Goddamn but there’s a lot of wonderful web content out there. There’s shit too.
Ron Howard and Brian Grazer started a company a few years back called New Form Digital and they are starting to bring interesting entertainment to various sizes of screen. I didn’t clap for their ‘all our shows’ teaser ad. It was everything I FUCKING HATE about H-style advertising; loud, bozoid, and did I mention loud.
The most successful of the new content development, aggregation and production companies like New Form do three things: they leave the copyright with the creators, they pair inexperienced storytellers with experienced, collaborative production overseers who know how to make the most of their budgets, and they do what seems like incredibly intrusive market research in quantities that drop-kick my brain into orbit.
Mass markets do exist, still, but they seem to be making like tortillas under the weight of behemoth brands.
Niche markets with deep pockets are perfectly matched to the new kind of content delivery.
The Canadian government subsidizes digital content production and some of the material thus subsidized, like The Drive, is made by a small number of people with a small budget (they didn’t pay for most of their locations, or maybe none of them, which might annoy extended family members) who make intelligent decisions about acting, directing, lighting, writing and yes, locations.
Over the last ten years, I’ve had more and more moments when I’ve said, “My tax dollars at work, out-fucking-standing,” when I’ve seen the subsidy bugs scroll by at the end of the film. Yes I watch credits, but for cool character name ideas. Why do YOU watch them?
People’s attention spans get shorter and shorter and they want their stories little. But they also want to binge watch, depending where they are. Depending on the demographic, they might be taking a break from their work, or outside having a smoke, or waiting for a bus, or for a friend outside a concert hall, or on a bus, and these little bits of story work because they provide a weird kind of continuity in an otherwise chopped up day. Screen related media, scaling up to a Jumbotron and down to a watch, is where it’s at. It’s being driven by kids, but there will always be a screen for the market. You just have to know what kind of a screen your target is next to and wants to look at, when they have the time to watch (or can make it).
I predict when movies in theatres, as currently distributed, are facing too much competition from small screens, there will STILL be movie houses, and there will still even be chains, but they’ll have to play anybody’s content on the basis of what the people who live closest to the theatre poll. So if New Westminster citizens say Here’s What We’ll Sit in A Theatre to Watch and the list reads as follows:
Three Classic Arnold Schwartzenegger action flicks in a row in one theatre on special
Titanic and The Rose double feature
The RIGHT version of the English-dubbed My Neighbour Totoro and anybody who understands this knows the burnination that I feel even having to say anything about that other hellspawn travesty
The fancut remake of Star Wars
Die Hard
A simulcast concert of whichever band babydykes are swooning over this year
And one newly released Hollywood movie. Maybe two.
And of course I have no idea about the demographics of New West but I could find out. In greeesome detail.
To me the shortening of the story cycle makes no fucking sense because you’re just asking for the intrusion of a commercial at that point. Sell advertising, after all, is what stories are supposed to do.
Keith PITCHED SOMEBODY today at the VWF which makes me so astonished and happy I don’t know what else to say about it. And shouldn’t — it’s his story to tell.
There were falcons in the media room for most of the day. I didn’t go near them. Keith loved on them for a while.
GROSSLY INAPPROPRIATE COMMENT which combines the worst of “Kids these Days” “Allegra’s inappropriate fear of handicapped people,” “Entitled parents make me puke” and “Who cares what I think so I might as well say whatever racist, obnoxious, anti-social or mean-spirited thing comes into my head and why are you always upset with me?” Aren’t you glad I gave it to ya at the meta level instead of actually making the comment? Pah, I amaze myself at times.