NYU Think-Tank Awards Artel Great Fellowship To Aid Underserved Film Communities | Shadow and Act

Indiewire's "Shadow and Act" featured 2014 CRI Fellow Artel Great this week, delivering an interview in which Artel outlined his plans to reach underserved film communities via his CRI Fellowship. NYU Think-Tank Awards Artel Great Fellowship To Aid Underserved Film Communities | Shadow and Act.

As part of his Fellowship, Artel founded Project Catalyst  to "meet the needs of passionate, emerging communities of color who yearn to be inspired by new productions of culture that they can take pride in." Project Catalyst will serve as a platform that leverages technology, performance, and exhibition in the service of media diversity.

This is just the beginning for Artel and Project Catalyst - stay tuned for updates and invitations to events!

illy Salon at the Cinema Research Institute

Earlier this week we filmed the pilot episode of the illy Salon at the Cinema Research Institute featuring John Sayles and Matthew Weise in a conversation about narrative at the intersection of film and games in an evolving media landscape. The conversation, moderated by CRI Advisory and Faculty Committee member Colin Brown and enriched by CRI Fellows and members of the NYU Graduate Film community, touched on issues of authorship, independent markets, and audience interaction. The conversation was a blast to hear and will be available via Tribeca's Future of Film website in early November. New episodes will be released once a month through May 2014 - stay tuned!

What's in it For Me?

I recently posted about this article on gift logic (vs free market logic), a social means of relating that governs certain cultures (like the Tiv of West Africa) and makes certain online platforms (like Kickstarter) work. Then someone seriously revamped our CRI website and accidentally killed that post in the process. So I just wanted to re-post the link to this compelling article since the author articulates relevant points about transactions that strengthen relationships, platforms that build communities, and social mechanisms that fund art. My CRI project is ultimately focused on understanding how online tools could support such transactions, platforms and social mechanisms, so I really appreciated this thoughtful perspective. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-would-you-ever-give-money-through-kickstarter.html?pagewanted=all

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.

Communities Run On...Transparency?

Here's a thought-provoking post by Chris Dorr on indie film and network effects (in case you didn't already see it featured on the Truly Free Film blog). Film people talk a lot about transparency these days, but they rarely consider its implications beyond making the folks at companies who require discretion with numbers vaguely uneasy.

Chris' suggests that thorough, generous transparency (like that offered by James Cooper with his kickstarterforfilmmakers project) if continuously offered and collected by an active community (still grappling with that word) has powerful potential to create a network effect. This (very) basically means that the more transparent information is offered by the participants of the network, the smarter, more powerful and more attractive the network becomes.

The obvious questions remain: what does this network look like? What are the online tools available to facilitate such a network?

In a class I took at ITP on online communities, our lovely teacher Kristen Taylor/kthread would systematically bring us back to the question "Communities run on...?" Love, passion, connection, purpose, and other such adequate-verging-on-necessary answers came up often. I don't think that transparency is a requisite community engine, but I think the implications of its employment for a network of film fans and makers are exciting and require further examination. I'm on it!

What else do (online film) communities run on?

"—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.

Group Watching > Solo Lurking

I just read this article on TechCrunch about new movie- (as well as future book-, app-, game-, and tv-) recommendation platform called Foundd. And now I'm here typing in this little box because Foundd has a pretty unique value add for this space, one that's intriguing enough to have me here typing in this little box now. The value add is group recommendations:

Berlin-based Foundd is a new movie recommendation service launching this week, which not only finds you movies you would like to watch, but also helps a group decide on a movie they can watch together. It’s an interesting twist on the concept of personalized recommendation engines, like those created by Netflix or Amazon, for example, which seemingly presume that watching movies is a solitary experience. While that’s sometimes true, you’re just as often watching movies with family or friends…and arguing about what to watch.

I wasn't able to actually test out this group recommending/viewing mechanism since after onboarding I found myself with zero Foundd friends [ :( ], but I'm still excited to see a platform in the recommendation/content space whose founders are trying to build into its architecture an understanding of what its community needs to function comfortably. A quick stroll through the Foundd world does not reveal beyond the group recommendation function much more of an attempt to differentiate itself from the bigger player Netflixes or smaller renegade Filmasters of this space.

Still, it's clear that the Berlinese men of Foundd are thinking about their community's needs and group behavior generally, and it will be cool to see if/how they move more towards making Foundd a real-time community experience instead of another static (if helpful) algorithmic lurk-zone.

Whoopi's Wisdom, Or Why Famous Folks Who Don't Need Them Are Turning To Crowds

In this IndieWire interview, Whoopi Goldberg explains her decision to use Kickstarter to fund "I Got Somethin To Tell You," her documentary on Moms Mabley, a black, female comedian who influenced Whoopi and many other comedians with a penchant for addressing some of the less comfy issues of their times. In discussing why she turned to the crowd, Whoopi notes:

I could have gone back to one of the cable stations, but what that means is you don't get to do the project the way you want to. This project is about the impact that Moms had on people. Impact on comics. It's less about her life story and about what she brought. She was the only female comic for about 40 years! That's never been celebrated and it's never been celebrated as a woman. She was on the cutting edge, a pioneer, talking about things that nobody was really talking about at the time and how she did it. So that's what this is about.

The sentiment here (which is similarly apparent in remarks like "[My crowd-funders] want to see good stuff and they don't mind contributing what they can," or "This isn't a little bullshitty project") is uniquely that of someone who is established and connected but still choosing to step outside of a system that can work but not without an often impeding amount of begging and meetings and opinions and begging. Whoopi, like Paul, Amanda, and Louis, simply gets it: if I can get my fans to fund what I do directly, I can do it how I want to do it, plus I can give them rewards, shield them from middle-man screwing, and other such heart-warming perks. Of course simply getting it is easier if you already have a lot of loyal fans, but one of the goals of my CRI project is to figure out how filmmakers can find the folks who love what they do--to figure out how to define community and build it. So, stay tuned.

For now, back to Whoopi and co. If you're reading this, you're undoubtedly reading lots of other writing on the disruption, the disintermediation that these established artists' decisions to turn to their fans for direct support signify. Chris Dorr, who has generously shared his expert perspective with me and helped to hone the approach and scope of my CRI project, has some really fantastic related posts like this one on Amanda Palmer and "True Fans."

I want to add an observation to this dialogue that is simple but speaks to a critical and oddly overlooked aspect of direct to fan activity: these famous folks who don't need them are turning to crowds, in part, because they (the folks) love them (the crowds) back. There is something (the something I am here trying to define) that is really refreshing about Whoopi, Amanda, and Paul's frank, gloriously unironic campaign videos, about Louis' sincere, typo-ridden emails. There are actual people poking out of the screen, people who aren't particularly polished or aware of themselves, but people aren't supposed to be this way--brands are. PEOPLE ARE NOT BRANDS. More on that in just a bit.

Whoopi emphasizes that her project isn't little and bullshitty because she knows her fans "want to see good stuff." I wonder if every filmmaker with a Kickstarter campaign really believes that (or has at least considered whether) the crowds of potential fans whom they are trying to reach wouldn't find their project little and bullshitty. This is not to say that people should make what they think their fans want them to make, but it is to say (very much so) that once an artist starts asking the crowd for something, he has an (ethical? strategic? humane?) imperative to respect and understand the people who comprise it. Whoopi wants the freedom to make what she wants, but she consistently refers back to the fact that what she wants is what the fans want (and is what Moms delivered): something edgy, discomforting, and honest--"so that's what this is about." She recognizes that in the particular story of "I Got Somethin' To Tell You," the fans want the thing that they can themselves fund, and this thing will be different from the thing that the cable station would have funded. So, that's what this is, and it's pretty special.

I think the "something" that these artists all seem to possess in their campaigning and which I'm trying to define here is an open and honest appreciation for fans, an inherent respect for the people who are into what they're ostensibly into because they're making it. The most incredible thing that the internet has done for filmmakers is that it has allowed them to actively give a shit about their fans. Crowd-funding tools, with Kickstarter at the helm, seem at this point to be the only online platforms that realize how incredible the human reality of this disintermediation is and thus build the tools into their platforms to facilitate seamless connection.

The more I read that filmmakers need to "brand" themselves and have more of a "presence" so they can be "relevant" (and other words that make me feel ill), the more I understand why so many of us are loathe to explore direct to fan options. That said, many of these options themselves seem built around the premise of branding and selling. Throughout the course of my research, I am going to look deeply at platforms and tools that are trying to support real connection and community, as well as ones that want to help filmmakers find their fans. I'll also explore what connection and community are as concepts and practices in both real reality and the digital one, so that my analysis of these platforms counts for something (and so that I feel less pretentious using both words ad nauseam in one blog post). I am happy to share my working bibliography and very happy to receive feedback--just let me know. I will post it once it's slightly less of a mess.

Thanks for reading!