NORM BOLEN was everywhere. On page 34 of your invaluable AIDC brochure, it outlines his years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Alliance Atlantis Communications. So, Day 2, he was being ubiquitous. There he was moderating a number of DOCUmart sessions and now here he was in the Yellow Room talking about Making Money on the Web.
“If you want to be part of the digital future,” he said, “You have to future proof”. As is often the case at in conference world, a speaker was employing the rhetorical device of saying that a particular cycle, genre, format or model of business was at an end. Code Blue! Crash cart – stat!
Documentary died on Day 1. Today television needed CPR. And as we know, the figures and studies bear out Bolen’s contentions. He spoke about his experience with television, which he dubbed ‘conventional television’. He said that with on-line advertising revenue growing 25% annually television ad revenue growth was flat.
“I became seized of the idea,” he said. “The old idea that content is everything is no longer true. Now everything is content.” He also used the example of the teens and early twenties in his own family to state that young people are abandoning television.
This all led to his discussion of mDialogue an Internet based distribution platform for filmmakers. He is a director of this company.
BRUNO FELIX from the Netherlands spoke about Submarine his independent production studio and online network.
TINA DALTON managing director of production company Wild Visuals spoke about re-purposing material that doesn’t make it to the final edit. Basically the suggestion was to turn this footage into stock footage. Her company had done this and was exploring a pay per clip model currently on their site. “Shoot as high-end as you can, because that shot can be used over and over again in the future.”
I was distracted at one point, by the idea that Dalton might have once been Ranger Tina on kids’ television. This is back in the days of what we call conventional television, understand?
Clearly, given my riff on ex-Midnight Oil singer and current Federal Minister Peter Garrett, yesterday, I find it hard to accept that people move on in their professional lives.
I’m still getting over the years I did a paper round. Could there be a documentary in this? Could I pitch someone my idea for working in supermarket night-fill during the 1980s?
Surely, I was certainly in the right place.
See You on Day 3,
Phil Jeng Kane
The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).
Tags: Bruno Felix, Internet, mDialogue, Norm Bolen, Submarine, Tina Dalton, Web, Wild Visuals
