no shit

“It’s this really fascinating puzzle. If you have about 3 minutes to tell a story, but the story can’t just be 3 minutes long. You’ve got to take it as far as you want: 3, 60, 90 minutes, 120? Of course people like to go on forever. Obviously. So how do you structure something that is both infinite and finite, that is long form, but happens in short pieces?

“What’s a season on the web?”

Pink caught people’s attention, because you can watch only so many dogs on a skateboard and there was no “broadcast” quality entertainment out there.

The Internet had 2 effects: 1. producing films has become cheap, 2. distributing films has become free.

“What the web cries out for is not more stuff but better stuff.”

“Write now, write fast, get it produced, get it out there and people will come to you. Period.”

blip.tv

category: PhD sources
tags: ,

Majors are heavily investing in video games.

Variety

category: PhD sources
tags:

“If a producer has the right film, with the right cast, with the right budget, it’s going to get financed”

“Equity is not going to just write checks. They want structure, diligence and risk mitigation and want to be involved with a group.”

“I think [mezzanine financing] will slow down dramatically, because financing only makes sense if you can leverage your equity, and your ability to leverage your equity has been reduced dramatically at the moment”

“A lot of people who are interested in coming into the business are really looking for opportunities with entities in distress right now, so they’re looking at it as a financial trade rather than getting into the movie business”

Variety

The film industry is moving towards blockbusters and micro-budget. The middle ground, what some call quality film, is disappearing. Specialty divisions of majors have left the field. New players emerge, but the prospects are bad. “Over-production has been an issue for film for some years.”

“A long tail and a giant head do not make for a healthy film industry. Film needs its middle ground.” -> But isn’t perhaps the long tail the solution?

Screen Daily

category: PhD sources
tags:

264

“The distinction between direction of change values and level of magnitude values is necessary to describe dynamic processes.”

269

“Despite the scrutiny of available talent, most signed artists generate losses, while a limited number of extremely popular acts account for the largest portion of the record companies’ revenues and virtually all of their profits.”

273

“with strong differences in profitability among customers, and prices that do not reflect this difference, service providers are vulnerable to opportunistic pickoff, that is, the most famous creative acts could negotiate for better contracts or simply bypass the existing distribution system.”

“according to our theory of newly vulnerable markets three conditions are sufficient to show that a market that has been operating in a steady-state is now open for new competition and for a significant transformation. [...]

  • newly easy to enter – new service providers can begin to compete with existing industry players, due to technological change, regulatory change, or changes in consumer preferences;
  • attractive to attack – as a result of significant differences in profitability among customers, new entrants can target the most profitable accounts, allowing new entrants to be very profitable without necessarily relying on large market share;
  • difficult to defend – organizational constraints may prohibit incumbents responding effectively to new threats.”

 
285

“an economic phenomenon that is becoming increasingly prevalent in the information goods markets, and explains vulnerability of business models: [...] decoupling of value creation and revenue.”

“The decoupling of expensive value creation from revenue creates attractive opportunities to new entrants for picking off the best customers by providing high value at lower cost while exploring novel business models that rely on different revenue streams.”

2

“The decline in value [of most companies within the media industry] has been due primarily to the poor business fundamentals that now plague the industry: flat or declining revenues in most sectors, highly leveraged balance sheets, and difficulties in developing successful digital business models. In addition, values have been hurt by the growing skepticism around the viability of the mega-media strategies pursued during the past decade. With little evidence to date that Media conglomerates are capable of delivering the synergies and strong results promised.”
“The Media industry is beginning to question the importance of scale.”
“The search for inter-segment synergies has been mostly abandoned for now.”
“companies are refocusing attention on optimizing the core operations of individual business units with the objective of generating growth through both traditional and new distribution channels.”

3

“This will make it incumbent on Media companies to present the market with a clear vision for the future.”
“The downturn in profitability has already required Media companies to take aggressive steps to reduce costs, eliminate redundancies, and streamline operations.”
“Some argue that instead of synergies, consolidation has led mostly to conflicting operating strategies, while highlighting cultural differences among various Media businesses.”
“The average return on invested capital over the last five years of the four major Media companies was less than 4 percent annually, far below the 13 percent average return on capital for all large U.S. companies in the same period.”

4

“current trend toward deregulation of the culture industries in many countries”
“The market has shown that it will reward performance and innovation.”

Being featured on YouTube does not guarantee success, but opens doors, gives connections to “film industry players” and gets the word out there, which is vital for a web series.

PINK The Series Blog

“Outside of Korea […] film funds have had a few false starts across the rest of Asia.”

“Although Asia is extremely prolific, there is still a lack of emphasis on development, which leads to the film funds’ biggest problem. Although they aim to facilitate slate financing, slates have been in short supply.”

“”It’s important the people involved are strong in distribution because it’s no longer good enough to make a good film – it’s all about the opening weekend,” says Shi.” (Shi is Japanese?)

“…the booming South Asian film industry is also shifting its focus towards slate financing and long-term strategic thinking.”

Screen Daily