You have to find your audience, because they won't always find you

One way to think of the world of theatrical releases and TV schedules is as limited shelf space. There are only so many cinemas and so many slots on the TV schedule, so the odds of getting one are not that great. And now, with streaming being the preferred mode of viewing for many, the very notion of limited shelf space gets thrown aside, just as it has for retail since Amazon came along. So does the seemingly endless shelf space of streaming and video on demand mean that the distribution bottleneck has been solved?

Not at all. But it does look markedly different.

Both producers and distributors can benefit from a new approach to the slate of work that comes after the picture is locked, specifically one that blends marketing and distribution activities together. This was the sentiment put forward by Jon Reiss at the Hot Docs Industry Conference held recently in Toronto. Reiss is a documentary filmmaker and author of Think Outside the Box Office and Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul. And while Reiss has spent the bulk of his career in the trenches of indie and DIY filmmaking, he assured the capacity crowd at the Hot Docs session that “the fun and miserable process of doing it on your own can also be the fun and miserable process of doing it with a distributor.”

Whether you go the route of doing things largely on your own or decide to share the fun and misery with a distribution partner, Reiss believes there are a handful of new skills and perspectives filmmakers can benefit from familiarizing themselves with, particularly when it comes to everything that happens once the production phases are complete. “50% is making your film. The other 50% is trying to connect with your audience,” he reminded the producers in the room. Not only that, Reiss estimates there are about 50,000 feature films released each year, and 20,000 documentaries. That’s a lot of supply, and even with all the new buyers at Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix, the competition for those slots is keen.

So what can filmmakers do to increase their chances of success? Understanding the new contours of the marketing and distribution landscape is critical. That means learning about the various elements now expected from a movie marketing campaign – from traditional press and promotion to digital and social media – and how these activities can be interwoven with distribution efforts using new tools and techniques.

About 10 years ago, Reiss came up with the concept of a PMD, a producer of marketing and distribution, to fill precisely this position. This is the person who comes in for that all-important second 50% of the work, the part dedicated to finding the audience. The PMD heads up a team that might include a publicist for online and offline media placement, a social and digital media specialist in charge of everything from SEO to paid campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, and an impact producer whose job is to initiate and manage the partnerships and community relationships that help the film achieve its social impact goals. In the words of one indie film blogger: “It’s a gargantuan task, akin to herding cats, yelling into cyberspace, and looking for that needle in a haystack.”

In addition, there’s the importance of learning the language of social and digital media marketing, because filmmakers, especially independents, need to know how to communicate with PMDs, social media specialists, or digital agencies. There are some basic acronyms, like ROA (return on advertising) and KPIs (key performance indicators) and also concepts such as the sales funnel, which is a visualization of the customer journey from knowing that your product exists to taking an action such as making a purchase. Or at least that’s where it used to end. In digital, the funnel doesn’t end once the purchase is made, or in this case, the film is seen, but it can continue with a positive feedback loop of fandom and advocacy.

Source:
https://trends.cmf-fmc.ca/film-and-tv-production-why-it-doesnt-end-with-the-distribution-deal/

In other words, in the digital space marketing can also be distribution. Loyal fans can do more than just click the ‘like’ button: they can also serve as advocates and micro distribution nodes for elements of your campaign such as trailers, images, and articles.

Another unique property of digital and social media is the ability to micro-target, to go beyond mere demographic segments and reach people within specific communities and special interest groups and to do so on a city-by-city basis. That’s what filmmaker Sanjay Rawal did with his 2018 documentary feature 3100: Run and Become. The film tells the story of the world’s longest race, a 3,100-mile odyssey that takes runners from the deserts of Africa to the temples of Japan and through the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. Using the granular targeting abilities of social media ads, Rawal was able to speak directly to the communities most likely to have an interest in the film, such as people of the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The film, which began its life on Kickstarter, ended up having theatrical releases in 15 markets and enjoying some of the highest recent local box office in cities such as Flagstaff, Arizona.

Knowing the unique capabilities of the new tools available and understanding how audiences can be activated in ways previously not possible need to be in the producers’ purview. As Reiss put it during his Hot Docs session: “Your distributor is your Plan A. You need to have your own Plan B, because the distributor doesn’t always do what you think they’ll do.” And in reality, he pointed out, you often end up doing a blend of Plan A and Plan B. So it’s really about how distribution and marketing strategies can work best hand in hand and, hopefully, up the fun quotient of the process while keeping the misery part at bay.

Note: This article originally appeared on Trends

Content Studios: Less Interruptive is the New Attention Getting

It seems like every week there’s another company outside of the conventional TV, film, and ad agency business launching a content studio. Among the most recent high-profile examples: Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify expanding into media production, with studios in Toronto and additional personnel in New York and Los Angeles pitching in to create original film and TV productions along with a weekly video series and podcast.

Last year, indoor fitness phenomenon SoulCycle also entered the custom content space and, over the past few years, media companies ranging from The New York Times to BuzzFeed have added native advertising and branded content to their slate of offerings. In every one of these cases, the hook is that there are new and less interruptive ways for brands to capture the attention of audiences.

H&R Block Not Interrupting You on The Onion
Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/07/07/native-advertising-examples

A recent panel discussion at Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox, titled “The Future of Work for Creators”, went deeper into these new avenues for content creators, bringing together producers and executives for a more detailed look at the evolving landscape. Tom Evans—who runs the Zulubot studio at agency Zulu Alpha Kilo and works with brands such as Tim Hortons, Harley Davidson and Interac—admitted that the days of earning $10,000 a day to direct a commercial are getting fewer and further between. “But now, there are so many opportunities to do other things, such as short and long form documentary for clients,” he said, and these business models are based on freelance directors.

Whether you’re a Jack or Jill of all trades that can write, shoot and edit all on your own, or a director more accustomed to overseeing multiple camera shoots, new options are emerging. The reason behind these shifts? It’s a moment of many overlaps in the business of strategy, media production and marketing. Explained Evans: 

“Consultancies like Deloitte are under pressure to act like ad agencies

 Ad agencies are under pressure to act like production studios, 

& Production studios are under pressure to act like ad agencies.”

Not only are the structural elements of the industry changing, but so are some of the media brands themselves. Take Air Canada’s in-flight magazine En Route, for example. The publication that meets 48 million passengers annually from the back of the plane seat in front of you is being transformed into a cross-platform media ecosystem. Malcolm Gilderdale of Bookmark Content explained En Route’s expansion from print to social, digital, video and podcasting this way: “Media production for the travel sector can be a lot more than just destination marketing and travel tips and hacks. We’re interested in how travel intersects with music, with food, with architecture and with technology. And what we’re learning is that you can tell amazing stories with the backing of a brand. And you don’t have to compromise your vision.”

It may be OK to inhale, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to advertise cannabis in Canada. Shaka Licorish, Director of Culture and Experience for Aurora Cannabis Inc., a medical marijuana company expanding into the recreational cannabis market, explained just how challenging creating content for the burgeoning cannabis market is. “This is not the tobacco or alcohol industry—cannabis is a medicine, tobacco and alcohol are not—but there are some parallels, and that’s why educating consumers with narrative content about responsible consumption is going to play a significant role.” Licorish continued: “There’s a lot of noise out there, and a lot of confusion.” He cites Bill C-45, better known as the Cannabis Act, as the reason for much of the fuzziness. Referring to sections 16 and 17, the parts of the Act that govern the depiction of cannabis for marketing purposes, Licorish points out: “It’s so specific yet so vague at the same time.”

Despite the litany of restrictions, there’s little doubt about the scope of the opportunity that lies ahead in the cannabis market. In other market spaces exploring new formats for content, it isn’t about adhering to legislation, but rather how to deliver enriching content to an audience less interested in a 30-second ad and more interested in new information wrapped in a novel experience. And, in every case, it’s about understanding the larger shifts in the marketing and promotion of products, services and brands. As Zulubot’s Tom Evans put it: “As the model changes, the people you should be talking to changes too.”

Note: A version of this post originally appeared on Trends

The Web Turns 30: So Who's in Charge of it Anyway?

In 1989, scientist Tim Berners Lee wrote the protocols that became the World Wide Web. His vision was to design a set of technical specifications such as URLs and HTML to create a more user-friendly way to access a global network of connected computers.

Commercial web browsers followed, and tech enthusiasts around the world started logging on to the Internet. No longer would it be confined to universities and academic researchers. Four years after the Berners Lee web protocols, the consumer Internet had caught on enough to produce this now famous cartoon, showing a dog in front of a computer monitor and keyboard, looking at another dog, with the caption: “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.” The point was that on this new communications platform, anonymity was built in. You could be whoever you wanted to be. 

In those early carefree days of connectivity the anonymity led to new forms of interpersonal communication that were, for the most part, good-natured. But as is the case with so much recreational activity, it’s all fun and games, until somebody gets hurt.

And in the past year or so in particular, people feel like they have been getting hurt online: By data breaches, through ethical missteps of the most popular social platforms, and via pernicious information masquerading as news. All this has brought issues of Internet governance, or how the Internet is managed and held accountable, in the broadest sense, to the popular conversation.

Source: https://cira.ca/betterinternet

Governing the Ungovernable

By definition, a decentralized technology such as the Internet – i.e. nobody ‘owns’ it – is extremely challenging to manage from legal and policy points of view. Furthermore, the nature of the Internet can differ substantially from one country to the next. We may think there’s one Internet, but in fact there are several. “This global resource connects us all, but it is not administered in a homogenous way around the world. Diverging ideologies have created an Internet with stark differences from region to region, and contrasting philosophies within those regions.” These were the words of Byron Holland, CEO of CIRA aka the Canadian Internet Registry Authority, the member-based organization that represents Canada in matters of international Internet policy and governance and also administers the .ca domain, the Internet country code top level domain for Canada.

Holland made this statement as he delivered the opening remarks at the recently held Canadian Internet Governance Forum, a gathering of Internet policy makers, professionals, academics, and advocates whose objective is to safeguard the original vision of a widely distributed, co-operation-enhancing communication platform in the face of threats posed by misinformation, cybercrime, and data and privacy breaches.

Canada and Internet governance

Though the players and companies are not household names, Canadians play an important role in the Internet’s operational and governance structures. CIRA, for example, broached online privacy issues years before the European Union instituted the personal data compliance regulations of GDPR. Canada is also home to Tucows, the Internet’s 2nd largest domain registry that issues millions of web domains annually. While delivering the keynote address at the Canadian Internet Governance Forum, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss pointed out that when it comes to global discussions of Internet policy, Canadians are known for being objective, rational actors. “Canadians are diverse by definition,” emphasized Noss.

On a global communications platform defined by heterogeneity, the Canadian perspective is indeed a big plus. It’s also a particularly good fit for dealings with ICANN, the non-profit organization that oversees the provision of the domain names, IP addresses, and root servers for the Internet. “ICANN is the only multi-stakeholder organization in which members sit side-by-side, in a non-hierarchical way, and that’s a fundamentally different approach to governance,” Noss reminded the conference participants.

And though one of the organizations that provides the undergirding for the Internet’s operation and stability is uniquely democratic, the global Internet is not. Outside of the western world a very different Internet exists, one in which information control through website blocking and content censorship is a common technique used by the authoritarian regimes of, for example, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and Iran. There are also methods outside of outright site blocking that countries are using to limit information access and curtail free speech. Uganda recently levied what’s being called a ‘social media tax’ on those using their mobile phones to access Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Whatsapp. The fees are billed directly through the mobile operators, and in a country where the average wage is about $100 per month, the hit on the pocketbook was felt almost immediately. In less than 6 months, 5 million Ugandans stopped using their devices to access the Internet.

Bad Actors and Lessons Learned

A more optimistic development in Internet governance can be seen in Canada’s Bill C-76, passed in December 2018. Also known as the Elections Modernization Act, the legislation represents a major turn toward transparency in online advertising, requiring tech companies to keep comprehensive records of the sources of advertising that could in any way be considered political or partisan. In other words, lessons have been learned the hard way from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the associated data harvesting that enabled the creation of psychographic profiles of tens of millions of Facebook users and the serving of biased ads during the 2016 U.S. election and the Brexit vote of the same year.

As a result of Bill C-76 as well as a desire to not repeat anything resembling the Cambridge Analytica debacle, Google recently announced it would not be accepting any form of political advertising for the duration of Canada’s upcoming federal election campaign. Said Colin McKay, Head of Public Policy at Google Canada, “We’re focusing our efforts on supporting Canadian news literacy programs and connecting people to useful and relevant election-related information.”

A Work in Progress

If we compare the Internet of 30 years ago with the Internet of today there really aren’t that many similarities. In the early 90s the Internet was more of a community than a marketplace, defined largely by the ability to publish without needing anyone’s permission, to collaborate across great distances, and to give voice to people and movements that would otherwise go unheard.

But when new communications technologies emerge so do new business models, new types of content, and new user behaviours, most of them unanticipated. That’s how the great open platform for global connectivity, co-operation at scale, and knowledge and information has also become the opposite: a machine for creating discord, division, and chaos.

So is the Internet the greatest thing ever invented, or the worst? The answer, paradoxically, could be yes, to both. Complex problems don’t have simple solutions, and in the opinion of CIRA CEO Byron Holland, the answer won’t lie in any single response, but in a combination of technology solutions, policy solutions, and our own digital literacy and online behaviours. “Canadians cannot remain silent, or get too comfortable,” said Holland. “The Internet we have today can be gone tomorrow if we are not vigilant.”

  Further Reading:

• The CIRA report titled “Canadians Deserve A Better Internet”

• “Four Internets: The Geopolitics of Digital Governance”, a report from the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian-based public/private partnership for the study of governance and innovation in the global economy

Note: A version of this post originally appeared on Trends.

Linear TV: Not Dead. Yet.

You’ve probably heard the saying “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”, a phrase that originated in the midst of a global speaking tour Mark Twain was on in 1895. When Twain found out that the rumours had evolved from an illness to his demise he uttered the now oft-repeated phrase and then carried on with his schedule. With the marked shift away from broadcast and cable TV and toward on demand OTT services, it’s worth asking if linear TV is on its deathbed. Or could it just be the Mark Twain of media?

In the screen-based industries the hot topic for the past few years have been OTT streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. And as you’ve probably noticed from your Twitter and Facebook feeds, people are talking about streaming fare such as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Russian Doll a lot more than they’re talking about the network sitcoms and sports and live events that fill large parts of broadcast schedules.

In Canada there are also the OTT/streaming offerings such as Crave, Alt TV, Ignite, and Illico from Bell, Rogers, Corus, and Videotron. Together, Canadians spend about $1 billion annually on these on-demand options, making it easy to see how the rumour mill gets churning about the death of traditional TV.

A closer look at the viewing habits of Canadians would suggest that not unlike Mr. Twain, rumblings about the death of linear TV in Canada have been overstated, at least for the moment. A December 2018 report that tracks cord cutting behaviour in Canada reports that about three quarters of Canadian households still use non-OTT delivery channels such as cable or satellite TV.

For many there’s a comfort in the relationship between established viewing habits and push models of TV programming. According to GlobalWebIndex, Canada ranks #9 in the world in linear television viewing, and the linear TV numbers are particularly striking for francophone Canadians. In French Canada the average daily consumption of linear TV is highest among G20 countries, ranging from 2.2 hours daily for those in the 16-24 age bracket and 3 hours daily for those aged 55-64.The above are just a few of the surprising statistics about Canadians and linear media consumption in 2019. There are also things that are not surprising, such as the correlation between age and cord cutters or cord nevers. 45% of Canadians under 30 are either cord cutters, or those who had cable and then stopped subscribing, or cord nevers, or those who never had a cable subscription in the first place, with the percentages declining as age increases, as one would expect.

Source:  http://media-cmi.com/downloads/CMI_Cord_Cutting_Trend_Tracker_121918.pdf

Research from Media Technology Monitor (MTM) issued in January 2019 provides additional insights into the distinct viewing habits of Canadians. It reports on a phenomenon in Canada known as ‘cord jumping,’ in which people with a subscription to either OTT or cable services cancel them, but with the intention of subscribing again in the future. This on again, off again relationship with subscriptions may be related to promotional offers, or to synching up cable or streaming commitments with special live events or premieres.

As evidenced by research on viewing habits, there’s a relaxed familiarity associated with the ‘lean back’ experience of traditional TV for some, though in the Canadian market there are additional factors affecting modes of viewing.
Industry analyst Jeff Fan recently noted that Canadian media companies aren’t witnessing the same decline in video subscriptions as their U.S. counterparts. Fan sees various factors at play, among them the fact that the dominant service providers, Bell and Rogers, “are still very much vertically integrated, especially when it comes to sports content.” Simply put, there’s a concentrated ownership of teams, specialty sports channels, and fixed and wireless distribution. Therefore, Fan points out, there’s “a larger vested interest to protect the traditional linear video subscriber base and ARPU [average revenue per user].”

Source: https://mobilesyrup.com/2018/05/16/cord-cutting-far-less-prevalent-in-canada-than-the-us-report/

As our local market has the unique challenges of Canadian content considerations and the related policy implications, the country also trails behind the U.S. in terms of unbundled and à la carte services. Through these, consumers can subscribe directly to, for example, HBO without a cable package through its HBO Now offering, or receive a variety of cable and specialty channels without the constraints of a pre-assembled cable package or subscription. These options start at from $15-$25 (USD) per month, through providers such as Spectrum, that offers 60 channels to Apple TV or iPhones for those and Philo, with a channel line-up including premium channels such as A&E, BBC America, Comedy Central, and Sundance TV, but no sports or local broadcast channels.

Other factors being thrown into the mix are the direct to consumer options in the pipeline from Disney in late 2019 (at which time the company’s contractual obligations to Netflix come to a close), Apple, and AT&T (owner of Time Warner since 2018). It remains to be seen if consumers view direct to consumer offerings for specific media brands as an addition to their media diet or as a substitute for the cable and/or OTT services they may already be subscribing to.

Note: This article originally appeared on Trends

Oblique Strategies & The Power of the Non-Obvious

Do you ever wonder how you could have been in the orbit of something for so long and still not actually encounter it?

The good news is when said elusive thing finally crosses your path you can add it to your stockpile of knowledge, and quickly deploy it.  As I like to say: You learn something new every day. If you're lucky.

The other week I got that kind of lucky and learned about something called Oblique Strategies.

It happened at a recent talk given by British media studies academic David Gauntlett, who now holds a chair in Creative Innovation at Toronto's Ryerson University. The topic was his current focus on the meaning and ramifications of creativity being everywhere, which happens to also be the subject matter of his forthcoming book An Experimental Culture Of All Kinds of Things Made By Everybody. In a nutshell the idea is that creativity is more inclusive than ever. And being done in more ways and for more reasons than ever. Whether it's handmade products and objects or the video and audio productions of the hundreds of thousands YouTubers and podcasters out there, we live in a time in which the means of production are open to more people than ever. (Whether or not people can make a living in this new widely distributed world of making is another story, and for those wishing to dig deeper into that topic, there's this recently released comprehensive study of the creative economy.)

As Gauntlett puts is on his website: "...Social change comes from small things as well as big movements, and from constructions of shared meaning and experience. The vision of an experimental culture of all kinds of things made by everybody can still be achieved."

Now back to those Oblique Strategies. In the course of the talk Gauntlett referred to them. They're not a thing as much as they are a practice. A way to unblock creative blocks. A kind of cleaning flush for the espresso machines of our minds. The Oblique Strategies are the work of pioneering experimental musician Brian Eno and multimedia artist Peter Schmidt. 

So what are they?

They're actually decks of cards, available since 1975, in a variety of editions. To give you a taste, here are a handful of oblique strategies from the original 1975 deck:

• Discard an axiom 
• Emphasise the flaws 
• Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate 
• Use an old idea 
• Use 'unqualified' people 

Source: 

http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/

In a 1980 interview on KPFA Berkeley Eno described the origins of Oblique Strategies this way:

"The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation - particularly in studios - tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you're in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that's going to yield the best results. Of course, that often isn't the case - it's just the most obvious and - apparently - reliable method."

And because we're now in 2019 of course there are unboxing videos of people doing just that with the Oblique Strategies cards.

The Oblique Strategies decks are available here as well as on Amazon and I'm sure other places too, but this link allows you to purchase directly from Brian Eno's site.

And in a related story David Gauntlett has his own card deck too, of great thinkers from the often cross-pollinating fields of media studies, cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, and sociology. Sheet 1 can be found here and look, here's sheet 2.

6 Takeaways from 6 episodes of the Now & Next Podcast

The first season of Now & Next, the podcast series I have been hosting, has just wrapped. And for your all-in-one-place convenience the audio files from each episode are embedded in this post, or if you prefer you can subscribe to Now & Next here and have the shows just magically show up on your phone.

The series examines the digital transformation of the media and entertainment industries through a series of in depth interviews with practitioners, executives, and analysts.

But what does digital transformation actually mean?

It’s a fair question, because digital transformation is a phrase you’ve likely been seeing appear all over the place, whether it’s in relation to industry sectors such as retail, transportation, and finance, or, as would be the case for most readers of this website, to legacy media organizations.

A top tech site defines digital transformation this way:

“The idea is to use technology not just to replicate an existing service in a digital form, but to use technology to transform that service into something significantly better….but it's not just about the technology: changing business processes and corporate culture are just as vital to the success of these initiatives.”

Just as it wasn’t hotels having websites, but the power and utility of an aggregating, reviews-based platform like TripAdvisor that permanently altered the landscape for the hospitality industry, producers and creatives have seen new links in the value chain of the media and entertainment industries emerge. And with such shifts come new opportunities, but also new competitors and often the need for new approaches to one’s business.

As a quick guide to the Now & Next podcast I've assembled this list of some of the most essential things learned from the conversations with people from companies ranging from YouTube to the user-generated content writing site Wattpad.

Takeaway #1: You can now build a media business by going direct to consumer

Episode 01: Inside YouTube: Beyond Dogs on Skateboards and Viral Videos

In the inaugural episode we learned about the new business opportunities offered by YouTube, for both producers and individual creators, with guest Mark Swierszcz, head of Toronto’s YouTube Space. Among other things we learned about Skyship Entertainment, the company behind the entirely YouTube-based kids’ channel Super Simple Songs that has over 11 billion views.

“Once the ecosystem for content started to change and kids programming became a little bit more on demand through DVDs and through collections of kids content that you take with you…I think producers like Skyship started to see, “Well look, we could completely run our business and skip the whole distribution problem, or distribution challenge on tradition broadcast television, go directly to YouTube”. They've figured it out and they've got a built in global audience and they're not really concerned about the whole distribution conundrum that the traditional Canadian system maybe 10, 20 years ago had.”

- Mark Swierszcz, Head of Toronto’s YouTube Space

Takeaway #2: Audio has become a low cost testing environment for TV & film projects

Episode 02: The Audio Renaissance

The second episode focused on a part of the media industry that historically had little overlap with TV & film: Audio.

Guests Steve Pratt & Dan Misener of the podcasting company Pacific Content helped us understand how and why there’s been not just a boom in audio production thanks to podcasting, but how a new relationship exists between the things first heard on earbuds and things seen on screens, as witnessed in such podcast to TV success stories as Dirty John.

“If you’re looking for original IP that you might license or auction for a movie or for a television series, radio and audio is a relatively low-cost way to experiment and try new ideas. And I have seen that up close and personal just in the attendance of industry events over the past couple of years.”

- Dan Misener, Pacific Content

“Podcasting’s wide open and I think, the same way as the rest of the internet, you can get some really powerful niches being built where you can be the best show about a particular niche that would never, ever make it on radio and you can find a huge, passionate, loyal audience precisely because it’s like nothing that’s ever existed on radio before.”

- Steve Pratt, Pacific Content

Takeaway #3: Data can take on the industry’s 90% failure rate

Episode 03: Wattpad: Leveraging a billion points of data per day

Episode 3 takes on what is perhaps the Achilles heel of the entertainment industry: About 90% of shows fail. Recently deceased Oscar-winning screenwriter and author of the bestselling book ‘Adventures In The Screen Trade’ William Goldman reduced Hollywood’s astonishingly high failure rate to just 3 words: ‘Nobody knows anything’.

But Wattpad, the online writing platform that generates a billion points of data per day from its millions of readers and writers, thinks they can user their data to improve the odds, and have plenty of examples to point to. Take The Kissing Booth,for example. It started out as a story written by a teenage girl on Wattpad, and in 2018 was one of the most watched shows on Netflix.

“We’re really diving into data that nobody else has access to, which does give us that unique view of how stories are growing, how genres are changing, how writers are writing. And that’s a very important way we look at data…We can use data to better predict success…whether it’s a 90% overall fail rate or 80% of shows that can’t make year two, that audience is going to make the difference, and it is going to make it easier for us to better see our chance of success.”

- Aron Levitz, Head, Wattpad Studios

Takeaway #4: Blockchain can unlock new value with one-of-a-kind digital assets

Episode 04: Cryptokitties: The cats that reintroduced value to digital assets …and broke part of the blockchain

This episode looks at internet economics, through the lens of, believe it or not, digital cats.

The democratization brought about by digital technologies came with great promise. Anyone could do anything and reach anyone. And usually at a minimal cost. But as we’ve come to know that comes with an upside and also a downside. At the same time we’ve gone from the free for all of the early days of the internet to a highly centralized internet dominated by a handful of a companies.

And so there have been new winners and losers over the past 20 years or so since most of us were signing up for our first email addresses. The media and entertainment industries are among those that are still working through the turbulence.

Enter blockchain technologies. They make possible a future of decentralization, which of course comes with much complexity and many, many unknowns.

But could people shelling out $140,000 for a digital cat be a bellwether for the future? Bryce Bladon, one of the founders of Cryptokitties, thinks so. Their individually distinct digital cats became so popular upon release that they crashed a part of the blockchain, thinks so.

"There can be just one of a digital asset. This asset can actually belong to someone. There is a record of who made this asset, where it came from, who it belongs to, who has owned it."

- Bryce Bladon, Co-founder, Cryptokitties

Takeaway #5: Streaming means competing globally -- and also financing globally

Episode 05: Fear & Risk Taking in Kids’ TV

How can producers of kids’ content differentiate themselves in a newly global and therefore more competitive marketplace? In episode 5 I talked to JJ Johnson of Sinking Ship Entertainment to find out how his company, started with a few friends from Ryerson, now has shows on in over 100 countries around the world. Sinking Ship is the producer of, among other things, Annedroids, the longest running show on Amazon Kids.

What’s worked for JJ and the team at Sinking Ship is expanding their thinking to the global level. Including financing.

“ I think Canada, or at least how we've always looked at Canada, should always be a wonderful home base and a place where you can take some risks and get a piece of the pie, but it should never be the whole pie. We're not competing just in Canada. We're competing globally, and we should finance globally. If that means that you need to change your strategies, in terms of what you're producing, to attract a global audience, and if that means that you need to maybe make some riskier content.”

- JJ Johnson, Sinking Ship Entertainment



Takeaway #6: 

Skills for location-based entertainment are found across various industries & sectors

Episode 06: VR & AR: Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

This episode digs into the integration of VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) into physical spaces, in an industry sector abbreviated as LBE, which stands for location-based entertainment.

We may not realize it but the cat ears we can put on our faces on Snapchat are an example of the mass market availability of AR. And VR is widely available through gaming boxes played at home and at the VR arcades that have popped up across the country over the past few years.

Some major new developments in LBE in Canada include strategic moves from Cineplex, Canada’s largest theatrical chain. In addition to a partnership that has brought a VR experience based on the popular Ghostbusters franchise to locations in Toronto and Edmonton.

Cineplex recently became an investor in Seattle company VR Studios. The result will be several dozen VR arcades installed in their cinema properties across the country, which means new opportunities for content producers for the immersive, in person experiences. 

Our guest for this episode, Alexis Macklin, is a San Francisco-based analyst on the VR & AR industries. She points out that the talent pool for LBE is unique, coming from both the traditional and digital corners of the industry.

“If you're doing more of a location based experience, you may need people with theatre backgrounds to be able to think about setting up the set, then building props and thinking about how people would go about the space. You definitely need gaming background for those game engines, but you would also need the cinematography background as well to know how to best bring up a shot, especially for those VR movies. When we look to the future, we'll definitely need developers that are more of a mix between the cinematic Hollywood background and the gaming background, and visual effects as well.”

- Alexis Macklin, Analyst, Greenlight Insights

Note: A version of this post originally appeared on Trends.

From View Masters to Virtual Reality at a Theater Near You

It's time for the final episode in this series of the Now & Next podcast, and it's all about VR and AR. Both VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) can be thought of as new technologies, but in many ways they’re not really new at all.

Early sensory simulation devices go back about 100 years. In fact those Viewmasters we played with as kids were a kind of virtual reality.

And not surprisingly the latest View Masters are being built and marketed as affordable consumer VR experiences. It's all about being able to see and experience things that aren’t there in our immediate physical world and using technology to help us do so.

On this episode of Now & Next we’ll hear from Alexis Macklin, an analyst with a San Francisco-based firm called Greenlight Insights that specializes in market intelligence on the VR and AR industries.

Alexis will explain where we’re at in the tech and content development cycles for VR & AR and how the use cases and consumer adoption for these enhanced experiences vary around the world, particularly for location-based entertainment.

Episode highlights

• Are VR & AR close to significant consumer adoption? (2:43)
• What are the emerging opportunities for content producers and creators (6:16)
• What are the key differences between Asian and Western VR/AR markets (10:08)
• What are the sought-after skillsets in the VR/AR sector (16:00)


Full interview transcript

LK: Leora Kornfeld
AM: Alexis Macklin

LK:

So VR and AR and all of these things that we’re talking about, they’re both new, and then they’re also really kind of not new. Many of these technologies have been around for not only years but decades. So, to quote the kids that are always in thebackseat of the car, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

AM:

I would say we’re still years away from any sort of significant consumer adoption, that’s for sure. On the VR side, we’re a little closer than maybe those smart glasses for AR especially once VR in this next year becomes more accessible with standalone HDs. So we’re kind of just waiting for the significant content library and platform availability to come about for VR. We’ll see that come more into play when there’s honestly more things to do in VR. Right now, it’s kind of more gaming and video watching right now, but as they go around, more social platforms will come about more productivity tools and, honestly, more variety of content. Right now it’s kind of in for those first person shooters, but we’re seeing more and more different types of games and video content come about. So we should expect to see a more positivity I would say within the next couple years.

For AR and smart glasses, we definitely have already hit mass adoption for mobile AR since that’s already a pre existing technology. So everyone has mobile AR, the problem is no one really knows that they do have AR which is good and bad. It’s a natural technology feature set that consumers don’t realize that it’s a whole new type of platform and technology, which is really great. It’s very natural, it’s a very natural next step for the camera, the smartphone. But when we come into smart glasses, there is no perfect device yet. 

We’re definitely far away from seeing that consumer smart glass that is just going to take the world by storm. A big part of this is form factor, definitely second is cost. When we look at something like Magic Leap, it’s thousands. Look at HoloLens, it’s thousands. So it’s something that’s a bit out of reach for consumers to add in, especially since they don’t know why they would use it.

But we should expect to see 5, 10 years from now a more serious product launch for consumers in terms of consumer adoption, consumers understanding why they would need an AR headset, and better form factors.

LK: 

Now you mentioned, you said everybody has mobile AR. Do I have mobile AR on my phone, ‘cause if I do I don’t know.

AM: 

Exactly. So Snapchat is AR. When you’re putting those filters on your face, or putting that dancing hotdog in the environment, that’s AR.

LK: 

I refuse to put the cat ears and whiskers on, but but if I did, I would be doing mobile AR?

AM: 

Yes exactly. Or even Pokemon Go, I mean, it’s basic AR in terms of what we’ll eventually get to, we’ll be able to use it seamlessly and consistently across platforms eventually. But for right now, it’s a bit more of a gimmick, it’s a bit more of a—you know—a social aspect to it. So even the Google products now have AR 3D assets that you can take pictures of. 

Probably the most famous was when the Last Jedi was coming out for Star Wars. They had different 3D figures for Star Wars that you could pull up in your camera phone and take videos and pictures with. So it’s definitely more social right now. There’s some gaming, definitely a big ploy with marketing right now, very interesting marketing feature set right now that sets those mobile marketing experiences apart from the traditional ones. But we’ll see this come more into play as more feature sets come out. Hum, especially with Apple and Google, this year, they both released different improvements on their software to enable multiplayer.

So we should in the next year to two years see a lot of multiplayer AR games that,  you know, you’re playing maybe something like table tennis in AR with your phone with a friend. It’s something of a shared experience which will definitely put mobile AR on the next level. So we’ll start to see more consumer awareness with things like that, those will definitely gain, gain some popularity depending on the use case.

LK: 

But, didn’t it feel... I mean, I had to look this up, I wasn’t sure if the Pokemon Go phenomenon happened last year or two summers ago, it was two summers ago, in 2016. And didn’t it feel like, “Okay everything is changing now” because it did get mass adoption. Didn’t everything change at that Pokemon Go moment?

AM: 

I would say yes and no. So, it was a very exciting time because this huge game that enabled AR became massively virally popular, and that was really great. But I would say it also didn’t change that much as well for the AR community since consumers didn’t know that that was AR really, and they didn’t really get the point of it. It actually made it a bit harder to play in AR mode than regular well I guess it’s more of a 3D but the traditional smartphone way to play, to play it. So there was definitely a positive and a negative. It became this rush of developers thinking that “Wow Pokemon Go really worked, let me kind of re-skin that. Let me do something like that and I’ll be the next big hit”, but it just doesn’t work that way.

Something that’s very important with those VR and AR that is something to keep in mind is why Pokemon Go became so successful is because it’s this very interesting place of wish fulfillment, which is the best form of VR and AR of—you know—always wanting to travel to the depths of the ocean, but never actually wanting to go there, well now you can experience that in VR.

LK: 

Without getting wet. You can be a cat [Alexis: Exactly...] without being a cat. You can catch a Pokemon without having a Pokemon, yeah I like that. Wish fulfillment... [Alexis: Exactly...] Is that the sort of industry term that’s used for it?

AM: 

I would say it’s more, I’m not sure if it’s used that often to describe it, but it’s definitely, VR and AR is, within the industry definitely seen as this endless possibility, being seen as something that can really do the impossible, which is why for enterprise it’s so promising as well, ’cause you can do things that maybe are dangerous, hum, as far as training, like learning to fly a fighter pilot in VR... so you can not fall out of the sky and save some equipment at the same time, right? So there’s definitely this cool and possible scenario and wish fulfillment, and hum, even cost savings for, for enterprise. But that’s kind of what VR and AR, those promises of bringing you into a new reality.

Of course VR is more about the bringing you to a new world, and AR is about bringing the other world to you almost, bringing that, those 3D assets into the real world and eventually will kind of have a mix between the two where—you know—maybe you’re at work and you decide, “You know, this office space ispretty boring. Let me overlay an AR in my smart glasses, a view of Hawaii out the window so I can pretend I’m someplace else.” So that will become a bit more meld, but that’s even further off in the future. So we’re still pretty far away from that.

LK: 

So, until then, we have to just deal with the screensaver on the laptop that has the picture of Hawaii... I mean, that’s what people are doing now, so that’s a very, I guess, early version of that wish fulfillment that you talk about.

AM: 

Yeah exactly, yeah.

LK: 

Based on your work and what you see, and you’ve just been it, what was the event that you were at, VRS, is that what it was called?

AM: 

Yes, it was the VR Strategy Conference. So, I was in this conference that we held, hold every year in San Francisco to focus primarily on business strategy within VR and AR. So, for companies looking to get into VR and AR and wondering how to be profitable for them or why they should do it, and then those companies who are working in VR and AR how they can make their ventures better. So, a lot of networking, a lot of discussing about what works and what doesn’t and where we’re going.

LK: 

So, I’m, I’m curious to hear, ’cause this is exactly what I’m interested in, are there, are there specific white spaces, areas that are ripe for innovation and experimentation that people aren’t in yet that are, that could be really big opportunities for producers?

AM:

Yeah, that’s a great, great question. I would say for media and entertainment, VR eSports is really coming into its own. It’s still very early days, it’s only been professionally around for about a couple years or so. But, there’s this community that can be built around VR that can’t really be built around for traditional gaming. So this can be more of a sport gaming hybrid, if you will, so this is also active. Of course, there needs to be some developments on that. eSports is very grassroots grown, very community orientated. Hum, so it’s going to take a bit to grow that community before eSports, VR eSports can really take off. But that’s some place that’s pretty emerging within the VR media and entertainment industry. 

One of the, I’m going to call it the worst kept secret right now in VR, is location-based VR. So these are the VR arcades, VR in movie theaters. It’s still an emerging sector, especially for North America, it’s more developed in Asia, especially in China, Japan, Korea, hum, but this is more, if you’ve heard of The VOID...

LK: 

We have that here in Toronto.

AM: 

Yeah, there’s some in Toronto, I know that there’s some in movie theaters, in Canada as well, I think both in Vancouver and Toronto, some of those. But yeah, it’s this whole idea of adding in VR experiences into entertainment, at home entertainment venues. So, whether they’re their own standalone like The VOID or adding in some game experiences as well, 

I think the best example is the Dave &Buster’s, they have this experience where it’s I believe six people in a car, and they’re in a motion simulator with VR headsets, they have VIBE headsets, and they’re doing a Jurassic World experience. And so they’re all in this buggy and they’re exploring the world and some shenanigans begin. 

They deployed this originally at 114 locations at launch, which is probably the biggest deployment of VR installations in the world yet. But it’s been going smoothly for them. The Dave & Buster’s CEO has already talked about expanding the experiences, adding more content, adding to all the locations, it’s been very positive.

But this is completely different as well across the world since—you know—entertainment centres in North America are very different from the popular types of out-of-home entertainment venues that are in Asia or even western Europe based off of space alone. Real estate is really important for this factor.

LK: 

What would the differences be between what you see in the Asian markets and in the west?

AM: 

Yeah, I think the big, big one in—I mean wow there’s so many differences, even when you look at different countries. For the US, it’s very much a focus on family entertainment centres, especially with, I think, Dave & Buster’s is probably the most famous example. 

But there’s a lot of those, whether it’s Topgolf or even something like Chuck E. Cheese, a place where families can go together and spend hours doing different activities. That’s not something that’s as widespread or popular in Asia. So, in China, it’s probably a very famous pastime. Those in China and Japan is karaoke. So, a group of friends get together and decide to go out, and they—you know—pay for a room and do karaoke for hours,  they’re trying to do that as well with VR. China has a, a very widespread amount of VR arcade locations. So locations that are specifically focused on VR, they also have the free realm like The VOID. Japan has a very, both Japan and Korea have a very interesting culture to where they are kind of molding the two together of the VR arcades and entertainment centres.

So, there’s a couple of different centres that are just VR focused, but they’re huge like a Dave & Buster’s, so you can go try. There’s simulators to where you’re going up in a hot air balloon, there’s definitely the roller coasters, there’s definitely different games as well, there’s a VR Mario Kart. But, all the IP are pretty unique, so all the different games are very unique to the culture in Korea and Japan. They have a lot of original content that isn’t seen anywhere else. But also, when you look at India, they, there is a very interesting growth in theaters of especially with Bollywood films and different things like that, the theater industry is very interesting there. So they’re adding in more, hum, places where customers can go see a VR movie in a motion chair. Those are pretty widespread as well in China as well for the motion chairs, something quick.

So, maybe instead of a theater room where it’s a traditional theater setting with a digital projector, they have motion chairs in this room, and customers can come in and put on the headsets, so you can go with your friends into this room at the same time, with, maybe, as 50 other people and see a VR movie. So it’s definitely very different in different areas, which is really cool to see, it’s really coming into its own, it’s very unique, there’s a lot of opportunity there across the whole world, which is really exciting.

LK: 

And with uniqueness, with a heterogeneity in markets instead of just a VR theater is one thing, that’s why I’m interested to ask you about, we had a big announcement here, I’m sure you’ve heard about it, that Cineplex, in partnership with the Seattle company VR Studios, they’re going to be doing several [Alexis: Yes...] dozen VR installation arcades over the next couple of years. So what do you see is the significance of that?

AM: 

Yeah, actually that’s a great question. So, VR Studios actually was a major partner in the deal with Dave & Buster’s.So they were building the basically the whole hardware of the experience, building it together. I would say something that’s very significant about that is right now at movie theaters for VR especially in North America, it’s something where it’s a, a bit more a dollar per minute and they’re longer experiences. 

So, if you’re a family of four say, and you go and you watch a movie, maybe you’re spending 40 to 50 dollars depending on when you go and the type of movie you’re seeing. And then when you get out or come before, they’re trying to sell you—you know—30 more dollars per person to, to play a VR game. So that’s something that adds up very quickly, especially when you think about it that way. That, you know, you could spend upwards of, hum, around 200 dollars just for the whole family to go play VR.

LK: 

You haven’t even talked about popcorn yet either.

AM: 

Yeah exactly... So the VR Studios is a bit more of a their solutions are a bit more of a bite-sized way to do VR, so get a very quality experience at a shorter amount of time to where it’s an incremental pay. Hum, so for example, the Dave &Buster’s experience is 5 dollars for 5 minutes. Of course, it’s not saying 5 dollars for 5 minutes, it just says “5 dollars to go to Jurassic World and—you know—be transported there through this VR experience”. But, you know, that brings the cost down tremendously for a family to where they’re still doing a quality VR experience, they’re getting that opportunity without having a huge hurt on their wallet so that—you know—20 more dollars for the whole family instead of, you know, it could be 120 if everyone does the 30-dollar experience. 

So, it’s definitely something that’s more manageable, and, very profitable for a theater since that’s something that doesn’t take up as much room as setting up a whole VR experience, you can get people through pretty quickly, hum, and it’s fun to see, it’s fun to watch people do it. So it’s something that almost feeds into itself.

LK: 

And, from the content producer’s or the technology producer’s point of view, and I’m sure this is something that came up at the conference you were at, because you, they were dealing with the enterprise level, how different are the skills required for this area than for digital media in general? And I ask this because I was on a block chain panel recently, and there was a panelist from a blockchain company and he said, “You know, when we advertise for developers, we don’t advertise for block chain developers ’cause it’s too new, we advertise for really good software developers, and then we train them.” So is it similar[Alexis: Yeah...] for VR and AR?

AM:

You know, it’s interesting. VR and AR very much borrows from a lot of different expertise. So, if you look at some of the best studios right now that are doing VR and AR, they actually have a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds. So if you’re doing something that’s more free realm, more of a location-based experience, you may need theater, people with theater backgrounds to be able to think about setting up the set, then building props and thinking about how people would go about the space. 

You definitely need gaming background for those game engines, doing that quickly, but you would also need the cinematography background as well to know how to best bring up a shot, especially for those VR movies, but it’s definitely this different area where you need a lot of different skill sets. So when we look to the future, we’ll definitely need developers that are kind of more of a mix between the cinema Hollywood background and the gaming background, and even visual effects as well. 

So, you know, when you think about all the big visual effects hubs in the world, from Vancouver to Atlanta to LA, you’ll definitely see... or even London as well, you’ll see a really great meld and need for that in VR since a lot of it is really a visual effects type of experience. So there’s a lot of need for a lot of different people. There’s going to be a lot of opportunity with it, within it, but yeah it’s definitely coming together. You’ll see a lot of different people for a specific company, from technology to cinema to gaming to theater, hum, even art background as well, humso you have a very diverse group working on one project.

LK: 

It’s interesting, it’s like, it’s from STEM to STEAM right, what is it science tech engineering and math but then you’ve got to add the A in there for art. Very important.

AM: 

Yeah, exactly, very important.

LK: 

Alexis Macklin of Greenlight Insights, thank you very much.

AM: 

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, it was a pleasure talking to you today.

Note: This material originally appeared at Trends