Live from Digital Hollywood: Paying Attention to Creators
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 by Patrick RossHOLLYWOOD, CA: One thing reporters learn when they're on the job
awhile is that when covering a panel discussion, the best quotes tend not to
come form the formal presentations, but rather from the Q&A at the end. So
it was today at Digital
Hollywood Spring 2008 (which by the way continues to be presented in
concurrent panels to standing-room-only ballrooms). An audience member, after
listening to a discussion of the interaction among creative works producers,
video host services and advertisers, asked what role unions played in that
equation.
The panel at first was silent. Perhaps it was because this town is still a
bit sensitive about the recent writers' strike. Or perhaps it's because these
are folks who work in tech spaces and don't interact with unions much. But Derek
Broes of Paramount Pictures took it on, acknowledging up front that when the
questioner asked about unions, she was also asking about individual
creators.
"We have to pay attention to creators," Broes said. "When people come to me
promoting mashups of our content, I say 'Great, let me bring Steven Spielberg in
for the next meeting and you can tell him how you're going to allow people to
mash up his art and let them make something possibly obscene.' That's like going
up to a Van Gogh and adding orange."
I can't tell you how refreshing it was to hear that. There has been so much
talk here about monetization, CPMs, click-throughs, pre-roll, post-roll, etc., I
think it's easy for people to forget that what we're trying to monetize here is
the result of creative minds, the creative expression of ideas, which is the
definition of copyright. Of course, on the mashup point, we are seeing more and
more every day opportunities being made available by copyright owners for folks
to do what they will with portions of works; Broes said his company offers
"winks" — short clips from major films — that include outtakes of Harrison
Ford as Indiana Jones. Note that some "winks" come from Spielberg works.
Broes was on to something, as he was earlier in the panel when he said that
these business models are "always about content, always about the artist."
Bravo.
What else has emerged today? More talk about how online video viewers don't
want to pay, and they have a low tolerance for ads, but as Lewis Henderson of
the William Morris Agency put it, the ad revenue online is very small compared
with the number of people viewing the streams. There was a lot of talk about not
replicating TV ads but making more personalized ads that take advantage of the
Internet's interactive features. Broes cited a technology where, with three
photos of your face, you could realistically have your face superimposed over an
actors' face. "If I can star in my own commercials, I'm going to watch them," he
said.
Oh, and a confession. Once again I found I was out of touch with the
digirati. In the 1990s I used to take apart CPUs and replace the guts, I was an
avid user of Usenet and FTP, I would routinely edit my config.sys and
autoexec.bat files, and I was an early adopter, buying a TiVo the first month it
came out. But as I've gotten older I've failed to stay cutting edge. In one
panel, moderator Hamet Watt of NextMedium asked how many in the audience watch
full-length TV shows online. The room had about 250 people in it, and half of
them raised their hands. I did not. I have watched exactly one full-length TV
program online, a few years ago. My TiVo allows me to keep up on shows, and I'd
rather lean back on my couch than lean forward on my desk chair.
I know that the attendees at Digital Hollywood do not represent mainstream
America, but I also recognize that there is a demand for these services, even if
I'm not one of those demanding them. I'm glad the makers and distributors of
these works are coordinating with platform providers to ensure these works are
available, affordably and legally.
