I spent the last 12 days of October in China as a guest of the Animaiton School at Communications University of China (C.U.C.), participating on the short film jury of their 4th annual AniWow International Student Film Festival, conducting a master class for students on the digital pipeline, and addressing a forum they organized on media education.

Additionally, they asked me to deliver a short speech at the opening ceremony of the Festival, and I thought I would post it below:

I have been asked to briefly say a few words on behalf of my fellow visitors, and thought I would take this opportunity to say a little bit about the future.  The young filmmakers whose works we are going to see this week are about to enter a vastly different world from the one that many of us here entered a generation ago.

It is no surprise to anyone in this room that we are in the midst of a seismic shift in the art, practice and business of media and entertainment.  These changes are greater than any previous evolutionary transition that we have witnessed before, whether it was the advent of sound, color, television or home entertainment.

Many of us are looking at these developments and trying to make sense of them.  In service to furthering our ongoing conversation, and our unfolding understanding, I would offer today for your consideration three new paradigms from which to contemplate this new era.

First, rather than thinking in terms of Movies, TV, Video or the Internet, I would suggest we think in terms of Platforms and Screens. Platforms and Screens shift the perspective away from that of the Content Provider (the Broadcaster, Producer or Distributor), to looking at media from the experience of the End User: the consumer of content.  From this perspective, we are receiving content in a number of different hardware and software venues – from the small screens of our phones and iPods, to the medium size screens of our laptop and desktop computers, to the large screens in our living rooms and bedrooms, to the theatrical screens in our cinemas, and in our stadiums.

In a world of Platforms and Screens, the sequential “windowed” distribution patterns that we have seen rigidly controlled by the Content Providers are giving way to a simultaneous availability of content that can be played or consumed at the discretion and under the control of the End User at the time of their choosing.

The second paradigm is the concept of Transmedia.  This term was first coined, as I understand it, by MIT comparative media professor Henry Jenkins in his 2006 book Convergence Culture.  Transmedia is defined as a narrative work that is made available on multiple Platforms.  Further, as distinguished from so-called “derivative” works such as sequels or remakes, or “ancillary” works such as toys, games or books, Transmedia properties all add something to one another.  Each version available on the different Platforms presents a complimentary narrative experience to the user.  Taken as a whole, a Transmedia property creates a synergistic world, where the user can experience and interact with the property in different ways.  Indeed, the user can even add to the content, and that User-generated content may become an integral part of the overall Transmedia work.

Transmedia changes the relationship between the content creator and the content consumer (or End User) from a one-on-one “binary” relationship, to a multi-point “network” relationship.

The third paradigm would be to anticipate a new era of content globalization. Over the last century, the U.S. has been the global driver of media storytelling and media culture.  We figured out a language of cinema, and applied that language, refined that language and cloned that language to create movies, short films, cartoons, TV comedies, dramas and game shows, as well as music videos and computer games.  But the world now knows that language.  Indeed, it was artists and visionaries from around the globe who came to the U.S. over the last century to lend their talents to shaping that vision in collaboration with American filmmakers.

Now, everyone knows this language.  With communication around the world more instantaneous and more pervasive than ever before imagined, everyone, everywhere not only has the means to create content through digital production technology and distribute it instantaneously to the entire world, they also have the same understanding of how this narrative language works, and can feel confident in their ability to compete globally for their voices to be heard.  It is no coincidence that universities all around the world are adding media studies programs to their curricula, and that many countries, including and especially China, are providing serious incentives to spur the development of local media content businesses.

So this is the world that I believe we are handing over to the young filmmakers we will be celebrating this week, and to their colleagues and counterparts all across the planet.  As someone who welcomes change, I think this is the most exciting time I have ever experienced in this business, and I am looking forward to being amazed and delighted by the new stories and storytelling forms that we will no doubt be seeing in the very near future.

Thank you!