Essay Advice - Production

A few of you have asked me about the Production bit of this question - How has the internet affected production and distribution of the media.

Part of the difficulty is not as much (as distribution) yet in Film and Music (think about News where lots is now being produced by amamteurs on Blogs and Youtube - lost more interactivity with audience etc) - it is fine for you to make this comparison - don't go in to too much detail about News though.

But there are impacts -
Prosumers - far more people are producing - Youtube etc - the barriers to being a producer are less - leads to surprising hits and more people being involved in producing
This links to the Long Tail - there are now more producers producing for a Niche audience - they can therefor produce music in alternative genres and stil make a living form it
Web 2.0 means you can get feeedback and interact with audience - again breaks down barriers
Producers now collaborate more online - especially with film in finding funding and sharing resources and ideas
in music their is the idea of the e-session where artists put there early versions up on line and other artists do their own verisons or help improve it

The future
producing for convergence - eg films for different screens - films that will suit small screens - short films have already got more of an audience through the internet.
involving users in the production - Games are on the verge of looking as real as films and you can interact with them - will we end up that we write ourselves into films/games and interact with the actors - we already have DVDs with alternative endings
This should be plenty - but it is fine to talk much more about distribution as it is haaving more impact there at moment.

Some exmaples to have a look at which are relevant to consumption as well
An Inconvenient Truth - there is a community that is built up around the film online - probably more improtant to the consumers of the film than just watching it
Open Cinema - an Orange film project produced Elephant's Dream - an open source project where people could contrbute financially or get involved http://orange.blender.org/press
Swarm of Angels - online collaboration for film - http://aswarmofangels.com/