New Media at the Anaheim International Film Festival

It’s film festival season.  If you’re an independent filmmaker, you’re either creating content for the specific purpose of screening at a festival or you’re seriously considering it.  A few weeks ago, I submitted a short to Sundance.  I consider it a part of the futile ritual of throwing my money into a big black hole in hopes that the hole leads to Wonderland.  I suppose I should just consider it my annual donation to the Robert Redford Endowment to a Better Life Fund.  But that is the ritual that we as independent filmmakers go through.  So, a couple of weeks ago, I submitted a web series to the Anaheim International Film Festival.  I never expected to get in.  If you don’t expect to get in, you don’t get disappointed.  A short time after submitting, I received an email that read, “We feel that your show ‘Kill Floor’ is an exceptional example of what new media has to offer.  As one of the show creators we would like to invite you to be our guest down in Anaheim to present your show.” What?  We got in?  We never get into anything!  It wasn’t exactly the “festival” that we got into mind you, but we got included in the expo and market.  What that meant was that we got to pitch our show to media executives that were also in attendance AND we got to screen our material on the big screen in the VIP theater.  I considered it a win.

So as I was reflecting upon the year, I realized that it was exactly one year ago this month that I wrote an article simply entitled “The YouTube Revolution Happened While I Was Sleeping.”   It was in that article and its sister article – speaking with The Mystery Guitar Man that really were giving me food for thought – particularly at this event because the primary reason for my participation was because I had unwittingly thrown my hat into the New Media Market by creating a web series at all.  Last October I was wondering if a web series could ever find an audience.  Well…would it?  If you only knew the lengths that we went to fail at finding a massive audience you would probably wince.  I will spare you on what didn’t work.  But it would take a year before I would understand what the new media is and more importantly what it isn’t.  And why I think that sometimes marketing truly is king and why bad marketing might leave good material largely undiscovered.  Fast forward…

So it was as I was walking down the Red Carpet of the Anaheim International Film Festival and I was speaking to different members of the media about how I felt about my project that I realized that I was living a dream of mine.  (And thanks to Erin Brown of Hot on the Red Carpet, I got to do it not once, but got to live it twice!) Anyway, there I was walking on the same carpet as celebrities who were also screening their bigger films.  And there I was too.  I was posing for pictures, answering questions and being shuffled from one media outlet to the next and just repeating my pitch over and over again.  And well…it was all really exhausting!  But it caused me to remember that YouTube article again and whether or not the internet would play a major role in the future of entertainment.  If it was going to have a role, I was a part of that proof just being at this event.  And not just me, but creators of all the participating shows like: Blue Movies, Damsels & Dragons, Asylum, First Edition, The Romantic Foibles of Esteban, Workshop, Groupidity, Clean Up Crew, Maybelline Girls, The Alibuys, Comics on Comics, Stalker Chronicles, Lemons, I Am Not Infected, Apocalypse Wow, Hot on the Red Carpet, Hard to Swallow, League of Steam, Hero’s Quest, Man-Teen and my series Kill Floor were all a part of the grand experiment.

I am both a journalist and a filmmaker.  My primary purpose in life is to entertain an audience – sometimes it happens through thought provoking articles and sometimes through clever little movies.  But I never would have imagined that a year after I released anything that I would be walking anywhere or talking to anyone about what I do – except to maybe comment on the colossal mistakes I may have made in making different projects.  Projects that I’m still paying for.  Projects that I may or may not have spent far too much of my own money putting together.  But to give the reader a little perspective, to date my web series has received a little over 2000 hits on YouTube.  That’s not awful, but in internet terms, that’s basically like being invisible.  I’m not telling you this to belittle my efforts as an artist nor am I trying to make my involvement in the festival experience bigger than what it was because I know that determining what is a success by analyzing the numbers can be a little misleading and frighteningly telling all at the same time.  Ask anyone about how they stumbled upon their audience and their story will be as different as the journey was difficult.  And it’s the audience that, for some, is the great mystery of the New Media Expo.  In the end, were our respective projects just a calling card or were our projects a springboard leading to multiple seasons and product endorsements?  What was the real goal here?

As journalists were asking me about Kill Floor, one of the questions that kept coming up was if I felt as if the “New Media” was finally finding it’s place in the marketplace…I had to wonder.  Was it really finding its place?  Had I found a place yet?  I still wonder.  But I had to believe that we were a part of a new trend that is hell bent on breaking down barriers and creating opportunities that used to be reserved for the Hollywood elite and/or for the lucky few that got into a Sundance (or something like it).  Even if we didn’t make a cent or in our case a few cents (Kill Floor to date has grossed over 17 dollars worldwide).  The world of web content is still largely an undiscovered and unwatched market.  But it’s a market that is growing.  My conversation with Joe Penna (aka Mystery Guitar Man) proved that there was money that could be made with silly videos on the internet.  The question for me, as not just a curious bystander, but full on participant remains, is there a market for this?

There are two mentalities when it comes to the New Media.  The first one and also the most prevalent among some producers in Hollywood is that the internet is the future of media, but they have no idea what it is or how to monetize it.  The second mentality revolves around the continuing evolution of new media in the context of the internet and how to incorporate our existing culture to participate in this new venture.  This second one is the more prevalent thought with independent filmmakers and producers– the former is often the one that doesn’t understand how to define New Media or how it will evolve over time.  Both know it’s the future.  But neither knows how to reach the middle ground of all of this chaos in order to figure out where the money really is.  This might also be a great example of how difficult it is to shed old methodologies and paradigms for new ones in order to share the wealth.  There were expert panelists at this festival who were “certain” of the internet’s future and its importance, but less certain about how to monetize content on it.  So far, it’s really only a handful of recognizable shows (like The Guild) or vloggers (like Mystery Guitar Man or Ray William Johnson) on the internet that can claim that they even make a profit or any money at all by placing content on the internet.  But there are certainly shows that you’ve never heard of that do make money as well individuals that make a wonderful living doing nothing other than creating content that is specifically designed to be consumed on the internet.  But life as an independent filmmaker creating web entertainment seems to be a life that is in a constant holding pattern of “wait and see” where this whole internet thing goes.  Especially when you consider that Apple, Google (and others) are currently jockeying to tier content in a less neutral internet (possibly) and create new gatekeepers so to speak.  Everyone is waiting to see what will happen.  Will the new Hollywood become the old Hollywood with new faces holding the key?

My hat is off to Canyon Prince (New Media Producer for the Anaheim International Festival) for attempting to push our content into the traditional marketplace that is central to the film festival experience anyway. I think he accomplished his goal, which was to demonstrate the presence that is the “New Media.” It was a big moment for me, for sure, but in the end this wasn’t about any one show.  It couldn’t be.  The fact that over 6,000 people watched the panel discussions that streamed live during the last day of the festival was proof of a presence and trend that proved that everything has been moving towards a convergence of interactive audiences online and traditional attendees of live events.  If there was ever a question of whether or not there was even an audience for New Media, 6,000 is a hard number to ignore when you consider that they were taking part in a “smaller” festival to begin with.

So as I reflected on the Anaheim International Film Festival, the point was not to brag, but to place things into their proper context.  Was I getting some star treatment?  Yes.  Was I proud of our web series?  Absolutely.  But when I really thought about how far things had come in the last few years, I was just as proud of all of the content and their creators.  Most of them had created some great material without the support of huge networks or large bank accounts.  And that’s really where I think this was all leading towards.  If the YouTube revolution happened while I was sleeping, I woke up to discover that I was in the middle of a new and continuing revolution of content that is only the tip of the entertainment iceberg – especially as set top boxes and web television leave our computers and make their way into our living rooms.  It’s only a matter of time before you’ll be seeing a web series like the ones at this festival sitting on a grid next to the ones created by the networks.  At least that’s the hope.  The hope is also that things remain fair and the net remains neutral so that people are free to find us. Until then all I can do is to keep closing my eyes and making wishes as I continue to throw my money down that Sundance hole.  I do it in hopes that my experience this past week was proof that at least one door in this business was left open – free for all of us to walk through.

By Paul Stamat