The Amazing Journey & Adventure of the 21st Century Story Teller
Film is dead.

Do not lament or cry out. Celebrate!!!

Everyone I speak with wishes to be a “film” maker. Riches, fame, the red carpet, festivals, travel, recognition!

How many of you are burning from within to tell The Story?

Since I was initiated into the distribution business in the mid-`70s, every aspect has changed. We are now a Digital-Media Art form. Certainly there are labs still processing film and film loaded cameras are lighter and easier to use than ever before, but the format is a century old. For the first time in the history of mankind we have a pallet of thousands of colors, an infinite screen with multiple dimensions, including 360 degree holographic, and a cornucopia, a box, of inconceivable tools which allow the Artist to create on all art platforms and communication media.

21st Century Story telling can be a cosmic journey, the means of visually becoming a Universal Translator, beginning with a Global audience that has a more diverse spectrum, and a more complex choice of subject matter.

We begin exchanging stories of our lives, our needs, our desires and sharing ideas of a world worth transforming. We have democratized the way stories are shared again for the first time in the history of mankind. A staggering number of platforms create 5 ubiquitous Screens: The Cinema screen, the Large & small format TV screens, the Desktop Computer Screen, the IPad screen and the mobile phone screen. Once fragmented and complex applications now unite to deliver every type of story in its own and particular style.

During the 1920s when film learned to talk, stories were often taken from stage plays and filmed as such. In the 1930s, novels, being published in greater numbers than ever before, and Yellow Journalism dominated the filmed story. In the 1940s news and propaganda about the war filled the screen, the `50s & `60s saw New Wave cinema, bold and adventurous story telling. The 1970s inaugurated the Independent Movement artists breaking down the traditionally studio controlled distribution systems and finding new outlets with TV, the beginnings of Cable and the Video Cassette. The ‘80s & `90s were generally repeats and sequels with some technical innovation in sound and computerized assisted camera. We had more sequels in the first decade of the 21st Century and new technical innovations like mo-cap and CGI beginning to influence story telling for the first time. Animation entered 3-Dimensions and became an entirely new form. And now, the 21st century enters into Multi-Dimensions and Global story telling fusions. Cross-cultural. The Mahabharata influences Lucas and others. The Bible's treasured "7 Stories" are enriched with interpretations and story forms from other "Holy Books".

Eleventh Century Rumi becomes the largest selling poet in modern times, on a Global basis. Hollywood is no longer the center of the universe. And we no longer have to imitate books, magazines, newspapers. Creating digital motion pictures allows us to use fewer words and more images; the clarion call in past writing courses has always been Show! Don’t tell. Now, every well produced story will begin to earn and reach the diverse audience it deserves, without thought as to length, language, or even style. Digital delivery side steps the question of how digital media is produced and places zero limitation on format.

The “new tools” will reach the largest collaborative & positive group of DMedia responders in recorded history, 1.3 Billion on-line subscribers around the world. Already intelligent and informed by nature of being on-line, they know they have choice in the matter.

The web has evolved to a simple and inevitable nature of absolute access to absolutely everything. We must now learn to embrace the new platforms and delivery systems --creating outside the Box and pushing through the walls, without totally abandoning the old.

All things flow, nothing stays, the journey of each day begins with infinite possibility for the creator, the Artist.

- Omar Kaczmarczyk.

LONGTALE PERSPECTIVE

LongTale is moving the independent content popularization and monetization business (Motion Pictures in all forms) into the 21st century. This means two things, principally:

1.     Setting up to work into every possible “platform” of value for the IP Intellectual Property), and,
2.     Taking the risk out of the representation business - which implies lowering the cost.

Intellectual Property management is a multi-dimensional effort. There are various forms of sponsorship that are engaged prior to production (or even after in some cases). There are various forms of exhibition - some say four screens. There's all manner of creatively finding the audience where they sit (or lay or stand, for that matter): service deals, promotional give-aways (a misnomer - there's actually income there), direct sales to an established customer base, as well just good old fashioned license sales. It begins with an informed plan that is regularly updated. It is implemented through a capable network of specialists. Regardless of how it is done, it begins and ends with marketing.

3.      
These days, for the independent distributor, a marketing venue of immense size and power is immediately accessible - it is the internet. It's a big place and it must be addressed with a plan,  skills, and capabilities. What's more, compared to P&A financing, new media can be inexpensive by orders of magnitude, if done well. To put it simply, new media promotion is where it's at. Every content producer, must, absolutely must, build the foundation of personal branding, content branding, and social positioning in order to succeed.

4.     To take the risk out of the representation, two disciplines are necessary, volume and efficiency. 

The Motion Picture  industry has shifted from a model of limited supply with narrow exhibition options in which exclusive access was the key to success, to one of over-supply and multiple exhibition windows in which multiple competencies are the key to success. As a result, the traditional trade is not paying up-front money at anywhere near the levels it did at one time. This means only a very few independent content projects have hope of ever recovering production costs by accessing the traditional trade. Representatives, on the other hand, until recently could survive making bets on selective content choices, pumping money into markets and trade promotion, and relying upon enough bets paying off to stay in business. No more. Ironically, at the same time, more people are watching more content through more means than ever before and the numbers and options are growing. Because content will not earn it's meat by a few big deals in a single mode of transaction (i.e. film markets), but by many small deals – some genres at film markets, some in many other ways - the representation business must first and foremost become more efficient. In a world where a few big deals carried the day, efficiency didn't matter much. It was all about access - with enough access one would make enough money that operational efficiency beyond a very low threshold was insignificant. This is no longer true. Many specialists, knowledgeable of technologies, territories, content, and trends, must work very effectively for modest earnings. But these aggregated earnings will earn the production budget for clients and a profit for the representative - if only they are done at a high threshold of efficiency. This means two things: Internet based services to accomplish in an automated way what used to take a cadre of specialists to accomplish and, a reduction of transaction costs by collapsing the number of intermediaries involved in moving content into exhibition. By setting up those automated services, and establishing the network of specialists, the representative then becomes not only capable of handling greater volume, but, given the expected margins, it becomes necessary to engage higher volume.
Put these two together: 1) informed content monetization planning, marketing execution, and ceaselessly searching for income opportunities for not only the content but its underlying intellectual property rights; and, 2) efficiency and volume in representation. Now you have Intellectual Property Management, the approach to independent content management designed by LongTale, and the right approach for the 21st century. There is one other factor to observe in this powerful combination - mitigation of risk for producers and for the representative, or better put, Intellectual Property Manager. Producers can be sure that their content will get the full potential exploitation of monetization opportunity. Their risk will not and cannot be removed - they must create something that people want to watch. Being assured that the content will be presented to the audience, a producer's risk lies in quality of the content - where it should be. For the IP Manager risk is substantially eliminated. Any competently produced content will be handled in a way that reduces market risk to close to nil, and assures appropriate expense assignment. With volume, efficiency, and effective marketing, power in the distribution channel will accrue to the IP manager and exposure will be assured. Now, the intrinsic unknown of entertainment content value will be averaged over a very wide base.

This is the foundation of LongTale’s 21st Century planning.  We have our history and both feet planted in the traditional brick and mortar business, knowing full well that as all things flow, nothing stays.  For the first time in the history of mankind we can instantly reach over 1.3 billion people around the globe, in their language, and market B 2 B AND B 2 C on a scale never before known. It only gets better.   

- Omar Kaczmarczyk.