Consult Rudman
Hannah Rudman Gets IT for 21st C cultureEIFF: clipped wings increases span of programme
It’s good to see the Edinburgh International Film Festival jettison its strained efforts to “keep up with the Cannes-es”. Reduced funding this year has clipped the Film Festival’s wings in terms of the amount of high profile stars appearing for red carpet premieres. But the clipped wings have resulted in innovative programming around the enduring quality main film programme (50% of the brochure). New media art (New Media Scotland), photography and visual art agencies (Stills) formally join the programme and stretch its span, hosting events that celebrate the impact and relationship of film to may other art forms, and the impact of other art forms on film. The events are held in other places and spaces Edinburgh – a strand called “Outside The Box”. The relationship between film and music is explicitly acknowledged, with a thread of programming around sound tracks.
The Film Festival is also highly accessible to those learning about film, starting out in film, as well as already established film professionals. The filmmakers have been recruited to become the teachers of a pop-up film school, as well as the panelists in the Industry Programme – a series of debates that address the current and future risks and opportunities for the industry. The impact of the web on film has created many new forms of making, distribution and consumption. Rather than being scared of the threat to the traditional art form, the hybrid forms are celebrated. The Industry programme properly addresses the changing nature of the making and distributing of film, and will analyse, debate, critique and reflect on what these changes might mean for the future of cinema and its audiences. I’m excited to be moderating the session on crowd funding with a panel including 2 seasoned filmmakers who have successfully crowd sourced funds for film production. (24.06.11, 1530).
Live Blog of Culture Hack Scotland
Rudman Consulting’s AmbITion Scotland programme co-produced Culture Hack Scotland together with Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab: I live blogged the event using ace app Storify!
[View the story “Culture Hack Scotland” on Storify]
Almost-live simulcasts work as well as live – NT Live’s Frankenstein
Last Thursday I watched an NTLive! almost-live simulcast at my local Cameo Cinema, of Frankenstein, London’s hottest sold out ticket, directed by Danny Boyle (to see it in London, I’d have to queue for a day ticket -from 1am, when the queue starts forming!). The production was mesmerising, engaging, gripping and yes, it was live theatre on stage, with its sweat, spits, and occasional trips and stammers, recorded for digital distribution. Except, this time, it wasn’t quite live.
The show has a unique concept in that Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller turn about, every performance, between the roles of Frankenstein and The Creature. The first NTLive! production of Frankenstein was on 17th March: Johnny Lee-Miller was Frankenstein. Later that day, they filmed the turn-about production with Benedict Cumberbatch as Frankenstein, which was simulcast a week later in cinemas. Why didn’t they wait a week to simulcast the Benedict Cumberbatch Frankenstein? Well, as with all theatre, the performance is unique every day, and the actors react to each other. So Cumberbatch’s Frankenstein in the evening show will have been influenced by his experience of the earlier show. So the filming on the same day enabled the cinema audience to see nuances of facial and body tics that the two actors have developed as both characters – bizarrely manifesting in both characters – intensifying the sense the audience experiences of not knowing who is the man and who is the monster. There were some camera shots that gave us unique experience of the lighting design and the set that those in the theatre would not have seen. In the bridal chamber scene, an overhead shot gave us a birds-eye view of the bride of Frankenstein that no audience member would have experienced. Presumably, the same-day filming saved film crew, cast and crew costs as well.
That the show wasn’t live didn’t matter at all in the cinema. The sold-out audience watched another brilliant NT innovation as they settled in their seats and got cokes/wine/crisps/sweets ready – trailers to live and simulcast upcoming shows, and trailers advertising the digital programme (£3). Emma Freud then did a talking head to camera in the empty NT auditorium, explaining the show’s set up, and setting our expectations about there being no interval and a short documentary introducing the show. At the end, the cinema audience clapped the bows, despite them not being live. It didn’t matter – the clapping was for us in the room, a physical expression of our impression of the show.
The Royal National Theatre have certainly increased the reach and scale of their latest show beyond their own walls, as well as improving accessibility to it – physically and socially. Almost live and live, filmed theatre can be inspiring if the content is handled optimally for screen, the context is set (Emma Freud does this), and the community engages (the community was the cinema audience, clapping together). The digital programme gives you access after the event to production images, videos, articles, all exclusive content. Click to download an example from previous NT Live! production of London Assurance.
National Theatre Scotland launch new virtual live theatre project
I’m delighted to announce that my other company#fiveminutetheatre! Envirodigital are consultant producers for Five Minute Theatre.
NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND MARKS ITS 5TH BIRTHDAY WITH A VIRTUAL 24 HOUR THEATRE PROJECT
Today, 25th February, 2011, the National Theatre of Scotland marks its fifth birthday by opening public submissions for a nationwide virtual theatre project as well as announcing details of a series of public platforms aimed at provoking and facilitating cultural debate.
Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director, National Theatre of Scotland commented: “Five years ago, we had no idea that anything we set out to do was actually possible. There was no such thing as an NTS show, an NTS event, or an NTS audience member.
“It is thanks to the talent, courage and inspiration of the people I work with – the artists, the designers, the truck drivers – and the hunger of the audience to be entertained, that any of this has been possible. That on our fifth birthday we would have shows in Ullapool, New York City, Aberdeen and Edinburgh was unimaginable, but here we are!
“The last five years have proven to me that theatre genuinely has the ability to be responsive, inspiring and change the way we see the world around us.”
Fiona Hyslop MSP, Scottish Government Minister for Culture and External Affairs said: “Over its first five years our National Theatre has grown into a remarkable cultural asset, celebrating the work of our many artists and bringing theatre to communities across the country.
“We have also seen our National Theatre flourish on the international stage, touring acclaimed productions and showcasing our cultural excellence to new audiences.
“The 5th Anniversary programme shows innovation, ambition and a genuine commitment to engage with audiences – all of which signals a great future for theatre in this country.”
FIVE MINUTE THEATRE
SUBMISSIONS FOR IDEAS NOW OPEN. DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: FRIDAY 25 MARCH, 2011
From 1pm today, Friday 25 March, 2011, National theatre of Scotland invites members of the public to visit http://www.fiveminutetheatre.com to submit their ideas to create a five minute piece of theatre.
Successful applicants will then develop their work for inclusion in a 24hour online broadcast of live theatre from 5pm on Tuesday 21st June until 5pm the following day.
Professional or not, old or young, absolutely anyone can take part by writing, devising, directing, performing and producing a piece of theatre, five minutes long. There are no set skills you must have; no qualifications required other than dramatic flair, a good idea and some bravery!
The deadline for ideas submissions is Friday 25 March, 2011.
www.fiveminutetheatre.com contains up to date information including clear instructions and details on the selection process as well as regular features from the National Theatre of Scotland’s key creative team offering tips, advice and classes on how to make and deliver a piece of theatre.
The latest Five Minute Theatre news can also be followed on Twitter, where participants can ask questions, share ideas and tips and connect with other theatre-makers.
Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director, National Theatre of Scotland explains:
“At National Theatre of Scotland, we don’t think we’re the only ones who can make theatre. We’re using our 5th birthday as an opportunity to offer audiences a chance to share their creative talents. On June 21st, we’re going to stage live, online, 24hours of non-stop 5 minute theatre – created by anyone, for everyone!
“Your five minutes can be filled with whatever you want it to be, whatever ‘theatre’ means to you. You can write your own script, create a scene or a situation, it can have music or dance, a director and actors, props and costumes or something no one has thought of yet.
She continued: “You can interpret this in any way you like, any style you like. It can be a thriller, a drama, a romance, a monologue, anything. It can be on a stage, in a living room, a park, village hall, community centre, library, office, class room, football pitch – the choice is yours.
“You are in charge. You decide what your five minutes are; you decide where to perform it, how to cast it and who the audience will be. It’s your story; however you want to tell it.”
Heather McDonald, Groups Sponsorship Manager at ScottishPower said: “ScottishPower is delighted to support the National Theatre of Scotland and would like to congratulate the organisation on its fifth birthday.
“Our support for NTS focuses on the community and education projects run by the Learn department of the company. Our belief is that culture and art should be accessible for all.
“With our long tradition of supporting the arts in the UK we are pleased to be continuing our relationship with the National Theatre of Scotland which is part of the substantial commitment ScottishPower has made to the arts in Scotland.”
Hannah Rudman, Director, Envirodigital (consultant producers for Five Minute Theatre) said: “We’re so excited to be consultant producers of National Theatre Scotland’s innovative Five Minute Theatre.
“Webcasting is a great new technology for increasing the scale, reach, impact and access to the Company’s work, digitally and so, reducing the impact on the environment.
“Webcasting isn’t about instead of the ‘live’, it’s about AS WELL AS the ‘live’, and we look forward to working with National Theatre of Scotland to ensure that their great content and curatorship is experienced in an appropriate context online, so that the online audience community can enjoy deep levels of engagement and participation with live theatre.”
How to crowd source funds
@WeDidThisUK ‘s Ed Whiting explains the aspirations and opportunities of the UK’s latest crowd source fundraising website, WeDidThis.
Launch of ‘Wedidthis’ at the MMM Culture Change Conference from Simone Jaeger on Vimeo.
Internet comes of age for visual arts with new Google project
Google’s ultra-high resolution Street View cameras have been sneaking around galleries in nine countries – out of hours – to capture the world’s finest art collections as 360 degree digital tours. The Art Project was launched at Tate Britain yesterday, and includes 385 rooms, and 1061 different pieces.
Each gallery has also chosen one piece to be digitised in ultra-high resolution (7bn pixels), which allows you see a masterpiece in greater detail than the human eye and most microscopes can manage. This encourages people to study art works in depth, for better understanding technique, subject, materials/construction and realisation, and is a move away from the noughties obsession in the visual arts sector as of digitisation as a mechanism for futureproofing archiving.
Nick Serota has had to assure art lovers (and insurance companies) that no security information is given away, but his most interesting comment is around the great fear that the cultural sector has of digitisation: that digitising work causes cannibalisation of the live, real experience. “When people get a glimpse, they want to see the real thing” he’s reported as saying in The Times today.
Having been shouted at twice for wanting to see an exhibit more closely and peering with my short-sighted head over the line at the National Gallery this weekend, I shall appreciate the accessibility of the work being online. I shall also be able to work out what I want to see in Paris during a short trip in April. But I know that I will not have the thrill of all the things I like in a gallery: understanding the scale of work; the way being near it makes me feel; if it smells of history or strange materials, and just trying to work out why someone else has been standing there studying the piece for a few minutes. As a sensory and social human being I know that the “real thing” cannot be replicated. I believe all human beings innately know this too, and I wish the cultural sector would more fully grasp the potential of digital for increasing access. Without digitising, we face the risk of becoming obscure.
Arts Minister says digital development in the arts essential
With UK Arts Minister Ed Vaizey delivering a speech (no I didn’t write it, although many have asked me if I had!) about how cultural organisations must develop digitally and work more with digital industries in order to be sustainable, its a great indicator that engaging with AmbITion’s opportunities is timely and appropriate organisational development.
Scottish cultural organisations digitally develop in 2011
2011 means more digital development for the UK’s cultural sector for me, and we’re already hard at it!
I interview Woodend Barn and Sound Scotland Festival about their digital development plans made possible by AmbITion Scotland Vodpod videos no longer available..
Arts & Theatres Trust Fife talk to me about their innovative Pantomime webstreaming – into hospitals in Fife over the Christmas period. (We’re keeping an eye on this story, because the results have been amazing in terms of increasing access to and therefore scale if this production).
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Expect more work from Rudman Consulting this year on developing live digital artistic content; developing innovative new work from opening up your data; and delivering bottom ££ value from your social media efforts. You can next hear me speak this year too – next at the Federation of Scottish Theatre’s Emporium on 25th February at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, and on 20th June at the European Concert Halls Organisation’s annual conference at The Sage Gateshead.
Digital developments in culture: that was 2010
It’s that time of year again for Hannah Rudman to sum up the 2010 digital developments in the cultural sector. Generally, we’ve seen more audience participation online and in venue, and digital access to culture becoming a mainstream activity.
Here’s my pick of the main developments in each art form: for more detail on what individual arts organisations have been up to, especially in Scotland, visit the AmbITion Scotland website for video case studies.
Music
2010 was the year the music industry got its way, when the graduated-response method of dissuading piracy was adopted by parliament. Digital downloads hit £370m this year – a fifth of UK music sales – but 76 percent of downloads are ‘illegal’.
—1.2 billion tracks downloaded illegally (source: Harris Interactive) – retail value: £984,000 (source: BPI).
—That’s 76 percent of all downloads (source: BPI).
—P2P use was up 7% (source: Harris Interactive).
If the Digital Economy Act measures get implemented, labels will have recourse against illegal P2P, the primary unauthorised channel. They spent the rest of this year turning their attention to websites which host songs without authorisation [source]. (Whether they’ll go after Google, who of course direct so many to so much “free” music…)
Classical Music
For the past few months, the SPCO has been experimenting with on-line coupons to reach new audiences. In May 2010 they trialled their first on-line coupon venture via Groupon, and sold about 80 coupons for a specific concert (of which 60 were actually redeemed). They then trialled Travelzoo. In October, they offered an inexpensive two-concert “flex pack” for the current season, and sold more than 500 of them. In December 2010, they offered a season pass for Thursday and Friday night concerts for the rest of the season via Living Social, and sold more than 1400 passes — an amazing number for a one-day sale! [source].
Many classical music and ballet organisations have been simulcasting concerts with great success – the business model works, and this has been proven by the Met Opera, now three years down the line.
Opera
In 2006, the Met began transmitting live, high-definition opera performances into movie theaters, beginning with six shows in 248 theaters in eight countries. The current season features 12 operas in 1,500 theaters in 46 countries. Last season, 2.4 million tickets were sold to nine different shows. The Met’s share of the gross was $24 million, and after subtracting production costs and revenue-sharing payments to its unions, the company realized over $8 million in net revenue.
Said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, “For the first time in its recent history, or maybe in all of its history, the Met has discovered a new source of revenue that has expanded its capacity and is helping to ensure the education of future audiences at same time.”
Last season, each HD transmission reached an average of 267,000 paying customers (Mr. Gelb notes that a successful opera DVD today sells 20,000 to 30,000 units world-wide), a major audience boost. The company also has picked up about 7,000 new individual donors thanks to the transmissions, a valuable resource for an institution that relies on contributions to supply about 40% of its annual operating budget. In addition, even given the recession, paid, nondiscounted ticket sales increased to 85% of the box office last year, compared with 76% when Gelb took over. [source]
Theatre
2010 has seen the success of distributed live performance through simulcasting begin with UK productions – see my blog about National Theatre Scotland’s experiment at Traverse Theatre, and increased audience acceptance of pre-recorded theatre. These are new business models for UK theatre, and have created new audiences interested in the new hybrid format at a new pricepoint. NT Live (see too this blog) and & digitaltheatre.com are the biggest success story so far, digitaltheatre.com utilising the internet as a global distribution channel for sale of HD recordings – video on demand (VOD) and download to own (DTO).
There have been interesting experiments this year where filmed performances have been distributed digitally live (think NTLive! simulcasting to cinemas), and on-demand (think digitaltheatre.com). But what about making work available to closed, finite networks to increase access, and enhancing it with distributed live elements such as Q&A with the cast? That’s what Arts & Theatres Trust Fife are up to this December: screening a special free performance of its Christmas show, Jock and the Beanstalk, by award-winning theatre company Wee Stories, from Dunfermline’s Carnegie Hall to children’s wards in six hospitals across Scotland via a private Web TV channel provided by Solus, enabling the show to be transmitted across various digital media on Fife’s network of linked screens to a wider audience as well as the hospitals. Staff from ATTFife staff went to all the 6 locations in Scotland, to facilitate a live webcast Q&A session with the cast and children at each location on the afternoon of 21st December.
Dance
Dance has been the core content of the year’s most popular digital developments: 3D film, and the natural user interfaces (NUIs) of gaming devices like Wii (you could liven up the post Christmas lunch slump in front of the TV with a family game of Dance on Broadway for Wii…).
The pressure to come up with new and exciting dance moves often keeps choreographers thinking outside the box. but 2010 has posed a new challenge: with the flood of 3-D film releases, they must also think outside the frame.
“It’s not just the choreography within the frame but the frame itself,” says Jon Chu, director of “Step Up 3D. With 3-D, the frame becomes a much more active partner, and it becomes a duet between audience and dancers.” [source]
Literature
The iPad and the Kindle have been changing the marketplace for e-books, ensuring their popularity and lower price point. Many e-books now have interactive elements too. However, the paper book is not dead, even if some of the mega/cahin paper bookstores are. Curated, local independent bookstores are thriving, supplementing book sales with live events and reading clubs. [source]
Visual arts
Audience and Experts have co-curated the Walker Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, aptly named 50/50. Using a digital kiosk in a Walker gallery and an online survey at walkerart.org, individuals cast nearly a quarter-million votes on whether particular artworks should “definitely” or “maybe not” be included in the exhibition 50/50. Crowd curation at its best!
Museums
Brooklyn Museum’s had a great time working with GPS location game FourSquare, rewarding the Mayor on the first Saturday of every month with an annual membership, and incentivising other Foursquare users with offers and prizes. and the Museum of London has given its archive a new lease of life on anyone’s smart phone and on the streets of London via an augmented reality application “Street Museum“.
That of course is just the tip of the iceberg. Please do review my 2010 blogs for more case studies. Thanks for reading this year, and I’ll be back in 2011, probably with some predictions of where I think we’ll be at in the arts, with digital, by the end of 2011!
Digital access to culture now mainstream
Digital access to the arts and culture is extending, rather than replacing, the live experience of the arts, and the Internet is now playing a much broader role in arts engagement than simply acting as a marketing channel. A significant minority use it not only to consume and share artistic content, but also to create it; and over half use social networking sites regularly. These latest findings from a major survey of 2,000 adult Internet users appear to “confirm that engaging with the arts through digital media is now a mainstream activity”. So reports Arts Professional, announcing the Arts Council England, Arts & Business & Museums Libraries and Archives council commissioned report by MTM “Digital-audiences-for-arts-and-culture-november2010.pdf”>Digital Audiences for Arts & Culture“.
Hannah Rudman is Managing Director of Rudman Consulting Ltd., and blogs here at consultrudman.com She is also Founding Director of 
Consult Rudman 