Your iPhone is Hollywood: The Evan Shapiro Interview, Part 2

Evan Shapiro, Media Cartographer, on how to thrive in the New Normal in Hollywood.

Welcome Back to Production.ink, Issue #12. In this issue, we conclude our discussion with Evan Shapiro of Media War & Peace fame about the state of the media and production industries today and what that means for Production.ink’s subscribers.

In last week’s issue, you read Evan's take on where audiences are shifting and what it means for the production industry. Evan helped us understand that Hollywood is unlikely to experience the rebound we’re hoping for—at least, not in the ways we expected. So if the "Creator Economy" is the future, what do we need to know, and how do we get there?

Most production jobs will be different—but the same.

As we discussed last week, Evan anticipates more consolidation in streaming, less “Hollywood” spend, more overseas work—and fewer production jobs from the Media Industry Complex. What will working in the new Creator Economy look like? Where will the jobs be?

You want to go towards enterprises that understand how to build audiences and economics around them on these new platforms. You don't have to get it, but someone will; the money is going to go somewhere. On Amazon Prime Day, more than 100 million people came to their live shopping channel. And those shows get produced. Now it's a different type of production, but it's not terribly different from how QVC does it. So there's a replacement of the ecosystem happening. It's large, it's active, and it's going to generate middle class livings the same way that the traditional ecosystem does. Those shows will need lawyers, and producers, and marketers, and ad people. But you do have to f*cking hustle the same way you always should have had to.

Start learning now.

The Media Industrial Economy is refusing to recognize the impact of the Creator Economy because it’s an existential threat. But don’t fall into that trap—your livelihood depends on it. The time to start learning the ropes and charting your path into Creator Economy productions was yesterday.

Evan recommended some good starting points to us:

Read the main trades. The Information has a creator economy newsletter that is excellent.
Media War and Peace, Evan’s newsletter. He has some important pieces on the creator economy, and also tracks where the money is headed. [Ed. Note: We can’t recommend it highly enough.]
Cannes Lion, the advertising festival in Cannes, now has a huge creators section in it. It’s a good indicator of how far we’ve come, who the major players are, and where we’re headed. They also have a newsletter that is a good pulse check.
Attending events like Vidcon would be a competitive advantage and give you a closer look into how brands are expanding and monetizing.

And don’t expect your guild or union to sort this out for you.

While SAG-AFTRA has made some headway with podcasts, influencers and updating Hollywood over the past few years, they aren’t adapting as quickly as the marketplace. There are and will continue to be new formats (like social video) that need totally new rules and regulations, and aren’t yet covered but will need to be. And as creators’ productions grow bigger, some of the “Hollywood” union rules may become more applicable to them.

We didn’t talk specifically with Evan about IATSE and the Teamsters, but we think they’re even farther behind SAG-AFTRA on these new formats and are a long way from effectively representing its people effectively in Creator Economy productions.

AI will be the catalyst for leveling the playing field.

Evan highlighted something we’ve talked about in the newsletter before: technology is democratizing productions and putting power in the hands of smaller, independent teams of creators:

AI brings a faster level of democratization to the Creator Economy. You’re now able to create a platform where you’re going to be able to make, if not Hollywood-level films, then Burbank-level productions on a regular basis using the various tools that are coming faster and faster to the marketplace.

That’s exciting.

💡

Speaking of AI in Production, we recently published a special report on how AI is impacting staffing and other aspects of the industry. New subscribers can sign up here and receive a free copy. If you forward this and a friend signs up, let us know at info@production.ink and we’ll get you a copy, too.

The bottom line: Your own attention should guide your career choices.

Evan’s parting wisdom emphasized the theme our conversation began with: Analyze how you, your peers, and the rising demographics consume media productions. If the work you’re doing isn’t producing what you’re consuming, that’s a red flag.

But most notably, for anyone who wants to keep working in entertainment: Look at what you do on a daily basis. Look at what you read, look at what you watch. Look at how you spend your time on your phone, and then on your tablet or big screen, and then do the same thing for anyone in your ecosystem under the age of 30. And then ask your friends, what do you listen to? What do you watch? What do you do? How much time did you spend on Tik Tok? That's where the money is heading. And if you're not a part of that movement, then you can't really expect to continue to have a gainful career in the media economy. If you are at least participating in a professional manner in the revenue that's being generated on those media forms, then you have a shot. But if you leave that completely out, you're just cutting your odds in half. And I just don't like that for people.

You can read more from our conversation with Evan here, you can follow Evan on Linkedin (link below) and subscribe to his newsletter here.

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Thanks for reading. See you soon. - The Production.ink team

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