It was enough to make your head hurt/spin/burst with exciting ideas. I think my head was doing all three at once. I think someone summed it up best at the end of the first panel-- We are in an awkward fragmented period right now. It is a hard and scary time for distribution, filled with a lot of trial and error on what works and what doesn't-- but it is also such an exciting time. When I think about ways to incorporate, from the start, some of the new media technologies into my next documentary, it truly does redefine what the documentary will even be. And while some of these technologies still need to grow into their own, I think if we ignore where we seem to be heading-- at a break neck speed-- then by the time you finish your documentary four years down the road, you'll be playing catch up in trying to connect to your audience instead of having your audience already built in and helping you distribute your film.
The opening panel discussion was called The Future of Visual Storytelling: Content-Driven Technologies and the New Documentary Movement ...just the title of the panel is a lot to chew on, and I could probably blog for a week about what was discussed over the 90-minute panel. The panel was moderated by Scott Kirsner, editor of the great CinemaTech blog and author of the new book Fans, Friends & Followers and made up of B. Ruby Rich, Lance Weiler, Tina Singleton, Mark Gibson, and everyone in the audience-- right from the start it was a pretty open Q&A complete with people tweeting their thoughts on the panel with a #pint09 tag and having them pop up on a big screen at the front of the room. The future of panel discussions?
I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow recap of the day since BAVC had two cameras recording the whole time and I'm sure you'll be able to watch the entire thing yourself in the next few days, if you choose. What I will do is highlight some of the discussion that tweaked my brain the most. In this opening panel, the three main topics they tackled were 1.) What do they envision the storytelling landscape looking like 5 years from now? 2.) What existing technology has the greatest potential for changing storytelling in the future? 3.) What will be the biggest behavioral changes to society as a whole? So what tweaked me the most?...
1.) What do they envision the storytelling landscape looking like 5 years from now?
Multiple platforms and layers of distribution all mashed together, and in real-time. They talked about the future of storytelling being more and more in real-time...everything seems to be heading that way, and if it continues towards real-time then cell phones will need to play a major role in all of this. What role will cell phones play in distribution? What this should mean is documentary filmmakers should have the opportunity to break out from the distributor enforced time limits-- the 52-minute, 82-minute, feature-length, film festival friendly etc. lengths that everyone decides their film needs to be whether it should be or not. This seems exciting but scary. Exciting to think you can make your film the exact length it should be, and you won't need to trim or fill to reach some magical number. Scary to think everyone may only want to watch bite-sized 3-minute YouTube friendly content on their cell phone. And if everything is moving to these new technologies, then who becomes the new "Gatekeepers"? In a perfect world there would be none, but obviously companies like Google will play a major role in future distribution. And how will this affect the storytelling? Will the quality of the content be the first thing left behind? But the big question looming over it all is "how will money be made?"...how will this all be monetized because so far nobody has figured out how to make significant money through online distribution.
2.) What existing technology has the greatest potential for changing storytelling in the future?
Many were already dropping Google Wave as the next big thing to watch. The other existing technology that had a lot of people in agreement was Second Life (never been interested in it myself) and how it has the ability to give users a personal connection to a situation they may never actaully be in themselves, and how this can be an invaluable learning tool. There was also talk of bit torrents and how they are currently used for pirating etc. but could they by used for proper distribution methods in the future. This also led to a discussion on pirating and how there are many examples of pirating not hurting and even helping a film/music/TV show take off and succeed, and that pirating should not be feared and maybe even embraced.
3.) What will be the biggest behavioral changes to society as a whole?
Think of how much more time people spend looking at their cell phones in any given day compared to 5 years ago? They will certainly be a significant part of future distribution. It will still be about figuring out how to get people to take action. People will already spread content digitally (I'm sure someone tweeted and re-tweeted this as it was said), but can these technologies be used to get large masses of people to do something physically like come out to a movie theatre? And can we drive meaningful social change? What technologies will stand the test of time? Is Facebook already heading on the same trajectory as MySpace? And if so, do you constantly have to re-build these audiences if the platform fizzles? One thing that I'm already facing is how do you keep up with updating all of these platforms and social networks? At times you need a team of people to keep up with all of the various technologies you are juggling to try to get the word out about your project. Will any of this become more streamlined and effective? And if the trailer for your film is on your website as a Quicktime movie or flash movie change it today. Embed and spread...make your trailer easy to share and spread. I use Vimeo and couldn't be happier. Our trailer is easy to embed, email and share and has at times spread like wildfire when it's been embedded on other people's blogs/social networks/websites.
Overall, it was one of the most interesting, and thought provoking panels I'd been a part of in quite some time, and I think Australian video artist Lynette Wallworth made a great observation while bringing it all back around to storytelling...We are uncomfortable when we think about all of this because the story isn't over. The action is leading the story, and we want to know the ending, but it hasn't been written. It is still playing out.
This ends part one of my mega two-part blog post. Later today, I'll post part two covering the three presentations that followed the panel.
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