Dissolving the Old Model
How Our Use of Technology Will Re-design the Film Industry
As a filmmaker, not going to L.A sounds crazy. Now, maybe if you end up with a gig you love that pays well, then sure. Start a new life over there. But, you don’t have to move to L.A to increase your opportunities if you’re good at creating stories and building value with your talent.
Alex Ferrari describes this in his book The Rise of the Filmtrepreneur, where he argues that an empowered rising class of creators making a living from their original films is growing year over year. Taking this route isn’t easy, but with the latest advances in information technology, filmmakers are now beginning to see it as a viable option. In the not-too-distant future, this technology might become so powerful that it could shift the whole industry from centralized businesses in Hollywood dominating content creation to decentralized networks of film entrepreneurs and small studios.
If this becomes true, big studios will continue making films. But most professionals will likely choose to work independently within these decentralized networks since access would be easier, the money would be more consistent, and the work would be more meaningful as they would be creating their own stories or searching for the stories they want to build, not the other way around. And as consumers, we’d be able to watch more films that are newer, more interesting, emotionally powerful, and memorable.
So, what information technology am I referring to that could make these radical changes possible? Well, let’s take a look at the top three that I believe will help spur this future and change everything we know about the filmmaking business.
#1: Machine Learning and Automation
This is something we’re all too familiar with since it’s already impacting our lives right now. But for those living in a cave, it’s basically algorithms that give computer programs the ability to teach themselves using large amounts of data. While there are certainly a lot of ethical concerns surrounding its use, if we’re able to figure out a standard, then machine learning could become a powerful tool to help us develop ourselves personally and creatively, particularly with the evolution of the generative pre-trained transformer or GPT, a huge next step in artificial intelligence.
Though currently, GPT is just a sophisticated chatbot, iterations like GPT-4.0 and beyond show promise that one day professionals may be able to interact with an “all-in-one” expert for help with anything. Need to draw up an agreement? In the not-too-distant future, you might end up regularly consulting with an advanced version of GPT instead of a lawyer to deal with contracting, except it’ll be much cheaper and will produce results in seconds, not hours or days.
What about creating screenplays? What if you have a great idea but don’t know how to write, and you need to communicate your idea to a professional you’re collaborating with? GPT could soon be used to turn your ideas into fully completed outlines, making it much easier for non-writers to work with writers. Or, maybe you are a writer and need input for your rough draft to make it stronger. Right now you have to find a professional willing to take the time to help you. But soon all you may need is your computer.
This can also apply to marketing, with entire campaigns fashioned by automated interactive analytics tools. And as AI improves, we may one day be able to create digital, autonomous versions of ourselves infused with this kind of expertise. If that happens, people will no longer need to hire teams of marketers because you’ll be able to do it all on your own.
Very soon everyone could have an all-in-one personal assistant. For creators that could mean being able to write, develop, produce, market, and distribute your content as if every expert in the world was helping you. Eventually, you may only need ideas and determination to make a movie.
Blockchain
Now, you might not be too familiar with blockchain technology since most who try to explain it come off as madmen from another time. That is until Bitcoin’s mentioned. Then we tend to think, “Oh, yeah. A digital currency that could make me rich one day if I buy in early.” Technically, this is true...Probably. But that’s only skimming the surface of what blockchain can offer, especially for filmmakers.
At its core, a blockchain is an immutable ledger that gives individuals control over many things that were once only possible for large centralized institutions to control such as banking, investments, or contracting. It’s easier to think of it as a layer of code embedded within the internet, similar to the layers of code that make streaming or instant messaging possible. But unlike those layers, this layer will likely have bigger implications.
It’s hard to see it because blockchain is clunky like the internet was back in the 80s. However, once it matures enough to be fully adopted by businesses, creators big and small will probably take full advantage of it. In particular, most creators may turn to smart contracts for making deals.
Say you’re a creative professional who gets hired by someone online. You’re not entirely sure you can trust that they’ll pay. You can check their reviews, but technically that can be manipulated, and if they’re new to the site they may not have enough reviews to establish trust and credibility. That’s why websites have to provide some kind of insurance, so they can mitigate those bad deals. And, while companies like Amazon do a decent job of this, it’s not air-tight.
This is why film entrepreneurs will start using smart contracts powered by blockchain technology: Collaborations involve a lot of money, which means a lot of trust and security are needed. With smart contracts, you can set the terms and conditions and dump the payment into a secure, “wallet” where that money can remain until the conditions and terms are met. This is trustless, programmable, and automatic contracting.
With online marketplaces for hiring professionals, users must rely on the service provider to correct wrongdoings. But with smart contracts, the contracts themselves and the conditions established and agreed upon prevent any wrongdoing from either side. So, it’s safer for the customers and cheaper for the companies.
Blockchain is even crazier when you consider how it can be used to raise money. Remember in 2011 when crowd-funding movies through Kickstarter was all the rage? Well, that my friend was merely the stepping stone to the next big thing: Crowd-investing.
Crowd-investing or asset tokenization through blockchain is the process of creating a digital token that can have its value tied to the value of an asset, such as a movie or an independent studio. This digital token can then be divided up and sold as an investment, which means anyone across the globe can buy into someone’s film or production company and get a return; all in just a few clicks.
This is how future filmmakers will raise funding for their movies. The up-and-coming indie filmmaker, Jim Cummings, who wrote and directed, Thunder Road was able to raise $350,000 through crowd-investing. So it’s already possible to do this with enough credibility, a great idea, and technical know-how. But, soon, it’ll be much easier for creators and investors alike because platforms similar to Kickstarter will come into the fold.
And who will the investors be? The fans, themselves. That’s a powerful thing when you stop to think about it because it means with the tools mentioned above and the talent you possess, you’ll be able to build value for yourself and leverage that value for funding so that you can then build more value and gain more funding. Now, it’ll be much easier to create value out of nothing and turn a simple idea into a marketable film.
Faster, Stronger Internet
With the full adoption of 5G, we’ll have much faster and stronger internet. How fast, you might ask? Well, its peak data rate is about 20 gigabytes per second, compared to 4G, which is 100 megabytes per second. That means a 100x times increase in traffic capacity and network efficiency, which translates to super fast download speed, low latency, and the capacity for all of us to do much more powerful things online. And as filmmakers, we know how much power needs to go into creating films, so this will be a blessing for everyone in the industry.
For instance, location scouting. It can be a huge pain in the ass and take weeks, even months to find the right spots, and that’s just for indie filmmakers. At the studio level, it can take much longer. But with 5G in conjunction with augmented reality, collaborators will be able to get together and meet virtually within these photo-realistic places to analyze the space before actually going out to the spot.
This means you can stay at home and narrow down your search instead of having to run around all over the place taking photos. It also means you won’t have to limit your time at the locations because the owner isn’t comfortable with you being there for so long. You can visit and revisit that spot over and over again as if you owned the place, yourself, which will make it significantly easier for indie filmmakers to plan their shots.
The best part though is that with 3d animation tools, VR, and stronger internet you’ll be able to meet up online with your collaborators to do tech location scouting. This means you’ll be able to set up virtual lights and cameras within a designed space that resembles the real location, plan everything shot-by-shot with virtual stand-ins, and even be able to capture those shots to determine the best flow for your film. That’s a huge game-changer for indie filmmakers because one of the biggest challenges we face is getting access to our locations multiple times throughout the pre-production process. With a more powerful internet, we’ll no longer have that issue.
Then, there’s production, itself, which can be quite robust and pricey when it comes to wires and cables. That’s because filmmakers need to be able to transfer large amounts of data quickly since time is almost always of the essence on a film set. An internet capable of handling that large data will make it possible to have a wireless film set so that you can distribute data quickly, which means faster offloading and easier setups.
Green screens will also be replaced by hi-res LED panels that can display computer-generated backgrounds. Currently, they’re a headache to use because of all the wiring required and the fact that LED backgrounds have high fidelity requirements, which means your file sizes will be much larger. But in the future, it will all be wireless and the ability to transfer those large files will be much faster. Creators will also be able to have more control and change the background and lighting in real-time. And since the computer-generated background is already there, editing will be much faster as you will no longer need to add in the 3d background meticulously by hand.
So a faster and stronger internet will ultimately lead to faster, cheaper, and easier location scouting, planning, and producing, which means more creators will have access to the same capabilities that studios have right now and studios will be able to push the boundaries even further.
Conclusion
Great changes are coming for filmmakers, but at the heart of it all are AI, blockchain, and advancements in internet capabilities. AI is making internet technology smarter and more capable. Blockchain is making it safer and more empowering and 5G is making it faster and smoother. With these three forces combined, you’re looking at a whole new Internet that won’t just help filmmakers. It’ll free them from the very structures of the film industry so that they can redefine it for themselves.
In the future, Most filmmakers from the bottom to the top will be free agents. Hollywood will still be around and they’ll thrive in their own right. But for the millions of others outside the industry? We’re gonna blossom in the next few decades.
Because at the end of the day, it’s not the lack of good ideas that is holding most creatives back. It’s the challenge in executing those ideas from the mind to the page and from the page to the screen. That is the true “barrier to entry”.
So, if the right tools can be made to help us solve these barriers, then more ideas can turn into scripts, more scripts can turn into movies, and more movies can put more money in the hands of creators and help everyone truly reimagine a world the way we want instead of a world where we’re told how it should be.
Hope this was helpful, and as always, best of luck in your creative endeavors!
Story Prism
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