Recomendados
Recomendados
Mais conteúdo relacionado
Semelhante a R. miller trt conference presentation 2015
Semelhante a R. miller trt conference presentation 2015 (20)
Último
Último (20)
R. miller trt conference presentation 2015
- 1. MASS MEDIA AND MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: THE MISMATCH AND WHY IT MATTERS Russell Miller Wonderreel New York, NY, USA 4th TRT Children’s Media Conference Istanbul, November 2015
- 2. • MASS MEDIA: CHILDREN AS CONSUMERS • THE CHALLENGE OF QUALITY CHILDREN’S MEDIA • MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: WHY ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL • MOLECULAR MEDIA: CHILDREN AS PEOPLE • AN INVITATION MASS MEDIA AND MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: THE MISMATCH AND WHY IT MATTERS
- 3. MASS MEDIA: CHILDREN AS CONSUMERS
- 4. MASS MEDIA: CHILDREN AS CONSUMERS
- 5. MASS MEDIA: CHILDREN AS CONSUMERS
- 6. MASS MEDIA: CHILDREN AS CONSUMERS
- 7. MASS MEDIA: CHILDREN AS CONSUMERS
- 8. MASS MEDIA: CHILDREN AS CONSUMERS
- 9. THE CHALLENGE OF QUALITY CHILDREN’S MEDIA Who will tell the stories to our children and for what underlying purpose? How can we assure the survival of alternative perspectives? What creative sources and resources can provide what mix of content that flows along the ‘electronic superhighway’ into every home?
- 11. Limited opportunities …and high opportunity cost The drive for ever flashier productions High economic costs of development and production Career paths that depend on the above Institutions built to support the above THE CHALLENGE OF QUALITY CHILDREN’S MEDIA: CHALLENGES TO MASS MEDIA CREATORS
- 12. Consumer “insights” —the anxiety of now Developmental psychology —slow, steady research into the what, when, and how of children’s thoughts and feelings SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE THE CHALLENGE OF QUALITY CHILDREN’S MEDIA:
- 13. MASS MEDIA AND MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: THE MISMATCH AND WHY IT MATTERS
- 14. How children think Core emotional challenges The construction of a life narrative The resulting diversity of interests New forms of social experience MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: WHY ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL
- 15. Conservation Multiple perspectives Overlapping social roles Decentering MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: WHY ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL THINKING
- 16. Competence: a pleasure & a concern Industry: mastering new skills vs. Inferiority: feeling failure or incompetence MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: WHY ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL PERSONAL CHALLENGE
- 17. Expectations, roles and social comparison Competition and cooperation Inclusion and exclusion Gender awareness Grownups count very much MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: WHY ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL SOCIAL RELATIONS
- 18. Awareness of oneself and others as both continuous and changing. Episodic autobiographical memories Autonoetic consciousness MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: WHY ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL SELF IN THE BRAIN
- 19. • sports • video games • music • science • clothes Fewer than 10% of topics averaged “don’t like” or“don’t care” 121 distinct interests, including • religion • cooking • fishing • reading • TV MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: WHY ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL
- 20. Tremendous diversity of interests New experiences of social relationship Awareness of multiple perspectives and dimensions Competence: a pleasure and a concern Life as an ongoing narrative MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: TAKEAWAYS FOR CREATORS
- 21. MOLECULAR MEDIA
- 22. MOLECULAR MEDIA: CHILDREN AS PEOPLE
- 23. MOLECULAR MEDIA: CHILDREN AS INDIVIDUALS
- 24. The self as both continuous and changing. RESEARCH, AUGUST 2014, SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY MOLECULAR MEDIA: CHILDREN AS PEOPLE
- 25. MOLECULAR MEDIA: CHILDREN AS INDIVIDUALS
- 26. Who will tell the stories to our children and for what underlying purpose? How can we assure the survival of alternative perspectives? MOLECULAR MEDIA: MEETING THE CHALLENGE What creative sources and resources can provide what mix of content that flows along the ‘electronic superhighway’ into every home?
- 29. for invitations: b2beta@wonderreel.com MASS MEDIA AND MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: THE MISMATCH AND WHY IT MATTERS Russell Miller rm@wonderreel.com www.wonderreel.info
- 33. Tremendous diversity of interests New experiences of social relationship Awareness of multiple perspectives and dimensions Competence: a pleasure and a concern Life as an ongoing narrative MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: TAKEAWAYS FOR CREATORS
Notas do Editor
- Thank you so much. It’s an honor to be here with you and to share our vision of a dramatically new approach to children’s entertainment This is a screen shot of the main screen, the centerpiece of Wonderreel, our digital entertainment service for boys and girls 6 to 11. And I'll talk about Wonderreel in a few minutes, but please forgive me if I take a somewhat circuitous route 2 years ago, at the TRT Children's Media Conference I spoke about technology. Now, in the spirit of this year's gathering, I'd like to address the quality of the audiovisual experiences digital technologies make possible—particularly for children of school age—those 6-to-11-year-old girls and boys. Note that, with all due respect to the Conference theme, I'm not using the word “content.” In fact I want to distinguish the audiovisual experiences at the heart of Wonderreel from what mass media companies refer to as “content.” I’ll be touching on 4 key concerns: Mass media, and their view of children as consumers The challenges of creating high quality media for children Middle childhood: Why one size, one type of audiovisual experience, doesn’t fit all Molecular media: a new approach that treats children as full, rounded people Then I’ll wrap up with an invitation to experience Wonderreel for yourselves. But I’m going to start about as far from our vision at Wonderreel as I can—with a dispatch from the great global epicenter of children's content—last month's MIP Junior, the international TV market in Cannes. Here's Stephen Davis, the chief content officer of Hasbro. Mr. Davis provided the keynote address at MIP Junior.
- AFTER VIDEO 1 What does he mean by content? He assumes the audience at MIP Junior understands,, but here's how he elaborates.
- AFTER VIDEO 2 So content means: whatever stuff Hasbro happens to be selling. Please don't think I'm singling out Mr. Davis or Hasbro out. Mr. Davis is simply an honored and eloquent representative of the perspective taken by mass-media “content companies”--or as Hasbro prefers, “a branded play company” This use of the term “content” is part of a matrix of language—“content,” “play pattern,” “branded play” – deployed by mass media content companies. Take the word “story.” Mr. Davis uses it to explain why Hasbro went from being a toymaker to a filmmaking company as well.
- AFTER VIDEO 3 So “story” is a characteristic of a toy brand. Sometimes. Because, listen to Mr. Davis describe children using some of Hasbro's newest toys, dolls with video game controllers built right in:
- AFTER VIDEO 4 Notice what he says—they feel as though… Kids, in this view, don't simply play. They “connect” with a “play pattern” provided by a mass media company. And this enables them to feel as though they're creating a story. But it’s not the kind of “story” Hans Christian Andersen or Nasreddin Hoça might have spun for a courtyard full of enraptured youngsters. This story is about economic transaction. “The story is the genesis for why any kid buys Pinkie Pie”--a My Little Pony toy--”or Optimus Prime”--a Transformer. In the logic of mass media content, stories don't live to be enjoyed, elaborated, retold. They exist to drive consumption—to prompt kids to want — and get someone to buy — more stuff. In the logic of mass media content, in the relationship between kids and content, the content is what counts. Children exist only to consume it. Their motivations, their beliefs, the qualities of their relationships, their understandings of the physical and social world boil down to whether they're attracted to the content—before it’s within their possession, of course, so they’ll want to buy it. So cmass media content companies must continually conduct research with children: to be sure they'll keep wanting to consume.—VIDEO 5
- AFTER VIDEO 5 By way of example, Mr. Davis brought up the latest Transformers TV series, R.I.D, or Robots in Disguise—the follow-up to a series called Transformers Prime-VIDEO 6
- AFTER VIDEO 6 That phrase ”consumer-generated series” almost implies that kids created this TV show. But of course they didn't. They consumed and approved; or consumed and disapproved; and with these lessons in mind, Hasbro tweaked its next round of products to maximize kids’ yearning to consume its content. When discussing consumer research—which, Mr. Davis calls consumer “insights”—executives like Mr. Davis make much of listening to children, of the need to track kids' fickle and changing desires, and of their companies' skill in keeping up with the changes. But content companies need to see children as fickle and changing....because truly satisfied desire would dry up the stream of revenue. I know that sounds like Marxism...or 20th-century French philosophy, but it's plain fact: The great challenge of mass-media kids' content is the management of desire—stimulating children's desires,, and satisfying children's desires…but only temporarily. And they'd best be the desires of hundreds of thousands if not millions of children—not only to maintain the flow of revenue, but to justify allocating precious, limited time on a traditional TV schedule, or the precious limited number of seats in cinemas. I don't mean to be ironic—or philosophical. These are genuine challenges for “content creators.” But they are challenges of mass-media commerce—not challenges of service to children. Contrast them with a different set of challenges, posed to digital media creators by the American scholar George Gerbner:
- 1. What creative sources and resources can provide what mix of content that flows along the "electronic superhighway" into every home? 2. Who will tell the stories to our children and for what underlying purpose? 3. How can we assure the survival of alternative perspectives? Which set of challenges is more commonly addressed-- Hasbro's or Professor Gerbner's?
- Well I can bring you this news from MIPJunior: My Little Pony has a new home with Poland’s national public service broadcaster. For broadcasters who prefer to spend a bit less, Dracco from Spain brought this IP to MIP Junior—Filly Funtasia. Again, I don't mean to criticize any of our colleagues. Proven hits—or copies of proven hits—are one way to manage the demands of mass media. They’re safe. And safety’s not so bad when you’re facing the kinds of challenges intrinsic to the mass-media content
- • Limited opportunities… airtime (and cinema space)—therefore high opportunity costs • The consequent drive to make productions flashier and flashier • which leads to high economic costs for development and actual production • And institutional structures, • and career paths that assume all of the above. I'm not here to critique this system. I am here to propose that we leave it behind. I’m here to propose we put kids, what we genuinely know about kids, through our own personal experience and through scientific research, back at the center of kids’ media development.
- I’m not talking about consumer “insights”, recommending how to tinker with products, stoke children’s desire, and relieve the anxiety felt by mass-media executives—what you might call the “anxiety of now”, I’m talking about understanding the structures and functions and development of children’s minds—psychological characteristics which have evolved over thousands of years, across cultures.
- All of which brings me to my title: Mass Media and Middle Childhood: The Mismatch and Why It Matters Middle Childhood is the psychologist's term for the remarkable period from 6 to 11 or 12 years of age—the age range Wonderreel has undertaken to serve. Psychology has learned a lot about this period— genuine insights that inform a very different approach to children's entertainment, because as we’ll see, kids in Middle Childhood are anything but a mass market.
- Research and clinical practice with real live kids over many, many decades —not just a holiday gift-giving season or two—reveals 5 key ways that children change during Middle Childhood. in the way they think. in the personal challenges they confront in the kinds of roles and relationships they encounter in their own sense of themselves And as a consequence of all this, in rich and rapidly changing their intellectual, recreational and social interests. Let’s consider these in more detail…
- If you've taken any introductory child psychology, the first two changes won't come as a surprise: Jean Piaget, a Swiss biologist, may have been the first person to look really really closely at how kids think, how they understand some things that, to grownups, are the most obvious things in the world. For instance, Piaget found that, if you take a short fat jug of water, and you pour the water into a tall thin jug, kids younger than 6 think there's more water! If you take a ball of clay and stretch it out into a long, thin rope, they think there's more clay! Only around age 6 do kids begin to understand what Piaget called “conservation” of volume and mass. This is just one of the dramatic shifts in understanding that takes place in middle childhood. Here’s another: kids come to understand for the first time that people in different positions have different visual perspectives and can see the same thing different ways—I see the piggy’s tail, you see its face. They begin to understand that social roles can be rich and complex—the same man can be both your dad and your doctor, while you can be his daughter and his patient—and you may need to act differently toward each other in different situations. In other words, in Piaget's famous term, they begin to “decenter”--to understand the world from perspectives other than what's right before their eyes.
- The second very famous change was identified by a Danish-American psychiatrist called Erik Erikson,. In Middle Childhood, Erikson found, kids in all cultures face a challenge he “industry vs inferiority”. They’re discovering that they not only can do things by themselves, but they may well be expected to —and that they may not do everything as well as friends, classmates, siblings. They confront failure. They have to cope with their own and others' judgments of themselves. Competence looms large in these kids’ lives—sometimes as a pleasure, often as a concern.
- Social relations get complicated too. Around 6, kids leave their homes or the security of day care and find that there are different expectations, different rules, in every situation. You have to understand them, you have to move flexibly among them—whether it's the lunchroom or the football pitch. You may have to negotiate competition and cooperation —often without supervision by grownup authority figures. You may have to decide when to join the gang and when to say no. And you may have to decide when to reject a misbehaving friend --or provide support for a friend whom other kids have rejected . What about romance, since mass media comedies love to show that? Well, if children in Middle Childhood consider romance, it's from afar, with confusion, even with anxiety—or sometimes with playful aggression, as when boys and girls “kiss and chase” each other across a playground. Boys and girls work together, and sometimes play together in organized settings, but it’s unusual and significant for them to socialize together. Romance –even the puppy love of mass media sitcoms--is hardly ever in a school-age kid's thoughts. Perhaps most important, because mass media show it so rarely, the grownups kids know and love, teachers but especially parents –and not their peers--remain the gold standard of social authority for kids 6 to 11s
- The third change comes out of much more recent cognitive neuroscience. It involves “episodic autobiographical memories” those are the ones where you remember not only what happened, but when it happened, where you were, what it felt like… they’re the memories that let you relive past experiences, tying them up into a coherent, continuous story of your own life. It turns out that kids younger than 6 are neurologically incapable of episodic autobiographical memory! They can remember facts. They can recall stories they've been told. They can remember that things happened. But they don't experience themselves in recollection, with all the warmth and intimacy and specificity grownups know. Marcel Proust would have been lost before Middle Childhood. A related achievement is “autonoetic consciousness”—the awareness that we know ourselves. So in Middle Childhood, kids come to experience themselves as both continuous and changing across time. And they come to experience others the same way. Their capacity for empathy grows richer. Put this together with the perspective-taking abilities identified by Piaget, and you’re entertaining an audience with a growing understanding of characters’ back stories, life histories, complex motivations.
- You’ve also got an audience with dozens and dozens and dozens of different interests. When the American social scientist Jacqueline Zbaracki set out to study the interests of kids ages 9, 10, 11, she identified 121 distinct interests, including 9 school subjects, PE to math and science (54:1), 15 kinds of books, comics to biographies to mysteries (90:9), 12 kinds of pretend play house, cowboys and Indians, war, dress-up (72:34) 9 general popular music, clothes, stuffed animals, (54:2) 22 sports outdoor activities hopscotch, hunting fishing, soccer/football (132:6) 26 activities involving others (156:4) board games, cooking, going to church, magic tricks, playing with babies 28 activities you do all by yourself (168:15) TV (adventure/comedy/cartoons/science shows), video games, collecting, writing, sewing, making models 121 different activities, and when she asked kids which ones they liked and which they didn’t, only about a dozen had an average score of “I don't care, or I don't like it.” That’s right—nearly every activity had a large group of fans, and fewer than 1 in 10 was widely disliked. That’s what I call varied interests!
- OK, let’s review: In Middle Childhood. Kids become aware of multiple perspectives in the world Competence becomes central to their lives—as a pleasure and as a concern New kinds of social relationships blossom. They literally become aware of life as an ongoing narrative. And their interests, meanwhile, multiply and change and wax and wane. So how on Earth are you going to come up with a hit that can satisfy such a diverse and quickly changing audience. Well here’s the good news. You don’t need to—not anymore. OK, if you’re Hasbro, looking to sell millions of My Little Pony dolls, maybe you need to. But for the rest of us, not anymore. That’s the miracle of digital entertainment. Let me explain:
- With digital tools, thousands upon thousands of creators can afford to create audiovisual experiences as varied and rich as the minds, life challenges, consciousness, social experience and interests of.kids 6 to 11. We don’t need Hollywood budgets. These tools have already loosened capital's grip on creativity. The Black Magic Pocket Full HD 1920x1080 CinemaDNG RAW Apple ProRes 422 (HQ around 870 Euros The iPhone 6Plus 1080p video at 60 frames per second, with optical image stabilization on a phone! DaVinci Resolve, enables cinema-grade editing and color correction on a MacBook …absolutely free...the cost of creative tools is literally approaching zero!!! So instead of mass media, appealing to one and all…we now have the opportunity to create molecular media …thousands of projects, with stories and characters and information that make sense to millions of different minds in middle childhood. Kids can discover, collect, trade and share, each creating her own constellation of audiovisual experiences. Molecular media enables us to treat children as unique individuals, not pairs of eyeballs in a mass audience.
- Digital scheduling, meanwhile, means that all those experiences can find their young audiences…and vice versa. Instead of one mega hit attracting millions, a digital streaming platform can offer hundreds of shows simultaneously, each attracting 10000. And we can match shows with viewers the same way a librarian might offer a child the perfect book. We can find an optimal audience for every show. • A young girl in a small seaside village in Brunei confronts gender roles and tradition in play and in art. • Magical realism, in the spirit of Garcia Marquez, as a boy moves from the jungles of Brazil to Rio De Janeiro. • while an animated school-girl from France asks big questions, like “where was I before I was born” Not one of these programs is for every child....and that's the point. Kids are different. Their shows can be different too. Of course, this kind of variety imposes new challenges: to make the right experiences available to the right kids at the right time to make it fun and easy for each child to find her own new favorite shows
- This is one way to do it. Clearly not optimal! But a well-designed user interface, supported by developmental psychology and data science, can keep things simple and clear, give kids a sense of control, enrich their viewing and perhaps best of all, avoid overwhelming them—so children don’t retreat to the easy path of binge-viewing. We can program a playlist for each child based on her interests, her tastes and her viewing experience. At the same time, we can let kids explore a classic “library” of audiovisual experiences. We can support their developing sense of themselves as unique, autonomous individuals. But how do we know they’ll will like it? Well, Hasbro aren’t the only ones who go out and talk to real kids. For instance, last summer we showed a black and white, 1957 British adventure tale to 8 year olds in the rural American midwest. Take a listen.
- So there's my case for using digital technology to move past mass media “content” to bring children rich, personalized audiovisual experiences.... to meet the challenges posed by George Gerbner
- 1.Every home, every child, can receive a rich mix of content. 2. Our children can experience diverse stories from a broad, global community of storytellers. 3. Above all, we can assure the survival of alternative perspectives—of diverse, humane, multicultural media offerings.
- And we’re not alone. We’re proud to have partners from around the globe, proud to bringing their shows and films to kids far beyond their own national borders. And we’d like you to join us too. In a few weeks, we’ll be launching a Beta version of Wonderreel to a select group of kids and to the industry. We’d love to invite you to join. Drop us a note at this e-mail address
- and we’ll be in touch. And I’ll be around throughout the Congress—come up and say hi. And thanks.
- Back to the news from MIPJunior: TVP ABC , Poland's public broadcaster for children, used the market to acquire My Little Pony and The Littlest Pet Shop—two Hasbro shows, and Thomas and Friends and Barbie Rock Princess from Mattel. Not every content company is fortunate enough to have My Little Pony to sell— so Spain's Dracco offers Filly Funtasia (My Little Pony in CGI 3D) Copycatting may be the most obvious shortcut to children's desire, but honest recycling of past successes works too.
- CyberGroup: brings back Zorro Gaumont: brings back Belle and Sebastian Atlantyca: brings back Geronimo Stilton DHX: borrows the hit movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and the service that worries the industry most of all, Netflix, appropriately, is recycling King Kong “Originals” were announced at MIP Junior too…
- Take Bader: Legend of the Pearls. Bader is the first Qatari superhero. He gets superpowers from his success at pearl diving—the backbone of Qatar's economy until cultured pearls displaced and petroleum replaced it.. This is what passes for local cultural content. Less nostalgic, more forward-thinking, but essentially the same was Dot—a “tech-savvy” girl who encourages viewers to “explore digitally and practically what excites [them]” Dot was created by a woman named Randi Zuckerberg. Is it unfair to question her motives? Just because her brother invented Facebook? Again, I don't mean to criticize any of our colleagues. Broadcasters and content companies are negotiating the challenges, the economics—and the cultural conventions--of mass media—which include…
- So just to review, kids change in Middle Childhood. They become aware of multiple perspectives in the world Competence becomes central to their lives—as a pleasure and as a concern New kinds of social relationships blossom. They literally become aware of life as an ongoing narrative. And their interests multiply and change and wax and wane. So how on Earth do you come up with a hit that can satisfy this diverse and quickly changing an audience. Well, the good news is, you no longer need to. If you’re not Hasbro, looking to sell millions of My Little Pony dolls, you no longer need a mega-hit. For creators, that’s the miracle of digital entertainment. I’ll explain: