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Permission Culture - Press 'Escape'

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by Lisa Salem
Lisa's blog, part of the Workbook Project Lisa's blog, part of the Workbook Project The tectonic plates of the film industry are shifting and it's not a good time to just stand still and close your eyes. If you do, the next time you open them you might find you've ended up on the wrong side of town whilst standing still on the same spot. If you snooze, as a filmmaker, you're almost definitely going to lose.

As Filmmakers, We've Been Submissive
Till now, as independent filmmakers (especially of non-fiction), there have always been gatekeepers between us and our audience. In the UK, they've been the primary broadcasting channels. For anything we made to have stood a chance of getting any decent kind of viewership - in essence, to have had any voice at all - a handful of commissioning editors and the whims of their tastes (or the format du jour of those channels) would have to have given their approval. Not only did they have veto over what gets seen, but ultimately - what gets made. And till now we've been left with the conundrum of making what they want us to make if we're going to stand a chance of obtaining audience, or making what we want to make and resigning ourselves to the idea of relative obscurity.

Ultimately, this has made us 'independent' filmmakers passive, subservient. And what’s more, it's totally dictated what audiences expect to see. The entire process has been mediated, and rather than being free to express ourselves, as filmmakers we have become a permission culture waiting for the acceptance of the powerful few.

And this has had a very deep effect. It means they've been in control of how and what we create and how we think about film in general - as a culture. We've been deferring our creative thought processes to those in power. But now the internet era has arrived, and this paradigm is contra to everything that the web is about.
We Have An Opportunity To Change
The web is challenging the current film industry status quo in many ways. There are more choices of what to do and so more competition for consumers’ time and attention. And there's more stuff being made within each medium because more people have access to the technology, so attention spans are more defensive and the consumer is becoming even pickier - even the primary broadcast channels are finding it harder to get a word in. Peer-to-peer filesharing (aka "pirating") is also a big threat to big budget enterprises: when you can get your content for free, who will pay for it - and why? But the most significant change for us as independent filmmakers is that the internet is providing an opportunity to communicate with our audiences directly; we no longer need the gatekeepers – in fact, they can kind of get in the way.

Because although those gatekeepers are powerful, the internet is more so. And the internet loves the individual. It's a direct mass medium, which means it talks to everyone who's connected to it - individually. And every individual who taps into its mainframe - who understands its culture, its language, its climate - has the power to speak to people en masse, en par with everyone you've ever thought of as powerful in the media marketplace ever before. And the web is just the starting point - once you've made a splash there there's no need to say that it needs to remain online.

Now The Power Lies In The Hands Of The Filmmaker...
And because it is in large part the internet that is challenging the existing powers in the market place, suddenly the light is shining on us - independent filmmakers - to figure out what's going to happen next. The current paradigm is fertile ground for a shift in power. And it makes for very exciting creative times. In fact, it's the opposite of permission culture.

Imagine having your OWN audience - and a direct relationship with them. An audience that is actually a community, united and gathered around your work. You get to decide what content you want to create - and then you join forces with the audience that is the most appropriate fit for what you're doing. Together, you create a cycle of sustainability. Sounds nice, right?

Well, once you start taking responsibility for building your own audience, many of the shackles to your creativity come off. And the tools are there for you to do so if you learn how to use them.  

But it's our concept of success that is one of the biggest barriers to entry in this new environment. If we perceive success in the old terms - as being defined by acceptance from the gatekeepers - then, basically, we're still asking for permission.  If we clumsily, awkwardly, ignorantly find ourselves, as we do, in this new landscape without shifting our concepts of success as quickly, we're going to be left behind. This isn't just true of the individual - it's true of the megaliths as well - and they can smell it. We, though, need to start de-colonizing our creative thought processes.

Actually, The Power Lies In The Hands Of The Audience...
It's the audience though that really has the most power in this new paradigm - that's where the real shift has taken place, because it's what they say yes to that will survive. The triangle of interdependence - between the audience, the film and the filmmaker and the interplay between those three dimensions - is an age old dynamic that's been considered in art for hundreds of years. The other power player that isn't traditionally mentioned in that dynamic is the patron, or the distributor - or anyone that has a say in whether or how that work will ever get in front of an audience at all. Just think of all the artists who have died in obscurity. In theory, it's possible that that never happens again because finally we can take that player out of the equation. If we make the work we want to make, and we learn how to access our audiences ourselves, their attention becomes our validation and we become their willing servants.

Except, Well, Actually, The Power Lies In The Hands Of The Filmmaker...
But the audience is not an audience without something to be an audience of - and till now, the audience itself has been as much a victim of mediation as we filmmakers have. With both parties, it effects what we think we should be seeing. And there certainly can't be a renaissance, hardly even an evolution, without the content that will be the vehicle of that change. A significant concept in building audience is the interdependence that it necessitates between the content creator and the content consumer. Obviously, the channel between them is the content itself, and the quality of your films is the determining factor in whether this opportunity actualizes - or whether it becomes a flaccid, empty balloon. Another bitter memory of opportunity that colours how we see any new opportunity that may follow.

As filmmakers - as content creators - the onus is on us to take the lead. To make something interesting, new, challenging, good - whatever will most effectively serve our audience and bring something worthy to the table. To lift our heads above the parapet and reveal what could be there. In the process, we can create new expectations from our audiences - and the responsibility lies with us to do so. They, in turn, become our quality control - they vote just by turning up.

If we start taking responsibility for building our own audiences, we can start really discovering ourselves as filmmakers. Rather than this being navel-gazing or narcissistic, the audience will always keep us in check by their presence or absence. When we become more explorative in what we make, the audience will become more curious about what they can see. It's a win-win situation, and we all become less mediated in the process.
Visit http://audience.workbookproject.com to read the first installment of 'How To Build An Audience - And Keep It' - an online learning resource - and subscribe to the blog where we post regularly about all things relating to audience and for updates.

(For what Permission Culture more commonly refers to, see here)
Lisa Salem is a filmmaker, currently in post production on Walk LA With Me, a feature documentary that began life as an interactive web-based project. The videoblog she kept during filming became enormously popular in itself and led to a commission from LA TV channel LA36 for three episodes based on the footage. She is now using her experiences in the world of new media to teach other filmmakers how to build online audiences – and keep them.

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