Dear Michela,
I have carefully read the NESTA proposal and I must tell you it is quite impressive. The amount of work that has gone into that thing is astonishing. It is bursting with information. I see why they have been enthusiastic about the vision.
I have also, as you asked me to, jotted down some thoughts about the things I found a bit unclear or unfocused:
• My overall impression is that it is great, but I am not sure what to do with it. How will this actually work?
• MISSING LINKS: All the components are explained, but not always the link in between such as how does development lead directly to sales and distribution. And how does that distribution lead to customers using the product.
• GAP IDENTIFICATION: You have done a fantastic job in identifying the cross-over gap, but not quite convinced me of the need to fill it. You might tell me we don’t have a hybrid of a fish and a bicycle, but that does not meant that I will automatically go out and buy one. The opportunity is clear, but why do people want it? I think the market NEED is a crucial component as I don’t see how these dinosaurs of media conglomerates today will be willing to risk any of their traditional markets. I can therefore envision that they will indeed do anything to STOP this development out from a tradition of conservation. They might actually create more hurdles specifically to bring you down!
• PIRACY: One of the most exciting words in your proposal was piracy as this is something I can see to be crucial in convincing the majors that this is another way for them to exploit their royalties and licences in a market that is rapidly changing and where they will inevitable lose control. I think this is one of the most alluring economic arguments in the proposal and could easily be played up more.
• There is an eerie lack of critical approach to the saturation of the market. There is an underlying assumption that consumers will naturally jump at this, rather than have to discover the fun. It seems a bit easy when we see a trend in television which has started to slow down and abandoned ideas about letting the audience program and mix their own TV diet or fragmentation of the market into various specialised digital platforms simply because people are saturated by CHOICE. How will this be different, and why do consumers need it? We are already inundated with content. There also seems to be an assumption that every link in between will also think this is great and be willing to take a risk on it. Some of these components are already hard to access, and it seems a bit naïve to assume the film will be invited to festivals and claim the script will fetch $700,000 when so many films and scripts are clamouring for this market. How is this miracle going to happen?
• THE CONSUMER, the end customer, is not very clear to me. Sometimes he or she appears to belong to the popcorn demographic, sometimes he or she is just referred to as people.
• ECONOMICS: Show me the money! One of the hottest areas I had a difficulty figuring out was the money. I can’t extract from the proposal how the money works. There is no point asking for money for something that will be a charity without sustainable economic feet of its own. So, there are several revenue streams mentioned, but not particularly explained how one rolls into another. I read words like DVD sale, advertising, subscription, royalties, but I don’t see how they are structured in the process, how much they are worth for each product, how the money will be divided, and what time it will take to get back into MOD films pockets. This part of the proposal seems to me to be weak if not non-existing.
• There are sections for technical hurdles and creative hurdles, but none for distribution or consumer access.
• The proposal seems to be based entirely on game research. There is very little in it that pertains to the film industry.
• The exit strategy is very good.
• There is a noticeable discrepancy between your personal goal and the company goal. This is where the proposal gets very murky as it is not clear how the relationship between Sanctuary and the company vision is built. Is Sanctuary the overall goal, and the company simply there to support the film project? Or is the company project there to be sustainable in and of itself and will use Sanctuary to prove its own merit? There are two parallel tracks here. It becomes particularly clear when you describe your own reasons for doing the project is to promote your own work. With the lack of overall financial projections for the company, it can make it sound like you simply could not get an agent on your own so you’re making a short film instead to convince the majors to do your film. There are parts of the proposal that sounds like you are waiting for the Hollywood to just come pay you out and that leaves the rest of the idea and us hanging. It will not be popular with NESTA as it not only neglects to support sustainable development in the interactive industry in Britain, it goes directly against it! Remember the Film Council created the greenlight film fund to keep talent here so they would not go to Hollywood.
• The implementation stage of the project is a bit hazy. The timelines do not follow all the way through to money going back into your coffers. The timeline is not broken down into clear stages with cut-off and revision dates.
• It is not clear how the company will work with other projects than your own. As you aptly put it: you want to be the lead singer for a few years, but then what? For the other projects, will they be taken on by consensus governed by economic or quality concerns? How will this be a resource to the rest of the film community? What exactly are you offering: content consultation of how to remix teaching artists about the potential of their story? How to access the technology? How to distribute and find their audience?
• I think your idea about dropping the console is a good one.
• There are references to the old copyright being out-dated, but there is very little explanation of how this will work in the future. What are the legal trends?
• There is lots in the proposal about what you are going to do and with what, but little about how you are going to do it, for whom, and for what in return.
I hope this can be of some use to you!