Big Pipes, Small Screens and Great Stories
What kind of content works best on broadband platforms? What content is well-suited for the web and even the very-small screens of cells phones? Any ideas? Anyone?
It’s a question a lot of smart people are grappling with, including programmers, artists, producers… and participants in the "Web Content – Where are the Big Ideas for Small Screens?" panel discussion Jan. 19 at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Coming out of the discussion, the consistent and oddly-reassuring answer is good content—the kind that deals with personal experiences and passions, told in a compelling way that also makes people want to take action.
And why, exactly, would THAT tall order be considered a reassuring answer, when it immediately begs so many questions (especially in the context of a college or university’s web presence)? The short answer is because it’s easier to tackle this question of good, compelling content than it is to resolve the questions centering on how best to record and deliver your content, and how to effectively stay on top of a rapidly changing tech arena notorious for trashing effective solutions in favor of the new.
Panelists in the discussion, moderated by the American Film Institute’s Suzanne Stefanac, came from feature-length film and documentary backgrounds, but there was no common ground, no consensus in terms of how they produced their (far shorter) pieces. Example: some panelists shoot using 16:9 ratios, others stay with 4:3, but no one disagreed with anyone else’s methods. A few of the panelists shoot on professional-quality HD cameras and then "degrade" their content until it looks good when played back on a cell phone screen. Others do just the opposite: since the content will live on tiny screens, they use cellphones or palm-sized video cameras to record their footage, and edit as needed. Combining these approaches worked for others, and there was a healthy use of still photos, manipulated to convey movement or to establish key points.
What the panelists agreed on is that the technologies and methods for producing broadband content can vary wildly, change often, and will likely do so for quite a while—but what will never change is that good, compelling stories will find audiences. That’s been true since firelight flickered across the first cave paintings, and it will continue to be true as we watch flickering images on the newest, shiniest, and smallest of screens.
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