demand
yeah, it will really blow us away like that good ol’ memorex tape. and it will be TV everywhere
and we’ll be able to watch it all at once and comment on it and gossip about it with our friends via twitter and foursquare
and buy stuff
that’ll be just great....
and we can watch it on our Ipad, if we can get that newspaper out of the way
but that’s not the innovation we need or deserve
If all we get out of this is a fancy TV set, we’ve failed. If all we get is our indie films on Netflix, we’ve failed
We are in danger of what Jaron lanier calls “lock-in” where the future is governed by the rules of the past and can no longer be changed
We need to become actively involved in innovating for the future. If we are to progress as a society we need to embrace this change. We, cultural producers and arbiters, curators, exhibitors, need to lead the innovation because if we don’t, the wrong people will.
So that’s my challenge to you as artists - invent the future we deserve
So that’s my challenge to you as artists - invent the future we deserve
and tell me what you create, invent, discover or think about. Here’s my details