Last week saw the launch of a new documentary channel aimed at Irish audiences. The Wildlight Documentary Channel aims to get a whole range of new people telling their unique stories in a visual format.

The catch is that none of these documentaries will be on RTÉ, TV3 or TG4. The channel is broadcast on mobile phones, following on from the successful model of the Wildlight Channel for film and animation, which has been running for the past three years.

Digital formats such as the internet and mobile open up a whole new world of opportunity for creators of video content in Ireland, but there are challenges to be overcome. One of the main barriers is that none of the main broadcasting outlets commissions material specifically for digital distribution.

Stephen McCormack, CEO of Wildwave, the company behind Wildlight, says this will have to change if the fledgling Irish digital film industry is to become a world leader.

“The basic outlets for TV are RTÉ, TV3 and TG4, none of which has a digital-only platform,” he says. “Nobody commissions for digital platforms the way the BBC and Channel 4 do. The industry needs to look at all these platforms, mechanisms and distribution channels and work out how do we make content for these channels, how do we finance that content and how do we make money from it.”

While McCormack compliments RTÉ’s website, he notes it is not paid for by the licence fee and has to survive on its own terms, thereby limiting its ability to commission new web-only material.

“RTE.ie streams content but there’s nothing commissioned specifically for it,” he says.

Industry stakeholders discussed these problems last week at the Darklight Symposium 2007, a three-day digital media event featuring discussion forums, workshops and film screenings. The state broadcaster was represented and McCormack says he feels RTÉ is beginning to take notice.

“We were trying to explore what the Irish content industry should do to get up to speed on these issues because we’re trying to become a world leader. At the moment we’re a bit behind in the race.”

“The investment back into arts, film and creative industries hasn’t been relative to the growth of the country over the past few years,” remarks Nicky Gogan, director of the Darklight Symposium. “It’s still very much a grass-roots system. People are developing things themselves. Digital technology has supported that because it has made it affordable for people to have their own editing suites in their house and their own digital cameras, whereas 10 years ago that was impossible.”

Digital media gets some funding from state bodies such as Enterprise Ireland, the Arts Council and the Irish Film Board, but more investment is needed to bring the industry here up to speed, she adds.

With digital film production being a lot cheaper than traditional production, a more pressing concern is not getting the content made but rather getting it noticed. With the proliferation of user-generated content on sites like YouTube, much of which is not very good and it’s becoming difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

“Our view is that you can have better content than just cats on bicycles on YouTube,” says McCormack. “YouTube is not all about happy slapping or kids skidding around Mullingar car parks.

Hopefully we’ll get people going up to those kids that are sliding in car parks and get their real interesting stories told, not just a two-second sound bite on RTÉ’s The Afternoon Show.”

Digital technology is lowering the barrier for entry to film making and allowing it to reach a wider audience through channels such as mobile and the internet, ultimately creating a new type of film maker and a new type of audience.

Developing reliable gateways for this material to filter down is a key priority for the sector worldwide. At present word of mouth (or ‘word of mail’) prevails, with the best content going ‘viral’, but more hierarchical structures will come on stream.

Gogan anticipates curator networks will be the TV and film guides for the digital age. “Those curator networks will distinguish themselves as other broadcasting platforms have done – the way Channel 4 or HBO have their own programming and commissioning style,” she says. “It’s moving away from this content aggregation model where things are gobbled up and it’s left to see what happens.”

With teenagers now spending more time online than they do watching TV, the way we consume entertainment will be utterly transformed within a few short years.

We will consume far less mainstream content and far more independently produced content. Making sure the best of that independent output gets recognised is a key concern for the Irish digital film community.

© Silicon Republic Ltd 2007
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- Niall Byrne