You know how you can call anything in a movie theater “the big screen” and anything on tv is “the small screen?” I’m thinking that system needs an overhaul. Say movies are the big screen. . . IMAX can be the “grossly oversized screen,” tv sets are the “medium screen” (while plasma TVs are “medium-large screens with fries and a shake”). My laptop is now “the small screen” and a video iPod is an “extra small screen.”
I’ve been thinking about screen size as I’ve started to peruse the offerings of one NextNewNetworks. They’re a company that seems exclusively devoted to creating media that is meant for the small to extra small screens of young, media savvy people. One of these mini-shows, IndyMogul, even caters to the DIY filmmaking audience. You can see all these video podcasts for free, and the site for each show has its own little community.
This form of distribution brings up a whole series of questions: What are the advantages to distributing your film through a company like NextNewNetworks vs. YouTube, or even vs. pushing yourself into the distribution world for those medium-large screens? And if major networks suddenly have to operate more like NextNewNetworks (by making content free and easy to access, and by paying their writers when that content is distributed online) – will the gap between DIY and commercial media begin to close?