Sundance Film Festival

The Adobe Macromedia merger is moving out of the stage of press releases and breathless analyst speculation and starting to manifest in the real world. The new Adobe Production Studio includes a Flash export feature. This is the tip of the iceburg, says Adobe VP of product management for Web and Video (and Discreet veteran) Jim Guerard, sitting in a booth at the Moose Café on Main Street. It‘s a level 1 implementation of the potential for integrating some of the world‘s most ubiquitous content creation tools with the world‘s only (so far) interactive web video format..

This intersection means something profound for Adobe‘s graphic design professionals, those people who use Creative Suite tools to make all manner of communication materials. Motion graphics become accessible (required really) in modern graphics communication. Storytelling finally becomes that old idea of multi-media experience that some hapless settlers pursued gallantly with the technology that was available in the 1980s. (Anyone remember that interactive movie at Iwerks where you could sit in a seat, push buttons and vote on the ending to a 70mm film? Talk about versioning.)

So at Sundance it‘s also appropriate to consider what Flash means to people who already make moving pictures. Nimble, unfettered, self-distribution has been a big topic throughout this Sundance (even as traditional distribution entities pay historic prices for the fortunate few). Wouldn‘t it be great if non-mainstream movies could be seen by the niches who want them and Sundance alone could generate a web (no pun intended) of movies that fan out across a variety of networks?

The buzz here isn‘t just about what digital distribution could mean to traditional-style films, but also encompasses the idea of making non-traditional films…ones that may be interactive or collaboratively made–or really, really short. People talk about what forms will work on cell phones, video podcasts and video blogs (no one knows). People who make short films rouse from their fiscal resignation to imagine for a moment earning a living. Internet impresarios postulate the convergence of online film festivals, My Space, self help websites, and Craig‘s List in a giant soup of interpersonal video sharing. A self titled Mobile Media Mogul will tell you how the advertising will work. Intel‘s in the distribution business, and why not?

It‘s not all fantasy, though it is early days. Just look at the way the Super Bowl spots have conceived their own web cult site. Just look, says Jim Guerard, at redbullcopilot.com. If advertising creatives don‘t stampede after these trends with the full force of their pitch-mongering skillset I‘ll eat my hat. And bless ‘em, let‘s see it.

Obviously Adobe‘s all for it and Flash is the medium to make it all possible. “The player is ubiquitous,” Guerard says, “over 670 million in the world.” The new codec, based in part on On2, is said to have an incredible file size to quality ratio. Flash movies are interactive and provide non-linear access, like DVDs, they support alpha channel transparencies and they can be embedded in a browser. OK, it‘s still a pain to upgrade your player, especially for those of us whose desktops are really giant to-do lists and depend exclusively on crashes to restart our computers.

But let‘s bear in mind the numerous advantages of Flash (and the new Flash Media Server which enables all kinds of business paradigms). From there, progress to stage 2 of the Adobe Flash integration–a more consistent and transparent workspace among Adobe content. Also at lunch, Simon Hayhurst (Adobe director of product management for digital video & audio) extrapolates some of the new workflow integration features of Production Studio (Dynamic Link, Cliff Notes) into a vision of what that would translate for Adobe/Flash. (It hasn‘t yet of course). It‘s all about the “create once/distribute many” thing and about removing barriers among creation and distribution software.

Both Guerard and Hayhurst also remind me that the idea of who is doing the “create once” part is also subject to change. That sentiment is echoed all over Sundance. On the one hand you meet filmmakers who relish the idea of being solely in control of every aspect of their filmmaking from idea to audience. Others can‘t wait to open up the process to teams and collaborators. Many just want their posse of favored collaborators to have more realtime access to each other. At the extreme, people imagine these teams to be serendipitous and virtual, perhaps even made up of strangers. “The wisdom of crowds” Hayhurst interjects and we launch into a sociological discussion about the relationships between creator and audience that will just have to wait for another time.

In the meantime, something is in danger of getting lost in all the blue sky-ing. Adobe‘s new Production Studio needs to be seen to be understood and it truly is worth seeing. Premiere Pro 2.0 is entirely new and the workflow elements will matter a great deal to some users, including the nascent Flash integration. Adobe is launching a

multi-city roadshow starting Feb. 7. I would encourage you to go and make your own assessment.