Why is Netflix not following short high quality 1-3 min videos model which is popular with young crowd? They already have Fast laughs tab which mimics that.
Youtube / Creative studios could pitch 1-3 min video ideas which Netflix could greenlight and provide just bare minimum capital to produce. If the final film is good, Netflix could buy the film and release on their platform.
Current Trends which are in favour of above idea:
1] Story generation will get cheaper thanks to ChatGPT.
2] Film generation will get cheaper thanks to Stable Diffusion.
3] Short video formats are already very good, engaging.
The pitch/studio model does not work for short content, and it never will. It's too slow-moving and corporate. The videos that succeed in this format are zeitgeist, flash-in-the-pan trends that are faster to produce and more dynamic than even the laziest reality show. The production value doesn't really matter--if anything it's a downside past a point.
If hackathons in software work and produce good product ideas, why can't the same be possible in creative fields? Cutaways in Family Guy are already short jokes which are shared without broader context on social media and they are popular. Netflix can always A/B test newly introduced content to determine engagement. Already built up cultural context (e.g. idea of multiverse, matrix and so on)need not be re-introduced from scratch, so no need to spend screen time on them.
Odd1sOut (Youtube Creator) has a animation series on Netflix. So in some sense, Netflix is already doing it. They just have to create a marketplace for this.
Not sure why Quibi failed. Maybe trying to get distribution/tech and content right at the same time didn't work for them. Netflix doesn't have distribution problem, just content and it should try to iterate on what works.
Personally, there are so many short stories (e.g. by Greg Egan, Borges, others[0]) which I would like it to reach mass audience. Rights are tricky issue though.
Quibi was interesting - the more I think about it (I work in this space) the more I think they actually might have had something.
The reason they failed is mostly because they went too big too fast. They spent almost a billion dollars in content at launch and expected to get a ton of people subscribed quickly at $8 a pop. Had a bit of a chicken and egg situation there. They needed enough quality content to justify that amount per month. But it was all new, untested content. When they didn't get the subscribers they had pretty much zero runway to ride it out and iterate.
Quibi failed because they over capitalized it and then pulled out when it didn't have the xxM DAUs. They basically launched and had an amazing journey in the same month.
To be fair to the backers (such winning personalities as Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, ugh), it wasn't a case of 1M DAUs when they wanted 5M. It was more like 5k DAUs when they wanted 5M. The idea was dead on arrival, no amount of money and effort would've saved it.
Youtube / Creative studios could pitch 1-3 min video ideas which Netflix could greenlight and provide just bare minimum capital to produce. If the final film is good, Netflix could buy the film and release on their platform.
Current Trends which are in favour of above idea:
1] Story generation will get cheaper thanks to ChatGPT.
2] Film generation will get cheaper thanks to Stable Diffusion.
3] Short video formats are already very good, engaging.
4] RunwayML and so on.