The Media chapter Business Consolidation, Globalization, and the Long Tail 3 https://www.kickstarter .com/projects/spikelee/ the-newestt-hottest-spike- lee-joint distribute or Famed filmmaker Spike Lee turned to the crowdfunding site post, Kickstarter to finance his decidedly non- commerical movie Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. Lee descibed the movie as being about people who are copy, “addicted to blood” but are not vampires. not Do Web Pix/Alamy Copyright ©2016 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. Famed African American filmmaker Spike Lee has a long record of producing independently minded films from his seminal movie Do the Right LEARNING OBJECTIVES Thing to his biopic on Malcolm X, though he’s also known for more commercial fare, like his thriller Inside Man starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and After studying this chapter, you will Jodie Foster. be able to: But during 2013 and 2014, he made an extremely low-budget, truly inde- 1 Describe how the media pendent film for a little more than $1.25 million financed by more than 5,000 distribute developed as a private industry 1 backers from the crowd-funding Web site Kickstarter. Da Sweet Blood of in the United States from Jesus, a movie Lee describes as a “bloody, funny, sexy movie” about peopleor the colonial period to the who are “addicted to blood” who are not vampires, was shot in 16 days in present day. 2 Brooklyn and Martha’s Vineyard with a cast of unknowns. Forrest Wickman, a 2 Summarize how control of movie reviewer for the Web site Slate, describes the movie as “veering wildly the media industry has between pulpy exploitation . and art-house filmmaking,” and notes that it is changed from the 1950s to the unlike anything that would ever get conventional funding.3 present day. To get funding though Kickstarter, filmmakers (like everyone else seeking post, 3 Define what is meant by “media Kickstarter funding) put together a video pitch along with written details about synergy” and illustrate it with at their qualifications and the film they intend to make. Potential contributors least three examples. pledge to fund projects they find interesting, but they only get charged if the 4 Explain why Apple, Google, and project reaches the financial goal the creator set. If the project doesn’t reach other tech companies may also 4 its funding goal, no money is exchanged. Assuming the project does reach its be considered leading media goal and gets funded, the people who pledge do not get an investment in the companies. movie as they might with conventionalcopy, movie financing. Instead, they get the 5 Describe the concept of long-tail satisfaction of supporting the project and very often some kind of reward, such media and its implications for the as a copy of the film or book produced by the project (though in the case of future of the media industry. Spike Lee’s film, the reward at the $10,000 level was getting to sit courtside 6 Identify six groups that influence with Lee at a Knicksnot NBA game). how the media behave and what At the time it was funded in August 2013, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus was the content they present. third largest movie project to be funded through Kickstarter (raising approxi- mately $1.4 million), following behind a movie version of the cult TV series VeronicaDo Mars ($5.7 million) and a Zach Braff film that raised $3.1 million.5 Lee, along with Braff (a popular actor and the director of the film Garden State), has received criticism for funding his project through Kickstarter when he had other options available to him, with the presumption that the funding that went to him could have gone to other, more needy filmmakers.6 The founders of Kickstarter, however, responded through their blog to defend the celebrity filmmakers: 51 Copyright ©2016 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. Almost five million people have backed a project on Kickstarter, and I’ve been doing more than a million have backed two or more projects. These “ repeat backers are responsible for 59% of the total money pledged KICKSTARTER before there to Kickstarter projects—a whopping $444 million. On average, was KICKSTARTER, there 2,130 people a day have become new repeat backers this year. This is huge! Future creators will benefit from more and more peo- 7 was no Internet. ple using Kickstarter. —Spike” Lee In his Kickstarter proposal, Lee says that using nontraditional fund- ing to finance his films is nothing new to him: I’m an Indie Filmmaker and I will always be an Indie Filmmaker. Indie Filmmakers are always in search of financing because their work, their vision sometimes does not coincide with Studio Pictures. But I do put my own money in my films. I self-financed RED HOOK SUMMER. My fee for MALCOLM X was put back into the budget. The truth is I’ve been doing KICKSTARTER before there was KICKSTARTER, there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes. I’m now using TECHNOLOGY with what I’ve been doing.8 (Lee is also making the point of SECRET 4 Nothing’s new: Everythingdistribute that happened in the past will happen again.) Kickstarter began in April 2009 and as of May 2014 had funded more than 60,000 projects. (Full disclosure: Your author has helped fund several music andor Web comic projects through Kickstarter.) Timeline 1800 1900 1910 post,1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000- 1812 Warof1812breaks out. 1903 Orville and Wilbur 1912 Titanic sinks. 1920 Nineteenth Amend- 1933 Adolf Hitler is elected 1941 United States enters 1950 Korean War begins. 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. 1974 U.S. president Richard 1983 First HIV/AIDS cases 1991 Soviet Union disbands. 2001 Al Qaida attacks World Wright fly first ment passes, giving chancellor of Germany. World War II. 1953 Francis Crick and delivers “I Have a Nixon resigns due to are documented. 1993 European Union Trade Center and Pen- 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville 1914 World War I begins. Dream” speech during Watergate scandal. tagon. publishes Democracy airplane. U.S. women the right 1939 World War II breaks 1945 United States drops James Watson discover Ozone hole is discov- is formed. 1918 Worldwide influenza to vote. Washington,D.C., in America. 1905 Albert Einstein out in Europe. two atomic bombs structure of DNA. 1975 Vietnam War ends. ered over Antarctica. 1994 Nelson Mandela is 2003 United States invades epidemic strikes. civil-rights march. Iraq. 1859 Charles Darwin proposes his theory 1929 U.S. stock market on Japan. 1957 Soviet Union launches 1977 Apple II personal com- 1986 Space shuttle Chal- elected president of of relativity. crashes, leading to the 1969 Neil Armstrong walks publishes On the Ori- 1947 Pakistan and India spacecraft Sputnik I. puter is introduced. lenger explodes. South Africa. 2008 Barack Obama is Great Depression. on the moon. gin of Species. gain independence 1978 First test-tube baby 1989 The Berlin Wall falls. 1997 Diana, Princess of elected U.S. president. 1861 U.S. Civil War begins. copy, from Britain. is born. Wales, dies in car 2011 Earthquake and tsunami hit accident. 1869 Transcontinental 1949 Communists establish Japan. United States ends railroad is completed. People’s Republic of eight-year war with Iraq. 1879 Thomas Edison invents China. 2012 Superstorm Sandy electric light bulb. devastates 1898 Spanish-American War U.S. eastern seaboard. breaks out. not 2014 Russian army invades Ukraine. 1640 The Cambridge Press publishes the first book in 1923 Henry Luce founds Time, Inc. 1930s Radio networks start carrying the AmericanDo colonies. national news to the entire country. 1928 The Walt Disney Company gets its start when Walt Disney produces the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. 1952 Rupert Murdoch takes over the Australian newspaper the Adelaide News and begins to 1830s The steam-powered printing press makes reading build his News Corporation empire. materials plentiful and inexpensive. 2005 CBS and Viacom split. 1835 Bertelsmann begins in Germany as a publisher of 2006 Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion. Christian music and prayers. 2006 Disney buys Pixar for $7.4 billion. 2009 Time Warner starts downsizing, separating from AOL 1844 The first telegraph line runs from Baltimore to 1983 Fifty companies dominate the American media and Time Warner Cable. Washington, D.C. This becomes the first private, industry. 2013 Comcast completes purchase of NBC Universal. electronic media in the United States. 1985 All three of the original television broadcast 2014 Crowdfunding site Kickstarter funds its 60,00th 1866 The transatlantic telegraph line, running from networks are sold by their original owners. project. Ireland to Newfoundland, enables transatlantic communication for the first time. AP Photo AP Photo iStockphoto.com/Roger Van Bulck; iStockphoto.com/ Web Pix/Alamy Gino Santa Maria; iStockphoto.com/Pali Rao Copyright ©2016 by SAGE Publications, Inc. This work may not be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher. Of the more than 14,000 film and video projects that have been funded as of the summer of 2014, 70 have been screened at Sundance, and more than 100 have been screened at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.9 Beyond being a new source of funding for filmmakers, Kickstarter represents a new way of the movie industry looking at the Internet and the people who inhabit it.