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Screen Forever 2013: Finding Out How to Get to Sesame Street

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch attended Screen Forever 2013, the conference of Screen Producers Australia, this past year and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s kindly allowing us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

On a sunny day in Melbourne, where the clouds had clearly been swept away, Kim Wright, Film Producer with the Sesame Workshop, talked about the things that make Sesame Street a success. Screen Hub`s Andrew Einspruch reports from Screen Forever, the Screen Producers Australia conference.

Sesame Street is an amazing success story. Now in its 44th season of 26 episodes each (that`s over 1,100 episodes all up), the perennial favourite of the two-to-five set has kept a loyal fan base of children and former children. It has now been around long enough that some of its original viewers are now grandparents, sharing the show with a third generation.

According to Kim Wright, a key part of the show`s magic of the show is keeping it current. Some of that has to do with the writing, some of it the on-air and off-air talent, and some of it is the ability to adjust its curriculum over time. 

And, of course, there`s the comedy and the celebrities. If Bert reads a copy of “Fifty Shades of Oatmeal,” or Usher sings the alphabet, it makes parents want to stay tuned, which keeps the kids tuned in as well.

Wright talked about how the show is developed. Each season starts with a curriculum meeting attended by all the show`s producers and writers (there`s a Head Writer and a team of ten additional writers). There, themes and issues that will be highlighted in the season are discussed. For example, they might be emphasising the idea of self-regulation, which includes things like being patient and controlling emotions. From there, the writers go off to work on scripts that address these themes, and the usual iterative process of writing ensues.

The show is structured in blocks, and each episode is made up of a predictable set of different blocks. For example, there will be a Word on the Street block, a number block, a letter block, a musical number from Elmo, a piece from Cookie Monster in a series called Crumby Films (parodies of current movies), and so on. The show is pieced together over months, with different elements being filmed at different times.

Wright also discussed the film commissioning process. They put out a Request for Pitch (RFP) three times a year. These requests ask filmmakers to come up with ideas for short films that can be included in the show. They can be live action, animation or mixed media. They might be 30 seconds long or a two-minute piece for a music video. There will be two or three films in any episode, and they might be about a letter, a number or something to do with the curriculum. Sesame Workshop basically puts it out there, and it is up to producers to come up with an idea that interests them enough to commission it.

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Screen Forever 2013: Dude, Where’s My Audience?

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch attended Screen Forever 2013, the conference of Screen Producers Australia, this past year and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s kindly allowing us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

With VOD, catch-up viewing, second screens, time-shifting, cord cutting and all manner of changes looming over the content consumption landscape, it makes sense to ask, as a session did at Screen Forever 2013, “Sorry, Where Has My Audience Gone?” Andrew Einspruch tells us that the answer might surprise.

Let`s cut to the chase. Australian audiences are still couch potatoes. According to statistics shown by Dough Peiffer, CEO of OzTam, the TV audience measurement company, in 2008, the average time viewed (ATV) in the five main cities was 3:08. That`s three hours and eight minutes per person per day watching broadcast TV.

Flash forward to 2013, and the number is smaller, but not a lot — 3:03. So even with all the new technologies, devices and competing media, the amount of time Aussies sit in front of the box has been pretty steady.

Not what you might have guessed. If the question is “where`s the audience gone”, the answer, at one level, is “nowhere”.

Total use of the TV set has actually gone up, even if what is being done with it is in the throes of shifting. Live viewing declined from 2010-11 to 2012-13 from 12.5% to 11.7%. In the same period, playback went from 0.7% to 1.0%. The biggest change is everything else, the “Other Screen Usage” category, which went from 2.9% to 3.8%. This is all the other things people do with their sets, like playing with the XBox, watching a DVD, or streaming from the Apple TV.

So changes are happening, just not at a cataclysmic rate (yet). Take time-shifted viewing as an example, where people watch a show within seven days of the live broadcast. The most time shifted program in 2013 was the final ofPacked to the Rafters, which saw an extra 257,000 people watch the show after the original broadcast, an increase of just under 20%. 

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Screen Forever 2013: Google’s Approach to Watching Content Owners’ Backs

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch attended Screen Forever 2013, the conference of Screen Producers Australia, this past year and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s kindly allowing us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

The world of content and culture is moving online. And search giant Google is in the driver’s seat to know what the trends are. But the digital world unfolds in a fraught way for many creators. In the opening session of this year’s Screen Forever conference, Derek Slater, Global Public Policy Manager, Google USA, gave a glimpse into this changing world, as viewed by the advertising behemoth. Andrew Einspruch reports.

100 hours.

That’s how much content currently gets uploaded to YouTube every minute. That`s a week`s worth of viewing in less than two minutes, and a year`s worth in less than two hours. That`s the supply side.

On the demand side, six billion hours get watched every month, or just under an hour per person on the planet, whether they have an Internet connection or not. It is a staggering change to the world, especially when you consider that YouTube did not exist nine years ago.

Google USA`s Derek Slater, a self-confessed fan of the Australian show “Frontline,” discussed this boom in creativity, and put it in the context of creators and money. Put simply, you have more content creators than ever before, and more ways for them to make money from all the connected consumers out there. He cited statistics that said digital music revenue was more than $5.6 billion in 2012, and that digital movies were nearly 30% of revenue in the US in 2012, up from 19% in 2011. Ebooks show a similar jump, with 457 million sold in 2012, up 43% from 2011.

It is still a developing market, but it represents a massive shift from the previous decade.

Slater also described Australia as a huge net exporter of video, with eight times as much Aussie video consumed off-shore than on-shore. Looked at differently, twice as much Australian content is consumed in the US than in Australia. From Slater`s perspective, it shows that local content is thriving, and contributing to a trade surplus in that category.

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Screen Forever 2013: Co-Financing with the USA

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch attended Screen Forever 2013, the conference of Screen Producers Australia, this past year and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s kindly allowing us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

A session at Screen Forever looked at some of the ins and outs of financing a feature film with some amount of money from the USA. Andrew Einspruch reports that success factors range from making sure the Aussie elements of the project work to developing credibility as a producer.

One of the key differences between making a film with a USA-based company versus, say, a Canadian, British or French firm, is there is no official co-production treaty. In fact, co-pro treaties are in place specifically to counter the might of Hollywood.

Even so, plenty of Australian productions have a USA component, and the lack of official co-pros simply means the deals have to stack up on some other basis. These elements were explored in a session called “Working with the USA: the Eagle and the Kangaroo”, moderated by lawyer Craig Emanuel of Loeb & Loeb, and which brought together producer Tony Ginane of FG film Productions, sales agent Clay Epstein of Arclight Films, distributor and EP Greg Coote of Larrikin and China Lion, and Tracey Vieira, representing Ausfilm.

The bad news is that the USA remains difficult terrain. It is still very hard to pre-sell North American rights, and the trend with studios (as reported previously) is they are making fewer, more expensive, mostly tentpole films. This, in turn, puts pressure on North American distribution, and forces projects to get financed without it.

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Screen Forever 2013: The State of the Digital Union

by Andrew Einspruch

Filmmaker Andrew Einspruch attended Screen Forever 2013, the conference of Screen Producers Australia, this past year and wrote a series of articles for the event, which he’s kindly allowing us to reprint here. These articles originally appeared in Screen Hub, the daily online newspaper for Australian film and television professionals.

Video on demand (VOD), digital distribution, and the changes industry and consumers face every day were all over Screen Forever 2013. Andrew Einspruch digs through a piles of notes to find the jewels.

The world of screen entertainment and content is going VOD. That much is inarguable. Yes, there are issues, and yes, we’re not there yet (whatever your version of “there” happens to be). But it does not take much squinting to see that it won’t be that long before all content is delivered online, and it will be on demand for consumers to enjoy when, how and where they want.

Even so, you’d be forgiven for rolling your eyes, and thinking that, for now at least, it was more of a pain than it was worth. Or that it was too overwhelming. Or that it was impossible to make a decision about which way to go, or even if can do anything because of contracts signed long ago. Wendy Bernfeld, Managing Director of Rights Stuff, started a session called “Catching the Digital/VOD Wave” with the following common thoughts about VOD:

  • “Too complicated, time-sucking.”
  • “There’s no money in it.” or “I did a deal (once) and got a check for $100.”
  • “It’s OK for America/big brands, but doesn’t really apply in [insert country].”
  • “I can‘t get the [internet/mobile/VOD] rights” and/or “The [broadcaster/distributor/sales agent] took them/sat on them.”
  • “We’re blocked in [country] by [insert: legislation, tax, exhibitors, etc.].”
  • Who wants to watch movies on a [mobile/pc] anyway?

Any of those sound familiar? If you are a producer, the odds are good you’ve muttered at least one of them.

And yet…

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