Docs and Social Networking at Sundance 2007

If you’re not one of the anointed, the Sundance Film Festival is a lot about cold toes and long lines, $20 parking fees, discovering that three other people are sharing the condo living room floor and finding out that you’re on the wrong bus. What do you expect in a tiny mountain town invaded annually by more than 40,000 people, every one of them on some kind of a mission?

As the most important meeting place of independent filmmakers, though, it’s also about intersections probable and improbable. The panels, mixers and parties are at least as important as the movies.

This year one panel—like all the others, turning away as many people as it took in-- focused on how social networking and Web 2.0 tools can help indie filmmakers do their job. It served as an indicator of the current utility of online to independent filmmakers. Chris Anderson (The Long Tail author and Wired editor) kicked off the panel with his hope that they could do their part to "destigmatize niche success." Anderson worried that filmmakers are too obsessed with a blockbuster and theatrical success, and are neglecting the power of the Web. The panel, however, composed of producers, journalists and marketers, didn’t give filmmakers who intend to recover the cost of production by selling their work much insight. Web 2.0 is still awfully experimental in this medium.

Ken Rutkowski, who writes an online newsletter on technology and media, reminded people that online venues could draw unprecedented audiences, flipping the model of using the Web to draw people to an offline experience. The current environment, he said, can be summarized in "four M’s": movement (get them to your site); management (get them to do something there); monetization; and measurement.

Katy Chevigny, founder of multi-project producer Arts Engine, described how its foundation-supported Media that Matters Film Festival has embraced the online environment (it launched as an online festival), but has also faced problems. "We were unprepared for success," she said. Kiri Davis’ A Girl like Me is a 16-year-old’s repeat of a classic experiment in which children of color are given a choice of a doll with lighter or darker skin; some 50 years after the original experiment, children of color are still favoring the lighter doll. (The audience gasped when shown a clip from the film.) When the film became a runaway hit, Arts Engine’s server crashed. The group then uploaded the film to Google Video and Youtube, which diverted enough of the attention to permit Arts Engine’s service to be restored. "We’re making it up," Chevigny said. "It’s all good. Be everywhere."

Rex Wong of DAVE Neworks, which enables content providers to release content on the Web, noted that the model had moved from providing content to creating community. A recent Stargate released for example allowed people to create MySpace-like accounts, which more than 20,000 did. "The community building has to be in the center now," he said. "And there’s no difference between big and small; the media strategies are the same: build community, and give the user choices." Wong is also seeing clients develop their own mini-channels using video on demand, creating a "minor league" in television programming. Wong’s clients have been commercial TV companies, but it is now working on a product to serve independents.

Jon Alpert, the now-venerable community media producer who co-founded the media arts center Downtown Community Television, cheerfully played the dinosaur role. Decades into his project, he said, DCTV was the last media arts center in New York, struggling for funding. Although a DCTV film Bullets in the Hood, made by an African-American teenager whose friend was shot by police, had won a Sundance award, it was never distributed. DCTV used its "cybercar," a truck with a wide screen on one side, to project the film in neighborhoods and at schools.

"Digital distribution is an economic torpedo for us," he confessed. "It threatens our survival to give stuff away, when we need the money. I would like help to figure out how to make it work for us."

Michael Terpin, who runs a public relations firm specializing in Web 2.0 skills, said that social networking, viral video and podcasts and blogs were all part of Alpert’s potential toolkit to gain attention. Terpin advised Alpert to target niche communities and use marketing tactics featuring social networking to call attention to his offerings—perhaps some of which could be free and some for pay. (Alpert looked distinctly like they were speaking different languages.)

Alpert also tried to use the web to sell, via download, video imagery of James Brown after his death. He discovered, however, that firms such as Brightcove didn’t want to work with him. "You’re too small," said Rakowski. "They’re looking for big contracts." (Wong pointed out that Dave TV is readying tools for independents.) Rakowski pointed out that Alpert needed to prepare for the inevitable death of celebrities whose imagery he had archived. "Get ready for Fidel Castro now," he laughed.

Terpin described how television production is being launched on the web. His new client, Darejunkies, is "Jackass on Youtube," he said. The web environment is perfectly matched to the aspirations of the media makers, to provide a platform for homegrown daredevils. (Indie producers in the audience didn’t seem to find this example very helpful.)

Ash Kumra, who runs Desiyou, a site for Asian-Americans in the diaspora, showed a clip of show about Bollywood movies. Viewers, he said, had shaped the content of the show, and their continuous feedback changes it. The clip he showed, however, looked like a familiar, Ebert and Roeper-style format done on access cable TV.

Anderson, who had just returned from the music industry trade conference MIDEM, said, "Can free online be a marketer for offline experience?" Musicians are often using free downloads to fuel appetite for their performances, he noted. Filmmakers seemed a little puzzled about how to make that model work, but Chevigny noted, "Longform film isn’t going away," she said. "We do that too, and there’s a need and an appetite for it."

Business models are mixing well, she noted. Although Media That Matters Festival started out as an online-only experience, users clamored for DVD format as well, and eventually got it.

The benefits of the "long tail" (niche marketing over a long period of time) model, which digital distribution permits at unprecedently slow cost, were clear to independent filmmakers. Murkier was how to build the niches—or communities--that they could serve (and collect from). How could niches also be publics, and not merely cliques or communities of believers? It’s an open question.

The powerful community-building tools of Web 2.0 can, in principle, recreate audiences as partners, both in production and distribution. Elsewhere in the festival, some filmmakers were doing just that, using both the web and face-to-face strategies. Judith Helfand, who with Daniel B.Gold made Everything’s Cool to incite action for "global cooling," was seen working with school kids, collecting post cards to Congress, and encouraging people to go to the everythingscool website, where a community-building feature is "coming soon." On a panel co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress on "media that matters," (catch the treehugger blog about it!) others including Rory Kennedy also described a wide range of approaches to making media for social change. But in discussion afterward, grizzled veterans of film distribution agreed that while Web 2.0 might open up many possibilities, it was still pretty much the future for the long-form film that Sundance now has at the core of its activities.