We’ve seen and heard on the first two episodes of ReInvent Hollywood how technology and desire are changing the nature of the film form as well as how artists consider their work and relationship with the business. Barriers to entry of both creation and distribution have been crushed. Platforms abound for a wide variety of formats, aesthetics, and engagements. As a result we are all overwhelmed by an abundance of culture and leisure time options, challenging both business and consumption models. How do these same changes effect things on the side of the audience? In tackling that issue on “ReInvent Hollywood: The Audience”, I found a new way to explain what the Film Industry must do in our era of transition.
The people-formerly-known-as-the-audience no longer want to be passive – and neither do the creators or the business people they collaborate with want them to be. We see a whole new world opening up thanks to the connectivity that the marriage of storytelling and the internet has enabled. Crowdfunding may be the best known way these three film world stakeholders work together, but its very name confuses the situation. The transformative effect that crowdfunding has granted is that the audience has a significant say in the generation and exposure of culture. It enabled Veronica Mars fans to claim the feature as “our movie”. Yet make no mistake, audiences are not saying they want to abandon being led when they say they want room to participate; they are voting with their dollars for the culture they want.
Social media has granted us all direct contact with the consumers of art and entertainment. The mistake many creators make is to see those consumers as somehow different than themselves. On the episode on “The Artist”, Austin Kleon pointed out that if you want to have fans, you have to be a fan first. When creators are using social media for engagement purposes, authenticity of voice is the holy grail. People know when they are being sold to. It sometimes feels like all filmmakers need to become their own marketers, but just like in storytelling, they need to find their own voice and platform. Similarly, there is no template; outreach and engagement must be customized for the maker and for the project. There are no shortage of collaborators and consultants available for the “shy auteur” – and even the reluctant or clumsy can find those that can shape one’s voice in an artful manner.
The elephant in the room remains the question of whether audiences can lead or can creators and their advisors even ever hope to lead the audience into new subjects, styles, and forms. If studios relay on franchises to be the sole gathering point for fans—and thus the tendency for an endless barrage of numbered titles – is that a mandate that audiences learn to be like The March Hare (in Alice In Wonderland) and happily learn to mistake “liking what they get” for “getting what they like”? New methods of aggregating audiences around shared values and popular themes may point to an emerging new power structure further strengthening the audiences’ say in what gets made and seen. For anyone interested in creating a sustainable culture of ambitious and diverse work, the necessity of developing strategies on how to help shift and advance audiences expectations is a given – and it is clear more work has to be done on this process.
The role of the audience certainly is expanding in new ways. Crowdfunding has shown elements of crowd curating as well as funding. The new wave of sites like Patreon.com allow this go beyond individual projects to being supporters of artists across the body of their work. Transmedia helps the audience become participant, be it playing, hoaxing, or sharing. As new business models are heavily focused on aggregation, we see the audience becoming a commodity themselves – but how can they better share in the rewards of that? Similarly, if big data can reveal what people want and how they want, who is the real owner of the data that this harmonious relationship between creator and consumer generates – and what safeguards should be instituted around it?
Millenials in particular refuse to accept any barrier between creator and consumer and take it as a given that there is regular passage between the two poles. Will the Film Industry soon make a virtue of that or will the distinction between online video culture and the film biz grow more pronounced, deepening the generation gap?
Perhaps the greatest hope of this new era is that no community will be neglected. If audiences use the power of the internet and social media to transform themselves into communities, the creator class will find them and collaborate. The same phenomenon allows filmmakers to no longer focus exclusively on the mass market and its subsets but now to target such niches. Yet just as the “winner take all” methodology has proven to crush the long tail online, and that opportunity has never yielded the same outcome, will this hope be made practice?
In a culture and world of abundance we are seeing that the audience is demanding a greater return on the investment of their engagement (ROIE) and both the business and creative communities need to just wake up to the fact but build it into their work flow. We are moving away from an industry of products and into one of experiences and relationships. Those words – relationship & experience – are as far from content & product as they can be, exposing the transformation of our business and culture. Without this shift in focus to the human side of the equation — and away form the antiquated material side — we will be left with more questions than answers.
The audience has spoken and the internet has enabled; the film business must abandon product and content as its primary concerns and focus first on experience and relationship. It is where the future is. Storytelling will always be the driving force, but it no longer needs be the sole thing commoditized. A more equal balance, as well as an acceptance of the responsibility of all sides, between creator, audience, and all facilitators holds the hope of a sustainable ecosystem for ambitious and diverse culture.
Please check out the whole show “ReInvent Hollywood: The Audience“. You can also watch a short “highlight” reel here. We had a great group of guests: Ivan Askwith, Sheri Candler, Tim League, Gillian Robespierre, Marc Schiller, and Anne Thompson. Join us.
