Category: Business

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Business & Marketing Item of Interest

Why Buying Audience Directly Is the New Black!

Why Buying Audience Directly Is The New Black http://bit.ly/ducSsp

Why should a brand rent someone else’s audience (on a network or website) when they can make direct connections with the audience through their own (branded) media.

This movement from buying audience indirectly to buying audience directly represents the effective merging of marketing and distribution costs. Rather than making one set of investments in marketing content and a different investment in distribution (through revenue splits), combining these costs into a single budget can yield substantial savings. This is why the costs of direct audience acquisition cannot be compared side-by-side with traditional marketing or distribution costs individually. The more that the costs of production, marketing, and distribution can be looked at as a whole with their cumulative impact on margin the better new methods of audience development can be assessed.

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Business & Marketing Item of Interest

27 Benefits of Online video to a company

27 Benefits of Online video to a company http://bit.ly/aHTvPH

One increasingly popular part of social media is online video. Not only is video being used for marketing, but it’s also becoming a common method of communicating and sharing. I recently started experimenting with online video for my own business blog. Although I’m only a few videos in and have a lot of room for improvement, I can already see some encouraging benefits.

And then the author follows with 27 good reasons to use online video. For producers and production companies this is your marketing plan!

I’ve certainly noticed a trend in tutorial production. I maintain the BuZZdex for Larry Jordan and the trend has been away from the text-plus-images tutorial to more video.

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Distribution Item of Interest

YouTube wins copyright case over Viacom

YouTube wins copyright case over Viacom http://tcrn.ch/aAOKqE

While i had expected Google/YouTube to prevail because the DMCA “Safe Harbor” provisions protect YouTube, I hadn’t expected a Judge to understand well enough to send the case to summary judgement before trial: no trial necessary this is really obvious.

TechCrunch summarizes well:

The fact that the judge granted YouTube’s summary motion to dismiss the case sends a clear message to media companies: live by the Millium Copyright Act, Die by the Millenium Copyright Act. The “safe harbor” provision in that Act is what protects YouTube and other Websites from being sued for the copyright infringement of their users as long as they take down infringing material.

Of course the fact that Viacom was uploading content that other parts of Viacom were having pulled down shows that not ever Viacom knows what is infringing and what is there deliberately on YouTube. And yet they expected Google to magically work it out. Even content not uploaded by Viacom could still be Fair Use and there’s no way to know that except to sort it out in the Courts.

And that’s why the Safe Harbor provisions were put in place: as long as the hosting site does not contribute directly to the infringement (nor knows about it precisely) then it’s not the hosting site’s problem.

Techdirt’s take: Huge Victory: Court rules for YouTube Against Viacom.

Categories
Item of Interest The Business of Production

Pre-buy a frame of a movie to fund it?

Pre-buy a frame of a movie to fund it? http://bit.ly/dhtAK6

The makers of The Tunnel, a horror movie set in the tunnels bored beneath Sydney (Australia) are looking at a rather unique way to fund the movie:

The funding for the film is being handled by the ‘135K project’ – a reference to the 135,000 frames that will be present in the finished 90 minute movie. A freshly launched website invites people to invest directly by buying a single frame of the movie for $1, 25 frames (1 second) for $25 or a minute for $1,500.

Now that’s not a huge budget – around $168,000 – but for an independent feature it can be enough.

This approach was decided on with the (accurate) realization that there’s no way of fighting unauthorized distribution so you might as well move forward understanding that.

No media these days is excluded from becoming available on the Internet, and Enzo’s previous production was no different.

“It just takes a quick Google search to see the endless torrents for that [Food Matters], too. The production company was nowhere near big enough to even try and fight it, so it was accepted that it would happen. So this time around I figured we should try and embrace that huge potential audience and make it a part of our strategy,” he told us.

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Apple Business & Marketing Distribution New Media Studio 2.0

How do you get Disney to fund your next production?

It seems like an odd idea at first: could you fund a production – film or ongoing series – using iAds? After all, Apple have lined up $60 million in ad spend for the second half of 2010 and that would fund a lot of independent production! But how would it work?

First off iAds go in Apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad – or they will from early next month – and are an integral part of iOS 4. Any developer can add ads to their App simply and 60% of the revenue from ads goes to the App developer (or owner). That’s $36 million that’s going to be paid out to someone, why not your independent project?

I’ve long thought that the future of programming was Apps. An App, like a website, gives a single place for everything about your project: blog, previews, special content, upcoming events, merchandising etc. The advantage of not only having a website, but wrapping it an App is that the App will be a better fan experience, and it’s easy to add in-App purchasing of digital goods.

So, create an App for your project. This App will have:

  • An area where you can read the production blog;
  • Forums and chat around your project;
  • The Twitter feed from your project;
  • Connection into your Facebook presence;
  • Previews of scenes or trailers of movies;
  • The full project, with a little in-App purchasing (or not).
  • Calendar for screenings, parties and other events around your project, including signup (filtered for just the geography of the fan if they want, thanks to GPS on most of the devices)

Having everything to do with your project in a mobile app on iPhone or iPad makes it much easier for your fans, friends and followers to stay involved and participate. Involvement will improve. (Connecting with Fans and giving them a reason to buy is a basic tenet of independent production in the digital era.) Plus fans will likely be clicking on some of those ads if they’re well targeted, bringing revenue to the project.

Plus, there a minor security advantage. There’s no download function in Mobile Safari and Apps can’t download very much. Plus there’s no way to actually get anything downloaded within an App out of the App to a computer. That means your finished, high quality version could be viewed in the iDevices without much risk of it being distributed without authorization. (Recognizing though, that it will get distributed unless you project just plain sucks!)

Who’s going to be the first to give it a try?

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

Bittorrent only full of leechers?

Bittorrent only full of leeches? http://bit.ly/amlT3X Peer-to-Peer (P2P) users of bittorrent are often thought of as only leeching on honest content creators but this group have organized funding for a seven episode series. Or at least the first episode.

Interesting turn: financed, released and distributed via P2P networks.

VODO’s newest release is titled Pioneer One, a brand new 7-part TV-series that raised enough funds to film the first episode through donations from TorrentFreak readersand other supporters. Unlike traditional television, the sci-fi-ish series will debut on the Internet, on BitTorrent.

Pioneer One is an ambitious project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on ‘The Lionshare’, a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year. With support from even more big names than before, Bernhard, who wrote the script for the TV-series, hopes that today’s release will set a new record.

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Apple Metadata Video Technology

How is Apple using metadata in iMovie for iPhone?

I was finally watching the Steve Jobs Keynote from WWDC on June 7. (I know, but this was our second try – we get talking about stuff, what can I say?) I got to the iMovie for iPhone 4 demo and was blown away by the creative use of source metadata.

At 58 minutes into the keynote, Randy Ubillos is demonstrating adding a title to the video he’s editing in iMovie and iMovie automatically ads the location into the title. Not magic, but it’s simply reading the location metadata stored with images and videos shot with an iPhone and using that to generate part of the title. This is exactly how metadata should be used: to make life easier and to automate as much of the process as possible.

Likewise the same metadata draws a location pin on the map in one of the different themes. Exactly like the same metadata does in iPhoto.

In a professional application, that GPS data – which is coming to more and more professional and consumer video camcorders – could not only be used to add locations, but also to read what businesses are at the address. From that source and derived metadata (address and business derived from location information) we can infer a lot.

Check out my original article on metadata use in post production and for a more detailed version, with some pie-in-the-sky predictions of where this is going to lead us, download the free Supermeet Magazine number 4 and look for the article (featured on the cover) The Mundane and Magic future of Metadata.

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Distribution Item of Interest

Scott Kirsner share his notes from Day 1 of the PGA ‘Produced By’ conference

Scott Kirsner share his notes from Day 1 of the PGA Produce By conference http://bit.ly/b0kDIH You should be following @ScottKirsner on Twitter (if  you do that) or his CinemaTech blog.

Scott’s takeaway points from the day are diverse but I’ve grabbed a couple of points that hit home to me. Go to the site and read the lot if you’re interested in distribution (and earning money) from media production in the future.

The subtext of most of the sessions I went to was this: we acknowledge that new stuff is happening and new technologies are emerging…and we know audiences want to interact with content in new ways…but it’s unclear how we’ll make anything approaching decent money in this new world.

Then follows an interesting discussion on Transmedia, particularly interesting was The Lion King:

But [Cary Granat of Bedrock Studios]mentioned an interesting transmedia example toward the end: Disney’s decision to create a Broadway version of “The Lion King.” The studio took a risk in hiring Julie Taymor to reinterpret the film, and wound up creating a stage franchise that has since surpassed the movie in revenues by playing for years in theaters the world over (at a much higher ticket price than the film, of course.)

On 3D Television:

On 3-D television broadcasts, Fox Sports exec Jerry Steinberg said, “It is still a technology in search of a business model. People will have to pay extra at home, or for theater tickets.” But Steinberg is a believer that it’ll happen: “What 3-D does for sports is recreate the experience of being in the premium seats, and we as an industry haven’t sold that yet.” He said his expectation is that 3-D TV, just like high-def, will be an 8 to 10 year transition. “We’re two years into it,” he said.

And from Scott’s own panel:

In our panel on “DIY and Hybrid Distribution,” I tossed out what I’ve found to be four essential truths of the new media world producers are living in: “Distribution is free. Choice is infinite. Demand is instant. Noise is unprecedented.” You can either develop strategies to address those shifts, or you can try to ignore them. (I’ve found that many studios and more established producers are doing the latter.)

If that latter content is of interest you’ll want to buy Scott’s Book Fans, Friends and Followers in either PDF or paperback. (I have both versions: the paperback came from the Distribution U conference, but I purchased the PDF so I cold search the printed book!)

Categories
Apple Distribution Media Consumption

Why are Google TV and Apple TV the wrong approach?

As a long term user of an Apple TV (useful when hacked) and reading recently about the Google TV and adapter boxes to come, as well as other ventures into merging “internet Video” and “The lounge room experience”. These approaches almost always have a 20′ interface: one that can be read from the comfy chair remote from the screen.

Apple’s minimalist approach certainly fits that screen factor, but there’s no real way to get Internet content there, other than where there’s a special deal, such as with the YouTube access. But here we run into the fundamental problem with this kind of interface: try searching for a video in YouTube, or heaven forbid (if you’ve hacked the Apple TV with ATV Flash to get a browser), actually typing in a URL!

Yahoo and Google want to bring a “social” presence to the big screen, as do Boxee and others, but I think they’re fundamentally going about it the wrong way.

Why do we watch TV on that big screen anyway? I think there are two fundamental reasons why we watch TV on a big screen instead of a computer screen (and one of them may indeed be bogus): a bigger image and watching socially.

In our household we have an old G4 laptop that serves as the primary media server via an Apple TV to the biggest screen in the house: in the living area. We frequently watch shows on our computer screen instead of the big screen, particularly when it’s a show I might enjoy, but my partner may not. Or I watch old TV episodes while scanning slides or processing images. But we watch some TV together and when we do that, we watch it on the big screen. Why? Because we’re watching communally.

When I’m watching TV communally I’m already involved in a little social networking with the person, or people, across the room. If I wanted to tweet my approval (or not) of a particular program, I wouldn’t want to do that on the communal screen, I’d do it on a personal screen: in my case my laptop.

The big screen argument may well be bogus: where I’m sitting right now I have a view of our main TV and my laptop screen and my laptop screen takes up approximately 4x more of my field of view than the TV. I would have a bigger screen experience watching on my laptop at 3′ than a big TV at 20′. So, for a lot of content, it’s really only the social aspect that requires the large TV.

I simply don’t want Twitter/Facebook etc. on the program screen. (That big TV.) And I don’t really ever want to explore web video on a big screen TV display without a keyboard or better input device.

And the it hit me: Apple and Google (et al.) are going about it the wrong way. The program goes on the big screen. Period. The interface is on our laptop, or iPhone, or iTouch, or (the killer one) an iPad. All have a keyboard for easy entry of urls and search; there are social applications that work just fine on those existing screens.

Trying to put the interface on a screen 20′ away without a keyboard (and wireless keyboards aren’t really an option) is just wrong: not only is it the wrong place, I don’t want to clutter my program communally (which presumably I’m watching because I enjoy it) with social media that’s personal.

The two screen approach makes much more sense. Put the program on the screen – uncluttered like  the program’s director intended – and put the control and any desired interactivity on another screen. An iPad would seem to be perfect for this, but since I don’t plan on getting one, an iPhone or iTouch or Laptop could also run the interface anywhere on the same local area network.

It turns out that an interface designed for a 20′ experience works equally well as a 2′ experience, but with touch and keyboard at hand.

Ironically a display designed for 20′ all works well at 2″ on a smaller display.

Categories
Business & Marketing Item of Interest Metadata

Seven hours from feature request to product update!

Seven hours from feature request to updated application released: Sync-N-Link now uses log notes from video *or* audio. http://bit.ly/aqcxN7

I love being a small independent software developer: it’s great to be able to respond to customer requests promptly – and it makes the software better. Incidents like this one today make me also appreciative of the communication tools we now have

Some time, overnight our time, we had a new customer buy a copy of Sync-N-Link to sync rushes for 8 episodes of a new drama series: in Belgium! A few hours later he emailed to say that it was doing everything he expected, but their sound guy entered metadata (log notes) into the sound clips and Sync-N-Link (like Final Cut Pro itself) discards audio metadata in favor of the video metadata. (In a merged clip there is only room for one of each type of log note/metadata). The feature request was that the metadata from the audio could be preserved instead of from that from the video.

A good request. The ever efficient Greg Clarke, after morning coffee, got to work. At around 1:30 pm (Pacific) an update was published, ready for download, with the feature added. Not quite seven hours from feature request to released software.

I love that we can do that.

If you use any of our software let us know what more you want it to do. We can be very responsive!