The Filmmaker’s Dilemma
In 1997, Prof. Clayton Christensen published the groundbreaking business article and book called “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” in which he stated that industry leaders usually focus their innovation efforts on the high end of the market, satisfying their most profitable customers with ever-growing features. However, they are exposed at the very low end, where unprofitable customers lie, and upstart competitors can bring a new approach that breaks with the traditional logic of industry structure. His poster child was the disk drive industry, where the leaders of the first generations (with disks of 8” to 14” diameter optimized for the mainframe and minicomputer OEMs) were wiped out by a new generation of manufacturers with 5.25” disks for the desktop industry, and these in turn were wiped out by upstarts focusing on 3.5” disks for laptop PCs, and then again by a new wave of competitors with 1.x” disk technologies, initially positioned toward appliances like heart rate monitors. Since the publication of his book twenty years ago, the industry has again been torn apart, this time by solid state storage technologies that again have grown from lower end applications and a very different set of advantages and shortcomings.

The film industry behaves in much the same way — almost all of today’s traditional innovation is happening at the high end, with ever-more-complex computer graphics imagery (CGI) into the filmmaking process. This helps to make the newest generation of blockbusters — huge budget action movies such as Captain America, Batman vs Superman, and Wonder Woman — into the most expensive movies ever made, but with huge payoffs; almost all of the latest wave of comic-derived action blockbusters over the past five years have gone on to generate $300 million to $1+ billion in box office revenues globally, plus hundreds of millions or billions more in subsequent income from TV and online viewers and license royalties from toys, clothing, etc.
But what about the bottom end of the industry, such as independent films, documentaries, and shorts? These categories are recognized by hundreds of festivals for a few days and then largely forgotten. Only a very determined film viewer will ever see any of these films pop up in his Netflix recommendation list. And the filmmakers will continue to struggle against the blockbuster mentality of the top 10 movie distributors to ever get noticed.
StreamSpace has a solution for the forgotten 95% of films: Self-publication and self-promotion through social media. We are launching a platform that will allow an independent filmmaker to:
- Securely post his content without fear of piracy. Blockchain technology makes it possible to publish and distribute huge files like movies in a secure manner, since the file itself is broken into a large number of packets distributed across many servers and only reassembled at the time of viewing.
- Set his own price for viewing or “owning” the content. Unlike today’s studio-driven distribution oligopoly, where less than 10 firms control over 70% of the total gross revenue value in the industry in most countries, the StreamSpace network encourages independent filmmakers to publish their unique content and control their own distribution policies, by setting their own prices.
- Promote the film on social media, including viewer reviews/scores. The StreamSpace social media channels are a medium for promoting independent content directly to the intended audiences. The filmmakers can establish their own web pages to highlight their content and events around the content, with Facebook or Twitter channels dedicated to each project or to the filmmakers themselves. Sections dedicated to reviews or grades will help to elevate the recommendation rates and viewership numbers.
Come see the StreamSpace white paper to learn more about the company and this exciting new opportunity to invest in disrupting the film industry.
