Author Archives: Michael Korican

About Michael Korican

A long-time media artist, Michael’s filmmaking stretches back to 1978. Michael graduated from York University film school with Special Honours, winning the Famous Players Scholarship in his final year. The Rolling Stone Book of Rock Video called Michael's first feature 'Recorded: Live!' "the first film about rock video". Michael served on the board of L.I.F.T. when he lived in Toronto during the eighties and managed the Bloor Cinema for Tom and Jerry. He has been prolific over his past eight years in Victoria, having made over thirty-five shorts, won numerous awards, produced two works for BravoFACT! and received development funding for 'Begbie’s Ghost' through the CIFVF and BC Film.

Mobile is where it’s going

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Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz asserts that “mobile is the future of technology and of the internet” in his year-end review 16 mobile theses.

A sample:

“We should stop talking about ‘mobile’ internet and ‘desktop’ internet – it’s like talking about ‘colour’ TV, as opposed to black and white TV. We have a mental mode, left over from feature phones, that ‘mobile’ means limited devices that are only used walking around. But actually, smartphones are mostly used when you’re sitting down next to a laptop, not ‘mobile’, and their capabilities make them much more sophisticated as internet platforms than PC. Really, it’s the PC that has the limited, cut-down version of the internet.”

The topics he covers are:

  1. Mobile is the new central ecosystem of tech
  2. Mobile is the internet
  3. Mobile isn’t about small screens and PCs aren’t about keyboards – mobile means an ecosystem and that ecosystem will swallow ‘PCs’
  4. The future of productivity
  5. Microsoft’s capitulation
  6. Apple & Google both won, but it’s complicated
  7. Search and discovery
  8. Apps and the web
  9. Post Netscape, post PageRank, looking for the next run-time
  10. Messaging as a platform, and a way to get customers
  11. The unclear future of Android and the OEM world
  12. Internet of Things
  13. Cars
  14. TV and the living room
  15. Watches
  16. Finally, we are not our users

Regarding search and discovery, Benedict says, “The internet makes it possible to get anything you’ve ever heard of but also makes it impossible to have heard of everything.”

We moved from browsing to search but today how do the iOS and Android platforms affect discoverability? Is there still room for curation? He ends with the age-old question: “How do you get users?”

Regarding the next ‘run-time’ he says,

“Really, we’re looking for a new run-time – a new way, after the web and native apps, to build services. That might be Siri or Now or messaging or maps or notifications or something else again. But the underlying aim is to construct a new search and discovery model – a new way, different to the web or app stores, to get users.”

Hear Benedict in this presentation.

My take: It’s been a dozen years since video first appeared on the Internet. Since then, the mediascape has been in transition. I admit I find it more faceted and confusing than ever. Benedict’s summary illustrates some of the fundamental shifts now taking place.

The Most Technologically Advanced Book Ever Published

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Chuck Salter writes in FastCoDesign about a publishing company that continues to innovate in the personal book field.

First came ‘The Girl Who Lost Her Name’ and ‘The Boy Who Lost His Name’. Now comes ‘The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home’.

“This time, a lost boy or girl navigates his or her way from outer space back home. Spoiler alert: to the reader’s actual home. The wayward space ship swoops into his or her city and arrives in the child’s neighborhood. The image, the book’s big reveal, incorporates the corresponding satellite photos. That degree of personalization required even more algorithms and developers than Lost My Name’s first book, along with help from NASA, Microsoft, satellite makers, and other unlikely children’s book partners.”

The creators are Lost My Name of East London. What a wondrous book and a steal at $30.

My take: I love this concept and the marvellous execution! (The new book does remind me slightly of Arcade Fire‘s Chrome Experiment, The Wilderness Downtown, which may or may not be still working.) Now imagine this in the video realm. I see no reason, with the state of CGI, digital production and online streaming, that my likeness could not be inserted into productions and animated, for my entertainment only. Maybe not in real-time initially and probably not voice. But imagine your own channel on Netflix, starring or co-starring you! That might be fun.

Issues in digitizing history

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Fast Company recently published The Trouble with Digitizing History.

Tina Amirtha claims “The Netherlands spent seven years and $202 million to digitize huge swaths of AV archives that most people will never see.”

She interviews Tom de Smet, head archivist of the Sound and Vision Institute, and Gene DeAnna, acting chief of the recorded sound section at the Library of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

‘”It doesn’t make sense to digitize everything,” de Smet says in his office at Sound and Vision. “You have ask yourself, ‘Who are you doing this for?’” Researchers may be interested in a narrow set of media, while the public may prefer a skim of the archives. “Honestly, only a little bit of the funding should go towards digitization and the rest, towards digital preservation,” says de Smet.’

The problems are many:

  • high costs
  • limited copyright clearances
  • indexing and meta-tagging needs for search retrieval
  • differing audiences: researchers and general public
  • media platform choices: in-house hosting or Youtube

Future considerations include:

  • securing pre-licenses to kick in after 25 years
  • donations of lesser known works by media companies

A major concern is that, over time, systems impose technological barriers to access. For instance, who still has a U-matic deck or even a VHS player?

My take: this is the paradox of the modern information age: whereas paper-based documents can last hundreds of years, digital works may be corrupt within a decade and obsolete within two decades. Is digital a Faustian bargain?

Legacy media companies face dilemmas

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Richard Greenfield from BTIG Research recently asked “Can Netflix Be Stopped? If Not, What Can Legacy Media Do?” at Neuehouse, NYC, on November 23, 2015.

His entertaining half hour overview of the modern mediascape and the dilemmas the TV industry faces is highly insightful.

Well worth watching; here are three takeaways:

  1. The problem is not so much the content but the medium used to distribute it. The TV model, even TV Everywhere, is losing dominance.
  2. In addition, viewers are simply turning away from interruption advertising any way they can.
  3. Viewers are moving their monthly video dollars from Cable TV to Subscription Video on Demand services, like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Now and Showtime.

My take: Richard even predicts an ad-free future in which most if not all content is paid by subscription. See his take on the future for film companies.

Portrait mode video lures advertisers

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Even though a mock Vertical Video Syndrome PSA first appeared in 2012, it seems as if portrait mode video is making a big splash.

According to Snapchat (as quoted in Long Considered an Eyesore, Vertical Video Is Now Being Embraced by Mobile Marketers on Entrepreneur),

“Vertical video ads are nine times more likely to be viewed to completion than their horizontal counterparts.”

There’s even a platform dedicated exclusively to vertical videos. Vervid plans to become the Youtube for “thoughtful content” shot in upright mode on iPhones. They write on Medium:

“We hold our phones vertically 90% of the time. Thanks to Snapchat and now Meerkat and Periscope, this behavior is becoming even more normalized as more and more content is being shot natively in portrait mode. So rather than having to constantly switch between how we naturally hold our phones (vertically) to the way most media has traditionally been formatted (horizontally), users are now able to enjoy content the way they’ve secretly always wanted to — upright, up close and personal.”

My take: even though purists might decry this state of affairs, I think it’s only a natural evolution. Consider that over 50% of Youtube views now come from mobile. Those mobile viewers will gladly watch in portrait orientation, saving themselves the time to rotate their phones horizontally. And though almost all movies are shot using horizontal aspect ratios, Xavier Dolan went 1:1 for Mommy!

The CBC joins with Fullscreen

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“Evolve or die,” says the CBC‘s executive director of multi-platform media sales Mary Kreuck, when it comes to digital strategies.

To that end, on September 23, 2015, the CBC announced a partnership with Fullscreen, one of the largest Youtube multi-channel networks. As an MCN, Fullscreen provides services to its 70,000 individual creators, such as Rooster Teeth, Fine Brothers Entertainment and shane.

The CBC | Fullscreen Creator Network will be a new way for advertisers to connect with millennial audiences. As Mary said,

“What are we offering? Custom content created for your brands, developed with your brand, its use by key influencers, and amplified across multi-media. So the result then is endless possibilities in a safe and proven environment.”

Read their media releases here and here.

My take: the CBC wants to remain relevant to their advertisers and to Canadian millennials. Recognizing that they have little expertise in the mobile video arena (and other online outlets such as Twitter, Snapchat, Vine, Instagram, etc.) they are partnering with Fullscreen and inserting themselves as an ‘agent’ for all of Fullscreen’s Canadian creators. In addition, the CBC might be hoping to “up-level” at least one of the Canadian Youtubers to network television. (Not sure, though, how this fits into Fullscreen’s plans to launch a mobile SVOD service later this year.) I’ve got to admit, I’m a little confused about what’s in this for the Canadian-based creators in Fullscreen’s stable. Maybe more subscribers? The Internet sort of erases distance and borders, so nationality is just not a big factor to them.

The improv branch of the new media tree

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Nick Fortugno, CCO & Co-Founder at Playmatics, and Lance Weiler, Director at Columbia University Digital Storytelling Lab, recently presented at Power to the Pixel, in London, England.

Nick began by reading a manifesto of sorts that concluded with:

“I stand here with the resolve that this is an amazing time to be a storyteller and we collectively hold a unique opportunity to innovate the industry we would like to see.”

They reiterated the necessity of story at the heart of innovation and then led the audience/collaborators in a story/creation of Sherlock Holmes & the Internet of Things.

The session was recorded: the pair present for the first half of the video and then launch into the simulation/group activity at 16:30.

Read about it on Hackpad.

My take: this seems to me to be an elaborate improv game. More of a parlour entertainment than a sit-back experience. I think that’s their point — the definition of media and audience is expanding.

Bread for Canadian Content

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Stream Daily recently posted Funding for Content Creation: Canada.

It lists four funding models:

  1. Direct public funding, such as cultural programs
  2. Indirect public funding, such as tax benefits
  3. Industry funding, such as taxation and redistribution
  4. Private funding, such as sponsorship, crowd-funding and personal loans

The best insight is provided by Andra Sheffer, CEO of the Independent Production Fund and the Cogeco Fund:

“Producers typically would have considered their primary target to be the end broadcaster — in effect, they were business-to-business companies. Now, with the reduction of linear broadcaster participation (which, traditionally, handled the marketing efforts), more emphasis needs to be placed on connecting with the end-audience. This means, producers need to do a better job at identifying who exactly will be consuming their content, and how best to engage with them in that pursuit. That can mean anything from more social media interaction, the ability for fans to influence storylines, or a better understanding of which platforms the intended audience is actually watching.”

My take: well said! To use a sandwich analogy, the old model was open-faced — a slice of pre-production with a generous amount of production on top. Your commissioner paid you before and while you made them this sandwich. The new model is that plus another super-slice of marketing and monefication on top. Note that it takes twice as long to make this sandwich — and you might not have any buyers lined up yet.

57 million channels (and nothin’ on)

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The excellent CMF Trends welcomes Barbara Chazelle of France Télévisions with a guest post titled TV / video: finding content still as challenging as ever.

Referencing Ericsson’s TV and Media 2015 report, she says:

“Half the linear TV viewers questioned confirmed that they “can’t find anything to watch on TV at least once a day.” The figure climbs to 62% for those 35 to 54. Once in front of the screen, 40% viewers still turn to the TV guide, with only 29% of those satisfied with what they find.”

Moreover:

“Those consuming non-linear TV are equally dissatisfied with what they’re finding when it comes to content. Many feel that the current crop of recommendation features is neither intelligent nor personal enough to meet their needs, to surprise or inspire them in their choices.”

The full Ericsson report is worth reading as a global yardstick with which to measure the Canadian experience.

My take: this reminds me of Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice. Does too much choice paralyze you? When it comes to your media, would you prefer curated suggestions, so you can maximize the ‘lean back experience’ after work?

New Media Business Model

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Annelise Larson of Veria recently gave a presentation at the Vancouver International Film Festival Industry conference about Discovering the Biz Model in the Data.

She starts with:

“For me discoverability is a two way street. It’s about the audience discovering you and your work, and it’s also about you discovering your audience. It means you have to know WHO they are, WHERE they are and WHAT they want. This is key for sustainable creative business models, for making your dreams a reality.”

She then illustrates this with four examples, including Angry BIrds and the Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

She concludes with ten lessons:

“1. Start with free. All of these success stories began with giving content away for free, and continue to have “free” as part of their model. Free allows them to grow and engage their audiences and reward their attention and loyalty to get them hooked. It’s part of the “give before you ask” nature of the online economy.
2. Think beyond the project. Instead of building an audience from scratch with each project, think big picture to your body of work. Finding throughlines through the work that can allow you to bring the audience you have discovered, grown and engaged with you from project to project.
3. Think franchise. Corallery of #2. Not a franchise in the Marvel Universe sense, remembering that audiences are more loyal to characters and storyworlds than the people behind them. Create a content/story franchise allows you to carry that auidiene forward and collect and leverage data for a long(er) time.
4. Data=truth. Success comes not just from gathering data but from being open to the truths it has to tell you (even if you don’t like what they are). And yes, I know data can be manipulated. But how about NOT manipulating it and actually trying to understand what it is telling you instead.
5. Listen & respond. Listen to your audience and then take action based on what they (and their data) tells you.
6. The digital space changes quickly. You can never afford to stand still but must keep adapting and following new opportunities.
7. Embrace failure. The digital space is iterative. You can never be “perfect.” Instead experiment, track and use what you learn to improve and get better at what you do. This is especially feasible within the ongoing “big picture”/ franchise model (and another good reason to think this way).
8. The digital economy is a social economy. It’s built on relationships. And at the end of the day, the data is simply an expression of your relationship with your fans. Listening to the data is listening to what they are telling you. And if you respond authentically you will be rewarded.
9. Digital business models starts with discoverability. If the audience can’t find you it doesn’t matter how good your story is.
10. Discoverability starts with audience data. Helping audiences discover your story, starts with discovering who they are, where they are and what they want. The online space gives you the means to do that in the access to data it provides.”

My take: although this has hints of chicken or egg, I really like the perspective. No longer are we filmmakers working on projects, we are media makers working on media experiences. Also, lesson #3 resonates for me — I call this the storyverse.