Viral Video bad for producers and advetisers http://bit.ly/dqgBKi

Jim Louderback is one smart guy. Revison3 is doing well, building strong audiences and yes, getting enough advertising support to make a business. In this article he debunks the idea that going for “viral video success” is the wrong strategy for producers:

Let’s start with producers and show creators. Media is all about building habits. Successful producers bind an audience to their creation, building an insatiable hunger for the next installment, next episode, next post. But when you focus on viral success, you throw that focus on repeatability out the window. By its nature, viral videos are designed to surprise, titillate and entertain. They are, by nature, unique…

They do nothing for the producer long term (with some exceptions) but worse they’re not good for advertisers either:

Viral videos may be bad for creators and publishers, but they are actually worse for advertisers. Your typical viral video gets passed around, yes, and drives a lot of views. And yes, those can translate into impressions for an advertiser. But as we’ve seen at Revision3, advertising associated with viral videos has only a small fraction of the impact of an ad that runs inside, or alongside, an episodic video program. We’ve seen tremendous results from putting brands next to our long-running episodic programs — those with real communities, high comment-to-view ratios and predictable views. We’ve seen terrible results by associating the same brands and services with the few viral-focused shows we’ve tried out over the last five years. And if you try creating those viral-focused videos yourself, you are in for a real surprise. It is overwhelmingly likely that you’ll end up with closer to a thousand views than a million.

Concentrate on building an audience? What a concept.

New Numbers Reveal: Cord Cutting Is Real http://bit.ly/920KcM

I’d love to believe that “cord cutting” – dropping a cable subscription in favor of web delivered video – is growing and that Internet distribution is a raging success. Except it’s not. At least not yet.GigOm quote some statistics – and for sure this is the biggest quarterly drop that cable subscription numbers have experienced  - but the reality is:

… much of those losses seem to be attributable to customers who subscribed to pay TV early last year due to the broadcast digital transition. Now these customers see the prices for their introductory packages going up, and quite a few of them have decided not to stick around.

Another GigOm post says that “45% of TV viewers get their shows online,” which makes a great headline, until you read the body of the article:

Almost half of all consumers watch TV content online every week, according to a new study released by the Ericsson ConsumerLab today

Watching a single video on YouTube would qualify you in that 45% so there’s no news there, particulalry when the same article presents:

However, linear TV content still reigns supreme: 93 percent watch plain old television every week.

So, watching online video doesn’t diminish the watching of conventional Television.

There are definitely “cord cutters” out there – ourselves among them – who have dropped cable or satellite (and over the air).

As an aside I couldn’t help noting the end of the article:

Apple, on the other hand, should be encouraged by Ericsson’s findings. 37 percent of consumers are very interested in a touch-screen tablet as a remote control for their TV.

That’s what I said months ago. It’s the logical solution to the problem.

If you want to give it a go (cord cutting) Salone has an article today Cut the cord: A guide to free TV but that article’s point one is to “adjust your expectations”! Right.

The most sane commentary on the subject in the last day or so comes from Silicon Alley Insider’s Judge The Success Of Web Video By Real Business, Not Hype Like “Cord Cutting.” I’m big on “real business results” since that’s what ultimately we judge on. The always sensible Dan Rayburn (president of StreamingMedia.com) concludes a very long and excellent counterpoint to the unreasonable optimism from “online video” proponents with:

Notice almost no analyst talks about what’s taking place today? It’s almost always about the future and three or four years away yet there are plenty of opportunities right now. This industry survived the crash in 2000 because expectations were re-set and consumers, vendors, VCs and others all came back down to reality of what was real and what was hype. Many of us don’t want to see the industry go through another correction like that, even though in the long run, it was the best thing that could of happened at the time. It will sound odd to some, but for those in the industry at that time, they will most certainly agree with me that our industry needed to go through that in order to survive and be where it is today.

Don’t let the hype in this industry become the metrics for how we judge true success in the market.

Breaking Bad to Fill Year-Long Hiatus With Short Webisodes http://bit.ly/d1lSUH

A great way to keep interest up between seasons of major shows.

These episodes will be available some time after January, when the show will begin production on the new season. “I, for one, am eager to make these little interstitials important,” the show’s star, Bryan Cranston, told Deadline. “I don’t want them to be simply filler or recap, but something that actually moves the storyline forward. If we’re going to do it, it ought to be a real part of the larger show.”

YouTube Tries To Boost Production Budgets With $5 Million Grant Program http://bit.ly/9Q2nVF

As they say:

The goal of YouTube Partner Grants is to act as a catalyst by infusing additional funds into the production budgets of a small group of YouTube partners who are at the forefront of innovation. Funds from YouTube Partner Grants will serve as an advance against the partner’s future YouTube revenue share. This additional funding can allow partners to invest in better cameras, achieve higher production quality, expand their marketing efforts, expand their staff, or just hire more talent. Anything that will help them evolve their art, business, and ultimately the entire creator community. We look at this as an investment that will bring an even richer body of content for our users and advertisers and raise the creative bar for online video.

So it’s more of an advance on advertising revenue than a grant, but still, it should help that “select group” to improve their product.

The Lack Of A ‘Golden Ticket’ Business Model Doesn’t Mean You Give Up And Go Home http://bit.ly/axLkMF

Kara Swisher goes to meet with Hollywood Executives who are all looking for a Golden Ticket (Willy Wonka reference) so that they can charge the same monopoly rents they did when they (used to be) a monopoly.

Michael Masnick deconstructs Swisher’s reporting and parses it for us. This is a worthwhile read, even if a little long.

From music to movies to television, the biggest minds here still sound perplexed as to what will finally be the golden ticket to carry them through to the inevitable next era of digital distribution.

That single sentence basically describes the problem. These guys are sitting back and waiting for someone to hand them a golden ticket that replicates the old ways of doing things. That’s not how it works. No one gave the buggy whip makers a golden ticket that let them keep their old lines of business going.

The unnamed executives even ask why the customer always gets to be right. Yep, that’s how far removed they are from any sense of commercial reality. The customer is always right because there’s always someone else that will meet the customer need if you don’t. (Where is my “any program, any time, any device for a fair price” service again? There’s a customer demand for it but the old guard won’t deliver.)

Final words:

The role of the disruptor is not to make life easy for the disrupted. Swisher and these execs seem to be confusing the role of certain folks in the legacy industry with the overall entertainment industry itself. As noted, the entertainment industry is thriving. More movies, music and books are being created. More money is being spent. It’s just that it’s going to different players. There’s no reason to “figure out a way to keep talent from being dragged into the future.” The opportunities and wide open path are there. The problem isn’t that tech leaders haven’t made it easy for them. They have. It’s that these guys are so myopically focused on the way they used to make money they don’t realize that the new opportunities are already there and have been embraced widely by others.

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?

The New Now of Television: Surviving the changing business of Television. http://bit.ly/9WoyNi LA for Television Academy members, starring me!

This is a custom version of my “How to grow your production or post-production business in any type of economic conditions”, which has been presented in New York in March, and will also be in San Francisco on June 19. (Along with an afternoon session on “Growing and Monetizing and audience for your independent production”.

Your personal brand defines how people perceive you: what work they’ll consider you for, what you get offered. You’ll learn how to manage your brand – and the stories you tell around your personal brand. You’ll learn how to build an internet presence by understanding how marketing, PR and social conversations have changed the business promotion and networking landscape. We will conclude with the top tips on maximizing your business’ visibility on the Internet.

• KNOW WHAT BUSINESS YOU ARE IN – IT’S PROBABLY NOT THE ONE YOU THINK IT IS
• HOW TO CLARIFY YOUR PERSONAL BRAND – WHO ARE YOU, WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR AND WHAT PROBLEMS DO YOU SOLVE?
• UPSCALE YOUR MARKETING, PR AND SOCIAL CONVERSATIONS TO GROW YOUR PERSONAL BUSINESS AND PROJECTS

MAXIMIZE YOUR VISIBILITY SO PEOPLE CAN FIND YOU TO GIVE YOU WORK

Having just got back from an North East trip – New York, Boston and Meriden/North Haven CT – I’ve had a good opportunity to think and observe trends outside my own environment. I see four major trends happening across production and, despite the publicity and inevitable NAB push, I don’t think 3D stereoscopy is among them (at least not yet).

Stereoscopy is indeed a trend in feature film production with an impressive percentage of last year’s box office attributable to 3D movies, but it will be a long time before it’s more than a niche for non-feature production. In fact the supply of 3D content vs the number of theaters equipped to display, is probably going to limit 3D distribution to the major studios and their tentpole releases.

That said, this year’s NAB is likely to be full of 3D capable rigs, cameras and workflows. For what display?  Until the viewing end is more established production in 3D won’t be that important.

Right now the trends I’m observing are: more multicamera production; extensive use of green screen even for “normal” shots; 3D sets, objects and even characters; and a definite trend toward larger sensor cameras (both DSLR and RED).

Multicamera Production

The appeal is simple: acquire two angles on any “good” take. Of course reality television takes this to almost-ridiculous levels with up to 68+ hours recorded for every day of the show’s shoot. On more reasonable shows, Friday Night Lights shoots multicamera in real world locations for a very efficient production schedule.

While it no doubt saves production time, and therefore cost, it can limit shot availability (as one camera ‘sees’ another) or more bland lighting (to make sure each camera angle is well lit). Multicamera studio shoots – the staple of the sitcom – tend to be lit very flat, but Friday Night Lights doesn’t suffer for the multicamera acquisition.

All major editing software packages support multicamera editing. We’ve also seen an increase in requests for multicamera support in our double-system synchronizing tool Sync-N-Link.

Part of the reason that multicamera acquisition is becoming more practical is that the cost of buying or renting camera equipment has dropped dramatically, so that three cameras on a shoot are not necessarily a budget buster.

Green Screen (Virtual sets)

If you haven’t already seen Stargate Studio’s Virtual Back Lot reel, do it now. Before seeing it I had the sense that there was a lot more green screen used out there, but I had no idea that shows I’d watched and enjoyed employed green screen. The Times Square shot from Hereos, for example, did not feel at all composited. When simple street scenes are being shot green screen – things that could easily be shot in the real world – then you know it has to be for budgetary reasons.

Green screen (and blue screen for film) technologies are well proven. There are good and inexpensive tools that fit within common workflows to build the green screen composite. In other words, the barriers to entry are simply the skill of the Director of Photography on the shoot, and that of the editors/compositors in post.

When 70% of a show, like Sanctuary uses virtual sets, the necessity for anything beyond a good screen screen studio, with a good lighting kit and some smarts seems less important.

3D sets and enhancements

The third major trend goes hand-in-hand with the use of Virtual Sets: sets that are created in the mind of a designer and rendered “real” with 3D software. There are literally hundreds of thousands of object models available for sale (or free) online. You can hardly read a production story now that does’t feature 3D set or character extensions.

I should probably add motion tracking as another technology coming into its own, because it’s an essential part of the incorporation of actors into 3D sets, or the enhancement of character with 3D character extensions.

Larger Sensors

Fairly obvious to all, I would think, but the trend toward larger sensors includes the DSLR trend as well as RED Digital Cinema and the new Arri Alexxa. Wherever you look the trend is toward larger sensors with their sensitivity improvements, greater control of depth of field and drop-dead gorgeous pictures. Among other uses they make perfect plates for backgrounds in green screen work!

All four (plus motion tracking) trends contribute to reducing production cost, making more shows viable with ever fragmenting audiences.

From the press release that went out today.

In conjunction with the New York based MoPic group and Boston’s Final Cut Pro User Group, Intelligent Assistance’s Philip Hodgetts will bring his business development and new media seminars to the North East for the first time.

These seminars have been among the most popular at the recent Digital Video Expo and have attracted crowds of interested people in San Diego and Los Angeles. Now New York and Boston get a chance to experience world class presentations.

“Now more than ever business owners need to know how to grow their production or postproduction business,” says presenter Philip Hodgetts. “This seminar is based on my book from last year The New Now. It summarizes the most practical advice into a interactive seminar.”

In an age where the democratization of production tools is almost complete people have turned their focus on equivalent democratized ways of growing audiences and making money from their work. In the How to grow and monetize and audience for your independent production independent producers will learn how to identify their core audience, grow the audience through social media and modern PR before understanding the many ways that producers earn a return from their independent production.

“The [MediaPro Camp] Day was capped off by a keynote address from Media Guru Phillip Hodgetts. He is a true Renaissance Man of the media. If you have ever been to one of his seminars, read one of his books, or his blog or heard him speak, you know what I mean.”

- John Coleman, at MediaProCamp San Diego

In conjunction with the The Moving Pictures Collective of NYC both seminars are being offered in New York sponsored by AJA Video Systems and Video Corporation of America. The seminars will be held at VCA’s facility on 7th Ave, one block from Penn Station on Saturday March 20th. Details and signup can be found at http://mopictivehodgetts.eventbrite.com/.

In Boston Hodgetts has joined with the Boston Final Cut Pro User Group to present the How to grow and monetize and audience for your independent production on Tuesday evening March 23rd at The New England Institute of Art. Details can be found at http://newnowboston.eventbrite.com/.

About Philip Hodgetts (as if you didn’t already know)

Philip Hodgetts is an expert and consultant in digital production and post-production workflows, encoding, web applications, digital delivery and technology innovation. He is the President and CEO of Open Television Network, a company dedicated to democratizing distribution through monetized RSS feeds.

He remains President of Intelligent Assistance, Inc – a systems and technology developer – and one of the “Big Brains” of “Big Brains for Rent” consultancy. He is an experienced trainer and has written extensively online across a range of topics.

He is the co-creator of “Assisted Editing” and an expert on metadata-based postproduciton workflows.

Philip is the author of “The HD Survival Handbook”; “Awesome Titles with FCS” and “The New Now: How to grow your production or postproduction business in a changed and changing world” among other publications.

He has presented at many conferences and seminars including Keynote addresses for the New York DV Show; Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ NEXT TV symposium in 2006; and the 2007 Podcast Summit at NAB as well as presented at Streaming Media East and West; NAB Post|Production, Seybold among others.

One of the important things I learnt from Distribution U back in October last year was the importance of knowing who your “first audience” is:

“Another primary theme, from both Scott and Peter, is that the distribution for every project will be different, because the primary (or starting) audience will be different and what attracts one audience will not attract another. In modern distribution the “primary” audience for any project is one that is already engaged, in some way, by the topic or content. That helps get word-of-mouth buzz going and the audience can spread. Targeting a specific audience is easier (and cheaper) than trying to build a generic audience.”

Then I come across an IPTV Evangelist post by Levi Shapiro titled “The Only Successful Model for Indie Film,” which naturally caught my attention. While I’m not convinced that there is only one model there are some nice parallels drawn for the modern era of distribution from models of the past: what is the modern equivalent to the ‘Miramax’ model of the 1990′s. Number two on their list for modern distribution is this:

2. Nurture a built-in audience: “The film was supported by the army from the beginning. We asked for their help and advice, they read the script and said, ‘Yes, we want you to make this movie and we will help.’ So they gave us access to a base to shoot, and we had a full-time adviser on the set. So we knew that officially the army as an institution was behind the movie.”

Now I think I’m beginning to see a pattern when along comes an uncredited post on the (highly recommended) Future of Movies blog titled “A Target Audience means a Better Box Office.” This whole post is well worth reading because it really accurately sums up the issue:

Let me repeat that key phrase from the quote: ‘…you have to make the movie for someone. Movies that are for a specific audience tend to overperform.’

After a little slam on “personal movies” (I’m just making it for myself!) the post goes on to note that metaphoric Hollywood makes “movies for everyone.” But it is the answer to the question “Who is your Audience?” that cuts to the heart of the subject:

“If you say everyone, you are either kidding yourself or better have about $300 million to make the next Avatar.

If you say the audience is yourself and forget the audience, you should just stay at home and not waste your investors’ money.

However, if you can create a project that speaks to an audience – a specific, identifiable audience then your story can be focused, your casting choices should make sense, you trailer will talk to that audience, and the film will entertain them and have them sharing and Tweeting and Facebooking and Rotten Tomatoing all over the place.”

All that “tweeting and Facebooking and Rotton Tomatoing” is what independent productions need to grow their audience. This is the crux of social media marketing: give your target audience something they love and they’ll spread the word for you. From among these people will come your fans – those few who actively promote the show.

If you consider some of the more successful independent productions – documentary or not – you can see the wisdom of this approach.

For One Six Right – a documentary about “the passion of aviation” focused on LA’s Van Nuys airport – the target audience is the body of pilots. Pilots have magazines and website dedicated to them making it easy to reach out to the audience.

2004′s Napoleon Dynamite’s target audience – the first people interested in viewing – was clearly people like me: nerds! Yes, it was fortunate and crossed over to the mainstream because the movie was entertaining and the word of mouth spread. But without that first audience tweeting and telling their enjoyment of the movie, who would have been interested in one nerd helping another nerd win Class President?

When Joss Whedon needed a project to fill in time during 2008′s writer’s strike, he pulled together Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog. While appealing to SciFi fans the “first audience” to get that all-important word-of-mouth going were Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris or Felicia Day fans. OK, we can’t all get that sort of head start, but do note that it wasn’t made “for everyone.” (Joss Whedon’s work is always targeted to specific niches.)

When  Aaron Woolf was looking to promote King Corn (a documentary about how damaging subsidies on corn farming has been) he chose to find their first audience through blogs about sustainable agriculture and slow food movement.

Robert Greenwald ‘s audience came from MoveON.org where he was an in-house filmmaker.

And so it goes. By focusing on a target audience – a niche if you will – the marketing becomes clearer and more focused. By saying “no” to the rest and targeting and appealing to the target audience, how you reach the audience becomes clearer and more practical.

When we were creating the Intelligent Assistants for various post-production software programs, I had a very clear audience in mind. In fact, I could probably name the half dozen or so people that I was writing for. They never knew it, but it was easier for me to write something that really met the needs of those people than something aimed at “everyone” using Final Cut Pro or Boris RED, et al.

During the years I was programming the Digital Production BuZZ I again had a very specific group of people that I was programming for. It was clear in my mind who I was not programming for. That made it much easier to determine who would be an appropriate guest for that audience, keeping it relevant and focused for those few and contributing, I believe, to its rapid growth.

You can never make an audience for “everyone”. The market for Predator has very little overlap with Princess Bride! To some degree Hollywood has semi-targeted specific demographics. But demographics aren’t people.

When you talk with me about promoting your independent project (as I will be in New York on March 20th and Boston on March 23rd) expect to be challenged with the question “who’s your target audience?” to clarify any questions. If you can’t define your target audience – the first you’ll promote to – you should stop everything and refine the project until it perfectly meets the expectations of a single, first, starting audience.

Then you can start production.