GOING BIONIC #268 – WELCOME TO OUR 5TH BIRTHDAY PARTY! May 19, 2015.

May 19, 2015

Welcome to our fifth birthday party! Before I limp down memory lane, I’d like to thank singer-songwriter Melinda Ortner for making it possible for me to create this article. You see, my laptop was locked away in a place I couldn’t access and the Cannes Film Festival Press Office was closed. However, Melinda lent me her laptop overnight, after only knowing me for forty-minutes. Such refreshing trust is nothing short of amazing, so I hope Melinda is blessed with an ocean of good karma for gifting me such authentic kindness. I also hope you click on her SoundCloud link https://soundcloud.com/melindaortner and support Melinda’s creative journey, because I believe she deserves to be heard.

Now back to our regularly scheduled birthday party.

Our bionic journey started on Tuesday, May 18, 2010, during the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival. Now, as you read this 268th article five years later, I’m still trekking the world to deliver insight on the international film scene and game-changing trends.

My last five years have been wonderfully eclectic and tumultuously perfect, because they’ve provided me with highs like becoming a father of my amazing twin daughters Lena and Zoe, lows like watching the world economic crisis suffocate everything and everyone I’ve ever known, and sideways journeys like becoming a partner at Industry Corporation, which has already become an instrumental part of my present and future. Throughout my journey with this column, I’ve observed several out-of-left field, “this could never actually happen, could it,” game-changing trends, which have rewritten the rules as we knew them.

Thus, today I’m going to share three key takeaways, which have forever altered the world of entertainment revolves, navigates and ultimately affects us all.

When I was at UCLA film school in the 90’s, it was widely understood that major careers in film, television and music didn’t happen without having a major agent. However, such is not the case in 2015. Thanks to the explosion of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and Sound Cloud, these days’ artists can present their creative chops to the world, without having to worry about gatekeepers restricting their ability to do so. While it’s still great to have an A-list agent guide you toward through the financial capitalization of your creative abilities, it’s no longer a requirement to get noticed.

I never thought I’d utter the words, “TV is King,” but they ring more true today than ever before. Simply put, there is currently more money to be made in, and better content to be made on television than feature films, and all signs point to that trend continuing. Furthermore, since tablets and smart phones have reached epic heights of visual and technological ability, consumers have become comfortable with consuming content on much smaller, mobile screens. Thus, while there’s nothing like enjoying the communal experience of a packed movie theater at the opening night of a highly anticipated, tent pole motion picture release, people are getting used to enjoying creative content on their own schedule and on their own personal devices.

Last year, Variety released a poll stating Internet personalities are more popular than A-list movie stars to mass audiences. As shocking as such results may seem, the reasons for the shift in society’s tastes make sense. The poll reveals mass audiences prefer Internet personalities because Internet personalities are more like they are and are willing to be in direct communication with their fan base. Of course, the results of Variety’s survey could be a trend, or an insignificant, soon-to-be forgotten factoid in the history of cinema, but I don’t think that’s the case. The world as we know it in is changing by the second, and thus entertainment is evolving alongside it. I’m just here to experience, observe and report my findings, and then report them to you.

I thank you once again for lending me your eyes, and I look forward to borrowing them again soon. Until then, I wish you happiness, health and creative bliss. I can be reached on Twitter @Lonelyseal.