Open Source Cinema – you’ve got to love it!!!

Morning all,

I’ve spent the last two years working for a technology company specialising in video streaming so my world has been bitrate, compression, CDN’s, bandwidth, VOD, IPTV, gigabytes, firewalls, media players, content distribution platforms. I’ve been involved in debates and sold many a campaign based on the lean back online viewing experience as opposed to the lean forward more webpage based experience.

And so where does all this lead….. well taking a step back and looking at industries in which content plays a role – and there are a quite a few – content producers, agencies and brands, licensing and lest one forget – lawyers – one could say there are some seismic changes coming down the broadband pipes and in the way consumers/viewers/people/the masses are starting to view and think about content.

For this first of my blogs about the content industry, let’s focus on the film industry.

For many years there has been the traditionally held business model – film made, distributed via the cinema with swanky premieres, after six months film is released on DVD and then finally sold to the broadcasters. Yes I am talking about the big blockbuster films here and for a reason as they account for most of the revenues in the industry and they have most of the control in the industry. Independent film makers face bigger challenges in actually getting cinemas (distributors) to screen their films and then worry about whether people are actually going to come and see their films. They rely on a smaller more cinema savvy audience who do make the effort to find out about their films! They are out there but there is a lot of competition for the share of their wallet. It’s a thankless task when the film you’ve slogged your guts out to bring to the cinema and is truly great gets completely ignored for some candyflossed Hollywood blockbuster with huge marketing budgets; that however is a blog for another day.

Meantime the film industry (i.e the big boys) are facing the same challenges the music industry faced with people downloading content and not paying for it. One hopes they are not going to go down the same path as the music industry did and start slapping lawsuits on people for downloading the latest film on bittorrent because that does nothing whatsoever to build future business models or find ways to engage with the public/audience online.

Quite what the film industry is planning to do is an open book at the moment. There are some fascinating people out there who are evangelising about bringing film direct to the public and in doing so opening up so much more choice in the films on offer. One of these is Peter Buckingham who heads up the UK Film Council. Well worth listening to one of his podcasts or reading his lectures. Peter is the man masterminding the Digital Screen Network project in cinemas across the UK. http://www.digimart.org/archives_webdiffusion.php?lang=en&page=videos&year=2006&id=20061018_1_shaping_change_in_distribution

And there are genius and courageous people who seem to really understand how the internet works and what online social networks are about and how to fund films and build business models without alienating audiences.

I’ve recently read about a person called Matt Hanson who is nothing short of visionary. Listed by Forbes.com as one of the ten people who will change the world this year, his idea is simple, audacious and well – brilliant. Quite simply he is recruiting 50,000 people into an online community all of whom pay £25 or $50 to be involved in a film called ‘A Swarm of Angels’. ( http://aswarmofangels.com )The idea is based on the same principles of open source software; i.e collobaration with members forming the social network deciding on the creative decisions such as scripting, editing. The project has attracted a global audience and people from different walks of life; from skilled filmmakers to run-of-the-mill-film-buffs. There are two scripts under production, one Matt has written himself and the other that has been written by the members.

If you think that sounds unwieldy, don’t forget that movie making is already highly collaborative, especially in Hollywood, where productions are subject to endless revisions, hirings and firings, and audience testing. And the result is often lousy. The difference in Hanson’s project is that the investors will be true film buffs, more interested in art than commerce.

Once the project is completed, it will be available for downloading and remixing under a Creative Commons license. For Hanson, it’s an important final step that harks back to the dawn of entertainment. “If you look at the Greek epics,” he says, “the storytellers that were recounting their tales always put their own spin on it.”

Personally I think people like Matt Hanson are brilliant. They are daring to think outside of the box, to explore new ideas and opportunities and develop new business models. The time of UGC (User Generated Content) is well and truly with us and people with a digital camcorder are proving they are more than capable of scripting, filming, editing and posting up videos. The concept of a community based film project is a next step in the evolution taking place online of video content and how people view it.

I for one will be watching and getting involved once they open the community up for more new members to join up.