InterventTech

On 22 and 23 October, Power to the Pixel returned to the BFI Southbank. Over the two days there were some very interesting ideas shared; ways that filmmakers could engage and maintain audiences for their work and the use of online distribution as an economically viable method.

Speakers Christy Dena and Alex Johnson both spoke about audience media consumption – some observations that came up: how it was normal for people to consume media simultaneously (i.e. using the internet, whilst watching the television), that the social networking demographic was aging, and that audiences expected to be able to access content across platforms.

It became apparent that from representatives from well-established media companies, such as YouTube and Current TV, that their organisations were concerned with revenue generation from advertising and there were numerous examples shown of clever marketing campaigns for big budget features like the Dark Knight.

With filmmakers present such as Arin Crumley, M Dot Strange and Timo Vuorensola it became apparent that there was not yet one over-arching business model to follow. Auters of the William Gibson ‘Garage Kubrick‘ model, they use the digital to realise their ideas, create cult followings, to draw on other people’s talents and resources and to share their findings.

All the talk of the difficulty of making money from digital distribution brought to mind the Canada on Strike episode of South Park where the internet stars from YouTube are waiting to collect the ‘theoretical’ millions they believe they’ve made from people watching their videos. Or for another way of looking at it – read Chris Anderson’s thoughts on freeconomics, as recommended by speaker Pete Buckingham from the UK Film Council.

M Dot Strange suggested that starting a cult was key to the success of his film. Having built up a fanbase on YouTube from early on in the development of his We Are The Strange project, M Dot offered his fans the opportunity to star in his film as zombie extras, blogged about the production process and posted film skool tutorial videos to YouTube.

I was particularly impressed by ‘film futurist’ Matt Hanson, who is currently producing the first crowd sourced/ crowd funded film in an ambitious project called A Swarm of Angels. The project is now into its third phase and is still at the development stage, so if you’re interested in contributing, best join the swarm now.

You can catch up with last year’s presentations here on YouTube, featuring several speakers that spoke this year – Matt Hanson, Lance Weiler, Arin Crumley etc. The videos from 2008 should be available soon.

-Ab-

~ by clairewelsby on October 25, 2008.

Posted in Art-Tech Reviews, C|N|AI art, F|A|G art, P|L|D art, S|S art, V|M art
Tags: Arin Crumley, BFI, Crowd Sourcing, digital art, Digital Future, Disitribution, Film, finance model, Lance Weiler, London, Matt Hanson, Media Art, News, Online, Social Media, Timo Vuorensola, UK Film Council, video art, William Gibson