We’ve been running a lot of cross media orientation workshops lately, most recently for the Tasmanian creative media industry in the lead up to our LAMP lab which will be run there in November. The response has been very positive, particularly when we have got people actively participating and pitching spontaneous cross media project ideas.
Within AFTRS we have delivered workshops for a range of staff full time and students who are not afraid to put us on the spot. It is good to be challenged and so is the debate that about the future of the entertainment industries. We are a passionate community of creative people and it’s good to see strong viewpoints being put forward and contested. There should be more of it, especially in our blogs.
One thing that keeps coming up though is a misunderstanding that the cross media landscape is somehow a question of taste. Emerging media forms have sometimes been portrayed as an afront to ‘pure’ art of filmmaking or as a new mode of expression championed by ‘digital boosters’ (a term Ben Goldsmith has coined). This is not an issue that has anything to do with my personal taste in media or yours or anyone elses. The emerging media landscape is being shaped by a range of forces operating at a global scale and at a pace that is largely unstoppable. Many of these forces are purely economically driven and, as media producers, we need to choose a strategy to take us forward. We can either do what the music industry did and bury our heads in the sand or we can engage with a new set of rules and make a go of it. I love the films of Felini, David Lynch and Godard but this is not the issue. Media production, screen business and audience trends are undergoing major changes. No one has the answers but it is a time of great opportunity to test new waters with the benefit of our knowledge and love of the cinema.
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It’s the enternal filmmaker elitism, Australian feature film trumps Foriegn Film made in Australia, which in turns trumps television drama which trumps documentary which trumps corporate film which trumps experimental films which trumps the graduate who make a healthy living making amazing wedding videos.
The interesting thing though – is some of the most innovative things that occur in a cross media sense are more readily accepted at the bottom of this elitist ladder. I saw a wedding photographer who had a great web site, offered a serivce which combined video and digital still images. Corporate film is commonly using still images for print publication, web sites and film. Some of the best blogs are related to television shows, the best web sites to documentary projects.
The lagger of the cross media revolution is the feature film.