Where’s the best place to find examples of innovation and monetization in digital content? Big media companies with massive budgets? VC-backed indie studios? Nope, according to panelists Tuesday at Digital Hollywood. Content labs – typically non-profit organizations that manage to get media execs, creatives and tech developers to do pro-bono work — are the ones pushing the envelope, they said.
According to Suzanne Stefanac, director of the AFI Digital Content Lab (an offshoot of the American Film Institute), it’s partly because the teams aren’t under immediate pressure to “make money.” They can afford to fail, and think non-traditionally; ironically, that freedom often leads to the development of cross-platform content that’s readily monetizable. Panelists shared some examples of how content they’d previously developed at the Lab was starting to generate revenue now.
— MTV’s $5 Cover: MTV’s EVP of new media David Gale defined the show — filmed in Memphis and starring local talent — as a “360-degree experience.” $5 Cover has a musical performance in each six to seven minute episode; each artist also wound up with an individual music video. The show runs on MTV 2, as well as online at MTV.com; the network made a deal with MySpace to promote the series (MySpace drove traffic to the site and the artists’ profile pages). Gale said his experience crafting a cross-platform show (social media, TV and online video) at the Lab influenced the development of $5 Cover.
— Machinima: Content creators use video-game technology to create a hybrid machine/cinema style of storytelling, and it’s growing in popularity. (Machinima.com, a site devoted to the genre, raised $3.8 million in funding late last year). John Gilles, VP of media and entertainment at Method, said Leaving the Game, a machinima project he worked on at the AFI Lab, managed to solve one big problem currently facing online video content: stagnant advertising. The team was able to insert ads from different brands on the fly (billboards in a subway station scene, for example). That meant the series wasn’t beholden to any one advertiser — it could swap ads after a set period of time, for a specific geographic region, or even time of day.
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