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Blog, Creativity 101: July 21, 2009 : 4:27 pm

Future of Entertainment

As a member of the media, the unstable environment we’re in right now is both exciting and pretty unnerving. How things will shake out is still to be determined, and the only certain relief I take right now is that I didn’t blow $30K on a film school education which would be irrelevant before graduation.

I found a link to Barrett Garese’s article “Scarcity, Experience, and an Old Seat at a New Table“, via ArtfulWriter.com. A lot of what he talks about are ideas I’ve been working on since I started Stranger Things, but like any good writer, Garese really clarifies the problems and challenges we face in the new media landscape.

The entire article is worth a read, but there are several passages worth more careful attention…

“Piracy is a distribution model”

Garese doesn’t say this outright, but he acknowledges (as should we) that piracy IS a common method of distrubtion today: legal or otherwise, it’s happening. The wise distributor will find ways to work this to his advantage.

“What will become the uniquely ‘online’ media experience?”

As Garese points, out, most online entertainment is really smaller-budgeted film or TV experiences, loaded on the Internet. This is no more appropriate than the filmed stage plays of the 1930s/1940s. For online content to thrive, creators have to lock in on what makes the online experience unique. If I had to put it in a word, I would say interactivity.

Content creators stand to lose less than distributors.

While I would argue some of the finer points of this idea, it has a ring of truth. As long as you can create content people want, there will be room for you in the marketplace somewhere. It’s a matter of finding out how to adapt your voice to the megaphones available. Distributors, especially of hard product like DVD, may find themselves in the cold in ten years.

“Free Google Internet????”

Check out conclusion #6 near the bottom of the post. This caught me completely by surprise. But some research turned up a few older stories (Google offers free Wi-Fi in Mountain View, CA / What’s Google doing with all that Dark Fiber?) so I’m more inclined to believe it.

• • •

Above all, remember that this changing landscape should only worry you if you’re already invested in it: i.e., if you have a show on television, or have a DVD distribution deal, or a three-picture deal with Paramount. If you are still at the bottom, working the angles to find a way in, you couldn’t be in a better position. This changing landscape will favor the fast-moving, industrious creative-types. It will mean hard work, but that’s a small price to pay to see the dawn of a new age.

As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

– Bob Dylan