|
|
ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.10 - JANUARY 2001
|
Debris from Dot Com Crash Hits Animators Feinberg connected with Icebox when it launched in January, 2000. He quickly got an assignment to develop two series, Hard Drinkin' Lincoln and Queer Duck, in collaboration with Mike Reiss, executive producer of The Simpsons. Meanwhile, Bulbo moved on from Hotwired to Mondo Media. In both cases, he was paid to produce the content and shares in ongoing revenues. Big players were on the move, too. For instance, the Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) showed short films and television-style shows aimed at 14- to 24-year-olds, attracting major backers such as Dell Computer, Enron, Intel, Microsoft and NBC. Frank Mancuso, former chairman and chief executive of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, joined the board of directors in February. Then, DreamWorks SKG and Imagine Entertainment announced pop.com, a site that would launch in the spring with a mix of animated and live-action short films. After the Deluge One early sign came in February, when DEN withdrew its $75 million initial public offering, on the same day two top executives, Chairman and CEO Jim Ritts and Chief Operating Officer Bruce Gamache, announced their decision to leave the company. Today, www.den.com is "server not found." Pop.com abandoned its original plans before their first short aired on the Web. Today, its original plans lying amidst the dot com rubble, pop.com is offering trailers for The Nutty Professor and the latest Brad Pitt/Julia Roberts movie. Opportunities for quick success have largely dried up. "After Pop's downfall, the buzz has dissipated," says Evan Spiridellis of JibJab Media. "Before, friends on the West Coast were calling every day, wanting to learn Flash. All of a sudden, they're not calling. Or they're calling, but they're not talking about online content."
Picking Up the Pieces On iFilm, animators aren't sharing in ad revenues anyway, or getting any direct revenue from the site. Animators put their work on iFilm for feedback and exposure. But even if iFilm did share revenues (as AtomFilms does, for instance), you wouldn't want to count on paying the rent with the proceeds. "The Internet offers a lot of possibilities for independent animators: new audiences and revenue streams, new venues. But it's very difficult as a complete and sole business," says Eric Calderon, a development executive at AtomFilms. "A new business model has to arise," says Brooks. "Content has to be paid for, otherwise no one is going to pay you to do it." "It's been a grim ending to the year for a lot of people," says Gilstrap. "Asking people about animation on the Internet now is like asking survivors from Custer's last stand about their career in the military. We've been fortunate that we've bounced out of it [into television and movies]. People that are strictly on the Internet, I wish them good luck. It's a tough sell."
Like Gilstrap and Brooks, Plympton's Net momentum has helped propel offline success. Money from AtomFilms helped finance Plympton's animated feature film, Mutant Aliens, opening at Sundance in 2001. "I wouldn't have been able to make Mutant Aliens without AtomFilms," says Plympton. AtomFilms itself continues to pursue traditional offline outlets as energetically as online ones. For example, much of AtomFilms' success with JibJab came in sublicensing to ABC and Fox's Mad TV. They also do deals with airlines, such as Air Canada, British Airways, Continental, Cathay Pacific and United. AtomFilms is investigating new outlets, too. One is hand-held devices, such as pocket PCs. Another is kiosks at malls, where a pay-per-view format might work, where targeted advertising would be a natural, and where long download times could be eliminated through caching on a local hard disk. Mondo Media, meanwhile, is placing heavy emphasis on syndication -- getting content onto multiple big sites, such as Lycos and Netscape. If no single site can attract enough eyeballs to make online production pay, multiple sites may do the trick.
|
||||
1 | 2 | 3
| 4  |
