“The number one threat to a filmmaker nowadays is not piracy, it’s obscurity.” (Matt Hanson at Power To The Pixel 2007, re-quoting from Tim O’Reilly).

I want to end the year by going a little retro, so in a kind of year-end look-back-as-a-means-to-moving-forward, I’m posting these three videos from Power To The Pixel ‘07.

I went to three festivals in November this year: Power To The Pixel ‘08, Sheffield Doc Fest and CPH Dox. At all but Power To The Pixel, filmmakers were frequently asking me why the issues of self-distribution and audience-building were so important, and how to jump in and get an overview of who’s doing what, what’s going on… and why.

I think these videos are a really great introduction.

These presentations made a huge impact on me at the time. Although I’d been following the self-distribution conversation for a while, it wasn’t until I heard the Head Trauma and FEM case studies that everything really seemed to gel for me. It was then that I knew where I wanted to go, could see the way forward and had a notion of what needed to be done. Not only that, I was exhilarated at the prospect. I felt as much creative potential in the possibility of gathering an audience around my film as I did in the filmmaking process itself - and as well, the level of need for doing it also finally became clear.

TWO OF THE HIGHEST RISKS OF OBSCURITY FOR A FILM ARE:

a) Not understanding how big the risk of obscurity is and

b) Not understanding that, ultimately, only the filmmaker can save their film from obscurity.

(- Either, at least, by understanding the dynamics of the situation (understanding the risk!) and figuring out how to facilitate/oversee a scenario where others can help match your film to it’s potential audience for you, or by doing it yourself.)

These videos are good because they highlight this very clearly and speak specifically to the real threat obscurity poses. Better though, they offer inspiring examples as to how these obstacles were overcome, what kind of initiative and attitude it took, and how much fun can be had in the process.

LANCE’S HEAD TRAUMA CASE STUDY

Over and above anything specific Lance says, it’s his headspace and playfulness with every level of the process that are the most informative.

ARIN AND SUSAN’S FOUR EYED MONSTERS CASE STUDY

Arin makes the point that in today’s climate, learning how to build and connect with an audience should really be thought of as no different from learning how to shoot and use a camera.

SELF-DISTRIBUTION PANEL

This panel is great because it’s really valuable to hear the filmmakers dialogue about their process and the issues they’re mulling over. I especially like it when Jeremy Nathan says:

“I think the only solution is self-distribution - through models that we’ve just heard this afternoon - because those are the models that I think are delivering dollars into people’s pockets - even if it’s small money, it’s still money coming back. Because otherwise it’s a fiction - films don’t get seen and you don’t get paid, so why bother? It’s too painful a process.”

- and when Matt Hanson speculates about ducking out of the money-and-audience-at-the-end syndrome into a new system altogether.

GOING BACK TO BASICS

So whilst these videos are more general and don’t explicitly relate to audience, it’s good to look at the big picture. The thing to take away is that the audience is there for us to connect with, and that it’s neither up to others to give us permission to do that, nor is it solely upon others that we can relinquish the task.

It seeks to enable artists to compete with corporations in how they can accumulate and make sense of user-data and also use that data to further grow a fanbase.

You Bloom also provides e-commerce tools that enable, amongst other things, a fan who likes a track to be able to buy it there and then - without having to leave your member page and go to an outside domain.

I spoke with You Bloom’s founder, Phil Harrington. In our interview he talks about how the You Bloom platform facilitates ways of getting fans directly invested in artists’ marketing and promotion, and how the goal of the site is to crack that proverbial nut of enabling content-creators to make money from the fanbases they’ve built - whether those fanbases be big or small…

Currently in beta, it’ll be rolled out in stages between now and fall next year. In it’s current form, the You Bloom team are concentrating on perfecting both the usefulness and usability of the site from an artists point-of-view. Next year, they’ll be shifting that focus to the fans themselves.

Whilst initially a music-centered environment, the roll-out will grow to adapt its features for filmmakers and other forms of content too.

Click here to hear the interview with Phil  >>>>

• Unique visitors: 6,193,776
• Number of mixes: 2,252
• Number of votes: 461,090
• Number of track listens: 1,745,304

These numbers roughly translate as:

• 0.04% of individuals entered their own remixes (4 in every 10,000 people)
• 7.4% voted on their favorites tracks (740 people in 10,000) and
• 28.2% (2820 in 10,000) listened to those tracks.

Moreover, about 35% did something. 65% did nothing other than check out the site. And yet Radiohead happily described these stats as a huge success for their competition.

SO WHAT CONSTITUTES SUCCESS?

Similar to Anderson’s post, when you’re dealing with audience numbers at the Radiohead level, of course this really is a raging success. Especially considering that presumably the chief purpose of their competition was to bring attention to their single outside of the context of their already previously promoted album ‘In Rainbows’ (and also to do the whole thing directly, not through a record company).

Because of this, it’s parameters of success aren’t strictly in how many people actually participated, but in having enough people participate to create a platform for wider attention for the single. It’s not the measly 0.04% who entered remixes (and 0.04% isn’t so measly when it’s 2,252 mixes), or even the 28% who listened to the song, the success is in the 6 million people who engaged with the song in any way at all - with the competition as the excuse to do so - and that enough people interacted with the site in some way to generate an audience that grows exponentially as a result.

But if you apply these same numbers to mere mortals - independent content creators who might be lucky to get 10,000 visitors to their site - 4 people participating in a remix competition just isn’t gonna cut it.

SO HOW CAN YOU USE THESE STATS TO SERVE YOU IF YOU’RE NOT RADIOHEAD?

Well, that’s what I’ve been thinking about…

Probably all you can do is be savvy. Be aware of the numbers and buffer yourself and your project with them in mind. Be sharper in general about what helps any project of this kind be successful. Different elements likely come into play, and understanding the most relevant and necessary ones for you is important. Covering as many bases as possible might also be a good idea.

• Do you focus on cutting down the barriers to entry - making it as easy, simple and tempting as possible for people to participate?

• Do you focus on widening your net as much as possible - being fastidious about letting as wide as possible a range of potentially interested users know about what you’re doing?

• Do you focus on establishing a solid relationship with your core audiences - creating loyalty and building trust, and hoping that that passes off into something where the audience itself disseminates what you’re doing for you?

• Do you create interactive entities that still work, are still engaging, with these statistics in mind - works that only need a low percentage of users to actually interact in order to be successful?

• Do you create timelines for your projects that allow usership to build and grow - time for word to spread and for people to bond with the concept of you and what you’re doing?

• Do you compensate for your humble status by creating interactive elements that have such a high capacity for spreadability built into the infrastructure of how users interact that your audience, just by interacting, gives you access to a much wider net of people?

• Do you use real ingenuity to gain attention and momentum out of your innovating - using the built-in audience that innovation itself has to access a much wider pool?

Obviously, the answer must be yes to any and all of these - dependent on the nature of what you’re doing.

• Mostly though, it must be about being aware of what constitutes success for your project. Knowing why you’re doing it and what you hope to achieve. Keeping it realistic and keeping the hooks that will really engage your audience sharp. Good content is often it’s own marketing tool - but relying on that is another thing altogether.

THIS ISN’T PARTICULAR TO INDEPENDENT CONTENT CREATORS THOUGH

All of these are things Radiohead or anyone else would have to do in order to have a successful project - except smaller fish have a need to do them even better if they’re to keep their heads above water (okay, bad analogy).

AND NOR ARE THEY PARTICULAR TO ISSUES OF PARTICIPANT/PASSIVE USER RATIOS

They’re integral to connecting with an audience/community/users at all…

—–

Please leave in the comments section any of your own insights as to how to translate these kind of stats into useful guidelines/suggestions for independent interactive content creators - or add your own experiences with participant/passive user ratios so we can see how they mirrored the Radiohead percentages, if at all….

I asked M dot Strange the same three questions I asked Arin Crumley about his relationship with his audience:

• How do you see your relationship with your audience?
• How do you integrate your audience into your lifestyle?
• How do you compartmentalize your audience into the big picture of what you’re doing?

It’s a pretty short interview but M dot touches on interesting ideas about being amongst his audience rather than separated from them. He uses the awareness this gives him to inform how he can best crowdsource for his films and use his audience community as a barometer for keeping him on track….

Listen here for the full M dot Strange interview >>>>>>

As I said previously, I’ll be asking these questions to people I meet along the way. Soon to come, Jamie King’s answers to these same three questions along with other stuff from CPH Dox, Copenhagen…

I’m really excited to be heading to Copenhagen tomorrow in time for the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival’s forum on creative distribution for creative docs.

I’ll be there asking the curators/fest directors/sales agents/distributors - whoever - how they see themselves fitting into the big picture in this new paradigm. I’m curious to see if and how they’re rethinking their relationships with audience and to listen to what ideas they’re bringing with them to the forum. I’m also looking forward to hearing what the filmmakers themselves have to say - as I’ll be taking in the proceedings with my own film in mind…

Read below for the full blurb - Lance is also speaking there as part of the event.

THE DOX:FORUM, 12-14 NOVEMBER 2008

Launched successfully in 2007, the DOX:FORUM is an exclusive 3 day market, running in conjunction with CPH:DOX.
The Forum presents a tightly packed program of work-in-progress presentations, pre-arranged one-on-one meetings, matchmaking events, distribution platform pitches and a line-up of seminars.

The DOX:FORUM has been launched to explore other distribution possibilities for documentary film than TV and focuses on theatrical as well as alternative distribution venues as museums, art galleries and online platforms.
Thus, the Forum positions itself as a new international meeting place for film professionals focusing on high quality, artistic and visually strong documentary films.

With a participant list counting major international distributors, sales agents, curators, festival directors, programmers from alternative and art venues and representatives from new online marking platforms, the Forum offers an excellent opportunity for filmmakers to introduce upcoming documentaries to international decision makers and to enhance distribution possibilities for their films. And with its exclusive selection of new, upcoming films, reflecting CPH:DOX overall interest in strong cinematic documentary film making, invited content seekers are given a priority chance for discovering the next big title on the international market before it hits the big winter and early spring venues.

Interestingly, he interpreted the question in a broader way - how do you compartmentalize your life, using the tools now at your disposal in this new culture of communication?

Arin sees categorization as a way of navigating our new social space more efficiently - because a new social environment necessitates new social rules. - Not the internet as a separate space but as an extension of every other aspect of our lives and world.

Because of this, in the last part of our interview Arin talks about the ‘mashing up’ of personal and private life, and compartmentalization as a means to filtering out noise.

Continuing the theme so far, he talks about embracing what is now at our fingertips and “Being willing to be an interacting human being in this new era” and how that is “going to make it a little easier for the compartmentalizing to happen a little more automatically.”

Click here for Arin’s full answer to question 3 >>>>>>

Click here to hear Arin’s answers to questions one and two.

- Part of Arin’s answer to my second question: ‘How do you integrate your audience into your lifestyle?’.

In his full answer, Arin explores what it means to share yourself and your life online.  He sees ‘audience’ as really a network of peers - and the term ‘audience’ itself as just another word for human interaction.

This kind of perspective informs how Arin relates to and with his audience and how he approaches the internet as really just an extension of the physical world.

What I find most interesting about that concept, if you take it on board, is the way it at once makes life both a constant performance and a never-performance. - It seems in that sense that a film is just a moment - and that ones web presence for the film is it’s natural tendency to have an existence beyond it’s otherwise highly constructed borders.

I can see how the ideas Arin expresses here inform the process of a person whose work is very much about his life - and whose audience relationship is built upon that foundation. I think Arin’s a good case study in terms of audience intimacy.

I once heard an excellent tip that I’m reminded of here: - that your online audience will usually respond to you in the same manner that you communicate with them. It seems there are many ways to relate with your audience and that it’s usually good to be conscious of where you’re positioning yourself in relation to them - and how that actually defines the kind of relationship you’re going to have.

Listen HERE to Arin’s full answer to question 2…… >>>

Arin is currently working on As The Dust Settles. Click here for his bio on the Power to the Pixel website.

• How do you see your relationship with your audience?
• How do you integrate your audience into your lifestyle?
• How do you compartmentalize your audience community into the big picture of what you’re doing?

I was curious to see how they were going to interpret them.

Arin’s answers turned into a 90 minute thought-trail (I’d like to call it a thought-experiment but I guess strictly speaking I can’t).

In his first answer, he muses about what is ‘audience’, what is ‘privacy’ and what is ‘on’ and ‘off’ the web? He also touches on something else I’ve been wondering about - how you go from ‘herd mentality’ to ‘hive mind’?

Because it was such a long conversation, I’m posting it in three parts.

Click here to listen to Arin’s answer to question one.

…I’m hoping to be asking others these questions along the way too.

Read HERE for Arin’s bio.

On the Power to the Pixel site, it says this about M dot Strange:

“When M dot Strange touched down in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007 for the world premiere of his first animated feature, We Are the Strange, thousands of Internet-obsessed teens and twentysomethings already knew more about the film than any buyer at the festival. For months M dot had been leaking footage and behind-the-scenes featurettes of the film to YouTube, and once he was accepted to Sundance he put up the trailer. It got 500,000 views in four days. Not bad for a guy who made a movie in his bedroom. With a love for 8-bit video games and stop-motion animation, the San Jose–based M dot has been honing his bizarre brand of stories since the late ’90s. “I’ve never taken a film class or an art class ever,” he says. “I learned everything through the Internet and reading books — the Internet was my film school.” M dot is currently working on his next animated feature film - a 3d Samurai film entitled Heart String Marionette due for completion January 2010.”

Listen HERE to M dot talk a little about branding - how he approaches it, how he uses it to let his audience self-select, and how, sometimes, it can be really good to alienate a few people along the way…

Power to the Pixel Hits London Again Tomorrow…

“Starting at 10am GMT on Wednesday, 22nd October, we’ll begin webcasting live to audiences worldwide. You can watch things unfold at http://powertothepixel.com/webcast or at http://www.screendaily.com .”

I’ll be covering the forum and reporting back…