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Uncovering the future of screen business

05 March 2010 Screen business VIC

 

In December 2009, the Creative Industries Innovation Centre ran a special event featuring UK screen industry expert, John Howkins titled, ‘Screen Business – Global Trends, Innovation and Opportunities’. This was held in partnership with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne, which hosted the event.

Annette Blonski, script editor and ACMI Board Director, and Lisa Colley, CIIC Director, joined John in a conversation about the key trends and future opportunities for content creators in the film and digital industries.

John is based in London and has worked in over 30 countries worldwide across the screen and entertainment industries. He is the Chairman of BOP Consulting and author of the recent book, 'Creative Ecologies: Where Thinking is a Proper Job'. He is also Deputy Chairman of the British Screen Advisory Council (BSAC) and a Member of the United Nations UNDP Advisory Committee on the Creative Economy.

The focus of John’s talk was on the future of the industry, and the impact of the recent paradigm shift in consumer demands and behaviour, due to mobile devices delivering content to the viewer on demand.

He said, “…the consumer, is increasingly impatient - and explicitly so - in making sure …they have the right, or they can make their own decisions about what they want to see… They want to see it when they want to see it and they want to see it where... so that’s on the device that they choose, they don't want to download it from a device in one room and not be able to transfer it to a portable disc in the next. And they want to pay for it in the way they want to pay”.

John also shared his views on the urgent need to revise the licensing, pricing and business models available for digital content, noting that “…we are now beginning to think about how…we would arrange between producers and rights holders and distributors and aggregators and online ISPS …so that we might have a system, a sort of hierarchy, a waterfall of different licenses and different prices”.

The CIIC is part of the Australian Government’s Enterprise Connect program, is hosted by the University of Technology, Sydney and supported by a national network of corporate, industry and university partners.