Bloom in Tech

Amid all the art and craziness of Frieze LA and seeming countless satellite fairs, openings and events, I was most intrigued by a panel at Neuehouse Hollywood featuring director and "Transparent" creator Jill Soloway and conceptual artist Jill Magid, herself now a director of the upcoming Oscilloscope Laboratories feature documentary, 'The Proposal." The Jills ranged widely, from the joys of directing, to the challenges of gender and work,  to the ways Magid pokes at and interacts with police, intelligence and other organizations that create limits and structures. It's a fascinating conversation between, on one side, a creator focused on breaking down boundaries and creating spaces for marginalized people, and on the other, a creator focused on engaging with and interrogating the many boundaries that limit and structure our lives. 

I hosted a great panel on the future of content marketing at this week's Digital Entertainment World conference in Los Angeles, with top executives with Twitch, Fandango, Machinima and CreatorIQ. Content marketing can include everything from movie trailers to live events to influencer partnerships to what the video game Fortnite did last week with EDM star Marshmello. And as the contest for audience attention gets tougher and tougher, more brands are opting for content marketing as a way to reach engaged, highly targeted audiences. Give a listen to what some of the best in the business are doing in this burgeoning field. 

Late January is the dog days of Hollywood's long, expensive awards season. Smaller events unfurl several times a week, and every win becomes a chance to further handicap the Oscar chances for major contenders. This past week, the Final Draft Awards honored Callie Khouri, who wrote "Thelma & Louise" and created the "Nashville" TV series with its Hall of Fame Award.  

The next night, the Lumiere Awards unspooled a few miles away, on the lot of a different movie studio, and handed out a lot more statues. And there, Tom Cruise surprised even the man being honored, the writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who is his long-time collaborator. I talked with Khouri and captured Cruise and McQuarrie all talking about the joys and challenges of making movies for this episode of Bloom in Tech. Give a listen. 

Adrian Gonzalez has had a long and distinguished career as an All Star first baseman for the L.A. Dodgers and Boston Red Sox. Now he's taking a swing at another kind of game, creating fan-friendly custom apps that connect (for now) baseball stars and their fans directly, instead of through social media or their teams' online presences. PopFly XP is debuting apps for Gonzalez and former Dodgers' teammate Justin Turner, trying to create new ways for baseball stars to connect, sell custom merchandise and build new kinds of businesses. I talk with Gonzalez and PopFly's CEO, former Dodger partnerships executive Jesse Nunez, about what they're trying to accomplish. 

Netflix has spent heavily this awards season on several films, part of a strategy to differentiate it from competing media companies that soon will have their own video-streaming services. The strategy paid off big time with today's announcements of Oscar nominations; Alfonso Cuaron's 'Roma' grabbed 10, tied for the most of any film and the first film from a streaming service to get a Best Picture nomination. I talk about what it all means. Give a listen.  

Companies such as EscapeX, Whalerock Industries and Beachfront have standalone apps that help big influencers generate more money from their most devoted fans. What are the opportunities here? I talked with the CEOs of EscapeX and Beachfront, and CreatorIQ COO Tim Sovay about the possibilities and challenges in helping influencers move beyond  their dependence on social-media platforms when connecting with their super fans. Give it a listen. 

I talked recently with two top NBCUniversal executives about Blueprint, their revamped hobbyist learning site, which combines lessons in nearly dozen categories with lean-back content, community, e-commerce operations and a healthy dose of celebrities and influencers. The site, now a subscription video-on-demand operation, is busy cross-pollinating with other parts of NBCU, and will be the basis for extending e-commerce functions throughout many parts of the media giant, the executives told me. It's a smart and provocative vision of the future of SVOD video sites and one I expect Amazon and others will be copying soon enough. You heard it here first. Give it a listen, won't you? 

Over the holidays, Netflix debuted its biggest ever hit and an intriguing interactive experiment, picked up multiple Golden Globes, saved hundreds of millions of dollars and hired a CFO. It faces more competition than ever in 2019, but I talk about how these various initiatives are helping the company evolve and succeed in the face of all those deep-pocketed challengers. Give it a listen. 

Influencer marketing was bigger than ever in 2018, despite a string of scandals hitting some of the major platforms. I talked with several top influencer-marketing agencies, data companies and consultants – including CreatorIQ, Tubular Labs, Pex, WhoSay and Michelle Merino – about what trends are shaping the industry as we move into 2019. Give it a listen. 

In this episode, I look at a  string of virtual-reality projects, technologies and venues that have arrived in Los Angeles recently, as the bad mojo of 2017 has evolved into a promising industry again in 2018. I also talk with Bruce Vaughn, the former Disney Imagineer and current CEO of Dreamscape Immersive, the Steven Spielberg-backed company creating story-driven VR experiences such as "Alien Zoo." Dreamscape just opened its first permanent venue in an upscale Los Angeles mall. This episode is not quite a year-end retrospective, despite the timing, so much as a rundown of cool stuff I've seen the last several months, in an industry that's finally starting to look sustainable, and fascinating. Give a listen.