Quibi Takes on Sundance With First-Ever Previews as Lena Waithe Praises the Business Model

Quibi co-founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman spent Friday at the Sundance Movie Competition wooing filmmakers on what they name the subsequent era of storytelling. Quibi additionally supplied its first-ever preview of the platform in motion, with a VIP cocktail social gathering that allowed friends to preview a few of the 175 titles that will likely be out there in the mobile-only streaming platform’s first yr.

For the uninitiated, Quibi serves up short-form content material — films damaged into chapters and an array of scripted and nonscripted collection, all with runtimes of 10 minutes or much less — that’s meant to switch scrolling by way of Instagram in line at Starbucks or falling into the dread of Twitter in the dentist’s workplace ready room.

Expertise doesn’t should be satisfied. It already looks like everybody has a Quibi present at the firm, which has poured thousands and thousands into commissioning initiatives which can be licensed quite than owned by the platform. (In contrast to Netflix, Katzenberg says, “We’re not a studio.”) Quibi has unique rights for seven years, after which the rights are launched to the creator.

At a Friday morning Quibi panel with Katzenberg, Quibi creator Lena Waithe (producer and narrator of “You Ain’t Acquired These,” a docuseries providing a essential have a look at sneaker tradition), which means with the ability to construct an viewers round the challenge earlier than, maybe, re-editing and releasing it as a characteristic.

“The largest factor that, actually you mentioned it, was possession — the proven fact that we’d be licensing it to you, an concept that I might do it there after which go promote it to a different place,” Waithe mentioned on a stage she shared with Katzenberg. “I’m a businesswoman, firstly.”

Lena Waithe at Sundance.

Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

“You Ain’t Acquired These” was amongst the choices at a preview of Quibi content material Friday night time. Dozens gathered at a Principal Road area and had been handed a cell phone and a pair of headphones to be amongst the first to take pleasure in the Quibi expertise. The corporate nonetheless hasn’t unveiled its app or person interface, however the demo did exhibit Quibi’s trademark characteristic: Turnstyle, the patent-pending know-how that provides completely different factors of view relying on whether or not viewers maintain their telephones in portrait or panorama mode.

The episode of Waithe’s present out there at the social gathering featured her, Hasan Minhaj, and others speaking about Air Jordans. Some interview scenes supplied viewers two separate angles of the similar particular person speaking when considered vertically, whereas only one angle was proven in panorama. The transition between the two was seamless.

Different out there exhibits included “The Day by day Chill,” which mixes an ASMR narrator and soundtrack with calming visuals, and “The Gayme Present,” a campy competitors hosted by “Las Culturistas” podcast co-host Matt Rogers and comic Dave Mizzoni. The episode out there had Ilana Glazer (“Broad Metropolis”) and “Saturday Evening Dwell” solid member Bowen Yang as friends. Additionally out there had been what Quibi payments as films in chapters, together with “The Stranger” from “The Killing” creator Veena Sud.

At the panel, Sud mentioned capturing for Quibi meant shifting actors’ eyelines and enjoying extra with a vertical aircraft, quite than the conventional horizontal aircraft. A scene in a fuel station was shot with horizontal orientation by narrowing the aisles so viewers’ eyes can be drawn north to south. The consequence was actors generally appeared immediately into the digital camera, making for a extra intense and intimate thriller.

“It began to really feel like FaceTime at moments, which was precisely what the app requires,” she mentioned.

Veena Sud, Kaitlin Olson and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Michael Buckner/Deadline/Shutterstock

Given the two native orientations, a Quibi collection requires an extended record of deliverables. However as Katzenberg tells it, there are however just a few guidelines for producing a Quibi collection.

The primary is that no episode will be longer than 10 minutes, with a candy spot of six or seven minutes.

Whether or not comedy, actuality, drama, or information, “It has to seize your curiosity, proper at the first shot … whether or not it’s visible or verbal,” he mentioned. It additionally wants to finish with what Katzenberg calls a “wow” — there’s no time to waste with slow-burn plot or character growth right here.

If it’s a serial, it must have a hook to maintain the viewer wanting extra. Katzenberg mentioned the grasp referent was Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” a novel with very quick chapters that ended with a cliffhanger or different drivers that saved the reader going.

It’s a hands-off strategy that actress Kaitlin Olson, who stars reverse Will Forte in Quibi’s “Flipped,” in comparison with working with FX on “It’s All the time Sunny in Philadelphia.”

To creators, “I mentioned ‘Aside from that, you’re the pioneers. We don’t know,’” Katzenberg mentioned. “We’re in enterprise with the finest individuals in the group. So we’re going to be taught as (they) be taught.”

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