Seven Lessons from the Future of Content

We’re in This Together Now

David Dylan ThomasSenior Content Strategist,

EPAM@movie_pundit

#FutureOfContent

In 1999, I shot a feature film.

It took 3 years to finish, cost over $10,000 to complete, and only

made it into two film festivals (one of which I had to pay for).

In 2013 I shot a web series.

It took two years, cost me nothing*, and was distributed on two global

platforms.

*My biggest “expense” was a nice laptop for

editing.(Which I probably would have

bought anyway.)

Lesson OneTools are cheap. Time is expensive.

This is an editing bay.

This is a camera and an editing bay.This is a camera.

The means of production are now sunk costs.

Specialization is cheap

I made no money on either project.

In fact I lost quite a bit on the first one.

Time is the last enemy standing.You used to need money to get into the game. Now you need money to devote

real time to it.

So how do we make that happen?

Lesson TwoRedistribution of risk changes everything.

Spoken Reasons has over 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube.

If only 5% of them agreed to give him $1 a month, he’d make over $1 million a year.

“The era of the media barons and gatekeepers will, from a wider perspective, appear to be a weird anomaly, an off-period

in the conversation between artist and audience.”

John Paxton

Collaborative Fact-Checking

Lesson ThreeWe are going to continually redefine “success”.

“If I wanted to maximize dollars, this is not what I’d be doing with

my time.”Joseph Gordon-Levitt on HitRecord

It’s Wall Street’s fault.A generation has learned to not trust money.

What if we could have a creative middle class?

Cost of living now drives the marketplace.

Creation and distribution are easier than ever.

Monetization is still hard.

Lesson FourThe content is the last thing we’ll make our money on.

Other ways to make money.• Teach• Live events

• Concerts• Speaking engagements

• Crowdsourced patronage• Schwag (until 3D printing takes that away from us)

Except when we do make money off it.

A diversity of gatekeepers?The new paradigm may not make it easier to make money, but it might make it

more equitable.

Why things might get better.

• Lower production/distribution costs mean fewer people to satisfy means fewer racists/sexists/homophobes to satisfy.

• Lower production/distribution costs means a greater potential diversity of voices allowed to tell their story.

• That’s the theory, anyway…

The Authenticity of MobileLow Fidelity = The Voice of the People

Lesson FiveContent looks a lot more like Toyota.

We no longer have to produce 22 episodes “just

cause.”Content can grow or shrink (or be funded or marketed to) the size that is

appropriate for the content and the audience.

Look at what’s happened to…

• The album• The television season• The web series• The podcast• The novel• The comic• The blog post

The collapsing of forms.Is there really any difference between a movie, a tv show, and a web series? Does

it matter?

Human-centered Design for ContentWe’re no longer building for the manufacturer.

Freed from arbitrary constraints, we’re finding that we really like short, controlled bursts of entertainment.

Sometimes all at once.

This has implications• Time gets weird

• Time-shifting social viewing• We start to understand things as being part of a greater

whole (including ourselves)• Business models change to value the long tail catalogue and

not the instant, current hit.

There is no new normal for content (shorter, longer, etc.),

there is only what resonates and what does not.

And the bar for how many people it needs to resonate with is often very low (and always tied to how expensive the content was to produce).

It’s all ball bearings these days!

And yet…Certain things remain true. Like, we still want schedules.

Lesson SixWe’re in this together now.

Content as PlatformVine Inception!!!

Advice to content strategists…

Study fan culture

Read Your Henry JenkinsStart with “Convergence Culture” and “Spreadable Media”

There is an explosion of content about content.

While broad-ranging publications have been marginalized, hyper specific content has proliferated.

Tumblr-based recapsWe use culture as the language for talking about culture.

Sherlocked Development

I challenge any company right now to co-create their content strategy with their customers.

Lesson SevenIn the future, many things will stay exactly the same.

What is the 6th highest-grossing film of all time

internationally?

We’re a big country, we want everything.

The future of big companies will be the same as it’s always been

— hedging their bets.

A few parting notes…

Games are the future of everythingNot just as a medium, but as a way of understanding the world.

I am NOT talking about gamification…

• I’m talking about tagging reality.• Content as a property of physical things.• (Internet of Things)• Games have been doing this for years.

• Also, games are the original content-as-platform.• Game narratives versus movie narratives

• Also, people are making tons of content simply by playing games.

We’ve passed the “browse” event horizonThere is too much content to browse it all. We must now search, sort, filter, and

recommend.

We live in an infinite stream of content……and see a snapshot made just for us.

Our identities are tied up with our fandom.What we like becomes a proxy for what we’re like.

As a result, Consumption Management becomes a new industry.

Help me consume better.

Why does this matter?&maybetheywontkillyou

Questions?

Thanks!David Dylan Thomas

@movie_pundit