Reel Word

My nephew is a voiceover artist. He does voices for Saturday morning cartoons, anime, commercials, and video games.  Companies whose primary business is creating and selling stories consider the writers, voiceover artists, and related creative talent to be among the highest-value assets of their organization, and the technical people are infrastructure.  Companies whose primary business is creating and selling games consider the programmers and related creative talent behind the gaming engine to be among the highest value assets of their organization, and the performers are just the tools for realizing the programmer’s game-play vision.

Which brings me to the writers strike.  The WGA and the Studios are expressing positions that reflect the view that they exist in a walled garden where the Studios control some marketplaces and the writers are the sole suppliers to those marketplaces.  That used to be true, which is why both groups were able, over many decades, to become strong and prosperous.

But now, while a strike is taking place to define the rules of play within that walled garden, writers are banding together and developing content for broadband and other distribution paths and markets, and Studios are acquiring content from broadband and other repurposable content development markets (including English language foreign markets).   These actions reflect the recognition from individual players on both sides of the strike that their playing field has become a component of a larger business ecosystem that now has emerging populations of players beyond their experience and control. 

Writers Guild members who undertake side projects that don’t violate the restrictions of the strike are competing with professional, prosumer, and amateur writers who have developed their skills writing non-linear books for games, posting blogs, constructing multimedia projects, etc.  The business people who run the operations that employ these non-Hollywood writers have only minimal incentive (ex. marketing hook – “by the writer of the hit show Yada Yada”) to offer the Hollywood writers the compensation and benefits that they are accustomed to.  In an ever-flattening world, visibly successful side projects by striking Hollywood writers will accelerate the readjustment of the compensation that they receive to reflect a new larger open market valuation.

Similarly, Studios that acquire content from outside of their system for repurposing within their system realize that they are in competition with other emerging and converging production/finance and distribution channels.  Establishing a brand that crosses over multiple distribution channels and monetization opportunities is a holy grail for the Studios and Networks.  By repurposing content from other sources, when search engines support tracking content to multiple sources, the Studios are to a certain degree undermining their own value.  They make themselves less important to the audience as ‘the’ place to find reliable quality content.  And they make their distribution infrastructure less valuable to advertisers as ‘the’ way to reach the target audience.

The strike is, among other things, a distraction for both parties; a diversion that is taking resources away from addressing the real challenges facing both parties.  In a world in which intellectual property is valued but not effectively protected, the Hollywood writers should be exploring creative ways to market themselves, increase their value in the emerging ecosystem, and monetize their creative output in competition with non-Hollywood writers.  In an anytime, anywhere, on any device world where anything can be found from multiple sources – including sources that have stripped away the tools that monetize the content and pay for its creation and distribution – the Studios should be exploring even more immediately-available ways than they currently are to create value-add experiences that draw consumers to their networks, sites, and products.

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. An example of this approach in the artwork is the current Copyright Murakami exhibit at the Los Angeles Geffen Contemporary ( LA MOCA site, YouTube video: Louis Vuitton and Murakami , a review of the show

I will be involved in two panels related to new media and entertainment technology at the Sundance Film Festival ‘08

I will be moderating the panel:
New Filmmaking Technology: What’s Now and What’s Next
Friday, January 18, 12:30pm
New Frontier on Main (Microcinema)

Ranging from lofty 4K cameras to the humblest laptop editing system, it seems no technology is beyond today’s indie filmmakers. How do we choose the best solutions available? Join the makers behind the Festival’s most innovative films to review the latest in HD cinematography, workflow options, post-production software, and more. Moderated by entertainment technology strategy advisor Phil Lelyveld, formerly with Disney.

And I will be participating in the panel:
Webolution! – Hollywood Adapts to the Web
Saturday, January 19, 12:30pm
New Frontier on Main (Microcinema)

The writing is on the wall – the Industry must adapt to new media or face extinction. Today’s studios and independents are finally embracing the challenge of porting content and revenue to new distribution strategies. Join Hollywood power brokers and new media superstars to discuss their strategies for the Web. Moderated by Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD.com.