Today is Blog Action Day when bloggers the world over unite in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. This year’s theme is climate change – not something I usually cover on the digital consultant blog, but low and behold yesterday’s Power to the Pixel conference, the international forum for exploring cross-platform production in film, gave me some unexpected inspiration.
I attend a fringe event in Birmingham organised by Screen WM which screened highlights of the main conference in London mixed with some localised discussions with an American producer and distributor back in Birmingham.
The highlight of the London speakers was for me Franny Armstrong and Lizzie Gillett, the two film-makers behind indie-hit documentary Age of Stupid, a landmark film that aims to change the world’s thinking on climate change, seeking to engage 250 million viewers with a limited team and marketing budget, in advance of the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009.
Armonstrong and Gillett felt there film was just too important to them – and too important for the planet – to be distributed in the conventional way, and the hard deadline of 250 million viewers in advance of December 2009 was ticking away. Funded by their own community, the pair kept all the distribution rights and negotiated their own way of getting noticed outside of the monopoly of distributors, cinemas and sales agents.
They organised an eco-friendly launch premiere in Leicester Square, London, with celebrities heading up the ‘green carpet’ and politicians speaking through a satellite link-up to many UK cinemas, creating a live, distributed event. The global premiere on 21/22 September 2009 linked up Downtown Manhattan with the Himalayas and other global locations with a live set from the UK by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke - showing you don’t need to fly celebs across the world to have a premiere – low-carbon style.
The most interesting innovation was in the distribution of the film. The producers steered away from cinemas and allowed community groups to show the film in their own centres with an online booking system set up called Indie Screenings for communities to programme their own event, making use of digital distribution where possible to save carbon and shipping costs. To date the film has seen 781 screenings in the UK alone, with roll-out of the site aiming to reach global audiences this year, and with the potential to develop the site later into a portal to support other important British or social films to enable wider distribution.
With a budget of just £500K utilising an army of volunteer evangelists and on-the-ground investors and helpers, the film has now beamed out to 45 countries and the team have struck deals to show the film in NHS hospitals, schools and the British Council.
Clearly the producers learnt lessons from Al Gore‘s climate change film An Inconvenient Truth which aimed to create a film that was distributed for social good rather than profit. But for me what is equally interesting is how a social cause can stimulate new forms of distribution and audience for digital content. Despite operating in a non-profit way, economic opportunities may arise for potentially a whole community of film-makers in the UK from this type of approach.
There were several other interesting other speakers at Power to the Pixel discussing cross-platform content in film. Slava Rubin from indie film-funding service IndieGoGo talked in Birmingham about how promotion for promotion’s sake was a dead art – every piece of content created in the film’s marketing must be interesting and relevant. The future of film is truly digital; as DVD sales decline from a $20bn business back down to zero, the reach of digital sales will be meteoric. We need to build a generation of ‘audience connected’ film-makers who can make direct connections – and seek direct sales – with their audience who may influence the investment, the content and the production.
Lance Weiler, director of Head Trauma, talked about films in the future being less about content – and perhaps the majority of the benefit gained from the social interaction with the content – like related ARGs or social networks tied into the film’s universe.
Rachel Mordecai talked about brand-funded films, striking deals with sites like Platform and Stardoll (the no. 2 website for teen girls with a staggering 214M users) synergising brands withentertainment content. She creates a story universe then hits ad agencies and brands direct whilst seeking a production company. Online video is a tiny ($0.7bn, compared to TV video advertising, worth $70bn) market but growing rapidly. Online video needs to immerse audiences immediately, with brands investing in the engagement.
Power to the Pixel in Birmingham was the first distributed event of its kind I’d attended. Unfortunately I don’t think it worked too well – there was too much telling and too little discussion, and the Americans leading the discussion were no doubt terribly clever but far removed from the types of opportunities and challenges those back in the West Midlands faced. Also watching a screening of an event is somewhat fatiguing after a few hours – like being stuck in a cinema all day. However, I think bringing this kind of higher-level thinking and engagement outside of London is important but to make a virtual event work there needs to be more engagement (a twitter stream or questions from Birmingham to the London speakers would have been awesome) between the different venues.
