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    Producers Day 2010, Friday 12 November 2010

    14th International Short Film Festival Winterthur

    Transcript of Symposium The Short Film on theInternet14:00 to 17:45: Symposium The Short Film on the Internet(Spenglerei Winterthur, Grtnerstrasse 18, 8400 Winterthur) in German,French and English

    How can I exploit the Internet for my short?

    From festival submissions and promotion to sales: the Internet hasbecome unavoidable. The representatives of the three largest onlinesubmission platforms, video-on-demand platforms and experiencedInternet promoters will present their sales and marketing strategies andanswer questions from the audience.

    14:00 to 15:00: Online platforms for festival submissions

    Laurent Crouzeix (ShortFilmDepot, Clermont-Ferrand), Tilman Scheel(reelport, Cologne) Christian Gaines (Withoutabox, IMDb, Los Angeles)

    15:30 to 17:30: From video on demand to free film promotion

    Elena Boggio (MEDIA Programme, Brussels), Frederik Stege (Trust Nordisk,Copenhagen) Krystian Miruchna (Jakun Media, Hamburg), Patrick Jean(director of Pixels, Paris), Mlanie Bosshart (Creative CommonsSwitzerland, Zurich) Mathias Vettiger (Blogwerk, Zurich)

    Moderator: Simon Koenig, SWISS FILMS

    Welcome and introduction by Simon Koenig, head of short filmsdepartment at SWISS FILMS, the promotion agency for Swissfilmmaking.

    This event is defined by the question how can I exploit the Internet for myshort? In the next four hours, we want to take a look at the opportunitiesthat the Internet offers for sales and distribution, while also discussing thepossibilities of free promotion.

    It is a good moment in time to discuss this topic. The Internet is starting tomature, and it has become an indispensable part of our professional andprivate lives. But it is still being used unequally to promote shorts andfeatures. After the initial euphoria came a period of scepticism as you all

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    know, the famous bubble that burst at the beginning of the millennium leftmany people disillusioned, and the euphoria about the possibilities of theWorld Wide Web became strongly deflated. Ten years later, there arenonetheless some highly successful companies that make money fromshowing films on the Internet. But we have still not reached the point that

    we hoped to reach a decade ago. I made a small, non-representativesurvey among my work colleagues and other festival organisers, to seehow they use the Internet to watch films. The results were sobering: over70% of the people I asked first look on YouTube if they are looking forsomething specific, and not on one of the many specialised sites. And nomore than two interviewees have actually paid to watch a film online.

    The aim of todays symposium is to let all of you go home with some newknowledge under your belt, to let you discuss sales and distributionopportunities and to thereby give you a basis to make future decisionsabout how to use the Internet for your short film. I would also like toencourage you all to ask questions.

    We have invited 9 international speakers to pass on their know-how and topresent the essence of their activities with a few concrete examples inshort presentations lasting about 8 minutes each. I would at this point liketo thank all the speakers who have taken the time to make themselvesavailable for this event. Our thanks also go to FOCAL, the foundation forprofessional training in cinema and audiovisual media, who are theinitiators of the producers day together with the festival, as well as to oursupporters Swiss Films, the Federal Office of Culture and MEDIA.

    Online platforms for festival submissions

    The three speakers that were invited for the first part of the symposiumrepresent the three most important online platforms for festivalsubmissions. The three platforms have managed to become establishedplayers, and the festival circuit would not be the same without them.

    Laurent Crouzeix:

    www.shortfilmdepot.com

    Hello and thank you for coming. Many thanks, also, for inviting me and fororganising this event. I work for the team that organises the short filmfestival in Clermont-Ferrand, where I among other things programme theinternational competition. In addition, I work for the online platformShortFilmDepot, where I am in charge of relations with festivalorganisers. I would like to talk to you about our motivations and ourconcept. ShortFilmDepot works in a very simple way: its a website thatallows filmmakers to submit their film to about 30 festivals with very little

    effort. The festivals, on the other hand, use the site to select possible filmsfor their programme. The site can be viewed in five different languagesand was created in 2004. One thing should be emphasised: we are not a

    http://www.shortfilmdepot.com/http://www.shortfilmdepot.com/
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    player trying to position itself in a market. Instead, we see ourselves as amediator who tries to simplify the contact between filmmakers and theiraudiences. In this sense, we are also endorsing the philosophy of thefestival Clermont-Ferrand. The site has nothing else to offer. Its solepurpose is to give filmmakers an easy way to offer their works to festivals

    and other takers much like a video library, as you have them here inWinterthur, in Brussels or in Venice. Today, we have a pool containing21,000 films.

    The establishment of our website went hand-in-hand with two phenomena.First of all, many film festivals saw a strong increase in the number ofsubmissions (among other things because they started accepting thevarious new video formats). Secondly, festivals are becoming morenumerous all over the planet, and are being perceived more strongly,among other things thanks to the Internet. This meant that traditionalsubmissions procedures had to be reassessed. Our platform offersfilmmakers the opportunity to distribute their film in a time- and cost-saving way. In addition, we wanted to chart the various festivals andthereby give the many young filmmakers who submit their films to us afirst point of contact with the festival circuit. The numerous festivals alsohave different profiles. There are regional and international festivals,open-air events and festivals that are committed to traditional films. Thereare different subjects and different genres.By using our platform, festivals have an opportunity to become a part of alarger network. This is why we dont do much advertising. If we areapproached by festival organisers, we first try to evaluate their needs and

    their capacities. We look at how many films they screen, how the festivalworks, and how it is organised. We want to see if collaboration makessense.To give you an idea of the activities of the website, I want to present somefigures. The number of participating festivals is growing constantly. In theyear 2009, 15,000 films were uploaded onto the site. In total, 69,000submissions were made to various festivals.At the moment, 30 per cent of the films are uploaded onto the page as avideo file. That is already quite substantial. If the trend continues, it ispossible that we will see the number increase to 60 per cent already bynext year.

    Apart from us, there are numerous other services in different countries. Itis a field that is growing rapidly the Internet is expanding fast. But wealso have to be conscious of the fact that the activities are not yetsynchronised enough. It also has to be said that there is not just oneworking model. On the contrary: there are numerous models in operation,which also complement each other.

    Tilman Scheel:www.reelport.com

    Thanks to the fact that Laurent came before me, I can abridge mypresentation. We basically do exactly the same. In other words, I wouldput my name to everything that Laurent has presented, and want to focus

    http://www.reelport.com/http://www.reelport.com/
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    on the things that we do a bit differently, and the things we possibly canoffer in addition. Reelport is thus also a platform where you can enter yourfilms metadata and submit it to over sixty film festivals, includingOberhausen, Tampere but also the Shortfilmcorner in Cannes, which ispurely a film market. We span from Ecuador to Korea.

    The biggest difference so far between ShortFilmDepot and us was the factthat we made a point right from the start that films should not besubmitted as DVDs but uploaded as digital files. In the meantime, we havereached a total of 7000 to 8000 uploads per year, which are submitted tothese festivals. This not only has the advantage that the festivals receivefar less or even zero DVDs it also means that programmers of otherfestivals can access this pool and preview the films beforehand as longas the rights owner of the film agrees.We dont only specialise in submissions but also in online previewing ofthe films by the programmers of the festivals. The result looks as follows:one programmer of a short film festival is in Sarajevo, anotherprogrammer is in New York. In this way, they can preview and exchangefilms online instead of having to send DVDs across continents. In otherwords: by this point we have specialised entirely on doing these activitiesonline.What we have also done apart from processing submissions via ourplatform is embedding the technology we have developed for this platformin other websites, for instance for the Shortfilmcorner in Cannes. We arenow expanding this approach.I guess that for all of us, the journey will lead to the creation of a short filmpool, where all the short films that are submitted to the festival circuit are

    available to the festivals.But we dont just specialise on short films. In a few weeks we will be doingthe same for the feature film market in Tallinn. We are servicing anotherfeature film market in Buenos Aires. The aim is the same: to sparefestivals the cumbersome management of DVDs and to give themworldwide access to submissions. But also, and this is very important tous, to give filmmakers a service that allows them to really submit the filmjust once and to let them send the film to various festivals and markets,without having to do the same work all over again and all of this onlineand digitally.Our discussions with festivals have revealed an increasingly large

    problem, namely that its not just about handling submitted DVDs. If a filmhas been selected, the screening formats also become an issue. There is atrue mishmash of formats, from Blueray to Beta, DigiBeta, 35mm, 16mmand even Super8. There are a ludicrous number of formats but festivalsoften have limited resources when it comes to screening these formats.We see the DVD-part (preview copies) as settled. But in future, evenscreening copies should be digitised and made available to festivals. Weare now a member of a syndicate of Scandinavian film festivals that has asits declared aim the possibility of becoming a collection point for screeningcopies, which are subsequently converted into two standard formats. Ibelieve that this also fits in well with all the developments within digitalcinema. In 5 years, we might end up having one format, a high-resolutionscreening format, which can act as the basis for further formats,depending on the use.

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    Christian Gaines:www.withoutabox.com

    Thanks for having me. I work for the company called Withoutabox. Weare a film festival submissions platform, just like reelport andShortFilmDepot. We have been around since the year 2000. We startedaccepting our first submissions in 2002. The primary signature productinnovation of the company is the international film submissions system.Like the other two companies, we accept films not just shorts, but alsofeature films, documentaries, whatever on our system and make surethat film festivals around the world receive them quickly, easily andefficiently. In 2008 we were bought by imdb.com, which is a subsidiary ofamazon.com.One of the things about Withoutabox is that it really does have a globalreach. 45% of new filmmakers joining in 2009 were from outside theUnited States. So even though its a US company, its growingconsiderably internationally, in part because our festival partners aregrowing considerably around the world. We now have 900 film festivalsthat are on the system. We have about 300,000 filmmakers that use it.And this number is growing at a rate of about 4000 to 6000 filmmakers amonth, who are signing up to submit their films to festivals around theworld. We estimate that in 2010, about 45% of the filmmakers onWithoutabox will be non-English-speaking. And pretty much every countryin the world (about 200 countries) is represented on the system, and we

    are translated into four different languages, including English, French,Spanish and German.In the following screenshots, you can see how as a filmmaker you can login; you have all kinds of ways to look at festivals and to decide whatfestival is right for you. You can search in all kinds of different ways, e.g.for genre festivals, regionally, according to deadlines etc. Its supposed tobe a resource for you: every day that you log in you can see whatscoming up, you can look at different festivals, get descriptions of them andfind out what they are looking for and if the festival is right for you. Andjust as importantly: you can find out if a festival is not right for you,because youre not eligible to submit to it.

    We also recently (much more recently than reelport) developed a secureonline screener system: in addition to being able to submit films via DVD,you can also submit online. We dont work with downloading, but actuallyhave a screening function, where you upload your film once (be it a shortor a feature film) using IMDbs upload tool (this is hidden on the system,so even though youre using IMDbs upload tool, its not actuallypublishing on your IMDb page, unless you ask it to). Then you stage it outto individual film festivals, and in turn the festivals can stage those filmsout using a proprietary unique user name and password to individualjudges around their region, around the world, or whatever they want to do.Its an economical way to submit a film: you are not sending any DVDsaround. Its much more secure if youre concerned about piracy or aboutpeople grabbing your films and putting them on the Internet themselves,this is a great way to be able to submit films. You can upload the film in

    http://www.withoutabox.com/http://www.withoutabox.com/
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    the quality that its viewed, and then select online previewing as anoption, so any festival that accepts secure online screeners on our systemcan see the film (the number of festivals doing so is growing all the time).After upload, the film is securely hosted by IMDb. Obviously, access to thefilm is restricted to the festival that youre submitting to. This service is

    growing very quickly.We are working with all kinds of film festivals around the world. Imentioned earlier that we have about 900 festivals on the system,including Toronto, Melbourne, Sundance, Hong Kong, Edinburgh, SanFrancisco and Vancouver. Zurich started using the system recently andthey use it because it enhances and complements their existing system.One of the things that we always try to explain to people is that were nottrying to come in and rip out your server and change the way youve beenaccepting submissions and conducting your review and submissionsprocess. We either want to be your entire workflow solution frombeginning to end, if thats what youre looking for, or we are happy toenhance the way you currently run your submissions and programmingprocess.And its really quite simple: just like a filmmaker goes into the systemonce and puts in all the information once, including the press kit andmetadata etc., a film festival can also go and put all the information aboutit once onto an account, and can then post a link on its submissions pageon its website. So in effect there are two ways a filmmaker can discoverWithoutabox, either by going to a festivals website or by going towithoutabox.com itself.We also provide customer service for filmmakers. If a filmmaker has a

    question about the service, e.g. if its not working properly or if they areconfused, we have a filmmaker support site and we also have a filmfestival customer support site.Withoutabox is fairly customisable, so pretty much every question afestival might have that they want to know about a filmmaker can beadded to the system, and they integrate it into their existing workflow.Also, they are living submissions, which means that a filmmaker doesntjust go in and put in their submissions once and then its locked. Iffilmmakers want to add something to the credits, or more photos for theonline press kit, they can constantly go back to the account and update it so its a constantly living submissions form.

    The website integration is easy: all a film festival has to do is create anaccount online and then add a link to its submissions page.We became a part of IMDb in 2008. IMDb is the 20th most traffickedwebsite on the planet, it has 57m monthly visitors, there are 2bn pageviews a week it is an enormous website where people go to getinformation, and not just to settle bar bets It was originally established20 years ago, actually pre-web! It was established as a fan consumer sitefor films and television. It has since become much more heavily relied onby the professional industry as well.Its important to know that when filmmakers submit to a festival, they areusing the Withoutabox submissions system, and when the festivalacknowledges receipt of that submission, the filmmaker is automaticallysent a message from IMDb asking if an IMDb title page should be created,allowing the filmmaker to decide at that point to opt in or opt out from

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    IMDb and becoming a trusted user on IMDb. So a festivals confirmation ofhaving received a complete submission makes you eligible to have anIMDb page. In other words: its a big deal, and its one of the reasons whyIMDb bought the company, as IMDb strives to be authoritative, thorough,complete and accurate, and this is one of the best ways to do this.

    Similarly, IMDb is also owned by Amazon, and there are all kinds of waysfor filmmakers to continue along the pipeline: once theyre on IMDb, theycan utilise the resources of another company called Createspace, apublishing on demand service, which allows filmmakers to publish theirfilms online and to ingest a film and all the metadata to set up a storefronton the Internet. Depending on how robust your fans, friends and followersare you can sell your film unit by unit, either by DVD on demand (which iswhere you publish a single DVD based on customer demand) or using thevideo-on-demand services of Amazon itself.And thats basically it. IMDb has changed a lot in the past year or so.There has been a massive redesign of the site, there is a ton of socialnetworking functionality on the page now, and there are all kinds of waysto upload photos, trailers, clips and even the preview of the film. And ifsomebody were to search for your name or the title of your film in Google,the top number one search result would probably be an IMDb page. So itreally helps you if you make sure that your IMDb page is as dressed up asit can possibly be, because thats ultimately where people who are lookingfor you and learning about you as an artist are going to go first.

    Discussion:Simon Koenig: There are three platforms, which basically offer the same

    thing. Why do we need three different business models?

    Tilman Scheel: First of all I think its a great thing to have competition,because it pushes everybody to get better. The second point is:ShortFilmDepot and reelport are running on the same business model,while the model of Withoutabox is slightly different, in that Withoutaboxalso collects the submission fee for the festivals. As we tend to focus onEurope, and European film festivals tend to not have a submission fee, thisis not part of our business model.

    Christian Gaines: Just to be clear: we have festivals on our system that

    both accept submission fees and dont accept submission fees. If thefestival doesnt accept a submission fee, we dont collect any money fromthe filmmaker, and if the festival charges 50 dollars to submit, we collect50 dollars from the filmmaker, so we are not charging fees to thefilmmaker.

    Tilman Scheel: Probably we are all three moving in the same direction;its just that were coming from different ends. You come from the US; westarted as a project for Oberhausen to tackle the problem of receiving6000 VHS submissions. ShortFilmDepot started out as a metadatasubmissions platform and has now moved on to offering uploads, sobasically we have come from different ends, but we are moving in thesame direction.

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    Laurent Crouzeix: I think it looks very similar, but its not exactly thesame. Reelport has its specificity with the online catalogue, for instance,which is something that we will not do, as we have to be neutral asorganisers of a market and a festival. Our role is to create a space wherefilmmakers can thrive, and not to become actors ourselves in this

    economy. We were approached by Withoutabox for a long time, and itstrue that at the beginning it wasnt interesting for us to be on such aplatform because it was mainly servicing American festivals with entryfees, whereas the norm in most of the rest of the world was not to apply aregistration fee. So this didnt work for us, but of course the idea was goodand we found inspiration in it. We contributed to reelport as well we werea part of the first pilot project together with Oberhausen and three otherfestivals. We also co-created the French short film portal Le Court Point,which also has its own submissions platform, which is managed by theFrench short film agency. So there are connections and similarities, but atthe same time there are something like 4000 film festivals around theworld, and not just one, and these festivals belong to different realities. Ipersonally dont feel that ShortFilmDepot is a competitor to any other site,but I think its good that there is mutual stimulation to make things better.

    Christian Gaines: I love film and I love technology, and I love the factthat there are people who are innovating constantly, making the liveseasier for filmmakers and film festivals. If there are more businesseslooking at this not just submissions but other kinds of technologies likescheduling thats just great! I would rather see more companies then atleast my mum would understand what Im doing for a living.

    Guest: How are the submission fees handled?

    Tilman Scheel: We dont take a submission fee. We take a 2 Eurotransmission fee, which is less than producing a DVD and putting a stampon a letter. This is basically to pay the service. This is very different to asubmission fee, which is an entry fee to a festival. Its like a digital postagestamp.

    Guest: But short filmmakers are definitely the weakest link in the process,why should it be them that have to pay the fee?

    Tilman Scheel: If you look around short film festivals, I dont think theyfeel that they have much money either. I feel that the fee is justified, asthe service immediately benefits the filmmaker: the cost is less thancreating, packaging and posting a DVD, and the submissions workload issubstantially reduced. For festivals, the payoff is less immediate, as theyoften have to run two workflows side by side (DVD submissions anduploads), which often means more work, and not less. So the benefit isdefinitely most felt by the filmmaker.

    Laurent Crouzeix: Weve always been a strong advocate of the fact thatthe short film world doesnt have much money and needs support,including political support and policies to sustain the activity. But we dontlive in a world where DHL or the post office will work for free for short

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    filmmakers. So we have to take this into account as well. Many festivalsdepend a lot on voluntary work. Even Clermont-Ferrand, which is backedby one of the biggest short film organisations in Europe, also relies on thehelp of 300 volunteers to get the festival running. So there is some sensein this.

    Its not just that we want to get rid of DVDs its not something we wantto impose. But its just the way things are moving. A few years back manyproducers were very cautious. They felt that somehow, if they send a fileinstead of a DVD, something wrong may happen it might instantly comeup on YouTube. There were also a lot of discussions at the time aboutpiracy and how it killed the music business and was also going to killcinema. It has not killed the short film scene and short film projection, asyou can see. It has not killed any festival either I dont know of anyfestival that has closed down because everyone was watching videos onthe Internet. Quite the opposite is the case: it enforces the status andvisibility of a festival, so it can be a great tool. And from the rights-ownerspoint of view uploading is more reliable we have tonnes of DVDs thatarrive scratched, broken or blank or that do not arrive at all. In mostcases, a digital file just works when it starts, it will also play until theend.To come back to the business model question about how we can financeour activities: its true that ShortFilmDepot has been free of charge so far.Its only been about sending an online form there was not much tocharge for. The system has been sustained by the fee paid by festivals. Asfar as the future is concerned, its a bit too early for me to say,unfortunately, so I can not disclose a scoop for you but one of the things

    we are considering is that maybe there will be a small charge to be able totransmit the files, and that the filmmaker will have to contribute. Butagain, if we can keep it free, we will.

    Guest (Laura Zimmermann, ZHdK, Zurich University of the Arts,film department):How are the two business models financed? In the end of the day, you alsohave to pay salaries, and not just the technology. The second question Ihave is: is the technological threshold not too high for everyone to be ableto take part? Is there not a level of pre-selection taking place by focusingon high-level technology?

    Christian Gaines: Youd be surprised that one of the ways thatfilmmakers learn about film festivals in nascent film industries is on theInternet. Its true that the Internet is very widely available to people even people in third-world nations. The people on our system are from allover the world, including very surprising places. And they are coming toWithoutabox to learn about the film festival community. And its really oneof the only places that they can do this. So even if they dont havewireless or whatever, the chances are that somewhere in their communitythey have Internet access.

    Tilman Scheel: In terms of the technology: you can run into problems inParis that you dont run into in Sudan. This is dependent on manyvariables, not just how developed a nation is. To upload a film, you dont

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    need high-end technological equipment. All you need is a fast Internetconnection. To answer the business model question: the film festivals pay,just as much as the filmmakers. Our third source of income is the filmmarkets that we organise, such as in Tampere and other locations.

    Laurent Crouzeix: On the one hand we generate funds through the feespaid by the member festivals. But there are also members of the team ofthe Clermont-Ferrand festival who work for us, as this tool is also used forthe festival and enriches the festival thanks to exchanges etc. so this iswhy a big part of the staff costs are paid for by the festival. But its alsodifficult to tell what share of the work is done for the festival, and what isdone for ShortFilmDepot, as its a big part of our work

    Christian Gaines: We take a commission per submission from the filmfestival itself. If its a no-entry film festival, we just dont bother. But wehave volume: we had 255,000 submissions through our system last year,so were doing just fine.

    Break

    From video on demand (VOD) to free film promotion

    Simon Koenig: Frederik Stege will introduce the second part of this

    symposium. Frederik and his Copenhagen-based world sales agency TrustNordisk were one of the first to sell film licenses to Internet-providers.

    Frederik Stege:www.trustnordisk.com

    Thank you for having me here. Im from the Danish-based sales companyTrust Nordisk. We represent the producers rights internationally, so wegive a license to national distributors around the world, and we handle allthe contracts, collect the money, deliver the materials etc. We have about

    550 films in our catalogue, which include some of our most acclaimeddirectors such as Lars von Trier and Susanne Bier. On top of that we alsohave a limited amount of short films. Feature films are our speciality, butwe do have a few shorts.Today I want to talk about our experience with video on demanddistribution. What we have seen in the most recent years for arthouse andindependent filmmaking is that its becoming more and more difficult tolicense out films, especially arthouse films, for international sales andinternational distribution. The minimum guarantees are declining, and weare experiencing fewer and fewer sales for each film. In the past it was

    quite easy to sell a film to 20 or 30 countries around the world, maybeeven 50 countries for a Lars von Trier film. This is becoming more andmore difficult, as revenues from DVDs are declining, TV sales are

    http://www.trustnordisk.com/http://www.trustnordisk.com/
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    declining, and many countries are seeing declining figures for theatricalexploitation. This makes it more difficult for a national distributor to pay abig minimum guarantee to buy the rights for its territory.This is a very big threat for a sales company like ours. What we thereforestarted doing about four years ago is we increased our focus on video on

    demand. In our minds, this is a market that is growing substantially andthat will make a lot of money for sales companies like ours in a few yearstime.The advantages of VOD from the perspective of an international salesagent is firstly that compared to theatrical distribution the distributioncosts are reduced substantially. All you have to do for VOD is deliver a filethat is ready to be executed on a specific VOD service. If you have asmany titles as we have, you need an easy way to distribute those films.From our perspective, and also from a producers perspective, therevenues that are connected with VOD distribution are a lot moreinteresting than compared to DVD distribution, as the percentage that youget from the end-user is 3 to 4 times higher compared to a DVD sale. Youcan get up to 70% of what consumers pay as a producer or as a salesagent. In that sense, VOD is a very interesting market.What weve seen over the past four years is that the revenues comingfrom VOD have been growing substantially. As I indicated, we dont haveso many short films in our catalogue, but we do have a few, such as Larsvon Triers Occupations that was screened in Cannes a few years ago,which we screened in the Internet environment called The Second Life.This was quite interesting and created a bit of a buzz.Another film we had some luck distributing digitally was the film Dennis,

    which was screened on YouTubes Screening Room. You can actually earnsome money screening a film on YouTube on Screening Room youlicense a film to YouTube for a limited time period, and they pay you anup-front fee and after that you also get paid according to the number ofusers who have seen the film. 1.7mn people actually clicked on the film.What our limited experience with short content shows us is that its quitedifficult to sell it on a pay-per-view basis (e.g. 2$ for a rent or a download).The business model that we see prevailing for short film content is thesubscription VOD service, where a service provider has both short andfeature film content, but you dont pay per view but you pay for subscriberaccess. Another model is advertising VOD, where ads are screening

    before, during and after the film, and the producer gets a chunk of therevenues from these ads. Thats a model we see prevailing for shortcontent.

    Simon Koenig: Our next speaker is Krystian Miruchna. His company iscalled Jakun Media, which is specialised in selling and licensing so-calledcontent to Internet platforms.

    Krystian Miruchna:www.jakun-media.de

    Hello, and thanks for inviting me. Our company Jakun Media wasestablished in 2008 in Hamburg, and we have moved to Berlin in the

    http://www.jakun-media.de/http://www.jakun-media.de/
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    meantime. Our activities can be divided into two areas: we work ascontent aggregators or content scouts for Internet portals, such asDeutsche Telekom or Vivendi Mobile Entertainment. If they are looking forcertain types of content for their portals, they contact us and we startsearching our network for films that are specifically suitable for our clients.

    We are constantly being contacted by new platforms that are on thelookout for new content, including features, documentaries, shorts, clipsand even music videos. There is currently a high demand for content onthe Internet, as everybody is keen to offer audiovisual content. We arealso approaching classical producers with specific web ideas and ask themif they could imagine producing certain contents for the web. We thenoffer these projects together to Internet platforms.

    Apart from our activities as a content scout and aggregator, we also workfor rights owners and producers as a kind of distribution company that hasspecialised exclusively on digital platforms. At the moment, we areworking mostly with German-speaking platforms. We talk to the rightsowners about what the best lines of distribution are for their content, withthe aim of maximising revenues.In regards to shorts: we dont actually license any single short filmsourselves, but we work together with short film sales agencies, e.g. theKurzFilmAgentur Hamburg, where we also work as consultants. Licensingindividual shorts is highly unattractive for the platforms, as it is already amajor effort to draft a contract. Most portals dont want to get involvedwith this.

    For this reason I would recommend taking an individual short film to asuitable sales agency that covers all markets, including TV, cinema and, ofcourse, Internet exploitation.

    To give you an example of a short: Our Wonderful Nature, a 3Danimation by Tomer Eshed, was ported on 3min.de and gathered about30,000 views, while on YouTube it had 300,000 views and 2,000 views onother platforms. With short films, it is often the case that films arescattered across many platforms, but that this hasnt been or couldnt becentrally monitored by a company or producer. The directors, producers orother rights owners send their films to countless festivals, and some

    festivals include Internet exploitation rights as a part of their submissionregulations. But we dont recommend this. Its worth distributingexploitation rights vigilantly, or you might end up having your film beingexploited by various rights owners, but without any money finally flowingto the producer at all.

    There are a few types of exploitation on the Internet, and I will brieflysketch out a few of them here:

    A-VOD (advertised VOD): as a rights owner you have the chance to get acut of the advertising revenues made from advertising (banners and pre-rolls). Only by placing films on the platform alone, it is hard to generatehigh revenues. By endorsing systematic strategies, such as socialmarketing, you can increase the click rates and thus the revenues.

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    T-VOD (transactional VOD): the end-user pays a fee per viewing of thefilm.

    We have noticed that short films are successful under S-VOD schemes

    (subscription VOD), where users pay a fixed amount to watch every film ina subscription catalogue. In this sense, a user doesnt directly realise thathe is also paying money for a short film. But the question always remains:am I willing to pay 1.90 for a single short or not?

    Simon Koenig: Can you give us a few specific numbers and give thefilmmakers and producers present an example of a short film that was soldsuccessfully over the Internet.

    Krystian Miruchna: Its always difficult to talk about revenues madefrom individual shorts, as we always deal with short film packages. Butone can generally say that if one approaches different avenues when onetries to exploit a short film, one can expect a high three-figure sum inrevenues each year. Of course, sometimes this can go into four figures Iam talking about the German-speaking market here. But it is reallydifficult to give you a blanket answer. This is why I would recommend eachrights owner to devise a small strategy for their short film andsubsequently carry it out with their partner.

    Simon Koenig: Our next speaker is Elena Boggio from the MEDIA

    programme, who will give us an overview of the projects and VOD-platforms financed by MEDIA, with a view to telling us which existingmodels work better and which ones dont work as well.

    Elena Boggio: I want to talk about the development of VOD, and then Illmention the objectives of the VOD scheme with MEDIA and also theeligibility criteria and the award criteria. Ill then go on to give a fewexamples of VOD that we have funded and will maybe talk a bit aboutsome of the business models that have worked, and about some of thelessons that were learned.At the beginning technology was available but the market was very slow.

    Then there was pressure from member states to introduce and to launch aVOD scheme. The first call for proposals was in 2007 under the MEDIA2007 programme. The initial results of VOD sales were weak even thoughthere were hits and visitors to the sites. What was seen was that it waspossible to develop VOD sites at a relatively low cost, but there were manybarriers such as obtaining rights and the lack of know-how, including legalknowledge, and customer management, as there wasnt much experiencein the field. So we realised quickly that it was important to have a strongbusiness model and a content-filled catalogue. We also saw that IP-TVworks better for feature films, while documentaries work better online. Butthere is definitely fierce competition. Another barrier was digital rightsmanagement, where there were some technical problems, and where itwas sometimes seen to be expensive. So, overall, VOD was difficult andslow to monetise and it was not always easy to reach the right audience.

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    Basically, there is no perfect business model. It all depends on what typeof content you have.In terms of the eligibility criteria: we have a call for proposals every year.The next one for VOD will be launched around March 2011. In order toapply you have to be an eligible organisation from an eligible country,

    which is specified in the guidelines. Eligible activities are VOD and digitalcinema distribution. Your catalogue must have a minimum Europeandimension. What we mean here is that the movies should come from 5European countries and have at least five EU languages. When it comes toeligible content, we ask for core content to be at least 60% (100% forDCD). By core content we mean features, documentaries, shorts. Forevaluating proposals we have external evaluators who come in and do theevaluations, and they look at all of these aspects, including the catalogueand the editorial line. They also look at the European dimension of thecatalogue and the business model, but also the budget and how realistic itis, as well as the marketing strategy. They will also look at innovativeaspects including technology and partnerships, and networking is alsovery important. They also look at the target audience and the potentialimpact.There is a long list of supported projects, but I will only look at a couple inmore detail. For example, there is a platform called www.daazo.com,which is a web platform that contains a collection of professional award-winning short films. They work very much on their online community, sofilmmakers can upload their films and they work with festivals both onlineand offline. In terms of business model and revenue streams, they havethings like sponsorships from film festivals, companies and cultural

    institutes. They also have targeted advertising, banners and flash-ads; andthey also have a distribution revenue share, which means that if producersor distributors want to contact a filmmaker, they go via daazo, and theyget a small fee for that.Another platform I want to mention is medici.tv that was launched in April2008 and has now become the largest online library of classical musicprogrammes and documentaries. They have a very targeted market andaudience, and now have customers in 200 countries. Their business modelis built around the strength in their online streaming and broadcasts of liveconcerts, which are usually free, for example the Verbier classical musicfestival. The offer is worldwide, and it is a strong niche market, so they

    have very few competitors. They have subscription VOD with differentoptions, so you can have monthly or even yearly subscriptions, and theyalso have sponsorship. Their latest sponsor is Rolex.The third example is shorts.tv, which is run by a company called KiwiMedia. They work with mobile network operators. They have developedapplications that allow you to watch shorts on your mobile device. Theyalso have partnerships with content owners, operators, festivals andtechnology suppliers.Now Ill try and present the lessons we learned from the examples that wehave. In terms of business models, we see that there is no one-size-fits-allsolution. We have different VOD projects that we support in differentfields, so there is no perfect business model, and there has been quite awide divergence in the VOD market in Europe. Often you have a verypositive early response, but the actual conversion rate of visitors, i.e. the

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    sales, has been quite low. Business models that rely solely on the sales oftheir VOD are usually not viable, but what usually works is having a long-term business plan and capital in reserves to help build a marketing andbrand-building strategy.If you can get to the IP-TV set-top box, that works much better. But its

    very difficult to get. Regarding targeted audience, one example we have isa company where the targeted audience evolved, and they now have aChinese platform. So being flexible is also important.Search-engine optimisation tools are also important, i.e. knowing youraudience. A lot of companies didnt know how their customers werefinding them. Other important factors are the content itself and theregular updating of the content, branding and social media (includingFacebook and Twitter, that help you work on your community). Andfinally, another important aspect is finding different revenue streams sothat you dont have to rely solely on VOD, including sponsorship andadvertising, and online and offline events.As regards shorts, they often have to be adapted to be on the Internet, buttargeting them at mobile devices is something that does work for shorts.To conclude: the future will definitely see VOD developing and thecompanies that we think will do best will be the ones who are able to beflexible and change their business plan if they have to according to howthings are going.

    Guest (Heinz Dill Louise Production): If I have a short film that I wantto present to the world: on which of these platforms should I put this film?The gentleman from Trust Nordisk said that you only accept short films in

    packages, and if I have only one film in the package, I have one tenth oftwo dollars or whatever is paid, of which 50% go to whoever, so effectivelythere is not much left I just want to know if there is another way, likedaazo or whatever. Can I send my film somewhere, pay a small fee forthat, and if I do my job well, people will go and see the film and pay.

    Elena Boggio: I cant speak for daazo, and the best thing would be tocontact them directly.

    Guest (Susann Wach): Elena Boggio, you said that MEDIA has beensuccessful in encouraging people to adopt this new field. In a way it

    sounds rather pessimistic: there are hardly any revenues, and you have totry to patchwork your revenues. But what does this mean for the future ofMEDIAs VOD support programme? Will you have to change your direction,or will there be any challenges to your activities?Elena Boggio: At the moment and for the next year, we are continuingwith the same guidelines and the same programme. Guidelines sometimeschange a bit. But in terms of the future, I dont know, and cant commenton any changes.

    Laurent Crouzeix: I have a question about the issue of exclusivity andnon-exclusivity. Krystian Miruchna might be in a good position to answerthis question, because he said that he was licensing films that werehandled by traditional distributors to several different platforms, so thatobviously means that the deals were not exclusive. But does this in any

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    way kill the chance to pursue traditional distribution channels that wouldrequest exclusivity to be able to get revenues from broadcasters? Or can itbe complementary to this? And how?

    Krystian Miruchna: According to our experiences, especially for shorts,

    you should not provide them exclusively to individual VOD platforms, asyou dont want to limit your visibility. If you pass on exclusive rights to aplatform and if it ends up not being requested, it ends up being archivedin their library. For shorts we have usually made the experience that youdont have any problems with TV stations if you separate the VOD rights.But this, of course, is different again for feature films.

    Short survey by Simon Koenig:Who of you has already placed a film on the Internet? And how many ofyou have earned money by doing so? Three of you

    Simon Koenig: We are going to have another short break and will showyou the short Pixels by Patrick Jean. This is a film that was promotedexclusively online and could be seen in its full length on the Internet.Within a short space of time, the film was a huge success with millions ofviews. Patrick will subsequently talk about how he promoted the film overthe Internet.

    Patrick Jean:We placed the film on dailymotion on 7 April 2010. We had the exclusiveopportunity that the film was placed on the home page of dailymotion.

    This helped us tremendously. In addition, the use of Facebook helpedmake the film known tremendously. People watched it directly there. In ashort period of time, we had one million views. This surprised ustremendously. In the end, the big production companies started contactingus. In this way, our lawyer could negotiate a contract with Columbia. Theinitial release on the Internet didnt harm its chances in terms of filmfestival participations at all. It still ended up being shown at about 50different festivals, and won numerous awards. I assume that a lot of youare interested in the money question. We hardly made any money on thefilm directly. But we did so indirectly. It definitely changed my life to acertain degree. I guess that it depends on the nature of the film if its best

    to premiere it on the Internet or at a festival. In the end, its a decision theproducer has to take. Im sorry not to be able to give any other advice.The Internet can generate a large audience, but the film can alsodisappear in the sea of available films. If I made a similar film, I wouldprobably place it on the Internet again.

    Simon Koenig: This brings us to the core of our topic. There is also thepossibility of placing a film directly on the Internet for free, and there aredifferent ways of doing this. We have invited a lawyer, Melanie Bosshartfrom Creative Commons, and she will give us a short introduction intowhat the opportunities are if you place a film on the Internet withoutcharging for it, and how you can license it.

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    Melanie Bosshart (Creative Commons):http://www.creativecommons.ch/

    Thank you for inviting me. We always see these events as a greatopportunity to present our licenses. I am a member of the Team Creative

    Commons. The Team CC is a part of Digitale Allmend, a Swissassociation that advocates the free access to knowledge and that took theSwiss lead about two years ago in creating Creative Commons licenses.Just to make sure that were all talking about the same thing, I want tointroduce some basics.Copyright protection basically applies to works of all kinds, includingimages, texts, songs, but also short films. Copyright gives the authormonopoly rights. In this way, the author can exclude third parties fromusing the work and can thereby also prevent them from earning money byselling or licensing it. But these advantages of copyright also entail someproblems.As a result of the contemporary remix culture, increasingly mashed-upcontents are becoming copyright issues. The problems are already presentin the production: what can an author use as a basis for a work, how dorights have to be managed, etc.? Problems can arise in the distributionacross global networks such as the Internet. The rapid technologicaldevelopments are accompanied by a very slow development of copyright.This leads to questionable developments such as digital rightsmanagement systems, so-called private protection regimes as well asstate-imposed protection extensions. As a result, copyright in this area canbe a very complicated topic for amateurs.

    This is where Creative Commons steps in. Just to make it clear: CC is not asubstitute for copyright, it builds upon it. It was developed by differentscientists in the United States. CC is a non-profit organisation in the UnitedStates and also an alternative licensing system. It does not replacecopyright, but is positioned between copyright and public domain. In otherwords, its not about all rights reserved, but some rights reserved. Theadvantages of CC are: it is globally homogenous, it is a simple modularsystem and it promotes the creation of derivative works.But its not just aimed at producers but also consumers, as it shouldclearly communicate what is allowed and what isnt. The aims aretransparency and legal certainty, as well as the establishment of a

    standard that is accepted worldwide and also endorsed by the courts.There have already been a number of court rulings based on CC, amongother places in Spain, Holland, Denmark and the United States. Thesecourts have accepted our licenses as license agreements. And we are alsoadjusting them according to national legal systems in order to optimisetheir applicability.I would now like to present the individual modules to you. CC provideslicense agreements. There are six different license agreements, which arearranged by conditions. There are four different conditions: the Attributioncondition, which allows a user to do with a work what he or she wants, buton the condition that there is attribution to the original author. But themoral rights may not be infringed, e.g. the work may not be disfigured.The Non-Commercial condition allows the work to be used, but not forcommercial purposes. Here it is often difficult to draw a clear line between

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    commercial and non-commercial usage. For example, is the use on anadvertising-financed blog already commercial or not?The No Derivative Works condition means that the work can bedisseminated but not altered. And the Share Alike condition can only bechosen if one uses the No Derivative Works condition. Share Alike simply

    means that one can change a work, but that one has to disseminate it withthe same license as the original work. Given the various combinations, thisgives us six different types of licenses.Google, for example, allows you to search for licenses in its advancedsearch options. The relevant films are then highlighted. Our licenses werelaunched in 2002. By 2008, no less than 140 million works were licensedwith CC.CC is used among other places on Flickr and Restorm. Since Obama cameinto office, all public government documentation has been CC-licensed.Training media and universities are also highly interested in us.

    Simon Koenig: Our next speaker is Matthias Vettiger. He works forBlogwerk Zurich and is a social media-marketing expert. He will show youa few possibilities how you can promote or fund a film on the Internet. Thepoint is always to not place a film behind a paywall, but to make themfreely available and to make sure there is a follow-up effect.

    Mathias Vettiger:www.blogwerk.com

    The question I want to find some preliminary answers for is: what can I do

    as a producer if I have a short film and want to market it myself. I want tocover three topics: first of all crowd funding, which is not huge in Europe,but larger in the US. Crowd funding allows you to ask people to donatesmaller or bigger amounts to fund your film. The second topic iscommunity building, and the third is distribution: what can I do todistribute my film if I want to make some money, or if I want to makemyself a little bit more known as a producer.There are several examples for crowd funding: The Age of Stupid, forexample, is a film that tried to acquire shareholders. They actually soldshares for their film, which cost between 500 Dollars and 35,000 Dollars,and they gave back some revenues to the shareholders after the film was

    produced. The Age of Stupid also organised some Indie screenings. Youcould apply for a screening of this film, where they named the price, andwhere you could subsequently keep all the money you made on thescreening of this film. Another well-known example is buy a credit. Theyalso produced a film, and you could buy a credit in the end-credits of thefilm. For 3,000 Dollars you could get a listing on IMDb as an executiveproducer, which is not a bad price. Then there are various platforms thatinstitutionalise crowd funding: for example, there is kickstarter.com, whichhas become famous, not only for films. There have been over 1000successfully funded film projects on kickstarter, which range from 1000Dollars to 350,000 Dollars. All of this was raised with kickstarter. This isnot a bad amount of money for a film that is only funded privately. Theaverage funding goal of projects on kickstarter is 60,000 Dollars. InEurope, a similar platform is starting up called startnext.de. It looks like

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    kickstarter and tries to be like kickstarter. Its still in its infancy, but thiscould be an interesting way to fund your film: instead of trying to get 3 or4 people to fund your film, you pitch your idea and get people to pledgemoney for it.The question is: when does this work? The answer is fairly trivial: you have

    to have an exceptional and special idea. The second answer is: when thecommunity gets something in return. I found a film called Sierra LeoneStars, a short film about a Sierra Leone soccer team that is made up ofamputees from the civil wars. They won the African championship, and thefilmmaker raised 20,000 Dollars for his film. For the various pledges,ranging from 5 Dollars to 5,000 Dollars, you would get something inreturn. For 5 Dollars you get informed about new developments, for 5,000Dollars you get a soccer shirt and soccer ball signed by the team and aDVD. If you really have a niche and you have people who are interested inthis product, then you can segment all these people and give themsomething back.The second topic is community building. If you have a niche and you knowthat people are interested in your movie, I think it is important that you tryto involve them. Specifically, this means that you have to at least create awebsite where you keep people informed about what youre doing. This isyour information hub. Secondly, you have to use new social media tospread the word about your idea. Once again, this only works if you have agood idea. But use Facebook, use a Twitter account, use YouTube toproduce trailers and teasers, try to get the word out and provide news toyour fans. Encourage the people who are really interested in you, yourfans, to spread the word, and even involve them in the production of your

    movie. Ask them questions. I have an example here called Krimi 20, aGerman project, where they want to make a crime thriller as we like it,and they have used all these media to get the word out: they wrote intheir blog, they had a Facebook page, a Twitter account, they producedvideo podcasts, they had live press conferences when somethingimportant happened, they had votes on who should play the maincharacter and on where plot twists should be placed. They really tried toopen up and collaborate with their fans.The last question is always: is there any money out there? First you haveto distinguish between short-term monetisation and long-termmonetisation. You can say that you want to produce a short film and you

    want to make money with it. You can also say that you want to produce ashort film, which in turn makes yourself more known as a producer, whichopens up new possibilities for you. Another dilemma is reach versusmoney. If you put something behind a paywall, you have no chance ofgetting a huge audience. Of course, there are alternative models inexistence we have already heard about advertising, about sponsoring.What we havent heard about yet is exploiting scarcity: if you have a filmand you have a digital copy, it isnt a scarce good any more: it can becopied easily. For example, the director of Sita Sings the Blues produceda film and put it on YouTube for everybody to see. She also made 4,999physical copies, but thats just because of the terms of the music license.What she did with the physical copies was she signed every single one ofthem and sent them out as signed editions. But she first tried to spreadthe word to get to the people, and subsequently monetised the film. For

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    example, she showed the film on TV after it was well-known thanks to theInternet, and now she is trying to make money through voluntarydonations. Shes telling people: Look, if you like my movie, why dont youdonate something? She is also trying to sell ancillary products, such asmerchandise including mugs and T-Shirts; she is also trying to get

    sponsorship deals.So there isnt just one business model for the future, but its a matter oflooking at what you can do to maximise the benefits in each individualcase.I would like to end with a quote from the producer of Sita Sings theBlues: There is the question of how I'll get money from all this. Mypersonal experience confirms audiences are generous and want to supportartists. Surely there's a way for this to happen without centrally controllingevery transaction. The old business model of coercion and extortion isfailing. New models are emerging, and I'm happy to be part of that. Butwe're still making this up as we go along.

    Simon Koenig: Thank you for your detailed explanations. We are comingto the last lap of our symposium, and I would like to ask all the speakers:when do you think its the right moment to make your film available onthe Internet for free?

    Frederik Stege: Never. This is something we discuss on a daily basis.From our perspective, which is feature film distribution, we are witnessingquite a dangerous development, because there is a tendency towardssupplying everything for free. Everyone is talking about free and I think

    that this can work for short content. But for feature film content its adangerous development, because if we license films out to these servicesthat offer advertising-financed VOD, the revenues you make on eachviewing are so extremely low. The average rate is 2 Dollars per thousandclicks or in some cases it might be 20 Dollars per thousand clicks, buteither way it takes a lot of clicks to generate just a little bit of revenue.While everyone is talking about giving things away for free because this iswhat consumers want, this is a model that we regard as a great threat tothe distribution business. At the same time, we also need to license thefilms at the terms that consumers want. You can see this in the musicindustry in Europe and in the United States: you started to have these

    three services where you could just have music for free, and the samedevelopment is happening in the film business. But I think rights holders inthe music business are starting to suffer from that. We have an expressionin Danish that says: you shouldnt pee in your pants to get warm youonly end up getting even colder shortly afterwards. As a rights holder youshould be aware of the risks involved in giving things out for free.

    Krystian Miruchna: I also think that one has to distinguish betweenfeatures and short films. If you show short films through ad-financedchannels, the advertising agent first takes his cut, then the platform keepsa percentage, and the rest goes to the rights holder. Lets take a value of6 Euro per thousand contacts. This means that if you have one millionviews, you get about 6,000 Euros. But the platform also has to utilise100% of advertising capacity to make it work. The question therefore is

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    always: what do I want my film to achieve on the Internet: much money ormuch attention? Each producer has to make that decision on an individualbasis. If I want to earn a lot of money with my short, then things are stillfairly difficult for me on the Internet.

    Melanie Bosshart: I once talked to Stefan Kluge from Webfilm Leipzig,who launched two films under Creative Commons. And if I remembercorrectly, the reach that they attained via the Internet ended up givingthem 35,000 in crowd funding. He said that they would never have gottenthis amount of money otherwise. They also had an offer from abroadcaster, but they didnt want to relinquish all their rights exclusively.But this is also a question of attitudes. And they ended up making moneywith follow-up projects.

    Simon Koenig: Are there examples of films where an online launch hasgotten in the way of making a career on the festival circuit.

    Frederik Stege: We have never done things this way around. Perhapsthis might be something we will do in the future, but I definitely seepossible benefits that can be derived by putting a film on the Internet first.This can make sense in some cases. But we should also be cautious ofproviding one or two case studies where things have been successful andgeneralising based on that. It doesnt mean that all films will enjoy thesame level of attention on the Internet. There is so much stuff on theInternet, it is very easy to find projects that were successful, but we never

    talk about the projects that were only seen by 5 or 10 people. So makesure you dont generalise just by pointing out a few good examples.

    Krystian Miruchna: I agree with your analysis, but would still like to adda positive note: there is a web series Internet format called Super TigerShow. It is a simple format about an actor from the Kreuzberg district inBerlin. First it was shown on YouTube and was subsequently adopted bythe platform 3min.de. In the meantime, its being shown on the TVchannel ZDF-Neo. In other words, there are possibilities to go the otherway.

    Guest (Michael Schwarz KurzFilmAgentur Hamburg): Ive got a shortquestion. Its a huge mistake to believe that you can make a lot of moneywith short films on the Internet. On the other hand, you can becomepopular, and this is what is important. You first have to make a productsellable to the masses, but once youve done this, it isnt a scarce productany more and you cant make much money on it. I think that one way tomake money is to produce series. You can do this in different ways. Forexample, you could make short series on certain topics, which keepreappearing on the Internet. Then you might have people who startdeveloping an interest in them. They could even go as far as ending upbeing shown on TV, like the Kreuzberg films. In other words: make shortfilm series and follow the trend of feature films, that are also beginningto be more and more serialised.

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    Krystian Miruchna: We have been developing web series and organisingsponsorship for them since 2008. Its not easy to convince users toconsume serial formats on the Internet. We can see this on 3min. Thereare a number of good series on this platform, but its hard for them togenerate a large following.