Category: Business

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Item of Interest The Business of Production

Why Every Brand Should Hire a Professional Video Producer.

Why Every Brand Should Hire a Professional Video Producer http://tinyurl.com/6kjxthb

In summary: the professionalism expressed in the quality of production has a direct bearing on how well the brand will be received:

Bruce Alfred, Principal of Cobblestone Inc., is asked over and over, how important is it to create high quality video? Can I just use my consumer HD camera to make something and put it up on my business website? As professional video producer and web video consultant, Alfred’s answered that question many times and his answer is no, that’s not the best idea.

Alfred says,

“When you’re putting your own video on your site you want it to increase and raise your image. You don’t want it to join the YouTube, user-generated, quickly shot and thrown up on the web type of video because there’s so much of that. You want to rise above the noise. So, in short, make sure that you hire a video producer or a video production company that knows how to tell stories, that knows how to connect with any audience, that can learn your goals quickly and be able to interpret those goals into a message that calls people to the action that you need.”

Note that he doesn’t talk about how “professionals” have a certain level of equipment, but rather hire “a company that knows how to tell stories”.

Mind you, a little creepy with the author of the piece quoting himself in the third person, but that doesn’t mean what he’s saying isn’t accurate!

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest Monetizing

Artists Don’t Think Piracy Hurts Them Financially.

Artists Don’t Think Piracy Hurts Them Financially, Study Shows http://tinyurl.com/3dtm7kk

Big Media pretends to speak for artists but in reality they are only in the business for themselves and frequently take money out of artists pockets, quite deliberately.

Continue reading “Artists Don’t Think Piracy Hurts Them Financially.”

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Distribution Item of Interest

Author Paulo Coelho Explains Why He “Loves Pirates”

Author Paulo Coelho Explains Why He ‘Loves Pirates’ http://tinyurl.com/6hmhczu

TorrentFreak alerts us to the news that he’s posted yet another blog post on the subject about howhe “loves pirates” and how people underestimate that artists can and do get paid, even when their work is being shared in an unauthorized fashion. In fact, he’s selling more books now that he’s actively offering up more “pirated” copies of his own work than ever before.

That parallels my own experience. While I know there are unauthorized copies of most of my books available, I’ve made sufficient from each work to be happy with the results.

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production The Technology of Production

Is cloud editing the future of Post Production?

Is cloud editing the future of editing? http://tinyurl.com/3mpfqq5

Is the cloud the future of editing: with a facility cloud or a remote cloud? How will the tape shortage change delivery into the cloud? How does cloud editing work? Will the cloud be suitable for archive? Will the cloud be suitable for archive? Will the cloud lead to outsourcing?

(Recorded before Apple’s NAB Final Cut Pro X preview was announced to be at the Supermeet.)

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest Monetizing

Kevin Smith’s Red State Experiment has already Paid for Itself.

Kevin Smith’s Red State Experiment Has Already Paid for Itself http://tinyurl.com/4ybp2ql

Kevin Smith announced that he would auction off the rights to Red State after a Sundance screening and then infamously sold them to himself, leading to a rant about the state of distribution for independent movies.

He planned on doing a series of screenings-with-director events leading up to an October theatrical release.  Well, according to reports he’s already close to, or achieved, payback of the $4 million budget.

Kevin Smith’s latest passion project Red State has already paid for itself, six months before it actually sees full theatrical release. Thanks to an ambitious multi-city road trip in which Smith traveled to screenings of the movie and spoke with audiences afterward, Red Statehas already made back the $4 million budget production company SMODcast Pictures invested in the film.

Now Kevin Smith comes with a built-in fan base that he’s cultivated over the years (and that is indeed part of any success in this new paradigm – first Connect with your Fans) but it’s not only working for Smith:

That said, Smith isn’t the only filmmaker experimenting with new types of distribution. Edward Burns, for instance, distributed his latest feature film, Nice Guy Johnny, direct to iTunes, VOD and DVD last year, skipping theatrical release altogether. Indie filmmaker Sebastian Gutierrez distributed his Girl Walks Into a Bar directly to YouTube. And Pixar CTO and independent film producer Oren Jacob used a mix of social media and food banksto boost the profile of his documentary Ready, Set, Bag!

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

How Could Documentary Cinema Change for the Better?

How Could Documentary Cinema Change for the Better? http://tinyurl.com/4qtk6cb

I’ve been sitting on this article for a while, waiting for a gap in the Final Cut Pro X “noise” to post it.

Yes, it is true that we’ve just had one of the best years for documentary ever. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t also more negative issues for the mode than ever before. The thing is, there are so many kinds of non-fiction films and so many kinds of doc enthusiasts that we all have very different answers for the following question: what one thing could change for the better for documentaries?

Continue reading “How Could Documentary Cinema Change for the Better?”

Categories
Item of Interest New Media

Why Google Should Buy The Record Industry

Why Google Should Buy The Recording Industry http://tinyurl.com/3r2xmaz

Since the music industry seems to want to stifle every innovation, why wouldn’t Google, or Amazon, or Apple, just simply buy them!  I’ve explored this idea before focused on visual content but it makes perfect sense here.

Another article I read today pointed out that the old industries – Record Labels, Studios, Networks – see themselves as gatekeepers so their immediate response is to say “no” until they can have ultimate control. Instead they should be seeing themselves as the enablers of any service that makes money for them, and more importantly, for the artists they represent. (Yeh, right!)

The fact that this is literally true tells us something that is often overlooked: the music industry is economically quite small and unimportant compared to the computer industry. And yet somehow — through honed lobbying and old boy networks — it wields a disproportionate power that enables it to block innovative ideas that the online world wants to try.

Why not fight the cartel with another cartel?

But that throwaway comment also raises another interesting idea: how about if Google *did* buy the music industry? That would solve its licensing problems at a stroke. Of course, the anti-trust authorities around the world would definitely have something to say about this, so it might be necessary to tweak the idea a little. 
How about if a consortium of leading Internet companies — Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu, Amazon etc. — jointly bought the entire music industry, and promised to license its content to anyone on a non-discriminatory basis?

However, as Chris Adamson said in response to my Twitter post of this link:

Hard to imagine a Google or Apple takeover of the music industry passing antitrust review, though.

And that’s a very fair point.

Categories
Apple Pro Apps Business & Marketing

Why the Pro Apps – particularly Final Cut Pro X – are important to Apple

As part of the Sneak Peek of Final Cut Pro X at the NAB 2011 Supermeet, Apple updated their user stats to 2 million customs (with 94% satisfaction).

Now, my understanding is (with help from Oliver Peters) that this number includes Final Cut Express and the early individual sales of DVD Studio Pro and Motion. Some customers will be included having paid only $199, while others will have paid the $995 purchase price and one or more upgrades. For a customer who purchased FCP 1 for $995 and paid for every upgrade, then that customer has invested, over the 12 years since NAB 1999, around $3750.

But balance that with those who bought educational pricing, and other discounted opportunities plus those low priced buy-ins and I’ll assign an average income per user of $1000.  I think that’s conservative but the data to make a more accurate assessment isn’t available to me. (If you have it philip @ intelligentassistance.com without the spaces.) Besides, it makes the numbers easy to work with.

So, 2 million customers with an average revenue per customer of $1000 (over 12 years) and that gives a gross revenue of $2 billion dollars or roughly $168 million in revenue per year.

Continue reading “Why the Pro Apps – particularly Final Cut Pro X – are important to Apple”

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Apple Apple Pro Apps General

What I’ve been saying about Final Cut Pro, AV Foundation and QuickTime

The anticipation might soon be over. At next Tuesday night’s Supermeet in Las Vegas we may get a sneak peek at what Apple has been working on. For those who aren’t regular readers of my blog, here’s links to my evolving thoughts on why Apple needs to rewrite both Final Cut Pro and QuickTime into a modern codebase, and why they may take this opportunity to not just rewrite, but to rethink how modern NLE software works.

The posts in bold are the key ones.

No doubt there’s some things I’ve written that are just plain wrong. But I’m expecting that on Tuesday night we’ll see the 64 bit Cocoa Final Cut Pro (using AV Foundation) that I wasn’t initially expecting until 2012, with a complete rethink of the NLE interface for the future.

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

Why Brands Are The New Labels (And Publishers, And Producers)

Why Brands Are The New Labels (And Publishers, And Producers…) http://tinyurl.com/3knt8xf

I have been a long time proponent of branded media because I find branded content to be much less intrusive than advertising. Branded media integrates with the program, hopefully in a relevant way, while advertising intrudes on a program with something likely to be irrelevant to me and my interests.

So I think this is yet another step along the way toward replacing intrusive advertising to models that are less viewer antagonistic.

Gone are the days of artists hoping and praying for that major studio deal  — which later they learn isn’t really that major. Instead they can take a paycheck from a brand and get pretty much the same thing as what they would get from your typical 360 deal offering.

But it’s not only music that is benefiting from having a brand as its studio.

Brands are positioning themselves as the new labels, no doubt, but they are also evolving into the content creators. There is, naturally, criticism of branded entertainment – it is necessarily the opposite of arms-length, unbiased reporting – but as the digital landscape has changed media integration, it has also increased consumer tolerance for brands looking for new ways to market. And if you want high quality content — whether that is music or print or video — someone needs to pay.  So, brands are stepping up as the new content publishers.

More changes coming of course…

At the March 2011 Shorty Awards, Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley pointed out that he saw an ad on TV encouraging people to discover the song in the Old Navy ad using Shazam. The call-to-action is then obvious: Purchase on iTunes.  Old Navy, Apple, a digital startup and an emerging artist all working together as one? That’s some epic progress – over some pretty blurry lines.  Expect more of this going forward.

Add in the extra news that Capital One is producing content and it’s a whole new world.