You As Creator
New Distribution Models Level The Playing Field
by Paige Donner
©Copyright 2006 Paige Donner

Featured in the AFM AFI 2006 Issue of Moving Pictures Magazine

“We are living at a time when the old rules don’t apply but the old rulers haven’t figured it out yet,” so says Peter Broderick, President of Paradigm Consulting, a company that offers filmmakers guidance on new and diversified distribution platforms and methods, “hybrid distribution models,” to use the company’s lingo.

Blessedly we are living in an age when the blockades and bottlenecks to content distribution are being bust wide open by technology. These new methods of distribution are internet distribution, mobile phone content broadcasting, digital downloads, download and burn, a “game changer,” according to one film studio executive.

The potency of this distribution revolution is that it offers all these new avenues for content to reach its audience in addition to the ones, such as TV, cable, retail and theaters, that we are already so familiar with. This means that “filmmakers who were formerly dependent on middlemen, are not so much anymore.,” explains Broderick.
“Filmmakers will be able to cut out the middlemen, and to start to retain control over the distribution of their films,” agrees Jeremy Nathan, the S. African producer of SMS Sugarman, a feature film shot entirely with a cell phone.

“A polymorphous approach to distirbution will start to invite new story-telling techniques, as we progress through this virtual world,” adds Nathan. For SMS Sugarman, “we are really working on the local and global distribution of the film, across Mobile TV and the internet, rather than concentrating on the traditional film route.”

Nathan goes on to illustrate that, “At the same time, we are editing another 4 versions - the mobile episodes (30 of them), the mobile feature version, the internet version, the DVD and TV versions, and all the EPK materials.” When asked how he sees internet distribution impactng content, Nathan says “The internet is yet to be explored in its entirety -in time to come I think it will become the glue that binds the various platforms. Importantly, it will cut out gatekeepers, who have set themselves up as arbiters of taste.”

Jeremy Nathan is not the only filmmaker singing a loud Hallelujah! in response to the widening of film distribution methods. Jeff Santo, producer of the documentary This Old Cub, a film about Ron Santo the former baseball All Star and Chicago Cub legend who also happens to be his dad, says, “Filmmakers really know how to nurture their film. Films with heart and films with a niche audience have new life with these new distribution models.”

Jeff Santo ought to know. They have sold 75,000 DVD copies of their documentary since first putting it on the market for sale in October 2004; 40,000 of those from their very own website, www.thisoldcub.com. And this with a $0 marketing budget.

“If you’re going to distribute your film on your own, two things are key: Number one, your own website. This is crucial. Number two, you must do Q&A’s after your theater screenings. I can’t tell you how many DVD’s we’ve sold just by having them available for purchase after one of our Q&A’s,” explains Santo.

“These new methods of distribution allow filmmakers to not have to depend on traditional distribution models - where certain films tend to do OK but others not,” points out Broderick. Santo’s success despite the hurdles he overcame to distribute This Old Cub successfully gives him a similar perspective, “Films like mine are all about word of mouth. Word-of-mouth marketing takes time. It takes time for the film to get its legs.” And a website, he adds.

Over at behemoth web portal Google, Jennifer Feikin, Director of Video and Multimedia Search Partnerships for Google Video, says, “We are in the first couple minutes of the democratization of content.”

So what does this really mean for you and me? Does this mean that we have become our own programmers? That our user tastes will dictate what is brought to our attention as we download a movie, or search for a particular video clip on Google, Yahoo, Veoh, Revver or other such sites? Or like when you order a movie off of Netflix it automatically suggests more titles of similar content and genre?

“We are primarily a search engine, interested in allowing people to upload their backyard sports game as well as World Cup footage,” says Feikin. “On Google Video people are telling other people what they like to watch - there’s social discourse, a flatter playing field. Great people are making great things that are being watched, putting them in the top 100 VOD on Google just because people are sending it to their friends.”

Asked whether Google would ever establish themselves as a linear channel, Feikin explained, “...if we ever did, it would be towards a search engine based on the consumer’s existing personal viewer habits.” She goes on to explain Google’s view on this, “Content is just content. It doesn’t matter where it lives. Example, people will find it on Google, on ABC, on some independent channel or site. It doesn’t matter where it lives. A key issue is control over the user experience.”

This issue of Net Neutrality is a crucial one if we are going to continue to be able to watch what we want when we want it on the internet, and soon to be mass marketed, internet capable TV sets. Net Neutrality is a contentious issue and one that every citizen and internet user ought to be aware of. At http://savetheinternet.com you can watch what people, even Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, has to say about the issue.

“More creativity is enabled by the internet than even a few years ago. Now the topic is how do you get the viewer to interact with the content?” asks Feikin, who in her next breath cites the phenomenal success of YouTube. And, of course, who hasn’t heard of MySpace?

The aim, for a content producer, is to be “platform agnostic.” People are watching a lot of short form media on PCs and mobile phones. But will they begin watching long form?
Cell phone content is “short attention span theater,” says Daniel Tibbets, Exec. V.P., Studios, GoTv Networks. For content produced as mobisodes, episodic content to be viewed on your mobile phone, “Our guiding principle is to tell a beginning, middle and end...in one minute.”

GoTv Networks, based in Sherman Oaks California, has two sound stages that are used for taping content from 4am to 11pm every day. “Our content is not repurposed, recycled material for broadcast. We must approach this as a very unique and very original medium,” explains Tibbets. “Example, TV vs. Film. TV required that stories be shot and told differently; this created different content,” and different content forms.

Tibbets sees an expansive frontier before him, “Mobile content is in its nascence...it offers a great opportunity to experiment with new content, new talent.”

It’s realistic to think of GoTv as a “channel”...on your cell phone. They have packaged content, such as the hip-hop channel, that a consumer subscribes to for a monthly fee. MobiTV streams live TV and therein lies the difference between those two mobile phone video content providers.

The real and poignant question here is What is fueling the explosion of accessible video content online today?

GoTV Networks has a traditional studio/TV submission process in place for new content. In this way it differs greatly from the large and user-popular video sites and portals such as Yahoo!, Google, Veoh, Grouper, Revver, MetaCafe and, of course, YouTube, (and such) who allow anyone to upload their vdeo content for internet broadcast.

This fundamental difference in method of acquiring content brings up the point: Are these sites, such as YouTube and MySpace so wildly popular among users (content ccnsumers) and the general public because we get to watch video content on a new medium -i.e. hardware different from the traditional TV set or theater film screen -? OR did these sites catch on fire because they offer participatory interaction by their users?

As content consumers are we more likely to want to watch content created by you, me and everyone we know regardless of its platform?

Or are we more likely to continue watching what is force-fed us simply because it is now being broadcast in smaller chunks on cool, new, gimicky hardware devices, such as cell phones and laptop computers?

The beauty of this, the REAL beauty of all this, is that you will be the ones to decide.