November 17, 2011
Tribeca Connection: Students Skype with TFF Co-founder, Jane Rosenthal
By Leslie Lello (Animation + Visual Effects, 2013)
Jane Rosenthal spoke to the students of Tribeca Flashpoint Academy last week as part of a continuing effort by the school to connect students with high-profile individuals with enormous real-life experience in the media industry.
Rosenthal offered the students her views on what it takes to be a producer as the state of the industry keeps changing, and where her own work methods have changed over the years as new technology and trends are introduced.
She related how new media and convergence are having a direct impact on her job and how students can leverage these current trends to their benefit.
The topic of social media came up often during the discussion as a great tool to market material and get material out in front of as many audiences as possible.
She considers audiences today to be “platform agnostic,” meaning that there is no urgency within audiences to run a theater opening weekend to see the latest movie. The audiences feel that they can always see it later in other ways (DVD, online, television, etc). Because of this, she has been more likely in recent years to suggest opening the movie online, much to the chagrin of directors who still appreciate the prestige of a theatrical release.
But because fewer and fewer people are physically going to movie theaters, Rosenthal believes it is better to have a big online opening than to have a movie premiere in theaters with a very small first weekend box office return.
She announced to the students that this is why Tribeca Film Institute has created a videos-on-command (VOD) site for their movies, so that audiences can see the films as early as possible on line.
When Rosenthal started to take questions from the audience, several students made inquiries about the future of movie-making and how it relates to fundraising, as well as to the school’s visual effects and video games disciplines.
The audience for video games is growing at an enormous rate, and will soon have one billion gamers world-wide. Although Rosenthal has never produced a video game, she is very excited about that part of the industry and believes games have the potential to tell some very complex and rich stories. She considers it a great venue for storytelling and would really enjoy getting more involved with that side of the entertainment industry.
She also feels that more sources for funding films has emerged over the last few years and there are more possibilities for filmmakers to raise money, even beyond crowdfunding sources such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
Rosenthal's talk was very inspiring, offering TFA students a tremendous amount of information, advice, and guidance that we'll use to springboard our careers and leverage the new technologies emerging today.