Sundance Film Festival

Avid’s senior product manager Matt Feury always gives me the impression that technology can never move fast enough. He’s thinking about solving all the problems and fulfilling all the wishlists out there. I can imagine him thinking that he’s trying to lay down track before the artists run out of rail.

So he said one thing at Sundance that really stuck with me. We were talking about what artists want–especially remote collaboration and easy movement of content. We’ve both seen that struggle play out over a very long time.

He said that distribution demands would make it happen where production demands never could. What he meant was–or at least this is how it seemed to me–that no matter how much editors suffered with sneaker net, relieving their woes could not drive enough cost savings to make some innovations possible. However, distribution-based business models could drive innovations that would benefit production.

It’s not a very complicated idea, but it was the first time I had really thought about it. Maybe I’ve just been missing the point. But he just made me think about how powerful changes in distribution are and will be. And that thinking backwards from distribution is one way to visualize the future. The last time Avid was at the front end of an emerging paradigm it was non-linear editing and we know what that did. So the next non-linear revolution is underway and we’re in it.

So that’s my final pitch for the importance of digital technologies at Sundance and one reason we cover this beat. Beneath the artistic, political, poetic, and hyped-out surface of Sundance, technology is fundamentally changing the way people make and share stories. It’s changing fast now. Quality storytellers will make it work in ways both traditional and novel. And the rest of the junk will be worth tolerating for the opportunity it helps create. If you don’t like it, don’t download it, you can always change your channel.