The Web isn't one big lump: millions of markets of thousands of people.

My article entitled “The Short Film is Dead: Time for the Emerging Filmmaker to Get a New Calling Card” caused a touch of a minor stir. Its been published in a  few places now, first as a commissioned guest post for www.nofilmschool.com and later on my own site and even in an upcoming issue of SEKANS the Turkish magazine of cinema culture. The reaction to the argument the article makes has been polarised. A great many have responded with enthusiasm (such as the first 35 comments on www.nofilmschool.com) Others have reacted to the premise of the article as if it were a treatise on how to murder their mothers. 

The article is obviously designed to be deliberately provocative but I believe there is a central truth in the diminishing currency of the short film as calling-card into the future and the exploration of what the other options might be? One critic of the premise of the article cited the volume of YouTube uploads as counter argument ”There is over 200,000 videos uploaded to youtube DAILY - good luck standing out amongst that noise and the latest old spice video…”

But this argument is misguided as such noise as YouTube generates doesn’t operate in the same ‘space’ as a web-series. This line of thinking wrongly assumes the web is all one, singular and unified lump of video noise. 21st century economics and globalisation have started to teach us well that the global village embodied by the web is millions of markets of thousands of people, not a singular market of billions of people.

YouTube is not the prime repository of web-series online, rather increasingly it is dedicated online Web-TV channels that devote to specialised audiences around genre, form and content. Dedicated channels that serve as filters and because they operate without the overhead of needing audience en-masse, can cater to the niche in ways that are potentially very profitable. Most particularly because advertisers are becoming acutely aware that they don’t want to promote their products to the biggest audience, but rather the RIGHT audience. Millions of markets of thousands of people. It’s this principle that negates the lowest common denominator effect of YouTube. Your web series doesn’t have to cut through the YouTube noise if it has clarity on it’s audience, its genre and what its viewers expect - the feeling-sate they are seeking to evoke in watching.

(There is a very good collection of examples of high quality webisode series on screenculture.net)

What is also important is to recognise the process of normalisation that is taking place in regard to the divide between streaming media and traditional broadcast. We need only look at the increasing prevalence of internet receivers in TV sets (Sony Brvaias for example) with dedicated ingest of BlipTV as a ‘tunable station’. This is the normalisation of streaming TV as indiscernable from a broadcast. The traditional idea of online media being small, low-res and watched in front of the computer is a quickly antiquated one. When a show delivered from the Blip.tv channel is accessed on the same screen in my lounge room and from the same remote control device then any hard user distinction between broadcast waves and streaming data packets is null and void. What remains is at-leasuire time-shifted viewing; which of itself is now very much the norm. i cant remember the last time i watched a TV show at the time it was broadcast. I record, download, stream and time shift everything i watch except the news (and I dont watch that on Tv at all). 

That said, the basic premise is that I believe the long-standing Short-Film>Feature Film pathway for emerging filmmakers is a broken model. I may be wrong about the Webseries as the new and better way to go but I strongly doubt anyone can mount a viable argument that the traditional pathway isnt fundamentally broken.

Comments

[audovox@gmail.com]

>> I strongly doubt anyone can mount a viable argument that the traditional pathway isnt fundamentally broken

Can you cite some examples Australian filmmakers establishing themselves through producing webisodes? There are endless examples of Australian feature directors who have established themselves using using your 'broken model'. Producers/directors behind Animal Kingdom, Road Train, Waiting City, The Loved Ones are obvious examples from the last year.

I don't think anyone is contesting the decline of traditional distribution/viewing platforms, but I'm not sure what broadcasting has to do with shorts on the festival circuit as a means of establishing oneself.

Without getting into YouTube's crapshoot CPM advertising model ($300k for *untargeted* daily buys on homepage) or behavioural analytics regarding online video consumption (views served through referrals and related content links dominate over niche, walled-garden channel views), I notice the Ozgirl webisodes linked from screenculture.net have an average of 300 views and your own films average around 15 views each.

I'd like to see some real-world evidence to back your theories up.

Cheers

[Mike Jones]

Thanks for your comment audvox

"Can you cite some examples Australian filmmakers establishing themselves through producing webisodes?"

The answer is no.... Not yet. But i'm speculating about something quite new and only now gaining a critical mass. Tiem will tell if im right or not.

Its very easy to cite half a dozen filmmakers who've achieved some prominence from recent successful shorts to features of late (David Michod's CROSSBOW short is astounding and a instrumental in the impetus to get Animal Kingdom off the ground) The old-model has been in a place a long time and it wont disappear. But, these successes are arguably anomalies and exceptions in the face the hundreds of 'quality' short films (not to mention 1000's of mediocre ones) that played festivals, won awards, and gave their makers nothing by way fo calling card. Short films that were seen by virtually no one and contain little in their structure and make up and narrative that would inspire confidence in financiers for bigger projects.

The short film model as a stepping stone to features and tv long-form is broken both creatively and financially - The market for selling short films has dried up, very few networks and distributors buy short films anymore, and the number of films being submitted to festivals has enlarged. It will still work for some but it fails many many more. It has long been advocated in the US (even as far back as the late 90's when i was working there) that if you want to make features you have to make a feature - that making a short was pissing in the wind. Colleagues from USC film school were arguing its better to make a mediocre feature than a good short film. Whilst the David Michods may have got their crack at a feature off the back of a killer short film, a good majority of emerging filmmakers ive seen who have made rather good short films are none the less seriously lacking in the chops to make longer-form work. And those creative skills and understandings that long-form demands wont be developed by simply making more short films.

That leads me to my speculation.....

a) What kind of production is resource and financially lean and viable?
b) What kind of lean production can been seen by a substantial and diverse global audience?
c) What kind fo production is better equipped to both teach and demonstrate the creative skills required for long-form works?

I believe the traditional Short Film only satisfies the First of these 3 and fundamentally fails the other two.

That leads me to WebTV and the episodic online series. A kind of production that has a much greater chance of achieve all 3 criteria.

There isnt hard data or high profile case-studies yet. (though I believe the South Australian guys who made Italian Spiderman are now producing a comedy series for SBS) But to suggest that the Short Film to Feature Film progression is a successful model based on a tiny handful of examples each year (most of which are commercial, critical or artistic failures) is a flawed perspective.

Filmmakers really should be asking "What are the alternatives?" "How else can I learn from and deliver a viable production"? rather than slavishly adhering to an old paradigm because every now and then it occasionally works.... If we dont look for alternatives, seek opportunities and possibilities we'll continue with a film industry that makes a pretty sub-standard product and - with just a few glorious exceptions - has a made a poor standard product for far too many years.

Right now, im speculating that WebTV might be part of the solution....

cheers
Mike