Film & TV's Internet Odyssey

In this blog am going to explore and discuss how film, television and the Internet and modern technology have converged, opening up a whole new way to see, distribute and experience this media. The Internet has changed the landscape that was primarily controlled by the networks and corporate Hollywood for film and television. The now low cost and accessibility of equipment and the user friendly technology that is available today has made making a low budget film, documentary or whatever story or presentation and have it be seen and made easily by every day Joe's. Through out this blog I will provide highlighted links for further information and exploration as we discuss different areas and In the end I will provide a list of links that relate to this discussion and see whats happening in the new frontier. We are going to look at the first and probably best case study example of this with the 2005 story of the independent film Four Eyed Monsters.This is not so much a new story as it is a great example of the new landscape and its potential.




This was an indie film project that through a grass roots campaign on the Internet and by creating of buzz through webisodes gathered enough attention to be seen on many formats including big screen theaters. The real story is through different techniques using the Internet they created buzz about their movie on blogs and webisodes on social networks. The quality of the material helped propel this, but without the tools of the modern day Internet this film would not have received the audience it did.


In The Four Eyed Monsters Case Study Directors Susan Buice and Arin Crumly talk about how after no one would pay attention to their film and how they used the Internet to promote and create buzz about the film and story through a series of techniques. By creating webisodes documenting the making of the film , their rocky relationship and new filmmaker mishaps they created a following of folks who then wanted to see their feature. By promoting on MySpace and then You Tube they were able to get an audience. About this same time Ipod had new capability to download podcasts such as four eyed monsters which people did , therefore creating a bigger following. They were attending smaller film festivals looking for distributors with little luck and decided to try the non traditional Internet promotional approach paving the way for low budget filmmakers to get their work to an audience. Another interesting phenomenon that happened was there was a dialog created with the audience about the webisodes and the how they could see the film. By collecting data of fans wanting to see the films in certain cities and bringing it to theater owners they were able to convince the theaters to have showings by guaranteeing a certain amount of sales through their fan base from the webisodes and dialog with fans. The fans were able to do this by the request for the movie and view the cities with the most requests on a google Heart Map. This is an amazing concept and model, we the consumers and movie fans could request the movies we want to see and if enough of us ask for a certain indie film at our local theater like the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Or. They would show it. Soon after they premiered their movie on You Tube for free for a short period of time. After that the IFC showed webisodes furthering the talk and interest. The truth is this little film and webisodes got more attention ,time and promotion than a Hollywood feature film that comes and goes quicker than Vanilla Ice on a reality show and spent much less money doing it. One question is what was the financial thinking behind making this film? just for art or possibly to make a profit? We know Hollywood has one thing in mind, making big profits and because of this its system limits its creative possibilities. Because of the generative design of the Internet at this time it has become easy and accessible and the directors of Four Eyed Monsters who simply wanted to make a film and show it and in this setting the were able to do that. Not only did they do that , they created a community around the film that gave it life. Did the filmmakers recover the debt they created making this film? We know a great deal of it was but the real profit was the visibility of their work and capability paving the way for future projects and paying jobs. But this system has issues and limitations. Even low budget projects require money and people cant forever put out content for free or generate it for nothing. In the end its up to the consumers and viewers to support content either by paying in some shape or form or allowing advertisers in and continue with the old rules.We can examine this in the article " The Price Of Free" where its discusses how some of the best shows with quality writers , actor and directors have high costs to produce and if everything was free it would be replaced by low end sloppy programs. It is wonderful the Internet has opened a portal to volumes of interesting viewing material but it could mean as this all evolves it will need to find a balance. The real fear for the studios here is the high end big budget studio work will loose much of its value in post theater DVD/digital download release competing in the Internet TV realm.





If we look at Marshall Mcluhan's Tetrad it fits into how the film/video has evolved in this new Internet age which you can get an understanding of in this in this video.




Through the new medium it has enhanced creative expression, finding media you know and don't know and creating access to experts and amateurs.The new film/video age has made the old Hollywood system somewhat obsolete changing the accessibility and communities by making them much larger and shifting the power more into the hands of the consumers,filmmaker and viewer. It has rekindled old films through open accessibility and made access for a global archive creating a community that branches out past just the simple viewing of materials.This new age has completely flipped and blurred the lines of the old traditional way we viewed these mediums. It is now blurring entertainment, education and community bringing it together as a whole. In this new universe the evolution of projects like Four Eyed Monsters became entirely possible. David Thornburg who works and writes on the advancement of communication media has written an essay called Campfires in Cyberspace:Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century about our new way of communicating and processing information on the web which translates well about Internet film/video community. Looking at the way we communicate he uses metaphors such as "Campfires" as places where we go to get the stories such as Atom.com an indie web show site. We have "Watering Holes" where we can gather and talk about the content such as blogs like Atom Blog where fans can talk about the shows and give input and we Have "Caves" where we go to reflect on the content we learned and process the information perhaps in a personal journal on your computer . In today's Internet media viewing experience I would refer to Marshall Mcluhan's references of "Hot" and "Cold" as we we view different Movies or TV shows on our computer. In the moment while watching our event in the "Global Village" it would be hot as we were immersed in the content but as we moved to the watering holes it would become cool as we interact with the content we viewed and moved into discussion, then reflection in our caves. This is starting to encompass our whole experience with film and video in the home front as our televisions start to merge with our computers and the Internet.We are on the brink of this convergence as we read about in this article "Some TVs Go Directly Online For Streaming Movies" and look at some of the competition and devices that are making this happen in this article about Roku Vs Boxee .





With this convergence brings diversity and an enormous range of choices of medium to take in. As we see in Four eyed monsters we can become part of the process and have a connection with the content. Henry Jenkins talks about other grass roots filmmakers in his book "Convergence of Culture" stemming from fan cultures making connections and films about films and shows they are fans of creating a whole community that breathes everlasting life into stories like "Lord Of The Rings" with tributes like "The Hunt for Gollum" that can be seen in its entirety for free or the fan Star Trek tribute film "Of Gods and Men". The choices are infinite. You can read more about how our relationships in this fan realm have changed at Online Fandom.
The Internet has completely changed the way we view film and TV and made us participants in ways before that were only possible for a few specialized professionals. My first TV when I was a young boy was a 10 inch black and white with rabbit ears that I would adjust late at night so I could clearly see the old twilight zone shows. Now I can find those same shows on the Internet and just about anything else I could dream of to watch. Soon our film and TV will converge all into one big system bringing together the ultimate viewing experience with endless variety. Its hard to say exactly how it will all turn out but it will be a different Movie and TV world. This discussion just barely scratches the surface on these topics and my hope is it opens the door for further discussion and exploration of this topic.Four Eyed Monsters is a great place to start and get a feel for our new Film and TV Internet Odyssey




In my other Blog posting Links for Film and TV Campfires I will bring you some links to a variety of sites with different content and information to further our journey into this exploration. So get the popcorn popping, some of the sites will have you glued to your chair!

My Video And Conclusions On Film & TV's Internet Odyssey