Reel Word

 (I’ve reposted this older blog because it is relevant to my Saturday Sundance panel.)

Linear content can be instantly pirated and distributed over the web without the permission of, or attribution to, the artist and owner of the rights to the work. Since that is the case, what is the incentive for creating anything above low cost long-form content? What is the incentive to pay the artist a licensing fee, or legally place ads in or around the content?

Historically, long form linear content has been the primary deliverable. Today, until the mechanisms for respecting the artists’ rights to chose what happens to their work are developed and generally accepted, alternative incentives for the creation of what is widely viewed as high value content must be identified and tested.

One approach is to view the long form linear content as the foundataion platform on which to build evolving and regularly changing value-added content and services that people are willing to pay for.

I recently spoke with a writer/director who wanted to pitch a feature for which his primary distribution would be over the web. He was thinking that he would shoot some of the scenes from multiple angles and offer up multiple versions of those scenes from different perspectives. He estimated that this would add 10 days of shooting to the project, at an estimated cost of $100,000 per day for a union crew and professional-quality production and postproduction work. He believed that this would add sufficient value to the online release to justify the added expense.

The obvious question he needed to answer is; would this bonus material be adequate to not only pay for itself but also contribute in an ongoing manner to the cost of creating the feature itself?

Even for a big name writer/director, the odds of a hit, multiplied by the odds of an online hit, multiplied by the odds of getting paid for a reasonable percentage of view of the online hit, result in a pretty small probability of recouping expenses – and by extension getting the project funded. His ideas are good from a creative standpoint, but do not address the problem that the material can be instantly ripped off, so they can’t be relied on to build a sustainable revenue source. The Long Tail argument might have people looking at the content over a long period of time, but it does not address the problem of motivating those people to go to a place where they can be asked to pay the artist for her or his work. He clearly needed a longer term creative and cash-flow vision.

One approach is to create regularly renewed, lower-cost and community-driven content that is subscription-driven or accessed via a menu of purchase options. Some examples are:

• Voice-overs by different characters throughout the program; such as the character’s inner voice articulating what they are thinking as events unfold. This can be inexpensive to produce and can be renewed regularly. The fan community can comment on the voiceover, which can lead to additional voiceovers in response to their comments.
• Plot point forks; ask the audience to write what happens to characters between the scenes in which they appear. This can lead to multi-branch story ideas, which in turn can become the basis for a related game or spin-off stories
• Community chat with the characters; pose dilemmas and alternative event ideas to the community and ask “what would you do”? This could lead to alternative story lines, which could then be the basis for lower-cost story-boarding, manga, and other alternative multimedia story-telling approaches, as well as potentially another foundation long form linear program.
• Spin-off products and merchandise; including allowing the audience to suggest products. Allow for ‘insider’ products and services to emerge, because they may help strengthen the community.
• Behind-the-camera commentary; such as encouraging and linking to personal comments by those involved in the production. Building communities around the cast and crew, including the post-production community, will extend the scope of the potential audience. The fan community will include people who produce their own content. Those creative individuals will want to ask advise and share ideas with the people involved in the production as well as others in the community. More links back to the platform long-form program will translate into more opportunities for people to join the fan community, participate in activities on the site, and contribute to the financial and professional success of the artists and other rightsholders involved in the site.
• Other: there are always more ideas that will emerge from the web community, prosumers, and professionals.

Linear content used to be a controlled, stand-alone product. It is now an extreme end-member – although one that is highly valued by consumers and advertisers – of a multimedia landscape that includes community, commerce, data, gaming, virtual worlds, enhanced reality, and a panoply of emerging and yet-to-be developed elements. An overriding question is; what art can artists create today that holds the possibility of sustaining their ability to create art. One approach, as articulated above, is to use high cost, high value linear content as the platform for building a fuller artistic vision, which in turn helps pay for the high cost, high value linear content.