Community vs. Blob

I've written plenty here about innovative and exciting platforms for independent film distribution and/or discovery (plenty enough to make at least myself and probably you repulsed by the words Innovative, Exciting, Platform, Distribution, And/Or, and/or Discovery). I've also written a lot here about how few of these platforms actually deliver on their promises to connect filmmakers and fans. My CRI project is about this connection, about community--defining it, understanding why it is a critical component of the online ecosystem for filmmakers, and studying the attempts that startups and institutions have made to build and address it. Community is critical because if it isn't there, than it really doesn't matter if your film is. Is a good library enough to draw community? Recognizable and trustworthy curators? Interaction? Involvement? Empowerment? I think it's some kind of combination of all of the above, with an emphasis on everything that came after "good library." Which is not to say that the quality of content doesn't matter in the online ecosystem. Of course it does. And there are enough quality films not getting (or not getting enough out of) traditional, theatrical distribution to populate a robust online ecosystem. Rather, online communities want an ontologically online experience--they want a unique kind of empowering involvement that does not exist in an offline world. And so some excited rambling about two organizations (a bootstrap startup and a leading institute) that are tackling the community question in truly Innovative And/Or Exciting ways:

One of the platforms I've been researching that I think is killing it is Seed&Spark, (whose COO (and my Tisch classmate) Liam Brady is using the platform to seed and spark his film, FOG CITY). Emily Best, founder and CEO of the company, writes that she "founded Seed&Spark to allow indie filmmakers to leverage this WishList crowd-funding method specifically to build and grow their collaboration with their audiences for the entire life-cycle of a film," because "...when you activate the imaginations of your broader community, you set off a chain of actions, reactions and connections the result of which can push the boundaries of your film beyond what you imagined." The "WishList" to which she refers is essentially a wedding registry for an independent film. Best first experimented with the WishList idea for her film LIKE THE WATER:

What we came to call the "WishList" rendered our filmmaking process transparent to our community and sparked their imaginations. They started coming up with ways to get involved we hadn't imagined. They became deeply meaningful collaborators in the film who then lined up – literally – around the block to see the film when it was finished. ... When both you and your supporter can name the material contribution they made to your film, you both understand your supporter’s importance beyond the number of dollars they contributed. And they should feel important because they are.

Best understands that a community needs to be empowered and thus feel important in order to thrive. So many brands spend so many corporate dollars trying to create online communities and make them feel important. But this is a difficult verging on deceptive task since the individuals who comprise these "communities" are ultimately as important as any other individuals from like demographics. For an independent film, however, individual supporters are actually important because they can, as Best points out and as Seed&Spark allows, contribute uniquely to that film's actualization. I have $50 to donate, you have a car to rent cheaply, he has c-stands to lend, etc. It's kind of beautiful how the needs of an independent film and its online community align like this. All independent films depend to some degree on the good will of communities--local communities, friends, family and peers of the filmmaking team, etc. And a community by definition thrives on supporting its members (that's why it's a community and not a nebulous blob of loners). Seed&Park offers online tools to facilitate this good will and thus connect filmmakers and fans in a profound and uniquely online way.

The Sundance Institute has announced that its Artist Services program will expand its suite of digital tools through partnerships with Tugg, Vimeo, Reelhouse, and VHX. These partners join Kickstarter, GoWatchIt, TopSpin Media, as well as the usual retailer suspects. The above hyperlinked IFP release as well as this IndieWire article provide information on these platforms, and I've also written about several of them on this blog. Artist Services is further partnering with other organizations which will select filmmakers to share Artist Services privileges with Sundance alumni. The organizations are: The Bertha Foundation, BRITDOC, Cinereach, Film Independent, the Independent Filmmaker Project and the San Francisco Film Society.

It is clear that the Sundance Institute is committed through Artist Services to exploring the community component of the online independent filmmaking ecosystem. Between their retail partners (iTunes, Hulu, Netflix etc.), and the partner platforms that help filmmakers strategize their direct-to-fan distribution and marketing (TopSpin, VHX, Reelhouse), #AS is providing their filmmakers a pretty robust toolkit for self-distribution. By additionally partnering with platforms like Tugg and Vimeo, #AS is acknowledging that an engaged community is as important as quality marketing or visible shelf-space. Tugg directly involves and thus empowers its community to bring the films they want to see to their local theater. Despite their nascent experiments with monetization, Vimeo is essentially a community of people who make videos and people who watch them. Although YouTube's community is bigger (like hundreds of millions bigger), Vimeo's superior user-interface/experience, profile customization, and opportunities for discovery (staff picks, categories, etc.) make it feel like a prettier, comfier, more tight-knit community. (There are other differences, of course.) However it stacks up against its opponent, Vimeo is indisputably a community, not a tool for direct to fan strategizing. Artist Services does not end its suite of tools at direct to fan strategizing platforms because tools that empower communities are as vital to a film's self-distributed success.

I'd like to believe that we are in fact being wired together, not apart, but I also think that there's space and time for both the movies we watch together in theaters and the ones we watch alone on personal screens (as long as they're at least 13 inches or so). Personal feelings about the anthropological impacts of online connection aside, the independent filmmaking and loving community is very real and very capable of helping each other make and discover movies online. To me, online community means a collection of real individuals that make real things happen via the Internets (online communities fund films; online nebulous blobs produce analytics). To different platforms, community means different things. Some don't need it (Netflix) and others can't live without it (anything I've written about here). I'm interested in online tools that by virtue of being online tools help a widespread group of like-minded people come together and Seed, Spark, Kickstart, Gathr, and Tugg stuff--tools that empower our community.

Helping One Another Become More Intense

Is the use of the phrase virtual community a perversion of the notion of community? What do we mean by community, anyway? What should we know about the history of technological transformation of community? Is the virtualization of human relationships unhealthy? Are virtual communities simulacra for authentic community, in an age where everything is commodified? Is online social behavior addictive? Most important, are hopes for a revitalization of the democratic public sphere dangerously naïve? --Howard Rheingold, The Virual Community (325)

Media theorist and widely agreed upon coiner of the designation "virtual community" Howard Rheingold asked these critical questions as he watched OG social-networking blow up in 1993. Nearly two decades later, these questions remain understandably unanswered--they're tough! But while it's understandable that theorists grapple still with these questions, it's unsettling that members of the "communities" in question don't seem to have interest in the implications of such questions. And if it's unsettling that "community" members don't seem to have interest in the questions, it's foolish that founders of such professed "communities" don't address them at all.

Rheingold continues (338):

Ethical issues occurred to me when I entered the business of growing virtual communities. Is building a virtual community for parents, for example, using money provided by a company that sells diapers, a way of turning community into a commodity? Is this a bad thing? Is it really right to call a collection of web pages or smutty chatrooms a “community?” how much commercial ownership are the members of a virtual community willing to accept, in exchange for the technical and social resources necessary for maintaining the community? Is it possible to be in the business of building communities for profit and still write about them?

"Ethical issues" can be understood as "market risks" here if it makes the business planner comfier--the point is that Rheingold considers how actual members of a community will respond to the predetermined virtual ecosystem built for them (if also for investors).

Author-composer-scientist-legitimate multi-hyphenate Jaron Lanier writes in his You Are Not A Gadget (47):

The 'wisdom of crowds' effect should be thought of as a tool. The value of a tool is its usefulness in accomplishing a task. The point should never be the glorification of the tool. Unfortunately, simplistic free market ideologues and noospherians tend to reinforce one another's unjustified sentimentalities about their chosen tools.

Many among the small coterie of folks who write about and/or experiment within the online world of film distribution and discovery assert the importance of "new" and "sustainable" "tools" and "models." Few, however, consider who exactly will use these tools, how they will use them, how they will know about them, and what tasks the tools will ultimately accomplish. There are some fantastic new online tools for filmmakers, like that offered by website Kinonation (the start-up evolution of which Roger Jackson has been so generously and transparently blogging about on Hope For Film) which accomplishes the critical task of allowing filmmakers to upload their work in order to have it transcoded to the different formats required by various VOD and EST services.

KinoNation further aims to help their filmmakers find an audience. It remains unclear to me how tools that allow selected filmmakers to get their films online (other examples include: Sokap and Yekra and even VHX For Artists for artists who aren't Aziz Ansari) but which don't have built-in audiences (like YouTube channels or Kickstarter) plan to connect filmmakers and fans. These platforms rightfully assume and assert that there are legions of potential fans out there consuming an unprecedented amount of content, but they don't explain why these legions will assume their specific tools.

Filmmaker and fan connection is a task that needs a tool, and it most likely won't be the same tool that gets a film transcoded, crowd-funded, or "liked" by the filmmaker's friends. But as soon as you're talking about the people involved (filmmakers and fans) as opposed to the technology, you're talking about social behavior and you're talking about "community." And the general questions surrounding virtual community and behavior are no better answered now than they were in 1993. I have focused my CRI research on these questions because I think their exploration is crucial for building the tool that can address the specific task of connecting filmmakers and fans.

"The places that work online always turn out to be the beloved projects of individuals, not the automated aggregations of the cloud," writes Lanier. He signals out one such place, a community of oud players (super legitimate multi-hyphenate) where "you can feel each participant's passion for the instrument, and we help one another become more intense" (71-2). (How) Can an online tool allow us to help one another become more intense, and, by assumed extension, more involved, more invested, more interested in each other's work and in each other?