Coming to a small screen near you

One of things that Tomi talk about in our book are the profound effects on existing business and distribution models when content becomes digitalised and broadband penetration become ubiquitous. Further in our paper on mobile as the 7th Mass Media, that shifts into an entire new gear.

Its a bit like Captain Kirk asking for warp speed 9. And Scotty rolling his eyes and saying

I never thougt the ship could go that fast Cap’n?

Of course we have have new business models and platforms like MyNuMo or Spreadshirt or Zopa or Artists First or Current TV, Your Encore and attempts to radically move away from the Hollywood Hegemony over what gets made by whom and where it is distributed

Exhibit A Soderbergh’s film Bubble And of course we have world cinema and The film festival that never ends in Jaman.com

So it comes as no surprise that a new company has launched that will distribute Art house films that never see the light of day. Did you know that only 1% of all films made in any one year are ever shown in the US.

In a Guardian article, we are introduced to another digital venture

Independent filmmaker Mary McGuckian’s new online movie site has a tagline that runs “not playing at a cinema near you”. Her MoviePol site, which launches at the end of the summer, is a direct response to frustration at trying to battle past the blockbusters to get her films shown in US cinemas.

Technological revolutions always shift control from incumbent institutions to a wider audience.

Run “virtually” between Los Angeles, London, Toronto and her office in the south of France, MoviePol hopes to be every film fan’s local art house cinema when it launches. Its first films were selected by critics as deserving of a wider showing than they got and include Ms McGuckian’s own Rag Tale, a romance set in the world of British tabloids starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rupert Graves. MoviePol is part of an emerging trend for filmmakers to shun the established industry release pattern and go straight to the web. Independent directors and producers argue that the film distribution industry is monopolised by a small number of executives whose taste and commercial aims dictate who gets to see what. The spread of broadband and the advent of piracy-protected video playing systems is encouraging growing numbers of stymied producers and distributors to bypass cinemas and, as they put it, “democratise” the system.

To be honest however, I wonder if that is true democratisation? Al Gore’s Current TV does not filter in this way.

As we say, you have to give up control to get control. There needs to be a filtration system but surely, the combined collective intelligence of a bunch of movie buffs is going to be better than a self elected elite?

I wonder if they have in fact looked at the Jaman proposition?

From Scarcity to Plenty
What information consumes is rather obvious. Said Herbert Simon an economist. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention
…The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

One of the first big UK releases comes from independent distributor Peccadillo. This month peccadillopod.com hosts the premier of Surveillance, a thriller starring Tom Harper, Sean Brosnan, Dawn Steele and Simon Callow. A one-off viewing costs ?2.99 or customers can download and keep it for ?9.99.

Peccadillo’s founder Tom Abell says his company will not abandon cinema but it has had to react to diminishing variety on the big screen. “It is getting harder and harder to get our films into cinemas. We have a wealth of material we’ve had for a while that hasn’t been released yet.”

Right so, why would you limit yourself to a controlled walled garden, when you can reach out, attract, and distribute to a global audience. In a world of plenty the rules change.

Yet the old guard would prefer a worlf of scarcity where they are the ones with the scraps of culture and content, prodcuts and services that we fight over.

And we all know, once you have stormed the Bastille you don’t go back to your day job ? right

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Posted in: Convergence, Distribution, Economics, Engagement Marketing, Film, Media, Networks, Trends, Web/Tech

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