Heard about the new tech that will change the entertainment industry forever?

Co-authored with Nuno Bernardo

We know our title sounds a little clickbait, but it’s more common than you think. Statements like these spring up in their dozens, heading news articles, blogs and conference talks, as and when new technologies related to moving images emerge. But instead of promoting the "revolution", we think that the media, the professionals of the entertainment industry and conference organizers should be focused on the evolution, enabling participants to see their role within the hype cycles, to use them as springboards for placement within the industry. Instead of promoting revolutionary messages such as "the end of Cinema as we know it" or "TV is dead" we need to understand the evolution of the industry and play accordingly. And this is why.

A few years ago, during a workshop aimed at TV and Film producers that we both attend in Scotland, a well-respected speaker pinned the rise of virtual reality (VR) onto the much-lauded Gartner Hype cycle. VR was really going to be the next big thing. The curve looked good and the outcome almost certain. According to its trajectory, VR had made its way through the toughest parts and was now destined for greater adoption within the industry. But if such an outcome was a sure bet, then how come all the other ‘big things’ that had taken up a place somewhere along the curve during previous years, hadn’t succeeded in knocking TV and film off their prime spots? So does a ride through Gartner’s five phases really mirror the journey from innovation to production within the media industry? And if not, then what’s the point of all that hype? What’s really driving the creatives and producers to embrace new technologies, platforms, devices and business models in their pursuit to tell stories?

Squint your eyes at Gartner’s hype cycle and you can almost trace the route taken by a roller-coaster. Ratchet your way up the Innovation Trigger as media hype fuels your ascension to the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Before you get a chance to enjoy the view you’ll be hurtling your way down the other side as interest wanes, screaming and protesting all the way towards the Trough of Disillusionment. Dislodge your stomach from your mouth before your journey calms, sliding you up towards the Slope of Enlightenment, eventually to rest on the Plateau of Productivity.

But open your eyes a little wider and you’ll see that there’s no real guarantee that a ticket for the start at the left will get you all the way to the end on the right. On the contrary, most carriages get emptied as they hurtle along the tracks. Thousands of ideas, concepts, products and services start but few make it all the way to the end. More often there are technologies that come and go, and they come for a second or third time – like VR – we think that we are at the Plateau of Productivity, that the technology survived the hype cycle and it will be here to stay, but in most cases it’s just the beginning of another cycle.

The thickness of the line is misleading. It should start thick and then reduce as concepts die-off. The next big thing all too often gets overtaken by the next next big thing and so on. Do you remember 3D movies and how they were supposed to change the cinemagoing experience forever?

When it comes to media, mainly speaking TV and Film, there appears to be two cycles influencing one another. One is the cycle of innovation - good old Research and Development (R&D). Something new comes along, let’s say the latest device from APPLE, SONY or SAMSUNG. The media talks about it and presents it as the next big thing, the device that will disrupt everything. Then everyone gets excited, and joins the innovation train by also talking about it – remember when Facebook bought Oculus Rift? New workshops pop up like mushrooms promising a seat in the carriage, posts on Linkedin suggest veiled threats to the establishment. Facebook takes it further by proclaiming the end is nigh. Side events spring up in conference side rooms. A panic is fuelled within the industry as it self-flagellates, firing off rhetorical questions ‘is this really the next big thing?’, ‘What will be the new business models?’‘Are we going through a revolution?’.  We get excited, we experiment, we do what the hipsters tell us and ‘fail fast’. Some succeed in doing something neat. Some don’t. But at some point, the hype recedes as fast as it came in, our rollercoaster carriage starts to head down the other side and we feel our stomach rising as we realize that the business wasn’t really there.

Someone outside the industry may think that this doesn’t make any sense. But, there’s a reasoning for why we so easily adopt these changes; as more content becomes ever more available, it becomes ever harder to breakout within the industry. So new talent usually embraces new technologies to tell and market stories, as a new way to get them made and get them seen. Remember “Blair Witch” project twenty years ago? Or the new YouTube/Influencers? Or that first movie that was shot on an iPhone? Every new technology is usually overlooked by the establishment in its early stages so it’s easier for new talent to create and be exposed – benefiting from the initial upward curve of the hype cycle.

But when we fail, we claim that we were ‘ahead of our time’. We look around, grappling for business models from other industries that might just keep us on track. But as we hit the dip, rather than travel along the predicted rise out of the trough, towards the success promised by Gartner, we instead disbanded the idea and make our way back to the start. That’s right. We go left, not right. We return to where we came from, riding a different carriage this time as another product comes along, perhaps this time from Google. We start a new cycle. Last time it was 3D, now it’s VR, perhaps next time it will be AI. Whatever it will be, we’ll still be cycling around, spinning out new ideas. And that’s fantastic and it’s how it should be.

But other parts of the TV and Film industry, financing, production, sales, marketing and distribution industry don’t stay still. They too evolve but at a different pace. The value chain, the ‘set of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver a valuable product or service for the market’ (thanks Wiki) is way too solid and geared to the specific products it creates to simply change at the speed of the R&D cycle. Change is slow, much like a slow growing oak tree. In contrast, and quite rightfully, R&D is the fast and throwaway, a little plastic one might say. So on the left hand we have the fast spinning ‘plastic’ wheel of innovation and on the right, the slower moving wooden wheel of financing, production, sales, marketing and distribution. Whilst there isn’t a drive shaft between the two, they are connected, with both feeding one another. And here’s how.

As media makers innovate and try out the new, often surfing the hype wave that pushes carriages up through the Innovation Trigger towards the Peak of Inflated Expectations they raise their own profiles. They get noticed. They make themselves relevant. New talent emerges. This most valuable element within the industry allows them to abandon the cart before it descends and thereby make a leap over to the other wheel. The kid that shot a movie on his iPhone and got noticed maybe got hired by a studio to shoot a big budget film (probably on 35mm film), or that VR creator that created some waves with his interactive installation in a very popular museum will be hired to do a TV Show for a top TV Network. 

At risk of adding way too many metaphors, they turn the rollercoaster into a ski jump, allowing the hype to propel them from one cycle (innovation) over to the other (production). And with them, they take some of that pioneering spirit and possibly some tech, albeit applying it to the slow evolving wheel that’s bound to the conventions of a value chain, that’s take over a century to mature.

New talent and creatives embrace new technologies to find their space, tell their stories and get noticed – this enables them to enter the ‘big boys and girls’ club’. At the same time, parts of the slow moving establishment become afraid of the disruption that new technologies threaten to their businesses and therefore embrace (in most cases, buy) such new tech, so they will not lose the hype bandwagon, thereby bringing disruptors closer. But at the end of the day, the established businesses keep moving slowly on.

Sometimes, it happens the other way. A successful craftsperson from the traditional world, wants to stand out. They seek relevance and go back into the innovation cycle to do something new. “I’m bored of this traditional, slowly changing ‘wooden’ world’ they shout as they ‘don their latex’ for a quick spin of the innovation ‘plastic’ hype wheel. Sometimes less successful people do the same, often citing the failure of the system as being their need to innovate. Whatever the reason, this creates another flow between the two wheels.

So next time you’re told that it’s out with the old and in with the new, question to which wheel they’re referring, as it may well be that replacement is what keeps the wheel of innovation spinning and ‘tried and tested’ keeps the industry wheel, running. Film and TV will not die in the upcoming years (if ever), the established funding business models will not dramatically change (Netflix and Amazon behave more or less like a traditional Film/TV studio), but all the buzz generated by new technologies help the proliferation of new talent and provokes some small change in the establishment, making them adapt to the evolving world and the change in consumer behaviour.

End.

This piece originated from the conference talk "Why the audio visual businesses always gets so excited by the latest technological developments and buzzwords?" FIPA 31- Industry Days. 26.1.2018

Paul Tyler is a creative analyst and moderator, working out of Copenhagen. paultyler.dk

Nuno Bernardo, CEO beActive Media, is a writer, producer, director and published author, working out of Lisbon and Dublin. beactivemedia.com