Last day left to help make a movie

There is the last day left for you to help our indie film team finish and release a feature film with a financial contribution. Read this for how you can help! I would love it if you help by following that link and clicking 'follow' on the Seed&Spark campaign page. If we get 500 likes, we unlock a lot of great services to help us distribute the new film. We can continue growing follows after the campaign is over, so please click and follow!

After reading about filmmaking for the last seven days, let's wrap up the story with why a CIO is busy making movies and how these worlds are related.

There are many areas where you could talk about overlap, such as in the process of making business cases, negotiating contracts and working with a partner ecosystem. This is all true, like any project, however there are some specific and key areas where my two worlds directly support each other. These are technology, creativity and teamwork.

Technology

The filmmaking and distribution industries have been turned inside out and upside down by technology. Movies are being made on smartphones, and they can be pretty good. At the hollywood level, the digital capabilities enable films like Avatar and the Star Wars. These special effects are open to us as well, such as the use of green screen and changing the sky in scenes to get rid of rain clouds. Digital has essentially democratised movie making - anybody can do it, as long as they have the knowledge.

On the distribution side, similar things are happening. We no longer need to send DVDs or tapes to distributors, there are now platforms to upload and you just send a link. Applying to festivals is via platforms. Register once and apply with a click. The actual viewing experience has changed, as most (all?) cinemas now are digital and are projected from big computers. At home, Netflix is available in 130 countries. Youtube now has the ability for filmmakers to charge per view. Getting the film to the audience has been streamlined by digital.

A quick word on piracy here. My observation is because the film industry with their limitations and restrictions on rights has made it impossible to have their content consistently available around the world. This makes it frustrating for the viewer, who in many cases then turns to illegal downloads to get the film. Our strategy is to get the films out on as many platforms as possible so the viewer can watch wherever they like. Yes, some will still pirate the film, but it won't be because they didn't have a legal option!

Creativity

When mentioning creativity, I'm not speaking about the on screen creativity. That is really interesting to be a part of, but pretty much I don't get involved there because we have experts for that. Just like in IT, I do need to know enough to be able to have an intelligent conversation. For me, the creativity is about the business model. Get creative and make the Agile Filmmaking method reproducible. Get creative and get the films online all over the world. 

As written earlier, we are now getting creative with how to attract and audience. It really goes back to the saying that, ' necessity is the mother of invention'. We need an audience, we can't afford to buy one, so we need to make one some other way.

How often in digital and IT projects did we not have enough budget to accomplish the goal? Pretty much every time, so you have to get creative to make things happen.

Teamwork

Like an corporate or digital department, you need a diverse group of players to make things happen. If it's all content experts on a single topic, you will never be able to finish. In filmmaking, many of the players are the same, but they go by different names.  The script could be considered the architecture to work towards. The writer, and the writing team, give the story and project the body. The Director, and the Directors team, are a mix of Product Owner and Scrum Master. The Assistant Directors are the one's who make sure all the bits of the puzzle are at the right place at the right time. 

There is an interesting tension around the Product Owner (an Agile role), where the Director is in charge of the 'creative' aspect, however the Producer is also responsible for the 'commercial' aspect. This is where teamwork comes in.

A huge aspect of teamwork for me, in both corporate and film projects, is the learning. We solve problems all the team, but for example the team working on the crowd campaign is Kristjan Knigge, Erik Bannenberg and BJ Boulter and myself with help from the whole production team. Throughout the process we've had to juggle our daily lives and adjust our focus and effort, often times switching and sharing tasks.  When an opportunity or question came up, there was a discussion during our weekly meetings or a phone call, and someone had a good idea and we went with it.

Fun!

I know I said there was three areas of alignm.... uh, overlap between the corporate and film worlds, but of course the fourth is fun. If it wasn't fun to create things and bring them to market, nobody would be doing it! 

This is the last piece of the story, as the crowd funding campaign is over tomorrow. You can still help after this date with a FOLLOW on the Seed&Spark site, as when we get to the 500 mark we can unlock the extra services. 

Thanks for the read, and the help. Curious what you think, so please comment below!

You can start at the beginning of the story here.