Community vs. Blob

I've written plenty here about innovative and exciting platforms for independent film distribution and/or discovery (plenty enough to make at least myself and probably you repulsed by the words Innovative, Exciting, Platform, Distribution, And/Or, and/or Discovery). I've also written a lot here about how few of these platforms actually deliver on their promises to connect filmmakers and fans. My CRI project is about this connection, about community--defining it, understanding why it is a critical component of the online ecosystem for filmmakers, and studying the attempts that startups and institutions have made to build and address it. Community is critical because if it isn't there, than it really doesn't matter if your film is. Is a good library enough to draw community? Recognizable and trustworthy curators? Interaction? Involvement? Empowerment? I think it's some kind of combination of all of the above, with an emphasis on everything that came after "good library." Which is not to say that the quality of content doesn't matter in the online ecosystem. Of course it does. And there are enough quality films not getting (or not getting enough out of) traditional, theatrical distribution to populate a robust online ecosystem. Rather, online communities want an ontologically online experience--they want a unique kind of empowering involvement that does not exist in an offline world. And so some excited rambling about two organizations (a bootstrap startup and a leading institute) that are tackling the community question in truly Innovative And/Or Exciting ways:

One of the platforms I've been researching that I think is killing it is Seed&Spark, (whose COO (and my Tisch classmate) Liam Brady is using the platform to seed and spark his film, FOG CITY). Emily Best, founder and CEO of the company, writes that she "founded Seed&Spark to allow indie filmmakers to leverage this WishList crowd-funding method specifically to build and grow their collaboration with their audiences for the entire life-cycle of a film," because "...when you activate the imaginations of your broader community, you set off a chain of actions, reactions and connections the result of which can push the boundaries of your film beyond what you imagined." The "WishList" to which she refers is essentially a wedding registry for an independent film. Best first experimented with the WishList idea for her film LIKE THE WATER:

What we came to call the "WishList" rendered our filmmaking process transparent to our community and sparked their imaginations. They started coming up with ways to get involved we hadn't imagined. They became deeply meaningful collaborators in the film who then lined up – literally – around the block to see the film when it was finished. ... When both you and your supporter can name the material contribution they made to your film, you both understand your supporter’s importance beyond the number of dollars they contributed. And they should feel important because they are.

Best understands that a community needs to be empowered and thus feel important in order to thrive. So many brands spend so many corporate dollars trying to create online communities and make them feel important. But this is a difficult verging on deceptive task since the individuals who comprise these "communities" are ultimately as important as any other individuals from like demographics. For an independent film, however, individual supporters are actually important because they can, as Best points out and as Seed&Spark allows, contribute uniquely to that film's actualization. I have $50 to donate, you have a car to rent cheaply, he has c-stands to lend, etc. It's kind of beautiful how the needs of an independent film and its online community align like this. All independent films depend to some degree on the good will of communities--local communities, friends, family and peers of the filmmaking team, etc. And a community by definition thrives on supporting its members (that's why it's a community and not a nebulous blob of loners). Seed&Park offers online tools to facilitate this good will and thus connect filmmakers and fans in a profound and uniquely online way.

The Sundance Institute has announced that its Artist Services program will expand its suite of digital tools through partnerships with Tugg, Vimeo, Reelhouse, and VHX. These partners join Kickstarter, GoWatchIt, TopSpin Media, as well as the usual retailer suspects. The above hyperlinked IFP release as well as this IndieWire article provide information on these platforms, and I've also written about several of them on this blog. Artist Services is further partnering with other organizations which will select filmmakers to share Artist Services privileges with Sundance alumni. The organizations are: The Bertha Foundation, BRITDOC, Cinereach, Film Independent, the Independent Filmmaker Project and the San Francisco Film Society.

It is clear that the Sundance Institute is committed through Artist Services to exploring the community component of the online independent filmmaking ecosystem. Between their retail partners (iTunes, Hulu, Netflix etc.), and the partner platforms that help filmmakers strategize their direct-to-fan distribution and marketing (TopSpin, VHX, Reelhouse), #AS is providing their filmmakers a pretty robust toolkit for self-distribution. By additionally partnering with platforms like Tugg and Vimeo, #AS is acknowledging that an engaged community is as important as quality marketing or visible shelf-space. Tugg directly involves and thus empowers its community to bring the films they want to see to their local theater. Despite their nascent experiments with monetization, Vimeo is essentially a community of people who make videos and people who watch them. Although YouTube's community is bigger (like hundreds of millions bigger), Vimeo's superior user-interface/experience, profile customization, and opportunities for discovery (staff picks, categories, etc.) make it feel like a prettier, comfier, more tight-knit community. (There are other differences, of course.) However it stacks up against its opponent, Vimeo is indisputably a community, not a tool for direct to fan strategizing. Artist Services does not end its suite of tools at direct to fan strategizing platforms because tools that empower communities are as vital to a film's self-distributed success.

I'd like to believe that we are in fact being wired together, not apart, but I also think that there's space and time for both the movies we watch together in theaters and the ones we watch alone on personal screens (as long as they're at least 13 inches or so). Personal feelings about the anthropological impacts of online connection aside, the independent filmmaking and loving community is very real and very capable of helping each other make and discover movies online. To me, online community means a collection of real individuals that make real things happen via the Internets (online communities fund films; online nebulous blobs produce analytics). To different platforms, community means different things. Some don't need it (Netflix) and others can't live without it (anything I've written about here). I'm interested in online tools that by virtue of being online tools help a widespread group of like-minded people come together and Seed, Spark, Kickstart, Gathr, and Tugg stuff--tools that empower our community.

Crowd Sourced Cinema... how we got here

This week, WIRED posted an article about the emerging phenomenon of crowd-sourced cinema. This trend seems to have emerged as a result of a confluence of factors, including:

(1) The digitization of the modern movie theater.  As studios has pushed back on exhibitors to outfit their facilities with digital projection technology, the requirement to create a 35mm print to play in a big house has fallen by the wayside. Digital theaters can now screen everything from DCPs to Blu-Rays, brining the cost of creating a screenable "print" from thousands to hundreds of dollars.

(2) Low weekday attendance at movie theaters.   There's a reason that the industry reports weekend box office rather than weekly box office. People go to the movies on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, leaving an opportunity for alternative revenue sources during the quiet weeks at the art houses and multiplexes. A model where theaters can show a movie without shouldering the risk makes a lot of sense.

(3) DIY. With Kickstarter and IndieGoGo filmmakers are raising capital themselves. And with the decreasing cost and increasing access to equipment, filmmakers have the ability to make films with more autonomy and creative control. For the entrepreneurial filmmaker, digital distribution and on-demand screenings offers an extension of this approach, affording artists the opportunity to control the distribution process, determine price and access, directly monetize a fan base or all of the above (see: Louis CK).

(4) The niche-ification of the independent film business.  As studio films get bigger, small films seem to be getting smaller (Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca have recently launched sections explicitly for micro-budget filmmakers).  Just as the music industry has seemed to transition from churning out overnight successes that could speak to most of us, to an array of middle class theater-playing acts that speak to few of us, the film industry may be headed in a direction where filmmakers grow and nurture smaller, but loyal audiences. Bring on the sub-genres.

Whether on-demand screenings are a new and legitimate alternative to traditional theatrical release, a marketing tool to help raise awareness and allow filmmakers to directly access (and monetize) their fans, a revolutionary approach to repertory cinema, or something in between, it's a fascinating development and one we should all have our eyes on as it continues to find its footing.

"—to whom a particular film is relevant—"

Gathr is a self-described "love child of Netflix and Kickstarter." Its self-described core service is "critical mass ticketing." It's basically a platform for crowd-funded screenings of finished films (old and new), much like Tugg. (Here are descriptions of the two platforms in tandem--sorry, I couldn't find an actual comparison. When I get to the in depth platform analysis stage of my research, I'll try to pinpoint the respective services and company dynamics that make the two platforms distinct. All I can tell from the surface is that Tugg is farther ahead in its collection of titles and relationships with established exhibitors.) Gathr's mission is plainly dope. They are providing the tools for filmmakers to (comfortably) stop asking permission of a system that is "archaic, inefficient, top down, and completely misaligned with the interests of the vast majority of filmmakers and their investors" to get their movies seen. But they also might be overestimating how currently well-suited our internets are for a filmmaker (or his team) to promote a movie adequately enough to achieve the tipping point for a screening. More on that in a bit (a little bit more in this particular blog post and a lot more in my CRI research project).

Fanhattan is (from what I can tell--it's currently only available for the iPad that I still don't think I need for whatever ridiculous reason) a pretty sophisticated and helpful aggregator of aggregators--it's like a pimped out, user-friendly CanIStreamIt. No, it really isn't anything like CanIStreamIt except that both share the daunting goal of bringing order to the chaos of content streaming and renting/purchasing. Fanhattan integrates not only with Netflix and Hulu but HBO, TV Everywhere (Time Warner and Comcast's platform for cable customers to get exclusive online content), and most TV networks (ABC, NBC, CW, etc.).

Fanhattan is further integrated with Facebook's Open Graph, but I think their implementation of the graph seems (again: no iPad) more thoughtful than the ubiquitous and eerily reductive "like" and "comment" features on which most Open Graph integrated platforms settle. Fanhattan's implementation seems more thoughtful because it is in service of its "watchlist" function. The watchlist is a curated list of movies and tv shows (old, current, in production) that Fanhattan's users create in order to receive updates about when and where the content becomes available. Users can also share watchlists, which renders all that liking and commenting meaningful since in this context, these functions can actually lead to someone discovering something or some similar kind of serendipity. People don't want to "like" your shit; people want to talk to each other about why they like or don't like your shit. (And it's really not all that clear to anyone why a high number of "likes" is at all meaningful. Unless I'm missing something--please comment if I am.) Communities function on meaningful experience, and meaningful (online) experiences are implicitly social.

Here's an interesting article on Gathr.

And one on Fanhattan.

From the Tribeca Future of Film blogpost on Gathr:

[Box office statistics are] a real shame, because word of mouth, online media, social networking, and traditional marketing ensure that millions of people nationwide—to whom a particular film is relevant—will have heard about a film’s theatrical release.

I like the concept of "relevance" these days as little as I like the word "niche." Enough case studies definitely exist out there which prove that if you can just tweet enough to that fervent network of neocon surf enthusiasts, you will be able to Gathr and Tugg them enough to pay your investors back. But the goal shouldn't be to (only) acknowledge the myopic few to whom your particular film is relevant, but to find the folks who care about your work because it's authentic and good (oh yeah, by the way, I'm totally assuming that your work is authentic and good. If it isn't, it has as little business being Gathr'd or Tugg'd as it does being platform released by Fox Searchlight).

Gathr and Fanhattan are completely different tools, but for either to survive as platforms or have any real value, it needs to recognize how its users (its community, perhaps--I still need to figure out what this means) want to play with its offerings and thus which tools it should offer to quietly facilitate that playtime. Fanhattan's "watchlist" is an inherently social and useful tool that may place a necessary focus on user interaction and subsequent discovery. Gathr might need to recalibrate its tools in order to service the filmmakers and fans who don't or don't care to belong to niches. Gathr's founder himself notes in the Tribeca blogpost: "After all, there are 343 cities in the U.S. with 100,000+ people, and there are more than 3,300 towns in the U.S. with 25,000+ people." That's a whole lot of people to whom tons of particular films may or may not be relevant--how can we empower them to talk, share, and figure out for themselves what they want to see?

The more I explore this question, the scarier our delimiting social networks become. But, more on that (and the Slow Web, and the fact that You Are Not a Gadget) in another post soon.