BOOK: Futuretainment

futurebook

From the book’s site
Futuretainment is about the world transformed by consumer connectedness. Futuretainment is about the world transformed by consumer connectedness. It is an indispensable handbook for anyone wanting to understand the future of media and marketing, and explains what it will take for companies and brands to thrive in this challenging new environment. With a unique focus on the dynamic markets of Japan, China and Korea – Futuretainment tells the story of disruptive consumer innovation at the cutting edge of social media.

(hat tip Christy Dena)

A new infrastructure

I recently contributed a post to Thompson on Hollywood. There’s been quite a bit of talk about the woes of the industry and I thought I’d contribute something to the discussion that focused on some simple steps towards the future.

Where the industry goes from here is going to require a rethinking of the infrastructure that supports it. To realistically move forward, innovation, experimentation and R&D is needed to help create an OPEN framework that will improve the funding, creation, distribution and discovery of truly independent work.

Here are some thoughts:

1. Keep it Open. As the industry shifts, it is key to build the next generation of discovery, creation, and distribution upon systems that embrace the following:
– Open software/hardware that encourages innovation and rewards improvements on functionality.
– Open business models that enable filmmakers, distributors, exhibitors, and audiences to sell, trade, and share films in ways that directly reward performance and encourage a healthy sense of competition.
– Transparency: In the age of connected devices and the real-time web, there is NO reason why tracking, performance and reporting can’t be accessible in real-time.

:: Read More

Two talks

I’ll be in London next week taking part in Digital Week. I’ll be speaking at the Protein Forum. If you happen to be in London check it out.

Protein forum

But before I fly out on Sunday I’ll be speaking at IFP’s Filmmaker Conference in NYC here’s a description

Join respected independent film pioneers along with a new guard of thinkers who are diversifying the industry through their approach to both the art and business of independent cinema.

Panelists:
Ted Hope, Partner/Founder/Producer – This is That – 21 Grams, Adventureland
Christine Vachon, Principal – Killer Films – One Hour Photo Boys Don’t Cry, I’m Not There
Lance Weiler, Writer/Director – The Workbook Project
Kenneth Woo, Co-Founder – Massify

Marc Andreessen gives some predictions

TechCrunch interview about his new 300 million VC fund lead to a few predictions…

1. Twitter and Facebook’s investors aren’t worried about monetization, but “it’s sweet” of you to. Twitter has spent about $15 million acquiring 30 million users. It’d be a no-brainer to recoup that if need be. Meanwhile, Facebook will generate more than $500 million in revenues this year—it’s spent far less than that to build the company to date. In other words, these are pretty fiscally conservatively run businesses with huge growth potential and no trouble raising additional cash.

2. Digg isn’t done. Andreessen is still bullish on Digg, citing the fact that Kevin Rose is no longer distracted with Pownce and Jay Adelson is moving to San Francisco to manage the company full-time. He thinks having both guys focused on the company will make a huge difference in the next twelve months.

3. The venture capital market should stop whining about Sarbox and other factors that are hurting their ability to take companies public. Says Andreessen, “Build Companies More Valuable and You Won’t Have this Problem.” That said, he sees a conceivable scenario where public markets are no longer how investors get returns at all. Instead, the same institutional names that used to buy the bulk of the shares at an issue, will just buy out VCs at premiums in private deals. That’ll essentially mean everyday Joes can no longer invest in high growth companies. That’s a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how many scars you have from the dot com bust.

4. At least 300 venture firms will go out of business in the next five-to-ten years.

5. Innovation and opportunities to build businesses on the Web aren’t done. They won’t be done for a long time because the Web is one of the only inventions that’s pure software, compared to computers, the television or even the railroads. That means it can completely change without having to fit into set molds. Anyone—Andreessen included—is deluding themselves if they think they know where it’s going. (In other words, don’t listen to anyone making Web 3.0 predictions.)

The Future of the Storytelling Biz

I’ve just returned from Europe where I gave a keynote at EIFF as part of the Digital Frontier Program. There was much talk of transmedia storytelling in Europe.

I found this today:

Now that the franchise has replaced the blockbuster as Hollywood’s holy grail, a new tool has emerged to help those who want to extend film and TV properties across multiple platforms.

The tool — transmedia storytelling — is capable of performing such feats as the recent revival of the Batman franchise, which helped propel “The Dark Knight” to the second-highest box office numbers in history, after “Titanic.” READ MORE

Learning from the audience

Scott Kirsner recently wrote an interesting op-ed piece in the LA Times entitled ‘Digital technology and dollar signs’ The piece goes into some interesting uses of digital tech and how creatives are considering the consumption of their audiences / fans to inform new biz models. These are exciting times where experimentation is needed and welcome.

The piece mentions my experiments with film, mobile and gaming. Here’s a section from the article.

Many in Hollywood still deride the wacky, user-generated videos that occasionally turn into viral hits on YouTube, the top website for video viewing. And it’s true that one of the most-watched videos ever uploaded to the site is titled “Charlie bit my finger — again!”

But a number of young creators — many of them working outside of Hollywood’s orbit — have been feverishly experimenting with new ways to tell stories and generate revenue. An office worker in Connecticut created the catty entertainment commentary show “What the Buck” on YouTube, and suddenly found he was making more from the site’s “partner program,” which offers creators a cut of ad revenue, than he was at his desk job, which he promptly quit. Lance Weiler accents his suspense films with cellphone and Web-based “alternate reality games” that enable players to explore the story and interact with characters after they’ve left the theater. Robert Greenwald, a Culver City-based documentarian, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars online to support his left-leaning films and Internet videos on such topics as the mortgage crisis and the war in Afghanistan. READ MORE

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

Danger Mouse’s new Dark Night of the Soul to be released as a blank cd-r along with a 100+ book of conceptual photographs by David Lynch inspired by the music. The decision to release the blank cd-r stems from a legal dispute with EMI. Dark Night of the Soul features collaborations with Iggy Pop, Sparklehorse, The Flaming Lips and many more.

Track featuring Vic Chestnut
play

Will be interesting to see how the album leaks and if it takes a similar path that Danger Mouse’s Grey Album did.