Tisch School of the Arts Launches Cinema Research Institute

NYU Tisch School of the Arts has launched the Cinema Research Institute, a new think tank and center designed to help industry leaders and filmmakers tackle the enormous economic and creative challenges facing the film industry. This center will bring together professionals, artists, emerging entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers, and government and industry experts. The Institute's goal is to incubate business models that protect filmmakers and their art, as well as seek greater efficiencies in distribution.

 

Movie making has changed irrevocably due to the advent of the Internet, advances in digital technology, widespread use of social networks and new media, as well as the recent economic downturn. All aspects of the film industry including fundraising, production, development, marketing and distribution need to be re-evaluated and appraised. Audiences have stratified, yet have also become more flexible and accessible. Viewing habits of all, particularly the younger generations, have changed due to a multiplatform based and participatory culture. At this juncture, new methods of production and distribution have the potential of redefining the dominance of the feature film form, but there are no institutional structures to cope with emerging models in this new climate.

 

The recent online piracy controversy highlights the fact that studio executives choose to limit innovative distribution rather than modernize their own strategies to compete with today's expanding digital culture. The Cinema Research Institute at Tisch School of the Arts will allow filmmakers to study and test their own distribution models through research-based collaboration.

 

The Institute's Fellows have the means to hypothesize, experiment with, and put into action new models for filmmakers and financiers, and to make this information available to the wider filmmaking community. Through these investigations, the Fellows at the Institute propel the media arts into a more robust and diverse future, both in terms of business models and creative pursuits.

 

The Institute will support twelve annual fellows, each researching a specific challenge or problem facing the film industry. Each fellowship is a yearlong program during which the fellow will write a paper or organize a symposium on his/her topic. The Institute will produce monthly symposia, which will be open to the public and invited guests. Once a year, a think tank summit will gather invited guests selected from the film industry, technology, social media and other arts and government related fields. Fellows will be expected to discuss new ideas and models for filmmakers, to be used in an online journal as a virtual center for the discussion and advancement of modern media.

 

Recent developments within the Graduate Film program at NYU, specifically the partnership with the Stern Business School for the creation of the Dual MBA/MFA Degree Program in Producing, makes it an ideal time and setting for this forward-thinking initiative.