We’ve already explored how the ease of internet access to music has provided young people with a certain hackers mentality that disposes them to circumvent access rules like cheat-codes used in video games. Legal solutions like Mixcloud, Spotify and an upcoming iTunes cloud streaming service were necessary as soon as young people became ‘pirates’. Yet with an industry as production heavy and reliant on young people as film and cinema, the adaptation period to instantaneous access is not so clear-cut.
Late last year Voddler, a Swedish web-startup, drew comparisons to Spotify as it signed deals with major film studios Paramount and Disney in order to stream their films online to its users for free. Voddler vice-president, Zoran Slavic, brought up the impressive stat that, in Sweden, his application is “adding about 3,000 users a day”. This figure evidences the startup’s belief that file sharing and internet piracy have fundamentally changed youth habits to the point that many expect to be able to see movies online without paying for them. However, while a belief that youth behaviour is both being changed and changing societal behaviour is forward thinking compared to the rest of the industry. It appears from early reviews that due to its slow user interface Voddler is not yet as essential for film as Spotify is for music.
Despite this initial poorly reviewed user experience the significant shift that the Voddler example brings, is the fact that major film studios like Warner Bros. have now begun to realize they will have to compromise to youth behaviour more and vilify the new technologies that young people use less . More and more consumer electronics brands producing TVs are realizing that digital distribution must now begin to be incorporated into the TVs. Meanwhile the video game console war is also being waged amongst young film viewers.
Even actors are beginning to realize the shift within their own industry. Rising star Joeseph Gordon-Levitt announced his open-source film production project, hitRECord.org at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Users can upload their own clips, tweak existing clips, add soundtracks, record new voiceovers, etc. Films can be recorded on anything from a professional grade camera to a mobile phone. Gordon-Levitt or RegularJOE as he’s known on the site, hopes to produce a full project that will be released in some sort of money-making format (DVD, VOD, small theatrical run, online etc) where half the money will go back to the users who selected to work on the project while the other half will go back into funding hitRECord.
The theme of money appearing at the end product is no real surprise in with such a production heavy industry as film. At last weekend’s “Cinemarama Futurama: The Future of the Theatrical Experience” panel Jeffery Winters noted how “the conversation will probably go to money, but the answer we all want is what will the future look like?” A detailed summary of the panel can be found here but it can finally begin to be stated that that “the thought that increased ways of watching films at home is cannibalizing the theatre business is wrong”. Young people have lead the way in film streaming at home and it seems as though the industry is realizing that digital will give increased exposure to films creating more interest in them generally, allow distribution costs to drop to zero thus giving everyone entrance to the industry, possibly like hitRECord. One negative factor might be the noise of promotion in the larger budget films getting louder while the independent films struggling to be heard. Perhaps we’ll ultimately have to rely on the wisdom of the crowds to bring forth the best films.
