Gives very PRACTICAL advice: specific numbers, costs, prices, positions, tasks, etc.
Mentions transmedia 3 times.
Quite radical from a filmmaker’s perspective. I specifically mean indies, who always seemed to see themselves as a smaller Hollywood -> Hollywood’s concepts / business models / etc. should also work for them. Which they never did. But now it’s becoming more clear that they don’t and perhaps never will.
Not radical enough from my perspective. It’s a filmmaker sharing his insights from his struggles within the film industry. It’s not a step back to reassess the big picture.

29-36
Define who your film is for (hopefully not for yourself) and how you will reach it.

37
“The new 50/50 is as follows:
50 percent of your time and resources should be devoted to creating the film. 50 percent of your time and resources should be devoted to getting the film out to its audience, aka distribution and marketing.”

45-52
A good “overview of rights, markets and windows”; how they have been and how he reconceptualises them.

53-59
Know what YOU want to achieve and think about how to get there.

61-72
He describes “the bare minimum” of team members you need, and some more recommendable positions if you have the money.

127-131
His “Introduction to Transmedia” is less than 5 (!) pages short.

128
“media consumers don’t consume in one unified pattern anymore.”

129f
Definition “extradiegetic”:
“This material is called “extra-diegetic” and includes all content that is not part of the final released film, especially material that is created but never intended to be part of the final released film. However, as our understanding of film expands, there will not need to be a separate classification between diegetic and extra-diegetic; it will all be part of a seamless whole.”

133-136
Chapter 13: Redefining the Theatrical Experience
His new Definition-theatrical:
“It is time for filmmakers to reclaim the meaning of a theatrical release so that it is inclusive of a multitude of live-screening event scenarios. The theatrical experience needs to be redefined as people watching “films” with other people. Any place. Any time. Any media.”

143
“Unfortunately, due to contract obligations, IFC is currently only set up to do VOD day-and-date with their Festival Direct Program.”

151
“[...] Chris Hyams (the head of B-Side) did the research and found that all films (studio and independent), on average, lose money from theatrical.”

171
“I believe that incorporating aspects of an event into your screenings is the future of independent live event/theatrical releases.” A bit of a nonsensical sentence, but it goes back to stressing experiences.

172-174
“Ways to create a sense of an event:

1. Personal Appearance by the Filmmaker/Cast
2. Personal Appearance by a Celebrity
3. Parties
4. Partner with an Organization
5. Sell Advance Tickets
6. Live Audience Participation Part 1 (?)”

174f
“Transmedia Aspects to Screenings

1. Live Musical Remix
2. Live Film Mixing [Peter Greenaway]
3. Add Live Storytelling Elements to Your Screening [Head Trauma]“

175-177
Other options:

• One-Night Events
• The Film Tour

195
“The alternative theatrical grassroots screening model has shown the way to democratize and return a shared film experience to the control of individuals and groups,. With that newfound power, people will continue to find new ways to exhibit and congregate in order to watch films.”

243
“I think transmedia has tremendous potential for how narrative filmmakers can find new audiences and engage with them. Again, this is not just about marketing, it is about finding and engaging the audience for your film and your oeuvre.”

244
“Audiences don’t consume media as they once did. They have their own preferences, whether it is a movie theater, DVR, their iPhone, Xbox console, etc. Audiences have media and art form preferences. You can’t bend them, you must accommodate them.”

245
“Part of the death of DVDs has been due to people realizing that they didn’t need to watch a film more than once. Transmedia creates a life beyond the one viewing of a film.” -> Not sure about that. Isn’t transmedia even more ephemeral than a traditional movie?

275
“merchandise can be points of entry for films or narrative extensions – so they can be important to a transmedia strategy.”

289
“Television’s core business is repeat viewers.
It is difficult for television to command repeat viewers with individual films. When there was a plethora of fledgling channels such as HBO, Starz, Showtime, AMC, etc., they needed to buy movies to fill their schedules. But as those networks have matured, they have turned to series to bring back repeat viewers. Even indie stalwarts IFC and Sundance are buying fewer films in favor of series programming.”

296
“Ways to monetize your digital rights”:

• “Fees Charged Per Download, Rental, or Viewing”
• “Ad Revenue Share”
• “Subscription Fee”
• “Merchandise Sales”
• “General Promotion/Theatrical Launch”
• “Ad Sales/Banner Ad Sales”
• “Branded Entertainment/Product Placement”
• “Sponsorship”
• “Pay What You Want/Online Tip Jar”

299
“There is an argument I have heard on panels lately: Most filmmakers have a greater problem with anonymity than with piracy. I think this is a false argument.” If nobody wants to pay for it, perhaps nobody wants to see it, so perhaps the film is simply shit or doesn’t have an audience. -> Market it properly!

347
“Dentler observes that if you look at the history of consumer media, you always have different models for different types of publications. Some things are free, some things you pay for. He uses print media as an example, pointing out the difference between the Wall Street Journal and the Free Press.“

They argue that marketing has to be remodelled entirely:

1. Pull not push: Don’t try to push people into doing something, but encourage/strengthen already existing natural pull mechanisms that spread ideas and behaviour.
2. Understanding the tides: Understand what’s going on and go with the flow, don’t try to work against it.
3. Understanding the landscape: Understand who you’re dealing with, who do you want to address?
4. Lighting lots of fires: You can’t do only one thing and expect it to be the right one, do many things and hope one or more will work out.

“When I think about these [story/media] outlets, I think about them in terms of like OK if they have the individual arc and then I have the overall arc in the full story, and it becomes about how I pace it, how I get it to an audience, and how I have them interact with it.”

Definition “story architecture”:
“Story architecture to me is kind of the idea of what effectively is a kind of fluidness of creative, technology in terms of how you actually deliver these things, how do you scale them, how do you get them to these various outlets. How do you make it an experience that somebody is going to be engaged by and want to continue to you know hopefully tell somebody else about. And then, you know, business. The last part is kind of entrepreneurial, you know, how do you actually derive your revenue streams from this. How do you actually look at it in a meaningful way, so it is ?impactful? [5:26 min] for yourself.”

“Once you have the data, and it is the future of everything, you know, if we look and we say search was the future, you know, a number of years back, it really is about discovery, it really is about filtering. And a lot of this discussion throughout the day, throughout this whole thing, you know, this conference, is going to be about how do people discover and find you in a world that is swelling with content.”

“What is interesting is, like, normally we started with like a three act structure in a screenplay. In the case of some of the work we have been developing it starts with the build of a universe, bible, game bible, show bible, where we kind of go through and define the world, define the interactions, define the characters, define the rules, and then from there it becomes this amazing kind of depth of information where you know more about the subject than you ever did before.”

Cuban, M ~ Sports Ratings Records (31.10.2009)

958f
“The Paramount decision forced the majors to divest themselves of their extensive theatre (cinema) chains (see CASSADY, 1958), and television drained off the audiences that had previously flocked to motion-picture theatres. The net effect, according to Christopherson and Storper, was a dramatic rise in competitiveness, uncertainty and instability in the motion-picture industry, followed by the break-up of studio-based mass production, whose peculiar process and product configurations could no longer sustain profitable operations. Instead, the system was succeeded by a new order in which the majors divested themselves of much of their former productive capacity and contractual engagements, and became the nerve centres of vertically-disintegrated production networks.”

959
“This turn of events allowed the majors to cut their overheads, to pursue ever more diversified forms of production, and eventually to flourish in the new high-risk Hollywood”
“the majors continued to play important roles in Hollywood as centres of financing, deal-making and distribution.”
“the sources of the majors’ market power [... at least since the Second World War] have resided mainly in the internal economies of scale that characterize their distribution systems.”
“the globalization of Hollywood’s market range (BALIO, 1996) [and this phenomenon actually] appears – for the moment at least – to be reinforcing the centripetal locational attraction of Southern California for motion-picture production activities of all kinds.”

960
“its technical and organizational configuration was marked by quite high levels of scale and a degree of routinization, but nothing equivalent, say, to the typical Detroit automobile assembly plant churning out identical models by the thousands.”
“two other [main] organizational effects flowed from vertical disintegration in the motion-picture industry. The first was the transformation of the studios themselves into something closer to systems houses, i.e. large-scale (though comparatively downsized) establishments now focusing on the production of many fewer and increasingly grandiose films. [...] The second was the emergence of masses of small independent production companies and service providers”

961
“The Hollywood production system today can hence be described in terms of a prevailing pattern of major and independent film production companies [...], intertwined with ever-widening circles of direct and indirect input suppliers.”

962

962f
“Another way in which the majors proceed is to work with smaller production companies, where the latter assume primary responsibility for organizing overall production tasks. The smaller companies involved in these ventures comprise both the majors’ own subsidiaries and selected independent producers in projects that may range anywhere from a niche-oriented film to a high-budget blockbuster. In these collaborative ventures, the majors work in a range of protocols, though in probably the majority of cases these grant significant control to the majors over production and editing decisions. Typical procedures include financing, production and distribution deals, co-production pacts, joint ventures, split rights agreements, ‘first look’ contracts, and any and all combinations of these arrangements.”

963
“Many independents also unilaterally assemble packages of scripts, actors, directors and other assets that they then present to the studios in the hope of securing a production or distribution agreement, though few are ever successful.”
“although the majors continue to dominate the entire industry, and continue to maintain a significant degree of in-house production capacity, they also rely more and more on smaller subsidiaries and independent production companies in order to spread their risks, to diversify their market offerings, and to sound out emerging market opportunities.”
“independent film production has increased greatly over the last two decades, with the period of most intense growth being the early to mid-1980s when a boom in independent film production occurred, fuelled by the growth of ancillary markets”
“The distribution of films made by independent producers is handled for the most part by independent distribution companies, many of them highly specialized with respect to market niche”

963f
“perhaps the majority [–] of Hollywood independents rarely or never come into contact with a major, and work in an entirely separate sphere of commercial and creative activity.”

964
“the two tiers described above are actually complemented by a more indistinct circle of companies as represented by independents strongly allied to the majors together with the majors’ own subsidiaries.”

965
“These four points all allude to important positive externalities underlying the Hollywood production complex, endowing it with strong competitive advantages in the form of increasing returns to scale and scope and positive agglomeration economies.”
“in spite of the centripetal locational pull of Hollywood, expanding streams of production activities have been moving to distant satellite locations since the 1980s.”
“Without effective distribution, the production system could attain neither the scale nor the scope that help to make it such a formidable source of competitive advantages today.”
“Most of the industry is clustered in a relatively small geographic area centred on Hollywood itself, but also spilling over into other parts of the region.”

966
“the industry not only continued to grow in absolute terms in Los Angeles over the 1980s and 1990s, but maintained its high level of relative geographic concentration as well.”
“Decentralization occurs for two main reasons, one being the search for realistic outdoor film locations (which has always been a feature of the industry’s operations), the other being the search for reduced production costs (which is a more recent phenomenon).”

967
‘Creative runaways’: “directed to Canada, Australia, Britain and Mexico, with Canada receiving 81% of the total.”

968
“In view of this analysis, we can obtain a clearer grasp of just why (relatively standardized) television films are more susceptible to runaway production than feature films.”
“pronouncements of AKSOY and ROBINS, 1992, p. 19, to the effect that: ‘Hollywood is now everywhere . . . production now moves almost at will to find its most ideal conditions, and with it go skills, technicians, and support services’, and of HOZIC, 2001, p. 153, who talks about ‘Hollywood’s exodus into worldwide locations’, are both exaggerated and premature.”
“Hollywood today is a large-scale, many-sided, cultural-production and franchising complex, disgorging an endless variety of products designed for many different market niches. The linchpin of the entire system is the high-concept, mass-appeal blockbuster, that is, a big-budget film with a simple but climactic central narrative, an uplifting finale, a major star presence and possessing many marketable assets”

969
“The distribution system disseminates the industry’s products on wider markets, pumps revenues and information back into Hollywood, and hence is a basic condition of the sustained economic well-being of the central agglomeration”
“Employment in the distribution branch of the business is densely developed in Los Angeles alongside the production activities that it serves.”
“Distribution is the segment of the industry where oligopoly is most in evidence.”
“the marketing and distribution costs of many blockbusters today are equal to or even greater than their actual production costs” (Cones, 1997)
“vertical integration has indeed been on the increase of late.”
“For independent distributors, the average domestic box-office per film is $2.3 million, and for majors it is $46.1 million.”

971
“the pioneering efforts of US firms have more or less naturalized American cinematic idioms on many foreign markets, making Hollywood films highly competitive with purely local products”
“block-booking by US-owned film distributors is prevalent in foreign markets, even though it is illegal in the US.”
“The MPAA is a highly-financed cartel representing the combined voice of the majors, and it has proven itself to be extraordinarily aggressive and successful in shaping trade agendas in audiovisual products, as well as in many other political tasks of concern to the industry.”
“the annual American Film Market in Santa Monica [...] has grown over the last two decades to become the world’s largest motion-picture fair, attended by more than 7,000 people from 70 countries.”
“the majors are just as likely to dominate content supply in the new order as they have done in the old. More accurately, we should say that if, in theory, new electronic means of communications allow small producers to tap readily into global markets, the massive resources of the majors will still in all likelihood enable them to gain a decisive edge in publicity and marketing, and hence in sales.”

972
“in the late 1960s [...] imports grew to the point where they represented fully two-thirds of all the films released in the US”
“Much more research, of course, is needed on particular aspects of Hollywood’s operations, including many questions about new digital technologies, creativity and innovation, local labour markets, the institutional fabric of the industry, agglomeration and decentralization processes, corporate organization, marketing, the dynamics of demand, and so on.”
“[A] steady convergence [...] appears to be occurring between the economic and cultural in contemporary global capitalism”

29f
“Reworking the adage that “all screenplays are also business plans,” John T. Caldwell observes that any screenplay being considered for production

“generates considerable attention and involvement at the earliest story sessions and producers’ meetings by personnel from the firm’s financing, marketing, coproduction, distribution, merchandizing, and new media departments or divisions. Such discussions and analysis seek to ensure that any new film or [television] series will create income-producing properties (reiterations of the original concept) that can be consumed via as many different human sensory channels as possible.” Caldwell, J ~ Production Culture, 2008, 232f

This vast expansion of the original film text suggests that the narratively contained world of the feature film is now the exception, as target audiences are encouraged to extend their consumption into other outlets beyond the initial theatrical screening. To be sure, this process of cross-promotion has existed for some time, whether through fast-food tie-ins or action figures; however, the process of incompleteness suggested by DVDs has helped to reconceptualize film narrative in ways that tie together the fictional world of a film with the economic goals of a studio.”
DVD was an earlier step to / a preparation of audiences for storytelling in an entarch.

57
“Thus, while digital effects provide filmmakers with new tools for telling stories, the true reinvention of cinema is taking place on the margins, often outside of Hollywood, where innovative filmmakers seek new ways to distribute their work.”

64
“[In 2007 each cinema] screen was watched by an average of one hundred people over the course of a single week, typically on weekend evenings.”

78
“less than 15 percent of feature revenues now comes from theatrical box office income” (Caldwell, J ~ Production Culture, 2008, p9).

85
“portable entertainment [iPod/iPhone] may offer new models of attention more associated with distraction and with extending the narrative world of a movie or television show beyond the confines of the larger screens.” The iPhone is not a new outlet for movies, but for extensions of movies. A step towards entarch.

86
“The idea that we’re all going to abandon the multiplex for the supermobile is nothing more than one generation’s fantasy of another.” (Longworth, K ~ Distribution Wars, 2007)

90f
“Blurring the boundaries between promotional and entertainment content, webisodes call for a new language for thinking about the definition of a film text and for thinking about our relationship to this material.”

91f
“digital media have also contributed to the dissolution of a vibrant, unified cinema culture, explaining that “when people prefer to identify themselves as members of ever-smaller cohorts – ethnic, political, demographic, regional, religious – the movies can no longer be the art of the middle.”" Gabler, N ~ The Movie Magic Is Gone, LA Times, 25.02.2007

92
“what might be called the era of “desktop distribution” has actually ushered in new models for the engaged film audiences that watch and discuss films in a variety of public and private contexts, even while providing new avenues for major media conglomerates to reach those same audiences.”

102
“independent filmmakers begin to find new platforms that may place less emphasis on theatrical premieres.”

123
“While crowdsourcing may very well help filmmakers build an audience, it can also shut down possibilities for others, particularly the middlebrow films that may depend upon a gradual, platformed release in order to manage expectations. These shifts have had particularly devastating implications for the major indie studios.”
“Good buzz spreads quickly, bad buzz even faster.” (http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/06/laff-mark-gill.html)

148
“film blogs are perhaps the most significant evidence yet of a vibrant and engaged networked film audience.”

153
“These shorter videos should not be seen as a substitute for longer-form entertainment, whether movies or television, but instead complement, promote, and in many ways depend on the feature films and TV shows they parody.” He’s quoting Miller, Nancy; 2007; Minifesto for a new Age; Wired 15.3.

173
“whatever else digital cinema is doing, it is also quite clearly a means for expanding the sites where cinema can be commodified, for bringing movies to the widest possible audiences.”
“However, the reactions within the entertainment industry to these forms of fan activity cannot be separated from the industrial, social, and historical conditions that shape film exhibition, distribution, production, and consumption. While a number of media companies, including Viacom, have attempted to contain these fan productions, others, such as Fox Atomic, have sought to co-opt them by providing fans with material for creating their own videos.”

174
“the ongoing shift to digital exhibition challenges traditional economic models and exhibition protocols, altering not only the selection of movies available but also our relationship to film as a medium.”

174f
“film is defined not merely as a technological apparatus, but also as Lisa Gitelman reminds us, in terms of the social practices associated with it. Watching a movie in a theater, at home on a DVD player, or on the subway on an iPod enteils far more than the activity of looking at a screen, and in some cases the uses of new technologies, especially portable media players, upset normative definitions of public and private space, requiring people to develop new codes of etiquette to match the new technologies.” check out Gitelman

175
“this anytime, anywhere distribution model also has the effect of reshaping theatrical distribution model based on scarcity, in which there are only a limited number of screens available at any given time.”
“[Nicholas] Rombes observed that with the inclusion of extras on the DVD, audiences were given the perception that movies are infinitely malleable or expandable.” More recently, of course, film texts are expanded even further through additional scenes posted to the web, allowing viewers to broaden their experience of a film well beyond the initial textual boundaries, while also ensuring a seamless mix of entertainment, marketing, and branding. Or course, these supplemental do more than promote specific films; they also promote a specific relationship with the film industry itself, addressing us on DVDs in particular, as connoisseurs, as experts on film culture.”
“these textual materials present an important site for the ongoing definition and “self-theorization” of the production cultures associated with film and television.” see Caldwell

176f
“we are witnessing a vast expansion of DIY and ultra-low-budget film production, due in part to inexpensive production and distribution equipment, leading to a significant transformation of the practices associated with film exhibition. Thus, even though Hollywood blockbusters are breaking box office records, indies face the recognition that many films that had historically played in theaters would now be unlikely to receive theatrical exhibition, except perhaps at a few festival screenings.”

177
“Hollywood studios continue to produce massive blockbusters seen by millions of people, but the sheer volume of movies may have the effect of fragmenting audiences seen while providing individuals with precisely the films they would most enjoy.” He calls this “the loss of a common culture” p177.
“cinema remains defined primarily in terms of theatrical distribution.”

178
“In fact, while studio filmmakers and theater owners continued to criticize day-and-date-releasing, characterizing it in some cases as a threat to the very definition of film, a number of indie filmmakers have recognized it as a viable option for getting their films seen. These models have been successful in helping some low-budget filmmakers find a wider audience, but it remains unclear how these models will be used.”
“blogs in particular at least maintain the imagined experience of the communal experience of watching with a crowd.”

179
“cinema continues to play a vital cultural role, no matter when, where, or how we watch.”

Very good marketing article! Good overview of marketing pervasive games, but applies to all new products. Worth reading again when I’m writing about marketing the entertainment architecture.

219
“It is safe to say that some of the more extreme pervasive games, such as Momentum, can neber be mainstream hits.”
“We propose that the way to mass-market a pervasive game successfully is to stop thinking only about mainstream game launches, such as Halo 3 and World of Warcraft, and instead look more to the launches of brands such as iPod, Starbucks, or Jamie Oliver. Pervasive games are not really new. It is just that the mass market cannot really grasp them. They are where the mp3 player was before the iPod, where coffee shops were before Starbucks, or where cooking shows were before Jamie Oliver – they lack the one prototypical product that defines the whole product category for the mass market.”
“Categorization is fundamental in human life. People categorize things automatically, even without being aware of it. The human ability to group instances into categories is automatic and critical in everyday life.”

220
“Product history shows that it is highly important to consier categorization when creating business moels for nevel products. What use, situations, needs, and solutions already exist that our product is replacing or adding to? These questions are central to marketing strategy decisions, such as what advertising style to use, and where to put the product on sale.”
“Thus, a new product should attempt to catch the eye of the market’s leading consumers. If the first impression regarding a new product comes from an association with a down-market-associated category, then the new product will inherit the associations from that category.”

222
“However, the launch of a truly new product, a rare opportunity, offers some opportunity to shake up perceptions.”

224
“The Majestic case [EA pervasive game that was marketed alongside video games] also demonstrates how important it is to avoid using category essences from a different category (in this case major computer games) if these essences make people perceive the product as something different.”

225f
Pervasive games do not fit into domain of “entertainment”, because they are not the reward after work and chores like film, TV, or a rock concert are. They are with a player all the time. That’s why they need to be marketed as part of a different domain, for example “specialized hobbies and interests” which “can turn into mass-market products if they manage to establish themselves as “designer lifestyle” products.” They can be the next Harley-Davidson or iPod.
All of this applies to the entarch!

226
“Human consumers carry around a primeval feeling of there being a time and a place for everything and unaware participation goes agains that feeling.”
-> ARGs and entarch have to be VERY carful not to disturb that feeling!

228
“This quality of “while doing other things” contrasts the domain of [engrossing] entertainment and its members such as literature and the cinema.”
The domain of “reward” encompasses “entertainment” (a disruptive activity) and “leisure” (non-disruptive). An entertainment product cannot be marketed as a leisure product. But the entarch is doing exactly that! Can the entarch be sold as the matter that glues various forms of entertainment together, but itself if not “entertainment” but “leisure”, a “designer lifestyle product” that channels consumers to “entertainment” products?? If it were a “reward” product, we wouldn’t have this problem, but can you market something as “reward” or is that too abstract?

229
If their concept is sound, “it means that the competitors for the mass-market consumers’ wallet and attention are personal fashion items and visiting “fashion-places” rather than newly released titles for PlayStation 3. It means that in the short term it may be wiser to design a pervasive game for the iPhone than for the PlayStation Portable, even if the former is a technologically inferior platform.”

Summary and comparison with the Long Tail Theory here.

Bernoff, J ~ Why marketers have trouble with full-duplex social technology (20.08.2009)