September 2007 Archives

It was noteable that a few weeks ago 18 out of the top 20 shows on Australian TV were actually made in Australia.   It seems our love of NCIS, CSI and Law and Order as finally waned, Australian drama was to be seen including 'Sea Patrol' and 'City Homicide'.   

This week in Australia though there is a radical change going on in television programming.   No more dull summers filled with endless cricket and old movies.   No those days are gone - from this week Australian television is really committing to showing shows from the USA within a reasonable timeframe, not 2 years after their U.S. broadcast but in some cases just a few hours.

There has been a gradual shift towards this in recent time, Chanel 10 showed the 'Lost' clone 'Jericho' within a few hours of the US screenings and the new David Duchovney show 'Californication' has been a success.

This week on Wednesday Chanel 7 will show new episodes of 'Prison Break' directly opposite Chanel 9's premiere of new US series 'Life, while Chanel 10 will have the show 'Damages' staring Glenn Close.   This is bringing out the 'big guns' against the ABC's locally made hit show 'Summer Heights High'.

On Thursday Chanel 7 begins screening the newly revived 'Bionic Woman', imediately followed by season two of the hit show 'Heroes'.    Bionic Woman premiered in the US last week to decent ratings.

While many people have noted that the era of 'appointment viewing' is  coming to an end, in the Australian market just getting the shows within a decent time frame may delay this process considerably.

WIRED have a great interview with Director Ridley Scott in which he talks about the new version of his film 'Blade Runner' that will be coming out towards the end of the year in a 5 disc DVD release.    This will be the third version of the film following on from the original release and the 1990's 'Director's Cut' release.

Unlike many directors cut's 'Blade Runner' is a film that is getting continually shorter with each revisit.    Blade Runner is an interesting film to re-watch as the predictions of the future become more reality than fantasy and the topics addressed seem far more relevant today than they were in the early 1980's.

On the WIRED site you can listed to the full interview as well.

There is also an article in the NEW YORK TIMES     

The Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) is going to be in Fremantle in February 2008.    This week we had the first meeting of the Local Management Committee (LMC).   The local organisers include Brian Beaton and Ceilia Tait from Artemis International, Peter Du Cane, Kate Beverley, David Curl, Andrew Olgilvie from Electric Pirctures, Ian Booth and Debra Miller from ScreenWest and Conference Director Joost Den Hartog.

The role of the LMC is to provide feedback on the proposed program, recommned local people who may be able to present and provide expertise on the local region so the conferecne can be as successful as possible.

I went to this conference in Adeliade this year and it was brilliant!   I hope the Perth conference can match the impressive standard that was set.    To read about some of things at this years conference click on the links below.

The New Toolbox for Cross Platform Production
Three Things Every Cross Platform Production Needs
The Great Debate
The Day of the Figurines
It's going to be about the repeats
The Change that has come and the change that has got to come
Bus Networking

Our first meeting was really interesting and the AIDC team are lining up some great international guests, don't ask me who - I'm sworn to secrecy.                

The guiding theme of the conference is going to be 'Storytelling',  noting that Western Australia is home to some of the oldest storytelling traditions in the world.    Many of the sessions will focus on how ever person in the production process contribute to the creation of the story.

The secondary themes are 'The Revolution will be Digitized'  - which will look into different business models and how idepedent factual producers can full exploit their rights revenues.    We are now in the second phase of the digital media revolution, it's no longer about predictions and futurists this is the time of the entrepenuer.

The third theme is 'Mash Up' - a term that originates out of 80's hip hop music, what is a mash up in the documentary world?

and finally 'United Nations' a look into the world of co-productions, international markets and the nuts and bolts of putting one together.

There will also be a AIDC Fringe conference right here at FTI on Saturday February 22nd, especially focussing on the early career part of the industry.

So, start saving your pennies for the registration, it is well worth the investment.   If there is something you would like to get out of this conference or the Fringe Conference, add your thoughts to the comments section.

MEDIA NEWS DAILY has an interesting article relating to the introduction of GPS systems that allow television and targeted advertisements to be played in taxis in New York.   It seems that taxi drivers are not too happy about it because they may be tracked by GPS and their short cut routes will be exposed.

What a great example of technological change having an expected outcome.   

Last week when I was in Sydney the facilitator of our meeting started the session off with a fun activity, he got everyone to reveal how much they had paid for a taxi from the airport to the hotel.   I had paid $23, exactly the correct amount but other people had paid up to $60 for the more sceneic journey.    Now there are the taxi's that need GPS tracking.    






Earlier story: Yesterday Buses, Today Taxis - 7th January 2007

The team behind the useful Squidoo site have just launched something new, SquidWho!

I've found the Squidoo website really useful, if your teaching a class something on computers and want to assemble a whole bunch of links and text and images together it's really easy to use.   

The idea behind Squidoo was it would allow Subject Matter Experts to easily corral a bunch of related links across the web into one place.   So wehter you want to write a killer article, get into filmmaking or knit some socks, there is someone sharing their knowledge.  

It greatest value though is it's usefulness is just putting stuff in a central place.   So in early 2006 when we were doing internal professional development bringing staff up to speed with Web 2.0 developments we put together this.   During the Learnscope Project with the ABC we used this site to share links during a training session, when I spoke at the 'Mind Your Arts' festival about video blogging we used this one.

Now the team have released SquidWho, the idea behind this is that it allow's you to create profiles of individual people, so if you want to know about someone you just type in their name and it searches for a profile.    Unlike Wikipedia, it does not matter how globally  famous you are,  if your famous in your own neighbourhood that's enough.     For example of some good pages check out Seth Godin, or Malcolm Gladwell.   If the person your searching for does not already have a page their supercomputers scour the internet for info on them and helps you to start building a page.

Following on from my post about stop motion films earlier in the week, FTI member Magnus Reid has highlighted this great video.

I've come across a few short films lately that mix a stop motion style with various other media.   Jordan C, Greenhalgh's 'Process Reenacted' makes use of polaroid photos and the award winning short and 'Flanuer' makes use of stickup posters.   Take a look.

If Western Australia specialises in the niche content areas of low budget feature films, children's drama, indigenous production and animation, and aims for long tail global markets, how distinctive do you have to be to actually be in the niche - rather than the suburban mainstream?

What is a Niche?
Earlier this week I was discussing with a colleague the focus, the West Australian Screen Industry has, on developing skills and content in the specific niche areas of children's drama, low budget features, indigenous production and animation.   I think it makes a lot of sense for the local industry to focus it's development into the areas where we have strong skills and a track record.    It also suits the growing business model of taking advantage of The Long Tail and the position of 'taking the local look to a global audience'.  

In our discussion we began talking about what it actually means to be in a 'niche'.   

The Dictionary defines a niche as; a distinct segment of a market.    Distinct content that is clearly distinguishable and different from all the other content.
   
When you think about the music industry it has always had distinctly different market segments; Rock, Pop, Soul, Gospel, Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Hop Hop, Trip Hop, House, Amyl House, Deep House, Hard House, Progressive House, Detroit House, Disco House....

Successful acts generally fit neatly into one genre and often fail when they make radical departures from their established market segment.    Remember when Moby did a rock album 'Animal Rights'?    It's referred to as one of the all time classic failed albums.   Or Pseudo Echo's failed third album when they abandoned being a new romantic pop group and moved into rock and metal, leaving all their fans behind?    Or when 80's boy band New Kids On The Block started getting into Gangsta Rap?   They all failed.  

To be successful, to be marketable, to find an audience, you have to be in a niche, and generally, you have to stay in it.

So what would the visual equivalent be?  

Animation is not a niche.   Animation is a broad category.   A niche in animation could be a production process; cut-out animation, motion capture, puppet animation or stop motion animation.   Maybe it could be a genre, docu-animation, dramatic animation, black comedy themed animation.    Imagine if Perth was known as the world leader in stop motion animation, taking over from Aardman with our innovative production techniques.    Imagine if when people thought of animation in Western Australia they said, 'Nobody can compete with those WA animators and their unique sense of humour'.

Low Budget Features is not necessarily a niche either, but low budget slapstick comedies is, low  budget political satire is and low budget shock comedy is.

If you look at the documentary companies based in Perth, they have all found their successful niche areas.   I like to think of them as 'water', 'animals', 'science' and 'chefs'.

So instead of talking about niches, maybe we should use a different language to drive things forward.    Maybe we should begin talking about how we are distinct and how we can stand out from the crowd.   What if we started asking filmmakers to make things that were radical, challenging, disruptive, controversial, creative, and outrageous?   What if these became our words.

At FTI, in our vocational training programs we make sure we provide a few very important key messages to students the first day.    Things that we believe are the crucial key points for building a career in film and television.

1. Collaborate, work with other people.
2. Get out there are interact with other people, its about the networking.
3. The filmmaking process is not just about making the film, it's about exhibiting and screening too.
4. ...and most importantly don't make anything that is boring.

It's that last point that is a war cry against the mundane, the derivative, the suburban and the beige.    When I was speaking to Multimedia Producer Kate Rothschild recently she recounted that her measure was always the question 'Is it cool?'.    Kate's question is the same as our plea, make something that is distinctive.

So niche's, maybe we should stop skirting about them and dive-in.   Anyone up for a low budget political satire with zombies? - There's got to be a distinct audience for that content.