Things are changing.

That’s probably one of the sentence I have written the most on mentorless in the last six months. Things are changing: you could be hired by a Studio to create content for YouTube now. Things are changing: your (future) agent is not only looking to sell your talent to traditional platforms, you can have an agent for Vines, you can build and lose a community supporting your career with a poorly handled Kickstarter campaign, you will reach a wider audience and reduce piracy if convenience becomes your priority.

Things are changing. And Kevin Spacey knows it too.

Opening this year Edinburgh International Television Festival with the MacTaggart lecture, the Award Winning actor who plays the lead character in Netflix original series ‘House of Cards‘ gave an inspiring and forward-thinking speech.

Here are 10 highlights from it:

1 – Kevin Spacey Is Disappointed…

“I don’t think we do enough. And like David Lean, I’m disappointed. Disappointed this industry doesn’t do more to support new talent. And just because I have achieved success in my career doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed in myself. Disappointed that I haven’t done better – that my work hasn’t always stood up to the challenge of the time. I want to do better. I want to produce better stories. I want to do better plays. I want to encourage the best of the storytellers coming up in this industry, because I believe ‘sending the elevator back down’, Jack Lemmon’s philosophy he handed down to me, is a great way we can all use success to benefit others.”

2 – Culture Is a Necessity…

“I believe culture is not a luxury item, it is a necessity. Storytelling helps us understand each other, translate the issues of our times and the tools of theater and film can be powerful in helping young people to develop communication/collaboration skills, let alone improving their own confidence.”

3 – Giving Audience Control Will Limit Piracy…

“Clearly the success of the Netflix model – releasing the entire season of ‘House of Cards’ at once has proved one thing – the audience wants the control. They want freedom – If they want to binge – as they’ve been doing on ‘House of Cards’ – then we should let them binge. Many people have stopped me on the street to say, ‘Thanks – you sucked three days out of my life”. And through this new form of distribution, I think we have demonstrated that we have learned the lesson the music industry didn’t learn: Give people what they want – when they want it – in the form they want it in – at a reasonable price – and they’ll more likely pay for it rather than steal it, some will still steal it, but I believe this new model can take a bit out of piracy. ”

4 – Putting Talents at the Center is the Key to Real Innovation…

“We need to be innovative. In some ways we need to be better than the audience. We need to surprise, break boundaries and take viewers to new places. We need to give them better quality. We might not disrupt the status quo overnight, but we can mould structures at the center of our businesses; because if we really put talent at the heart of everything we do, we might just be able to have greater highs across a broader spectrum of the industry. That’s what I believe.”

5 – The Industry Needs to Have Patience…

“If an audience is bonding to a show, however small that audience is to begin with, isn’t it worth investing the time to help it find its true potential? And if that means ripping up the rulebook and scheduling in a different way, or playing with windows to build excitement and availability, then we should be prepared to try anything.”

6 – Those Who Refuse to Recognize the Revolution In Movement Will Be Left Behind…

“Studios and networks who ignore either shift – whether the increasing sophistication of story telling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement – will be left behind. And if they fail to hear these warnings, audiences will evolve faster than they will. They will seek the stories and content-providers who give them what they demand – complex, smart stories available whenever they want, on whatever device they want, wherever they want. Netflix and other similar services have succeeded because they have married good content with a forward-thinking approach to viewing habits and appetites.”

7 – We Need to Stop Distinguishing Formats: Only Great Stories Matter…

“If there is one thing that overlaps between business and art, it’s that in the long run, THE RISK TAKERS ARE REWARDED. 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. It’s 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 of two, any differentiation between these formats – these platforms – will fall away.”

8 – We Need to Try, Learn and Then Try Again…

“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.”

9 – New Creatives No Longer Need To Take On One Title…

“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.”

10 – Trust Orson to Know It Best…

“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 peanuts. But I just can’t stop eating peanuts.”

Watch Kevin Spacey’s full lecture below:

Thanks to The Guardian for publishing the Full Text here and Kevin Spacey for such an inspiring lecture. Let’s hope it will be an important stone to path the road to the future of storytelling.



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