Wanderful

This year the movie industry made $30 billion (1/3 in the U.S.) from box-office revenue.

But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. Where did the other $57 billion come from?

From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: Pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads.

The Movie Industry and Technology Progress
The music and movie business has been consistently wrong in its claims that new platforms and channels would be the end of its businesses. In each case, the new technology produced a new market far larger than the impact it had on the existing market.

• 1920’s – the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can’t compete with free. No one was ever going to buy music again.
• 1940’s – movie studios had to divest their distribution channel – they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. “It’s all over,” complained the studios. In fact, the number of screens went from 17,000 in 1948 to 38,000 today.
• 1950’s – broadcast television was free; the threat was cable television. Studios argued that their free TV content couldn’t compete with paid.
• 1970’s – Video Cassette Recorders (VCR’s) were going to be the end of the movie business. The movie businesses and its lobbying arm MPAA fought it with “end of the world” hyperbole. The reality? After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket.  With a new channel of distribution, home movie rentals surpassed movie theater tickets.
• 1998 – the MPAA got congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), making it illegal for you to make a digital copy of a DVD that you actually purchased.
• 2000 – Digital Video Recorders (DVR) like TiVo allowing consumer to skip commercials was going to be the end of the TV business. DVR’s reignite interest in TV.
• 2006 - broadcasters sued Cablevision (and lost) to prevent the launch of a cloud-based DVR to its customers.
• Today it’s the Internet that’s going to put the studios out of business. Sound familiar?

Why was the movie industry consistently wrong? And why do they continue to fight new technology?

Technology Innovation
The movie industry was born with a single technical standard – 35mm film, and for decades had a single way to distribute its content – movie theaters (which until 1948 the studios owned.) It was 75 years until studios had to deal with technology changing their platform and distribution channel. And when it happened (cable, VCR’s, DVD’s, DVR’s, the Internet,) it was a relentless onslaught. The studios responded by trying to shut down the new technology and/or distribution channels through legislation and the courts.

Regulation/Legislation
But why does the movie business think their solution is in Washington and legislation?

History and success.

In the 1920’s individual states were beginning to censor movies and the federal government was threatening to do so as well. The studios set up their own self censorship and rating system keeping most sex and politics off the screen for 40 years. Never again wanting to be at the losing side of a political battle they created the movie industry’s lobbying arm, MPAA.

By the 1960’s, the MPPA achieved regulatory capture (where an industry co-opts the very people who are regulating it,) when they hired Jack Valenti, who ran the studios’ lobbying efforts for the next 38-years. Ironically, it was Valenti’s skill in hobbling competitive innovation that negated any need for studios to develop agility, vision and technology leadership.

Management of Innovation
The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to existing markets, particularly to content/copyright owners whose sell through well-established distribution channels. The incumbents tend to have short-sighted goals and often fail to recognize that more money can be made on new platforms and new distribution channels.

In an industry facing constant technology shifts the exec staff and boards of the studios have lawyers, MBAs and financial managers, but no management skill in dealing with disruption. So they rely on lobbying ($110 million a year,) lawsuits, campaign contributions (wonder why the President won’t be vetoing SOPA?) and Public Relations.

Ironically, the six major movie studios have a great technology lab in Silicon Valley with projects in streaming rights, Video On Demand, Ultraviolet, etc. But lacking the support from the studio CEOs or boards, the lab languishes in the backwaters of the studios’ strategy.  Instead of leading with new technology, the studios lead with litigation, legislation and lobbying. (Imagine if the $110 million/year spent on lobbying went to disruptive innovation.)

Piracy
One of the claims that studios make is that they need legislation to stop piracy. The fact is piracy is rampant in all forms of commerce. Video games and software have been targets since their inception. Grocery and retail stores euphemistically call it shrinkage. Credit card companies call it fraud.  But none use regulation as often as the movie studios to solve a business problem. And none are so willing to do collateral damage to other innovative industries (VCRs, DVRs, cloud storage and now the Internet itself.)

The studios don’t even pretend that this legislation benefits consumers. It’s all about protecting short-term profit.

SOPA
When lawyers, MBAs and financial managers run your industry and your lobbyists are ex-Senators, understanding technology and innovation is not one of your core capabilities.

The SOPA bill (and DNS blocking) is what happens when someone with the title of anti-piracy or copyright lawyer has greater clout than your head of new technology. SOPA gives corporations unprecedented power to censor almost any site on the Internet. It’s as if someone shoplifts in your store, SOPA allows the government to shut down your store.

History has shown that time and market forces provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology is a video recorder, a personal computer, an MP3 player or now the Net. It’s prudent for courts and congress to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude.

What the music and movie industry should be doing in Washington is promoting legislation to adapt copyright law to new technology — and then leading the transition to the new platforms.

The U.S. State Department has been championing the Internet Freedom initiative across the world. Secretary of State Clinton said, “…when ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices, the Internet is diminished for all of us.”

It’s too bad the head of the MPAA – an ex Senator - made a mockery of her words when he wondered “why our online censorship can’t be like China?”

We wonder, “Why can’t the film industry innovate like Silicon Valley?”

Lessons Learned

• Studios are run by financial managers who lack the skills to exploit disruptive innovation
• Studio anti-piracy/copyright lawyers trump their technologists
• Studios have no concern about collateral damage as long as it optimizes their revenue
• Studios $110M/year lobbying and political donations trump consumer objections
• Politicians votes will follow the money unless it will cost them an election

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Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Customer Development

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2011/1210/1224308848887.html

@neilleyden aboy neil! optimism will win

Production with a purpose. Thinking big. Starting conversations and being creative with media. All good.

Book publishing... it's exciting!!

beActive launches Digital Comedy Lab

steven | November 21, 2011 | Comments (0)

The search for the next big Irish comedy act starts today

Digital Comedy Lab is an incubation program for film projects in the comedy mockumentary genre for the new YouTube generation, providing support in the following areas: training, script development, production financing and distribution. It will select 6 new comedy creators or comedians in Ireland and provide them with the training and the tools to allow this pool of talent to produce and successfully distribute content on the new digital platforms.

The Digital Comedy Lab is produced by beActive  (the digital studio behind Sofia’s Diary, Flatmates, 350 South and the Emmy nominated Final Punishment) in partnership with Filmbase, and Setanta Sports. It’s open to comedy writers, actors, comedians, producers and/or directors who believe that they have an idea that could be the next Borat, The Office or This is Spinal Tap – applications open from today until the 31^st of January 2012 to be part of Digital Comedy Lab.

From the applications received, a judging panel will select 6 projects to enter the training and mentoring programme and one of these will get production funding to shoot a low cost digital feature film during Summer 2012 to be screened to an Irish audience by early 2013. The winning project will be announced at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Details for the lab are available on-line now at www.digitalcomedylab.com.

Speaking today in Dublin Nuno Bernardo, Managing Director of beActive said: ‘Digital Comedy Lab is a scouting and development program for new comedy talent in Ireland, through a new kind of training and production program that has been created with the industry’s current demands, economics and the audience tendencies in mind’.

Speaking on the launch of the Lab Alan Fitzpatrick, CEO of Filmbase said ‘the training, mentoring, production and distribution advice integral to this scheme, in addition to the funding on offer, will provide invaluable support to new and emerging Irish film talent who can engage an audience across a range of platforms. We are delighted to be supporting this innovative scheme and look forward to seeing an exciting range of projects emerge from new Irish filmmakers.’

Tony Whelan, Controller of Programming at Setanta Ireland said ‘There is an unrelenting appetite for innovative Irish comedy and this is a brilliant initiative to help feed that demand.  Following our success with the mockumentary series Fran partnering with beActive for the Digital Comedy Lab is a natural step. We look forward to giving the winning project it’s Irish TV premiere’

Full details on the Digital Comedy Lab can be found at:

http://www.digitalcomedylab.com

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• October 13, 2011 -- Competition: Win a Pair of Tickets to ‘Superheroes’, a documentary film by Michael Barnett
• October 11, 2011 -- Filmbase presents the Best of the West 2011 – Award Winning Short Films from the Galway Film Fleadh.
• October 3, 2011 -- Filmbase now taking bookings for Final Cut Pro X Training
• September 14, 2011 -- MediaZoo in association with Filmbase announce After Effects Masterclass in Belfast 24-28th October
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Tags: Digital Comedy Lab, filmbase, Setanta Sports

Category: News

From 2010- another expert says Mobile is going up, Desktop is going down. And apparently tablets are the way to go in the short term.

In Order to get the most out of YouTube’s Workshop you should sign up for their Partnership Programme below:

“Gearing up to our Alternative Ways of Distribution next week, we’d like to invite all original content creators to start exploring the world of YouTube Partnerships  (read: ways that you can develop an audience and earn revenue from your films & videos on YouTube) and sign up for a Partner Programme in advance.  The YouTube team will be presenting the Programme on Friday, but are encouraging all to sign up now so that they’ll be able to guide you directly through your Channels and show you the best ways of developing them.  Please visit www.youtube.com/partners to sign up or email zofia@support.youtube.com with any questions.  And don’t forget to mention Darklight when applying!”

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2011 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Latestnews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I attended this talk on Youtube partnership at the Darklight Film Festival last week. Partnership with Youtube is beginning to make a lot more sense for producers, particularly those with niche audiences generating a lot of traffic already on Youtube. The message from Youtube was that if you're going to build a large audience, they have tools and analytics that will help you build it better. In addition, when you become a Youtube partner, there are ways to earn revenue from your channel. You have to start somewhere, and Youtube would prefer if you start with them. They also make a compelling case for using their partnership advertising model, although the amount of money you might earn was unclear. Still it looks like a great way to begin to explore the possibilities of online video production. The Youtube playbook is an essential read: http://www.youtube.com/creators/playbook.html