Tag: Clay Shirky

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Truly Free Film

The New Independent Film Distributors’ Business Model (Pt. 1 of 2)

Guest post by Sheri Candler.

In this second post, I want to focus on how to rehabilitate the film distribution entities so that they may continue to exist. I know what you are thinking “What’s she on about? We’re fine. We survived the latest shake out and are all the stronger for having less competition.” I am here to tell you that is fallacy. The old ways of bringing films to market are fading fast and it is time to reinvent your business. I want to acknowledge my gurus Gerd Leonhard, Seth Godin and Clay Shirky (though he is more my go to guy on all things having to do with immersive storytelling and audience collaboration) for being a constant source of inspiration for me in looking toward the future of media.

When Ted announced on his Facebook page that he would take part in a panel discussion at the upcoming Woodstock Film Festival concerning the new distribution paradigms, I had to look at who would be involved in this discussion. What people and companies would be taking part who are practicing radically changed business models for film distribution? It was as I thought; none. I posted a link on his page (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100326/1452138737.shtml) asking all involved in the discussion to read it and then talk about how they see the new paradigms. I don’t know if anyone did, but I did get a response from Dylan Marchetti from Variance Films explaining to me how his company functions to actively engage audiences for films they’ve booked in the theater. It was a lengthy exchange that resulted in my writing this post. I don’t think he read the article before he spoke because the point of that piece was to inform on how businesses need to form ecosystems around their companies, not continue only to sell copies of the content they distribute. Distribution companies should not be focused on selling copies, either for viewing or for owning. They should be selling access, creating networks of devoted fans around their brand and developing customized experiences instead. In other words, selling things that cannot be copied. This means they must first gather and cultivate a community of engaged followers and then develop, acquire, produce, and source material with only these people in mind.

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These Are Those Things

Recipe For Happiness: Focus On The Future & Embrace Experimentation

Yesterday, I ranted a bit about the apparent silence in the film community regarding our collective need for forward thinking experimentation (and support thereof).  The need for such action is reinforced in a recent WSJ article by Clay Shirky promoting his new book:

This issue isn’t whether there’s lots of dumb stuff online—there is, just as there is lots of dumb stuff in bookstores. The issue is whether there are any ideas so good today that they will survive into the future. Several early uses of our cognitive surplus, like open source software, look like they will pass that test.

The past was not as golden, nor is the present as tawdry, as the pessimists suggest, but the only thing really worth arguing about is the future. It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity. We are now witnessing the rapid stress of older institutions accompanied by the slow and fitful development of cultural alternatives. Just as required education was a response to print, using the Internet well will require new cultural institutions as well, not just new technologies.

Yes, we are overwhelmed.  There are too many choices.  But solutions are being found.  And the tools have never been better.  How can you not be moved by stories of discovery like this.

Even more so, the benefits of such future focus is underscored by this great video based on Philip Zimabardo’s lecture that my wife, Vanessa, turned me on to:

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Truly Free Film

Keep It Simple

Last month, Clay Shirkey had a most interesting post entitled “The Collapse Of Complex Business Models“. Shirkey calls attention to Joseph Tainter who in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” pointed out that “under a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”.

Shirkey explains that in Tainter’s view, complex societies don’t collapse despite their cultural sophistication, they’d collapsed because of it.

Subject to violent compression, Tainter’s story goes like this: a group of people, through a combination of social organization and environmental luck, finds itself with a surplus of resources. Managing this surplus makes society more complex—agriculture rewards mathematical skill, granaries require new forms of construction, and so on.

Early on, the marginal value of this complexity is positive—each additional bit of complexity more than pays for itself in improved output—but over time, the law of diminishing returns reduces the marginal value, until it disappears completely. At this point, any additional complexity is pure cost.

Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract and then some.

The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond.

Hmmm…. sounds a lot like the time we are living in now, doesn’t it?

As one can expect, Shirkey provides great examples and greater understanding.  It’s a must read.

Thanks to Couper Samuleson for making sure I did not miss this!

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Truly Free Film

And What Makes It All Worse Is…

As freeing as the growth and utilization of new media is, the death of traditional media certainly hurts Art Film and The Specialized Film Market.   When I read (online of course!) articles like David Carr’s “Mourning Old Media’s Decline”, I can feel that jolt of panic.  It starts in my legs, and then spreads…

“The auto industry and the print industry have essentially the same problem,” said Clay Shirky, the author of “Here Comes Everybody.” “The older customers like the older products and the new customers like the new ones.”

The problem is that Art Film’s audience is predominately over 35.  They are not generally online as much as others.  They are not participating in the blogosphere.  How is the audience going to get their information?  How are we going to get them signed up?  We need to make sure they are getting their RSS feeds of the great film lover websites like Hammer To Nail (okay, I confess to being a tad self serving on this) and Green Cine.  
I think for every film fan over 35 that you get to subscribe to such a blog, you should get a gold star.  Two gold stars if they are over 45.  Three for 55!  I don’t know the solution, but we have got to sign them up.  What to do, what to do?  We have to act fast…