Please welcome Stacy Cochran to my Blog a fellow Author, and Filmmaker
Stacey Cochran Guest
Blog Post
Hi Kipp,
Thanks so much for letting me visit your blog today. As you
know I’m in the midst of a Blog Tour to help promote the release of my new
novel CLAWS 2. If folks are interested in the book, it is available exclusively
from the Amazon Kindle store for reading on digital devices.
Because of your background in indie filmmaking, I thought I
would write today about the connection between emerging technologies, writing,
and filmmaking. I’ve worked a fair amount in the past three years in television
and have even started producing and directing my own short films.
At the same time, I’ve started making progress as an author
independently publishing my own novels and short stories. I believe we are in
the midst of a cultural renaissance of sorts. To date, I’ve had over 40,000
book downloads through the Amazon Kindle device. Prior to the Kindle, I podcast
my novels to listeners through Podiobooks.com and had even higher numbers of
downloads of my books in that medium.
What I’ve learned is that there are audiences for
independent authors, writers who have stories that don’t quite work for
traditional mainstream publishers. In fact, what Kindle has shown is that there
is a ready and willing audience of readers interested in stories that don’t fit
the traditional mold and they’re willing to pay money for them.
My hypothesis is that there is a similar scenario in place
in filmmaking and TV production. As summer box-office numbers slump in 2010
with big budget traditional movies, I wonder if part of that is that audiences
are looking for something different, something innovative, and something that
breaks the mold of what we conceive of as “a movie.”
While I’ll admit it’s risky to push this parallel between
Kindle and filmmaking too far, the hypothesis warrants exploration.
With my own short film, I produced, directed, wrote, and
distributed it on a shoe-string budget. The film is available via Amazon.com
The problem in this scenario is that audiences don’t go to
Amazon to buy movies from independent filmmakers… at least not in the same way
that Kindle readers do so for buying and reading stories.
However, if a future Kindle device enabled users to
instantly download (or “rent” a movie), I suspect a lot of Kindle owners would
start looking for films to download. For the savvy independent filmmaker with
the right kind of content (i.e., a good story), this potential market could be very
hot because of low initial competition and high audience interest. It’s
certainly easy enough to distribute a film through Amazon.com as both a DVD and
a Pay-for-Download rental or purchase.
Until the two markets (Kindle device and Pay-for-Download movie
rental) connect, this may a moot point. In the meantime, a savvy indie
filmmaker could certainly use other emerging technologies to push out in front
of the new wave.
I, for example, have become addicted to instant-streaming
movies through Netflix. I watched two films last night. If you haven’t
experienced the power of instant-streaming film rental on your television, you
should definitely give it a shot. The Netflix database has tens of thousands of
films available for instant download and “renting” costs nothing. With Netflix,
you pay a monthly subscription (e.g., $9.99) and you can download as many
movies as you want, whether it’s one or 500 or 5,000. The monthly subscription
stays the same, and you can watch any movie any time you want.
Very soon, a tech-savvy company like Netflix or YouTube or
Hulu is going to open the doors to indie filmmakers the way that Amazon Kindle
has done for indie authors to upload and “rent” their movies to a wider
audience. When this happens, the handful of independent filmmakers in place
with good product could stand to be in a competitive position.
I think the key is to continue developing good content and
to explore innovative methods of distribution. If you’re an indie filmmaker,
you should have your content available through Amazon both in DVD form and in
Pay-for-Download form. It would be great if Netflix allowed indie filmmakers
the same ease of access to get their content in Netflix’s database; as yet,
they have not. But keep your eyes open because it would be in their company’s
interest to do so, and so they may very soon.
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Stacey Cochran was born in the Carolinas, where his family
traces its roots to the mid 1800s. In 1998 he was selected as a finalist in the
Dell Magazines undergraduate fiction competition, and he made his first
professional short story sale to CutBank in 2001. In 2004, he was selected as a
finalist in the St. Martin's Press/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest. He
lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife Dr. Susan K. Miller-Cochran and
their son Sam, and he teaches writing at North Carolina State University.
Visit him on the web at http://www.staceycochran.com
Thanks so much, Kipp!
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