EXPLORING THE FUTURE OF THE FILM INDUSTRY
OMNIA Entertainment LLC was present at the Entertainment and Technology Summit to be a part of the dialogue on the current trends in these two combined industries. With so many new distribution outlets, OMNIA Entertainment LLC will also be creating its own entertainment platforms and solidly compete, and our goal is to work with creators who are already working across all the new platforms.
The insight at the summit articulates all the new opportunities, develops brand awareness and exposes how companies like Facebook, Snapchat, GoPro, DC Comics, Awesomeness, Buzzfeed and Full Screen, which were all represented at the summit, are similar or different in their efforts. By observing and understanding the strategies and behaviour of these companies, OMNIA Entertainment LLC can easily identify the best places to be in the market in order to capitalise on it. As Diane Nelson, President of DC Entertainment and WB Consumer Products stated, “It’s ultimately about the depth of the industry”.
NEW WAYS OF ENGAGING AUDIENCES
Success in the entertainment industry is based on distribution, and great content is important for sustainability. However, without the driving mechanism of using all possible distribution outlets, it is not possible to compete on a large scale. The experience added the specifics of the players, their strategies and how they are experimenting to discover the best combination of vertical platforms. All these platforms begin with the ideas; the stories to be told. The end game is to reach the consumer in a multitude of ways: Publishing, gaming, streaming, online interactive, immersive, mobile devices and consumer products.
The best news of all is that entertainment companies have multiple ways to make money on-going and do not necessarily have to rely on the big studios in order to do so. This includes the notion that some of the companies out there and their ideas got started from crowd funding. The giant studio system of Hollywood is shrinking, and more success will come to creators who can think in a multi-medium kind of way.
PROMINENT AND EXPERIENCED SPEAKERS
The 30 speakers at the summit are some of the best in the field and many have been in the industry for 20-30 years. The networking of all these executives being in one place at the same time was a perfect opportunity to listen to the heartbeat of the new trends and how the industry is changing. Years ago, it was daunting to pursue the entertainment market due to the power of the studios, as the studio system is very difficult to penetrate. The big change is that the studios have to compete with all these new platforms in order to stay competitive, and the little creator does not necessarily need a big studio to create a successful business.
Ted Zagat, head of brand awareness for Facebook, told that they are planning to start their own original content. Facebook wants to capitalise on mobile advertising, and on how consumers connect to businesses they want. Nick Beel said the same thing with creating content for his company Snapchat. Snapchat is very producer-friendly with fewer guidelines on what the entertainment needs to be.
Furthermore, Adi Sideman talked about his new company YouNow, which is a live social video piece. Fans and audience can call in and have interaction right away with their shows and hosts, and they get 150 million users a month. Currently, social video is not add content, but is still a multi billion dollar business.
BEING PART OF THE DEVELOPMENT
Technology and Entertainment are two of the biggest industries in the world. Being able to see how these two industries intersect gave us our own insight, and it develops our own instincts about the projects and products that we will invest in.
It is part of OMNIA Entertainment’s vision to be creative, entrepreneurial and at the forefront of industry, and participating and being “in the know” with this summit was as exciting as it gets.
This is a very exciting time in the entertainment industry due to all the above-mentioned developments, and at OMNIA Entertainment LLC, we are going to be a part of it.