Page 86 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

86there are legions of teenagers who follow series created for the small screen, just that they don’t watch them when they are broadcast and nor are they willing to put up with the deluge of advertisements, which they regard as a nuisance.A determining factor is people’s changing consumption habits. We don’t get tosee what is being o ered to us, but we demand what we want to see and where, when and how.In actual fact, the emergence of videogames and young people’s behaviour are only isolated factors. It’s the sum total of all of them that has turned the situation around. The important thing is to realise that we’ve gone from beinga society of supply to one of demand, and once again digitisation and the Internet are cornerstones of change. We don’t get to see what is being o ered to us (others make the choice on our behalf), but we demand what we want to see.We’ve become used to consuming content where, when and how we like; and, incidentally, this is not an attribute exclusive to young people but is true of most of the digital population. What is more, this consumption is generally zero cost, or at least that is the perception the user has.Here I must make an aside and introduce another idea that is essential to understanding that production processes have changed too. I’m referring to the concept of scalability. We used to have to build a whole product before releasing it onto the market and exploiting it. Now we can create small pieces that can be tested on future audiences before making a larger and more costly production without knowing if it’s going to be well received.There is an added bene t to this: the audience feels part of the creative process; with the help of feedback we can adapt the discourse better. (So much so that it has led marketingcampaigns to be moved from the end of the production chain to the pre-production phase: sounding out the audience to nd out what they think before making the product allows us to adjust the content before it’s too late).Another positive point to be mentioned when rethinking the approach to cinema as an industry is that all these technological changes involve the emergence of new technical and professional pro les.A last phenomenon that has emerged powerfully is transversality. It’s no longer any use shutting yourself away in your own world, your own market, your closed ecosystem...As the expression goes, you have to think out of the box – come out of your comfort zone (which incidentally is becoming increasingly less comfortable) and start replacing the word competition with alliance, in search of intersectorial win-win operations.4. New formatsThe arrival of the Internet and the adoptionof new consumption habits have sparked the appearance of new formats – which is also good news, as it paves the way for new creation.A product born of the need for fast consumption and the freedom of not having to t into a schedule is web series.17 It should be pointed out that what identi es them as such is their format, not the distribution channel. (House of Cards is simply a conventional TV series that is broadcast online).Web-native series meet the new requisites: short chapters (between 2 and 15 minutes long), seasons with a variable number of episodes, a faster-paced story (which can even be tempestuous) and the creation of images (frames, composition) designed to be viewed on the screen of a smartphone or tablet rather than a monitor or TV.DATA, INTERFACES & STORYTELLING: AUDIOVISUAL IN THE DIGITAL AGE · MONTECARLOSmart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Artistic Creation