What is the future of television in the interactive era? Is the Internet a tool that will help the traditional broadcaster drive viewership and add value to its audience experience, or does it threaten to take over the market from them? These are some of the questions on the table at Convergencetv.com, a Playback-produced conference scheduled for Aug. 9-10 at Toronto’s Hilton Hotel.

Convergencetv.com will assemble some of today’s key players in new media for nine sessions that will try to define the present and future roles of the tv set and the home computer.

Some argue that with ever-improving streaming video technology and the forthcoming arrival of digital tv and its interactive potential the functions of these two appliances are becoming indistinguishable. Others believe that after a hard day at the office, you just want to crash on the couch and be entertained – you don’t want to interact with your remote control beyond selecting a channel and turning off your brain.

To turn on our brains before the conference, Playback presents the Convergencetv.com Report, which looks at these very issues. The Internet is a new delivery tool many of us have in our homes, and it provides a fresh medium for people to get their messages out there, no broadcast licence required. What will drive traffic to your site is the quality and nature of your content, which provides a challenge to the traditional broadcaster and Internet startup alike.

There are no absolutes in these nascent days of convergence tv. ‘It’s an ongoing story,’ one Internet company executive told us, ‘but it’s a fun place to be.’

www.convergence-tv.com

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Canadian short content will get a new development and promotional resource with the September launch of website 48media.com. The Toronto-based company will webcast short films, animation, demo reels and movie trailers for productions with budgets of $2 million or less.

48media.com follows in the footsteps of u.s. entertainment sites such as AtomFilms and pop.com as well as local enterprises including Trailervision, which features trailers for films that don’t exist, and Film Toronto.com, which lists film service and craftspeople information. With the potential of film and Internet convergence largely untapped, 48media.com will combine elements of these sites to see which proves most popular.

The Tieu, a copartner at 48media.com, has a background in the film industry. He has produced three short films, served as production manager on various others and coproduced a project for MuchMusic’s Videofact. His partner, Jim Morrison, has directed music videos, short films and a couple of tv pilots. Presently they want to focus all their energy on 48media.com, which they believe addresses a major need.

‘We want to bring together the talent that exists in Toronto,’ Tieu says. ‘We hear talented young people saying, ‘I have a project but I only have half the budget and I also need some more people,’ but they really don’t know where to go. What we’re trying to do is create a network of hundreds or even thousands.’

The 48 Resource Centre area of the site will list coming courses and events as well as feature classifieds, production articles and industry craftspeople’s resumes, with demo reels and links to personal websites.

After helping emerging filmmakers get their projects off the ground, 48media.com can also serve as a place to showcase their work. Site visitors will be able to access the films free of charge.

Unlike many other websites showing video content, 48media.com will not be streaming.

‘We’re going with video-on-demand, using QuickTime as the technology of choice,’ Tieu explains. ‘We find that this maintains the quality of the content, even on a lower bandwidth connection. With streaming video such as RealPlayer, we have discovered that on a 56kps modem the playback is not consistent.’

Demos most popular

As the company accepts its first batch of submissions it is evident the demo reels – which can represent producers, directors, dops or editors – are the most popular idea.

It can be argued that a cinematographer, for instance, might not want his demo reel seen in a small box on a computer screen, but as Morrison points out, ‘If you’re sending out your reel to 30 different clients, this is a cost-effective way to give them a quick peek and let them decide whether or not this is a direction where they want to go, and then [you can] supply them with a follow-up.’

Tieu adds that the demo reels he has seen are perfectly conducive to the Internet experience because of their brevity and are slick enough to have entertainment value to surfers who otherwise have no interest in the film industry.

As opposed to the big u.s. entertainment websites that got into bidding wars over exclusive rights to short films at the last Sundance Film Festival, 48media.com does not pay filmmakers for showing their work and the agreement is non-exclusive. Tieu believes with this structure they won’t have any problem finding content.

‘There are more projects out there than the ones [other sites] are willing to pay for,’ he says. ‘Right now that’s not a concern. In some ways that’s actually refreshing for the people submitting, because they have a sense they’re not locking themselves down to anything.’

But as 48media.com’s lawyer has advised, what might limit the number of short films it can show is the sticky area of copyright.

‘In most of the short films, people throw in things like music they didn’t get the rights for,’ Tieu says. ‘We’ve seen some excellent stuff – we just can’t use it. The filmmaker is not willing to write off saying they’re going to take full responsibility, and we can’t say ‘You’ve submitted and we’ll take full responsibility.’ ‘

Since 48media.com’s webcast and resource services are free to the user, the company has devised other methods of generating revenue. One of those is a web design and hosting service for filmmakers.

‘I know many people who have a 10-minute 16mm film, and once they have done their film festival run they don’t know what to do with it,’ Tieu explains. ‘They’re interested in staying fresh, but they don’t have a medium to deliver that. We will have the infrastructure in place in terms of taking a film on a vhs or beta tape and turning it into a QuickTime. So what we have to say to them is ‘Give us your bio and your tape and we can create a website for you.’ ‘

Banner ads will be another revenue stream for the startup, but before it can charge advertisers, it has to establish how many hits it is getting, which obviously can’t be gauged until after the official September launch. Until then, they will offer free banner ads to certain organizations to forge business relationships. The company plans to build its infrastructure this way.

‘We’re trying to set up a partnership with a company that has an editing suite so we can use their equipment for free in exchange for banner ads,’ Tieu illustrates.

By securing equipment without paying hard costs, the partners plan to begin a production wing of 48media.com called 48 Productions, which will take on corporate and private clients. 48 Productions will also produce content for the website. The first such projects will be a series of 30-second parodies of the Heritage Minutes, titled ‘Only in Canada.’

Starting nationally, 48media.com has a clear plan to take advantage of the Internet’s global marketing opportunity.

‘Our [goal] is to create a well-organized e-content site focusing on Canada in the first year,’ Tieu says. ‘Then once we have the infrastructure in place we can expand on that to include all of North America within the first 18 months, and then beyond North America by the end of the second year.’ *

-www.48media.com