National Research
In 2002, a landmark study on the future of independent media was published. Under the auspices of the National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture, Andrew Blau of Global Business Network worked with six San Francisco based media organizations to "imagine a future likely to be very different from the present." Using a scenario-building method, the group outlined the rapid changes taking place in the media environment, and speculated on the implications of those changes. Their findings are included in the report, Deep Focus, A Report on the Future of Independent Media.
The findings, observations, and recommendations of this national report provided a valuable contextual framework for AIMM as it began its own exploration of the Boston independent media community. Here are some of the fundamental conditions of the new ecology of independent media that the Deep Focus report describes:
- pervasive - with the steady migration of producers and consumers to digital formats and internet-based platforms, motion media becomes increasingly omnipresent
- noisy and competitive - as the costs of basic production and distribution fall, and the number of platforms grow, the environment becomes increasingly crowded
- inverted - with consumers able to exert more control over what they choose to watch, the dynamic of the field is weighted to the consumer/design side rather than the producer/supply side
- fragmented - audiences coalesce around specialized programming and markets organize according to niche content
- financially reorganized - with the advent of niche programming, financial support comes from individuals and other community sources cultivated from grass roots movements and the Internet
Despite the turbulence of the transforming environment, the report suggests that independent media makers are entering an era of unprecedented opportunity. Equipped with cinematic skills and rich narrative ability, independent media artists can flourish, contribute to, and advance the increasingly pervasive, competitive, inverted and fragmented new world of motion media.