I’ve been contemplating the evolution of the documentary this summer and I was delighted to see that The MediaGuardian’s recent Sheffield Doc/Fest 2011 coverage includes ten articles providing a refreshing perspective on how documentary makers are finding new ways to reach their audience. These articles provide a view into a crystal ball in which we can begin to see a vision of the future. Here are links to the articles, worthwhile reading and a good starting point for further reflection and discussion.

Social media influences documentary-makers
Social media have had a truly revolutionary effect, enabling film-makers and citizens to disseminate their own stories

Adam Curtis: happy to be different
The maker of classic documentary series such as The Trap and The Power Of Nightmares believes he is still learning his trade

New technology opens up documentary-making
Recording devices are always evolving – from 16mm cameras to iPad apps – offering film-makers the chance to innovate

Jay Hunt: Social media promotes a better viewer experience
Using multiplatform and social media is an incredibly important part of what we’re doing at Channel 4

Can you make a film and a profit?
Making money from documentaries is no easy task, but there are some business models that are generating revenues online

How the internet is galvanising support for social justice documentaries
Films that form part of a campaign for social justice are regularly appearing online – greatly increasing their reach and impact

Tools of attraction: creating multimedia content for games and TV shows
Audiences now expect stories to be told in new ways across different platforms, but commissioners often fail to produce compelling ‘transmedia’ content

The impact of Twitter on TV shows
For producers, posts on Facebook and Twitter are seen as indicators of success – but do they influence ratings?

BBC documentary boss wants programmes that do more than entertain
Commissioning editor Charlotte Moore favours quality and craft over feelgood and populist

Steve James hails a ‘golden age of documentary film-making’
Prior to his visit to the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, director says attitudes towards docs have changed

Image credit: Crystal Castles by Frogman (2008).

I spoke with Philip Hodgetts at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas and asked him about his new venture, the Open Television Network which I blogged about several weeks ago.

 Play Video

Music by Colin Owens.

With a keen attention to multiple perspectives, Kirsner presents the view of industry executives who are reluctant to innovate, and contrasts their views with the innovators who have advanced the many technologies like projection, color, sound, non-linear editing, digital projection, internet distribution, etc. that have transformed the industry over a century of change and revived it over and over again for many generations of audiences. Inventing the Movies is a lively book of interest to innovators in any field, as well as people who love movies and want to take a look at the business and technological machinations behind the many screens in their life: cinema, television, home theater, personal computers, portable media devices, and video-enabled phones.

Last week I did an interview with Scott Kirsner about the book, how the project got started, and what he plans to do next. The interview is currently being edited will be posted on this blog sometime before September rolls around.

The book is now available from Amazon.com. The book is also available as an e-book from LuLu. Scott Kirsners blog post on the book is here.

When we started out to do [quarterlife], and people heard it was going to go to NBC, we were sort of damned if we did and damned if we didn’t, because a lot of people said “oh, it’s just a television show in disguise, and these are old television guys, and they are just doing television,” in fact, the difference for me was I went back to my early days, I just recently looked at the pilot of thirtysomething, and I was not so brainwashed in those days in the world of television, and the pilot of thirtysomething is so raw, and so real, it doesn’t look anything like a television show, it’s not lit like a television show, they don’t sound like a television show, and that’s what I went back to, in other words, I didn’t say, “what is the internet, I have to do an internet thing,” I said, “let me let go of the shit that I’ve been doing that I’ve taken on over the years without knowing it,” these voices in my head saying, “oh, will they like this character, you know, will people understand when you say this, will they stick around,” all these kind of things that network executives are scared of I just said, “forget it, I’m just going to do my thing for this, that”s how I did it differently, and low and behold you know what? It ain’t a television show, and it was proven last night it was not a television show (laughter in the room), it’s too specific for a big network, and that’s fine, cause we’re going to find a home for it, that will work for what we do. But that’s the difference, is I went back to my own voice.

It’s ridiculous to call quarterlife a failure, it’s simply a proof point that crossover is not always a good idea, that the audience for broadcast television and internet episodics is different, and twenty-somethings are growing up in a vastly different media world. They are not going to watch broadcast television the way my generation did. And why are we even talking about online shows making the jump to television? As if this was somehow the holy grail? Why look at new media through the lens of old media? As Herskovitz said, quarterlife is not television, it’s something different. It does not belong on prime time, which is about mass audience and lowest common denominator, it belongs on a niche cable station if on broadcast at all. Why do so many broadcast industry people talk about the internet as a new breeding ground for television shows? They sure would like to outsource creative development. But the internet is not a new old thing, it’s a new new thing, and internet entertainment properties should be judged on their own terms as their own thing. The new media revolution will not be broadcast, nor will it be rebroadcast. It will be streamed, downloaded, and shared as part of a community experience as you see happening right now on the quarterlife site. When quarterlife first launched I did an interview with Marshall Herskovitz that you might find interesting.

Personally, I find quarterlife to be one of the more interesting pieces of entertainment to come out in 2007, and part of what I like about it is its rawness, the feeling that it’s a work in progress, something evolving, and that there’s a community around it. It’s in a very different “voice” as Herskovitz said. And that’s part of the appeal for me, and probably not right for mass audience appeal. But in the world of long tail media distribution, it’s about finding a niche, not the mass audience. What is being done with quarterlife may not translate to the model for the future of television, but it’s sure working by many metrics of success. Without spending time watching all of the episodes and spending time observing and/or participating in the community, you can’t really grok what quarterlife is. Innovators in entertainment have created some flops that have made cinema/television/new media history, but at the same time where would we be without the innovative projects that showed us that there are other forms that entertainment can take, and new ways of interacting with an audience? It’s too soon to call for a verdict on the quarterlife experiment and premature to make claims of it’s demise.

OTN lets viewers subscribe to an RSS feed so they can see the titles of new videos in iTunes. When the viewer clicks on a particular item to download it, their OTN account is debited the price of that video. This is done through a technology called KlickTab. Media makers can add buttons on their site that when users click on them it add their RSS feed to iTunes. Before viewers can buy content they will have to obtain an account with OTN (OTN starts new users off with a $5.00 credit as an incentive to try it) and then whenever they click on content in iTunes from an OTN publisher, their account is debited the price of the video. Like PayPal in the early days, people are going to be hesitant to give their credit card number to an unknown entity, but I think that if OTN can collect a critical mass of interesting content, viewers will start to see the value of being part of the network. What OTN needs is a killer hit that everyone will want to download, or some free content that requires opening an account, so viewers can see what’s in it for them.

There are many things I like about the OTN model. They provide small publishers a way to get paid for their media, they are putting it into iTunes, which offers a seamless user experience for getting media to iPods, iPhones, and AppleTV that most people can manage. There are no content gatekeepers (except for clearly inappropriate content like pornography). No DRM. OTN charges a reasonable 15% fee from the money they collect, unlike other services based on old media that want to take much higher percentages. Last time I checked internet transactions were super efficient, so the percentage distributors take should drop precipitously, not stay the same.

Some media makers may be concerned about no DRM, but OTM is perusing a positive model and counting on the goodwill of most viewers out there that want to support media makers doing good stuff. Rather than worry about protecting your media, small publishers should worry about getting their media out there and sold. User convencience should be the priority. Long tail publishing actual benefits from some sharing among viewers, for that spreads the word of mouth. And as Philip Hodgetts of OTN said at last week’s Final Cut Pro Users Group Meeting in Boston, it’s about making it, “easier than piracy and almost as cheap.”

The music industry made a big mistake when they introduced CDs at a price higher that LPs rather than lowering the price. That was the beginning of the end. The video industry was much smarter in the transition from VHS to DVD by lowering the wholesale price of DVDs, and the home video industry took off. Now Apple’s iTunes music store is selling videos for too much money, are they repeating the mistake of the music industry? I think the price of a video should be low enough as to constitute an impulse purchase. Only a small segment of the population is going to pay $1.99 for a TV show. There’s an untapped market out there. The long-tail content publishers that OTN is building their system for will have an open marketplace to sell their goods. Right now they have none. The democratization of production and post production is not enough. You need the democratization of distribution. OTN is trying to take care of that. So far advertising has not earned much for media makers distributing their video online, however, for specialized an niche content, OTN might help media makers make a decent living making videos for specific audiences who are not served by the major studios.

I just posted over at Art Film Talk an interview with Marshall Herskovitz in which he discusses the origins of Quarterlife, the new web-based project he’s producing with Edward Zwick. In the interview we cover the origins of the project, the writers strike, and what’s different about producing for the web compared to traditional film and television.