December 11, 2008 – Hope For Film

Part of the problem of the moment is that as we all retreat to our private screens and sound systems, we lose the glue that conversation brings, that thing that creates community. Remember movie theaters? Remember how you went out for a drink with your friends afterwards and spoke about what you last saw. How great was that! How are we going to do that when are watching on our computer screens and HD monitors?

As much as I will always love going to the cinema and talking about films afterwards, we all have to recognize that most media will not be consumed that way. Without that, how are we going to facilitate conversation and appreciation about cinema? It can’t all be after the fact blogging. We need real time discussions.

I recently got to see a new technology that addressed this, that allowed multiple viewers to watch simultaneously the same thing, see their friends who were doing the same thing, and communicate in real time while they continued watching. Okay, so its a little different than sitting in a big dark theater with beautiful projection and downing some coffee afterwards.

Facebook’s Connect site browser is a step though in this direction. BBC news ran an article on it and its got me thinking…

The built-in socialising tools on sites such as MySpace and Facebook will mean that friends can virtually gather, for instance, to watch a video via Hulu and chat about it all in the same place.

I confess: I am truly new to all of this social networking stuff. This blog is about two and a half months old. I think I have only been on Facebook for 5 weeks. Our film production company has a MySpace page but I am not a MySpace member. I know I blog about some stuff here that the digi-elite embraced eons ago. Let’s just say although I am a newbie, I am passionate advocate — and a textbook example of how you can teach an old dog some new tricks. And I recognize how much my community has to learn. Admit it: the film biz is filled with Luddites.

I was a very slow at making a commitment to the social network world. I pondered FB membership for months. And I mocked the young ‘uns in our office who sang its praises. I am a convert now, but I am still only using it to maintain a dialogue about the emerging new paradigm for non-Hollywood cinema (I hate describing things in contrast to, but …). To that end, I am have the same issues Pericles commented on the other day: I am confused whether I should just “confirm” everyone that friends me in an effort to expand the circle, or should I limit my connections to the people I actually know or do, or could do, business with, or at least those that have the courtesy to write and explain why we should be “friends”. I lean to the former but haven’t jumped in yet. Some of my hesitancy comes from my expectant embrace of the more social aspects of the technology — and frankly I don’t want to be more social. I have been trying to figure out how to have more time to myself and my family for a long time.

Which brings me to my fears of using Twitter. When I was looking for an article on how Twitter might be best applied to the film world, Beth’s Blog led me to the OReillyRadar posting of some of their report “Twitter And The Micro-Messaging Revolution” . I’d love to see the whole report; if you want to buy it for me for the holidays, you can do so here. Reilly’s preface documenting his adaptation to the technology echoed what I had suspected — he joined for business reasons and soon found himself using it for social updates too. It was inspiring though.

I would like to hear further how filmmakers have effectively used Twitter to communicate with their audience, but this piece alone, got me a lot closer to embrace the present a bit more. Any filmmakers out there with Twitter experiences to share?

Copyright © 2024•