Through the LCD clearly

In essence very few movies make a substantial profit. Studios churn out dozens of movies hoping that the success of one mega hit will surpass the loses of the others. Yes millions will be expended in hiring name actors and engaging in a full on publicity blitz but at the end of the day this model is still vulnerable to audience and market whims. Popular trends in the entertainment business are subject to the cyclical nature that also dictates the course of history. Disaster movies, Vampire Movies,  even 3D! (please do not try smell-o-vision again). These wax and wane in popularity but always seem to return to the spotlight. The other downside though is that the financial stability of the current system is also caught up in this tide. The high budget spectacle, reliance on name actors, and banking on current trends has on several occasions severely burnt the industry. With failures such as Citizen Kane, Heaven’s Gate etc sinking careers and sinking those involved. It is in those moments that self financed or outside the box films; Easy Rider, Mean Streets, Clerks, Reservoir Dogs, etc come to ascendancy.  The studios then typically react by financing dozens upon dozens of similar movies; low budget, limited appeal, and no names attached and inevitability return to the cycle of blockbusters. For every Star Wars there is a Battlefield Earth, for every Memento a Delgo and the cycle continues. For all of us without the power to greenlight despite how apparent upcoming trends may appear there is the option of self financing.

Financing films remains a tricky proposition. In University we were taught to approach dentists, lawyers, doctors, and other investors who essentially expect a production to lose money and then use it for tax write off purposes. Forward Money has an article on a new method for film investing Indievest. It breaks down to be more of an investment club with buy in options. What makes Indievest something to examine is they also handle marketing, and distribution which in the end of the day proves to be where other “independents” often fall short.

In addition to relying on strangers with candy for money film financing has to come from other sources. The double edged sword that is having household names or at least names attached to your project comes into play selling distribution rights to territories before production has even begun. Then of course one can do in kind deals, product placement (E.T is perhaps the progenitor of this trend in modern movies), or pay with the promises of net or gross points.

How is this going to change in the future? Well the ability to execute viral and niche marketing campaigns via the Internet make it possible for independent features to attract additional eyeballs, since a definitive gate keeping/distribution system has yet to gain a stranglehold online distribution is relatively open. But we are already at the point at least with feature rather than episodic content that viewers are going to start gravitating towards names. The backing or finances needed to get Nathan Fillion on board an online production already provides for a huge advantage over a homegrown feature in the Midwest.  It’s very likely that we will be drawn into the same cycle for online productions that has so long dictated traditional features.

The ability for fragmentation though now is unsurpassed. Filmmakers will still have to compete with the big names, with flashy effects, and publicity engines that permeate every crevice of society. The larger content producers will still have to concentrate on maximum potential return of investment leaving content producers who don’t want to rush out a disaster movie every 20 years able, if streamlined enough, to carve out a living in Niche markets. The ability of the Internet to allow for selective targeting of these groups and the existing infrastructure to reach them is perhaps the ultimate promise of the New Media. Rather than have to get 20 million viewers to make broad advertising attractive producers can remain agile and target smaller groups.

Be it a Jane Austin or Tea Party movie for my mother, a documentary on an obscure underwater shrimp for my brother, a road trip movie with vintage motorcycles for my father, or an history piece on 1930s aircraft for my uncle the Internet allows for much more than traditional demographics to focus on.

J. Ewan Van Dijkhorst

Money. It’s not just something I don’t have any of but also the primary motivator force behind corporate technological innovation in the New Media age.  It sometimes appears that only when larger companies are faced with the the glaring realization that someone else is garnering a fortune do they begrudgingly branch into new territory.  This reluctance to risk money and go into early implementation is a monumental obstacle to corporations.

The difference between a conglomerated empire today and a ruinous husk tomorrow will largely be decided  by the ability and willingness to embrace alternate revenue streams.  We are nearing an age where agile development and the ability to quickly adopt new infrastructures will be the single biggest index of survivability. The old axiom “Adapt or Die” rapidly becomes predict or die.  I-tunes and the iPod are the perfect illustrator of this.  Napster may have had a pay to download store beforehand, and Rio certainly beat Apple to the creation of a practical portable mp3 player but Apple’s vertical integration (and perhaps DRM) coupled with its branding prowess all but assured them dominance of the digital music distribution landscape. The major recording studios, retailers such as Wal-mart, and eventually other outlets have been regulated to a subordinate position in this arrangement. They are not the gatekeepers of this new market and their ability to dictate terms and prices are severely curtailed by that fact.

The question though is how do small scale content producers earn enough to fuel the next generation of development?

The way in which content earns has gone through many recent transitions but in some cases has come full circle.

The earliest days of radio and television relied on sponsorship. Entire blocks of air time were purchased from the networks, productions were completely contracted to or funded by said sponsor, and the audience got to enjoy a LOT of talk about said product over the programs course. Viral marketing campaigns, and ARGs are the true successors to this tradition.

When production costs and audience demands increased product placement became more prevalent. Had Opie been puffing away on a particular brand of cigarette it would not likely have been a character choice by Mr. Howard. This is becoming a viable income source once again. Those shots of a Panasonic device in Transformers, the Soda crate National Security‘s warehouse shoot-out, the convenient Dell monitors in 24, do not linger because editing conventions dictated so but rather because all those companies paid a premium to have their product featured.

Up until the age of the DVR the CPM methodology reigned supreme. CPM or cost per thousand formula requires more higher ratings. An advertiser agrees to pay a set fee per thousand eyeballs that view the show and presumably their advert. This method still works well for websites but with the increasing difficulty in keeping accurate ratings and the ability of many viewers to simply fast forward through their spot problems arise.

Pay Per Click in its current practice is one of the least content producer friendly forms of revenue generation. It seems that the per click usually works out to be less than simple CPM methods. Unless they lead to….

Referrals and commissions have proved to be an excellent source of ancillary income. Your favorite site’s link to a product on amazon is likely to generate a low percentage referral. Call it redirection kickback, gift of mutual assurance whichever you may this is an under-tapped market. With a little convergence and a pre-existing technology it’s what I plan to focus on in the long term.

I’m going to go more into depth in each of these, provide an analysis on how these can best be utilized what kind of content/demographic they’re ideal for and where they may be heading. I also want to cover other distribution be it direct or indirect purchase, rentals, merchandising, and of course convergence. I also want to look at pay to surf sites, survey point redemption operations, and online gate-keeping.

We’re not at adverts being beamed into our heads Futurama style.. Not yet anyway.

J. Ewan Van Dijkhorst

It’s been a while since I’ve last updated. The job hunt is all consuming at this point but I found a few links well worth sharing.

Microsoft has unleashed what it means to be a Garage Band killer Songsmith. I’ve yet to test it out but on multiple occasions I’ve had to rely on Window’s Movie Maker  to make a last minute adjustment when AVID, Vegas, or Premiere cecided to crash. It won’t be an Pro-Tools killer but at $30 it’s not meant to be. I’ll wait for some reviews from some of my more active Post Sound friends but it may prove a more useful bridge between Audacity and Pro-Tools for those of us who don’t have 64 Channel mixer banks to worry about.

Make Magazine has an excellent post and series of links on free I-phone development guides/tools.  I’d like to see the three way war between Apple, Adobe/Flash, and Microsoft’s Silverlight to be a bit closer to resolution before diving into this pond but it’s worth trying and perhaps getting a few toes wet.

As time permits I’ve been playing with encoding. For those of you unfamiliar with some of the more common standards here’s an quick peek at codecs and compression.

MIT maintains some open source lecture materials for some of their prior courses. Their Media Art’s and Sciences department has some very interesting material on well everything. I urge you all to browse through some of the material.

And some more from the I should practice what I preach department. A guide on how to set up a social media cheat sheet on any subject.