I’m in Park City, Utah for the next week for Sundance and Slamdance. I’m here working on some new projects I hope will get announced soon, but also to speak on a couple of panels and show my support for some projects I’ve been involved with. I’ll also be continuing to participate in SOPA/PIPA protests, because no, even though the we had a great success on fighting this, the war isn’t over yet.

Anyway, I’ll be speaking on a distribution panel being held by Passion River Films. The event is on all day, January 24th, and due to some scheduling issues (on my end), I’ll be speaking later in the day about how to succeed with your film even when you didn’t get into that big fest (like Sundance):

Panel 3:  Didn’t Get Into Sundance? No Worries.

Learn How to Go Beyond Big Name Festivals to Secure Distribution

4:00pm – 5:30pm

Every year, thousands of films are not accepted into Sundance, yet many still become BIG hits.  Learn from industry experts on how the former “Plan B” of distribution could surprise you as being your NEW “Plan A”!  Panelist include:  Brian Newman, Mat Levy, Josh Levin, Mike Grice, & Michael Tuckman.  Read bios below.

• Why films can still be highly successful without any major festival exposure.
• What other factors do distributors consider beyond being an “official selection”.
• Securing theatrical distribution – Is it worth the expense?
• How can a publicist or social meida campaign help?
• Building a fan base with every festival appearance.
• The pro’s & con’s of DIY self-distribution.  Decision time?

I’ll also be touching on this topic at Slamdance on another distribution panel. This one is titled “Where there’s a will, there’s a way…to find distribution.” The panel description:

In a time long long ago, an indie filmmaker was approached by a suit, they shook hands, the suit walked away with the film, the filmmaker walked away with a fist full of dollars. A week later the film was playing at a theatre near you. Those days may be long gone, but in 2012 there are more options than ever before to get your film in front of your audience. Learn about new distribution possibilities through social media, web & mobile apps, and other DIY methods. Come be a part of this interactive discussion with some of the most formative minds in this movement. Occupy Distribution!

My name isn’t listed in the speakers, but I’m one of ‘em, and I’ll be there. Please join me with Orly Ravid, David Magdael and Tom Thimot.

There are lots of good films at both Sundance and Slamdance, and you don’t need my advice on what to see, but… I am friendly with a couple films there and highly recommend them. First, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, by Alison Klayman. I’m on the board of a nonprofit that helped produce this project, so I’ve given some advice to them, especially back when they did their Kickstarter campaign. It’s a great, and important, film, and I highly recommend it. Second, I’m good friends with Alexandra Berger, the director of Danland, at Slamdance. Danland is about Porno Dan and his work, his attempts at a love life. I’ve seen an earlier cut, can’t wait to see this final version and recommend it as well.

I’ve already met a few of my tiny group of readers here. If I haven’t met you yet, look me up while you’re here.

I’ve been complaining a lot about SOPA/PIPA here and on the chatty webs. It bothers me, mainly because it’s not the culmination of a bunch of bad policy from the MPAA/RIAA, but just the beginning in the long awaited storm, leading to what Cory Doctorow has called the coming war on general purpose computing. But the gist of the problems with SOPA/PIPA can be hard to understand, not just for the layman (always read people dumber than me, but I’m actually suggesting me too), but also for people who keep up with these debates.

The underlying problem with all of this, however, is not just copyright or piracy or anything else that people will tell you. The real reason for this battle is that many incumbent players feel threatened by everything that’s going on and can’t innovate and join the rising tide, so they are using the one weapon available to them – their influence over that maddening body of nitwits we call our Congress.

Piracy is such the maguffin here. As I’ve said many times, big media is scared because we all like watching some baby bite his brother’s finger as much as we do the Dark Knight. The disintermediation and democratization of media means that anyone can make something as good (or actually, just good enough) and as popular as some hit made by the majors. Unfortunately, when some 10 year old makes a viral sensation, she doesn’t have to pay rent, pay union wages, pay for lunch at Cipriani, pay for six assistants…you get the drift. That kid in her basement, not to mention the legions of freshly minted Film MFA’s with no paying job, can innovate a lot quicker and with less risk than some Studio. But they sure don’t have Chuck Schumer in their back pocket because they didn’t donate millions to him this year alone, now did they.

This is called disruptive innovation. Some kid, some Film MFA, some small company, can adapt more quickly because they don’t have the legacy to contend with. Hollywood has known the content purchase business model is going away for quite some time. They aren’t stupid. But getting rid of it quicker and pushing into new business models was too painful, and they won’t do it until they’re forced to, but by then it will be too late. Or it would be without that special nuclear option called the Congress.

Now none of this analysis is new, and none of it should be controversial to anyone with a working brain and a sense of honesty and decency. The other day, however, I found myself down a digital rabbit hole by the name of Macroeconomic Resilience, by way of a Tweet from Clay Shirky. One Ashwin Parameswaran writes this blog and it’s a good one…if you like delving into macroeconomic theories, that is (and I do), and it expanded my argument a bit.

My initial foray into his blog had nothing to do with film. I started reading a post about the current problems with the Euro, but I soon found my way to a post called Innovation, Stagnation and Unemployment, and while not directly about the current fights over “piracy,” it did bring me to recognize the bigger problem, which is that the negative economic impact of implementing SOPA/PIPA will be far greater than its proponents claim is lost to piracy.

To understand why, we have to dig a bit into his argument, or as he says, “we need a deeper understanding of the dynamics of innovation in a capitalist economy.” (Note, everything henceforth is a paraphrase of his argument). As Ashwin puts it so well (bold his):

“The primary objective of incumbent rent-earners” (think studios) “is to build a moat around their existing rents whereas the primary objective of competition from new entrants is not to drive rents down to zero, but to displace the incumbent rent-earner. It is not the absence of rents but the continuous threat to the survival of the incumbent rent-earner that defines a truly vibrant capitalist economy i.e. each niche must be continually contested by new entrants.”…”This emphasis on disequilibrium points to the fact that the ‘optimum’ state for a dynamically competitive capitalist economy is one of constant competitive discomfort and disorder.”

Innovation occurs as a result of this constant tug of war – with the incumbent innovating to keep off the competition, and the competition innovating to unseat the incumbent. The types of innovation, however, are quite different. As Ashwin explains it, there are two types of innovation: “exploitation and exploration.” Incumbents usually turn to exploitation – tweaking their processes to drive down costs or make a product better (or at least make it seem better). In our case, this would be Studios turning to digital distribution in order to cut the costs of P&A, for example (but not using it to fundamentally alter how we see movies in theaters beyond the image). Competitors usually turn to exploration – looking for a game-changing new way of doing business, and that usually requires a healthy stomach for disequilibrium. In our world, this would be things like how Netflix changed the game for DVD distribution (but not, importantly, how they’re moving forward in streaming, which is largely for cost-savings, or a process innovation). Or, more radically, how Vo.Do is using Bittorrent to build a new business model around using P2P for both free and fee-based distribution.

Stepping back from our industry and looking at the broader economy (and back to Ashwin’s argument), the current economic malaise has led incumbent powers to exploitative innovation – using technology to cut costs, make a product more appealing (3D), doing everything to protect your business model. This has lead to the seemingly odd situation where we’re having more and more technical innovation but not more jobs. Why? Because the bulk of the investment (by companies, not VC’s) has been in process innovation (exploitation) which doesn’t lead to job creation, but rather job destruction. As Ashwin puts it (bold his): “My fundamental assertion is that a constant and high level of uncertain, exploratory investment is required to maintain a sustainable and resilient state of full employment. And as I mentioned earlier, exploratory investment driven by product innovation requires a constant threat from new entrants.”

Thus the importance of ongoing, disruptive innovation to our economy, and to our chance of ever getting out of the jobless mess that is the state of the American economy today. We need to create demand for new things, so people get hired to make them, but that causes a problem for incumbents. Ashwin summarizes it perfectly here:

“Eventually, a successful reorganisation back to full employment entails creating demand for new products. If such new products were simply an addition to the set of products that we consumed, disruption would be minimal. But almost any significant new product that arises from exploratory investment also destroys an old product. The tablet cannibalises the netbook, the smartphone cannibalises the camera etc. This of course is the destruction in Schumpeter’s creative destruction. It is precisely because of this cannibalistic nature of exploratory innovation that established incumbents rarely engage in it, unless compelled to do so by the force of new entrant.”

Or, as he puts it much later: “The aim of full employment is made even harder with the acceleration of process innovation due to advances in artificial intelligence and computerisation. Process innovation gives us technological unemployment while at the same time the absence of exploratory product innovation leaves us stuck in the Great Stagnation.”

Now, that’s precisely what we have from the (VC backed) competitors to the status-quo, and we can see that the incumbents aren’t too happy about it. Ashwin goes on to explore how our monetary and fiscal policy has attempted to address this problem, and in short, we’ve failed at this. It’s worth reading, but for our sake, I think we can summarize it by saying that government policies have allowed incumbent players to prosper by way of exploitative innovation (including cutting labor costs) without incentivizing them to invest in exploratory investment (which they probably won’t do anyway), or by letting them face the fear of true failure (think bank bailouts), and without making it easier for competition to flourish.  In regards to banking and big business, Ashwin notes that we have severe limits to such competition by way of things like our patent system and licensing rules and that we should let the big guys fail and the little guys take over. Now, he’s talking about banks and big institutions, but all of this applies equally well to the media industry, and that brings us back to the piracy fight.

Hollywood Studios are loathe to change. They’ll talk at fancy conferences about innovation, but don’t forget, they’re mainly talking about innovation by exploitation. What we need, as an industry and as a society, is more exploratory investment, and that’s not coming from the incumbents. We can see a world, in what Ashwin brilliantly calls the ‘adjacent possible’, where upstarts are re-shaping the media world. It is leading to jobs, it is leading to exploratory innovation and it is the best possible future for us as independents, and as members of society.

That world, however, will be built by those doing the exploratory innovation, and that’s not Hollywood. So Hollywood has brought up the fear of piracy, equating it with theft (which it is not), and have gotten their friends in high places to use legislation to hold onto their power. It has been ever thus. This I know. But it is shocking to me that our Congress would so cynically support this legislation at a time when our Nation is so threatened by an anemic economy, a world-economy on the brink and an unemployment rate unlike any we’ve seen for quite some time. SOPA/PIPA will stifle innovation. More importantly, it will stifle our most ambitious entrepreneurs, the people who might actually turn around our economy, all for the sake of making sure that you spend what little money you have on the products of a dying industry.

That’s why I’m so opposed to SOPA/PIPA. It’s sad that it takes this many words for me to get the point across, but if you made it this far and agree even slightly, it’s why you should help spread the word that SOPA/PIPA are bad for the adjacent possible future of the (next) entertainment industry, and for our country.

Well, I’m continuing with the top ten list theme for this week, and I’m giving you my recommendations for 10 art shows in NYC right now, or soon, which I think are pretty cool.

1. Georges Hugnet – “The Love Life of the Spumifers” through Jan 28th at Ubu Gallery –

I’m a big fan of the Surrealists and Hugnet was quite a strong one who never gets much attention. I’ve never seen his work in any show, so this is a rare opportunity to catch one of the better, lesser-known Surrealist’s work in town. This show focuses on his “Spumifer” works, where he painted fanciful fake animals on top of racy postcards (pre-porn, I guess). It works, and they’re pretty cool. Huget had a falling out with Breton, and ridicules him in one of the postcard, turning him into the “Conceited Wooleton” spumifer. Ken Johnsons’s review of the show in the NYT is worth reading, it may be one of his best reviews ever. From the review:

“The theme of beauty and the beast reverberates. It implies that formal beauty is cold, lonely and sterile without the warming vitality of erotic urgency. Christian tradition, however, separated the spiritual and the carnal into the angelic and the demonic. The Spumifers look as if they had escaped from the margins of a Medieval manuscript illumination, from a borderland where miniscule demons were sometimes allowed to cavort freely. They come to rescue and ravish the virginal soul of a modern consciousness still haunted by ghosts of puritanical religious dogma.”

And later still:

“Some Surrealists — Breton in particular — took very seriously their campaign to subvert norms in the service of psycho-social revolution. But Hugnet, unlike Dali, to name another monster of self-importance, had an appealing sense of humor and an allergy to sanctimony. He was playing a sophisticated, subversive game of his own with clichés: those of the classical nude and the kitsch pornography that imitates it; those of framing devices that domesticate expressions of erotic exuberance; and even those of Surrealism itself. Fundamentalism of any kind was Hugnet’s enemy, irreverence his scourge.”

Whew boy, that’s some good writin’. Go see the show.

2. Swanlight by Antony and the Johnsons, presented by MoMA at Radio City Music Hall, One night only – Jan. 26th

The title alone should get you to go. My membership to MoMA paid for itself many times over when I was able to buy advance tickets to this show. I’m a big fan of Antony’s singing, and MoMA is genius to have commissioned him to do this show, and I’m very excited to go see it. From the event description:

“The Museum of Modern Art has commissioned artist/musician Antony to conceive, produce, and perform a large-scale concert and performance event, Swanlights, with Antony and the Johnsons, on Thursday, January 26, 2012, at 8:00 p.m. at Radio City Music Hall.

Featuring a 60-piece orchestra, the performance piece is conceived as a new commission especially developed for the January 26 performance, and an evolution of the highly acclaimed The Crying Light, which was presented at the Manchester Opera House for the 2009 Manchester International Festival.

Envisioned as a meditation on light, nature, and femininity, Swanlights includes songs from all four of Antony and the Johnsons’ albums (self-titled, I am a Bird Now, The Crying Light, and Swanlights), set to symphonic arrangements by Nico Muhly, Rob Moose, and Maxim Moston. It is produced in collaboration with light artist Chris Levine, lighting designer Paul Normandale, and set designer Carl Robertshaw.”

Who would miss that?

3. Weegee: Murder is My Business, at ICP Jan 20 – Sept 2, 2012

I’ve been a fan of the great photographer Weegee since the first time I looked at a photo history book. Weegee captured the seedier side of things, being a news photographer (who developed his prints in his trunk!), but did so most artfully. No reason to give more history here, you probably know it, but this show promises to have some great photos from the ICP’s collection. Not to be missed.

4. The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde at the Metropolitan Museum, Feb 28-June 3, 2012

This here’s a blockbuster show. The kind Museum’s throw to keep the doors open. Nevertheless, it’s worth seeing. The Stein’s were some of the most important patrons of modern art in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, and therefore funded and collected some of the most important works of the avant-garde. I’ve spoken a lot about how we can still learn a lot from the avant-garde, and here’s a chance to do so. I think there’s something like 200 works to look at, and some of the biggest names are included. Definitely one to see, perhaps a few times, in 2012.

5. Cynthia Hopkins, Songs from This Clement World, St Ann’s Warehouse, May 4, 8pm

I’ve been a huge fan of Cynthia Hopkins since Colin Stanfield introduced her work to me when he played saxophone in her band back about 12 years ago (Colin is now head of the Nantucket Film Festival, for those who don’t know him). I found her mix of punk, rock, blues, country, performance, jazz and….who knows what else, to be pretty amazing. I’ve listened to her perform with Gloria Deluxe and have seen each of her recent performance works at St Ann’s. This is a work-in-porgress for her new performance, and it’s something of a change in direction for her. Her previous works have been very personal (too personal for my taste lately), but this one is looking at climate change and how it impacts more than just her. I’m interested in getting a sample of this new direction, and she’ll be playing some old songs too, so this is a good intro to her if her work (and that of her collaborators) is new to you. She’s also doing a performance at Abrons Art Center on Jan 8 and 10th, but I’m not able to attend those.

6. Rashid Johnson, Rumble, at Hauser & Wirth, Jan 11- Feb 25 – The wife recommended this show to me, but when I read about Rashid’s connection to boxing in the NYT, I was sold. See, it turns out that Rashid learned that the Hauser & Wirth gallery is located inside a townhouse which was once owned by the boxing promoter Don King. Rashid’s father was a boxer and Rashid grew up watching Don King and boxing matches and decided to name the show after the “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in (former) Zaire in 1974. Being a former boxing fan myself, this gave me a new interest in his work – but trust me, Rashid Johnson is an upcoming art start regardless of this tidbit. He’s a finalist for the Hugo Boss prize and in addition to his growing fame in the art world, he’s doing some film work too, showing ” The New Black Yoga” at this show.

7. Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds, Mary Boone, Jan 7 – Feb 4 – Ai Weiwei’s blockbuster show from the Tate Modern is now in NYC, albeit in a much smaller version. I saw the original show in London, and I went and saw this on opening day this weekend. Truth be told, I’m not the biggest fan of Ai Weiwei’s work here, but I am a huge fan of his activism generally and of the concept behind this project. Gazillions of sunflower seeds – crafted by porcelain artists from China, that’s right – hand-made, hand-painted, little sunflower seeds line the floor of the gallery in a pile about 4 inches thick. You have to see it to understand the enormity of this undertaking. To my mind, it works better in this smaller gallery, compared to the Tate’s Turbine Hall, where it was practically dwarfed by the space (there, the sunflower seeds numbered in the many millions). It’s worth seeing, even if (to my mind) it isn’t the best art. Now, what I do like about it is the unintended conceptual art it has become: Originally, guests could walk on the Sunflowers and pick them up, and take the seeds, but this soon caused a porcelain dust to fill the air, and the Tate decided after a couple of days that they should stop people from interacting with the seeds. This gallery also keeps you off the seeds. To my mind, it’s hilarious that seeds made by relatively poor artists in China could have caused a dust storm that might kill the relatively rich art lovers of the West and now we’re reduced to security guards keeping us away from this potentially lethal art – and with folks reduced to stealing seeds and buying them at auction (yes, I’ve seen this in person). That wasn’t the intent, but pretty cool anyways. On a quick side note: I’m on the board of a nonprofit, Muse Film and Television, that produced a film on Ai Weiwei which premieres at Sundance – Ai Weiwei:Never Sorry, by Alison Klayman (links to video with her). Check it out at Sundance if you have the chance.

8.The Wedding (The Walker Evans Polaroid Project) with Roni Horn, A curatorial composition by Ydessa Hendeles, Andrea Rosen Gallery, til Feb 4. – This is a real gem of a show, and I just caught it this weekend (it’s right across the street from the Ai Weiwei show). Hendeles, who does this sort of thing a lot, was given permission to curate a show of any type she wanted in the Andrea Rosen gallery, with the only stipulation being that she use at least one work from the series of Polaroid photos which Walker Evans took during the last year of his life. She ended up using 83 of them, along with photos from “Bird” by Roni Horn, one amazing Eugene Atget Paris photo, a great set of Eadweard Muybridge animal locomotion series, a giant (really, huge) bird cage/house/Indian Palace, a French model of a cooper’s workshop and the furniture of Gustav Stickley and some other early 20th Century arts and craft movement folks. Sounds like an odd mix, and it kinda is, but it works very well. Pick up the artist booklet at the front desk and read it – some cool connections are written about that you won’t pick up on your own unless you’re a very well-read art scholar. My favorite part of the show are the Evans photos – tiny little Polaroid photos which he took using what many considered to be a toy camera. In an interview quoted in the show’s book, he says that he liked using it because it stripped away all the other stuff and left him to just find the best image. Which he did, and did very well.

9. Eugene Atget at MoMA, Feb 6 – April 9 – If the one photo at Andrea Rosen isn’t enough for you, there’s a whole bevy of Atget photos being exhibited at MoMA starting in February. Atget was a hard-working artist with little recognition when he died. Keep that in mind, struggling artists, as you go to this show. He sold his photos to architects and such, mainly as models, to pay his bills. Man Ray lived down the street from him and loved his work, he convinced Berenice Abbott that he rocked (while she was his intern) and she convinced a wealthy art dealer to finance the purchase of his works, which MoMA then bought, and now you can see what they got – an amazing body of work which ended up influencing the Surrealists, as well as many other artists. Atget considered himself an auteur, and for good reason. I can’t think of a better show to see in NY this year, and can’t wait for this to open. BTW, you can learn more about this history in the book accompanying the “Wedding” show mentioned above, and the photo in that show is not in the MoMA collection, so again, see both.

10.The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936 – 1951, The Jewish Museum, through March 25 I can’t believe I haven’t made it to this show yet, it’s been up since November, but to finish this photo-centric must-see list, I mustn’t forget this show. The Photo League was a group of mostly Jewish photographers who in the Thirties decided to turn their lens to documentary photography (and socialist ideals) during a quite tumultuous time in US history. It included folks like Berenice Abbott, Weegee, Paul Strand and many others,and it was quite a collaborative – with dark rooms and shows, lectures and talks. In the late 40s things started getting a little toxic in the US, and some members ended up on blacklists and the league finally closed. But their work remains influential to many, and it seems to me to be quite a timely show. While there, you can also catch Jem Cohen’s “Weights and Measures” his 2006 film, which is quite lovely.

I realize this is quite the male-centric list, although not entirely. It’s also Manhattan heavy on the venues. Sorry, but these are the shows I most want to see/have liked thus far, and that’s just how it seems to have happened. Anyway, I’d most like to hear from you – what other shows should I see that I’m missing? If you’ve seen these, what are your thoughts on the shows?

Every year I join the madding crowd and write up the 10 or so things which I think will be interesting to watch in the coming year. So, here’s what’s on my mind heading into 2012.

1. SOPA/PIPA: This might be the most serious thing for us to watch in 2012. I’ve written about it here, been interviewed about it here and think these few blogs are the ones to watch to learn more, but my hope is that more indie filmmakers start to think more seriously about the impact of these laws on our possible futures in 2012. I wished this in 2011, so I’m not holding my breath. My hope: Someone creates a Crowd-Controls mash-up to “Occupy the Cinemas.” What’s that? A major boycott of one or more Hollywood film’s opening weekend in early 2012 to protest the Studio’s support of the MPAA and their position on SOPA. They’re funding this. We need to show we can do something. In the perfect world, people would pledge to skip the opening weekend(s) of some Hollywood film(s) and you could track by Zip Code (and by congressional district?) the protest as it grows. Perhaps we could all pledge to attend an indie film instead, so that no one can claim we’re just hurting theaters, stuck in the middle. I’d love to see this happen, think it could be huge, but lack the time and programming talent to pull it off.

2. Sundance sales/launches: This is a perennial debate in the film world, but one again, I’m excited to find out how sales go at Sundance (and Slamdance). We’ve got some results on how last year’s big buys performed, and we’ve had an interesting year with new distributors, new distribution models and a lot of turmoil in the economic marketplace. How are this year’s film selections? How will they perform? What new companies will launch? What initiatives will Sundance announce? Or others? Always a good time to get a bead on what’s next in the American indie sector, and I’ll be in attendance and following the news closely.

3. Sundance Artist Services: Sundance makes it to my watch in 2012 list twice for one other reason: their ongoing Artist Services program. You can read about it here, but the quick summary is that Sundance is using their brand and connections to help their alumni to get their films to the public in a better way. They’ve negotiated great deals on behalf of their artists with companies like TopSpin and New Video to help artists take control of their films and get them to audiences (and make money). This, to my mind, is the smarter approach of those being launched by some other fests – we don’t need more distributors, but we do need smart ideas to help filmmakers and audiences connect, and Sundance is leading the way.

4. More branded content/advertising experiments: There’s been a lot of new experiments in branded content and brand partnerships in the indie sector in the past year – as I predicted last year. One of the more interesting developments I’ll be watching is the LaunchPad program launched at DocNYC this year. I reckon we’ll see many more over the course of 2012, but I also imagine we’ll see the beginnings of, if not the fulfillment of, many failures in this space. Why? I’m actually bullish on the idea overall, but I actually think that very few people in the indie film sector have any clue how advertisers think and work, and won’t structure projects that lead to any return on the advertiser’s investments. Second, they’ll fail because consumers aren’t watching. Yes, me, you and everyone we know loves indie films. But there’s not many of us, and we’re a lot less cutting edge and sexy than what’s going on in short form video online, gaming and so many other sectors. But hey, someone will figure this out and make it work, and I’m actually all for it.

5. Transmedia Backlash (but the practice continues on): You can’t look around too long in the film world without running into someone going on and on about the rise of transmedia. Heck, I talk about it a lot too. But there’s a couple things bothering me about this: 1) there actually aren’t a lot of people in the indie world doing this, and; 2) most of the experiments have sucked. Yes, more and more filmmakers are exploring it, but I follow this sector pretty closely, and trust me, it’s a small group. There’s been a much bigger interest in this from the advertising community. A lot of foundations are now funding this for documentaries, but mainly because they’re always chasing trendy things they don’t understand. I’m even seeing proposals from people saying they’re making transmedia when all they’re doing is making a website. The term is just being overused (along with still being a crap term). Second, I’ve yet to see more than a couple of good transmedia projects. I don’t want to single out the good or the bad, but it’s an open secret – whenever I attend events dedicated to transmedia, a few of us gather for beers afterwards and this truth always comes up in conversation. I’m sure this isn’t going to stop us from hearing more about it in 2012, and I hope we see a couple new peojects which prove my second point wrong, but I’m even more sure we’ll get lots of backlash – filmmakers and critics and industry calling more BS on the practice overall. I’ve started to see it on fest panels over the past year, but expect more in 2012.

6. Impact of OWS on arts: This has already started in 2011, but expect to see a lot more hand-wringing amongst arts leaders about perceptions of elitism and class disparities in the arts. Expect to see many more protests at cultural events. As the OWS movement picks up steam again as the winter fades (and it will rise up again), we’ll see a lot more talk about how artists should respond, how arts organizations should (or shouldn’t) get involved and about deep structural issues of class and culture. This should be fun. Seriously, while a lot of the arguing will be old hat and boring, there’s a lot to talk about here, and my sincere hope is that some artists do something unexpected, cool and genuinely creative and inspiring around OWS issues in 2012.

7. Economic meltdown in latter half of 2012: I suspect those OWS inspired events will also increase due to something I keep yelling about, though no one wants to hear it – the increasing likelihood of another economic meltdown in late 2012. You can read what I think about it here. You can disagree with me too, but you have to admit that things remain tough out there and as the economy continues to sputter it will continue to impact budgets across the US, and this will mean cuts to the arts. It will likely mean more scrutiny of film incentives, and the likely loss of some of them (already occurring in some states). Now, some people call me a pessimist for talking all doom and gloom, but I’m not really. Remember, pessimists are always happy, because we expect nothing to work, and get surprised (and happy) when something does work, or when bad things don’t happen. I’m a big supporter of the idea that art gets more interesting in tough times. There’s a silver lining here, perhaps, but I really do think we’ll see some economic turmoil and it will have impact on film and the arts. We’ll see if I’m right.

8. The next phase of crowdfunding: And if everything does go to pot, we’ll definitely see more people turning to the crowd to raise their funds. We’ve seen some amazing things with Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowd-funding sites. I’m a fan of them, I’ve used them and I plan to use them again in the future. But I don’t think that crowd-funding will continue forward only under this current model. I’ve already seen presentations of other start-ups tweaking the model a bit, and some will launch in 2012 and I suspect many others will as well. More importantly, as the idea matures, we’ll likely see it taken to new levels and with new models, and perhaps these will even be done by the existing leaders in the space. Where’s it going? I’m not sure, but as the crowd gets more connected, there are better ways to leverage its support than through constant tweets about your campaign. A directed, aggregated crowd could have more impact than the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations combined (seriously). I like Ian David Moss’s proposal for this space, as just one example. I suspect we’ll see more in 2012.

9. Which celebrity will use Kickstarter to fund a major Hollywood film? Along the same lines: Okay, this sounds dumb, but seriously, the moment that someone like Ashton Kutcher uses Kickstarter to raise money for a major Hollywood (or Indiewood) film is surely upon us soon, and it will work. I’d hazard to guess that any major celebrity could raise $50M to fund a major production and invent an entirely new distribution-to-fans model at the same time. I hope we see it in 2012.

10. Collecting Data: Ok, this one is kind of boring, but I’m hoping that some bright person(s) or group(s) use 2012 to help collect some data for all of us to use. Geesh, you’d think that with multiple filmmaker-service orgs in the film space, most having been here for over 20 years, one of them would’ve done this already, but nope, they’re doing some other service, I guess. We need a lot of data. It would help all of us. Things like: how has the audience size (by attendance, sales, etc) for indie film changed over the years?; a historic comparison of sales and performance for different films by genre, perhaps based on the history of Sundance; how much economic impact does indie film generate?; a comparison of festival attendance in different cities, including demographics; what percentage of film school grads are working in film in 5, 10, 15 years?; which distribution release strategies work?. These are very basic questions, I can think of thousands of others. I get emails all the time from people asking for some similar data sets (just got one two days ago), but there’s precious little research and data about our sector. I’d hazard to guess it might be useful in all sorts of ways. Project for IFP, FIND, NAMAC, NEA, Sundance, Guilds, IndieWire, Variety, NYU Film? Come on folks, someone must want to do some research for us?!?!

11. Social, check in and content: I’ve predicted this for a few years now. I’ve got lots of ideas in this space, but I’m convinced that 2012 is when the ideas of social, check-in and sharing hit content in a big way. There’s some people doing it now, but no one is doing it well. I wish film fests would figure this out. Someone will.

12. Exhibition Changes: I think we’ll see a lot of disruption, good and bad, in this space. I’m very excited about rumors of expansion of Alamo Drafthouse. I love the new Nitehawk and Rerun Theaters in NYC. The Arthouse Convergence is helping arthouses to work together to keep themselves thriving, and hopefully do some new things. I also think we’ll see some shake-up among the larger theater chains. I love the MoviePass disruption being led by Stacey Spikes. I also suspect we’ll see a lot more micro-cinemas, alternative venues and hopefully, more tools for indie filmmakers to tap in to all of these resources. 2012 should be a year of great change in the exhibition space.

So, there’s my 12 things to watch in 2012, what are yours?