The New Bubble
So…apparently the iTunes store sold 8 million videos at $1.99 apiece in 90 days at the end of last year.
Just came from a packed Digital Forum session at the Film Center–more than a 100 people, standing room only. All there to hear about “Cinema on the Move: New Mobile Technologies and the Next Wave of Filmmaking.” Like most conversation on this subject it was still quite general, but the subject has great momentum.
Forum moderator: Walt Mossberg, technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Participants came from worlds of short film, mobile phone and internet. It’s clear all these worlds need to spend a lot more time in dialog. They don’t speak the same language.
Here’s who was on the dais:
-John Burris, director of Digital Media Programming for Sprint Nextel
-John Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of MediaSquirrel, “a online marketplace for independent film/video makers to sell their work to the emerging iPod market.”
-Brian E. Levin “Mobile Media Mogul.” Founder fo Mobliss in 2000, architect of the American Idol text messaging campaigns. Driven mobile strategies for Coca-Cola, Toyota, FremantleMedia, Fox, and Mark Burnett.
-Carter Pilcher, CEO Shorts International/Britshorts
-Jim Guerard, Adobe/Macromedia
Mossberg: This is one of those interesting moments in that it does resemble some of the dotcom bubble frenzy. We don‘t merely have technology developments but we have them coming together with content developments.
Mossberg is no starry eyed booster, he’s a natural skeptic. But he’s growing less so, or at least seems willing to facilitate the dialog on these things. And as I’ve said, dialog is sorely needed if the content creators, distributors and inevitable advertisers are to negotiate something that will be sustainable for all the stakeholders and will not amount to the equivalent of video spam.
Mossberg’s pointed out that the TV networks and studios are finally scared enough to come to the table. “While it is a big deal that they‘re willing to sell this conent, they‘re being very timid about it and we don‘t know how far they‘re going to be willing to go. “
But what about the independent producer, specifically the short film producer? Even with representation on the panel from that community, it just seemed clear that most of the movement on this topic is obviously distributor and advertiser driven–and in a very competitive way that inevitably slows progress. Perhaps the business model does need to come first, and the phone and marketing companies are the ones with dollars and eyeballs to experiment with. How will the content creators get their place at the table? Let’s think on that.
As John Jacobs tentatively said, finally there is becoming potential for filmmakers to actually, possibly recover their costs and to think of short films as an alternative or additional way to work. Emphasis on possibly.
And will it even work for consumers? People in Japan and Korea seem to think so, more than we do. But as Mossberg points out, how Americans will consume mobile video can’t really be predicted by how they consume music. Music, he reminds us is a background task; that‘s not true for video which is a foreground task. So there‘s less time in the day and fewer situations where it can be consumed.
This type of topic is all over the place at Sundance and rightly so. As digital content creation becomes the norm in the democratization wave, distribution is the obvious next set.
