The changing face of media distribution has gotten everyone in the film business (both studio and "independent") scared. If you think about it, media as we know it is quite young and has been constantly evolving over the past century. As this evolution accelerates in the digital era, everyone naturally tries to frame the future in terms of that past.
However, I just don't think that's going to work. Though no one can really predict anything, the future of the film business is even more difficult to prognosticate for two primary reasons:
1) the technology of media distribution has not yet plateaued
2) the people who "really matter" to the future of mass media have not yet developed their viewer (read: consumer) habits.
Regarding the former, we clearly live in an ADD age where we get excited by one toy and quickly toss it aside in favor of a newer, slightly shinier one. Friendster was a revelation, MySpace was expansive, Facebook cleaned up our act. The same goes for media consumption. Quicktime to YouTube to AppleTV to Hulu to Netflix to Boxee to TVs that connect directly to the internet, etc. Someone is always coming up with a better way to provide that media/entertainment experience that either renders its competition obsolete or just plain eats it alive. Hence building a new economic model on top of a shapeless foundation simply isn't going to work that well.
This leads to reason #2. Those of us who grew up going to the movies, wishing we had HBO, renting VHS tapes and buying DVDs already have a point of reference of "how things used to be". But it's not about us. As we get older and become dinosaurs, our spending will typically decrease, and the ones who are going to decide what they will and will not pay for and what they will and will not pirate are currently just kids. I've had enough people tell me that their eight year-olds download movies off bittorrent with little interest in how the movie looks or even if it's the complete film. They'll watch parts of a crappy lo-res copy and think nothing of it since they don't relate to "how things used to be". There's no experienced or internalized point of reference.
The fact that the technology is constantly changing right before their eyes, makes predicting their tastes even more dubious. How can they start to form their habits when technology hasn't stopped for them to wrap their heads around a platform, a screen size, a mode of delivery?
In the past, the media industry and conglomerates always told us how and when we watch something and for how much. While in many ways older generations are still used to that, future generations won't be. The table is turning and instead the media consumer will soon essentially dictate how the business makes and delivers its content.
Many I know say people will always want to go to the movies, and I don't doubt about that at all. But while the act of going to the movies won't get marginalized the way going to the theater did, the moviegoing experience has already lost its grip on the individual's leisure time.
The social element of watching movies will thus change. While the shared sense of community you get from experiencing a film in a dark room with strangers will always be fun and particular, there will clearly be new ways of feeling community in conjunction with moviewatching. With social networking already a part of a kid's socialization, there will be sufficient means to serve the same social needs.
I've attended enough panels and heard enough from speakers trying to figure out what the new model will be, but after a while it blends into the same chatter. No matter how intelligent or how experienced some of these people may be, there's nothing new to add because, whether we realize it or not, we're pretty much waiting to see what happens.
While I'm not suggesting we simply sit passively on our hands and watch the grass grow, I do believe that when these kids are of "prime consuming age", they'll tell us what they want and how they want it when they're damn good and ready.
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