主题：凯文.史派西：论电视行业与创意人才 -- 万年看客

One way that our industry might fail to adapt to the continually shifting sands is to keep a dogmatic differentiation in their minds between various media - separating FILM and TV and MINI-SERIES and WEBISODES and however else you might want to label narrative formats. Its like when I’m working in front of a camera . . . that camera doesn’t know it’s a film camera or a TV camera or a streaming camera. It’s just a camera. I predict that in the next decade or two, any differentiation between these formats - these platforms - will fall away.

Is 13 hours watched as one cinematic whole really any different than a FILM? Do we define film by being something two hours or less? Surely it goes deeper than that. If you are watching a film on your television, is it no longer a film because you're not watching it in the theater? If you watch a TV show on your iPad is it no longer a TV show? The device and length are irrelevant. The labels are useless - except perhaps to agents and managers and lawyers who use these labels to conduct business deals. For kids growing up now there’s no difference watching Avatar on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV and watching Game of Thrones on their computer. It's all CONTENT. It's all STORY.

To say nothing of the audiences’ attention span. For years, particularly with the advent of the Internet, people have been griping about lessening attention spans. But if someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn't that show an incredible attention span? When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera. We can make NO ASSUMPTIONS about what viewers want or how they want to experience things. We must observe, adapt, and TRY NEW THINGS to discover appetites we didn't know were there. The more we try new things, the more we will learn about our viewership, the more doors will open both creatively and from a business perspective.

There has been this myth of “nobody knows anything,” that making good programming is a crapshoot. But frankly, that’s just BS. We do know how this works and it’s always been about empowering artists. It’s always been about total abandon. It was that way when Jack Lemmon began. It was that way when Grant Tinker birthed the shows of MTM Studios. It was that way when HBO threw up its hands and thought, “Why not a show about overweight, mob boss in New Jersey who kills people but also suffers anxiety attacks? Why not?”

And for all of Netflix’s big data and mathematical research, it was there when they opened the door to ‘House of Cards’. And boy we got lucky in the creative department because since Netflix had never done an original program before, they didn’t even have an office to give us notes. Can you imagine the notes we would have gotten if we’d been at a network that didn’t support us artistically…“Umm, we are very concerned about the fact that Kevin strangles a dog in the first five minutes of the show… we are afraid we’re going to lose half our audience”.

But we weren’t asked to compromise or water-down the story we wanted to tell by anyone. Not at Netflix and not at MRC, our production company. And that first scene - creatively - set the tone for the entire series.

So we know what works and the only thing we don’t know is why it’s so difficult to find executives with the fortitude, the wisdom and the balls to do it.

Because here’s the thing. And it’s good news. More than any other group gathered in the 37-year history of this lecture, you - in this hall today - are in a position to make it happen. To do work that you can both prosper from and go home proud of.

Fifteen years ago, I might not be up here speaking to you about this, because television was considered a lost cause. (Frankly, fifteen years ago I wouldn’t have been up here lecturing you because my agent would never have allowed me to even consider being on a television series after winning an Oscar, much less something “streaming.”)

To an unheard of degree we are free from that hoary old shadow cast over TV since its inception: the shadow of ratings. Not one of us will ever see a 30 share in our lifetimes. And that’s a wonderful, freeing thing. Netflix did it right and focused on all the things that have replaced the dumb, raw numbers of the Neilson world - they embraced targeted marketing and "brand" as a virtue higher than ratings.

And the audience has spoken: they want stories. They’re dying for them. They are rooting for us to give them the right thing. And they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook, make fan pages, silly Jifs and god knows what else about it, engage with it with a passion and an intimacy that a blockbuster movie could only dream of. All we have to do is give it to them. The prize fruit is right there. Shinier and juicier than it has ever been before. So it will be all the more shame on each and every one of us if we don’t reach out and seize it.

The question is how can we find more David Leans who will support the trailblazers; more men & women in the money departments who understand how to nurture and liberate the next level of thrilling talent, give them confidence so we can risk finding the new ideas?

Right down through the history of entertainment there has been leadership at networks, motion picture studios and theater companies - who understood the value of the creative community. Go as far back as you want and you will see the lesson there for us: whether during the heyday of the studio system in Hollywood, the group of actors & directors that formed United Artists, the hotbed of creative output at the Royal Court Theatre in the 1950’s, the great eras in BBC drama that changed the face of British television, the efforts at Granada during those years of remarkable output or the ability that HBO and its brave executives have shown in keeping the flame of artistic excellence alive in these past 15 years.

But, crucially, those in the positions of leadership at all those institutions also knew that these policies, of supporting, nurturing and protecting their creative communities, was good for business. They found a way to make the art and commerce come together and had the guts to fight for quality and for talent.

But the new generation of creatives is different. We are no longer operating in a world where someone has to decide if they are an actor, director, producer or writer - these days kids growing up on YouTube can be all these things; We have to persuade them that there is a home for them in the mainstream. But we also have to make space for those single-minded geniuses that just have it all together, and all they need is a door to be opened - the Lena Dunhams of our world.

Now I would like to read to you the names of the future storytellers and trailblazers who will make their own amazing contributions to our industry…but I can’t because we don’t know who they are yet. But you can be sure there out there. Working away online, cutting together a first student film, rehearsing in some basement theater trying to put on a new work, applying for an Arts Council grant or filming their own Funny or Die comedy sketch.

It strikes me that there is at last a space for this new wave of talent to occupy. It is not yet as large a space as it could be, but the door is ajar and the windows are open. It’s going to be up to us to decide to invite them in. Just as I wouldn’t be standing here today if Jack Lemmon hadn’t put his hand on my shoulder at the age of 13 and gave me the confidence to seek out a career as an actor.

We can all send the elevator back down. We just have to make sure the floors we live on are not so high that we can no longer hear the voices of those who want to get on and take a ride up to our level - calling out for opportunity. Wherever they want to go in this new world - television and the Internet surely cannot afford to lose them all.

History will indeed be what we make of it. With all that is at our fingertips can we still find a way to gather together and share a more Frank Capra like world? We all still crave shared experiences. But these days the water cooler moment (where people gathered at work to talk about what they’d seen on TV the night before) has vanished. We no longer live in a world of appointment viewing. So the water cooler has gone virtual, because the discussion is now online. And it’s a sophisticated, no-spoilers generation; and because of that we need never be alone with our Breaking Bad habit or our crazy obsession with Dexter. And stories are the great leveler - capable of crossing borders to unite audiences. And when there is so much conflict in our world as countries go to war, with all that pulls us apart - it is culture that unites us.

So we are still a family - a beautifully diverse global family - and the optimist in me would argue that maybe we just have to work a little harder these days to make sure we actually share these experiences together - and try not ignore each other quite so much - in this wonderful life!

So I have tried to address the big questions that might have been on your minds today and I hope that I have set the tone for the conversation as this festival gets underway. It’s been an honor and a privilege to stand before you all and give you some of my thoughts about talent, this industry and these new platforms.

And I want to leave you with the words of a man as good as any to address the nexus of commerce and art, Mr. Orson Wells - who once said: “I hate television. I hate it as much as much as peanuts. But I just can’t stop eating peanuts”