Don’t despair! Avery T. Phillips lists the three simple ways that any filmmaker can survive in the shifting digital landscape of today.
It doesn’t seem so long ago that people were still buying movies, or that DVDs slowly started invading the shelf spaces that were previously filled by VHS tapes. The digital revolution made practices and jobs simpler until older conventions started disappearing at rapid rates. The more digital things got, the less power Hollywood had.
This digitization hasn’t wiped out the film industry completely by any means, but in order to stay relevant and adapt behind the scenes, you need to know how to utilize technology trends to your advantage, whether that means switching distribution platforms or expanding to social media and YouTube channels. Here are some ways to use film technology in innovative ways other than television show and feature filmmaking.
Online Branding
The personal branding done through film in the past has brought actors and actresses bigger opportunities, even leading some of them to public office without the proper credentials or an MPA degree! Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and of course Donald Trump are all examples of this. However, it’s not as simple as just being in a few movies nowadays or working on a few yourselves — an online presence is almost a must for actors, actresses, and filmmakers who want to be publicly recognized.
An online brand for your film work involves building a community around not only your work but your thoughts and ideas through the power of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo — these are things that put your work into the public eye where others are able to interact with you.
Frankly, online branding through social media can work both as a resume and as self-promotion, in turn offering you more opportunities. With social media you can network with other producers, filmmakers, directors, writers, and actors, and find out about networking events in your area. It’s a digital tool you have to use to be involved in the film community as somebody new to it.
Common Practice
Where people used to pay for cable, they now can use streaming sites at the click of the button. Where people used to rent movies from Blockbuster, they now use Redbox (or, if we’re being real, torrents).
This is forcing cable subscription channels and industries to go strictly online, or in the case of an organization like ESPN, literally become an internet-based company. On the editing front, common practice must change with everything from software to relevant scene placement ideas and the like. And writing and storylines should always be pushing the limits beyond what has been done before, a lot of which has opened up due to the possibilities afforded us by CGI.
At the end of the day though, the creative process that makes a good story is still the same — it’s the deliverance that technology has changed.
Marketing Practice
Film-based marketing has been able to keep up with the times thanks to wise counsel and teaching from film schools and other educational experts. Film techniques extend into the realm of video marketing, used by just about everybody. When was the last time you found a brand that didn’t use video as part of a marketing campaign?
However, it’s not just the use of a video recorder, of course. Using filming techniques to create quality content allows videography to be used in advertising, even if it’s restricted to things like YouTube and other corners of the internet. Acting, video editing, and production are all very important to video aesthetics. Due to this, the use of video in marketing will never go away.
