The Film Victoria International Financing Summit was held on November 28 & 29, 2005 at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia.

As expected, mobile media wasn’t a platform of focus at the Film Victoria International Financing Summit, but it certainly laid waiting underneath many nervous discussions of the changing economics, production methods, audience patterns, and distribution channels of film and television.

Listening to the summit panelists’ talk in, for want of a better phrase, old-media terms, made me realize that “mobility” is a much broader concept than “mobile media” – we are heading toward an (oxymoronic) era of immediate media.

“Immediate” in this sense refers to media that is fast and easy to access – on demand; and which is lean and not burdened by multiple points of mediation. The mobile revolution is about mobility in broad and varying senses. It is about freedom in regard to time AND space - immediacy. For content producers, it is about the unhinging of our conceptions of the entire cycle of film and television production and consumption.

This is the shifting reality for producers.

For over fifty years the television industry has held viewers captive to a fixed programming schedule. But this fixed gaze is beginning to wander. No longer are we squared-eyed; we are lazy-eyed.

In its broadest sense, mobile media is about watching what you want, when you want it. That includes DVD, portable media such as the PSP and Video iPod, TiVo recordings, Bit Torrented content, Internet fare, and mobile content.

Like television, the film industry, too, has assumed that it can continue with the same old model. The system whereby theatrical release sits at the top of the distribution apex is being challenged by immediate media. The recent anti-piracy security checks at the worldwide openings of King Kong seems a pathetic and futile attempt to deal with a changing economic environment.

It is futile because immediate media is agile media – media able to move fluidly around the Internet, digital cinema networks, into and around homes, between devices, and throughout communities. It is fluid. The dam has burst.

Independent producers best leave plugging the holes to the fat fingered and dying Megafauna, and direct their creative energy toward developing financing models that reflect this new regime. Content creators, too, need to re-think their conceptions of content – right down to givens like beginning, middle, and end.

Then again, that might all be a load of crap. Who knows? Is the sky falling?

The Film Victoria International Financing Summit was an attempt to begin to throw these questions and reinventions in to the ring, and to sort the talk from the dialogue.

Sophie Walpole, who also spoke at the xmedia conference, talked about the case of BBC’s Doctor Who being leaked on to P2P networks a week before its launch. The BBC reckons that it didn’t make any considerable difference to the viewing numbers when it aired on television. This brought up some interesting discussion, most of which centred around the idea that there is something special about large-scale communal media events, and that this is television’s distinctive competency.

Sophie also said that the BBC are seeing interactive and broadband content as the new hammock that leads people in to other content. For instance, you might watch a BBC documentary, and then check out the website, which might lead you to other areas on BBC’s site, and maybe back to another television program or DVD. This hammocking creates great cross-promotional opportunities crucial to the digital production model.

Writer and producer Robert Connolly talked about the false success of DVD from a content maker’s perspective. He said that he can sell a DVD to a rental business for $30, and that’s the last money he sees. The rental business, however, can use it over and over and over (unlike video), and then even sell it for ten or so bucks at the end of its rental run.

Simon Killen from Aztec International made an interesting comment from the perspective of a DVD distributor dealing in small and mid-budget films. He said that if Look Both Ways was taken up by the Internet downloading community then “it would be an honour” because it would mean the film had reached some kind of popular critical mass.

There was then discussion about the kinds of content that people are seeking out on the net. Cameron Reilly from the Podcast network made a similar argument to that which Mark Pesce made at the xmedia conference - that production values are not the critical factor among communities of interest. He gave the example of his favourite podcast - a history program made by a retired American history teacher. The program is basically this guy hitting record and speaking about American history for an hour. Cameron said that he is a history buff and loves it – he’s part of a community of interest. He also reckons there is a “pent-up” demand on the part of consumers to make content.

Later, in question time, someone suggested that there is a limit to the amount of time and energy people can actually invest in making media – not everyone has time to be a media maker. Nor can everyone be a Stanley Kubrick. But a response to this argument is that the definition of content creation/creator is shifting – is a person playing networked games in which they build things a content producer? What constitutes content?

The scariest reality of the day, from a content maker’s POV, was that there was general agreement among speakers’ that there is an oversupply of content – and much of it quality content. But worse still, the digitalization of the industry will see the opening-up of back catalogues – just imagine the size of the BBC’s back catalogue, and that’s only one broadcaster! So now your baby must compete with all the new babies as well as the legions of walking dead. Attack of the Back Catalogue.

But there is always hope for quality content in the emerging media meritocracy. John Maynard talked of the need to create new forms of drama – to take screen stories to new places - and, for me, this is where the only solution rests, and it is also where mobile video enters the discussion. It’s time to conceive of, and invest in, cross-platform productions – immediately.